Woman Scorned

Nuala

I had only just begun to take joy in the quiet of the cottage and in the familiar slow steps of my husband bringing in turf from the yard before the girls were born. The cottages themselves stick like dirt in folds of skin, sunken and low in an attempt to dodge the daily sweep of rain and wind off the Atlantic Ocean.  They blot the landscape with an inky smudge of white and grey, speckled with dried blotches of fallen paint. We are set at the second to last plot on our 'road'. It's inhabitants proudly named it thus after a week of crunching numb bones while we all helped to pave it, in a manner, with rough stone. Each plot stretches out around the cottage at the road, to encompass outbuildings and sheds and lean-tos full of animals, feed, turf, children playing, children quarrelling, parents working and villagers gossiping. There are eight cottages on our road, which have stood stout and squat since before my Granddaddy was born. Each cottage has, in my opinion, only one redeeming quality, the view.  Which yelps and whistles through the edges of our shutters pushing itself into the cottage stinging with frosted salt. To push open the shutters is to reveal an opening in ones chest that finds a vast hall expanding in front of you to make way for the landscape bruised and chipped and tossed always by the wind that even after a life time of seeing can never be mundane.

 I couldn't fluster myself with the house work, I wasn't allowed to the fields and had spent the previous three months house bound with the biggest stomach the Island had ever seen. Of course we all knew that there was three babes in there, but none of us wanted to know what the outcome of this pregnancy would be. The villagers seemed to talk of nothing else but never to actually talk about the real fear of the babes or myself dying in the process. So slowly they all told us in the pub that I really should stay inside and that I really shouldn't be doing the laundry, that I really mustn't clean the floor, until I was sat still for an age, until the women visited me. 

Each morning I would shuffle like a lost aged women across the wooden slabs to the seat my the drafty window. There I was bound my blankets. Longingly, I would picture myself scuttling down the road, veering right towards the pub before skirting among the sandy banks to be reunited with my beach. Fishing boats rarely look up at us from the sea with the rolling current and rocks scattered around our bay. That makes our beach all the better though. From the warmth of the cottage with a strong mug of tea I would throw my mind down to the beach. Relishing in the thought of rough wind smoothing my face, the dainty hint of rain to fall later in the day, frizzing my hair as I was walking from my seat to the edge of the river. I would hear the shore up ahead pulling sand slowly over rocks and blasted shells, tingling with the movement. The river in front of me would make an altogether deeper sound. One that hinted that if I was to cross it in reality I would need more than wellies to keep myself dry. Miniature cliffs of sand would weave up to the spray before releasing it's fresh mountain water into the ocean. The cliffs at the inter most curves would slowly pull, as though errors in knitting, falling into the river. When we were children we would stomp of the cliffs and cry out in delight as we sailed down into the river, falling back onto the bank at the last moment. But I would be rudely ripped from my beach by the continual visitors to check on me.

Whenever women from the village came to help with the house work, I secretly smiled to be excused from work for the moment. I was like a little girl, coddled by my village, with nothing expected of me. The women pitied me. So big with children, but I delighted in letting the children within take hold of my body. If I could just stand on the beach again each day I would have been content forever. 

When the girls were born, the villagers were unsure what their response should be. To safely birth three children, for each of them to survive and for my labor to be so swift they suspected rituals were in play.

But gradually, the babes won over the village. As they grew they had a kind of hold over all that they met. Each child had the same features with dark limp hair and pale blue eyes rimmed in green. In our village those features were unremarkable as only the landowners possessed the fair features we all desperately craved.

It was the manner the children demonstrated that so transfixed the people here. The three of them would softly murmur to each other, letting each murmur finish before their own began. It is only now, after carrying four more babes, that I realize how striking the trio were. They held unbreakable concentration on whoever they encountered. The villagers in turn all devoured the attention each girl gave to them, believing it to be adoration or devotion.

They would rarely wail or sob, instead showing their discomfort or distress by squirming and reaching for each other. It was not an embrace they sought, merely contact. When they lay on the rug they simply needed to touch toes or fingers to be fully content.

For all of their early years the girls were cherished by the village. Visitors to the cottage would often bring the girls small trinkets to play with or portions of food from their own tables. They would laugh and tell me it was because they felt sorry for us with three small children to feed. But the villagers swiftly took to thinking of the girls as their daughters to love and protect.

As the girls became old enough for schooling we encountered many instances when the locals would intervene and freely discuss our children. The triplets would become severely distressed after hours of being made to sit away from each other and break their usual contact when they went to the school in the valley.

At this time I was heavy with our fifth child Tommy. My mother had started to lose her sight and the villagers had lost faith in her skills to deliver babies, even though most of them had been delivered by her own hands. My best friend Ealga had sat with me for many evenings urging me to take up my mother's responsibilities on the Island. I had reluctantly agreed that it was time to take over.  We live on an Island just off from Eire and doctors are beyond our reach. My mother taught me how to care for women when their time came, when to be soft and when to be stern. I hadn't fully realized how interested the village had become in the three children. In a rural place like ours and no money to spare on entertainment the island was always humming with some gossip but this fixation was something deeper. 

In each home the women would offer me advice on how to keep the girls happy at school and assured me they would settle into their new surrounding. Each woman, even those with troublesome pregnancies, would talk at length of the triplets' distress before allowing me to offer them support for their own babies. They told me that the girls must be used to having constant company in each other and would eventually find their own isolated interests. But the comfort they offered fell short. After two years of schooling Aoife, Mary and Mona were persistently distressed at the smallest of separations. The teacher had long ago given up sitting them apart and would allow them to go everywhere united.

 The girls had a habit of wandering off together. I would be in the cattle field or making dinner when before I knew it Mrs Lavelle would boisterously jamb her way through our door to tell me they had gone off. She had longed for curls for as long as anyone could remember and her hair was split like bird legs behind her in every direction from the excessive curling. Usually she would slam through my door daily with the girls in tow, they would shuffle around her together, squeezing past the bulk of her skirts. But when the girls were into their ninth year Mrs Lavelle entered in her usual stomp but the girls did not follow. 

'Nuala? Nuala? They've done it again, Mary Jesus and Joseph it is worse then ever Nuala.' She slammed the door behind her shut swiftly and I turned around looking for the girls, her flock of hair settling on her shoulders. 

'I'm sorry Mrs Lavelle, I will speak to them I promise ye, did they let the chickens out again by accident?' I said hoping to Christ above that the damage could be swiftly repaired. She pulled her hands together, unconsciously tracing the rivets between the protruding veins. 

'Well.'  She stopped her self from continuing to move her gaze down. Addressing a smear of blood on the kitchen floor, she carried on. 'They are on the faerie hills Nuala. Now I ain't saying I believe in that hogwash but-'

'Jesus' I exhaled cutting her off. I frantically looked down at the children sat at the table. 'Mrs Lavelle you are gon'ta have to stay here.'