‘She Flies Far From the Land’ by Chris Beausang

If she pushed with her finger, just hard enough that it began to yellow at the tip, she could make the wall behind the mirror speak, thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, the wall said, until she moved her finger away, and the wall, now released, could iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiht, on its return. She had tried to force the wall, had tried to move it quicker or further, but this was all she could get. This was its extent, this was the wall’s essential range. Listening to its reverberation, she felt as though she might be in dialogue with the building, that this skyscraper had been built for the purpose of placing her at its centre. She was in an important room. She drew her finger towards the mirror once more, in anticipation of its broad yawning thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Lady Hibernia’s reflection was clothed. It wore a cliché, coloured a dishonest shade of green. As she looked, she heard a voice from somewhere, a teacher she had once had, accusing her of wearing a top that was ‘cut down to her navel’. But this could not have been her she realized, she must have been speaking to someone else. Even if it was not her memory, the outfit was ridiculous, this country does not have the sort of air one exposes one’s collarbone to.

Everything all right in there?

Lady Hibernia raised her glass of wine and toasted herself in the mirror.

We’re both on the red I see.

She held the liquid in her mouth before swallowing, trying to develop an opinion, but she could not get past the texture. It tasted like every other glass of red wine she had ever had, like resin, but grainy and unresolved somehow.

H-hello? Are you still in there?

Aoibheann was waiting for her behind the door, her name announced by the press pass attached to her lapel. AOIBHEANN, it said, the two Ns spiralling inwards and upwards, reflecting a dawning awareness of increasingly limited amounts of space. Aoibheann’s pass therefore lacked its usual authority, for reasons logistical as well as calligraphic. The outlet Aoibheann wrote for (muchly.ie) did not have full clearance for an interview with this particular arm of the state. Her editor merely had a friend in the Department of Defence’s press office, and had secured assurances that if they posted an interview on their website, the department would not say that it had not taken place. They wouldn’t confirm it, but they wouldn’t deny it either.

It’s just a legal thing, just to make sure we’re not culpable, they’re not culpable, all that.

Would that not mean that I’m culpable?

Just keep to the questions we usually ask politicians when they’re in, like, would you rather fight a horse-sized duck, is a Jaffa cake a biscuit, that sort of stuff.

Aoibheann felt as though this brief had not adequately prepared her for conducting the interview as it was currently unfolding; speaking to the interviewee through a bathroom door was more suggestive of a hostage situation than a prelude to a journalistic career on the brink of taking flight.

I was just hoping we’d be able to finish up the interview before I have to let you go downstairs.

The door opened. Aoibheann had never had to write about anything real, anything that had ever actually happened, let alone anything quite so real, quite so happening as Lady Hibernia. Aoibheann’s sentences had only ever had to adjust themselves to black quartz surfaces and spaces populated by bar stools which were not designed to take a person’s weight, flatpack copy for content aggregators or real estate investment catalogues. Now Aoibheann wondered if there was not too much reality in Lady Hibernia – too much of that aura which emanates from the famous and lends normal people their drawn, greyed quality – for her sentences to bear.

How are you?

I’m all right. A bit worn out from all the selfies earlier.

How exactly do you do it? The flying?

Flying is just something I could always do. Always. I could always just sort of drift off if I wanted to.

Just drift?

It had started to rain and the windows became opaque. What remained of the view thickened and became smoother, as though it were painted. Lady Hibernia wondered why the lobbies were so dependent on natural light when there was so little of it to get in. The horizon of each building on the river would never enter into focus, not in Dublin, where the light was seasonal and perpetually waning. Thinking of this flaw in the building’s smart system made her feel a vagueness she might have associated with nausea and she realized she was probably more drunk than she would have liked to be.

Yes. I could always drift.

And is drifting different from flying.

It’s certainly different from going fast.

And what’s that like.

That’s more about releasing myself to it. All the air is there, I just have to tune into it.

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course not. It was much more like stretching, one did not so much fly as extend, but it was as much as Lady Hibernia was willing to part with.

You passed me once.

I’m sorry?

You passed me. At the Loopline Bridge. I was on the quays down there and you went past. It was just for a second but it was you. You were there, and then there was that sound, that thing that they say you do, when you’re breaking the sound barrier, and you were gone. It was like an explosion, like a bomb going off.

