A Swift Pure Cry (19 page)

'Say it, Michelle. Say it. You didn't want it, did you?'

The smoke was in her face. The words seeped into her skull, mocking her. She rocked, shuddering. The tape spool hissed.

'All you have to do is say it. Then we'll leave you be.'

She closed her eyes. She was St Peter at the Tribunal. The cock was about to crow. He was on the verge of denying Jesus. If the cock would only crow before she spoke, she'd pass the trial. The prediction wouldn't come true. SAY IT, SAY IT.
Don't say a word, Shell.
Molloy's words and Dad's, fighting in close combat. She panted, her hands pressed to her eardrums. It was worse than childbirth.

'Say it, Miss Talent. You'll feel better for it. They always do.'

She opened her eyes. The competing voices screamed in her head but she disobeyed them. She spoke. Not the words the man wanted. Her own. The words nearly killed her, breaking her apart, but she said them. 'I loved my baby,' she sobbed. 'I loved her. Loved her.'

The words crashed about the room, like toppling chairs. She was head down, arms splayed on the table. The file was prised from under her. The tape was turned off.

Somewhere in another world, a door closed.

Thirty-four

Later.

Molloy and Cochran were talking in whispers.

She'd been in the field by the ring of stones. Now she was back in the room with the window of frosted glass. She could hear rain gusting against it and the man and woman by the door, muttering. She did not raise her head from the table. They didn't realize she could hear.

She listened.

'She's confused, sir.'

'No. I think I know her game, Cochran.'

'What?'

'She wanted a girl. That's what she wanted.'

'You mean--?'

'She's in denial. It came out a boy and she couldn't face it.'

'But--'

'So she kills it. I knew it. All along.' Molloy's voice, low, staccato.

'Knew what, sir?'

'That she's the one. The father's lying.'

'Lying?'

'Lying to protect her. I can always tell.'

It's me they're talking about.

Shell raised her head. The man and woman looked up towards her.

'Michelle,' the woman said. 'Can I get you something? A cup of tea? Water?'

'No,' she said.

'Do you want to see your father?'

'No.' Her voice sounded loud in the tiny room. The last person she wanted to see was Dad. 'No,' she repeated, softer. 'I'm all right.'

'Good.'

'I want to make a statement.' She nodded towards the woman.

'You do?'

'Yes. I want to make a statement to
you
.'

The man's nostrils twitched; his lips flickered from Shell to the woman. He looked at his watch. 'I'll give you twenty minutes. I want this wrapped up by the day's end.'

He left the room, closing the door behind him.

'Are you sure you're ready to talk, Michelle?' Sergeant Cochran said.

'Yes.'

'Will it be the truth?'

Shell nodded. 'The truth.'

Sergeant Cochran put the tape back on. She stated the names, the dates and the times.

The ghost-hiss filled the room.

The wind chased itself around the outer walls.

Shell began to speak.

She started with the body book, how she'd stolen it from the mobile library. The sentences came, one after another, as if she were reading a script that she'd learned by heart. The words were dull and quiet, with no gloss to them. It might have been another time, another place, another person: somebody else's story. She only cried when she got to the bit about Jimmy cutting the grey-white cord. She remembered now what the body book had said: you were supposed to clamp it in two places and cut it in between. Jimmy hadn't done that. She'd forgotten to tell him.
Is that what went wrong? Is that why the baby died? Or was she dead already?
She finished with the ring of stones in the back field.

Sergeant Cochran didn't interrupt. After Shell stopped, the ghost-hiss came back into the room along with the moans of the wind.

'I've just a couple more questions, Michelle,' Sergeant Cochran said after a spell. 'Can you answer them, do you think?'

Shell nodded.

'Where was your father in all this?'

'He was in Cork. As far as I know.'

'In Cork?'

'He goes in during the week to do the collections.'

'Collections?'

'For charity.'

'I see.' The woman looked nonplussed. She didn't see. 'You mean he wasn't there?'

'No, miss. He wasn't there. I didn't tell him. It was just me, Jimmy and Trix. The three of us.'

'And you buried the baby in the field?'

'Yes. In the middle of the field. The field behind the house.'

'So how did it end up in the cave, Shell? The cave down on Goat Island?'

Shell looked up. 'The cave?' she said.

'That's right. You said you knew the place?'

Shell nodded. Haggerty's Hellhole. The Abattoir. She shivered.
We'd tie them up and leave them there to the mercy of the waves.

'How did it get there? Did you put it there?'

'No. As far as I know, the baby's still in the field. Unless--'

'Unless what?'

Shell's voice dropped. 'Unless somebody dug it up. And put the stones back. And the earth. Just as they were.' She felt the table lurching, the knots in the wooden surface swinging around. She shut her eyes and swallowed.
But who would want to do that?
She shook her head and opened her eyes.
Not Jimmy. Not Trix. No.

'So that's your story?'

Shell nodded.

'One last question, Michelle.' The woman clasped her hands on the table and leaned forward. 'Who was the baby's father?'

A vice closed on Shell's throat. Declan was drinking in the night bars of Manhattan. He was chasing the break of day down with the pints.
You're in a class of your own, Shell
, he said, his eyes laughing. The barley stalk went
swish-swish
over her belly, then he was face-down in a cowpat. Sergeant Cochran was waiting. It was none of her business.

'Nobody,' she replied.

'Nobody?'

Shell shook her head.

'That's not possible, Shell. There are no virgin births these days. Not so far as I'm aware.'

'Nobody important, so.'

'Is that all you've to say?'

Shell nodded. 'Yes.'

