Lizzy, a short story by Nick Adigu Burke at Spillwords.com

Lizzy

written by: Nick Adigu Burke

Father Time could set his sands by her. I, would set my watch by her, but with a wee bit of leeway, as they do on Galway Bay – like the old song goes.

Lizzy! Resplendent Lizzy. She was the highlight of my day. Always, without exception, gliding by the shoe shop at eleven. Man, what a beauty. What an angel, with her white chiffon dresses and porcelain skin, and her hair that ran down her back in rivulets of gold.

Never late and never early, she always appeared unflustered, as though she had all the time in the world. Strange. But in a good way. She fascinated me. Her style and poise reminded me of one of them sixties flower maidens; I used to call her my Gypsy rose, though she wasn’t mine, or a gypsy, as far as I knew, but definitely she was a rose, the prettiest in the meadow.

My job was necessary, and definitely evil. Certainly not part of my master plan. The tedium gnawed at my soul. Everything about it, shite; from the shop’s name, One Step Ahead, right down to the old girls that came in for shoe fittings. There was Mrs Callaghan with her purple rinse, and the carbuncles she never stopped whinging about. Then came old Ma Delaney with her gammy hip, and Mrs Dunne, the mayor’s wife, who would fall asleep as a rule. And it would be a sin to forget old Maureen Holland with her dickey heart, and the son, who was serving time in Castlerea – he was “a good lad,” and didn’t do it, of course, but what he did or didn’t do, I dared not ask.

However, my favourite, the Black Widow herself – old Mrs Cleary. A nickname from the rumours. Folk, old enough to remember, reckon she killed her first husband, Mick or Mack, in a lusty frenzy, after he’d fessed up to a bit of how’s your father with the secretary. I reckon old Mrs Cleary was capable too – she had those death-row eyes, where the whites show at the bottom. Buck McGraw, a grizzled criminologist at Trinity, once told us, the eye-white thing, is often a sign of psychosis.

Mrs Cleary had a dog, too – her demon familiar, as we joked: Rafe or Ralph, or something or another. A Chihuahua. The little shite would growl and show its teeth every time I went anywhere near his old ma’s trotters. He was a “good boy” too. Sure, if good boys are members of the Devil’s brigade.

Despite its humdrum monotony, and the mad customers, Lizzy made work, a treat; as though waking to the first beam of sunlight, after the night has gone. She made the job a Heavenly calling.

The problem was, I wasn’t content in just seeing her walk past. She was like a drug, I needed more of her – more of a Lizzy-hit. I prayed she would come into the shop, or to stop by the window, at least. You know, to admire how I dressed it. Or better, to peer beyond the strategically positioned boots and shoes, to see me; to lock her eyes on mine, to become captive within them; to become as besotted with me, as I was with her. Never happened though. Life isn’t a movie, as my old nan would say.

I’d take my lunch early, so I could ‘accidentally’ run into her, as she flitted past at eleven. There’s a wee grove opposite the shop, with a bench, and that’s where I’d sit. Mrs Connelly, the shop’s owner, used to raise her groomed eyebrows and tut, when I lunched prematurely: reckoned it too close to breakfast. Should have seen her face when I started turning up on the bench on my days off. Thought I had a thing for her – as if. Granted, Mrs Connelly was a cougar, and at a squint, a MILF, but closer to my granny’s age than mine.

Mrs Connelly told me, with that sharp tongue of hers, that my behaviour was bizarre, unnatural. But what’s more natural than love. Fuck! Love. Something I hadn’t considered. Surely the weirdness that bubbled in me, was that of love. The thought freaked me. I bollocked myself. Called myself a fool. How could I love a lass, I had never talked to. How could I love a girl, who didn’t know my name, let alone that I even existed. But she was lovely, and I gave myself props for my impeccable taste. Though her appearances across the spectrum of the day were fleeting, she destroyed the intolerableness of them – on a par with ice cream in hot summer. Sweet and soothing. Gorgeous. To be sure, the best looker in the west of Ireland. Scratch that, the whole of Ireland. Hell, let’s be real, the best looker on the planet. Nay bother.

The bench on which I ate my butties, according to its plaque, was put there by the Diocese of Galway, to honour the life of one of their own. Father Jacob O’Malley, who died after being kicked in the head by a horse.

