The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill

Author:Bernie McGill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

Maddie

31 OCTOBER 1968

Anna, is everything all right? Are you sure, daughter? You’d tell me if there was anything amiss with the baby? Who was it you saw? Oh, Dr. Shaw is a saint. I’d trust him with my life. And he said it was all fine? Sit down now and rest yourself. Can I? Are you sure? But my hands are cold. Look at you, your belly as round and ripe as a plum and my old hand on it like a diseased branch. Oh, Anna, I can feel it, a little bursting bubble of life moving around inside you. God willing, I’ll be spared to see your baby, lay my eyes and my hand on it for real. God bless you, Anna, and Conor and your child, and keep you safe always.

I saw Conor, when he brought the letter. Oh, he’s a fine-looking fella, Anna, he is. And getting on great at the university, he tells me. Lecturer in education, isn’t it wonderful? Owen would be that proud if he was here. And Peig. She’d be strutting about like a peacock at news the like of that. Sure, he’ll be a professor in no time. Oh, he was always clever. And interested in all sorts of things. I remember him as a wee lad gathering seaweed on the big strand and able to tell me all the different kinds and their Latin names, and what was the word he said to me one day, and him only a young pup? “Algae.” That was it. “Algae,” if you don’t mind! Oh, sharp as a billhook, he was, like his father and his grandfather before him.

I was told by a fortune-teller I’d have a long life. Me and Bella went to her one day on the Parade for a joke. She had a wee wooden hut near the rocks, down by the Carrig-na-Cule, and a beaded curtain in the doorway. I always remember the sound of it when you walked through, the way the beads all knocked together, the way you felt like you were passing through a solid waterfall from one kind of living into another. It was dark inside; you could barely see her face under the old black shawl she wore. Dark lines ran from her ears to the corners of her mouth and she’d a voice like the whisper of a wave breaking. The whole place smelled salty and high from the seaweed that washed in and got trapped under the hut. Her hands were cold, I remember, and her nails were as thick and tough as horn. She told me I would never marry, for there was a lie in my life. Imagine telling that to a person, Anna. Not a mistake, or a regret, mind, but a lie. Is a lie always something you’ve said that’s not the truth, or can it be something you’ve never said? Can a lie be a truth you’ve never told, not to anyone? Not in the confessional, and not

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