Beatrice Read online

  We drive into town, parking down a side road. I have an idea that I will take some things with me down home. I have my camera in the studio, some paper and inks and a couple of my sketchbooks. I have a vague plan to document everything – maybe use it in my show.

  The studio is on the second floor. Noreen is at work on a steel plate.

  ‘Eithne! How’s it going? Are you in today?’

  ‘No, hun, I’m going home for a few days. This is Lisa, a friend from England.’

  ‘Wow!’ Lisa says, pointing at our giant press. ‘What is that? It looks like it should belong in a museum, like a giant thing they used for washing clothes hundreds of years ago.’

  ‘It does look like a mangle. We use it to print – the paper goes here with the plate on top of it, then we put the blanket on and then we wind the press and it rolls across the top,’ Noreen explains.

  ‘Heavy work,’ says Lisa as she tries to turn the handle.

  ‘That’s not the half of it,’ says Noreen.

  ‘And what are they?’ asks Lisa, looking over at a stack of limestone blocks.

  ‘They’re lithographic stones. They’re very, very heavy and a real pain to work with.’

  Lisa fingers the weathered stones.

  ‘Each one has to be ground completely smooth and washed down before you can use it,’ says Noreen. ‘Then it’s touch and go whether the ink will take.’

  ‘God, I never thought making a picture was so hard,’ says Lisa, looking at the art around her.

  Noreen exchanges looks with me – I know what she is thinking, what she’ll say to me later.

  ‘Do you have time for a coffee, Eithne?’ she asks. ‘We could pop over to Joy of Coffee.’

  ‘Love to, but we’re really in a hurry.’

  There’s no rush, but coffee with Noreen has implications. I just don’t want her to know what’s going on, not yet.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks. ‘You look ever so pale.’

  ‘I just couldn’t sleep last night – I’ll see you later.’

  We go back downstairs with my stuff.

  ‘Beatrice was studying art when she disappeared,’ I tell Lisa. ‘She was at the National College of Art and Design. She was good, very good.’

  Lisa looks at me.

  ‘Well, I didn’t inherit that off her. I’m crap at art.’

  ‘Maybe you never gave it a chance.’

  ‘No, I’m really shit – matchstick people, that’s all I can do.’

  By the time we hit the Navan road it is lunchtime and people are running out of their offices, across the road into smoky cafes for soup and rolls. We pass a McDonald’s.

  ‘Hey,’ says Lisa, ‘can we get a burger or something? I’m starving.’

  I go into the drive-by lane. Lisa orders a cheeseburger, Coke and fries. I just get a coffee. I can smell the place from inside the car and it makes my stomach churn. I pay, while Lisa digs in.

  ‘You know, that food is complete crap,’ I say.

  She looks amused.

  ‘You sound like my mum,’ she says with her mouth full.

  As I drive I begin to get nervous. I haven’t been home in a few months. Leo and I had spent Christmas with his family, and then we had gone away for new year. Being home at that time of year is hard, there’s booze everywhere, and Daddy usually gets out of control.

  When I was little I used to love Christmas. Then, when Daddy drank he was funny. He’d buy box loads of crackers, and wear all the silly hats one on top of the other and turn all the stupid jokes into stupider songs. Mammy and Beatrice would join in, a bit. They’d start off playing Monopoly with us, but usually they’d get bored and wander off into the sitting room to watch the Christmas movie together. Then the battle would begin – Daddy and I could play for hours, bankrupting each other. He was always the top hat, Mr Posh he’d call himself, and I was always the little dog, Little Jordie he used to call me, because he said the dog reminded him of someone he used to work with.

  After Beatrice disappeared, Christmas became pure torture. Daddy never even made it to the dinner table. After Mass he’d head straight for the pub. Mammy could hardly get it together to cook anything. I remember one year sitting in front of The Wizard of Oz eating cheese sandwiches. Another year the Lynches invited us. Mammy refused to go, but insisted that I should. It was awful. The Lynches were so nice to me. They had all bought me presents, and Assumpta gave me exactly what I wanted – a denim pencil skirt. Everyone was laughing and hustling and bustling – there was so much noise, so much love, that the contrast to my own home hit me like a force. I decided it would have been better not to know what I was missing each year. I never went again.

