Eating Achilles (short story) published in Crannóg literary journal, Issue 59, Autumn 2023. ISBN: ‎ 978-1907017667

Eating Achilles

Jessica Grene

When my husband died, I thought I’d put him in the garden.

I told my sister this. She looked confused for a moment.

‘Oh. Well, see how you feel when you get the ashes. You don’t have to decide now.’

 At that point I was calm. Some part of my mind was holding out. I didn’t really believe that my husband had ceased to exist. My consciousness floated above the action, waiting for the finale. It watched me make arrangements for the service and cremation. That part of my mind was keeping the story for him. I was going to tell him, sweetheart, I had to decide where your ashes should go, God, it was awful.

 I was going to scatter his ashes under the oak in the corner of the garden.

He told me he would put a swing on it for Achilles. He showed me the branch where it would hang. Light filters through the bright emerald leaves in dappled patterns in summer. I imagined Achilles, sometimes a blonde girl, sometimes a boy with dark hair, laughing and swinging high. There was a flower bed behind it, a profusion of blue and purple blooms. My husband said they were perennials, would come back every year. He laughed at me for asking would the colours change?

 The planning part of my mind thought it would be a good place for his ashes. The floating part was thinking that he would have to tell me if human ashes were bad for the plants. The ashes would go into the earth, they would be absorbed into the roots of the tree. Some part of him would stay in the garden.

 The garden was all his. He cut the grass, he planted the flowerbeds. He had planted some herbs and vegetables.

I can’t keep plants alive. It was a running joke in the office. We each had a plant on our desks. Mine died. The replacement died.  Anyone taking leave gave instructions that I was not to be allowed near their plant.

When I left my job, they presented me with an air cactus. A small rootless thing in a glass bauble. It survives blowing around in the desert. It’s supposed to be unkillable.  I don’t know how I killed it. It shrivelled and went grey. My husband threw out its corpse.

‘Seriously, how’d you manage that?’

‘How am I ever going to look after a child?’ I wailed, entirely joking. We were going to  be amazing parents. I told him that we had to name our baby something character-building, like Achilles.

 The room next to ours was Achilles’s room. He teased me about how I would cope with baby-slime all over my carefully chosen furniture. I laughed, because I had made a family home. My style was vibrant, good quality furniture. Our house was perfect for our family.

I hate us for agreeing that we had plenty of time.

My sister takes me to stay with her family.

My brother-in-law sits at the table chatting while my sister clears away the meal she’s cooked. I used to catch my husband’s eye when this happened, silent couple communication.  Don’t you ever pull that one on me, I told him.

He was never supposed to leave me to clear up the mess.

One evening, I look over at the sofa. The little one is on his father’s lap, his brother nestles against my sister with her arm circling him. I suddenly hate their little family cuddling in the flicker of blue light. I say I’m going to bed. My sister moves to get up, to follow me and see if I need anything. I bark at her to stay where she is.

I couldn’t keep the house, the garden and the oak tree.

‘But we have life insurance.’ I am stabbed with the memory that my husband always insisted it was life assurance. So pedantic.

The solicitor politely explains that yes, we had life assurance policies, but. Sad loss. Your husband’s income. Costs. significant disparity.

‘I see. Thank you for explaining it.’

Fuck you, you stupid prick, I say to my husband. I get more and more enraged. How fucking dare he leave me like this.

The urn with his ashes stays on the mantlepiece. I moved the Aspara dancer relief to make room for it. I hate cluttered shelves.

Our beautiful house. The work that I put into it. The plans we had. We talked about Achilles, we had lots of plans for him. Or her. what if it was a girl? Even more character-building, I said.

Someday, I’d tell our daughter, our son, we used to talk about a baby, we called you Achilles before we had you. Now I’m the only person who knows that that room with the warm mango walls is Achilles’s room. The bookshelf, the armchair, wardrobe, curtains and carpet.

I never really minded the teasing about my gardening skills. I did sincerely mean to keep those plants alive. I don’t know what I did wrong.

 ‘What if Achilles gets my gardening skills, and grows up colour-blind and messy, like you?’

