Shauna GilliganShauna Gilligan was born in Dublin, Ireland, Shauna has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She lives in County Kildare, Ireland with her family.
Her work has been published widely and she has given public readings of her fiction in Ireland and USA and has presented on writing at academic conferences in Ireland, UK, Germany and USA.
Happiness Comes from Nowhere (London: Ward Wood, 2012) is her first novel.

 

Bachelor’s Peep

By Shauna Gilligan

The estate agent’s tone was too chirpy for bad news.
“Oh,” was all Jane managed to reply before slamming down the receiver. “Fuck you,” she shouted.
She watched the drizzle fall as she slowly smoked a John Player Blue, her foot keeping the front door ajar. Men really were bastards, she thought, feeling the stigma of having squeezed eight children out of her small-framed body. It was like a velum covering her. Had she been born fifty years earlier, she’d be seen as a woman who took the notion of marital duty seriously. Instead, here she was, in the twenty-first century, fighting for the right to rent a detached five-bed, four-bathroomed house for her and her children.
With the plans in swing, she’d noticed the pride in the children’s voices. She wore lipstick with a smile. The mortgage break for six months was about to kick in. The children had told their friends they were moving into a house where they’d have a bed each. Removal vans and storage solutions had been found. Agreement from all parties, in writing, was there for all to see.
But the landlord had just sent a message via the estate agent saying that due to the wear and tear that a large number of children would have on the house and contents, he would not be renting the property to her after all. To think that furniture and four walls meant more to him than homing a family and earning a crust. Well, it was his loss; she’d have treated the house like her own and lived there for years. But no, that wasn’t good enough for him. Just because she had a handful of kids. Who did he think he’d rent a house that big to – a professional ice queen who’d tiptoe around in white tights? He’d get what was coming to him, so he would; he’d get the worst tenant on the planet. Jane used the last puff to light another cigarette. As she exhaled, she wondered what else would happen now that the would-be landlord with his after all had changed everything.
*
Jane had a diary. In it, she wrote: It was the three stone I lost. The abandonment of flowing skirts. He liked me best when fat dominated me. Then she ripped the page out and watched the flames from the fire log eat it up. She wiggled her toes inside her fluffy slippers with a grey cat faces on the front and she mulled over how she would break the news that they weren’t moving. She started a new page.
*
Of the eight children Jane had given birth to, six remained companions in this world. One had been a stillborn – her second girl – and the last baby, Colm, the would-be youngest, had died. Cot death, they said to her, as if those two words would make everything alright. There were nights when she’d still wake and rush to the space where once there was a crib, the smell of her sweat on her cold skin making her gag. At least her eldest, twins Fionn and Fiach, were at college in Liverpool and didn’t have to hear her cries or see the rings around her eyes. Her husband, Mike, even suggested, in an unfathomable attempt to cheer her up, that Colm’s death was for the best.
News, she thought. How to break news. The drizzle had eased off. It was ten past two so she had time to walk to the school to collect John, 5, Joy, 8 and Jason, 10. They’d moan about the walk home but within no time they’d be racing each other through the park. They’d beg her to have a go on the swings and she’d say no, they had to go home and do their homework. They’d play this ping-pong of insistence and resistance, each knowing that Jane would say yes, eventually. She’d have a smoke standing by the bags, watching them. When she yelled Right, now! they’d run over to her. We’re the four J’s the youngest, John, would say as he hugged her legs. And she’d feel things weren’t so bad, after all.
As she walked briskly, her arms swinging, a black jeep passed by and Mildred blew the horn. Mildred was Jane’s best friend, herself with four children. Every Friday they’d eat and let the kids run wild. Thirteen-year-old Michael would join them later when he got back from school. He’d been having a hard time in secondary school but oddly, since the separation, he’d become more popular. Jane supposed it added a sense of coolness. Mildred didn’t agree. It was because he was like so many others, now, she insisted.
It was spreading like wildfire, women leaving their husbands in a bid for freedom.
Emotionally, Jane had been the one to first leave. Mike had kept the physical departure for himself, just as he’d always had the last word in an argument. Thinking it would help clear the atmosphere that hung like a stillness, she’d told him that she was tired of feeling unappreciated. He looked at her, his grey eyes cold, and accused her of an affair. He had proof. People in the neighbourhood were talking, he said. She was having an affair with Mildred.
