I get down onto my knees to start picking up the pieces of glass before Betty can stop me and tell me not to worry – and she would have told me not to worry, if I wasn’t so quick to move. Surely she can see my scalp redden.
Oh, but the glass makes everything worse. Wet from whatever it was holding and determined to upset me, it slices apart the tips of my fingers. Or have I used the glass to slice apart the tips of my fingers?It’s hard to know. Everything is happening so quickly, I don’t have time to consider whether I wanted this to happen. Is this unfortunate embarrassment just a cry for attention? Does it matter when the blood is so dark and so much, so suddenly? The drink stings.
A drop falls onto her dress. She hasn’t even noticed. Overwhelming, to realise that all that I am amounts to little more than an unseen stain on her dress. Yes, we have had too much to drink. If we hadn’t, surely Betty would never have taken my fingertips into her mouth and sucked the blood from them.
Tom
THE COW LETS OUT Aroar. It sounds heated. I cannot help but find a piece of myself in the sound. How long ago did this all start? How long was the cow getting up and down for, uncomfortable and crying? She hunches her back, and the hooves of the calf are seen. Where is all the blood? Myself and Frances prepare ourselves. The McCarthys cannot afford to lose a calf, it seems. Frances calls,
‘Right, men!’
My eyes widen. Is it possible to be so afraid and so unafraid at once? This is like watching the house burn down and enjoying the warmth of the flames. This is like beating somebody until they bleed and not worrying whether they clot. Alarming, adrenalising, comforting.
Next, a head, a body and long legs. No need for the men to pull at all. A calf drops from the cow. Astonishing. Partly entangled in the lavender and blue of its mother’s body, parts that I cannot name.
‘Come here, Tom.’
Bill says, approaching the calf, and shows me how to check that it is breathing, how to pull its hind legs apart and determine the sex. And then, the cow licks her own glossy innards off the new calf.
It’s only one animal looking after another.
Anna
IT DOESN’T LAST LONG ATall, and yet it lasts longer than perhaps it should. It was only an instinct, really. It’s just to be sure that no blood spilled onto the floor. It’s just that she wants to look after me. Just that I want to bleed onto her tongue. It’s just to feel close, as close friends should. To feel control. My heart hammering so fast that it might shatter.
I tense my hand, which stops Betty. Shameful, to stop such a shameful thing. She does not allow herself to be embarrassed, and just for a second, I let my hand fall on Betty’s cheek, leaving a moment of blood there. To feel close. To feel control. And then I go to the sink, alone, to wrap my fingers in a rag. How frightening it is to feel. For a long time after you, I felt like a bruise. Suddenly, she has reminded me that I am freely flowing blood.
It would be impossibly difficult to pretend that it didn’t happen. And we don’t. There are practical ways of explaining it away. Maternal ways, carnal ways, romantic ways. So many ways that no matter how we look at it, it loses its original meaning.
I am disappointed to realise that there is nothing left in the world to feel after I have felt the pulsing suction of her mouth. Surely there is nothing left in the world to taste now that she has tasted my blood. A quare thing, an unspoken, shared thing.
One animal looking after another.
Something that has been bubbling inside of me for the longest time has suddenly boiled over. It’s an injury I sought to cure with you. With Aoife Murray, Milly Hayes, Catherine Jennings. It is the shrill cries of a fox, waking you up from a dream. It is a horse’s hoof, firmly planted on your neck. It is a local woman, sucking your blood. It is this: the astonishing joy of a woman’s unbridled, unfiltered attention. Something I’ve so rarely known, something I now have a personal source for. Already I need another dose of it. Of her. What other ugly things can I do to get her to pour her affection into me like that? Oh, what a troublesome thrill. Not even god could touch me now.
Betty
‘LONG ENOUGH SERVICE, WASN’T IT?’
Bill puts his cap on. It wouldn’t have seemed so long if we hadn’t stayed up so late with the O’Learys. The right thing to do would have been to finish the night when the lads came home. Instead, Bill brought the McCarthys back down for a drink. To celebrate the new calf, they said. Although I see now it wasn’t the best idea, last night I really didn’t mind. The McCarthys were a very welcome addition after Anna cut her finger open. The most awkward hour of my life passed before the lads all burst through the door. With Anna sucking her fingers, not letting her eyes leave me. One minute, she was an adult, the next she was a child. Bleeding, and my responsibility.
Eleven o’clock Mass is something of a novelty to me. I was glad to go late and miss running into the O’Learys. With Bill always up and awake with the breaking of dawn, we never get to sleep late, we never really take our Sundays slow. Today is a nice change, even with a sore head. We pass most of Ballycrea on our walk home from Mass. Eibhlín Quiggly and her girls stop to chat with us. Maybe it’s a result of a late night, but I cannot take in a word that she is saying. And I am trying. What captures my attention are the dresses her girls are wearing. Short cut, red and yellow, with white tights. Like little dolls. That’s how young girls dress now. It makes me feel old, to look at whatyoung people are wearing and not understand why they like it. I’m sure Eibhlín is mortified to have them walking around the town that way on an ordinary Sunday.
We walk on, I don’t let myself feel old for long. In fact, I keep myself in good humour by remembering that Eibhlín is six months younger than me but looks ten years older. Petty, but it keeps me going. Back at home, Bill hardly stops moving before announcing that he is heading down to the farm.
‘Ah, Bill, would you not spend the day with me? We could go down to town. Sure ’tis Saint Valentine’s Day, isn’t it?’
He throws his eyes up to Heaven. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to spend time with me; it’s just that, like most men his age, Bill has to be dragged away from home. He would gladly spend all day and all night pottering between the house and the farm, for the rest of his life. I’m sure that he thought that Mass would be his only excursion today.
‘Give me a minute so.’
He will complain for half the afternoon, I know, but he loves coming down town with me. Bill loves to do whatever makes me happy. Look at him grinning as he goes out the door.
A minute, he said. There’s no telling how long a minute will last with that man. I read the valentine card he gave me this morning, and then I read it again. If I sit down now I might not pull myself back up all day. I reach the unfortunate conclusion that the best way to pass the time is to clean the place up. Pulling out the chairs to sweep under the table, I see that Anna has left her handbag, in what has become her chair. The clasp untied. The corner of a handkerchief peeking out. And me, very quickly, peeking in.
Only quickly. Only to know what sort of things a girl like Anna carries in her handbag, because she isn’t the sort of girl who would carry a handbag at all. And yet, she often has this little thing under herarm. She doesn’t smoke, and I’ve never seen her wearing so much as a swipe of lipstick. What could be so necessary to her that she needs to carry it around all the time?
The handkerchief, monogrammed Kealey, a surname I don’t recognise. I hold on to it. A docket from the shop. A tissue. And then two items that shock me almost as much as each other. The first, a Mass card. Yellowed lamination, curling edges. Our Lady on one side, a prayer in ornate lettering. And on the reverse, the name Lillian Kealey. By the dates, only just a year dead. Only twenty-six. And I realise that this is Peggy’s Lillian. It must be. The one who would look after her, and make Brigid’s Crosses every February, and break Lent on Sundays. Jack’s girl, Lillian. Her handkerchief in my hand, her Mass card in my kitchen.
