Nora -A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce - Nuala O'Connor Page 0,1

fill a fairy thimble, in truth, but he holds up the dripping wrist and cries and shivers as if he might die. I take hold of his shaking arms and sit him on the bed, and I run to try to fetch the porter for he will surely know what to do. But, as I hammer down the back stairs of Finn’s Hotel a voice trails behind me, calling, “Throwaway runaway! Throwaway runaway!” on a long string of cackles. I open the back door and in apron, cap, and all I run and run and run until I can go not another step. At the river Liffey wall, my stomach lurches and I empty my breakfast into the water and watch it float off to the sea.

Ireland

Finn’s Hotel, Dublin

JULY 16, 1904

TO JIM I AM IRELAND.

I’m island shaped, he says, large as the land itself, small as the Muglins, a woman on her back, splayed and hungry, waiting for her lover. I’m limestone and grass, heather and granite. I am rising paps and cleft of valley. I’m the raindrops that soak and the sea that rims the coast.

Jim says I am harp and shamrock, tribe and queen. I am high cross and crowned heart, held between two hands. I’m turf, he says, and bog cotton. I am the sun pulling the moon on a rope to smile over the Maamturk Mountains.

Jim styles me his sleepy-eyed Nora. His squirrel girl from the pages of Ibsen. I am pirate queen and cattle raider. I’m his blessed little blackguard. I am, he says, his auburn marauder. I’m his honorable barnacle goose.

“Nora,” Jim says, “you are syllable, word, sentence, phrase, paragraph, and page. You’re fat vowels and shushing sibilants.”

“Nora,” Jim says, “you are story.”

Goose

Galway

MARCH 21, 1884

I WAS BORN IN THE UNION WORKHOUSE IN GALWAY. NORA JOSEPH Barnacle they called me.

Mammy was a spinster—twenty-six years old already when Daddy lured her into matrimony, promising their life would bloom and rise like the bread he baked for a living. But the only thing that bloomed was Mammy’s belly and all that rose was Daddy’s hand to his gob with the next drink and the next. When I was three, and my twin sisters were born, Mammy sent me to live with her own mother, Granny Healy, in her quiet houseen in Whitehall.

“It can’t be helped that you’re a Barnacle,” Granny said, “but always be proud of your Healy and Mortimer sides.”

But still, as I grew, she liked to spin tales for me over bread and butter and bitter tea.

“You’re a seabird, Nora Barnacle. Born from a shell.” She eyed me over the rim of her china cup.

“Not born from an egg, Granny, like other birds?”

“No, not from an egg at all, loveen. A shell. For the barnacle is a rare and magical goose.”

“I like magic.” I tried to sip my tea the way Granny did, heartily but with grace. “Where does the shell come from?” I asked.

Granny leaned closer, broke a piece of currant cake in half, and put it into my mouth. The rest she chewed herself and she looked over my head, out the window into Whitehall, as if she’d forgotten me.

“The shell, Granny?”

“Well, girleen, that’s the most peculiar thing of all. That shell you came from grew like a fruit on the branch of a noble tree that stood by the Galway Bay shoreline. The shell-fruit got heavier and heavier until it dropped into the sea. There it bathed in the salty water until it bobbed ashore at Salthill.”

“Do you mean our Salthill, where we walk the prom?”

“The very place.”

I sat before Granny and imagined a pearly shell lying on the shore, nobbled like the conch Uncle Tommy gave me.

“Go on, Granny. Tell me more.”

“This beautiful shell burst open on the shingle at Salthill and inside there was a dark-haired baby, serene and curious. The baby smiled and smiled, and she had one droopy eye that gave her a wise and holy look.” Granny leaned forward and put her cool finger to my eyelid.

“Me.”

“Yes, my lovely Nora, it was you.” Granny set down her cup. “Your mother was walking the Salthill prom that day and, when she saw that fine shell, she tripped down to the beach. She clapped her hands when she found a baby inside, smiling up at her. She was so happy. Your mother picked you up and brought you home, her little barnacle gooseen.”

I settled back against the rungs of my chair. I lifted the china cup to my mouth