Lady Hibernia looked as though she was trying to remember something. She had just thought of the anecdote she usually reels off for journalists, about how she tried to avoid travelling above mach one these days because she found it to be bad for her skincare regime, but she couldn’t remember who it was she was supposed to endorse. Who was it she had the arrangement with? She would be sure to follow up on that and get the sponsorship into a story.

Probably just trying to get out of there.

There was actually something I was hoping to ask actually, a favour, just if it would be all right with you.

The most viral post to have been associated with Lady Hibernia was one authored by the President of the United States. The single image, which had gone out last March, was of a hefty bit of piping lying on a felt green cloth next to a bowl of shamrock, the customary gift for the Taoiseach to present the president with on St. Patrick’s Day. The image was captioned: ‘Just had the honour of meeting Ireland’s finest , Lady Hibernia! A true privilege, and very beautiful!’ Lady Hibernia, it was implied, had squeezed the pipe until her strength had impressed the shape of her hand into it, and Aoibheann had brought a similarly sized piece of metal along with a view to replicating the President’s original post, but in such a way that playfully repudiated its predecessor, parodying its use of language, the sexism, the misplaced comma.

Lady Hibernia knew exactly what she was being asked to do. Of course she did. Aoibheann had not been the first to try it, not even close.

Yeah, no, I’m really sorry, people ask me that a lot, it was just that once. My biometric data is supposed to be a state secret.

My Lady Hibernia!

The Taoiseach was descending from the floor above them, the escalator spilling him and a number of handlers a step lower every few moments. His hands were raised above his head as though he were the one receiving them and it made his suit jacket tight at the elbows, revealing at the wrists.

Some of the handlers were looking upwards to see the balconies they had read about because they were the sort of people credulous enough to think that they might be anywhere above us, at any time. The Rich. Aoibheann knew the most advertised parts of these developments were never used, that they are worth more if they were left as empty space. The rows and rows of expensive booze in complicated bottles would forever remain just as they appeared in the photographs that ran alongside her copy. Full, and in novelty-sized fridges.

Taoiseach, so good to see you again. And in such a beautiful and impressive structure as well.

I was only saying it to them I’ve been down a few times during the construction process but it’s not until it’s all finished, it’s not until it’s actually done – that’s when it’s the real thing, that’s the only way that you’d ever get a sense of it all.

That’s very true Taoiseach, very true indeed.

All the scaffolding, all the whatever, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, it’s the finished thing.

They crossed together the third of the building’s lobbies, the largest of its load-bearing intervals of post-tensioned concrete and tapering glass. As they passed down the escalator, the blinds on the broad wall began to roll out, eroding the river, subsuming the window frames in a sheet of placid shadow.

It’s a real testament to the firm that they got it up so quick, I was watching it from my office the whole time!

I have your

The whole time! Well, that is to say on the

Sorry

On the, what is it, the stream, I was watching it on the stream the whole time.

Taoiseach, sorry to interrupt, I have your speech here for you, for when I call you up.

It was printed across two pages; the reverse sides of each were blank. He shuffled one in front of the other.

A bit long no.

Just under the two? We’ll try to get it down for you for the next time Taoiseach, sorry about that.

There were two small crowds of journalists, civil servants and diplomats in the foyer, divided between eight rows of collapsible grey chairs, connected with bright yellow cable ties, trimmed neatly after the pawl. Most of them were curled around the backrests, trying to find an angle from which Lady Hibernia and her rebranded bulletproof costume could be seen. This part of the foyer was usually used as an auditorium, for when a head of state or some famous novelist or other was over. You could still feel the rails beneath the thick layer of tastefully dark green carpet which had been laid over it. The same colour as Lady Hibernia’s costume. Aoibheann wondered if this was actually true, or if this was just some copywriting muscle in her brain making itself known; if the longer she spent at her desk the more her mind would reward this recalibration of the world as a seam from which copy was mined. The minister raised his arm to the level of his shoulder.

We’ll try to get that down.

So first of all welcome everyone, welcome, eh, along this evening to Dublin’s newest conference centre.

