Read Online Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy - Free Book Online Page A

from the river, that and her fillings would give her away. She could trace the route of the scar, fading though it now was, as surely as if she were sightless and reading Braille. If she were ever to have a baby – oddly, she considered the prospect more concretely since they had lost Pearl – it would mean another slashing of skin, a new wound. It would be by Caesarean; she knew this with a certainty she couldn’t justify. No man had ever entered her; how could a baby come out? It would have to be torn from her, yanked out like her shattered ribs had been. What had become of those delicate shanks of bone removed so long ago, she wondered. Had they been stored in tall jars of formaldehyde like pickled ghosts? Or buried perhaps, a spindly quartet of ivory. Or had they been used, as Irene now suspected, to make something new. She saw a group of doctors, unknown to her, closeted away in a bubbling laboratory, grinding each rib down by hand into a fine dust. They would add something then. Using pestle and mortar. Milk, of course. Mother’s milk. To make a paste as pliable as dough. And from that dough a baby make. A plaster-cast infant, glazed and prettied and cooked in the oven until hard. From dust and ashes, new life. This was her offspring, hers alone, the child of her illness, Irene’s first loss. And she was still out there. Not dead, simply lost. In a hospital ward somewhere, unclaimed, waiting for her mother. This time Irene determined she would tell no one, not even Stanley. She would seek out the child who was rightfully hers, the fruit of Eve’s ribs.

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    MAY BLESSED STOOD on the steps of the Four Provinces with the backs of her turned wrists resting on her hips like decorative jug handles. The VACANCIES sign on a pole lashed to the railings creaked rustily. Irene set her bag down and looked up hopefully at the buxom woman framed in the doorway.
    â€˜I’m looking for a …’
    â€˜Come in, come in,’ Mrs Blessed interrupted, beaming. ‘Plenty of room at the inn!’
    She ushered Irene over the threshold and pushed the heavy front door to on a damp, mauve dusk.
    â€˜Mrs Blessed,’ she declared. ‘May Blessed.’
    She gave her name as if it were tidings of great fortune.
    â€˜And you?’ she enquired.
    â€˜Mrs North,’ Irene said plucking a name from the air. A telephone jangled.
    â€˜Oh dear,’ Mrs Blessed said letting her hand fall. ‘No rest for the wicked!’
    She disappeared through a glass-panelled door marked OFFICE .
    â€˜Four Provinces,’ Irene heard her purr through the half-open door. ‘Can I help you?’
    Irene wandered out of earshot. Mrs Blessed had tried very hard to turn her rooming house into a hotel. There were little attempts at sophistication. The U-shaped reception desk padded in red vinyl, a latticed noticeboard for letters and announcements (the times of Masses), an umbrella stand. But inside the front door, left on the latch, dry leaves had gathered in rustling covens. A man’s bicycle was propped up against the wall with a damp stain on the lino under the back wheel. Near the back stairs, a black call box was affixed to a pocked piece of chipboard embroidered with spidery names and numbers. A faint smell of stale fat hung in the air.
    â€˜Now, Mrs North,’ said Mrs Blessed, emerging from the office. She lifted a large register and thumped it down noisily on the desk. ‘How many nights?’
    How many indeed. Startled into wakefulness in the small hours by a timid scratching from the other room,
her
room. Irene, bolt upright, would strain to read the night noises. She would shake Stanley.
    â€˜Do you hear it?’
    She did not believe, as Stanley did, that it was the mating calls of toms that had roused her.
    â€˜What?’ he would groan through a fog of sleep. (They joked about it at the yard when Stanley appeared hollow-eyed and dawny for work. Good night with the missus, eh