The Heather Blazing (25 page)

“No, I'll go home, or I might go back down to the other house.”

They sat in the car without saying anything. The street was empty.

“What about tomorrow?” he asked. “Can I see you after work?”

“That's fine,” she said.

“I'll park the car in the Railway Square, so no one will notice me. I've spoken to enough people. Could you come around there?”

“That's fine,” she said again. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

He could no longer sleep in the house. Too much of its atmosphere brought back her memory and he could not bear it. He made a bed for himself in the car and spent the day away from the house, walking, desperately trying to make himself tired so that he could sleep. He left his rucksack down on the sand and looked again, but a wave had risen and blocked his view. When he saw it now it looked like a man's head, a diver's head perhaps. It seemed so inert in the water, floating without moving and disappearing each time the water swelled and folded.

It was a seal. And it was much closer to the shore than he had ever witnessed in all the year. When he was a child, the appearance of a seal would be greeted with wonder by the people on the strand in Cush. He had a vivid memory of a day in the past, a mild summer's day and someone, a woman, standing and pointing and telling all of them who were lying down taking the sun to look, there was a seal, look how close he is. And they all stood up to see.

Eamon was too old then to be lifted but someone hunched down and pointed out to sea and he had searched the waves and had seen nothing while the adult—who could it have been? he was sure that it was not his father—had become impatient with him for not seeing. And then he saw it out there, a small, black shape in the water: the seal's head. The seal had come in to look at them. He's harmless, someone said. Even then, he had felt unsure about this blubbery animal in the water, and for the next few days he felt uncomfortable swimming.

*  *  *

He left the house late in the morning and walked down to the cliff. It was a warm, sunny day, but there was also a strong wind which whistled in his ears as he turned in the lane towards the gap in the cliff just beyond Mike's house. He paid no attention to the house as he passed. It was only when he turned to descend the cliff that a figure caught his eye. Mike was sitting in an old wooden chair beside the chimneypiece where his living room used to be. He had glasses on and was reading a newspaper. If the front wall of his house had not been missing it would have looked like an ordinary, domestic scene, but now it was strange, almost comic. Eamon did not know if Mike was aware of his presence or not. Maybe he did not want to be greeted. It would be hard to know what to say. Eamon stood there for a moment longer, giving his cousin every chance to look up from the newspaper, but Mike did not move. Eamon walked down the cliff away from him.

He could not wait to tell Carmel what he had seen. He thought about when he would see her next as he took a few steps down, and then he realized, as a slow pain went through him, that she was dead, that he would not have a chance to tell her about the scene he had witnessed. This made him understand, more than ever, that he could not face her not being with him, that he had spent the time since she died avoiding the fact of her death. He went down to the strand and sat down in the shade. The wind was still strong and blew sand at him. He thought about it: the interval just now when he had believed that she was alive, that she was back in the house, in the garden maybe, or in the porch, reading the paper, or a novel, and he would come back in from his walk or his swim and he would tell her the news: Mike has taken to sitting in the shell of his house, with its walls open to the four winds reading the paper. But, slowly, painfully, he recognized that there would be nobody when he went back to the house.

Two days later he was still thinking about that small episode, his lapse into believing that she was still alive, and as he walked along he tried to think about her dead, he repeated to himself that he would not see her again, that he was alone now, and she was alone too in her grave, her flesh slowly rotting until she would be unrecognizable, bones and a few remnants of hair. Carmel is dead, he whispered as he walked. Carmel is dead.

He sat down on the sand. It was early and the sun was still low over the soft horizon. His back was sore from the previous day's walking, but his feet were well rested. He thought that in future he would not carry the rucksack which was too heavy for his back. He wondered how he would carry the togs and towel, the raincoat and the pullover, and he let his mind wander over arrangements for the next day's walk. He closed his eyes.

When he stood up he noticed a tractor coming from Ballyvalden or further north, moving slowly along the shore. He walked towards Ballyconnigar, aware that soon he would have to stand aside while the tractor rolled past. He saw the scene already, visualized himself saluting the driver and the driver waving back. He wondered if the driver would be wearing a cap.

He stood at the beach below Keating's house and inspected the damage which the previous winter and spring—there had been bad storms in the spring—had wrought. The County Council had put more huge boulders just below the cliff in an effort to ward off the sea. He remembered when there was a road on this side of the house and a field beyond the road. He remembered the cars edging around the road in the years when the field had disappeared and the drop was sheer down to the strand. One of those Sundays in summer: a clear blue sky and a sharp sun glinting off the windscreens of Morris Minors and Morris Austins as they turned gingerly, cautiously into the car park. The sound of the big radio in
Keating's kitchen, blaring out reports of hurling matches and the fate of the Wexford team.

