Prose Marie O'Shea

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MARIE O’SHEA

Marie is a short story writer living on the Beara Peninsula in Kerry. Her work has been published in Popshot, The Galway Review, The Blue Nib, Trasna, Spelt Magazine, Storgy and other places. In December 2021, Marie was awarded a residency at the Heinrich Boll Cottage in Achill. During her time there, she started work on the present story.

The Greenland-Shark

Swallows dip and swoop in sweet heart pairs but Eileen does not look up. She does not

have time to look up. Speed walking past the picnic area with its scattering of sun bleached

tables and chairs, she approaches a cluster of white holiday apartments stacked like dominos on

the tarmacked slope overlooking the bay. A large woman in a linen shift dress appears from

behind the boot of a rental car. Next to her, a boy of eight or nine years cradles a rubber shark.

‘You must be Gaela,’ she says. ‘Welcome to Achill Island! I’m Eileen.’

‘Gaela Mc Kenzie from Portland, Oregon,’ says the woman, pumping Eileen’s hand. ‘And this here is Bradley, my grandson. I stole him away from his Mama. Honey, I said, Bradley’s going to learn far more from his travels than he’ll ever learn at school. Isn’t that right Brad?

Bradley glides his toy shark along the garden fence then force dives it into the plastic

planter, ‘Ask her now,’ he growls.

‘Later, honey, later,’ says Gaela following Eileen into the newly cleaned, air freshened

entrance hall of Fuchsia Cottage.

‘Coffee?’ says Eileen, flicking the switch of the kettle.

‘Sure thing,’ says Gaela gazing out at the conical peak of Slievamore. ‘We’re super excited to be here. Driving along these twisty bog roads really takes me back.’

‘You’ve been here before then?’ says Eileen pouring milk into the blue cow creamer then

replacing the carton in the fridge.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ says Gaela, her eyebrows shooting skyward. ‘I was married to John Joe Casey, a tinker man from Clew Bay. We had ten children. Imagine that? Ten children

all born by the side of the road whilst we travelled the length and breadth of the country.’

She gives a slow-motion shrug. ‘I found that out the first time I did a past life regression. Ever since then, Ireland’s been top of my bucket list.’

Eileen blows out her cheeks. ‘That’s an amazing story,’ she says. ‘I hope you’ll be very comfortable here, Gaela. All the houses have been newly decorated. The wifi pass word is

written in the book. We have a café on site and there’s a pub in the village.’

‘What about you?’ says Gaela, eyes fixed on Eileen, ‘What have you got on your bucket

list?’

Eileen reaches for the coffee pot, piling in scoops of the discount brand she buys in bulk.

‘I’m not sure I’ve got a bucket list,’ she says.

‘Girl,’ says Gaela, tossing back her mane of silver hair, ‘when you get to our age, you got to kick loose, follow your own dreams.’

‘Ask her about the sharks, Grandma,’ says Bradley.

Gaela pulls an amused face. ‘Honey,’ she says. ‘This is Ireland. They’re not going to have any sharks.’

‘That’s not strictly true,’ says Eileen, ‘We have a few basking shark, nothing to worry about though, they’re not dangerous.’

Bradley cracks a chubby fingered knuckle. ‘One time, Marsha took me to a pool with killer sharks. I was there when they threw in a dead seal and the sharks ripped it apart.’

‘That’s his Mama,’ says Gaela, ‘she’s writing a book about North Sea Sharks.’

‘Greenland sharks,’ says Bradley, making pincers of his fingers and snapping at the curtains.

‘What’s so special about Greenland sharks?’ says Eileen, straightening the cushions.

Gaela gulps some coffee. ‘Marsha says they live up to five hundred years. Imagine that? Five hundred years swimming in the deepest, darkest waters on the planet. Weeks and months

spent without food, without company, endlessly circling the same frozen waters. Keepers,

according to Inuit legend, of the Goddesses very own piss pot.’

Eileen imagines an immense weight of water bearing down on her, squeezing the air out

of her lungs. ‘Really?’ she says, giving herself a shake.

‘Yea, Marsha says they smell real bad.’

‘And they’ve got worms hanging from their eyelids which feed on their blood and turn them blind,’ says Bradley, draping himself along the back of the sofa.

‘That’s gross. Eileen doesn’t want to hear about parasitic worms.’

‘She does too.’ He swings around to face her, retracting his eyeballs, eyelids fluttering.

