We present the shortlisted stories from the RTÉ Short Story Competition shortlist 2023 – read Tessa and Viviane by Julie Cruickshank below.
About the story: Julie says: "I thought about writing a ghost story originally, but not a scary one, and it occurred to me that the most persistent, nosy and irritating ghost of all would be a mother..."
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On an early morning trip to the bathroom I saw my mother standing beside the window in her bedroom. She had been dead for three weeks by then.
She wore the outfit she had been buried in, a turquoise peacock patterned caftan she had made herself, with a matching bandana, arranged to cover the scar that ran from her throat to just above her ear.
I wasn't surprised. 'So you're back, Lena.’ She had never let us call her Mum or Mammy, no matter how much myself and my sister Viv pestered her. Eventually, we added this minor grievance to the list of oddities she had foisted upon us as kids growing up in a small rural town, the worst of which was her humiliatingly public white witchcraft phase, and included forcing us to wear second-hand clothes as well as a downright refusal to allow us make our First Communion.
‘Tessa,’ she turned to face me. ‘When you get this place re-painted, go for impact. Deep red. Or a strong purple. Don’t be nervous of colour.’
Later in the morning, I opened the window to air the room. Four dents remained in the carpet where the hospital bed had been.
A large felt tapestry, a brash mixture of lime green, yellow and rust, had fallen during the night and was lying on the ground.
When her tumour had been diagnosed as malignant – it was the fast-growing type, naturally – I had packed up and come home from London within days. I felt a mixture of dread and self importance. I was finally needed. I envisaged a lot of brow mopping, some difficult but meaningful conversations, plus time for myself to regroup and figure out stuff. In my luggage were the remnants of all my self-improvement attempts -- a yoga mat, my Nutri-bullet, running shoes. I planned on losing at least ten pounds. Viv waited outside the terminal in her Hybrid; a waft of her citrusy, freshly-washed hair scent hit me when I opened the door. I manoeuvred my three overstuffed cases into the pristine boot. ‘Don't get too comfortable,’ she said. ‘We're talking weeks not months.’
It turned out I wasn’t needed. True to form, my mother and her cancer were racing ahead, leaving us blinking in her wake. An infection turned to sepsis, and she was gone within a week.
In my old bedroom, on the same lumpy single bed, I slept well into the afternoon, stared at the patches on the ceiling where once I had strategically placed my boy band posters. I was 35, unemployed, and the dull ache that sat permanently in my sternum had now become a dead weight.
A match popped up on one of my dating apps. A twenty-something teacher and GAA coach. ‘Go for it.’ Lena sat on Viv's old bed. She wore pink harem pants and her Mae West tribute t-shirt, I Used to be Snow White but I Drifted. The swelling in her hands and lower legs had receded and her collection of heavy silver rings were back in place, one on each finger. ‘Meet him. You need something to get you out of this slump. Onwards and upwards.’
‘Christ,’ I said, ‘are you telling me I need a project?’
Lena’s projects filled every corner of her three-bed workman’s cottage. Whatever she started, she did with equal parts enthusiasm and carelessness. Done is better than perfect, she would say as a nail shattered a chunk of plaster, usually followed by: A Man on a Galloping Horse Wouldn’t Notice.
It was the same with us. Between her evening classes and multiple, frequently changing jobs- receptionist, masseur, childminder -- it was difficult to catch her eye, never mind her attention. Any stomping, sobbing, banging doors or emotional outbursts of any kind were brushed aside, ignored, until we ran out of steam and withdrew to our rooms in a sulk. As we grew into our twenties, partly to irritate her, we dressed conservatively, drank in moderation and refused to wear makeup; I rarely deviated from navy and Viv limited herself to a palette of Ralph Lauren beige and cream. Glum and Glummer my mother called us. For her wedding photos, Viv chose black and white, possibly as a subtle revenge, a way to offset my mother's outfit, which was a vintage PVC neon orange coat worn over a leopard print trapeze-shaped dress.
I met the teacher for coffee. Lena positioned herself a few booths down, still attached to her morphine drip. She wore a turban hat and dark glasses. I worried about people tripping over tubes, but they seemed to dissolve on contact. ‘Smile,’ she mouthed at me, a grimace of purple lipstick. 'Forget I’m here.' She adjusted the roll of bloodied post operative bandage that was slowly unwinding from her head.
I tried to focus on my date. ‘Have you noticed,’ I said, ‘the trend for naming coffee places these days. You pick a metal or a stone, and then add a contrasting herb, flower or softer substance. Copper and linen. Bell and lint. Granite and leaf.’ On the way to the loo, she beckoned me over. ‘Stop trying to be a pretentious smart ass,’ she said. ‘It's painful to listen to.’
Later that week I met him again and we sat in the window seat of the only decent restaurant in town. My mother passed by wearing a smock made from one of her old Wiccan tunics.
She popped her head around the door. ‘Your problem is that you are afraid to take a chance on anyone. Or anything.’
When I got home she was in the hall.
‘Used goods,’ she said, ‘was a phrase your grandmother was fond of. It was a different ballgame back then.’
‘What now?’ I was tired, not in the mood for this uncharacteristic maternal fussing.
‘I'm not judging you,’ she said. ‘Just don’t feel bad about yourself in the morning.’
‘I won’t! I'm not the one with the 80s Catholic guilt.’
‘Self -esteem,’ she said. ‘That was the big thing in the 80s. Now I hear it’s all about resilience.’
‘For crying out loud, it was just sex. Bad sex. It's a bit late for you to be worrying about my self-esteem.’ I closed the bathroom door in her face.
