The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (6 page)

‘I was thinking,' he said slowly. ‘You're going to get in real trouble about those lines.' He came further into the room. ‘Something the matter?'

‘No.'

‘Well, I was thinking. If Mrs Burke does read those lines and you get in more trouble, then maybe you could prove it to her, and to all the kids in school.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘How'd it be if I got some of the guys, Liam Doherty and the others, and we all went up the Big Hill with you, and then we told Mrs Burke? She'd have to believe us, right? How about it? Would you do it?'

‘Course I would.' Jessie spoke without really thinking. It seemed to her this was like a challenge, that maybe Jack didn't believe her either. But when she did think about it, she immediately began to regret it. Just because she had climbed the Big Hill once, it didn't mean she could do it again.

‘Anyway,' she said, ‘if she doesn't read them, and she won't, then I won't have to do it, will I?' She just hoped she was right.

‘Your mom lost her vote?' Jack went on.

She nodded. ‘See you,' he said, and then he went out.

Jessie couldn't sleep that night, and it wasn't just the owl outside. Her head swarmed with endless puzzlements and debates and anxieties. Was Jack right about the shouting? Would it just get worse until they split up? Should she put in the one word in her lines that would make life easier at school tomorrow? If she did, and Mrs Burke did read them, then at least she wouldn't have to climb the Big Hill again. And what would happen if she tried to climb the Big Hill in front of everyone, and then failed? She'd never live it down. Marion Murphy wouldn't let her. And that was another thing. Marion Murphy was hovering around Jack a lot too close, and she didn't like it. She didn't like it one bit.

She got out of bed and went to watch Barry for a while. He was asleep at the bottom of his bowl, just breathing, nothing else. It was as much to wake him up as anything that she put her hand in and fished around in the stones for the earring. She took it out and shook it dry. And what of the voice she had heard on the Big Hill? Was it real or imagined? What of the face in the mirror and the earring in her hand? What was going on? Her feet were getting cold, so she hid the earring deep in the stones again, said goodnight to Barry, and went back to bed.

The moon lit her room and the shadows from the tree danced across the ceiling above her head. ‘Are you there?' she whispered. ‘Can you hear me?' The owl answered from the abbey tower. ‘Bog off,' she said. ‘I wasn't talking to you.'

But as she drifted into sleep at last, watching the moving shadows, she fancied they were not shadows any more, but waves. Dipping through the waves came a galley and on the prow of the galley stood a woman, her hair flying out in the wind, her cloak whipping about her shoulders, a flag fluttering over her head, a flag with a red pig emblazoned on it. Then the woman was looking down at her from the ceiling and smiling at her. ‘It's late, Jessie,' she was saying. ‘Just you go to sleep now, and let tomorrow take care of itself. It always does.'

5
THE GHOST OF GRANIA O'MALLEY

TRUE ENOUGH, TOMORROW DID TAKE CARE OF itself. Mrs Burke remembered the week was up and asked for the lines. As expected and hoped for, she gave them no more than a cursory glance and dropped them into her waste-paper bin. ‘No more of your nonsense now, Jessie,' she said, and that was that. Jessie looked across at Jack and smiled her relief. So she wouldn't have to prove it, she wouldn't have to climb the Big Hill again after all. For Jessie, school that day was one long sigh of relief.

Jack's rollerblades made him, without any question, the most popular person the school had ever known. Jessie sat on her place on the wall and watched him, her legs swinging. She felt real pride that Jack was a cousin of hers. She was less pleased when Marion contrived to have more turns than anyone else, and somehow she always seemed to need Jack to help her up when she fell over. Miss Jefferson had a try too, and she was quite good. Jack showed her what to do and stood back. She wobbled just once across the playground, and everyone cheered and clapped, even Mrs Burke. It seemed to set her in a good mood for the rest of the day.

That afternoon they all did a comparative study of Clare Island, County Mayo, Ireland, and Long Island, New York, U.S.A. – the one barely four miles long, the other over a hundred; the one you could only get to by ferry, the other with a road and rail link to and from New York; the one inhabited until four hundred years before by Red Indians (Jack said they were called ‘Native Americans', not ‘Indians'), and the other the last stronghold of the Irish-Gaelic tribes against the Normans and the English.