As I ate, and awaited Lizzy, I often wondered what that old priest would have said; about me using his bench as a strategic vantage point, from which to see her. Would he have seen the romanticism in it, or just considered me a divvy?

After a few days taking my lunch on Father O’Malley’s bench, I wondered if the dead ever get brain damaged. When I reckoned they didn’t, I prayed to him! I asked for divine assistance, “I’m not asking a lot, Father O’Malley…” is how it began. All I wanted was Lizzy to look my way – to see me; to stop and chat to me. I’ve never been good with the lasses. I was an awkward sod. Not like my older brother Paul, or my cousin Jamie. They got it. They knew how to talk to them – got the gift of the gab, as they say. The true Kings of Connacht, is what I called them. Not at all like me. Love or not, there was no chance I was gonna make the first move.

Naturally, I wondered where Lizzy was going, and who she was meeting, and prayed she wasn’t seeing a fella – one of those deep-sea fishing types, with an anvil jaw and tree-trunk forearms – how would I compete! I wondered about the nature of her thoughts, too. I pictured her in one of those swanky restaurants down by the docks; sat at a table with a red and white tablecloth, and a bowl of oysters before her. I then pictured her eating them slurpy things. And how noisy and messy they were – that wrecked the vision. I wondered about her family; about brothers and sisters, and her parents too. I wagered they’d be proud of their lass. Triumphant to produce such a beauty, but not too proud, seeing the Church made pride a sin, and them being old fashioned, God-fearing folk and all.

I worked at the shop after I’d flunked out of Trinity in April ‘22. That’s when I’d first seen Lizzy. Pure gold, all a glisten in the springtime sun. Back then, I’d joke to myself. Said she’d brought the eternal sun to Galway. Man, every day was sunny. From April until July, I don’t think it rained once. Probably the reason for her serenity – whenever I saw her, she was always steeped in sunshine. Reckon a more conceited fella would have said, the heavens had cast a spotlight on her, just for my pleasure. But so stunningly attractive was she, that I supposed her natural beauty was for everyone to enjoy. Akin to the best of Mother Nature’s gifts: the Mountains of Kerry, or the Giant’s Causeway, or the Cliffs of Moher, and the like. Lizzy was no more my prize than Lough Corrib is the Taoiseach’s.

When July came, so did the rains. It chucked it down for a week – none stop. Me being a slave to my infatuation, I remained loyal to the bench. Not even the drenchings or Mrs Connelly’s smart gob broke me. Not even her name-calling, “Divvy” and “Eejit,” put me off. I couldn’t give two shites. I had an umbrella and more importantly, Lizzy.

With the rain, came the strange shenanigans. When Lizzy breezed through the streaks of water, which lashed from the grey sky, she never broke character, in as much as she neither had a coat or umbrella. But that wasn’t even the weirdest part. In that torrential rain, she remained positively serene, and as golden as she did in the springtime sun. In fact, her divinity was such, that her carriage – the way she glided as she walked, meant that she didn’t even get wet. It was freaky; impossible, but true. “An angel in my midst, surely,” I’d laugh to myself, as I lay awake at night.

In one of them bouts of sleeplessness, I decided I’d follow her. It was a great idea. I was positive. Granted, often it is better not to solve the mysteries of life. Too much info, shatters many an illusion, and it’s the illusions in life that keeps a fella young. It keeps our inner child, alive. But, it was driving me nuts! So there it was. It was decided, the next day, I would follow Lizzy.

By morning, what seemed like a brilliant plan, had lost its shine. It was a stupid idea. Creepy pasta, in fact, with extra lashings of creepy ragout, and creepy parmesan cheese crumbled on top. What the hell was I thinking?! Though, admittedly, only one notch less creepy than plonking myself on a bench (everyday), watching the lass from afar.

Stalking, not sure what the prize for such a rap would be. Nonetheless, I pictured my scrawny arse, locked in a cell with Mrs Holland’s son, tallying the remaining days of my sentence on the wall, while listening to my man tell me he didn’t do it – a likely story.

Later that morning, I sat on the bench as usual, eating a bacon butty, when something surreal happened. In want of a better analogy, I likened it to one of them out-of-body experiences. Luckily I didn’t have to die to experience mine, just sever myself from all sense and rationale. Despite concluding it unanimously creepy, and conjuring up visions of myself incarcerated with your man Ryan Holland, I found myself rise from the bench as Lizzy breezed by. I must have risen on my lusts, on the thermal of my heated blood, or something. There was no other reason. I’d become one of them glider planes, but in human form: Icarus, in the pursuit of adventure, as I followed Lizzy, hoping I wasn’t flying too close to the sun.

