Words from a Glass Bubble

by Gebbie, Vanessa

• ISBN13: 9781844717347
• ISBN10: 1844717348
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-30
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

This passionate new book gathers together for the first time many of Vanessa Gebbie's award-winning stories. Described by Maggie Gee as 'a prodigiously gifted new writer', she is a natural storyteller; her narratives unfold with a deceptively light touch, exploring with compassion what it is to be human and flawed. 'Words From a Glass Bubble' is about coming to terms with the cards we are dealt. The stories pivot around the recognition that those who seem powerless can prove to be the strongest catalysts for change, both in themselves and in others. Vanessa Gebbie never shies away from difficult subjects, creating an intensely emotional and at times distressing world, but it is never totally dark or despairing. Sparks of the unexpected and flashes of humour light the whole collection with an indefatigable optimism.

Excerpts

The Virgin Mary spoke to Eva Duffy from a glass bubble in a niche halfway up the stairs. Eva, the post woman, heard the Virgin’s words in her stomach more than in her ears, and she called her the VM. The VM didn’t seem to mind. She was plastic, six inches high, hand painted, and appeared to be growing out of a mass of very green foliage and very pink flowers, more suited to a fish tank. She held a naked Infant Jesus who stretched his arms out to Eva and mouthed, every so often, ‘Carry?’The VM’s words were unfailingly meaningful, but often ungrammatical.‘It will be the porcelain and silver effigies that speak properly,’ Eva said. And anyway, this VM had to speak out of the corner of her mouth where her pink lipstick had smudged.She also appeared to have a wall eye. That would be the sloppy painting in the VM factory according to Connor, Eva’s bricklayer husband, who never stopped on the stairs to find out if she spoke to him, too. ‘No one’s perfect,’ Eva said.Connor had a port wine stain on his left cheek in the shape of Cyprus with a few undiscovered islands under his ear. He had the habit of turning sideways when he spoke. He turned sideways on the stairs too, didn’t look at the niche. Eva mumbled enough Hail Marys for the two of them every time she went up or down; she always picked up a small oval photo frame from the shelf, said, ‘How’s Little Declan keeping?’ and kissed it. More gilt than silver after twenty-four years of kissing.That particular day, standing at the turn of the stairs, holding her only baby’s photo, Eva heard a dog bark twice somewhere on the estate. That was a good sign. She replaced the photo with the VM’s bubble to one side and, on the other, the phial of Holy Water from Lourdes brought by Mrs Flynn after Declan was taken with the asthma.Also, instead of saying one thing for Eva to think about on her post round, the VM said two: ‘. . . but we live in cavernous times,’ she said. That was the usual meaningful bit. At least, Eva supposed it was so. She patted Declan, made to go on down the stairs. But the VM spoke again in Eva’s stomach. ‘Don’t you go delivering no letters to that Finn Piper,’ she said.‘Why ever not?’ Eva’s mouth said. There was no reply from the VM. Eva’s heart said, ‘I can’t be promising that. It’s not up to me who gets their letters.’ What was a post woman after all said and done but a carrier of people’s questions and answers? It would not do to short-circuit the process.Ah, but it may have been a safe thing to be promising what the VM wanted. In all those years of being post woman, there’d not been so much as a weekly cut-price promotion leaflet from the Stores to take up the four mile track to Finn Piper’s farm. ‘Mad as a box of frogs,’ said those with opinions, and the kids from the estate cycled up there on fine evenings, threw stones at what was left of the windows to make Finn angry, and no one said not.Finn Piper would rumble deep in his throat and screech like a night owl, throwing his voice round about the pine trees. He would ack ack like the blackest of the crows and honk like the oldest ravens in the crags. His black-bearded face would appear in first this window then that, as he flapped his hands and screeched, and the estate boys would set up a howling and a barking back. But none of them could make the sound of the birds like Finn Piper, and they never stayed up there when dusk fell to hear the thin cry of the buzzard rising from the old chimneys into the night sky.But that was the day that Eva Duffy did have a letter to take to Finn Piper.It was a Wednesday. The writing on the envelope was a child’s, the stamp was askew, and it had been posted locally a week before. Must have got caught up. Eva kept that letter until last, and drove the van as far as she could up a muddy track, parking by a tubular metal gate, padlocked and tied to its post with blue string. There were gorse bushes on either side. Eva hoiked her skirt up and stood on the second bar of the gate, swung a leg over the top and dropped onto the mud. One foot slid into a brown puddle.That was the VM reminding her not to give Finn Piper any letters. ‘What do you know about being a post woman?’ Eva muttered, rubbing her shoe with spit and a finger. She had two miles further to go, stepping round cowpats and sheep droppings, scattering knots of dirty-bummed ewes, before she reached Finn Piper’s farm.The front door was open. Chickens were scratching in the mud, both inside and outside the house. There was no letter box. Eva put her head round the door. It was very dark. No convenient hall table on which to place the post.‘Mr Piper?’ Eva called, but the dampness ate her words.She fetched a flat stone from the wall and put it on the ground just inside the door, placing the letter addressed to Mister Finn Birdman on the stone where he would not miss it. Then she shouted his real name once more before retracing her steps. But only a short way. It was the twittering of a flock of sparrows approaching that stopped her, and she ducked behind the stone wall, to hide rather than to spy.But she did spy. The bearded figure of Finn Piper came loping and twittering across the meadow swinging an old green enamel saucepan, naked as the day he was delivered. Two collies followed, low to the ground. He crossed the yard to his house, and the twittering stopped as he put the saucepan down, slopping water onto the mud. He looked round, and Eva ducked again. She counted twenty. When she peered over the wall, he was sitting on a tree stump with his back to her, holding the letter, and as she watched he raised it to his face, sniffed at it, and carefully bit one corner as though he was testing for gold.Later, Eva talked to the VM. ‘It was the back of his neck,’ she said.‘What was?’‘Ah. Like a little boy’s. Vulnerable.’‘Needing a wash, more like.’ The VM’s mouth seemed a little pinched tonight. She hefted the Infant Jesus, who was out of proportion with his Mother — big enough for a three year old — higher on her arm. ‘I were watching.’‘I thought so,’ said Eva. ‘I could feel something like your breath on my own neck.’Eva, in bed, couldn’t talk to Connor about little boy’s necks. So she said, ‘Took a letter to that Finn Piper today. Been in this job twenty years, give or take. First one.’Connor chuckled into his pillow, facing the other way. ‘Mad as a box of frogs.’‘They all say that.’ Eva watched the streetlight striping the Artex through the curtain rings. She sighed. ‘I wonder . . .’‘Wonder what, then?’‘If Finn Piper can read.’Connor sat up and turned on the light. His hair was sticking up. Cyprus was looking redder, it always did that when he was tired. ‘Now don’t you go interfering . . .’‘I can’t take you seriously with your hair like that,’ she said. ‘Put the light out and go to sleep.’ ‘And,’ Eva could have said, ‘you are beginning to sound like the VM.’ But she didn’t.The next day Eva had no spare time, but on the Friday she took an extra bag in the post van. Connor’s old painting trousers. A few jumpers, patched but fine. A new orange shirt that Connor hadn’t liked, still in its cellophane. She’d carried the bag downstairs, holding it to her left side so the VM would miss it.She didn’t. ‘Taking them someplace nice then?’ she said.‘None of your business,’ Eva’s heart said, as her mouth said, ‘The needy.’ And she’d paused in the kitchen and added half a chocolate sponge wrapped in foil.