  We drive past Navan, and it begins raining. A drizzle at first, but as the temperature drops the rain becomes icier and builds up momentum. I hope Daddy is busy, that he hasn’t been in the pub yet. It is January, grey and cold. The land will be barren at this time of year, and there’s not much to do. When it’s that bleak, it’s hard to take.

  When I was a child, I wished we lived by the sea. The sea is so immense, so wide, so dazzling to a child’s eyes. When you first see that chink of sea-blue on the horizon, it’s a moment you remember for ever. But now I am glad we grew up in the heart of Ireland where, in the summer, the land is lush, the river wide, and we were surrounded by woods, bogs and loughs. Your childhood landscape never leaves you, wherever you end up.

  A car pulls out in front of me.

  ‘Jesus!’ I slam on the brakes.

  ‘He didn’t even see you,’ says Lisa.

  ‘I suppose visibility is pretty bad.’

  I am jumpy, like a cat. My heart is pounding as I begin to realize how much I am dreading going home. Since we were down with Mick, Leo has refused to go home with me. He says he’s fed up trying with my parents. He says it’s like they just don’t want to get to know him, like they couldn’t care less who I was married to. I try to tell him otherwise, but I lack conviction. Daddy does care . . . it’s just he’s not well; he needs someone to help him. As for Mammy, Leo is right. She is cold. Especially compared to Katy, his mother, who adores me, and plasters me with kisses and hugs every time she sees me, while enquiring when exactly am I going to produce a grandchild. Mammy never asks that. Thank God. But then she never asks anything specific about our lives, just how’s work? And, not even listening to the answer, she’ll move on to, how’s the house? How’s the little girl, Shauna? It drives Leo mad. I try to explain.

  It’s like she’s standing behind plate glass, I say, and it’s all steamed up, and she just can’t see anything very clearly on the other side. She’s lost inside her own pain. That’s why she’s distant. And he says, well, what’s on her side? Beatrice, I say, the both of them, protected from reality. Well, Leo says, it’s about time the glass was broken, it’s about time you had your mother back. It hurts when he says that. It’s too late now, I say, I’ll never be Beatrice.

  We pass through Kells. There’s a line of traffic up the town.

  ‘So did my mum have a boyfriend, then?’ asks Lisa. ‘Do you know who my father might be?’

  Jakob Rudin springs to mind. And then Phil . . . I had worked out that Beatrice must have got pregnant round about the end of August so it was before she left for Dublin. It was definitely someone back home.

  ‘It could be a couple of people,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to ask Mammy. Beatrice might have told her if she had a boyfriend.’

  ‘Are you going to tell your mum about me?’ asks Lisa. ‘How do you think she’ll take it?’

  ‘I think she always thought Beatrice would come back. I don’t think she’s ever believed she was dead.’

  We turn left out of the town, already it seems to be getting dark.

  ‘Because of the things,’ I say. ‘Lots of bits and pieces belonging to Beatrice were found all over the place – a necklace in the woods, a book down by the lake, a scarf on the hill. I always thought there was a killer out there and that was his trail but Mammy thought they were
clues; she believed that Beatrice had left them there for us.’

  ‘That’s really weird,’ says Lisa. ‘What else was found?’

  ‘Well, there was also a beret – that was found on the bog. It was pink and it had sequins on it.’

  ‘God, people wore really disgusting things then, didn’t they?’

  I say nothing, and Lisa looks out of the window.

  ‘I used to have a beret,’ she says. ‘I bloody hated it. My mum, who I’m going to call Lorraine from now on, used to make me wear it to school every day. I looked shit. So every day I’d take off the beret and hide it in a bush behind our bins. I also had another pair of shoes there as well. You can imagine the type of things Lorraine made me wear.’

  I glance at her.

