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Malachi dreams in a cupboard, a short story by June Caldwell

Room Little Darker author’s contribution to Doire Press’s Galway Stories: 2020 anthology

June Caldwell. There is an unmistakeable and inextinguishable flame of kindness throughout her new collection that recognises the shared humanity of even the most wretched.

June Caldwell
Mon May 4 2020 - 05:31

Two gombeens in blue uniforms strolled up to our Malachi’s newly acquired semi-D in Barna to throttle his noddle with news that he was a leprechaun. The doorbell went bingdroomdring. T’was just him inside, courting a Tuesday. Caoilainn herself was out working Reception at the spangly Glo-Tel in Salthill, made of seaweed pillow cladding.

‘Sorry to bother’ or some flange like that. ‘Are you Malachi Ó hÉalaighthe?’ Him thinking it might be dems from the council over-concerning about sewers carrying unsolicited gunge towards fish farms owned by that tool of a quadrangular-headed politician whose nephew is a serial killer.

‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘If it’s local election drivel lads, I’m not easily swayed.’ Beneath the enflamed hair on his s’tickly chest, that fattened pounder going at it like a bodhrán on a sawdust floor at last orders: lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub. Him about to be exposed, whether he wanted or whickered.

He was only married a drizzly twenty-two weeks and according to all it was going mighty. The only nit in the grit was the unemployed bit. Piddling hours away picking at musical instruments he couldn’t master or make sense of. On Caoilainn’s days off he’d put away his trioblóidí, romping about the house doing the sexy cheese, not giving a hoot or a hickle. The sputters outta them and who’d dare scoff having been there themselves or about to be?

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Once, on account of Malachi’s increasing low moods, she let in two Mormons of an afternoon to wreck his cranium. Assumed it’d give him a bit of a chuckle and the two of them could wet themselves about it in the pub later. There’d been a bad barney that week with him buying the wrong colour [and size] Creuset. Rosemary Green with a Volcanic stripe in an 18 cm, instead of Cotton Grey in 26 cm, for her low-carb casseroles.

Even I could see she was a bit croíbhriste about the state he’d got himself into. Everything was a fuddle and a jiggle. The smallest of tasks making him feel fierce tired, inadequate. She sweated about him a lot, but also learnt how to suppress her disappointment. Taking thoughts of him to the toilet, and again deep into her dreams where she’d attempt to recalibrate his sham ways of thinking.

In my day our kind didn’t marry or get with womenfolk much at all. Well, I’m about to contradict myself here, thinking about it now on the hoppity hop. Us lot being male and solitary by nature, sure. But there were no female counterparts to be chasing after and moping over. Those that lived on the fringes of common sense, the not-all-theres, as the saying goes, they’d take us on alright. Had an appetite for it. In secret, small bouts. Intense ravishes in fields and ditches. Bouncing about in the lichens, liverworts and algae.

In truth it took a lot of darting up legs to get used to these strange new geographies. Different basins and bales, smells and such like. The slower types were a bit more open-minded. But I suppose, like everything, it had its run until word got around and the clergy got involved. Those kinds of interactions were the death knell for a farmer’s daughter, as you can imagine. The Christian-centric lifecycle an’ all, I tell ye. Jaysis. There be no messing with that. Some ended up behind high walls with no chance of free air. That exact type of saga, I says, an identical narrative, is what the bible is sold on.

But who’d pay heed to the oldest leprechaun in Ireland, Tomás Ó hÉalaighthe? They’d rather stick with duplicities, dem lot, and micro-manage. People along these stretches were always better able to maintain genetic diversity in beef stocks than in themselves. Ah sure, if I’m viciously honest, t’was a dirty business. No-one sets out to try and wipe out their feckin’ tribe, you know? Pleasantly lustful one minute, howling at the Maumturk. The next it’s hiding lumpy heads of newborns, those fluctuating facial symmetries, crooked legs. Sometimes the little squealers were smashed up with shovels by uncles or brothers. Buried in the sands up at Mannin Bay.