Eileen fakes an indulgent smile. ‘Better dash,’ she says, rinsing the coffee cups. ‘Have a lovely stay. Call reception if you need anything.’

A speedy glance at her phone confirms she is running late. She must switch on the hot

water in Number Three and there’s something else. She’s sure of it. Something she’s forgetting.

up!’ She’s halfway down the gravel path when Gaela calls from the window. ‘Hey Eileen, wait

As she spins around, the heel of her shoe slips sideways shooting pain up through her

Achilles tendon. She grasps the fence post sucking air as Gaela’s full moon face swims in an out of focus.

‘Girl,’ says Gaela, ‘you’re forgetting something.’

It occurs to Eileen, in that hazy split second, that Gaela has hacked into her mind.

‘What?’ she whispers.

‘Your rose coloured glasses,’ says Gaela, dangling Eileen’s pink glasses case in front of her ample bosom. Then she laughs, this big, outrageous, happy laugh.

Later that afternoon, as she’s gazing out the window at reception Eileen sees something the size of her neighbours guinea pig slink along the back wall.

‘Eoin,’ she calls to her husband, ‘Come quick!’

‘What is it?’ says Eoin, emerging from the toilet cubicle, hair dishevelled, clutching hold of an electric drill.

‘There’s a rat!’

‘Calm down Eileen. There’s no rat. All the bait boxes were topped up last week.’

There is a flaw in his logic. Before she can point it out, he’s darted off in search of a bigger drill bit. She sinks heavily into the office chair. When the radio plays a song from her

youth, she sings along.

can.’ ‘Cause I am your lady, you are my man. Whenever you reach for me, I’ll do all that I

An image swims to mind of herself at eighteen; stubborn chin, smoky eye liner, straight

hair tonged wavy for a night out in Westport. Squeezing her solid, country girl thighs into her

sister’s denim mini then tearing down to the Sound just as the bus was pulling away.

Closing her eyes against the glare of the sun, she listens to the drone of voices on the

radio, the whine of Eoin’s drill as he mounts the new toilet roll holder in the jacks.

‘Oh for fecks sake,’ he barks as the drill shoots a screw off sideways.

In her mind’s eye, Eileen sees the girl some six months later. Dressed in cream lace, hands clasped over the swell of her belly as she waddles up the aisle. She remembers the

occasion well. Waving goodbye to her school friends as they headed off to college, with this

smug sense of satisfaction that she had her man, her life was sorted.

Swallowing two pain killers with the last dregs of tea, Eileen allows herself to wonder,

for a brief moment, what might have happened if she had simply missed the disco bus.

‘Hey lady,’ says Gaela, breezing through the door. ‘I thought I might find you here! How

about a crazy night out? There’s a session in Clancy’s bar tomorrow evening. I’m going buy me

one of those cute Irish drums and beat the hell out of it. What do you say?

‘Why not,’ says Eileen, flushing with pleasure. ‘I could do with a night out.’

‘Wonderful!’ says Gaela. ‘Back home, I started up a women’s drumming circle right after I divorced Marcia’s father. You won’t believe the transformation…’

‘Gaela, this is Eoin, my husband,’ says Eileen, as she glimpses Eoin hovering in the door

well.

Gaela looks him up and down. ‘Wonderful to meet you sir,’ she says.

‘Likewise,’ he says, shaking plaster dust off his pants, ‘Is that your son I saw at the boat

pond?

‘That’s my grandson,’ she says, ‘he’s taking his shark for a swim.’

‘You should bring him over to Keem,’ says Eoin. ‘Shark fishing was huge there in the 50’s. They’d pay one of the young lads to keep watch from the cliff, then when he spotted a shark the men would row out in a curragh and stab it to death. There was big money in shark

oil.’

‘Eoin, stop,’ says Eileen, feeling her stomach contract. ‘That’s a horrible story.’

‘Let him be, Eileen,’ says Gaela, with a delighted bellow, ‘He’s connecting with his inner hunter.’

On her way home from work, Eileen picks up some mince from Supervalu on the

Sound. As she’s chopping onions, a waft of something nasty hits her airways. Thinking it might

be the compost, she swills out the bin with bleach. But then, as she loading the dishwasher it’s there again, stronger this time and more putrid. Peering into the cupboard under the sink, she

removes two tins of dried up polish, a rusting can of air freshener, a box of soap flakes which

crumples in her hand and an assortment of rags. Once the shelves are empty she’s sees the backboard is black with mould, a small platoon of wood lice feeding on the rotten wood. Her

thoughts drifts to Gaela. What would Gaela make of this dank, dirty cupboard? She pictures

Gaela shaking her head from side to side and feels herself shrivel.