All the while, my heart pounded to the rhythm of love, but also to the requiem of my dead senses. The only thing worse than stalking a lass, I thought, was being caught, stalking a lass! However, that was a fucked way of thinking, and I tried to consider it no more, as I followed, hypnotised by those shimmying hips.

In my fretful pursuit, I laughed at myself. The whole palaver was silly. I was no longer Icarus, but a narrator in verse, following Molly Malone, you know, the lass from the song, following Lizzy through streets broad and narrow, towards the docks (though we weren’t in Dublin’s fair city, nor was Lizzy wheeling a barrow, and she certainly wasn’t crying, “cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh.”) She was silent, like always. Not a soul let on to her, and vice-versa. A shooting star, scorching across the firmament, unnoticed. Unnoticed, that in itself was really bizarre. How could my fellow Tribesmen and women, and the thousands of sightseers, not see such a glorious vision as Lizzy. No head turned or second glance taken. Nothing. Nada. Weird.

We left Quay Street, with its hubbub of hammered bars and restaurants, and hot-footed it onto High Street, then shortly after, Buttermilk Lane, towards Saint Nicholas’ church. In that church’s shadows, Lizzy slowed. I thought I’d been sprung. I then hoped her dawdle was because she’d reached her destination, nullifying her need to hurry.

She idled on the pavement, like a butterfly on the air. She then fluttered into the churchyard, through the Lombard Street gate.

At first, I idled on the pavement too. This is where she goes everyday, to pray, is what I thought. Jesus! I clutched my belly. I felt terrible. A dumb-dumb. An intruder on the sanctity of her life. I wanted to head back. I urged myself to do just that. The devil on my shoulder had other ideas, however. It gagged the angel on the other, and convinced me to stay – snarling, What’s the worst that could happen?” So, together, we continued.

I thought she would enter the church, but she didn’t, she turned left, instead, towards the burial plots. My unease deepened. I felt awful. I was now stalking a lass who was paying her respects to a deceased loved one. How low could one fella get. Whoever was in that grave would be spinning – her mother or father, or even a dead lover. Now, I really was trespassing!

Despite my self-loathing, still I followed. It was as though I was shrouded in a haze, a dreamy haze, where control was ripped from my hands. A haze I couldn’t escape.

Halfway into the forest of gravestones, she stopped. I stopped too. My heart nearly cannonballed through my chest. I was breathless. Lizzy turned and stared straight at me. She has caught me. I’m stalking her, and she’s caught me. Jesus! Surely she’ll scream for the Garda or knee me in the knackers, but she did neither.

She had a look on her face. A look that broke my heart in two. I’ll never forget it. Haunted. Her dark eyes shone with tears, and her full lips receded and thinned into the sad lines of her face. Such a look of grief. Sadder than I had ever seen anyone look, before or since. The love she held for the person, whose grave she was at, must run deep. She must miss them more than anything in the world, I thought.

Again, I bollocked myself. In her desperate sadness, I could offer little comfort – though not through a lack of want. I ached to hold her – to reassure her. I wanted to tell her it gets better. I wanted to scream, “I love you!” but the situation was already too awkward, and I wasn’t good with the lasses; not like my older brother Paul or my cousin Jamie. All I could do was sympathetically tilt my head, and offer a thin, knowing smile.

After what seemed like a lifetime, she turned back to the grave. She stepped forward and left me all a shiver, well an truly gobsmacked, as she slowly vanished. I stumbled back. I tripped on a vase. My eyelids were on fish hooks. I frantically darted my eyes about me, startled, hoping somebody else had seen what I had seen. I thought I had lost the plot. Gone doolally – cray-cray. But no. I was far too sane for that. She was a ghost. Shut up! But she must’ve been. A spirit from a higher realm. Or perhaps she really was an angel. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to think at all. I was numb. I should have scarpered – fled that graveyard, but instead I edged closer, to the grave into which she’d vanished.

Shielding my eyes from the sun, with my hand, I stared at the inscription upon the headstone, it read, In loving memory of our daughter and sister Elizabeth “Lizzy” Nolan, 27th January 1817 to 14th April 1840.