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Authors: Kerry Hardie
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birds. Everywhere
you looked everything was jam-packed with life, doing nothing at all with itself except living.
And the more I saw how alive it all was, the more I got this creepy feeling that it was way
too
alive, it was all too busy and strong for me, and if I went on looking another minute it might do like the skull had done
and turn into something else.
So I stopped looking. I scuttled across the rocks like one of the slaters, and when I found Liam, I flung myself at him, demanding
a bus.
“A bus?” he said, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me off and holding me there. “Where to?”
“Belfast,” I said.
“Back to Robbie?” he asked, the anger showing in his eyes and tightening his mouth.
“None of your business.”
“What if I think it is?”
It’s nearly three in the morning, very dark, for the cloud has thickened and crowded out stars and moon. I’ve been a long
time remembering Achill; it’s been strange to see it so close up in my mind when I haven’t really thought of it for years.
I suppose I was already deep in love with Liam, but I didn’t know it, I thought it was only my body responding to his. And
I thought I could live rationally, could make that body give up what it wanted and do whatever I told it to do.
But I didn’t go back to Robbie. Liam was angry enough to say what he thought of him, and somehow after that I couldn’t make
him big enough in my mind to submit again to that life.
Instead I went running home to my mother in Derry. Did I say that? Here am I, sleepless with dread at the thought of the morning
and what it will bring, when back then Derry was home and my mother and refuge of sorts.
A delusion that even then was short-lived. After a week of her I was so beside myself I walked into the town and had all my
mass of flame-red hair cut short in some sort of crazed, inarticulate protest. I came home near bald and wild with dread that
I’d driven Liam off from me for good. Which was what I wanted and what I couldn’t bear.
I looked in the mirror. This poky white face like a rat’s with tufts of red all around it looked straight back out at me.
I got outthe antidepressants and sedatives they’d given me in the hospital and shook a whole load of tablets into my hand. That felt
good; it felt painful and dramatic. Then I caught myself on. There were neighbours of ours, RUC men, who’d been shot at their
own front doors. I knew what death looked like—I didn’t want to be dead.
I picked up the nail scissors and eased the sharp points in under the flesh of my palm till the blood began to come. It hurt,
but at first I liked that because it made me forget how I was hurting over Liam. Then I stopped liking it; I looked at myself
and what I was doing and filled up with self-disgust. I set down the scissors and sat at the window reading the graffiti on
the walls of the houses across the way. IRA S CUM and D EATH TO ALL T AIGS. I felt sorry for myself and martyrish—Romeo-and-Julietish—as though by falling in love with a Catholic I’d gained some sort
of special status. I wept till my eyes were swollen and red, and I felt much better. I knew I wanted to go on living, I just
couldn’t work out how.
My mother gave out when she saw my hair, which got up my nose because she was never done telling me to tie it back and stop
it from flying away out like a flag. I said there was no pleasing her. She said to keep a civil tongue or I wasn’t welcome
in her home.
“It’s my home too,” I said.
“It is not,” she said. “You’ve a home of your own in Belfast, in case you’d forgotten. A husband as well, and it’s time you
were thinking of going back to him.”
So there it was, out on the table. She wasn’t blind—no phone calls, no sign of Robbie, no talk of me going away.
I saw the stiff line of her shoulders, and my heart sank inside me, for I’d backed myself into a corner and I knew that I’d
have to tell her the
you looked everything was jam-packed with life, doing nothing at all with itself except living.
And the more I saw how alive it all was, the more I got this creepy feeling that it was way
too
alive, it was all too busy and strong for me, and if I went on looking another minute it might do like the skull had done
and turn into something else.
So I stopped looking. I scuttled across the rocks like one of the slaters, and when I found Liam, I flung myself at him, demanding
a bus.
“A bus?” he said, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me off and holding me there. “Where to?”
“Belfast,” I said.
“Back to Robbie?” he asked, the anger showing in his eyes and tightening his mouth.
“None of your business.”
“What if I think it is?”
It’s nearly three in the morning, very dark, for the cloud has thickened and crowded out stars and moon. I’ve been a long
time remembering Achill; it’s been strange to see it so close up in my mind when I haven’t really thought of it for years.
I suppose I was already deep in love with Liam, but I didn’t know it, I thought it was only my body responding to his. And
I thought I could live rationally, could make that body give up what it wanted and do whatever I told it to do.
But I didn’t go back to Robbie. Liam was angry enough to say what he thought of him, and somehow after that I couldn’t make
him big enough in my mind to submit again to that life.
Instead I went running home to my mother in Derry. Did I say that? Here am I, sleepless with dread at the thought of the morning
and what it will bring, when back then Derry was home and my mother and refuge of sorts.
A delusion that even then was short-lived. After a week of her I was so beside myself I walked into the town and had all my
mass of flame-red hair cut short in some sort of crazed, inarticulate protest. I came home near bald and wild with dread that
I’d driven Liam off from me for good. Which was what I wanted and what I couldn’t bear.
I looked in the mirror. This poky white face like a rat’s with tufts of red all around it looked straight back out at me.
I got outthe antidepressants and sedatives they’d given me in the hospital and shook a whole load of tablets into my hand. That felt
good; it felt painful and dramatic. Then I caught myself on. There were neighbours of ours, RUC men, who’d been shot at their
own front doors. I knew what death looked like—I didn’t want to be dead.
I picked up the nail scissors and eased the sharp points in under the flesh of my palm till the blood began to come. It hurt,
but at first I liked that because it made me forget how I was hurting over Liam. Then I stopped liking it; I looked at myself
and what I was doing and filled up with self-disgust. I set down the scissors and sat at the window reading the graffiti on
the walls of the houses across the way. IRA S CUM and D EATH TO ALL T AIGS. I felt sorry for myself and martyrish—Romeo-and-Julietish—as though by falling in love with a Catholic I’d gained some sort
of special status. I wept till my eyes were swollen and red, and I felt much better. I knew I wanted to go on living, I just
couldn’t work out how.
My mother gave out when she saw my hair, which got up my nose because she was never done telling me to tie it back and stop
it from flying away out like a flag. I said there was no pleasing her. She said to keep a civil tongue or I wasn’t welcome
in her home.
“It’s my home too,” I said.
“It is not,” she said. “You’ve a home of your own in Belfast, in case you’d forgotten. A husband as well, and it’s time you
were thinking of going back to him.”
So there it was, out on the table. She wasn’t blind—no phone calls, no sign of Robbie, no talk of me going away.
I saw the stiff line of her shoulders, and my heart sank inside me, for I’d backed myself into a corner and I knew that I’d
have to tell her the
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