‘Babe, I have a normal person’s perception of colour. And I’m bloody tidy by civilian standards.’

We laughed and were smug because we were golden.

I am so angry with him for all the ways that he was not perfect when he was alive. I am so angry with me for wasting time noticing them.

I don’t want a thing from the house now

Are you sure, my sister kept asking. Nothing, I told her. Not even? No.

Every chair, every shelf, every damn light fitting. I made a choice about each detail. It reflected us. I poured all my love, my creativity and energy into that house. It was our happily ever after. But it hadn’t begun yet. No Achilles. No swing.

The last vestiges of my husband will not stay here when I leave. He is not going to return to the earth under the oak where the swing was supposed to go.

He’s coming with me. I’ll dig up a random plant, and his earthly remains can go into a cruddy plastic pot with it.  I will bring it with me and watch it wither. When it’s desiccated, its leaves crumble, or its a sodden mess growing mould, I will throw it in the bin. Or maybe I’ll flush it down the toilet. He can flow to the sea via sewage treatment plant.

I don’t know what kind of plant it is. It could be one of the weeds that are already choking up the garden, taking over gleefully because he is gone. I find a pot in the shed. I get a trowel and half dig, half chop and drag the plant out. I scoop up earth into the pot. I take the lid off the urn, shake the ashes onto a layer of lumpy garden soil. Some of the ashes puff out in a slight breeze, a dusting of my husband on the lawn. I put my hands in the pot and mix the ashes together, crumbling the earth into them. The texture of the soil is more repulsive than the ashes.  I find a bag of compost, and tip some in. It’s a richer colour, a soft crumbly texture.

You have to get your hands dirty, he used to tell me.

There are black crescents of his incinerated body under my nails. He never cut his nails in a smooth line, there were always little angles in them.

 I find a grim little flat.  The once white walls are ecru with age. Clustered spots of dark mustard damp crawl from the corners of the ceiling. Its miserable square of balcony hangs over the road, a rusted can of full of cigarette butts left on it. I carry the husband-plant in my arms to my new place. Like a fired employee clutching a filing box.

 I buy the cheapest of everything in one transaction online. A bed, mattress, sheets, plates, table, lamp. The furniture is flat-pack, with veneer in varied unconvincing approximations of wood.

I water the plant daily. I’m giving it a fighting chance.

Our life together seems unreal now. Our wedding, our house, sex and meals and holidays. They all seem as fantastical as our never-conceived child on his or her swing. A montage of glowing moments that seem imaginary. These scenes flash through my mind, overly bright Technicolour in the sepia flat.

 ‘You let me down’ I tell the plant.

All that seems real is my fury. My irritation.

The people in the bereavement group nod when I mention my anger. It’s normal, they tell me, we’ve all been there. I’m angry with him, I say, and they are not shocked. Part of grieving, they tell me. I hate him sometimes, and they nod. I start to explain about his nails, and the shelves, and how he would call anything from periwinkle to navy ‘blue’, and their faces go blank, and I know it’s not what they meant at all. I don’t tell them about the plant.

The husband-plant doesn’t die. Every night before I turn off the light, I tell it ‘Fuck you’

You have to talk to plants, he used to say, they’re sensitive to the human voice.

I talk to my husband, the plant. I tell him all the things he did wrong.

He wouldn’t eat mushrooms, or anything that had mushrooms in it. Ridiculously childish.  His accent changed depending on who he talked to, becoming fake north Dublin with men who called him ‘Bud’.

My sister visits. She looks at the shoebox flat with its cardboard furniture, and looks at me, worried. I made her get rid of a pine table once, and scoured the city for the teak one that was right for her house. I keep my face blank, daring her to say anything.

She sees the husband-plant.

‘Oh, that’s nice.’

I tell her that I dug it up from our garden, and she nods, sympathetic but relieved. I don’t tell her about the ashes.

One day a new tiny green shoot appears in the pot. Did it re-seed itself?

But the leaves are different. Some stray weed got in there. I leave it.