Then Liam Doherty was asked to stand up and explain the rules of Gaelic football, and Jack had to say how American football was different. Jessie was bored by all this, for there seemed to her to be very little difference between the two. The goalposts were about the same shape and, to her, it was just a lot of people running around kicking a ball and shouting, and not very interesting at all. The Americans wore funny helmets and dressed up like mutant giants and the Irish didn't – for her that was the only difference. Liam was becoming a little edgy because people weren't as interested in what he was saying – mostly because they knew it already – as they were in what Jack was saying.

Mrs Burke finished off the whole day by telling them all what both Irish and American had in common, Clare Islanders and Long Islanders. ‘The main thing is,' she said, ‘that we speak the same language, and that's good, because it means we can understand one another better. We are both free countries and democracies, and we've that to be thankful for. Do you know what a democracy is?' No one answered. ‘Well, it means that we Irish vote for what we want; and so do you Americans, don't you, Jack?'

‘I guess,' said Jack.

‘Take for instance, last night,' Mrs Burke went on, ‘when we had our Island Meeting. A perfect example of democracy in action. Almost everyone was for the gold mine, and just two were against. So like it or not, the gold mine is coming. No one can stop it now. That's the power of democracy for you.'

Jessie could not leave it like that. She had to speak up, she had to defend her mother. Her anger made her suddenly brave. She put her hand up.

‘Yes, Jessie?' said Mrs Burke.

‘My mother says that voting is all very well, Miss, but just because a thing is popular, she says that doesn't make it right. She doesn't think the gold mine is right, and neither does old Mister Barney.'

Mrs Burke glowered at her for a moment over the top of her glasses and then looked up at the school clock. ‘I think that'll be all for today,' she said. ‘Tidy your tables, children.'

They were in the playground at the end of school, shrugging on coats when the skirmishing began. It was Marion Murphy that started it all. She sauntered up to Jessie with that lipcurl of a smile on her face, the smile that Jessie always knew meant trouble. She was a head taller than Jessie and big all over, a great round face and a mouth to match.

‘Your mum,' she said, ‘is she mad in the head, or what? My mum says that your mum just likes the men to look at her – that's why she gets up and talks like she does. A bit of tart, my mum says. Married a lousy blow-in too.'

‘You've a filthy mouth on you, Marion Murphy,' Jessie said, fixing her with her most contemptuous and withering stare. But the sneer on Marion's face was still there, so Jessie had to go on, ‘My mum's got a perfect right to say what she thinks about the Big Hill – and besides, she's right and the rest of you's wrong. You shouldn't go cutting the tops off mountains just for a lump of gold, and they will poison the water like she says, and there won't be work for everyone either, and they won't put it all back as good as new when they've finished, like your daft daddy says. It's all lies. And if the men look at my mum, that's because she's beautiful, and if they don't look at your mum, that's because she's an ugly old cow.'

She had gone too far. She knew it, but she just could not rein herself in. She was trembling with fury, and with fear too. She was probably safe enough from physical attack – there were some advantages to being the way she was. And anyway, Marion was all mouth – she hoped. There was a crowd closing in round them now, almost the whole school. Jessie was glad to find Jack there beside her.

Marion's face was scarlet. ‘Cripple!' she screamed at her. ‘You're just a cripple, you know that, just a cripple. My mum says you shouldn't be allowed in the same school with us. They should send you away so's no one's got to look at you.'

Jessie had never liked Marion, and she knew Marion had never liked her, but she'd never said such a thing before. No one had. They might have thought it. Jessie had often caught sight of a side-glance here, a lowering of the eyes there, and she knew what they meant well enough, but it had never been spoken out loud before. It was suddenly out in the open, and the shock of it took her breath away. She was stunned to silence. Jack spoke up.

‘We're going home,' he said, taking her elbow. The crowd parted for them and seemed a little disappointed it had come to no more than harsh words.