  ‘You know, those really awful Clarkes things – really nerdish. Course, I was caught in the end. Lorraine was gardening one day and found the beret and shoes. But instead of getting angry with me, she just started to cry and ran up to her room to sulk. She was always doing things like that.’

  It has stopped raining, and the sun vainly pushes through, although it is almost dusk. I turn off the main road, and drive up a steep lane. I need to walk. I park the car at the base of a hill – Witch’s Hill – and switch off the ignition.

  ‘Let’s stretch our legs,’ I say.

  ‘Okay,’ Lisa says unenthusiastically.

  We leave the car park, and walk up some stone steps to a small gateway. A few sheep stare at us. We start to climb up the hill. There is a faint track in the grass. It is quite steep, but Lisa almost jogs along. It is hard to keep up. As we ascend, the clouds begin to clear, and we are able to look around us. The view is staggering. In every direction distant blue peaks frame the horizon. You can see Lough Sheelin, a wide pool of shining silver. Some of the land is rough, and knobbly, in other places fields have been levelled and cultivated. The hills nearby are the most fantastic shapes, one looks like a shark fin.

  ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘What a view!’

  ‘It’s something else all right,’ I reply.

  We can hardly talk. It is so windy the words are being blown out of our mouths. Finally we reach the top. The main burial mound faces us; its surface is covered with sharp grey stones. To our left is a small burial chamber and to our right another ring of stones.

  It is wild up here. The sun is setting and dusk creeps across the fields. We are being buffeted around by the wind.

  ‘That’s where Beatrice’s scarf was found,’ I yell above the wind, pointing to the entrance of the mound.

  She nods and goes over to it. Peers inside.

  ‘Spooky,’ she shouts.

  We walk round the windy side again, I am being pushed and pushed into the sky. It’s hard to take.

  Lisa climbs up onto the hag’s chair, makes a loud whoop, and jumps down.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘It feels like you’re flying!’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Come on.’ She takes my hand and forces me up.

  On the rocks the wind tries to beat us down, but we stand firm, and then jump out into it. Lisa whoops and I yell. The rage in my belly comes out as one big roar.

  ‘Wow!’ says Lisa. ‘You’re loud.’

  We do it again and again until, completely exhausted, we collapse on the ground.

  ‘That was great,’ she says.

  ‘We’d better go, it’s getting dark.’

  We pick our way down the hill. The rain has made it slippy as hell.

  ‘Go down like a crab,’ I say. ‘Sideways . . . like this.’

  She looks at me like I am bonkers, and at that moment she loses her footing and slips, landing flat on her bum.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her shoulders are rocking back and forth. At first I think that she is laughing, then I see the tears spilling off the end of her nose, trickling down her lips.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, and put my arm around her shoulders. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She shakes her head; then she lets out a wail.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ she screams. ‘Why the fuck did she give me up!’

  ‘I don’t know, Lisa,’ I say. ‘I’m angry too.’

  ‘I wish it had been you,’ she says, and gives me a tremendous hug. Something about the way she does this, or the feel and smell of her as she hugs me, reminds me of my sister. Finally I can sense Beatrice in Lisa. She doesn’t look like her, but she is beginning to look like someone familiar. I just can’t remember who.

  Back in the car we clean our shoes.

  ‘Look at them, they’re ruined,’ Lisa sniffs, as she tries to pick the mud off her runners.

  ‘Maybe we should wait till we get home. We can put them in the washing machine.’

  I start the car.

  ‘Lisa,’ I ask, ‘are you sure you don’t want to go back to Dublin?’

  ‘No, I’m okay now. I want to go on. I want to meet my real family.’

  BEATRICE

  ‘There is a wonderful world in the deep,’ said Beatrice to Phil, as he stripped some bark off the tree. She stared at his hands. His fingers picked at the pieces of wood, which flickered all shades of brown.

  ‘There are secret gardens and blooming sea-flowers unseen by human eyes,’ she said. Phil paused, and looked up at her. His eyes were nearly as black as the bog-earth they sat upon. Her pupils were as dilated as his.

