Away (5 page)

Eventually the priest rounded a bend in the road that led up from the harbour town. Now he could see the straggling cottages and cabins that made up the village. He heard wind and birds and his own determined footsteps on the gravel, then the expected sound of sustained chant coming from the hedgerows. Quinn joined in unconsciously, mouthing noun declensions, moving with facility into verbs and then shouting enthusiastically long Latin sentences concerning Roman campaigns until the other chanting voices ceased and a tall form emerged from an opening door in the shrubbery that lined the side of the road.

“Well,” said the schoolmaster, “how is it that you’ve come on a day such as this?”

Behind him the voices that had been dutifully reciting broke into chaos. Words and laughter burst out from summer leaves. Great scuffling erupted.

“Creeping up like this you might have been one of the inspectors of the old days.” Both men remembered when hedge schools such as this had been forbidden by law. “I’ve most of the children here though they’re itching to be gone, if it’s some talk you’re after.”

Father Quinn was passing the old leather book from hand to hand nervously. Four or five blackbirds paced at his feet. “It’s about something else I’ve come,” he said, “besides Latin.”

Two small boys rolled out of the entrance and wrestled in the dust on the road. The dark birds spun away.

“Back in with you,” roared O’Malley. “On with Caesar. Do the part on England. Recite in whispers.”

The boys disappeared. Hisses slipped through the wattle, thatch, and lattice of the old structure.
“Britannia est magnum insulum,”
the voices announced in unison.

“Magna insula!”
shouted O’Malley, tossing his head back briefly in the direction of the greenery. “We’ve been looking carefully at your
Lives of the Saints
, if it’s that. And grateful we are for the loan of it.”

“Fine, fine,” said Father Quinn, “but, no, it’s hot that.”

“Should I send them off, then?” The whispering beyond the leaves stopped. The very air seemed to listen. The priest looked furtively up and down the road as if he were about to perform an act for which there should be no witnesses. “If you have no objection,” he said, “it might be best.”

O’Malley turned and entered the shrubbery. “Two more sentences,” he demanded, “and then be gone for the day. And say them slowly and clearly in the voice of Caesar.”

“Insula natura triquetra, cuius unum latus est contra Galliam,”
the children droned.
“Huius lateris alter angulus, qui est ad Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallia naves appelluntur, ad orientem solem, inferior ad meridiem spectat.”

“Until tomorrow, then!” O’Malley boomed. “And think about Caesar.”

Thirteen children exploded through the makeshift door and hurtled past the priest. Most were barefoot. Father Quinn watched them scatter across the road in the direction of freedom, their clothing like torn pennants waving from fragile poles.

Shortly afterwards, their tormentor appeared in the sun. “There’s one or two of them have the makings of a scholar,” he said. “But there’s not a poet in the lot of them. More’s the pity.”

“And your own poems?” asked the priest, politely.

“Ah those … they come now, if they come at all … very slowly.” The schoolmaster looked suddenly shy. “I’ve one on the recent shipwreck though, if you’d like to hear it.”

So, thought the priest, the silver and the whiskey were not divine providence after all. “Speak it to me,” he said.

O’Malley cleared his throat:

Through the several verses of the poem the priest admired his friend’s strong face, noticing the lines on the forehead and the cut of the angular bones, and then the creases made by worry, thought, and kindness around the dark blue eyes. He needed a haircut, thought the older man, but the hair itself was neatly combed, though greying and thin at the temples. Altogether the man had a pleasant countenance. What would she who was over on the island think, he wondered, of a face such as this.

The schoolmaster finished his recitation and looked towards the stones at his feet. One of his laces had broken this morning. He mostly kept his poems private, guarded against the world. But Father Quinn was his closest friend – though he came from the island and they met infrequently – and his verses were received by the priest in a friendly manner. Their views on certain other subjects, however, diverged dramatically.

“Fine,” said Father Quinn now. “A fine poem and filled with noble sentiments.”

Brian O’Malley took the compliment, as always with mild embarrassment. “Oh, there’s nothing in it,” he maintained quietly, “that hasn’t been said before.”

