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  IN WHITE INK

  Elske Rahill

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  About this Book

  About the Author

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  About In White Ink

  Darkly disturbing meditations on motherhood by an exceptional Irish writer.

  Motherhood, nurture and violence – these are the themes of Elske Rahill’s remarkable first collection, In White Ink. Rahill brings to life the psychological and physical reality of mothering, pregnancy and childbirth in ways that few other writers have attempted. Here is a biting realism, in the relations between men and women and in the expectations and failures of their assigned roles.

  Each story is illumined by moments of harsh poetry. They are carefully crafted snapshots of our condition. In the title story, an isolated young mother is locked in to a custody battle with her abusive husband; ‘Right to Reply’ shows three generations of women confronting the terrible legacy of their family’s past; in ‘Toby’, a woman obsessed with hygiene finally snaps, when she finds her home is infested with fleas. The precision of Rahill’s prose, the stoicism of her unflinching narrative gaze, reveal characters caught up in violently emotional situations.

  The version of motherhood found here is painful. Yet its endurance, as nature’s greatest force, is brilliantly and compassionately rendered.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About In White Ink

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Toby

  In White Ink

  A Wife

  Bride

  Terraforming

  Right to Reply

  Dolls

  Manners

  Cords

  Playing House

  Tasteless

  Acknowledgements

  About Elske Rahill

  More from Apollo

  About Apollo

  Copyright

  One way or another, these stories are for my children.

  ...a woman is never far from ‘mother’ (I mean outside her role functions: the ‘mother’ as a nonname and source of goods). There is always within her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She writes in white ink.

  ‘THE LAUGH OF THE MEDUSA’, HÉLÈNE CIXOUS

  Toby

  THE HARDWARE SHOP is dusty and cluttered, with a muddy, masculine smell that at once revolts and reassures her. There is a teenage boy at the till and a white-haired man sitting on a stepladder. The man goes downstairs to look for the bug bombs. He returns waving a tiny rectangular box above his head.

  ‘Here you are, love,’ he says. ‘The last one.’

  Valerie follows him to the till, looking as she goes at the rows of nails and brackets and screws, each presented in a trough with letters and numbers written on a label above them – codes she cannot read. She tries to keep her gaze away from the rumpled, pink face of the man: too much colour against the blanched hair and all around his eyes creases cramming like the unready petals of a peeled poppy bud.

  ‘Unusual this time of year,’ he says, handing the box to the boy. ‘You must keep the house very warm, love, is it?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Valerie. ‘Yes, I suppose perhaps.’

  The man leans over the boy’s shoulder, pointing at the till. ‘There.’ He says it softly, like a pleasant secret. ‘Press Open, then Pets, and then you can put in the price... It’s on the back. Turn it over – there, y’see?’

  His voice is louder for Valerie, his accent clipped clean of nuance: ‘Do you have a dog, do you? Or a cat?’

  ‘A dog, yes. My husband’s dog.’

  ‘That’s what it is. Has it a flea collar? There’s flea tablets you can give them too, you know? Might be the best thing.’

  The man points as he speaks. His fingers have an inflated look, spongy and pale – the nakedness of roots grown blind beneath a garden slab. Valerie wonders how that can be, given that he is in the business of hammers and nails and soil.

  While the boy confuses the till, Valerie moves to a small pet section in the corner and chooses a flea collar for Toby, some flea tablets, and some dog treats to hide the tablets in. When she brings them back to the till, the boy is still struggling. The drawer jangles open and the man slides it closed again. ‘Don’t mind that,’ he tells the boy. ‘Start again. Just take your time.’ He explains to Valerie how to use the bug bomb, warning her that there are rotten chemicals in it.

  ‘Leave the house for the day,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’d do, no two ways about it. D’you’ve any kids, do you?’

  ‘One. A baby.’

  ‘Keep him out of the house for the day.’

  ‘A girl. Yes, she goes to crèche, so...’