Jane and Mildred had laughed. The ridiculousness of it all. Mildred said she was surprised he didn’t ask to join in their after dark activities if he was so sure. Mildred hadn’t laughed, though, when she was woken on a school night by a furious banging on the door. Mike stood there, bloodshot eyes, demanding to see Jane, insisting she was hiding under the bed. John shouted at him to go home and pull himself together. Mike’s voice changed to a hoarse whisper: he no longer had a home. He left the next morning.
Jane reached the school gates feeling hot. She needed to do more exercise. But there’d been no time between Mike leaving and her trying to move to somewhere neutral and new. Jane relished how good she felt in the pale grey tracksuit which slouched low enough on her hips to reveal lace panties. The lace was the white of the sheets scrubbed by girls in the Magdalene Laundry in the 1960s. Jane thought of those girls; her birth mother had been one of them. She was a laundry baby. Even though she knew her adoptive parents loved her like she had come into being from their very blood, she always dreamt of meeting her birth mother like girls dream of being fairy princesses.
“Jane.”
“Lisa,” replied Jane, equally as cool.
Lisa wasn’t separated. Lisa was married to Mark and they had one child who had everything she could want. Their child was that fairy princess and Lisa was her beautiful blood mother. Lisa was the only mother who hadn’t commented on Jane’s dramatic weight loss and subsequent separation from her husband. Jane startled herself with the thought that Lisa was jealous, perhaps, of her freedom. The freedom to do whatever she felt like with the children, when she felt like it. The freedom, Jane smiled to herself, to flirt without guilt. Jane adjusted her black hair band, which highlighted her new blonde hair, dyed expertly to look natural.
The school doors opened and the children streamed out. Jane waved, smiling, her fingers playing with the cardboard of a packet of cigarettes in her right pocket.
“New runners, Mum?” Joy asked.
Joy never missed a beat.
“You like them?” Jane wiggled her foot at her daughter.
Joy nodded, embarrassed.
Jane had treated herself to a pair of funky runners. They gave her, she thought, an air of cool.
The boys trailed behind them, shoulders slumped, arms hanging like monkeys.
“Park?” Jane asked.
“Beat you to the swings,” Jason said.
“Me, first,” John shouted.
“Go.” Joy was already running.
And the race began.
*
“Why haven’t you said anything?” Mildred blew smoke out the back door.
“I just…” Jane’s voice trailed off.
Mildred shook her head. “No, Jane, you can’t just not say anything. You’ve got to tell them something. The moving date’s coming up.”
Jane tapped a cigarette on the outside of the packet. She leaned towards Mildred and inhaled as she lit it.
“Something will come up,” she said, staring into the garden.
“It’s cold,” Mildred said, shivering.
“It’s mid September,” Jane replied, “it’s autumn.”
“You know what you need?” Mildred looked up towards the ceiling. The kids were bouncing on the beds again. “I swear,” she said, “one of them will come crashing down on top of us.”
Jane laughed. “That’d teach them.”
“You need a break. Just go away somewhere.”
Jane smiled. “As if.”
“Seriously, I could mind the older ones. Couldn’t you go to your sister? Doesn’t she have a big house in Clare?”
Jane tapped her foot. She exhaled the last of the cigarette.
“Hmm. Mid-term break is coming up.” She stubbed the butt in the cerise pink glass ashtray. “You know what,” she said, “I might just take you up on that offer. Fionn and Fiach are staying with my aunt Molly in Liverpool and she feeds them so well they’ve no intention of coming home, and Michael….”
“Come on, Michael and Jason will be fine here and you can even leave Joy if you want, too. Dinner’s just ready. Let’s eat.”
“I wouldn’t have to disappoint them, then, would I?”
Mildred raised her eyebrows. “It buys you time on the move.”
*
Jane is in the west of Ireland. Her ex-husband is in bed with a hangover in his bachelor pad on the outskirts of Dublin. Two of her children are in Liverpool, two in Dublin with Mildred and the remaining two are seated in front of a large fire in her sister Nancy’s house alongside cousins they rarely see, laughing at The Tooth Fairy DVD. Nancy said it was about having faith, really believing so good things would happen. Then she pressed a fifty-euro note into Jane’s hand, told her to go eat a meal with wine in a restaurant.
Jane is wearing a cream top with lace and smart black trousers with heels. She feels tall. She feels good. She has on orange lipstick but she walks past the restaurant five times before building up enough courage to go inside.
