Chapter 5
Chapter Five
O nce a week, on a Friday, Niall and I did the stock check. I was happy to do it on my own, but Mrs O’Callaghan insisted I had an extra pair of hands, and I couldn’t exactly tell her no because she was the boss. We’d do it late morning, during our tea break, and then I’d meet Una for lunch afterwards.
The stock check involved me on a stool in the storeroom as I read out every single item to Niall, who stood below with his clipboard recording it all. To most people it would have sounded like hell, but to me it was heaven because it kept things in order, and I liked things in order.
Niall had lived in the village all his life, like me. We went to the same primary school and used to walk home together most days because my mum didn’t like me walking home alone. We’d walk to the shop, and I’d wait there until my mum turned up. Sometimes Mrs O’Callaghan would give me a cold drink and a biscuit. Other times Niall and I would do drawings together upstairs in the flat. He drew bugs, I drew trees, and we’d sit together in the silence of our own little worlds that were more parallel than I realised. We were comfortable in each other’s company, I guess. And all these years later, not much has changed.
Niall has always been infatuated with bugs. Even when we were little I’d see him on the grass in the park with his magnifying glass instead of on the swings with the rest of us. He brought a beetle into school once and the whole class had laughed when he told them it was called a Cockchafer.
I saw a lot less of Niall at secondary school. We’d pass each other in the corridors but that was about it. Apart from science, we were in the same science class. I had hated school. I spent most of my time looking out of the window daydreaming about not being there. When I wasn’t daydreaming, I was making sure my pens in my pencil case (I used a tin one because the zip ones just messed them all up) were lined up and in order. Then I’d count them over and over again until I’d said the number right in my head. It used to take me so long, that by the time I’d finished I’d absolutely no idea what the teacher had been saying.
I think Niall must have cottoned on to that because on a few occasions, when a question would be fired my way, he’d scribble the answer on his school book and tilt it just enough for me to see.
All my school reports were the same.
If Pearl spent as much time concentrating on her schoolwork as she does looking out of the window, she would do really well.
More focus please, Pearl!
Pearl needs to concentrate more in class.
What they didn’t realise was that I was focused, just not on my schoolwork. My imagination was alive even if my brain wasn’t in class. I dreamt of being a writer, spending my days looking out of my window for inspiration. The only subject I enjoyed was English. Mrs Evans, my English teacher, would often tell me how good I was, and I think that spurred me on because I never daydreamed or looked out of the window in Mrs Evans’s class.
Niall handed me a cup of tea with a Rich Tea biscuit.
‘Do bugs feel pain?’ I asked with a mouthful of biscuit.
‘Yes.’
‘Even woodlice?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Research.’
‘Yeah, but how do you research that? They can’t exactly tell you, can they.’
‘When they encounter something harmful, they react in the same way we do, like flinch or curl up in a ball.’
‘Jesus, what do they do to them to find that out?’
‘They use heat usually.’ Niall cringed.
‘They burn them?’
‘They have to expose them to heat to test their reaction.’
‘What about emotions?’ I asked.
‘Harder to establish but in theory, yes, insects can experience emotions.’
‘How the hell did you work that one out then?’
‘It’s just common sense if you think about it,’ Niall said. ‘Insects produce their own offspring and are social with their own species so if something were to disrupt that, like if they were taken away, then they could experience some kind of emotion.’
‘What about memory?’
‘In what context?’
‘What about if I was to move some insects away from where they lived – all of them so none were left behind to feel sad – and put them somewhere else? Like woodlice for example, would they know?’
‘To some degree they would have a memory. If they’ve made a home, like ants do, they remember where they live and come back to that place.’
‘So, if I moved some woodlice they’d just come back anyway?’
‘It’s best not to disturb nature if you can help it.’
‘Even if it was a life and death situation?’
‘What situation?’
‘Like if they were going to get squashed.’
‘There’s no harm in moving them if you think you’re going to save them but generally speaking you should leave them well alone.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘Can’t what?’
‘Can’t leave them alone?’
Niall looked frustrated for a moment and then his tone softened, like he knew exactly what I was worried about, even though he couldn’t possibly have known because I hadn’t told him.
‘Then you do what you’ve got to do to make yourself feel better.’
* * *
I met Una when I was fourteen. She’d moved to the village from Killarney and we’d hit it off straight away. Probably because she was the only other girl my age in Drangan so we kind of had no choice really.
Una describes herself as strawberry blonde but she is as ginger as they come. I didn’t know why she had such a hang-up about being a redhead. She’d dye it of course, to try and hide the red, but it would come back with a vengeance, a life of its own. It never knocked her confidence though, being a redhead, if anything it gave her more fire.
Una used to bang on about how her name meant ‘ The One ’, which she interpreted as The One and Only. But that was what it meant in Latin, not Irish. The actual meaning of her name in Irish is ‘ Lamb ’. So I used to tell her that when she was older it would change to Mutton, which she hated even more.
My name means ‘Daughter of The Moon’ and when we were younger we’d sit out at night looking up at the sky, with Una doing a moon dance to summon my moon mother, while I sat and waited for nothing to happen.
I do that a lot, look up people’s names. It is a compulsion, much like everything else that I do. I like to keep things simple. It is the best way. It helps keep my mind from blowing up. The smallest of things – of changes – can overwhelm me. Like if someone invites me to something that involves socialising around new people or if something isn’t done exactly as I need it to be done. It will trigger my whole day.