  She tries to imagine 82 cubic metres because the man says that’s how far the poison spreads. She asks him is there anything else he has, because her house is quite large and one bomb won’t be enough for the upstairs and the downstairs. He sends the boy to get a spray for the furniture.

  ‘You’re sure it’s fleas?’ he says, pulling a reel of paper from the top of the till – a translucent strip with rows of ghostly purple zeros printed on it. He tears the paper off and throws it in a basket by his feet.

  ‘Yes,’ says Valerie.

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t kill them by squashing – you know that? You have to roll them.’

  ‘Oh yes. I know.’

  A few days after they began, Valerie looked it up on her husband’s computer. Rolling, not squashing, said the Internet, and vacuuming. Vacuuming everything over and over. She has vacuumed twice this morning – that’s what had Joanna late for crèche – and right now Dolores will be arriving to do the weekly clean. Valerie left a note instructing her to vacuum everywhere, and to bleach all the floors.

  The man ducks beneath the counter.

  ‘Unusual this time of year,’ he calls. ‘Unusual for Ireland actually, to tell you the truth, love.’

  He reappears flushed and pleased, wire-cutters in his hand.

  ‘I wasn’t going to order in any more of them bombs, we sell so few. It’s more in the heat you’d tend to get fleas. The continent. Rotten stuff in them things. Should be banned.’

  The teenager returns with the spray, his face set in eager determination as he approaches the till. He smiles for approval as he gives Valerie her change, still smiles as he puts it all in a blue plastic bag with Carrier Bag printed across it in faint black letters, nods like a man as she takes it.

  Valerie stows it immediately in her spacious cream leather handbag. She doesn’t want to arrive at the hairdresser swinging that flimsy carrier bag like something haggled from a street seller, bright bug spray glinting through the cheap plastic.

  *

  At Saphron Hair Design Valerie catches herself in the mirror, being helped into the black robe like an invalid, and she can see at a glance that her new gold-sheen lipstick ages her and that her eyes are overdone. She sits on the swivel chair and looks down to avoid the mirrors all around her; the shock of her profile, the dregs of shadow settling beneath her eye sockets. She will ask for her roots to be done today. Then she will feel better.

  A man puts his hands on her shoulders and speaks to her reflection. He says his name is Justin and he will cut her hair today because her usual stylist, Lauren, is out sick. His smile, she knows, is meant to reassure, but he can’t conceal the sneer on his lips when she tells him she likes it the same every time. His gaze flitters over her pearl-stud earrings, her kitten heels. ‘Sure. If you find a way that works for you... why change?’ He has a quiff like a tidal wave, a gold hoop spearing the flesh of his brow.

  ‘Well yes exactly,’ says Valerie.

  Fashions come and go, b
ut every woman has an ideal hair length for her face shape; when she finds it, she should stick to it. It was Valerie’s confirmation day when her mother explained that. They had a girl in to do her hair, and Valerie sat at her mother’s vanity table, in her new blue suit with the shoulder pads and the sailor collar. She requested an up-style, but her mother shook her head.

  ‘Know your own face, my girl. Every woman has an ideal hair length, but it’s only a clever woman who knows what it is.’

  Side by side in the mirror, they looked together at all the secrets of Valerie’s face. Valerie might make the most of herself, her mother explained, by letting her hair fall just to her chin, giving her a bit of a jawline and sweeping inwards, to soften her look. When she was finished speaking, her mother stood behind her, wrapped her hands firmly around Valerie’s shoulders as though to strengthen her, and sighed into the mirror.

  While her hair is cut, Valerie leafs through a magazine from beginning to end, then starts at the beginning again. Her fringe is still clamped up in a big green clip when the hairdresser abruptly stops cutting. Valerie’s breath snags, and, keeping her head down, she glances up carefully at the mirror. The hairdresser is frowning a little, pecking slowly at her scalp with long, clean fingers. She swallows quietly, forces her eyes back to the magazine – a ‘sneaky snap’ taken from far away, that shows the naked face of a celebrity on a hotel balcony. Valerie always uses a lice treatment before a hair appointment, and a leave-in repellent – she has nothing to worry about. But there is a twinge behind her ear, a twitching impulse to scratch. She forces breath out slowly through her teeth. She can feel the drag of her own cheeks, the foolish heaviness of her mouth, lipstick cloying.