Behind the stage, there were enormous stacks of white papers on wooden pallets marked ‘Strategic Defence Plan 2024–2030’. Aoibheann had liberated two glasses of wine from the bar where they were stacked in rows by bar staff at not quite the rate at which they were being taken. Aoibheann took two, enjoyed the sensation of holding two glasses at once, two objects purposefully made to be that bit more impossible to hold than usual, to drum up a greater sense of event. They reminded her that she had been to receptions, that Dublin was never short of rooms where the over-educated spoke as if from a great height, in an I know that you are hanging on my every word, but even if you weren’t, they actually wouldn’t give a fuck sort of way. This is how I conduct myself, Aoibheann thought, this is how I, and my people, behave.

Are you sure you have enough for your interview?

crowning achievement

Yes, absolutely thank you. All I need is some kind of starting point and then we’re supposed to punch them up into something more shareable later on.

the great cities

I see. Well if you have any other questions, you could ask them now. I don’t think I have much more than a photo op left to do here.

masthead

Oh, well, would you be willing ...

Aoibheann reached into her handbag and pulled out the pipe.

No, I meant what I said. I can’t do that sort of stuff, I can’t compromise the data like that. That thing was smelted after they posted it.

In its capacity to reshape itself and to take new forms at night, in all its clean and gleaming lines, its play with surface, this building truly is a testament to the ancient Irish talents for tradition, but also innovation and boldness. It is in this spirit that I now wish to welcome and to introduce to you all this evening, our Taoiseach, he is going to talk about the newly developed strategic plan developed by him, in consultation with the Ministry of National Unity and Defence, and the role that this is all to play in the next phase of the Lady Hibernia project. Taoiseach, thank you.

The applause began before she had finished speaking. As he walked out, he kept his head raised, and his gaze fixed on the podium.

Now, I’d first of all like to thank Maureen for speaking so well, for her kind words, as well as for her expertise on this convention centre. Maureen oversaw its construction at our national institute for urban design and planning. I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone here that she’s doing amazing work with industry there at the moment, and I’d like to make sure she gets her due for it.

This is everything that Lady Hibernia represents, to me, to us and to the rest of the world. Her work in securing the borders, patrolling the Irish seas, and proving aid – both to our own defence forces and those within the pan-European Defence Initiative – preventing those who would wish to weaken, to undermine the fabric from which our identity is spun, has been ceaseless, and will continue to be expanded. I am honoured therefore to announce that her role in this capacity will be brought to the entire continent, and will begin with her deployment to the Mediterranean, securing the borders of our European neighbours, perhaps more in need than we, to consolidate the destiny of our continent, in nipping the bud of our current crisis rather than waiting for it to spread, when it will be far too late to do anything about it. There is much that we have to celebrate as an island nation, especially at the occasion of events such as these. While I don’t want to bring the mood down – I know that this is a warm and celebratory occasion for all of us here this evening – there is a certain solemnity that an occasion such as this, the launch of our strategic plan, demands from us. A certain solemnity, and no small amount of clarity of purpose. We all of us live in a world now where our way of life is under severe and constant threat. We are fortunate, in many ways, to live in a part of the world in which we do, in close connection with our European neighbours in a community whose roots stretch backwards many thousands of years, and though over those centuries we have had our differences, there is a fundamental, shared set of values by which we all live. Many of our colleagues in the European community, more recent entrants and those who have lived in more permissive societies, have not fared so well in recent times. But in our strength, in our unity and sense of our own traditions, Ireland will always persevere.

I did have one other question I wanted to ask. And you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, I won’t put it in the story if you don’t want me to. But I just wanted to know, is there, what is it like? When you’re out there, fighting for our borders, turning those boats back to where they came from? What does it feel like to fight for your country, for the sake of your people?

I have done things I never would have imagined doing in the defence of my own nation. But I don’t even think about it anymore, I just do it. Because I know I’m part of something bigger than myself, something far more valuable than I could ever be by myself. These are responsibilities that we will not shirk, not until Ireland can present to the world an image worthy of her dignity, and her tradition.

Lady Hibernia often caught her reflection in the newer buildings along the Liffey as she passed them. These new citadels first seemed to flicker and to fragment, but the quicker she moved the more consistent they appeared, as though her reflection was sliding along a single long double-skin pane, a surface which glinted in suddenly disclosed sunlight, uninterested in revealing what was behind.

From issue #9: autumn/winter 2019

About the Author
Chris Beausang was born, and continues to live in Dublin; they have had work appear in gorse, 404INK and The Bohemyth.