I stop saying ‘Fuck you’ to the husband-plant. This other plant is new and impressionable. Despite my corrosive thumbs, it keeps growing. I call it Achilles. It grows. It’s not a dandelion. I wonder if it could be a tiny oak tree.  I go into a garden shop and buy plant food. Achilles develops a cluster of green bubbles, berries or something.

My sister visits again.

‘Oh’ she says ‘A tomato plant’

It sneaked in, I tell her. It seems to be doing well.  

 I decide that Achilles needs his own space. I go back to the garden shop.  A bag of compost, a bigger pot. I ask about growing tomatoes, and  get a tomato frame. I show a picture of Achilles to the woman in the shop. I explain about my intruder, skipping the dead husband’s remains part. I buy a trowel. I ease Achilles gently from the pot, careful of my husband’s final resting place.

The green bubbles lighten, go orange and then red.

 I wonder if it would be wrong to put Achilles-tomatoes in a salad?

I buy a salad bowl. It’s stoneware, a bright cobalt. I can’t eat a salad made of Achilles served in a shitty cheap bowl. I keep it on the table, a vivid note in the middle of the drab box.

I carefully pick the ripe tomatoes and slice them. I pour olive oil on them, add salt and pepper. The juice from the tomatoes lightens the greenish oil to golden.

I focus only on the blue bowl, the red tomatoes dripping golden on my fork, as I eat.

I plant some runner beans on the balcony. Their scarlet flowers bloom in the summer.

Highly Flammable

Jessica Grene

John had great big waterproof boots on. Pure white, like all the regulation boots for wearing on the floor. No-one was allowed on the floor without putting them on. No-one was allowed to clock out without taking them off, and leaving them for the sluice. John’s were the biggest size, not many of those. When the girls started, there weren’t any boots in their size. Had to be ordered special. Just two pairs, they stood out, smaller and whiter than the others. Never had any women on the floor before. It wasn’t really heavy work, since automation, but men had always done it. The only women around the place had worked in the offices and the canteen.  The system showed if anyone on the shift hadn’t clocked out yet, but John still tallied the boots waiting for the sluice before he left at the end of the shift. Always had.

When John started out, it was only Irish in the whole place. Now there was nearly nobody on the floor that wasn’t Brazilian. They’d do the job for less, didn’t complain, worked hard.

Irish complained about not finding a job. They’re not looking hard enough (said John).

There was a blind spot from the cameras. A few years back, a couple of lads had gone in there for a smoke. They’d been let go, not for bunking off but for smoking on the floor. Fires could devastate the place in a flash. They’d be cut off in that corner, and someone would risk their lives going in after them.

John had seen a fire, early on. Some of the lads thought it was harsh for them two to lose their jobs over going for a smoke, but John wasn’t in agreement. He said nothing. He told every new starter how the lads had lost their jobs for having a smoke, miming taking a drag, and showing ‘out’ with a pointing finger. He didn’t tell them about the blind spot. Nobody but Farrell that was here now would know about that, unless the lads from security let on about it. John told the workers they were on camera all the time.

The lads he went to school with had moved on. They’d gone off to Dublin or Cork or Galway. They only came back at Christmas or for funerals. They’d come into Mulligans for a pint and be delighted to see  John at the bar, instantly recognisable by the big bulk of him.   Good man, Johnno, they said, as though they’d been friends throughout the school years. As though they’d ever called him anything but Thicko or gobshite.

They’d ask John what was the craic, Brady’s, sure you’re running the place by now, the mammy says there’s only foreign lads in the place these days, Brazilians is it?

The classmates are baffled if Anders or Rafa greets John by name at the bar. Jaysus, never thought there’d be black lads working in Bradys.

These men are gratified that John’s still at Brady’s, as he was when they left the town. They’re pleased that that Mulligan’s pub hasn’t changed. They want the town to stay the same, with the factory as its beating heart.  They left. Their children go to college, travel abroad, have never set foot on a factory floor. But they want Irish people from the town to work in Brady’s.