  ‘What colour did you say you usually go for?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Valerie, ‘Caramel 06 is the one Lauren uses.’

  Red rings have been drawn around the flaws in the star’s face. Guess who has crow’s feet? says the title.

  *

  On the walk to Grafton Street, Valerie keeps her eyes on the pavement ahead. She can feel how her new haircut sleeks over the contours of her skull and curls girlishly at the nape, making the shape of her head painfully conspicuous. She will need to sort herself out before shopping. She tugs a lock in around her chin. It’s supposed to draw a nice curve around her face, but the man has made her hair a little too short, exposing the rough cut of her jaw. Already, she is dreading collecting Joanna from crèche. The minders will notice she has had her hair done. They will try to compliment her or, worse, they will say nothing but giggle together when she is gone. They will think the hair is too youthful for her face.

  *

  The cosmetics department is Valerie’s favourite part of the store, and she always does a little browsing before picking up her monthly skincare supplies. Today she is distracted, though, flitting from counter to counter but collecting no samples, making no enquiries, taking nothing in. To take advantage of the free gift offer, she buys two bottles of her usual cleansing milk instead of one. The girl at the counter is beautifully made up in this season’s mango-yellow eyeshadow and coral-pink lipstick. They are the kind of colours Valerie might buy and never wear. You need delicate features and a porcelain complexion for colours like that.

  ‘It’s a great offer,’ says the salesgirl.

  ‘Yes.’

  Martin often teases Valerie about her lust for bargains. He tells their friends about it – ‘Vie knows all about shopping! Shopping is Vie’s speciality! Nothing a woman loves more than to spend her husband’s money. Am I right, lads?’ and the husbands laugh, and she smiles, and the wives roll their eyes in sympathy, ‘Oh don’t mind him, Val. My Brian is just the same...’

  Valerie’s mother used to say that your skin is the one thing you are stuck with, the one thing you must look after. These days she has to make a particular effort to keep her skin decent. Since the baby it has grown temperamental and prone to blotches.

  After the birth her cheeks were covered with fine red lines and pricks of blood that twinkled like mocking stars. They were burst vessels, the nurse said, from the pressure of pushing. They would clear up in no time. The swollen lips were nothing to worry about either; they were a result of her biting down for the final push, determined not to scream, not to make a spectacle of herself.

  ‘Is that the baby?’ she’d said when the head showed. ‘Yes,’ said the midwife, ‘touch it.’ But she hadn’t. ‘Are you sure that’s the baby?’ – because the head, faceless and purplish, looked like it could have been her own insides – a kidney or a prolapse. When they pulled the rest of it out, it hadn’t cried as she’d expected. ‘Is it over?’ she said. ‘Can I sleep now?’

  The nurse pried something from its mouth with polythene hands, and Valerie heard a faint mewl. They handed it to her wrapped in a green towel and told her it was a perfect baby girl. It cried then, but only a little, with no enthusiasm. In its open mouth a wound-pink tongue curled like a fern. Its fingers stretched wire-tense and gossamer-fine, casting dark shadows on the lap of her polka-dotted hospital gown.

  *

  The salesgirl slides the gift into a tasteful beige bag beside the cleansers and ties everything up with a neat black bow.

  ‘I’ve popped in a nice sample of our hand cream,’ she says.

  ‘Oh that’s lovely,’ says Valerie. ‘Thank you. I might give it to my mother. She’s in a home now, you know, but she still likes to look after herself, never without her hand cream and lipstick...’

  ‘Oh,’ the girl nods, ‘that’s a nice idea. I’ll give you another one then, for yourself.’

