The Scattering

1. Title Page
   
2. Endorsements
   
3. Dedication
   
4. Dostoyevsky Quote
   
5. By the Black Field
   
6. The Badminton Court
   
7. 1975
   
8. Hellebores
   
9. The Scattering
   
10. Painting, Smoking, Eating
    
11. The Congo
    
12. 1976
    
13. The Burning Woman
    
14. The Sanctuary
    
15. Blood
    
16. The Visit
    
17. The Tribe
    
18. Trumpet City
    
19. The Stonemason's Wife
    
20. Stitch-up
    
21. The Hemingway Papers
    
22. The Lagoon
    
23. The Jailbird
    
24. Notes
    
25. Acknowledgements
    
26. About the Author
    

The Scattering

a collection of short stories

by

Jaki McCarrick

The Scattering'

‘Jaki McCarrick tells a chilling tale of death and despair.'

The Irish Emigrant

‘The Sanctuary'

‘…a tender story of
mourning and longing.'

writewords.org.uk

‘Of particular note… Jacqueline McCarrick's “The Sanctuary”; a tender portrait of a lover dealing with the death of a long-term partner.'

Mark Brown,
The Short Review

‘The Badminton Court'

‘I was totally knocked for six by this story. It is an incredible piece of writing… The spare, sinewy sentences had me going over and over them; and such economy of writing! I must, simply must see more of her work…'

Alex Smith
The Frogmore Papers

‘The Visit'

‘“The Visit” takes the reader deep into old sadnesses and life-changing feuds which still burned under the surface of Irish society at the time of Bill Clinton's visit.'

Susan Haigh,
The New Short Review

‘By the Black Field'

‘My highlights to date would be: Jaki McCarrick's “By the Black Field”... it has such an understated menace running through it and the writing is so subtly coloured, it reads like looking at a painting.”

Brian Kirk,
Wordlegs

Leopoldville
(play)

‘A superbly dark, taut thriller…. A fascinating piece of theatre.'

Deborah Klayman,
RemoteGoat
: 4 Stars

‘Impossible to shake off, the effects of this show plaster themselves on its audience… a stellar script… Expect to leave shaken.'

Naima Khan,
Spoonfed Theatre Journal
: 4 Stars

‘A sharp, well-observed piece of writing that is performed beautifully by this young, ensemble cast. The tension builds and builds throughout the play culminating in a harrowing twist that both excites and disgusts in equal measure… Fantastic work.'

Phil Tucker,
Broadway Baby
, 5 Stars

‘A fantastic, haunting, terrifying play… very strong, young cast & tight direction. It's the winning entry for The Papatango New Writing Competition 2010 and rightly so
…
'

Shenagh Govan,
The Group
, Theatre Royal Stratford East

‘All the familiar ingredients are here: rustic eccentricity, colloquial lyricism, the Troubles. Yet fine performances and a subtle handling of the shades of morality lift this above the ordinary.'

Kieron Quirke
Evening Standard:
4 Stars

‘A powerful play'

Nina Steiger, Soho Theatre

‘I love her voice'

Simon Reade, Bristol Old Vic

The Mushroom Pickers
, Gene Frankel Theatre, New York

‘
There's a great deal to admire in new Irish playwright Jacqueline McCarrick's debut work “
The Mushroom Pickers
”… a compellingly dark and difficult play… steeped in the dialect and lore of Co. Monaghan… one of the play's major strengths is its strong sense of place – the local landscape is presented throughout as both beguiling and dangerous – and McCarrick knows how to sift drama from the tensions and realities of everyday border county life… McCarrick's play is unique in that it presents a part of Ireland rarely seen on Irish stages, and the playwright presents the realities of that region with courage and rare honesty… (the company) is also to be thanked for bringing this challenging new production to the New York stage for the first time.'

Arts Editor, Cahir O'Doherty,
New York Review

For my father,

and in memory of Pamela Von Hunnius

Each of us is responsi
ble for

everything and to every

human being.

DOSTOYEVSKY

By the Black Field

Angel was building a fence right along where his land cut down to the river, not because the river might burst its banks, which it was prone to do in the rain-heavy months, but because he or Jess or the child might accidentally fall in, especially on a moonless night when they might not be able to see. He was concerned because the ground was too soft now for the poles, and he was convinced that what he should have done was rebuild his grandfather's wall as far as Henry's.

A pleat formed between his brows. He was bothered and his eyes hurt. He lacerated himself for his persistence – and for wasting good money on the poles.

He looked up at the swaying pines as if seeing his wife's face: no doubt she would be disappointed in his efforts. He turned to the newly ploughed field. Soon it would be ready for sowing. He thought of summer when there would be knee-high potato stalks with their purplish and white-wheeled flowers filling its black space.