‘EEEKKK!’ says, Eoin, creeping up behind her and squeaking in her ear.

‘Stop Eoin,’ she says, scrambling to her feet.

‘I thought you were heading out with the crazy lady,’ he says, throwing himself down on the bench.

‘That’s tomorrow night,’ she says. She considers telling him she’s sick of house work,

cooking, watching other people enjoy their holidays whilst she herself cannot manage a day off.

That Gaela, crazy Gaela might just be the one person in the world who can spark her back to

life, then she bites her lip.

‘What’s for dinner?’ says Eoin, oblivious to the well spring of emotion bubbling under his wife’s cardy.

‘You can heat something up yourself,’ she says, swallowing her pills. ‘I’m all done in.’

Drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, Eileen hears the scrabble of bats under the eaves,

footsteps leading down to Silver Strand. Tomorrow she’ll call the plumber, best ring him early

before he leaves for the job in Castlebar. Really, she should set a reminder on her phone only

she hasn’t the energy to peel herself from the sheets. When she shunts onto her back, her lips emit a gentle snore, bubbles stream from her nostrils. Transfixed, she watches them shoot

upwards like a volley of sparks. She watches for some time then her thoughts veer off. She

thinks of the geometry set she had at school, the set-square, compass and ruler all kept in a

dented tin box.

Interesting, that she now finds herself at the centre point of a circle, that a radius of

twenty odd metres connects her to this hideous gape-mouthed creature swimming slow

rotations. Transfixed, she watches the beat of its tail propel its lumpen body round and round.

It veers nearer. She sees its eyes glazed over, the battered, pock marked marbling of its carcass.

Recalling Eoin’s words, she imagines the slick of oil in its liver, the stink of its spilled guts. How long, she wonders, has this poor creature been swimming in these frozen waters? Since she was

a baby? Since her mother was a baby and hers too? Pondering the futility of its endless circling,

she feels an immense weight of water bearing down on her, pushing her deeper and deeper into

the sandy bottom. Surrendering herself to the force, she listens to the roar of the ocean, the

rush of water in the cistern. Some minutes later, her husband emerges from the en-suite and

stumbles into bed.

After breakfast next morning she pops two pills, buckles her sandal a notch looser then

makes her way to the car. Some twenty minutes later she finds herself standing outside the

front door of Fuchsia Cottage. She knocks, waits an appropriate length of time, then knocks

again. No response. At this point she knows she should simply post the sea-life brochure she’s dug out for Brad and walk away, that this is the logical, rational thing to do.

Instead, she takes the master key from her handbag and lets herself in. ‘Anybody home?’ she calls, her eyes adjusting to the gloomy half- light cast by the closed curtains. A book on the

coffee table reveals passages highlighted in marker. Eileen peers at the cover picture of a

woman with rattlesnake hair. Someone, whose name carries weight, urges women everywhere

to embrace the dark goddess. Whatever that means, Eileen thinks, stumbling over the rubber

body of a prostrate shark. Whatever that means.

Slowly, deliberately, she makes her way to the staircase, standing on the first tread, then

the second, then the third. Before she knows it she is sitting on the edge of Gaela’s unmade bed. The linen dress Gaela wore when she arrived lies crumpled in the corner. Eileen resists the

urge to fold and put it away, to plump up the pillows and open the window. Instead, she sits on

the bed looking out at a configuration of grey clouds shot with the occasional burst of sunshine.

She thinks of the years she’s spent cleaning rooms like this. How the money she’s earned put Eoin Junior through college, how this is something to be proud of, an achievement.

On the bedside locker there’s a deck of cards with skulls and shovels on the box.

Without thinking very much, she gives them a shuffle. The card she eventually pulls out reveals

a moonlit tower. In the foreground, heads thrown back, two dogs give vent to their misery. But

no, on closer inspection, she’s not convinced they are dogs. There’s something shaggy and unkempt about the creature on the right. Might the shaggy, wolf like one be Eoin and the other

herself?

Her ankle throbs. The throb comes in small, dizzying bursts pulsing to the rhythm of her

beating heart. Closing her eyes, she rests back against the pillow raising her left leg on the bed

frame. Through the open window she can hear birds singing, the smug, self-satisfied voice of

the woman from Number Eight giving out about phone reception on the island. Catapulted to a

more prosaic version of the present, Eileen jolts herself upright. What the hell is she playing at?