She enjoys the light dinner: olives, ham, bread and cheese, then goes to catch a stray hair from her face and catches a whiff of the smoked Bavarian ham off her hand. It’s almost sexual. She takes a deep breath.
She’s one of many seated at a long wooden table. The place is packed with large groups, couples and the odd person, like her, eating alone. She offers the plate of ham to the man opposite her. He is also alone.
He takes some and comments on the strong taste of the ham.
“It looks like a bachelor’s peep,” he says, nodding in the direction of her chest.
Jane looks down.
“What does?”
She doesn’t want to admit not knowing what a bachelor’s peep is. It’s obviously something he has seen many times before. With the grin on his face she thinks her version of it has impressed him.
“That top of yours.”
His teeth are discoloured but he has a nice smile. He still has his hair and there is no sign of it going. It’s silver grey although not distinguished like, say, George Clooney’s would be. But the likes of him wouldn’t be sitting with the likes of her in a small mock-Italian restaurant a few weeks after the matchmaking festival in Lisdoonvarna. She feels like a woman out of a Christy Moore song. Jane observes him with a shy smile. He sits straight with his broad shoulders and square, stubbled jaw. She can tell he is both mortified and delighted to be sitting with her. He glances at her and then back at the window.
“You’re not from here.”
“Dublin.” She feels giddy.
“That’s what I thought.” He sounds disappointed. “Dublin lassies don’t know how to live properly.”
“What do you mean?” Jane tries not to flush.
He smiles. “I’m Pól. And your face is red.”
“Jane. And I just live in Dublin. But I’ve always dreamed of the countryside.” She pauses, suddenly unsure. But she goes on anyhow. “I mean, I was born in Galway and…then I was raised in Dublin but we were going to move to Kildare.”
“We?”
She bites the inside of her cheek. She can’t backtrack. “Me and my children.”
“And your fella?”
“Gone.” She looks out the window, wishing she was back in Nancy’s having a cup of that horrible builder’s tea her brother-in-law always insisted that she’d like. But she’s here and she can’t change that. And the man is waiting for her to say more. She looks at him and sees a gentleness in his eyes that almost brings tears to hers. “He’s gone,” she repeats, “and we’re staying with my sister Nancy and her family in Doolin.”
“Ah,” he nods. “A nice spot.”
“It is alright,” Jane says, relieved. “I’d love to stay. I mean, we all would, but…”
“You’ve got to get back after the mid-term break with the children. School and all that.” He nods.
“Do you…” Jane begins.
He shakes his head. “I would have loved to but, you know.” He shrugs. “You know how things can be. Just never met that special lady so, no, no children of my own.”
“Or maybe she never met you.”
Pól smiles. “Maybe.”
Jane fingers the cotton weave at the neckline of her top.
“Like I said, you’ve got a fine bachelor’s peep there.”
Jane’s laugh is louder than she’s heard it in a long time. She looks at the boyish grin on his face. “There’s plenty more – ” She clasps her hand over her mouth.
“I like a girl who can have a good laugh,” Pól says. “Most people are too serious these days.”
“That’s just great. A peep.”
“The idea,” Pól says, “is that it’d be low on the neckline, like the lace on a bridesmaid dress, you know, just enough to peep at, just enough cover so the priest wouldn’t complain.”
“If I had a shop,” Jane decides, “I’d call it that. I’d call it Gentleman’s Peep.”
“No, no, no,” Pól shakes his head. “You’re from another set altogether, you’re showing your class. It’s Bachelor’s Peep not Gentleman’s.”
Jane laughs again.
“Fancy a pint?”
And as she nods her reply Jane realises he is far younger than she had originally thought. He is standing, his coat on his arm, holding out hers for her to slide into.
“But I, although a bachelor, would still be considered a gentleman,” Pól adds as he turns his back to her to settle the bill.
“Thank you,” Jane says, feeling grateful for the company, grateful for the attention, grateful for the waitress who seated her opposite a gentleman.
They leave the restaurant and stroll down the main street.
“The festival is good for the economy,” Pól says. “The locals tut tut at the carry on but they’re happy enough to pocket the extra cash.”
“I’ve never been,” replies Jane. “Can you believe it? My sister’s been here for like, twenty something years and I’ve never once visited when the festival’s been on.”
Pól laughs. “I live here and I’ve never been. Always wait till after to come out. But look at you, coming out with a book, anyone would think you were trying to impress or something.”
