Stolen Child by Laura Elliot Page A

boisterous. They had gathered to celebrate her seahorses, those gentle males with their protruding bellies who mate for life and sing their love songs under the silver rays of the full moon. David had just qualified as a geologist. No surprises there. He’d grown up with sand and fire, flint and oxides, and was familiar with the melting and moulding of brittle substances. Petroleum exploration and oilfield development were his fields of expertise. Soon afterwards he left on contract for the oilfields of Saudi Arabia.
    I settled into Miriam’s Glasshouse and was soon travelling across Ireland, meeting customers and building up her market base. I rented one of the new townhouses being built in Market Square and she invited me regularly to Rockrose. In David’s room I browsed through his music collection. The Chieftains and Horse Lips sat uneasily beside Alice Cooper, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. I was familiar with the Chieftains but heavy metal was not a taste I’d acquired. I was repelled yet fascinated by the lyrics: death, pain, anger, loss. I absorbed his presence and thought about his absent father.
    By then I knew Miriam’s story. I asked her if she felt any animosity towards her ex-husband, who had walked out on his family when David was six years old.
    She shrugged and admitted her only emotion was in difference. ‘And David,’ I asked, imagining him as a young boy, alone in his room, playing his harsh angry music, giving the finger to the man who had deserted him. ‘At first they used to meet,’ she said. ‘But not any more, not since he was thirteen and stopped mentioning his father’s name.’
    David arrived home from Saudi Arabia six months later. In Molloy’s, the local pub where set dancing was a tradition, he stood out from the crowd, a tanned, mature man with a new firmness about his mouth that suggested authority. He was immediately whisked to the floor by an impetuous young woman.
    ‘Imelda Morris,’ Miriam nudged me. ‘She’s been friends with David since their pram days.’
    More than friends, I thought, watching her heels flashing.
    Miriam nudged me again when another young woman danced past. ‘Corrine O’Sullivan,’ she whispered.
    Up close, Corrine was pretty in a blowsy way that would, I suspected, soon turn to flesh. Her boyfriend was sturdy and straight-backed, a squared-off chin that would brook no arguments. I watched David dancing with Imelda and Corrine dancing with her husband-to-be. They seemed oblivious of each other, yet I sensed the tensions that could be released by an inadvertent glance. I thought of Nina, my mother, cold and silent in her grave, and wondered where all that angry energy went when it could no longer be contained within the body. But the night passed off without incident. David asked me to dance. I suspect a hint from Miriam sent him in my direction. I shook my head, having no wish to compete against the fleet-footed Imelda, who claimed him once again.
    When he came home on leave again I’d learned to set dance. In Molloy’s, I wore a sundress with a discreetly plungingneckline and my toenails were painted red as sin. What was ten years between a man and woman, I asked myself. Nothing…if it was the man who carried the years. But for a woman, trapped by time, by a biological clock, it was different. I had squandered my time with too many men and had no more to waste.
    Imelda had youth to flaunt but I was skilled in the art of pleasure. I knew how to give, if not to receive. How to stroke and caress a man’s flesh, to apply firm or gentle pressure, to moan deeply, to breathe urgently, to gasp, as if pain and pleasure had clashed then melded. I often wondered if the sour coupling that led to my conception was responsible for my inability to experience pleasure; but David, on our first night together, had no reason to doubt my satisfaction. No condoms. I reassured him. Everything was under control.
    We were together every night until it was time to start