Five minutes later, ‘What’s wrong with you that you have no self- esteem?’
Viv organised a skip. We filled it with bin liners full of fabric and badly painted wooden furniture. In the spare room we opened boxes full of bills, bank statements, job applications, letters to landlords. All the wheedling and cajoling and pleading she had done to keep us going. We found our baby tags from the hospital, Father Unknown in faded pencil. An old Maths copy with her to-do list in blue, in schoolgirl's handwriting, each item with a red tick beside it. Clumsy drawings of what seemed like the crown of a baby's head. We kept going, late into the night, silent scavengers, neither of us admitting what we really wanted to find: a name or an address, a photo.
When we were little she had made up stories about our father based on what we were reading at the time. He was a spy, a pilot, a soldier. Later on, when that wouldn't wash, she had him die in a motorcycle accident. She had named us after her favourite female punk band. (That part turned out to be true.) We speculated, scrutinising our faces, hair, bodies for any texture or shape that might have come from him, but all we saw was our mother, the same milky skin, poker-straight strawberry blond hair and pale eyes. It was as if Lena had willed all signs of paternity right out of us, cloned us from herself. Every now and then one of us would havea meltdown, demand to know, issue an ultimatum, but Lena would refuse to budge, and the following morning it was as if the conversation had never happened.
I moved back to London. I continued dating. My mother hung about, doling out unwanted snippets of advice, all the while getting younger, thinner, cockier. Her appearances had an urgency about them, as if time was running out and she had unfinished business.
She was a royal pain in the arse.
On Tottenham Court Road, she passed me decked our in her full punk get up, peroxide hair, dog collar, tartan skirt. ‘Nice pins Lena!’ I said and she winked back.
She pushed past me in Covent Garden, laughing, chased by a security guard.
I saw her in Finsbury Park at a taxi rank late one night on the edge of a bunch of drunk teenagers, shouting and obnoxious.
I elbowed past her in the cinema, long legs, not getting out of the way. I was on another dull date. She gave me the finger.
‘Will you at least tell me who our father was?’ It was a Friday night in a Gastro pub in Shoreditch and we were in the ladies. She drew a perfect thick black line along her eyelid, finished with an aggressive flick.
‘To tell you the truth,’ she shrugged, ‘I can’t remember all that much. Or maybe I do. Does it matter? I met him in a squat in Finsbury Park, or maybe it was a Slits gig. Scottish? Welsh?? Maybe he stuck around for a few years and maybe then I’d had enough. Tell yourself whatever story you like. In the end I got what I wanted. My girls.’
On a drizzly winter evening, near Clapham tube station, I saw the gleam of a newly painted mural on an end-of- terrace brick wall. The Slits. Some badly drawn female faces. And underneath a list, a Roll of Honour: Ari-up, Palmolive, Budgie. Tessa and Viviane.
A few weeks later she sat beside me on a park bench. She was heavily pregnant, I figured it was me. There were dark circles under her eyes. She held a can of cider and a cigarette.
‘Not your best look Lena.’
‘Don’t start,’ she said. ‘It was the 80s. No one knew any better.’ She blew a ring of smoke. ‘When you were a baby, you had the beginnings of a cow’s lick, a whorl of golden hair with the most intricate pattern. An ever-decreasing circle. It reminded me of a fossil. I tried to draw it, but I had no patience for detail. I was always so tired. That's why I went home.’
Brazen was a word my grandmother used. Reserved for women only. When the all-night bus from London had pulled in another passenger had held Viv's hand as she climbed down the steps. My mother had followed with me in her arms. I was barely three months and no one knew I existed. I imagine them on the station forecourt, my grandmother's face, my mother silent and defiant.
The last time I saw Lena it was early morning, like before. I slid from underneath the heavy arm that lay across my chest – it was a weight that I was beginning to get used to, bearable if not exactly comfortable.
She was a young girl, maybe ten, in a brown corduroy pinafore and woolly tights and she sat on the edge of my bed, golden red hair in plaits. Her features were sharp and delicate and her eyes ice blue. Eyebrows so faint they were almost not there. I held her gaze and waited.
Her image blurred and then fractured into tiny coloured pixels, before merging into the space around her. She became the walls, the bedspread, the wardrobe, the felt tapestry I had brought from home and hung at the end of my bed. Eventually nothing remained except a suspended tuft of golden hair, the end of a plait, a ghostly thumbs up.
When she was gone, a sound came from inside me, a howl; something that, until that point, I did not believe myself capable of making.
About the author: Originally from Galway, Julie Cruickshank lives and works in Dublin. She has been shortlisted for this competition before, in 2020 with Beneath The Trees, Where Nobody Sees and in 2022, with The Coast of Africa.
Tessa and Viviane was read by Janet Moran on RTÉ Radio 1 at 11.20pm, Tuesday 17th October, as part of Late Date.
Read more stories from the shortlist on rte.ie/culture, hear updates on Arena on RTÉ Radio 1, and tune in to Arena's RTÉ Short Story Competition special which will go out live on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7pm on Friday 27th October 2023 from Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, with all 10 shortlisted writers in attendance.
Judges Claire Kilroy, Ferdia MacAnna and Kathleen MacMahon will discuss the art of the short story and the stories from this year's shortlist with host Seán Rocks, there'll be live music and performances from leading actors, and we'll find out who's won the top prizes.
Why not join us in person? Audience tickets are now on sale via the Pavilion Theatre.
And for more about the RTÉ Short Story Competition in honour of Francis MacManus, go here.