To get to Una’s salon from the shop should take a normal person around three minutes on foot. For me it can take anything from ten to twenty minutes. All I have to do is leave the shop, walk a little way down the road, cross the zebra crossing and carry on until I reach the corner, which is pretty straightforward for your average Joe, but not for someone like me. I have to get there without seeing any red cars and if I see one before I get to her, I have to turn around and start again or something terrible will happen.
The thing is, I went to see a clairvoyant when I was twenty-one (which I blame on Una because she made me go with her) who’d told me the colour red was significant and that I was going to lose someone later in life. So it could only have been Una, couldn’t it, because of her red hair.
I’d got to the salon in seven minutes, which is a world record for me, and caught Una just in time for her lunch break. We often ate our lunch together – in the graveyard (because nobody could die if they were already dead). I had my cheese and pickle sandwiches on brown bread, yoghurt and a banana. Una turned up with a coffee and pre-made baguette from Ellie’s bakery, which has been there for as long as I can remember, although I’m not sure how much longer Ellie will be able to keep it up since her husband became ill and she has no one else to help her.
There are around 150 people in Drangan, give or take a few that have died – and there are a few, trust me. My grandmother is one of them. Annie O’Leary – about as Irish as you can get. That is why my mother called me Pearl. It is a bit different. I think she thought it gave me a chance of getting out of the village if I had a noticeable name – You’ll shine like a celebrity – that’s what she used to say. But most people just thought it was daft because my surname is O’Reilly.
Anyway, I happen to like that I am Irish. I don’t want to run off to Hollywood. I am happy where I am. I am happy being me.
I have often asked myself why I am the way I am. Why two is a bad number (it means death) and why seven is evil, but three, five and six are safe. I’m not into numbers in a numerology kind of way; I don’t believe that my birthdate has some sacred meaning. But I do believe that I will die if I sit at table number four or seven. Or longer numbers like 247 or 427 or 742, which all mean a long painful death.
My OCD isn’t inherited. It isn’t learnt or copied or brought on by some traumatic experience that happened to me. I wasn’t abused or bullied or put down as a child. Nothing awful happened to me, yet I am filled with so much anxiety and I have no idea why.
Una is convinced something happened and that I just can’t remember it. She even arranged for me to see a hypnotherapist to unearth some deep-rooted and buried trauma that was so horrendous I have blanked it out of my consciousness. She believes it is there somewhere and that I just have to dig it out.
I went to the appointment because a part of me wondered if Una was right, if I might have suddenly re-enacted something awful that would reveal the reason behind my craziness. I had expected someone to be sat opposite me swaying a pendent while talking in a ridiculously slow voice and asking me to think of something from my childhood to take me back there.
But it wasn’t like that. There was no pendent, no slow voice or even mention of my childhood. Instead, I was asked to sit still, to take some deep breaths and to go to a place that made me feel calm. So I went to the graveyard, to my grandmother’s grave, because I always felt calm there. Then I was asked to think of something that made me feel anxious and to replace it with my calm place.
The only problem is Mr O’Callaghan’s penis had popped into my head just as I was thinking of my grandmother’s grave. And when I told the hypnotist that, she was convinced that something had happened with Mr O’Callaghan and his penis and no amount of me telling her that Mr O’Callaghan had never been inappropriate towards me or any such thing made a blind bit of difference. So in the end I just let her believe it because it was the quickest way of getting out of there. (Sorry Mr O’Callaghan).
‘How was stocks and shares? Get any shares from Niall?’ Una interrupted my thoughts.
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘You know he’s dying for it – why else is he always at the shop?’
‘Because he works there.’
‘He doesn’t really need to be there when you’re on, though, does he?’
‘It can get busy.’
‘He wants to get busy with you.’
‘Well, I don’t want to get busy with him.’
‘I bet he’s a beast in bed, it’s always the quiet ones...’
‘When is your holiday?’ I changed the subject. I am good at that.
‘You should come with me,’ Una said with a mouthful of tuna and mayonnaise. ‘We could scuba-dive.’
‘To the Maldives?’
‘I’m serious. You should come.’
‘I don’t want to go on holiday,’ I said.
‘Who doesn’t want to go on holiday?’
‘Me.’
‘When was the last time you went abroad?’
‘I went to England with Mum and Dad.’
‘When you were eight,’ she said flatly.
‘It still counts.’
‘Jesus, Pearl. Don’t you want to see a bit of the world?’
‘I have my world right here.’
‘There’s more out there than bloody Drangan.’
‘Well, go and see it then.’
‘You’re a stubborn mare. You know you’re going to end up buried in this very graveyard having never left it.’
‘What would my gravestone say?’
‘ Born and Dead in Drangan .’
‘Very creative. Will you do my eulogy?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I won’t be living anywhere near here.’
‘Won’t you come back for my funeral?’ I pouted.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you wouldn’t deserve it.’
‘Wouldn’t you come back for my wake at least?’
She shook her head.
‘But you love a party.’
‘It wouldn’t be a party. It would be as dull as your life.’
‘Anyway, you’re going to die before me.’ I took a bite of my cheese and pickle sandwich.
‘Oh, yeah, how do work that one out?’
‘Because I’m going to keep walking next time I see a red car.’