  The girl doesn’t understand what Valerie is telling her; her mother – Mummy – who has always been the smell of soap, and ironing water, and Red Door perfume, who has always known how things should be done, is old now, and in a home, and sits all day by the window, and makes an ugly sucking with her mouth. She can no longer oversee a room of dinner guests, making matches and soothing out old resentments with her quiet, dignified gait and soot-heavy lids.

  It’s when Valerie reaches into her handbag that it happens – the barely perceptible landing weight and in an instant the tiny prick, building already towards an itch. She feels for her wallet and grips it hard, squeezes her lips against the compulsion to scratch the back of her wrist. She would give way to madness if she responded to every sensation that moved over her skin, and she must not encourage her imagination, which is learning to taunt her with little stings and tickles. Even her eyes have started to play tricks – a speck of dust that hops; a cleft of wood that hatches larvae fine as the hairs on her child’s back.

  Valerie looks up at the girl, who is patiently smiling. She smiles back, lifting out her hand, tilting her wrist very slightly to catch the shape of it. Yes. It’s there all right, angling on the hill of her knuckle, the fleck of its body poised for escape. She opens her purse. She will not make a spectacle of herself.

  ‘Take your time,’ the nice girl says. But Valerie can feel the red patches under her eyes, the perspiration on her palms.

  *

  The interior of her car is chemical-clean and air-conditioned. It is dim in the car park, but Valerie flicks on the roof lamp, a thatchy rectangle of yellow. She moves bits of herself into its glow. There is nothing on her ankles, nothing at her cleavage. She runs a palm around the back of her neck and down the lobes of her ears. There it is – from nowhere she feels it land. She raises her arm to the light, watches it pivot in the crook of her elbow, the humped back peaking puce with her blood. She brings her fingers down on the porridge-soft fold of skin, and presses firm. It bites again but she can feel it, a tiny grain beneath her touch. Ha! She has it.

  It’s not the catching that’s the problem; it’s what to do afterwards. She rolls hard, pushing a finger back and forth until she is confident there is no risk of escape. Then she traps it expertly between thumb and forefinger and rolls it some more before leaning close to inspect it. It’s surely dead now, or crippled at least, legs like crushed lint; jagged, cr
ooked filaments.

  In the rear-view mirror, she examines the papery creases under her eyes, the thin film of skin restraining a liquid swell beneath. She will need to fix herself before collecting Joanna.

  *

  She parks in a loading bay, rushes in and out as though in a great hurry. ‘Come on, darling,’ she says to Joanna, loudly so that the girls – the pretty foreign classroom assistant and a trendy young mum with a baby on her back – understand she is not being rude. ‘Mummy is in a bit of a hurry today.’ She shakes Joanna into her coat, hooks on her bag. Joanna is a quiet, obedient child. She slips her hand into her mother’s, but Valerie can’t bear it – the coolness and certainty of the touch, the fine bones closing together like a bird’s wing. The itches are starting up again, convulsions of them running over her wrists and under her arms. She pulls her hand away, clutches the back of Joanna’s coat as she guides her across the road. It’s a beautiful coat – well cut, made from pure lambswool. Valerie was delighted to have found it in the January sales.

  The flexibility of these thin arms always surprises her when she loops them into the straps of the child seat. She smooths the plaits either side of Joanna’s face, straightens her shoulders, light and round as ping-pong balls, and pushes her bottom into the cup of the seat before pinning the little chest with a final click. ‘There now,’ she says. She hands Joanna a box of raisins and switches on the DVD. The entertainment system is in the back of the headrest on the passenger seat. It makes journeys far more pleasant for everyone. They are educational cartoons, and it reassures her to hear Joanna shouting back at the characters, ‘Square!... Triangle!... Green!... Smaller!’

  Valerie knows she is not what people call a ‘natural mother’. She is not ‘made for it’, the way some women are, with slings and breast pumps and all that. But she does her best. With what she has, she does her best.