Skellig (7 page)

“Brilliant!” she said. “Brilliant!”

“I made the hooting noise last night,” I said. “Just after dawn, very early in the morning.”

“Did you?”

“Were you looking out then? Did you make the hooting sound?”

“I can’t be certain.”

“Can’t?”

“I dream. I walk in my sleep. Sometimes I do things really and I think they were just dreams. Sometimes I dream them and think they were real.”

She stared at me.

“I dreamed about you last night,” she said.

“Did you?”

“Yes, but it’s not important. You said you had a mystery. Something to show me.”

“I have.”

“Then show me.”

“Not now. This afternoon, maybe.”

She gazed into me.

“You were outside,” she said. “There was an eerie light. You were very pale. There were cobwebs and flies all over you. You were hooting, just like an owl.”

We stared at each other.

Dad started calling.

“Michael! Michael!”

“See you later this afternoon,” I whispered.

“MRS. DANDO WAS ON THE PHONE,”
said Dad, on the way to the hospital. “She was asking about you.”

“That’s nice.”

“She said your pals want you back.”

“I’ll see them Sunday.”

“Not missing school, then?”

I shrugged.

“Don’t know.”

“Maybe you could go back soon, eh? Don’t want to miss out on too much.”

“I learn a lot from Mina. She knows about lots of things, like birds and evolution.”

“Aye, there’s that. And of course you’ve learned the Chinese menu by heart.”

At the hospital the baby was still in the glass case, but the wires and tubes weren’t in her. Mum lifted the lid back and I held the baby on my knee. I tried to feel if she was getting bigger and stronger.
She squirmed, and I felt the long thin muscles in her back as she stretched. She took my finger in her fist and tried to squeeze it tight. She opened her eyes wide.

“Look,” said Dad. “She’s smiling at you.”

But it didn’t seem like a smile to me.

A doctor came to see us. Dr. Bloom.

“She’s coming on, then?” said Dad.

“Flying,” said the doctor.

“We’ll have her back soon, then?”

Dr. Bloom shrugged. He touched the baby’s cheek.

“We’ll need to keep an eye on her,” he said. “A few days, maybe.”

He smiled at me.

“Try not to worry, lad,” he said.

I touched the baby’s shoulder blades, felt how tiny and flexible they were. I felt the thin rattle of her breath.

“She’ll be running in the garden soon,” Mum said.

She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes.

She took the baby from me and rubbed cream on my skin again.

“You look tired,” she said. She looked at Dad. “You two been staying up too late?”

“Dead right we have,” said Dad. “It’s been videos and Chinese take-out all night, every night. Hasn’t it, son?”

I nodded.

“Yes, it has.”

I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs. I jumped into an elevator and went up.

I stepped out of the elevator and a woman came past me pushing a walker. She rested, puffing and grinning. “Exhausted,” she panted. “Once up and down the ward and three times around the landing! Absolutely exhausted!”

She leaned on the frame and looked me in the eye.

“But I’ll be dancing soon.”

Her hands were twisted and her knuckles were swollen.

“Arthritis,” I said.

“That’s right. Arthur. But I’ve got two new hips and I’ll be dancing soon and that’ll show him who’s the boss. For a while at least.”

“I’ve got a friend with arthritis,” I said.

“Poor soul.”

“What’ll help him?”

“Well, Arthur usually ends up winning in the end. But in the meantime some folk swear by cod-liver oil and a positive mind. For me it’s prayers to
Our Lady, and Dr. MacNabola with his scissors and his saw and his plastic bits and pieces and his glue.”

She winked at me.

“Keep on moving. That’s the thing. Keep the old bones moving. Don’t let everything seize up.”

She shuffled on, humming “Lord of the Dance.”

I followed the signs to Ward 34.

I looked inside. There were dozens of beds, facing each other across the room. There were people practicing moving on walkers. Some lay in bed, smiling and knitting, wincing as they called across the ward to each other. Some lay exhausted, filled with pain. At the far end, a cluster of doctors and students in white coats gathered around a man in black. He spoke and they scribbled in notebooks. He strode through the ward and they followed. He pointed at patients and they nodded and waved. He stopped at several of the beds and smiled for a moment as he listened to the patients. He shook hands with a nurse and headed quickly for the door. I stood there as the cluster approached me.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The man in black strode on.

“Dr. MacNabola,” I said.

He stopped and looked down at me. The doctors and students came to a halt around me.

“What’s good for arthritis?” I said.

He blinked and grinned.

“The needle,” he said.

He pretended to squeeze a great syringe.

“Deep injections right into the joint,”

He winced, pretending to be in pain, and the doctors and students sniggered.

“Then the saw,” he said.

He made sawing movements with his arm and he gasped and twisted his face in agony.

“Bits cut out and new bits put in,” he said.

He pretended to thread a needle, then to sew.

