Anna Byrne – Molly

Anna Byrne was born in 1984. She comes from Kildare, Ireland. She is a writer/filmmaker. Her work has been published in Ireland and abroad. She is currently writing a novel, Falling Darkness, set in Western Australia. She currently lives in Berlin.

Molly

By Anna Byrne

Molly Reilly had been back in her mother and fathers cottage fifteen years when the phenomenon of the starfish occurred. She had returned too late to look after her mother. On her death bed Mrs Reilly had looked absurd laid out, the tumour bulging from her stomach like a malevolent pregnancy. Her brothers and sister left after an hour of polite exchanges. The cottage frightened them. It reminded them of stifling closeness, greasy mutton, chilblains. Also, there was no television and the children were bored.
The cottage was on the coast, a field from the sea and a mile from the road. It was surrounded by high trees and in a wind it sounded like many hands crumpling thin paper.
Only Molly had stayed on with her father who was becoming a ghost of himself. A month later in The Sea Inn Dave Kavanagh swore that he’d seen old Mr. Reilly perched on the sea shore, a birds skeleton on him, picking mussels off the exposed rocks and prising them open. So the end was near. He died soon after, a scrap of a man devoured in the coffin by his good suit. The sister and brothers cited air fares and children as reasons they could not return a second time so soon.
And so Molly was left to her own devices. She installed a phone, got the thatch patched. The paint peeled on the outside walls. The front garden waterlogged in heavy rain. The woodworm wormed. She kept the fire going, grew what she could in the back garden – potatoes, onions, carrots.
Molly’s return was as mysterious as her disappearance had been. She was rarely seen in the town, was known to speak even less and as the years went by the neighbours amused themselves with their own stories of her past and present situation. She had been in love with a Protestant and had run away to England with him, only to be deserted. She had had a child. She swam naked in summer. She was a witch.
The millennium approached, was celebrated and forgotten about. Each year the salesmen who travelled the roads viewed the lane with squinted eyes; the knowledge shared by neighbours that all it held was a single woman of middle age.
~
Molly wakes early and watches through a parting in the curtains as the light reaches the outer dark of the garden – the stone wall, the unkempt grass the rats hid in- the pale milk of day coming across the land and reviving it. The room was her mother’s. Mould has long taken hold of her own childhood room. Even if it hadn’t, she has kept the door closed on it for a long time.
After breakfast she goes across the field and to the edge of the sea. Here and there the remnants of plastic bags glitter with dew. The lunar landscape is spotted with sheep. Often she walks across the pitted rocks, stands on ground that become islands depending on the tide. In summer she takes off her clothes, leaves them on a rock and goes swimming. Her eyes get red from peering underwater.
‘Hush,’ she says now to a ram stamping its foot.
From here she can see the new house being built across the bay. Small dots move around, pointing at where things should be put. A small lorry reverses from the house. She can see the driver, his arm resting on the open window.
Back at the house there is a van she recognises. It is the man from Galway. He comes once a month to collect the hats, scarves and gloves she knits. She exchanges them for a slim cheque and nods him off.
It is the first of May today, she remembers. The beginning of summer.
~
Fat ponies chew on grass, catching their manes on the barbed fencing as they lean to reach the pollen-filled flowers of thistles. Gliding over the field of rushes, the air is occupied with the smell of moist soil. A gleaming jeep passes her. Two children watched a cartoon set into the back of a head rest.
When she first moved back she cycled all the roads, retracing her childhood. The area is rich with stone buildings and crosses, their ruins tied down with weeds and grass. Nowadays more and more houses crop up while the older ones sink into the ground. The new ones are huge and, for the most part, empty. Ornate hand painted signs swing above some of the more secluded houses. A crèche, two healers, and an Indian head masseuse share her road. She has never seen any of them.
The village is a one street town laddered with brightly painted shops and pubs, perched on the edge of what the tourist information depot calls The Magical West. She cycles past The Sea Inn where fishing memorabilia hangs from the ceiling. Although it is only lunch time she can hear music, recognises the shining rental bikes outside, the strong legs of tourists in beige shorts.
After cashing the cheque at the bank she moves further along the pier. A chip van sits crookedly on its hind wheels. One fishing boat hangs lopsided in the low tide. Her father once kept his boat here. Sometimes he liked company and would ask her to go with him. His strong hand gripped on her shoulder, leading her. She learned to know when he craved this company and when it came hid, like an animal, in the fields.