  ‘There are forests of seaweed, groves of seashells, pools with pearls that shimmer and gleam,’ she continued. ‘The coral is as red as a poppy and shaped like a castle. And all manner of tiny sea creatures live within. It is a lovely country at the bottom of the sea.’

  ‘When I was younger, when my step-father actually liked me, he used to take me fishing on the Thames,’ said Phil. ‘I liked it, we sat in silence, but it felt like family. Once he took me sea fishing. It was different. Kind of wild and noisy. I suppose there were other people there. I kept hearing this bell pealing like a church bell. I said to my step-father, “Why is the skipper ringing a bell?”

  ‘ “What bell?” he said. He didn’t hear it.

  ‘Afterwards I read in a book that some sailors say that they’ve heard church bells – peals from the ocean’s depth, floating to the surface from towers below. These towers belong to submerged cities and sunken lands. There is somewhere else.’

  SARAH

  Every Friday Father Cleary arrived to instruct Sarah in the Catholic faith in preparation for her wedding while Margaret took Beatrice for a walk in the pram. Margaret really did seem fond of the baby and Sarah was, in a way, thankful for her support. She could not imagine how she would have coped on her own in Clapham – but maybe she wouldn’t have been alone?

  Sarah had never considered herself religious, thus she accepted what Father Cleary told her to believe in just as she accepted her lot. She still had not written to her parents and, though she knew she should contact them, as each day passed it became harder and harder to put pen to paper. Soon it would be Christmas and this year they were expecting her.

  As the days shortened and Beatrice grew, Sarah was put to work around the house. It seemed to be her job to wash the floors, which were constantly dirtied by mud from the yard and outbuildings, every day.

  Joe’s father had died about five years earlier. It was shortly after his death that Joe and his brother Jack had set out for London. Both had started work on the building sites, sending money home to their mother every week. Jack had moved on about three years ago and was married, working in a bank and settled in Surrey.

  The Kellys didn’t own much land. A good part of it had been sold after the father died, but Margaret managed a few sheep, a couple of cows and some hens on the acres she had left. Joe’s three sisters still lived at home. Aoife, who worked in the local chicken factory, was due to be married next spring. She was the fairest in the family and the friendliest towards Sarah. Mary was much like her mother. She always seemed to be going to church, as far as Sarah could tell. She was only at home for a while longer; in the
new year she was going to Dublin to train to be a nurse. Bríd was the youngest. She spoke little and spent most of her time outside on the farm. She had been in charge of the livestock until Joe had returned and, although fond of her brother, her resentment towards him was perceptible. Towards Sarah she was unmistakably hostile.

  At first Sarah found it hard to understand the Kellys’ accents; they all seemed to speak so fast. Then she just stopped listening; they were never talking to her anyway. It was as though she was a shadow in the corner. Yet for the first time in her life she was vaguely aware that she was an important part of something – if only through her baby.

  The women doted on Beatrice, showering her with little toys and hand-knitted cardigans. It certainly wasn’t Beatrice’s or Joe’s fault, but somehow all Sarah’s fault that they had never been told she and Joe were married.

  The wedding day approached – the second week in November. Beatrice’s baptism had been arranged for the same day. Joe and Sarah had been sleeping in separate rooms over the past six weeks. According to Margaret, ‘They were not yet married in the eyes of the Lord.’ Margaret had asked Sarah about her family. Were they not coming to the wedding? Sarah had explained that her father was too ill to travel. The subject was never raised again.

  It was all happening too fast, yet each day felt impossibly long. Sarah went for walks, but there was nowhere to go. She would just stare at the sheep and their indifference and then turn back to the house. Her life was being lived for her. She felt utterly apathetic.

  Joe more or less left her to it. Although she knew that she would never be able to love him, not in the way she felt about Anthony, nor even like the short-lived infatuation she had had for Jonathan, Sarah still wished he would spend more time with her. At least they could be friends. But he seemed always to be out and about on the land, or out someplace with Tommy O’Reilly, when they would usually end up in the pub and Joe would not get home until after she had gone to bed. Only on a Sunday was he around – for the big dinner.