Over time it made people a lot smaller, but smarter on the hoof. That fitted right with us. Then it had to be stopped altogether. It’d hook ye in looking over its own shoulder trying to start itself up again. Ah sure, before it was bad it was good and after it felt good it turned bad. Back down the line we lived in harmony, tis what I’m saying. For small pockets of time in anyways. Then we were cast out again, when mutations got a bit more obvious. Our Malachi wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for that buck teeth girl with dull eyes from Claddaghduff.

Nope, t’was nought political, the two lads at the door tells our Malachi. Him in no mood for this at all, de head on him. They were straight up, no joking about. From the West of Ireland Family Association (WIFA). A coordinating body for a network of government-approved genealogical research development projects, based up there at NUIG, and unaffected by Brexit. Enjoying independence and non-interference from the hard sciences. Autonomy and the likes. They were able to make startling discoveries. He should sit and take a bit of a breath, they says. None of this was going to be comfy on the gulp down. Going back a rake of generations, unquestionably in the affirmative. Malachi belonged to the purest and most majestic class of ancients. Older than the Celtiberians, and not even vaguely connected to the R1b haplogroup.

By the time he was starting to take it in or give them any credence at all, they had their hooves in the doorjamb, and Malachi was not minding his sap too well. Spinneying, so he was. Trying to figure who’d be up to it. Lots of headway with Irish DNA, they were finding out the full extent, beardy of the two explained. Had Malachi always had that spinal curvature? Was he teensier than most going back to the early years? Did he have woeful concentration? An affliction with giddiness mixed with a short temper. Halitosis and headaches. An ability to foresee and forecast? For the love of horseshoe crabs, the fucks wouldn’t shut up or put a thwack on it. He slammed the door and told them they had twenty-two minutes, is all.

There was only one long-ago fíoras stopping him kicking dem boyos in the nuts or flinging them onto the tarmac. A series of blackouts and brain blips when he was a very young yoke. Months of alarming visions and nightmares that left him hospitalised. What the psychologists had whittled down to plain old neurosis. He imagined he was living in fear of the mallachd. A situation that could mash you up if you reeled a pointed foot wrong. Destined to spend his nights roaming the landscape with nothing but yellow stainer or horse mushrooms for company. His head pounding with the arrival of unlucky quartermoons; being chased goodo by barbaric badgers. Ones that lacked the mental schooling to realise he might have social standing amidst the crags and scarps and magic peoples of the tírdhreach. Didn’t he have to grab on to the substratum of a stinking sheep to escape some forest animal’s instincts to batter the fuck out of him.

These dreams or whatever they were, daymares, showed a different face. An old hospice face stuck onto a liquid-cack frame of a toddler. In these visions, he may have been seeing himself in the far past. Thought the whole place was out to get him. Word getting around, posters yopped up on hedgerows, with rewards for hunting him down. It seemed so real. And for a while it was concluded he must be proper sick in the head. These were no dreams though, and I had no way, being caught in-between worlds, of letting him know what it meant.

T’was normal to be feeling these things. No shame in it. These days there’s so many feckin’ festivals and public upchucks of artistic frippery by way of an overdeveloped arts sector that any bollox could wiggleweave the cobbled streets of Galway going berserk, calling himself a fairy or a mad man. But inside these terrifying incubuses, which were analysed the piss out of and made factual by an authentic fear of having been adopted, he couldn’t escape the inkling that he wasn’t on a par with everyone else. Something seemed to be very wrong. T’was a series of portents and forebodings he was having, plain as flour.

When he got to his sixteenth birthday his mother admitted he wasn’t adopted in any kind of official sense. Found by a couple of fishermen, wandering along the hydrangeas and azaleas of outer-edge Connemara, crying his lamps out. There was little or no legislation then. Finders being the keepers alright. The whole country driving drunk despite Middle Eastern petrol shortages and Mountbatten getting fried alive over there in Co. Sligo. They took him in anyway, thinking little of it. Fussed over him, made him their own. Bought him all the toys he could only have dreamed of. Donated a dozen handmade hurley sticks to Scoil Einde in place of any kind of birth certificate.

By the time a couple of summers had been and gone, the dreams had stopped clear and his quirky ways were on a par with any other GAA obsessed teenager. The best he could do for himself would be to think of them as his only family now and put away any notions of looking for the ragged lot that abandoned him. ‘Your people, your clan, on your father’s side, they owned shoe shops in Galway and Athenry from early times, is that correct?’ He could see where they were going with this. I was watching him there, like. Up he jumps and heads to the kitchen to tear open a jumbo-size box of Barry’s tae.

