We present an extract from Rituals, the new novel by Danielle McLaughlin, the acclaimed author of The Art of Falling and the short story collection Dinosaurs On Other Planets.
Joan, a public servant in her fifties, is in the habit of living alone. Or rather, she's in the habit of living with the many rituals and routines—some ordinary, some less so—that allow her to navigate her days.It’s a system that works very well for Joan… until it doesn’t. An unexpected career break prompts her to take in a lodger, a young man studying English Literature at the university. Together they must learn to negotiate everything from a shared bathroom to the hazards of global warming.
Set in Cork city, Rituals takes us inside an obsessive mind and invites us to reflect upon the power and beauty contained within our daily lives, but also the dark grip of compulsion.
Every year 'Thornfield' stirred out of sleep mid-January when the three red ceramic pots migrated from the back step to the front. The largest pot was placed with its chipped edge facing the wall. What the eye doesn't see, Joan’s mother said. Her mother was dead some twenty years but wasn’t one to let a thing like that stop her from having her say. This January seemed starker than usual, bare-limbed, the near-nude cherry tree by the gate clinging to a smattering of leaves. Beyond the gate, past the small park and neat terraces, behind the bulwark of warehouses, the sea lapped at the edges of the city.
Joan cast an eye over the pots as she turned the key in her front door. Nubby shoots of new growth poked from the mulch. In a week or two they would deliver on their promise of snowdrops.
They would sit on the front step until the beginning of March when she would load them again into the wheelbarrow and drive them round the back, to be replaced by the camellia in the terracotta planter. She hung her raincoat on its peg in the hall beside the hook for her car keys. In the living room, she took the pink-lipped conch shell from the mantelpiece. Holding it with her right hand, she shook it gently over the outstretched palm of her left. A tiny plastic rabbit slipped out. Whenever Joan went out, she dropped the rabbit in the conch, to be resurrected as soon as she returned home. He'd once been primrose yellow, but much handling over the years had worn away the paint.
A bit like Joan herself.
Now only the sheltered hollows of the rabbit's eyes retained their original colour, which meant Plastic Rabbit always looked slightly jaundiced. She carried him out to the hall, returned him to the shallow pottery dish patterned with celtic spirals where he lay on his back, eyes open.
There! Conch, tip, palm, dish, carry on.
Now she could go into the kitchen where she flicked the switch on the kettle, took down the box of Barry’s tea bags. Locating the English Department had proved easier than anticipated. She’d expected turreted attic rooms, winding steps worn thin by centuries of learning. Instead she found herself in a space resembling the Motor Tax Office. A large Perspex sign pointed her down a wide corridor. She took the lift to a foyer where students—she presumed they must be students—stretched full length across seats.
They napped, they ate, they chattered. The aesthetic was less hallowed halls, more airport boarding gates. Joan had been ready to give an account of herself, but nobody attempted to stop her when she took the square of card from her pocket and pinned it to the corkboard. She glanced left and right. It could be that one of these bright, noisy, overly relaxed young people would become her lodger.
How would she feel about that?
Not the boy reclining across two chairs, my goodness, no. What she had in mind was someone more like the presentable young man pulling papers from his rucksack, though she would have preferred that he wasn’t holding the pages between his teeth while he continued to rummage. Now there would be spit and slobber all over them.
Perhaps not that young man after all, but never mind, there were plenty of others. Renting out a room wasn’t something she’d had to do before. She’d bought Thornfield with a 10% deposit and a twenty-year mortgage, since paid off, back when it was possible for a young clerical officer to do that on their own.
It had only ever been Joan and Thornfield, Thornfield and Joan. Then the career break had happened - how apt that word break - and it was Thornfield’s turn to bring in a little money. A student would keep her synapses sparking. She’d decided to steer clear of the Business School, the Maths and Physics Department, all the science faculties: too many sparks and one had oneself a fire. But someone with whom she could discuss books might be nice.
She’d kept the wording of the advert to a minimum. Room available in comfortable house in King’s View Terrace. Suit student of English literature. Originally it had said 'suit male student of English literature’ but the male part was possibly illegal, so she’d torn that one up, started again.
Rituals is published by The Stinging Fly Press
