A pregnant city with a Catholic mind

In the derelict depths of Donegal, Callum was tucking into his mother’s coffee liquor. She had left abruptly, so he decided to invite his old friends round for the weekend. The house was classically falling apart. A bit too empty and a bit too beige. He looked around at everyone around this table. They also played the same roles as they did four years away. Hector, with a farmers, squalid shirt hanging off him and ripped shorts, reveling in his own brutish banter. Will, smiling with his nicotine-stained teeth, pouring beer down his gullet, ranting about fish farming. Hector despised what he didn’t understand and Will mumbled in agreement. Jimmy was shy but surreptitiously witty. 

10:13pm, Callum surveyed the room in a desperate attempt to make eye contact with someone, but at this point in the night, eyes were routinely glued to phones. His grandfather would be fuming at the sight. He could hear his beastly, booming thoughts breathing down his neck. It felt so degrading. Having invited all his old mates from Trinity College Dublin, to sit in his living room with their shameless obsession, which they would refuse to label as an addiction. He abhorred it, not because he was righteous or passionate. But today his nerves were seizing up, for once he actually felt angry. This Anger was empowering him, it forged a shield around his body.

Hector’s eyebrows narrowed whilst his eyes widened, illuminating from the phone screen, “what the absolute….crikey Aurelia!” he announced, sparking everyone’s attention. Even her name made Callum’s throat swell. “She’s got a child” as he gained more attention and evidence, Hector confirmed with more conviction, “Fellas, not a baby, a child!” panting like a child in the queue for ice cream.

Callum, never at ease with overwhelming attention, felt every beady eye in the room on him. All in unison, like birds on a telephone wire, they exchanged glances from Callum to Hector’s phone. “Didn’t she move to Syndey or something?” But Callum could not conjure up the courage to speak.  He stared at the picture captioned Diermud off to nursery!

The little blonde boy, clutching a tiger teddy, squinting his left eye directly into the sun and hiding behind her arm. Aurelia was turning back squeezing his hand, looking a bit disheveled and aggravated. Her bright blonde hair streaming down her back and her face laminated with maple chestnut. He stared into her eyes narrowing, her eyes stared back at him. It was four years ago, but Callum could still smell her, that sweet cinnamon.

“Lads, I swear she only went out there three years ago. The boy is off to fucking nursery!”

 A few minutes later, Callum felt his body shook, “Callum…Callum…fucking…say something…mate.” You could smell the panic in their eyes. “Callum, it might not be yours, let’s just calm for a second. Look she could have met some lad out there.” They all set to work, welcoming the persona of social media detectives. Conforming to millennial stereotypes, they cottoned on quickly in the digital world. 

“Lads, let’s all just calm,” Jimmy asserted “Maybe we can figure it out, with the dates and…”  Will jumped in “whose photo is that? Surely she would have fucking told you, Callum…Surely not….Cal, Cal, when she left that night, what did she say….. this girl who tagged her in the photo is called Lux Paterson, she’s English….and her profession is No workplaces shown, no universities…Look at Aurelia’s new friends on Facebook.” They all kept speaking louder and louder and louder and seemed to be repeating the same thing again and again and again.

It was illegal to have an abortion in Northern and Southern Ireland. Callum grew up in Donegal, a pregnant city with a Catholic mind. His grandfather’s words used to pierce down his neck, “Women’s rights defies human rights, boy, do you hear me?” Callum would stare right at his chin to avoid the terror of this eye-contact. His mother never preached Catholicism to him, and Callum defied it ever since his grandfather died in 1993.

Aurelia was often away with the fairies, she loved to indulge in bawdy revelry and fantasy. Sometimes she sat in meadows picking up flowers as if she was Persephone about to be abducted by Hades. Callum knew she was even insanely serious or seriously insane when she told him she wanted to have the baby. He loved her so much. The idea of Aurelia in pain was unbearable. She lived her life in the fast lane, running blind, and never paying her anguish a visit. So how could he allow a rabbit running on adrenaline, to have a baby? But how, all the same, did he have the right to stop her? Every morning he would write down the pros and cons of not supporting Aurelia’s decision to keep the baby. But the writing, the pen, and the paper felt so useless and juvenile for the cost of a human life. He knew Aurelia wasn’t stable but it was her body, her choice.

“Callum mate…do you want to go outside?” Jimmy whispered. But Callum couldn’t hear anything. The memories were haunting him. How he used to lie in bed and pretend she was next to him. How he used to wrap his hands around his body to stop his loneliness being so destructive. How he used to curse the thoughts he had that letting go of Aurelia would allow him to be free and liberated. But he lay there every night trapped and regretful. And now, he was paying the consequences of that dreadful night. He had been trodden on a thousand times and everyone is now watching, an open wound spilling out blood.  “Callum, say something, please.”

He got up and ran until his heart felt like it was going to explode. Breathe, he asserted to himself, breathe. But the engines whirred and whined. He felt the plane in his head thundering down the runway, then bang! He was thrown forward as the pilot stamped on the brakes and brought the plane skidding to a sudden standstill. His heart was pounding a hundred miles an hour. His mind was racing with the possibilities of what might have happened - and what might happen next. Callum ultimately knew that his catastrophizing mind wasn't helping matters. The first thing he had to do was calm down, and to get some of the adrenaline out of his system. Breathe.

“Callum, Callum” voices bellowed from afar. They went after him, shining a torch, picking out of the darkness clear patches from the low clouds. Their feet getting bogged down in slush, and the rain slapping their faces repeatedly. How far had he fucking run? Jimmy’s phone torch revealed a path he had run through the snaking grassland. “I’m here, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Callum kept apologizing, it spilled out his mouth uncontrollably, “I’m so sorry.” They found Callum wrapping his arms around his legs, rocking up and down, his trousers completely soaking. “It’s okay mate, it’s okay. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Jimmy lay his hand gently on Callum’s back, soaked in sweat, and repeated: “Just breathe, mate, just breathe.” Every time Callum attempted to explain what was going on in his head, he could not fathom the fact that he was a father. He felt tears on his cheeks.

Minutes later, breathless. He muttered staring into gloomy sky hanging over them, “Once we have reached a certain age, it’s difficult to reconcile your actions with yourself.” His shock has swept over this body. “What do you mean, Cal?” Will prompted.  “I wake up most mornings and wonder what that child would have looked like, his face, his voice. I say “he” but I actually imagined our child as a girl. I was so fucking….so fucking….”

A gust of damp air that smelled of earth blew up in their faces. He was still trembling all over, “Cruel. How could I have been so cruel? How could I have not supported her decision?” Jimmy gathered all the authority he could at this moment, “Callum, now you listen to me, you were not cruel, and you are not cruel. You were the one who told Aurelia she might be pregnant, she was drinking herself dry, you offered to pay for her flights to the UK, to go with her, to provide her accommodation, to hold her hand throughout the whole process, Cal. Do you remember? Because I do, clear as day, Cal. Do you remember what happened that night, that night before she disappeared?”