‘We’ve a map here,’ yer man shouts after him. ‘It’s a 1651 map, of Galway, shows the Shoemaker’s Tower where Eyre Square Shopping Centre is today. Shoemaker’s Lane, Bóithrín na Sudairí, the road of the shoemakers or the tanners, at Buttermilk Walk.’

Malalchi was only barely listening to the two boyos. He could’ve put an end to their delusions by telling them he was adopted. None of it applied. No, instead he decided that if they wanted a fucking leprechaun, he’d give them one. Danced in doing a sideways jig. Cracking circles around the coffee table, twisting his face up like a leather purse. I was trying to give him teachtaireachtaí on de telepathic. Me: Ó hÉalaighthe, dun-coloured world-mighty artistic bald plunderer, free from jealousy, a hound of the sea. But foremost a fire-sprung sprite and primogenitor of Malachi’s for nigh on five hundred years. ‘Hang in wee man! It be no bad thing to embrace your true nature, pull it back to basics. There’s a lot to be said for a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.’

But him being deaf as a haddock, he carried on losing the nelly regardless. Resorting to what any of our kind does under pressure, turning off his inner síceach, breaking his balls laughing. Singing away to himself the Soft Cell ditty ‘Sex Dwarf’ as Gaeilge. Abhac gnéis, Abhac gnéis, you’re my Abhac gnéis... isn’t it nice, idir luibh is leigheas, dollies an dioscó, i ngreim an vice. That’s what Caoilinn called him, her sex dwarf. Found nothing offensive in it though it made him squirm.

All of this could be just a superprank manufactured by his good friend Micheál O’Shaughnessy. His snake-begrimed dreadlocks in the high breeze at Spanish Arch, putting two randomers up to it for the price of a few gargles.

‘Are you two plums for real, who sent yeas?!’

Did he notice an increase in blurred vision around electric streetlights? Was he plagued with heartburn? So many questions and forms to fill out and suggestions for what should happen next. Would he mind going public on it? Would he be up for more formal tests?

‘We can see you’re upset,’ says one. ‘It’s hard to take in.’

‘Any chance of some samples to make trebly sure?’ asks the other.

They were pulling out tourniquets and antiseptic gauzes and the likes. Our Malachi had reached endgame, so he had. ‘Feck off!’ he tells them. He watched them screech off, feeling nothing but relief when they turned out of the estate and onto the sea road.

He headed off into the cupboard in the utility room where he often goes to rinse his head and scratch for a bit of peace away from her. What would happen when everyone got to hear about the likes of this? He’d be a proper celebrity about the place. Every eejit would be guffawing, taking the piss. Tourists queueing up to take snapshots for #insta, and all kinds of mná out of their bins pulling at his breeches. ‘Short arse! Oi! Over here!’ O’Shaughnessy would be roaring. A pint of craft glupe in one hand, copper-headed fraochún clinging to the other. A few other burly mallets in company too, waiting to see the real live modern-day Galway leprechaun.

The more he thought about Caoilainn, the more he wanted to scream the house down. She’d been bitching like mad about his wretched misery to the lads in the local. When he told her not to be telling virtual strangers their most personal of business, she called him ‘paranoid’. But these fellas, they’d said too many things that he felt were beyond pertinent. He knew they considered her too good for the likes of him. He’d scored way above his station and should be eternally grateful.

‘Watch your skull Malachi for Christ’s sake, think of the good things ahead if you play your cards right.’ What they were really saying was, ‘Think of the baby, do what Caoilainn asks, she’s the boss, you’re lucky to have her.’ The terrible mortification he suffered when they found out it wasn’t her body that had the problems. Asking was there any chance he’d gotten chlamydia at some stage; her tests had come back normal. In and out of the gleaming clinic, leaflets rammed in their pockets. All manner of claptrap about follicle-stimulating hormones, the benefits of postcoital testing. Her making jokes to any aul ear about turning him into a sperm machine. Extracting juice at the exact hour needed to make it work. No concern at all about what it had done to his confidence.

