Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

K ATHERINE RISES LATER THAT MORNING, after a short, disrupted sleep, feeling as though she has not slept at all. Even getting dressed feels such an effort for her. She is comforted somewhat by the promise of a hot day when she opens the back door. Wafts of honeysuckle scent float on the balmy air and mingle with the slightly sour odor from the half-open dustbin beside the coal shed. But as Katherine turns her head to look over the city, her brow furrows in disbelief. Hanging in the sky is a huge pall of gray smoke like a wide, flat cigar, incongruous against the morning blue directly above it. The smoke’s curling, dissolute plumes move listlessly outward before folding back in upon themselves, twisting around a dense gray center.

This stretch of gray cloud is confirmation of the trouble George had talked about in the early hours of the morning, at which Katherine had shaken her head in disbelief. Now, it is there for her to see, ominous, foreboding, and undeniable. What in God’s name is happening? She wonders. Riots in the streets, petrol bombs, cars and buses burning?

Katherine calls George, who is inside the house, cleaning the dried dirt off his black boots from the night before. He arrives in his socks, a boot in one hand, a damp cloth in the other.

“Look, George, look at the smoke.”

George follows Katherine’s gaze. “I know. I expected it. I got a call from the station this morning when you were still in bed.”

“Yes, I heard the telephone.” Katherine’s voice is barely audible.

George speaks with a heavy and sober tone. “A nine-year-old boy was shot dead last night, Katherine. Shot dead as he was sleeping. Half the side of his head gone. Indiscriminate fire, they say.”

“Dear God.” Katherine is stunned.

“There were clashes between crowds and the RUC all night.” George shakes his head. “I’ve no idea how long I’ll be needed, Katherine. It all depends on how difficult our access will be.” He kisses her on the cheek. “I’ll pass a message to the station to get one of the boys to telephone you if I’m going to be very late. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

“And you’ve cleared this with the council? They’ve given you more time off work?”

“Yeah — they understand the seriousness of the situation.”

Katherine reaches out her hand to his face. “How will I know that you’ll be safe, George?”

“Don’t worry, love, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Katherine stares into George’s eyes. There is something urgent, something pressing in his expression. George lifts his arms — still holding his boot in one hand and the cloth in the other — and folds them around Katherine. He presses his head against hers. He holds her tenderly. He holds her for what seems like an age. “I love you,” he says to her. Then, pulling gently back from his embrace, he kisses her on the lips.

George.

Katherine gathers herself. “I’ve made sandwiches,” she says, visibly warmed by his display of affection. “They’re on the table.” She smiles at George. “I love you, too,” she says, and then moves swiftly into the house.

With George gone now, Katherine sets about preparing breakfast for the children. She can hear the thump-thump of Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa upstairs as they jump heavily onto the floor from their beds, and above that she can hear Stephen squealing from the cot. She walks to the bottom of the stairs and calls up to the girls.

“Take it easy. Someone’s going to get hurt. Maureen! Maureen!” The rumpus stops immediately, followed by an unearthly silence.

Then: “Yes, Mummy?” Maureen’s voice sounds hoarse.

“Lift Stephen out of his cot and come down for something to eat.” There is barely an acknowledgment from Maureen before the noise begins again.

After a lazy breakfast, Katherine rallies the girls to help tidy up the kitchen. She is now feeling exceptionally tired, although it is only late morning. She tries to shake off her worry over George, but it clings like an unsettling dream.

“We need to bring in the sheets and blankets and things from the garden,” she informs the girls with a forced briskness.

“I can’t believe the summer holidays are nearly over,” Maureen moans as she scrapes off the remaining flakes of cereal from a bowl into the kitchen bin.

“There’s ages left,” Elizabeth says.

“Well, there’s not ages left,” Elsa says, correcting Elizabeth as she checks her upside-down face in her spoon; “there’s two weeks left.”

“You know what I mean,” mutters Elizabeth.

“Smarty-pants,” says Maureen, taunting Elsa.

“Big smelly pants!” replies Elsa.

Katherine gives Elsa a quick slap on her behind as she passes her by. “Manners, Elsa!”

Stephen has been looking intently at Elsa from his high chair and is now peering into his own spoon. Then he throws the spoon on the floor, laughing loudly to himself. Maureen picks it up and gives it back to Stephen. Stephen throws the spoon back onto the floor again.

“All right, girls,” Katherine says, putting away the last of the dishes, “let’s sort out the garden.”

They dismantle Madam Maureen’s fortune-telling tent as though they are a circus leaving town, imbued with the inevitable contemplation that transience brings and with the growing sense that somehow their world is changing. Katherine removes the clothes pegs, then pulls the sheets and blankets slowly from the clotheshorse and bunches them in her arms for washing. Maureen collapses the clotheshorse. Elizabeth gathers the cushions and lifts the little wooden table that had been used to hold Madam Maureen’s crystal ball to put it away. Elsa becomes prospector of her own garden, sweeping her leg like a metal detector through the blades of grass to search for forgotten things. With her toes, she discovers the Butlin’s Holiday Camp eggcup in the grass by the garden wall, the HOME BAKING sign crumpled and sodden with dew under the hedge, and the bag of toffees in the long clump of weeds by the apple tree. The toffees have melted into a sticky clump. They all work silently, lifting their heads a little now and then to check on Stephen, who plays beside them in the grass, and to sense how the morning swings on a light, warm breeze, on the piping voices from a neighboring garden, on the solitary coarse bark of a dog chasing its tail.

Katherine, holding the roll of sheets and blankets, looks up at the sky.

Here and there is the blue promise of a hot day, but where is the sun? Gray smoke still hangs over the city. “Dear God, keep George safe,” she whispers.

She gives each of the girls a penny for all their work setting up the fair and for raising money for charity and for helping with the tidying up. They will give the proceeds of the fair to Father Daly after Mass on Sunday. Maureen and Elizabeth both put their pennies away for saving. But Elsa wants to buy sweets from McGovern’s shop. She runs down the crazy-paved driveway of her house, holding the penny in her hand. As she makes her way down the road, she can see the city spread out below her and she can blot it out with just one hand if she wants to.

The footpaths on either side of Elsa’s road are edged by rectangular patches of grass. During these summer months, the men from the Belfast Corporation came as usual with their giant whirring machines and leveled the growth, tossing the freshly cut grass into the air. The children who live on the road played with it, creating ancient city walls that snaked the surface of their new world while unleashing smells of grassy sap and dog shit. Once these games were over and conquests had been lost and won countless times, the grass cities became deserted like abandoned archaeological digs, left to the mercy of the wind and the feet of passersby. Now Elsa kicks clumps of walls here and there as she runs, scattering the grass about the street and over the curbs, which are painted red, white, and blue.