Women didn’t go for jobs on the floor much. Easier waiting tables, cleaning, childcare. The two girls on his shift were well able for the work. Dolores was a strong, bony woman with cropped grey hair, who laughed and talked shit with the lads. Helena was quieter. She was heavy, her rounded flesh drooping on her body. Her face sagged downwards as well. John wasn’t sure if from unhappiness, or just that was the set of it. He’d not had much contact with her. He saw himself in her. Not getting the joke, not moving quickly. He felt revulsion and compassion.

Even starting out, when there was plenty of other lads that spoke English, John wasn’t a big talker. He didn’t have an easy way with him. He felt lonely some days now, with no chats at all. He’d say things to himself, inside his head. No point saying them out loud. Some of the lads had decent English, but they weren’t used to his way of talking. If you repeat ‘Grand day’ three times before it’s understood, you realise it was a useless thing to say in the first place.

He let the words in the locker room wash over him, listening to the tone of them, the laughter. The boys greeted him in English, but went back to chatting. Only other English speaker around was Dualta Farrell. Like John, Farrell was a safety officer because he was Irish. John hadn’t much to say to Farrell. John came in early so he wouldn’t arrive the same time as Farrell. Farrell would talk as they got out of their cars next to each other. His talk did John’s head in. He’d talk about girls, say things about foreigners. He’d talk till they got in the door, and the lads’d see them arrive together.

I don’t exactly how I know this (said John), but there’s something off about Farrell. Even to himself, he couldn’t put into words the wrongness he saw in Farrell. There was a cruelty to him; a hidden violence that John could see looking out of Farrell’s eyes. He talked his shite to John, because he knew John didn’t like it. He knew John would never tell him to shut the fuck up.

John didn’t think the lads gave the girls a hard time. He couldn’t understand the words, but listened to the sounds of their chatter. There was back and forth, but never had the ring of badness to it. They weren’t young women. They weren’t pretty. They’d not been able to find other work. Dolores was too butch, Helena too pathetic. The girls and some of the lads had to drive up from the town to Dublin nightly for their English classes, otherwise their visas wouldn’t be renewed. The language school wouldn’t give them their money back, let them study somewhere local.

He saw Farrell saying something to the girls. Dolores nodded, said something back. Helena nodded too, didn’t look at Farrell, her eyes staring as if resisting turning to see his face. Farrell moved on, but later John saw him watching Helena, studying her like she was a menu, and he was going to order.

Not my business (said John)I know nothing.

Helena got quieter. John saw her movements, slow and dragging, when she put on the white boots to go on the floor. Her shoulders were more slumped. Farrell was oilier somehow, puffed up in himself. But there was nothing for John to know. Same as him, Farrell was on the floor the whole time.

Besides checking everyone was clocked out, John always checked the rack of boots for the sluice. Counted them. Knew straight off that the girls were gone, because the smaller white boots were there.  

Better than computers, it showed him the floor was clear.

He left off the boots, put his shoes on. Helena came off the floor. She had black runners on her feet.

‘Hey, Helena. You’re clocked out. You can’t go back on the floor without the boots on.’

Her face was miserable. He thought he’d never seen a face look so ugly, and it made it worse than if she had been beautiful. Going back on the floor without PPE, not clocked in, was a serious incident, and he was supposed to write anyone up who did it. Not just the contamination, but the risk.nAgain and again in the safety videos. Fires from the dryers could spread in seconds, anyone on the floor could pass out from the smoke and die, nobody knowing they were there.

‘Sorry.’ She said, keeping walking.

‘Are you okay?’ was all he said. He didn’t know how to ask, what to ask. He didn’t have the courage to help her. He read contempt in her eyes.

‘Yes.’ She said crisply. ‘I go now.’

The boots were all there. But he felt sure Farrell was lurking on the floor, planning to sneak out once John left. John wasn’t going to say a thing about Helena. But he would write Farrell up.

Safety first. (John would say) I can’t let this go. You could have died.

Farrell would know John had seen Helena. John would say nothing. Farrell would leave Helena alone.

John waited.

After twenty minutes, the fire alarm sounded. The lights and clanging were impossible to ignore. John had done the drills so many times the actions were in his body, like putting on his boots. Farrell did not emerge from the floor.

