We present the stories from the RTÉ Short Story Competition shortlist 2023 – read The Warbler by Caitríona McArdle above.
About the story: "It's set in an Offaly bog in the early Nineties," Caitríona says, "a story of a father and daughter navigating grief and early adolescence."
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The Warbler, by Caitríona McArdle
The car shook along the road, gravel spitting into the verge, the mirror on my side scraping the hedgerows, leaving a haze of insects and dandelion seeds whispering past the window. Morning light blinked through the tangle of brambles and bushes, exposed the streaky windscreen and burned into my eyes. I pulled the visor down, turned up the radio. My father drove more slowly as the grass growing in the middle of the road got thicker, the ground beneath it softer. I shuffled in my seat, the torn edges of the plastic cover scratching the back of my thighs, my denim shorts damp and heavy in the warm air. A small but grievous sigh escaped me without much thought.
"I just don't know why you had to drag me along," I grumbled.
He glanced across at me, one hand on the wheel and one eyebrow raised in disapproval. Yes, I thought, I probably am going to keep this up all day.
He stopped the car at an old farm gate, and we sat in silence for a moment before he flicked my leg with the back of his hand.
"Go on, Katie," he said, nodding at the gate, as though I was supposed to know it was my job to open it. I got out, giving the door a good hard bang. I pulled the gate just wide enough for him to manoeuvre the car through, my feet precarious on the heather-covered bank. The wheels spun in the soft ground, spattering my feet in dry dirt. My jaw clenched. I stomped back around to the passenger door. My hand reached toward the door handle and the car belched forward, leaving me, arm outstretched, twenty yards behind. I cursed him for dragging me here, the sun already hot and a day of boredom and slavery ahead of me. He could have just let me stay at home; I wasn’t a kid anymore. I half ran in his wake, and as I clambered back into the passenger seat he turned to me, his bronzed face alight with laughter. My father fancied himself as a comedian.
"You’re so annoying," I lamented. He smiled and we drove on, bouncing along the boggy lane. His thick hand fumbled on the gearstick, steadying the car. Though there was nobody but me to witness, his tiny nylon shorts and broken runners made me cringe. He hadn’t run since she’d been gone.
We came to a stop only when the lane had all but disappeared. Ahead of us lay endless rows of cut turf, the grass half scorched between. Monotonous, barren, brown. I thought of the town girls, laughing their way down the main street, perfect legs in fashionable shorts, a rainbow of slush puppies and fruity lip gloss. Not that it really mattered anyway; I wouldn’t have been with them. I wasn’t thin enough and could never think of anything to say. It was the first week of the holidays, and here I was, already exiled, the potential optimism of summer fading to disappointment.
"Sure, where else would you be rather be today, Katie!" he teased, rubbing sunscreen into his ears, taking in his surroundings.
He was bent over working before I’d even gotten out of the car. He laid down two sods parallel to each other, another two on top in the other direction, and continued until the stack was five high. Barely a pause before he started the next. I rolled my shorts up my thighs and pushed my t-shirt sleeves up over my shoulders; at the very least I might come out of this with a tan. As I succumbed to help him, crouching over to arrange the first of my perpetual sods, I looked up and caught his eye.
"The more you do, the quicker we get out of here!" he called, the mockery in his wink met only by my scowl.
I began by copying him, stooped down, arms long, stacking the rough chunks in pairs. Squat little structures slowly rose, replacing the broken peaty carpet the tractor had laid down weeks earlier. Any mild satisfaction it brought was short-lived, but I kept going, making sure that my sloppy work and relentless huffing would reaffirm my outrage. I slacked, daydreamed, cursed and raged my way through what felt like hours, the sun gradually moving higher in the sky, heat building. My back was close to breaking. I kicked the sods, breaking them apart, then shoved them into a large pile with the inside of my foot. Crouching down, I gathered and lifted a large armful together, a method intended to lessen the workload. The coarse dried edges scraped my arms and I dropped the load, leaving my t-shirt covered in brown grit. I kicked hard into the ground, and sat gracelessly down into the dirt. Flies hovered at my side, a glittering mob. The backs of my thighs were stinging, my shoulders ached. After a few moments of sulking, I stood straight, arching my shoulders back, the relief immense.
I’d had enough.
"I’m going for a walk," I called out, "to the pool over there."
"OK, love."
I trudged across the dry bogland, until it gave way to muck and rushes, bog cotton barely moving in the mugginess. Birdsong got louder as I moved toward the bushes. My ponytail was warm and heavy on my neck. The pool was shallow and alive with flies and water fleas. I knew the names of most things there, the legacy of nature walks with my old country school. It seemed so much longer than a year since I’d left it. I turned back toward my dad; he was bent at the hip, both arms moving together, building the stacks, two by two, robotic almost. Then a sound like someone mowing grass in the distance, a mechanical hum through the gorse. A warbler. I’d heard one before, but never seen it. A small secretive bird, a summer visitor who spends his winters in the warm climes of tropical west Africa. Dad had his shirt off now, the sweat on his back glimmering in the heat. I stood dead still, watching for the warbler, camouflaged somewhere in this jumble of growth. It was a long way to come every year, from Africa, to breed and raise his young. The drudgery of that journey back, just to keep them warm in winter. I looked back again toward my dad. I could see him in the distance, standing straight now. He pulled an elbow back behind his head, then the other. He swung his head slowly around in a circle, stretching his neck, opening his eyes to the sky for a second before bending down again. The warbler went silent.