Sergeant Cochran sighed. She switched off the tape. She sat back, casting her hand over the machine. 'Is this the truth, Michelle?'

'The truth?' Shell smiled, remembering one of Mam's songs from the carol book:

This is the truth, sent from above,

The truth of God, the God of love;

Therefore don't turn me from your door,

But harken all, both rich and poor.

The sweet sadness was in the notes, with her mam's eyes far away as she sang them, looking out of the window, over the fields, and Christmas was everywhere in the house with the sound of her voice. Perhaps Molloy was right. You did feel better when you spoke.

'Yes,' Shell said. 'It's the truth.'

Sergeant Cochran put her hands on the table and rubbed her knuckles. Her eyes were cool and sad beneath the spiky hair. 'You
say
it's the truth,' she sighed. 'But it doesn't make sense.' She shook her head. 'You know what Superintendent Molloy's going to say?'

'No.'

'He's going to say: it doesn't accord with the
facts
.'

Thirty-five

The door opened. The man of facts returned, brandishing a typed statement.

'It's from your father,' Molloy said, needling her with his eyes. He folded the paper in half and put it in his jacket pocket.

Sergeant Cochran leaned over and whispered something to him.

Shell stood up and turned away. Nobody stopped her. She stepped towards the pane of frosted glass. She ran her hand over its reticulations, imagining the storm-tossed day that lay beyond. The whispers went on, fierce and urgent. She heard the tape being rewound, the ghost-hiss again, then her own words, sounding lighter, disembodied; higher-pitched than how she thought she sounded. The thin reediness of her voice was like straw, something the slightest breeze could blow away. She wanted to block her ears off, but in this tiny room, there was no escape.

'Come back here, Miss Talent.' Molloy's voice was piercing, a metallic hook.

She sat back on the chair. Slowly she looked up at him. His mouth was open and frozen, the upper lip stretched off to the left, so that she could see a large front tooth, a small tip of tongue. She averted her eyes.

'Bollocks,' he said. His fist crashed onto the tabletop. 'Bloody bollocks, isn't it?'

She drew in her breath.

'Well? Isn't it?'

She let out her breath. 'No.' But it was so quietly said, he didn't hear.

'You expect me to believe this crap?'

She squeezed shut her eyes.

'Babies being delivered by little brothers? Little sisters making cots from old boxes? Babies being buried in back fields? Miss Talent. You know, I know. It beggars belief.' He thumped the table again. 'Top marks, Miss Talent, for fiction. Bottom marks, Miss Talent, for truth.'

He sat back.
Tut-tipper-tup
his tongue went against his teeth. He gave an elaborate sigh. Sergeant Cochran sat at his side, but by now she'd dropped off the edge of the scene, an irrelevance.

'The facts, Miss Talent. I want the facts.' He tapped his fingernails on the tabletop, accordion-like. He retrieved the typed statement from his breast pocket. Gingerly, he unfolded it on the table, making the page lie straight. A minute ticked by. He did not move. 'I'm not a patient man,' he observed in a confessional-box hiss. 'Sergeant Cochran here will tell you. You'd better wake up, young lady, if you don't want me to
really
lose my temper. Because it's not a pretty sight, is it, Sergeant Cochran?'

His voice grew louder.

'I have here three versions of events. First, I have solid evidence: the baby found in the cave, along with the doctor's report on how it met its death. Second, I have this'-he tapped the statement-'the version that your father's given us. And third, I have that'-he brushed his hand against the tape machine-'
your
story. Now listen, Michelle. Number one version is true. Nobody can deny it. A dead baby was found this morning by a woman walking her dog on the strand. The dog went sniffing into the cave and wouldn't come when called. So she went in-and found, in a carrycot, skimpily clad-a baby. Stone dead from cold. She called the gardai. When we got there we confirmed what she found. The pathologist is still preparing his report. But there is no doubt in his mind that the baby was born recently and was brought there by a person or persons unknown, and cruelly left there to die. Brutally, deliberately exposed to the elements. Do you know about exposure, Miss Talent?'

'No,' Shell whispered.

'I'm told they did it in Roman times. And in China. Who knows where else? Exposure is a way to kill a child as sure as dashing out its brains. Or smothering it with a pillow. Or plunging a knife into its heart. But exposure, Michelle, is the coward's way of killing. The person maybe thinks it's not as bad as actively murdering the thing. Let the cold do the trick, they think, and I'll have nothing on my conscience. But the child, Michelle. See it from the child's point of view. It suffers more. Just think how that little babby felt, alone in that strange, damp cave. With the sound of the tide, ebbing and flowing outside. The cold in its fingertips. Think how it must have cried, Miss Talent, cried as hard as its little lungs could manage. But no good. All to no good. Think, Miss Talent, think. Then tell me the truth.'

Shell sat in her chair, her gullet frozen, mesmerized. Haggerty's Hellhole. The encrusted black walls. The cold sand and stones. The groan of the wind in the hidden crevices. The tiny white flesh, wriggling to keep warm. A terrible place to die. Voices, loud and demented, rang in her head:
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel
.

'That's right, Michelle. You're seeing sense now, aren't you?'

She could feel his thoughts, moving inside her brain, shifting, restless, hurting her skull. He wanted her to say she did it. Why not say it? What did it matter? Her baby was dead, her insides were dead, everything was dead.

'Mr Molloy,' she said. She swallowed.

He leaned forward eagerly. 'Yes, Michelle?' he coaxed.

'Mr Molloy,' she repeated. She shut her eyes and breathed out. 'I
didn't
do it.'