~
At the cottage Molly curls the money into a thick ball and puts it into the tin she keeps behind the stove, then goes outside to eat blackberries from the huge tangled bush. She looks out across the bay. Salthill is across there. She sees the lights at night. The day she left the house her mother stood here, throwing feed to the chickens. The sister and brothers were gone by then; scurrying onto trains and buses the moment school was finished. Her father was on the boat. She had planned it that way. Her mother would not turn around and look at Molly’s face after the words had been spoken. She walked the mile to the road, counting her footsteps, waiting to hear her mother’s voice, the hand on her shoulder. Neither came.
‘Hello.’
In the yard she regards the strange man as she would a strange dog, waiting for him to do something.
‘I was looking for a phone,’ he says, stepping toward the woman with black seaweed for hair and a long tattered jacket. ‘Sorry, I’m from across the bay there, the house being built. My mobile doesn’t work here.’
He holds up the small device as evidence.
‘I don’t suppose you have a phone I could use.’
She finds her voice.
‘I do indeed. Come inside.’
He follows her in and she locates the phone under several layers of wrappers, bags, cups and the phone book. She leaves him to it, listening in from the kitchen as he tells someone that the builder is a homophobic arsehole who won’t do a thing he asks. The person on the other end is asked to come back earlier than Friday, the caller did not sign up as project manager on this house. He hangs up after a few minutes.
‘Thanks,’ he exhales loudly. ‘All the other houses were empty.’
Molly looks at him. He reaches out a hand.
‘My name is Mark. Pleased to meet you.’ She grasps his hand, the palm flat and hard.
‘Myself and my partner are building the house across the bay there. It’s a lovely spot.’
She doesn’t ask him to stay for tea. Later, looking at sparks fly up the chimney, she wonders if that is odd.
‘I met someone today,’ Mark tells Steve on the phone that night.
‘Oh yeah? Making friends with the locals are we?’
‘The woman across the bay. She seemed….interesting.’
‘Hmmm,’ replies Steve and Mark knows he is losing his attention.
‘I wish you were here. I don’t have a clue about recessed walls or whatever.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. The shop is almost done.’
Steve is an interior designer. He has just launched a new shop focussing on accessorising rather than full scale remodelling. It’s what the market can bear right now. He says that like a mantra.
‘It’s great. People will still spend the money but they’ll think they’re saving,’ he tells Mark. He has planned the whole house, the Italian tiles, the hanging racks in the kitchen, what colour the radiator in the main bathroom will be. Steve is on a break from work. Their friends have stopped asking for how long.
~
Molly is digging up potatoes and throwing them into a pail when Mark arrives the next day. She looks up at him, squinting.
‘I wanted to say thank you for the other day,’ he says, holding a jar of jam the neighbour’s wife gave him yesterday. She remembers about tea.
‘Tea is it?’ she says loudly, already walking towards the house.
‘Sure, if you’re making it.’
Inside the house the kettle is already whistling. She puts down the bucket of potatoes and pokes a lump of meat with a fork. He looks furtively around the kitchen. Buckets of murky liquid squat by the big wooden table. Knitting needles rest halfway through a scarf.
She hands him a cup. The tea is strong, fragrant and sugared. She nods, an abrupt upturn of her head.
‘I make them and I sell them.’
He runs a hand across the scarf hesitantly. It is a moss green and brown with gold threaded through it. His lets his hand rest on its warmth.
‘It’s beautiful.’ He smiles, looking at her. ‘Did your mother teach you how to do it?’
In the buttery morning sun he sees her green eyes are flecked orange.
‘No,’ she replies.
~
The days fall and re open. Mark gets into the habit of calling over. Sometimes they walk across the field together and down to the sea. She laughs when he is frightened by the stamping sheep.
‘They’re looking after their young, that’s all.‘
By the water they wander. Gulls wheel above them, circling for prey. Mark picks up a starfish.
‘Look,‘ he shows it to Molly.
She examines it.
‘They all across the shore around here,‘ she says.‘The mussels attract them.‘
He looks at the sandy floor again.
‘Here’s another one. Looks like it’s been half eaten by something,‘ he says.
‘The fishermen tear them up sometimes.‘
‘Why?‘ he asks.
Molly holds the piece of starfish.
‘They think that they eat too many of the mussels. But they can grow back, when they’ve been torn apart. They can make themselves into two.‘
‘What?‘
Molly laughs.