Both men were silent, knowing this to be true.

“Shall we walk towards the cottage then?” O’Malley touched the priest lightly on the shoulder.

They walked some distance in silence, the priest with his hands behind his back. Normally he would have complimented his friend on his few square acres of native landscape, its cliffs and pastures, the dark lakes and the sea in the distance. He would have commented on a neighbour’s lambs or a new calf. He would have continued with reference to the splendid view of Rathlin Island that could be had from this or that point, and he would have ended with a long speech on the island as being the best bit of rock that God had ever flung into the sea. But his thoughts were elsewhere, on a white neck, a green eye, a burning halo of hair.

“What is it then?” O’Malley eventually asked.

The priest looked hard at his birthplace, then into the eyes of his friend. “There’s a terrible fever sweeping the island,” he whispered.

“Not the cholera again?” The faces of all his pupils leapt into the teacher’s mind.

The men had stopped walking.

“No, it’s a fever of the mind,” said Father Quinn, though he, of all the islanders, knew it was a fever of the body as well. “There’s one on the island,” he continued, “who is away.”

“Now Father … this is mere superstition. How it persists is beyond –”

“No, listen: you don’t believe it but it’s tragically true. She’s had one from the sea for a lover and now she’s away. Wasn’t she
found asleep and he lying drowned in her arms, and the beach stones all changed and she, too, changed utterly?”

They were walking again. “And how is it that she’s changed?” asked the teacher.

“She’s …” Father Quinn’s voice caught on the word. “She’s beautiful.”

“And was she not before?”

“She’s beautiful,” insisted the priest, ignoring the question, “and she’s only speaking now in verses and songs.” Father Quinn strode angrily ahead so that O’Malley had to hurry to keep up. “And it’s the men of the island, old and young, that are stricken with the fever. Tossing, they are, on their beds at night, and then stumbling into my confession box during the day to tell me their wild thoughts. And they’ve gone all soft, no one planting or fishing, or planting and fishing without their hearts in it and having all their dreams at night taking unholy courses. And she, herself, down by the sea on that ungodly beach, singing to no one we can see, and sometimes” – the priest reddened with shame – “sometimes swimming naked.”

“I don’t believe it!” asserted O’Malley.

“Ah, but it’s true, I’ve seen her my –” Father Quinn broke off suddenly.

O’Malley swallowed a smile. The shadow of a cloud pursued the two men down the road, shaded them briefly, then went on momentarily to darken the schoolmaster’s white cottage which had just come into view.

“I’ve never seen the likes of it,” Father Quinn went on. “Everything blooming at her doorstep – and none of it planted, mind – and they say when there’s rain falling, it falls everywhere but on her mother’s cabin and she in it.”

“And this poor, unfortunate drowned creature, who was he, then?”

“I’ve already told you who he was. He was one of
them
. Sure
he’d stolen some poor mortal’s flesh to be visiting her, but one of them it’s certain. Didn’t he bring an unholy flood of whiskey with him? That and a gathering of silver teapots so plentiful you couldn’t walk but you’d be crushing one beneath your heel.”

O’Malley referred to the recent shipwreck and his own poem about it.

“Ah yes,” said the priest darkly, “and who was it I wonder who caused this poor ship to founder? She has a look on her would tempt God himself.” Quinn’s face went soft. “Never mind bring one of them up from the sea.”

So she
was
beautiful before, thought O’Malley, but he kept his own counsel.

Entering the cottage’s gloom, the priest remembered his mission with distaste. I haven’t the cunning, he thought, of the true matchmaker. Already I’ve revealed too much. I’ve forgotten what I meant to say.

“She’s good natured,” he began now, “and not likely to be away much longer, I’d think. Perhaps –”

“Would you show her to me, Father?” the schoolmaster interjected.

“Perhaps with some prayers and some holy water …”

“I’d like to see her.”

“Some long prayers might bring her back soon.”

The schoolmaster squatted near the hearth, his broad back to Quinn, blowing on the ashes, hoping to find some fire to boil water for the tea.

“Does she say the poems loud enough to hear?”