The workers filed out, grinning, not sure whether to believe the supervisors telling them that this was not a drill. Excitement rose as heat and noise drifted from the back where the dryers were. They lined up and checked off names.  John stood alone.

‘Your shift’s finished, yeah?’ Said the manager.

‘All of your team off the floor, out of the building?’

‘That’s right.’ Said John. ‘All clocked out. Counted the boots.’

‘Thank fuck for that. This is a big one, no joke.’

I didn’t know he was there (said John) I had no way of knowing.

Flames were engulfing the back of the building. The manager shouted to go on home, lads, nothing to be done here, no use standing gawping.

John walked to his car. Farrell’s car was parked in its place nearby.

And that (said John) is that.

Into Something Rich and Strange

Jessica Grene

 ‘Excited for the seaside?’ the doctor asks, as she takes gently places a cuff around my arm.

This escapade had to be authorised by my care team. They did many tests to ensure that it wouldn’t cause my heart to pack in. Too much shock to my system could easily kill me. I don’t feel that this would matter much, but protocol must be observed.

Doctor Sarah and rest of the team were enthusiastic about the prospect.

I don’t choose to talk much to the other residents, but apparently the adventure Helen has proposed has caused a bit of a stir among them.  I think the care team wish a more deserving resident had a granddaughter who would give them this experience. I am a difficult old woman. They keep saying how sweet it is of Helen to organise this for me, how happy I must be.

I long to see the sea, but I am tense with the strangeness and effort.

I ignore the doctor’s question.

***

The hiss and splash of waves on the sand is a sibilant rhythm, a soft in and out like the breath of a sleeping child. I think of Laura when she was small, and I ache for her. Even after all these years.

I see the curls of white crests and the tideline slinking up the shore. The empty expanse of sand is smooth near the edge of the tide, rippling into hillocks further back.

The scattered clouds are golden pink against the blue, and I feel the gentle warmth of a summer evening.

‘We used to get burned,’ I say. ‘We’d slather ourselves in sunscreen, but still end up all red’.

Helen makes a face of sympathy. She has never needed to wear sunscreen. I want to tell her that it was a part of the fun, coming home cooked to lobster colour. Even the scratchy pain of the sand on your sunburn. But she knows about the melanoma I had removed from my face two years ago.

I feel the sand shifting under my feet, getting firmer towards the tideline. I bend and pick up a handful of it. I peer at the tiny specks of dark and white and red, the golden glints in it. I let the grains trickle through my fingers. It used to cling to everything, get everywhere. This will not be a problem today.

I listen to the distant calls of gulls, and the murmuring of waves. I can just barely feel the fine spray of ocean  on my face.  The light hits the sea at the line of the horizon.

I breathe deeply; I want to fill my lungs with ocean air.
I could almost forget myself, and feel long ago freedom. I could almost start to walk along the unending shore, discreetly guaranteed not to repeat material for ten kilometres.  I take in more gusts of the air. I realise what is standing in the way of my surrender.

The experience is so very nearly real. So much work has gone into getting every detail exactly right. But smell is elusive.  Evocative.

It’s hard to describe why it smells wrong. The saltwater and seaweed and breeze is there. But there was always a hint of something rotten in the sea. Something less salubrious was mixed in there. The edge of a stench of fishy decay. Seagull shit, dead crabs, the tang of oil that polluted the water. Corrupted nature. In this careful blend it has been sanitised. It is a pleasanter smell, but it’s not right. Not real. It gives it away.  

I can’t let myself go. Can’t give in to belief, and be. That sweetness cloys in my nostrils, and the whole scene seems overly perfect. ‘Get me out of this’ I shout, until Helen shuts it down, and we are back in my room.

‘What was it? What happened?’

‘The smell.’ I fumble for the words. ‘It’s not right’

‘It’s just that it was quite expensive, and it was booked for three hours.’ She tries to contain her annoyance.

***

Helen’s skin is just two shades rosier than pallid. Porcelain, you could call it.

She is placid and dutiful. I couldn’t help needling her when she showed up to see me last week.