‘Sometimes they even do it to themselves. They’ll crawl in opposite directions, pull themselves apart.‘
‘How do you know that?‘
‘My father.‘
He taught you that?‘
Molly shakes her head. She places the piece of starfish gently on the ground.
‘Later‘, she says. ‘After I left.‘
Or they sit on the crumbling stone wall around her back garden watching the sun melt into his house. On hot days the smell of baking seaweed holds in the air.
One evening a rustling sounds behind them. Mark tenses and turns his upper body. Molly grips his hand before he can speak. They hear it again. Not ten feet away a badger jumps from the wall and runs past them. It moves quickly for such a low set animal. Racing to the opposite end of the wall it leaps up again and disappears. The smell of it lingers.
Mark whispers.
I’ve only ever seen one dead on the road.’
When the weather is bad Molly stokes up the fire and he sits and listens to her knit. One day he brings seafood he has cooked.
‘I can’t,’ Molly says.
‘I thought you’d live on it here.’
For a long time the only sound is the clacking of the needles as they spin gold into a moss green hat.
~
When Steve comes at the weekends, he and Mark eat at the seafood restaurant in town and drive into the Burren looking for craft shops. In the last month of summer he persuades Mark to bring him to meet Molly. She is standing in the back garden, staring out at the sea.
‘Ouch. That’s a firm grip,’ he laughs when Molly shakes his hand. When she doesn’t reply he stands with his hands on his hips, nodding as if agreeing to something.
‘Was this…your parent’s house?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re passed away?’
‘Yes. A long time now.’
‘Such a beautiful place. So close to the city really. Great thing about Ireland, you’re only ever a few hours away from everything you need.’
I’ve everything I need here.’
‘Really?’ He laughs, looking at Mark.
‘I don’t need anything from the city. If I do I don’t know what it could be.’
‘Really?’ he says again. ‘Isn’t that interesting.’ He falters, searching for something, then smiles again.
‘Actually, we just picked up some mussels. You know the van on the square in town. Can we offer you –‘
‘Molly doesn’t eat mussels,’ Mark interjects.
‘Oh? Really? Why not?’
Molly doesn’t reply.
‘It’s just. Mark said your father was a fisherman.’
The silence yawns in the space between them.
‘Tea?’ Molly asks.
‘Actually,’ Steve looks at Mark. ‘We need to get going.’
‘We could stay for a cup,’ Mark says quietly.
Steve looks at his watch.
‘No can do. I need to call John about that shipment before lunchtime.’
‘I can walk back,’ Mark finally stubbornly.
Steve coughs irritably.
‘I thought you’d want to speak to John too. About the job.’ he says.
‘I don’t know why you bothered coming over when all you wanted to do was leave,’ Mark says in the car on the way back.
Steve injects a bright cheeriness to his voice.
‘C’mon Mark.’
‘C’mon what?’
Steve laughs.
‘What did that guy in the pub say about her? That Dave guy?’
Steve slows down as he passes a woman pushing a pram. A cold grip tightens on Mark’s stomach.
‘She’s my friend, Steve.’
‘And the job?’
Mark doesn’t reply.
‘A year. I know I said take your time, but Mark.’
They pull up to the house. The sun glints off the reinforced glass wall.
‘Oh yeah. He said the whole family were always odd.’
That night Molly knits like a demon. She gets through three hats, a scarf and a pair of gloves. She knits her way through the years. Of cold flats and damp sheets, cleaning jobs and tinned beans. Of hurrying across different grey cities as the perpetual rain spat down on her. Of making something of her own. Her father used to eat all the mussels he could. The smell of it on his breath as he leaned over her those times, his fingers rough from sea salt. The night of her mothers’ funeral they both stood in the yellow light of the fire. She gathered up his fishing rod, the tackle box then and smiling at him, fed them to the fire.
Finally she puts down the needles. She walks outside to the boundary wall, looks out at the water and the lights winking from Salthill. The moon is high; the only sounds the leaves rustling above her. The smell of salt in the air, of sealife.
~
The next morning Mark thought he was the first to find the starfish. Later, a local expert would scratch his head and give a television interview with Mark’s house visible above his left ear. But now, Mark picks his way over them, lying in heaps the wide, tide cleaned beach; thousands of starfish obliterating the landscape.
Then he sees her across the bay. She stands very still amongst the starfish. The sun glints on her hair like it is made of glass. She is far away but he imagines she is looking at him. Seagull wheel silent circles between them. He walks across to meet her.