“With some prayers she’ll not be saying them at all. Her mother says she works hard. I’ll do all I can to bring her back. If you come in a month …”

“I’ll come with you,” Brian said, “in the morning.”

“But she’s …”

The schoolmaster rose, having managed to coax a flame from the remaining turf. “I’m of a mind,” he said, “to see her as she is. I’m of a mind to see her now.” He poured some water from a pail into the kettle.

The priest walked back and forth across the flags. He hadn’t the heart to speak anymore about Mary, and his spirits were too low to introduce the topic of philosophy.

O’Malley set the kettle to boil.

“What was the name of that ship?” the priest asked for want of something better to say.

“Moira,” said O’Malley. “The
Moira
was her name. She came out of Belfast, I believe.”

The priest registered the name but did not comment upon it. “And where was she bound?”

“For America, I think they said, a place called Halifax.”

“She hadn’t gone that far on her journey, then.”

“No,” agreed the schoolmaster, “she hadn’t gone far at all.”

S
HE
awoke at first light, swimming upwards from deep, green dreams.

The desire for the sea was on her. Liquid.

This was the only room she had ever known. From that small window she had watched her father’s departing sail, her small hand flat against the cool glass.

Now the room was bathed in blues and greens; the furniture dim as if holding onto night.

In her dreams her father’s sail collapsed into a green horizon. Gone.

His wake had tumbled around and eventually out of her memory. Coffinless. The singers and the smokers. Herself near her mother’s skirts and all the women wailing.

She had waited for him to return for three years until even his absence became absent.

Now she lay in the dawn with the desire on her and armies of new words in her mind requesting that she say them.

“His forehead,” she whispered, the words pushing out past her lips, “his long arm.”

She lay flat on her back with her hands open on her stomach, the idea of his arm as real as if it glistened there before her.

“Just below the surface,” she began, “with the tatters of your shirt around it and the fluid between us, the flower of your hand
turning in the ocean’s mind, your arm a bright banner, your forehead an approaching sail. My own arms pushing wind aside to plunge them into salt. Let me breathe this green with you and be with you. Our breastbones touching.”

Her bed was hard and dry. Sheets rasped, papery, against her skin and blankets were heavy on her limbs. Anything solid was an impediment when there was this sea change upon her. Her body, it seemed, was composed of salt fluids: blood and tears.

She left the cabin quietly, timing each footfall to coincide with her mother’s snores and settling the doorlatch back into place soundlessly. Soon her bare feet were covered with dew and the bottom of her skirt drenched in it. Her mind already awash with love, her eyes fixed on the black beach over which she had to walk in order to swim. Dark morning birds lifted away from the earth she walked on, her words spinning in the sky then flying over the fields to the shore.

She would swim until cold and exertion caused her body to ache and her mouth to gasp. Then she would swim harder and he would begin to take shape. She would see his ribs in the sand ripples and something in the surf would begin to speak to her. “Moira, Moira,” until all of him, a taut muscle, glided by her side. Salt-lipped, slick-thighed. And afterwards they would stagger to the black beach where she put her head on his still chest.

There was great wealth in this, great treasure. She had him, even when far from the sea in all the new words that sang and spoke in her mind and spilled from her lips. And then the pictures he had shown her: distant harbours, far shores, rivers penetrating foreign continents, a glimpse of a strange dome or monument, a riot of flowers the colour of flame dancing on a weird strand, mountains flickering on a horizon. He would open his hands under the water and there would be steeples, towers, forests, a crowded wharf.

She could build him with stones and smooth driftwood, with salt water and sand, the architecture of his body fragile and impermanent, the sea reclaiming it when she turned again towards the world. But the next time she needed him the materials would come into her hands as she swam and she would know the pleasure, the craft of reconstruction.

This morning, as always when she awakened on the beach, he was gone. As she stood to return to her mother’s cabin, the world drew fractionally closer. She saw the ferry crossing from Ballycastle in the direction of Rue Point, her own island. It would dock, she knew, at Church Bay, only a few hundred yards from the spot that she used to call home.