‘I suppose the boys didn’t want to see me?’
Her smile was determinedly cheerful.
‘They would have loved to come, Granny, but they’ve gone to the park with Greg.’
They had done nothing of the kind, but I didn’t bother correcting her.
Emboldened by my silence, she said.

‘I thought I could take you somewhere.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Not this again. You can’t take me anywhere.’

‘We could go anywhere in the world. Paris. We could go to the Eiffel Tower.’
‘I went to Paris in my twenties, you know. Really went to Paris, not this bullshit.’

I thought of the Champs Elysees, and the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop. There was a  young man called Yves. He took me on his motorbike to Pere Lachaise, and we sat and smoked a joint at the tomb of Jimmi Hendrix. I didn’t share this story with Helen.

‘I know it’s not exactly the same as what you did when you were younger, Granny.’

Helen was elaborately patient. ‘but it’s amazingly developed. You wouldn’t really know the difference. A lot of people your age say it’s actually better than now than back then.’
‘Better?’
‘Well, yes. I mean, it can’t have been great, getting there by transport, and all the people, and...contact’ she shuddered, and added hastily ‘Of course, it was normal at the time.’

I hesitated.

‘I would like to see the sea again.’

***

I remember a trip to the beach nearest our house. Laura was about two and a half.

It must have been before things got very bad, because I brought her on the bus. It wasn’t the last time. I can’t remember which was the last time.

The sky was overcast, and the air was damp. I thought she could paddle in the sea, but the tide was way out, leaving greenish silt. The sludgy sand was fetid, and I wished we could have gone further from the city.

‘Nooders’  Laura said, pointing to the curled piles of lugworm casts.

‘Not noodles. Worms’ I said, repulsed. ‘Not for eating. Don’t touch. Worms.’

‘Worms.’ She repeated, and studied the wavy pile.

She wouldn’t take her shoes and socks off, and she was ankle-deep in the slime. It oozed between my toes.

I held my shoes awkwardly in one hand, fingers in the heels, Laura’s bucket in the other.

She stamped and splashed in the shallow puddles. I was bored.

The tide began to come in. Laura plopped herself down, and the muck clung to her bum in the cute yellow leggings she wore, showing the bulk of her nappy.

‘Time to go home, baby.’ I said. ‘Come on, love’

‘No!’

I bent to pick her up. She writhed to get out of my grasp. I carried her awkwardly. The muddy sand got all over my clothes.

I should have stayed out in the filthy shallows with her.

I didn’t know. The last beach, the last phone call, the last trip outside, the last time you see your daughter. We never know.

***

Helen’s face has resolved into benevolence again, and I search it for any echo of her mother, any trace of my daughter in her daughter.  I don’t find it.

Laura and I didn’t always get on. We had screaming rows, into her adulthood. We’d declare that we weren’t speaking to each other, but we both needed to have the last word. The generation gap between Helen and me is a yawning chasm. She is polite. I am prickly.

Helen never knew her mother. I tried to keep in touch, but Laura wasn’t there to link us.

Helen seems to feel that family is important, even an ungrateful old bitch like me. She occasionally makes the two children appear, squirming awkwardly, and the grinning Ken-doll husband. She pities me. I resent her for that.

‘Your mother.’ I say to Helen, wanting to explain. Her face is impassive. She’s never asked me anything about Laura.

‘Your mother loved going to the beach as a child. ‘she would always beg me to take her.’

‘Yes’ says Helen, smoothly, as if hearing about an acquaintance. ‘my boys love going too.’

A wave of weariness and frustration breaks over me. She will not understand.

Helen has never been outdoors. The time when people congregated in groups, rubbed shoulders with strangers, got sunburned and covered in smelly sand, is history to my granddaughter.  Frightening, unsanitary history.

Her world is a new one. It’s not one I can join. I am unfathomable to her, with my strange nostalgia for what was putrid and dangerous. Yet she tries.

 ‘Granny? Let me take you somewhere else?’
I sigh. I fumble with the buttons at my side, until I find the right one. I press it to make her disappear.