“Stitch it up, good as new,” he said.

He sighed with relief, as if all his pain had gone.

He leaned toward me.

“Are you a sufferer, young man?”

I shook my head.

“A friend.”

The doctor stood up very straight.

“Then tell your friend to come to me. I’ll needle him, saw him, fix him up and send him home nearly as good as new.”

The doctors sniggered again.

“Failing that,” he said, “the advice is simple. Keep cheerful. Don’t give up. Most of all, remain active. Take cod-liver oil. Don’t allow those joints to grind to a halt.”

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Anything else?”

I shook my head.

He looked at the doctors around me.

“Any other advice for the young man’s friend?”

They shook their heads.

“Then let us carry on,” he said, and he strode into the corridor.

I stood there thinking.

“You looking for someone?” said a nurse.

“No.”

She smiled.

“He’s a good doctor, really,” she said. “But he does like to show off. You tell your friend: Keep moving, and try to smile. Don’t make it easy for Arthur.”

I ran back to the elevator and back to the baby’s ward.

Mum and Dad were sitting holding hands, gazing down at the baby.

“Hello,” said Mum.

She tried to smile, but her voice was flat and I could see she’d been crying.

“Hello.”

“You’ve been a while.”

“All that Chinese take-out,” said Dad, trying to get us to laugh.

“Cod-liver oil,” she said. “That’ll sort you out.”

She held me tight.

“You’re my best boy,” she whispered. “Whatever happens, you’ll always be my best boy.”

At home, as Dad prepared to get started again in the front room, I took a bottle of brown ale from the fridge and hid it with my flashlight just inside the garage door. I got my Swiss Army knife from my
room. I took a handful of cod-liver oil capsules from the bathroom and put them in my pocket.

I asked if it was okay if I went to see Mina again.

“Don’t worry about me,” Dad said. “I’ll do all the dirty work. You just run around and have a good time.”

HER BLANKET AND BOOKS WERE
still on the lawn, but she wasn’t there. I looked up into the tree and she wasn’t there. I stepped over the wall, went to her front door, rang the doorbell. Her mother came.

“Is Mina in?” I asked.

She had jet-black hair like Mina’s. She wore an apron covered in daubs of paint and clay.

“She is,” she said. She put her hand out. “You must be Michael. I’m Mrs. McKee.”

I shook her hand.

“Mina!” she shouted.

“How’s the baby?” she asked.

“Very well. Well, we think she’ll be very well.”

“Babies are stubborn things. Strugglers and fighters. Tell your parents I’m thinking of them.”

“I will.”

Mina came to the door. She had a paint-splashed apron on too.

“We’re modeling,” she said. “Come and see.”

She led us through to the kitchen. There were big balls of clay in plastic bags on the table. The table was covered in a plastic sheet. There were knives and wooden tools. Mina’s book of bird drawings was open at the blackbird. She showed me the clay she was working with. It was just a lump, but I could see the outline of a bird: a broad body, a pointed bill, a flattened tail. She added more clay and pinched the body and began to draw out its wings.

“Mina’s fixated on birds just now,” said Mrs. McKee. “Sometimes it’s things that swim, sometimes it’s things that slink through the night, sometimes it’s things that creep and crawl, but just now it’s things that fly.”

I looked around. There was a shelf full of clay models: foxes, fish, lizards, hedgehogs, little mice. Then an owl, with its great round head, its pointed beak, its fierce claws.

“Did you make those?” I asked.

Mina laughed.

“They’re brilliant,” I said.

She showed me how the clay would be shaped if the bird was in flight, how she could mark the feathers in with a pointed knife.

“Once it’s fired and glazed I’ll hang it from the ceiling.”

I picked up a piece of clay, rubbed it between my fingers, rolled it between my palms. It was cold and grainy. Mina licked her finger, rubbed the clay,
showed how it could be made shiny smooth. I watched her, copied her. I worked the clay again, drew it into the shape of a snake, pushed it all together again and made the shape of a human head.

I thought of the baby. I started to shape her, her thin delicate form, her arms and legs, her head.

“Like magic, eh?” said Mina.

“Like magic, yes.”

“Sometimes I dream I make them so real they walk away or fly out of my hands. You use clay at school?”

“We do sometimes. We did in one class I was in.”

“Michael could come and work with us sometimes,” said Mina.

Mrs. McKee looked at me. Her eyes were as piercing as Mina’s, but more gentle.

“He could,” she said.

“I’ve told him what we think of schools,” said Mina.

Mrs. McKee laughed.

“And I’ve told him about William Blake.”

I went on making the baby. I tried to form the features of her face. The clay started to dry out in the heat of my fingers. It started to crumble. I caught Mina’s eye. I tried to tell her with my eyes that we had to go.

“Can I go for a walk with Michael?” she said immediately.

“Yes. Wrap your clay in plastic and you can get on with it when you come back.”