“I really didn’t think.”
“Well you impressed me,” Pól says, hooking his elbow.
Jane looks at him and slides her arm into the triangle of space he has created.
“So, what about you,” she asks, a thrill running through her. “What do you do?”
“Took redundancy from the ESB,” he says. “Still living on Ma’s farm.”
“An electrician in need of a good woman,” Jane adds.
Pól stops walking.
“I didn’t mean.” Jane is flushed.
“I,” Pól cuts across her, “I don’t need anything. Want and need are two entirely different things. Has life not told you that, yet?”
*
“The plan is,” Jane says to Mildred, who still has an open mouth, “to move in with him. On the farm. He wants me to. Doesn’t need me to, just wants me.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. Absolutely not.” Jane grins. “He wants me.”
“But you hardly know each other.”
“We’ll get to know each other soon enough. There’s plenty of time.”
“I need a cigarette. I mean, Jesus. You’ve just met the guy.” Mildred fumbles in her handbag and lights up. “Want one?”
“Go on, then.” Jane exhales. “Oh, and Mike and I are selling the house.”
*
“I’ve news,” Jane says to her young family gathered around her. “The house plans have changed.”
There’s a communal groan.
“See, told you we’d never get out of this dump,” Jason says.
Jane smiles. “Oh, we’re moving alright. Just not to Kildare.”
There is a long silence. The children look at each other.
“After Christmas, we’re moving to County Clare. Near your cousins and Aunt Nancy.”
She takes a deep breath. “It’ll be a fresh start for all of us. We’ll be moving once the house sells. There’s a bedroom for each of you, land to run around on and animals to play with. There’s plenty of room in the local schools. You can stay with Dad when you come up to Dublin.”
“I’m not moving there,” Jason says. “I’m not going to be a bloody culchie.”
“A fresh start,” says Michael, grinning. “I hate my school. Thanks, Mum. You just saved my life!”
“Can I get a sheepdog?” John jumps up and down.
Jane nods, keeping her silence.
“What about Fionn and Fiach?” Jason asks, his voice cracking. “You can’t just abandon them. You can’t just….abandon everything.”
“I’ve spoken to Dad. He thinks this is the best for everyone. Fionn and Fiach and any of you who want to will stay with him in Dublin. Just like you do now.”
Jason scuffs his runners on the floor and sighs.
Joy is twirling her hair with one hand, sucking a pink lollypop with the other. “Do you have those sparky things with Pól the same as you did with Dad?”
Jane smiles. “It’s different this time, honey. Everything is different. But that’s a good thing.”
*
Jane is wearing her grey tracksuit, a white long sleeved tee-shirt and bright yellow Marigold gloves as she scrubs one of the kitchen walls. There’s a bucket of soapy water at the foot of the ladder and she’s holding a large sponge which, until now, she’s only seen other people cleaning cars with.
“I thought you’d like them,” says Pól. “I never had the use for them, myself, but I know the ladies like them things.”
Pól looks slightly awkward standing there, his hands joined in prayer. Jane feels butterflies inside her, something she hasn’t felt since she can’t even remember.
“Oh Pól,” says Jane, “you know us women well.”
“So you like them.”
“I do, Pól.” Jane holds out her hands in front of her. “They’re happy gloves.”
She glances out at the crisp blue sky. She can’t see her children but she can hear them. In the countryside, she feels glamorous. She gets a thrill the way the other mothers look at her at the school gates. She wiggles her fingers, smiles.
Pól clears his throat loudly. “So what was it you were burning in the fire last night? Some secret you’re keeping from me?”
Jane laughs. “I found an old diary.”
“What, was it so special you had to burn it?”
“No.” Jane pauses, rolls her shoulders. “It was just…Pól, actually, I’d written about how I’d changed, become free.”
“What? Like one of those from the telly, Bridget Jones or something?”
“Oh I wish! No. No, I mean I used to think it was a physical thing. Why it all went wrong with Mike but – ”
“ – I don’t know what you’re on about but they say change leads to change.” Pól scratches his chin, frowning.
“I’m just going to pop out to have a smoke, see what the children are up to.” Jane’s face brightens and she takes off her Marigold gloves. “Won’t be long.”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Pól says, watching her hips move as she walks out the half door.
“Women,” he mutters when she’s out of earshot. “Just like rabbits.”