The day came when he refused to take part in any more of it at all. No more tests; leave it to fate like normal people. But she was having none of it. He could forget about sloppy burgers, jalfrezi from the new takeaway up at Spiddal, frozen dinners from Joyce’s. The road ahead now was sunflower seeds, cow liver and cooked tomatoes. If he jacked in his job like he was threatening to do, he’d have to be the house husband fulltime, forever more. There’d be no going back. All the housework, the dinners, the scraping out of the fireplaces, the wallpapering and painting of walls. She wasn’t falling for ‘the voices’ in his head stunt either. Too much of a burning coincidence. Too handy.

The only voice allowed in his head was the same one she was experiencing on the hour every hour most days. How they’d manage to make the mortgage on one wage, the humiliation they’d have to go through borrowing more and more money off her father. ‘Do you want that level of grief?’ she’d shouted down from the bath. But sure, when they’d captured their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow…when they were stood there staring into the cot at the perfectly formed tiny happy face grinning back up at them; it’d be worth it. It’s no more than thousands go through every year all over the bloody globe to ensure it happens. It was her, after all, going through the painful daily injections, the crippling stomach cramps. Not him. It was her, all her, without complaint or a whimper.

All very different of course to the carefree days of early dating. When he’d spotted her outside Neachtain’s in yellow high heels and a gorgeous black faux fur jacket, knocking back shots of whiskey, Kahlua and cream. O’Shaughnessy daring him to go over and ask her out, him being a good foot smaller than her. No one thinking she’d even bother with a sideways glance, never mind a resounding yes OKAY let’s do it. Short strolls down The Long Walk followed by lingering lunches in Nimmos. Wrestling to make sense of the foraged herbs and unpronounceable grains she’d dared him to try. She’d opened a rake of new worlds for him, uncountable firsts. He’d sat through four hours of that godawful Waiting for Godot and even managed a plausible analysis afterwards to impress her.

Three nights in a row she’d come home and found him hiding out in the utility room, wishing with all his might for an end to her unyielding obsession. His first wish of getting her against all odds happened without a glitch, same for the second, which was nabbing the house in Barna, also against the odds. Massively over-priced and by all accounts they shouldn’t have even passed the stress test. The navy suit from the bank said he’d learnt enough from the last round of booms to know they’d manage payments somehow. Malachi had tried everything to make the third wish happen, even growing a long beard to turn her off as he knew she detested them. ‘If you want to look like a sad hipster, go ahead,’ she said. ‘As long as you get your trousers off when you’re supposed to, I don’t care what you look like.’ If he’d said similar about her, how pasty she looked since she stopped wearing make-up, he’d be labelled a sexist pig.

She’d be back in an hour wanting the full lowdown on the two male nurses from the clinic. It took her weeks to organize and pin down a home visit. Did he answer their questions in full? Did he comply with the blood tests? Did he agree to the counselling sessions they’d discussed? Staying off the anti-psychotics? Talking through the option of fostering or adopting if the latest sperm samples proved just as rotten as the ones four months ago? ‘Malachi,’ I says. ‘There’s only one way out of this one: pack a bag and get yourself deep underground like the good people of the Tuatha Dé Danann had to do when they were banished for good, no turning back.’

He heard me alright cos he climbed out of the cupboard and shouted, 'That's not a bad idea, Tomás, all things considered.' Progress! I thought. However long the day turns out, the evening is still set to come, that's a pie man's certainty. 'You may also want to remember that forgetting a debt doesn't mean it's been paid,' I says to Malachi, always the man for the pause. 'I'll take the broccoli out of the fridge first,' he replied. 'She wants it steamed with the wild sea trout, done low in the oven, omega-3 fatty acids, motility and all that. I'll see what the colour of her moods are like then, you know, take it from there?' Honest to God, the humble dragonfly would struggle to hear its own burp with the clatter of the world the way it's gone, and not even your own kind can be bothered to take decent advice anymore. 'The planet is fading,' I says. 'You're on your own boyo from here, my work is done.'
June Caldwell is the author of the short story collection, Room Little Darker. This story is from Galway Stories: 2020, a Doire Press anthology edited by Alan McMonagle and Lisa Frank.