He heard a woman talking on the road. It was Margaret, the frenetic, spindly woman who lived round the turn on the other side of the ring fort. He could never say what, exactly, but something troubled him about her. She and her husband Jack ran a computer business from their blue dormer. She was nice enough to him and Jess when they first arrived, and when they'd meet her on the road she would say hello and sometimes ask them about themselves. But still, Angel disliked her; he saw in her a kind of desperate and cold ambition and it reminded him of London. Her mustard-coloured MG would regularly screech to a halt out in the road. She'd have forgotten something that the small, wiry Jack would invariably be asked to retrieve. Or she'd pull over to take or make a call, and talk so loud the birds would fly out of the trees. And there she was now, Angel thought, at it again. Though this time she seemed to be alone, and was walking.

He was heavy with depression: a feeling of length in his stomach as if a fist was inside him pushing down on his breath. He set about methodically collecting the poles then stacked them against the side of the house beside the turf.

There were times when Angel thought that the land communicated with him. He knew that this was irrational, and probably due to overwork, and to the fact that he had not yet lost his city-born infatuation with green fields (and also, possibly, because he'd spent his childhood summers in this place and had fond and lively memories of it). He imagined that after a few more years on the farm he'd be as hardnosed towards the land as every other farmer he knew. Still, he could not dispel the sense he had that wherever he went on his six acres he was not alone. He would feel guided towards sowing this or that crop, doing this or that farm job. Sometimes he would just put his ‘delusion' down to the voices of men and women at work in nearby fields being carried on the breeze or downriver. That's what he told himself. He said nothing about the experience to his wife.

As he closed the door behind him, Jess brushed past carrying his grandmother's large blue-flowered plate (that she had left to him) filled with steaming vegetables. He quickly washed his hands and changed his clothes then tucked himself into the table.

‘The poles are all wrong, Jess,' he said, his mouth full of food.

‘How come?' Jess asked.

‘It's too wet. I should have hired some help and built the wall.'

She was strong, like a thick white lily in the sunshine. And now, in the eighth month, more unavailable to him than ever. Since they moved here she seemed to fall into an ever-deepening daze, Angel thought. He knew she had no love for this land. Not everyone was able to engage with nature the way he could, he knew that. He had not expected her to love the place, just to appreciate something of its beauty and charm, as she had seemed to do at first. But lately she'd begun to talk about London and how she missed it, and the talk had annoyed him. He felt as if he had failed her. He looked at her across the table from him. She was beautiful with her long white hair, and eyes that were as pink as his own.

The house, lost on the end of the long road before the turn towards Carrick, was set into a wide, elder-protected circle, further shaded by pines and a large oak. A dead beech stump, host to clusters of oyster mushrooms, sat behind the front stone pier. It was one of the few restored cottages of its kind in the barony. All the other homesteads of a similar age in the area served as a source for walls, or were used as rickyards or byres – or were simply abandoned. While he had rehabilitated the old house, his neighbours – the Dalys, Cassidys, Conlons – had all set up in the soulless, heavily mortgaged piles they'd had built alongside stone cottages (in various stages of dereliction) in the same way the Church had established itself throughout the land on pagan sites and shrines. Before they had come, the house had known no modernity, though latterly, with electricity, his grandmother had had ‘the wireless'. And up until now it had been shelter (during the summers, anyway) to only one albino child (and how he got into the works nobody knew), and that was Angel.

In the autumn there had been a rat in the barn and it was this, Angel believed, that had triggered Jess' mistrust of the place. At first they thought it was a mink; a neighbour who had come home from Australia had begun breeding Swedish mink for fur and all the mink had escaped. A rat, however, was another story. Angel had stalked the rat for three days. Then, one morning, he found it on the barn floor, sleeping, and took a hammer to it. His frenzied attack on the creature disturbed him, and he knew then that he, too, had begun to change in the place.

After the meal, he cleared the plates and sat by the fire. He watched his wife as she walked to the window and looked out. He wondered if, after the child was born, she would want to stay.

‘Will we go out and watch the weather, Jess?' he asked, hoping she would stand with him on the porch and look up at the stars as they had done when they first came.

‘In a bit,' she replied, and went to lie down in the back room. He pulled his chair into the warmth and thought of the fence. It was important to get a barrier erected. A partially sighted child could not be allowed to wander a farm left unguarded to a deep river. He'd call in some aid and build a wall. He'd call someone tomorrow. There was more than enough stone; round the sheds there was plenty, and it was all free.

He must have fallen asleep. There was a heavy rap on the door and when he awoke he had thought for a second he was back in the flat in Willesden and was confused. He went to the door and opened it.