What if Gaela were to return and find her stretched on the bed?

Hobbling back to reception, she’s overcome with an intense longing to bathe her swollen

ankle. Before she can talk herself out of it, she is back in the driving seat puttering along the

track to the shore. Pulling up on a grassy verge, she turns off the engine, and looks out at the

headland. A heron charts a solitary course across the open sky, the beat of its wings amplified

in the stilly morning air. Winding her way through dune grasses, surrounded by the chirruping

of crickets, Eileen has the odd sensation that she is free floating, hovering somewhere above her

actual body.

As she approaches the foreshore, the sulphuric stench of egg assaults her nostrils . A

cloud of black flies hang suspended over a carpet of rotting sea weed. Sidestepping the

wreckage, she scrambles over an outcrop of barnacle encrusted rock. When she reaches the

water’s edge, she rolls up her trousers and takes off her sandals. Edging forward, she feels the shock of cold as the waves roll in, sucking the pain from her ankle, drawing it out to sea. Then

her phone rings.

Go away, she thinks. Whoever you are, whatever you want. It rings again. She sees that

Eoin has left three voice messages. At 9.20, ‘Eileen, what’s going on? Twenty minutes later,

‘Eileen, where are you?’ Then at 11 o’clock, ‘Eileen, my darling girl, are you OK?’

She waits for her diaphragm to contract, the pressure to build in her chest. While she’s waiting she wades deeper letting the sea soak the roll of her pants then creep higher, caressing

her bottom the way Eoin did that first night. Some distance ahead, a seal breaks the surface

then dips back under. Its gleaming grey body puts her in mind of the dream she had. Being

suspended like a baby in the womb, whilst this vile piss pot creature, this aberration of nature

swam circles around her. She casts back in her mind for the terror this must have provoked and

draws a blank. Clearly the dream meant something, but what? The question buzzes in her mind

like a troublesome fly then flits away.

Eileen turns to see the long stretch of water that now separates her from the shore. A

glint of light from the top of the dunes catches her eye, making her blink. A man with

binoculars raises his hand by way of salute then shuffles off. The indignation she feels at this

surveillance carries her as far as the car then falters. Recalling the sight she must present- alone,

fully dressed, edging out to sea, she resists the urge to shout and tell him she’s OK. It’s not what he thinks.

Driving past Fuchsia Cottage on her way back to work, she sees Gaela struggling to

squeeze her suitcase into the boot.

‘Eileen,’ she shouts, waving her hand. ‘The very woman!’

‘Everything OK?’ says Eileen, pulling over by the kerb.

‘Exciting news!’ says Gaela, ‘I got a call from a TV network back home. They want to

feature me in a show they’re running on psychics.’

‘What about our night out?’ says Eileen, in a small, hollow rasp.

Gaela shrugs her shoulders. ‘I guess it wasn’t meant to be,’ she says. ‘I’m sure we’ll be back real soon though.’

‘Not that soon,’ says Bradley. ‘Next year she’s taking me to India. They got river sharks

swimming in the Ganges.’

Gaela slams the boot closed. ‘Brad, honey. You want a last minute pee-pee?’

‘No ma-am,’ he says.

‘You got something to say to the lady?’

‘Thank you, lady,’ he says, not bothering to look up.

Gaela heaves herself into the driving seat. ‘Well Eileen, I’m real glad you drove by. Eoin called around looking for you. Seems to me like you got a good man there, hon.’

‘Gaela,’ says Eileen, her face impassive, ‘What does the moon card mean in the skull and shovel pack?’

Gaela scrunches her nose, ‘Honey, the moon tarot means you got to trust your intuition, plain and simple. Ain’t no-one else going to show you the road home!’

Eileen watches the white Fiesta disappear over the brow of the hill. The two bags of

rubbish left outside the front door have not been tied. She observes this in a distant,

disconnected way, as if it doesn’t hugely matter whether dogs or even rats go at it. Then she

thinks of the shark swimming endless circles in the depths of the ocean. Drawing the dream

shark to her heart like a secret, golden talisman, Eileen considers the day ahead. Will she ring

Eoin, suggest they drive over to Keem and get a bite to eat? Yes she thinks, her hands fluttering

as she taps in his number, high time she kicked loose, let her hair down. She can’t remember the last time she took a spin around the island.

(Marie O’Shea)