‘I hate her, I really hate her,' Jessie said much later, as they walked away past the abbey ruins. The post van came down the hill past them. Mrs O'Leary, postlady and pub-keeper, waved at them cheerily.

‘What's a blow-in?' Jack asked. ‘Marion said your pa was a blow-in.'

‘Someone like you – foreigner, English, Irish, no matter what. If you weren't born here, you're a blow-in.'

‘So?' said Jack. ‘Back home, that would make just about everyone a blow-in. Well, maybe not the Native Americans, but even they probably blew in from somewhere, I guess.' They walked on for a while in silence.

‘D'you find your lucky arrowhead yet?' Jessie asked.

Jack shook his head. ‘Maybe it wasn't that lucky anyway,' he said. He stopped suddenly. ‘Hey, listen. You want to take me up this hill of yours?' he asked. ‘You want to take me up the Big Hill?' It took Jessie by surprise.

‘What, now?'

‘Why not? You've done it before, haven't you?' he said. ‘I'll tell the guys afterwards. How about it?'

‘I don't want you to tell them,' she said. ‘I don't care if they believe me or not. Don't care if no one believes me.'

‘I believe you,' Jack said. ‘I just want to go up there, OK? I've got to find out what all the fuss is about, that's all.'

‘OK,' said Jessie, but she meant more than that. She meant: ‘Thanks, thanks for believing in me.' She gave him a smile to tell him so, and then immediately began to worry whether she would be able to make it to the top again. She had no choice but to try. There was no way out of it.

They had to go past the end of the farm lane to get to the Big Hill. Mole was grazing the grass verge and followed them. By the time they reached the grassy clearing by Mister Barney's shack, Panda was there too, bounding away into the bracken after rabbits, his tail whirling. Jessie was counting out her rhythm in her head: one and two, one and two, one and two. She hadn't the breath to talk. Having Jack alongside made it easier in one way, but more difficult in another. It was easier because she knew he'd be there to help her if she tumbled, but more difficult because she knew he'd never believe her ever again if she failed to reach the top.

When they got to the stream across the path, Jack sat down on a rock for a breather, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘We're only halfway up,' she said, tottering on past him, ‘so we're neither up nor down. What's keeping you?' Seeing him sitting there exhausted, made her feel good, very good; but she felt even better still when she reached the gulley beyond the waterfall, and could see the summit up there ahead of her. But then, without warning, she sat down with a bump and Jack was crouching beside her.

‘You OK?'

‘I need a hand up, that's all.' He helped her up and steadied her. ‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘Fine.' From now on it simply did not occur to her that she might not reach the top. She sat down only once more, more awkwardly this time, and fell sideways into the undergrowth. Jack hauled her on to her feet again and freed her from a bramble that was caught in her hair.

‘Almost there,' he said; and they were too. They were calling out the rhythm together now: ‘One and two, one and two, one and two.' A last scramble over rocks on hands and knees, and then they were stretched out on a great soft cushion of pink thrift at the summit, their eyes closed against the sun. After a while Jessie propped herself up on her elbows. Jack was standing on the highest rock and gazing out to sea.

‘Your mom's right, Jess,' he said. No one ever called her Jess, except her mother and father, but Jessie found she didn't mind at all. In fact, she liked it. ‘They shouldn't do it,' he went on. ‘They shouldn't go cutting the top off. I don't care how much gold there is inside here. I never saw anything like this place. It's really special, you know that? If we let them knock it down, then no one's ever going to stand here like I am and look at this. All you get from gold is money. Money sure makes you rich, but rich doesn't make you happy. This makes you happy.'

‘You on Mum's side then?'

‘I guess I am. What about you?'

Jessie was looking around her. Jack was right. It was special. It was beautiful. It was the perfect place. ‘I don't think I ever really made up my mind about it until now,' she said, ‘until right now. But yes, I am on Mum's side, and not just because of what Marion said either. Mum's right. She's been right all along.' She tried to get up, but found it difficult. He came over and helped her to her feet. ‘Anyway,' Jessie said, ‘it doesn't matter any more. It's too late, it's all decided.'