"Hungry, Katie?" Dad eventually shouted across the bog, as he walked back towards the car. I started towards him.
I gazed across at his sea of perfect structures. He’d footed about fifty times what I’d managed. I pulled a bag from the car boot, the picnic he had promised. Four oranges that had seen better days and some buttered brown bread and ham. A dragonfly circled my hands as I pressed my thumb into the orange skin, a light spray of citrus oil sticking the peaty dust to my fingers. I sat down on the edge of the open boot, carefully flicking the pips out before biting in. He sat beside me and took a long drink from an old lemonade bottle, containing what was now lukewarm water.
"Gross," I said. He ignored me, munching down on a thick piece of bread, the ham floundering against the side of his mouth. His fingernails were thick with dirt, soil caught in the hair on his arms.
"What a gorgeous day," he said, his mouth full, eyes fixed on a jumble of ferns and spikes of purple flowers. He always stared like that when he ate. "Loosestrife."
"What?"
"Loosestrife. Those purple ones."
"Oh."
"Your mum loved them."
"What?"
There was such injustice in the lightness with which he shared these crumbs of her, this information that to me, now, was sacred. Every silly little thing about her was sanctified.
"Yeah," he went on, "they were her favourites."
I baulked, heat rising in my face.
"No," I snapped, suddenly now more irate. "Irises were her favourites."
The sting in my voice caused him to turn his face sharply towards me, his eyes surprised. I looked away, fixing my eyes on the dirty runners swinging from the end of my legs.
"She used to always bring home a few sprigs of loosestrife and put them in a vase in the kitchen," he said calmly. "Do you not remember?"
My throat suddenly felt constricted, my tongue fuzzy. I could feel him watching me intently as I stared at my feet, suspended in stillness now over the earth.
"Katie?"
I swallowed hard.
"How would I remember when it’s like she barely existed?" I spat back at him. "You never talk about her."
"What?" he said, his face a mixture of indignance and concern. "I do. I’m talking about her now."
"Why the hell did we put irises on her grave?"
I jerked my sticky legs off the car, causing the bread that lay beside me to topple on to the peaty ground.
"For fuck’s sake, Katherine!"
"I obviously didn’t mean to do that!" I shouted angrily, kicking the tyre. "I can never do anything right!"
He exhaled sharply as he looked at me, then bent to pick up the ruined bread. He began the futile process of picking dirt off butter, his breathing heavy, his expression empty. I felt guilty now, for the bread, for the outburst. Nothing more passed between us for a few long moments. He took another swig from the crushed bottle. He waved a fly from his face. Insects whirred their wings in the still air, and eventually he spoke.
"She loved irises too, she loved all of this," he said, casting his eyes across the landscape. "She loved you."
As quickly as I could, I wiped away the tears that came not so much from the words, but because words were being said at all.
"I know," I said.
"You know you can always talk to me if you’re sad," he said quietly, and I knew he meant it. Except that I wasn’t sad. Sad was easy; sad was understandable, palatable. I was angry, and lonely, and her face in my mind was not of a mother who loved bogs and flowers; her face was heavy with death. I’d had a mother who hadn’t fought hard enough to stay with me. I felt like I was no longer tethered to the earth. I was wrong in my body. I was a motherless somebody hanging in the unrelenting silence between childhood and something unknowable. What feeling is that?
"I know," I said again, as I turned back to the turf. I picked up two sods and started stacking methodically. His eyes stayed on me for a while, and then he started working again, the sticky air between us a chasm that spread deeper as the day grew cold.
"Well, it wasn’t so bad in the end, was it?" he said later as we bundled ourselves back into the car, the empty lemonade bottle and orange peels strewn under my feet.
"Wasn’t great," I said.
"Right."
The sound of the ignition rumbled into the quiet of the bog.
"Katie, I’m doing my best, you know."
"I know." I whispered back, reaching my body across the handbrake and resting my head briefly on his shoulder. He turned his face to leave a quick kiss on the crown of my head, then turned the car for home.
I know, I thought, watching the fading light through the hedgerows flicker past again, you’re keeping us warm in winter...
About the author: Caitríona McArdle grew up in the midlands and now lives in Dublin city with her young daughter. She works as an architect.
The Warbler by Caitríona McArdle was read on air by Elaine O’Dwyer at 11.20pm on Thursday 26 October, as part of Late Date on RTÉ Radio 1.
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 27 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.
