A Terrible Beauty

Katie leaned forward and looked directly into his deep-set eyes. 'I will see you locked up for this, Tomas. And long after I'm retired, and I'm sitting at home in the evening, by the fire, I want to have the warm, satisfying feeling of knowing that you're still inside the Bridewell, and that you'll stay inside until the day you breathe your very last breath.'

32

Siobhan was in such a rush to catch the bus that she forgot to pick up her fashion folder with all her preparatory sketches in it. She was halfway down Wellington Road when she realized that she had left it behind and she had to run back to the house, her big knitted bag swinging from her shoulder. She unlocked the front door and panted up the stairs to her bedsit, snatching her folder from the table, and clattering downstairs again.

By the time she reached St. Luke's Cross, the bus was just leaving. She frantically waved at the driver, but he pulled away from the curb in front of the news agent's without even seeing her, and the bus was off down Summerhill in a big black cloud of diesel smoke, leaving her behind. There was no use running after it. She was going to be late for her design class now, and Mrs. Griffin would greet her with her usual sarcasm, and make a show of her in front of the rest of the students, because she was almost always late, and even if she managed to finish her project, she would still feel hot and humiliated.

One arm swinging, she started to walk at a furious pace down the long steep gradient toward Cork, past the gray Victorian spire of St. Luke's Church, and the higgledy-piggledy tenement buildings that were stacked up on either side of Summerhill with their damp walled gardens and their rusting cast-iron gates. The low November sun shone into her eyes like a migraine. At this time of the morning, traffic was teeming into the city from the north side and the noise was deafening.

Siobhan had furiously flaming hair, wavy and almost uncontrollable, which she brushed back every morning and tied with a knotted scarf. She was pretty in a pre-Raphaelite way, like her mother, and like her mother she had deathly white skin and sapphire-blue eyes and whenever she was embarrassed her cheeks caught alight.

Ever since she was a little girl she had wanted to design dresses. In nursery school she had drawn pictures of ladies in glittering ballgowns, and when she was eleven she had won anEvening Echocompetition for the best party dress design for teenagers. Her father had always been skeptical, and told her to think about training for a 'proper job,' like working on the checkout at Dunnes Stores, but her mother had encouraged her and protected her and believed in her. She was old enough now to realize that her mother saw her as the girl thatshehad always wanted to be-talented, free, independent, and acknowledged-not pregnant at seventeen and exhausted at twenty-three.

She was less than halfway down Summerhill when a large white car drew into the curb beside her and the passenger window came down.

'Hallo, there! You look like you could use a lift.'

Siobhan bent down and peered into the darkness of the car's interior. She could see a man's silhouette, a man with tiny dark-lensed sunglasses. There was a strong smell of leather upholstery and expensive aftershave.

'No, you're grand. I don't have far to go.'

'You look as if you're in a hurry, that's all.'

'It's all right, thanks.'

'Suit yourself. I've got a few minutes to spare before my first appointment, that's all. I can take you anywhere you need to go.'

She hesitated. She had never accepted a lift from anyone she didn't know, but it wasn't as if this was two o'clock in the morning, with nobody else around. The pavements were crowded with walkers just like her, making their way down the hill to the city, and the roads were full of buses and cars.

'All right,' she said, climbing into the passenger seat and tucking her portfolio down beside her. 'I'm going to the Crawford College of Art and Design. Do you know where that is?'

'Oh, yes,' said the man, and smoothly pulled out into the traffic. 'I thought you might be an art student, from that colorful red coat of yours.'

'I designed it myself. I'm studying fashion.'

They stopped at the traffic lights at the bottom of Summerhill. The man turned to her and she could see her own white face reflected in his sunglasses. 'Such extraordinary hair,' he remarked. 'The true Celtic fire.'

'I used to hate it.'

'How could you? It's like acohullen druith.'

Siobhan gave him an awkward smile. She didn't have the faintest idea what acohullen druithwas.

'It's a scarlet cap, made of feathers,' said the man, as if he knew what she was thinking. 'It's worn by the Irish mermaids, the merrows, to help them swim through the water. The merrows are strikingly beautiful, like you, and very promiscuous in their relations with mortal men. Not that I'm suggesting, of course-' He paused in what he was saying as he released the parking brake and drove away from the lights.

They crossed the river and drove along Merchants' Quay. When they reached the next set of traffic lights the man said, 'The merrows have to take off their caps when they come on land, and hide them. Any man who happens to find one has complete power over her, because she can't return to the sea without it.'

'I think we learned something about that at school,' said Siobhan. She was beginning to feel very uneasy. The man had stopped in the right-hand lane, as if he intended to double back across the river, over Patrick's Bridge, instead of straight ahead toward Sharman Crawford Street, where she wanted to go.

'I could walk from here,' she told him.

'I wouldn't dream of it.'

'It isn't far now, honestly.'

The man turned to her and grinned, showing his teeth. 'What's your name?' he asked her.

'Siobhan, why?'