Himself(12)

Mahony finds another stone. ‘A low-tide island?’ He gets set to throw it, then thinks better of it.

‘But you have to wait and wait. Mammy says you’ll see it once in a lifetime if you’re lucky and twice if you’re blessed.’

‘Have you seen it, Ida?’

‘Maybe.’ She peers up at him through pale eyelashes. ‘You can walk on it. It’s longer than a fishing boat and as wide as a bus. In the sunshine it sparkles, all the little stones like wet jewels.’

‘You’ve walked on it, Ida?’

‘Jesus, are you thick or something?’ She sighs and looks up at the sky and continues in a flat bored voice. ‘If you ever see Denny’s Ait you’re not to go near it. Even if you think you can jump it or wade it. Even if it’s surrounded by less than a teaspoon of water. You’re to remember the Protestant who went digging for old bones on it. You’re to remember that when the tide changed, him and the island both drowned to death.’ She bites her lip. ‘Now his bones swim around and around it like long white fishes.’

Mahony looks out at the water. In the back of his brain something moves, shifts, a brief sickening feeling, like a wakening. He jumps up and walks back along the bank, needing to keep moving. He heads back to the clearing knowing she’s right next to him, walking to heel like a puppy, still trying to hold his hand.

She is smiling. It’s in no way a wholesome smile.

Say it, Mahony. Fucking say it.

‘Where’s the dead girl, Ida? The one you brought me to see?’

She stops smiling. ‘What dead girl? I don’t want to see no dead girl.’

‘Then why did you bring me here?’

‘To find my yo-yo. I lost it here and here and here.’ She turns around and around with her hands stretched out.

Mahony rubs his eyes. ‘Please, Ida.’

Ida puts her hands over her ears and drifts right out of sight.

Mahony makes his way over whorls of tree roots and through moats of leaf mould knowing that he’s lost and knowing that he’s watched. The dead of the forest are rustling in the undergrowth and winding up the tree trunks, twittering on branches and nosing through the loam.

Mahony feels them reach out to him as he passes.

He’s almost relieved to catch sight of Ida sitting cross-legged on the ground up ahead, flickering very slightly.

‘I’m not your friend no more. Just so’s you know, Gobshite.’ She picks her nose and wipes her finger on the sole of her shoe. ‘I mean it. I’m not feckin’ talking to you no more. Never. Not ever. All right?’

Ida is true to her word. By the time Mahony reaches the path to Rathmore House she hasn’t cursed him once. She turns away with narrowed eyes, holding a finger over her fading lips.

Mrs Cauley is out in the garden when Mahony reaches the house, ensconced in a wheelchair with a lap tray on her legs. She is brandishing a sausage on the end of a fork in the direction of a greying priest who sits with a defeated sort of aspect on a garden chair at her feet.

‘I’ll hear no arguments. I do this for the church, Father.’

‘Mrs Cauley, you are most generous but I’m certain my superiors will want me to see the proposed script before you embark on another one of your productions.’

Mrs Cauley puts the fork down. ‘Father Quinn, I cannot allow a collaboration. As an artist I must work alone.’ She takes a long sup from her teacup. The priest watches on with thinly disguised impatience.

‘But we must ensure that the production is suitable, Mrs Cauley, for it goes under the auspices of the church. Especially given the furore generated by your last production.’

‘A resounding success.’

The priest throws her a sour look. ‘I was unaware that the Holy Family featured at all in West Side Story.’

‘It was but a meandering thought of mine.’

‘But a contentious portrayal none the less, especially in terms of the costuming.’

‘A loincloth is not to be sniffed at, Father.’

‘I don’t think you quite understand me, Mrs Cauley.’

Mrs Cauley hands Father Quinn her teacup with a patient smile. ‘Father, the Son of God lived amongst us only briefly, but this much we know: as a man he had a fine physique and a splendid beard. That is well documented through holy statues and great works of art, is it not? And I think Tadhg made a valiant attempt once he got used to the safety pins. He may have been a big fat arse of a Jesus but you’d forgive him that for his superior singing voice.’

‘We received many complaints.’

‘And you sold a fair few tickets too. They came from far and wide,’ says Mrs Cauley, smiling slyly now, ‘especially after that article in the Western People.’

‘All I ask is for the play to be suitable.’

‘It is a travesty to require a play to be merely suitable.’ Mrs Cauley takes up her fork coquettishly with her head to one side. ‘If people choose to misinterpret my work what can I do?’

Father Quinn frowns. ‘If I could only advise a more appropriate theme, Mrs Cauley, one that steers clear of—’

‘Sadly, you can’t. My creative juices only flow freely in the dark. My mind is like a mushroom: if you shine the light of the one true church on it, well then, inspiration may not spore at all.’