The tractor passed him as he stood there. He turned and waved, smelling the thick smoke from the exhaust pipe which rose from the body of the engine. The driver waved back and slowed down to cross the river where it spread out into shallows as it neared the sea. Some years before with money from Europe, they had built a stone slipway for the small fishing boats, but they had not understood how vulnerable the land here was to change, how the sand levels shifted each year. Now he could see the exposed foundations of the slipway. It no longer reached the sea. It was an eyesore, he thought, and soon it would be completely useless.

Keating's house still hung on at the edge of the cliff. The whitewash was bright and glaring, and the building itself seemed firm and strong. Soon it would go, but they had been predicting this for years. He recalled someone showing him once how it would not be finally threatened from the side but from behind, where the hill had been. But this prediction had turned out not to be true.

He sat on the wall, watching a herd of cows gathering against the fence in a field across the river. The air was full of flies and he had to move his hand up and down in front of his face to ward them off. There were a few caravans in the field which led to the strand and in the adjoining field which was used all year as a caravan park. There was also a modern tent pitched close to the river with a station wagon beside it. But there was no one to be seen.

He stood up and walked back to the strand, crossing the river and making his way slowly south. Earlier, when he set out, the air had been still, there was almost no wind, but now a wind had blown up and a thin film of sand was being blown northward along the strand. He could feel the wind in his face, but it was pleasant and warm as he walked along. He tried to move with an even step.

There were gulls and a few other solitary sea birds lurking over the waves. The sea was calm. He was hungry already, even though he had eaten a boiled egg and some toast before he left the house, but he decided to go for another hour or so without opening the sandwiches. He felt sweaty and tired but decided to have his first swim of the day later, when he had walked further along the strand. Since he began to spend each day walking he had learned how to divide up the time.

He was almost at Curracloe now and looked back along the strand. The day was becoming hazy and the sand being blown along the shore lessened visibility. There was nowhere he could sit to eat the sandwiches he had packed without the sand being blown into his face. He walked up the strand towards the dunes where there was more shelter. His back was beginning to pain him and he was glad to take off the rucksack. He sat down and removed his canvas shoes. His feet were hot and there was a small blister on his heel. The skin around it was red and raw. He took out the towel and put it behind his head as he lay stretched out.

He looked up at the pale sky, feeling sleepy but knowing that he must not sleep. He would have to keep going. He sat up and opened the flask, poured the hot tea into the cup and unwrapped the sandwiches and ate without thinking, staring down towards the sea, which was washed of all colour now, just vague hints of blue and green against white and grey.

He threw away the last drops of tea and re-wrapped the sandwiches which were left, then packed everything, including the canvas shoes, into the rucksack and stood up again. He rolled up the bottom of his trousers and walked along in his bare feet, but the blister was too painful so he had to sit down on the sand, open the rucksack again, put on a pair of socks and his canvas shoes.

He set off walking again. He carried no watch or clock so he had no idea how long he had been on the strand, but guessed that it was one o'clock or two o'clock and that he had
been walking for two or three hours. He passed a few people, but there was no one lying on the sand or going into the sea to swim; the wind was too strong. The sand was softer nearer the sea; he walked where it was wet. At low tide, he knew, you could pick cockles here, but the tide was well in and the strand grew narrower as he walked along. In a few miles it would disappear altogether. Then he would take to the road.

After a mile or so the sun became stronger, although there was still a haze over the sea. The wind had died down. He sat again and fished into his rucksack to find his togs. He took out his towel as well and slowly took off his clothes and put his togs on. The blister on his foot was bigger now. He tried to burst it but it was too hard. He stood up and tested the water. It was not too cold. He limbered up, arching his back to see if he could get rid of the pain at the base of his neck which spread down his back every time he moved his head. But the pain was still there. He turned and walked slowly into the sea, ignoring the waves and wading without hesitation once the water was up to his waist. Without stopping, he dived in and swam out, lifting his head only to take in air, trying to exercise his arms to relax the muscles in his neck.

He set himself goals: to swim out twenty strokes and back in again, and over to the side and back again, and over to the other side and back again once more. Growing tired he rested his head on the water and floated. He closed his eyes unsure now whether he was floating in towards the shore or out towards the horizon, but on opening them he found that he had let himself float a good distance northwards and swam back until he was close to where he had left his rucksack.

When he had dried himself he moved away from the shore, further up the strand. He dressed himself and lay down, too tired to put off sleep. He placed the towel under his head and closed his eyes.

On waking he knew he had been in a deep sleep. He was cold and reached into the rucksack and took out his pullover.
His legs were stiff. He wished that there was a bed close by with clean white sheets that he could crawl into, but there was still a long day ahead. If he went back now, he knew he would sleep and then wake in the night, and he could not bear that prospect. For the first few days in Cush he had been unable to spend time inside the house but instead had sat in the garden or gone into the village. He had begun to sleep in the car, having made a bed for himself in the back seat. But when he woke after an hour or two—as he usually did—he felt a terrible blackness.

He had nowhere to go. The court was on holidays and the house in Dublin was too big and empty. Soon he would have to go back there, he could not carry on like this day after day, this interminable walking from the morning until darkness fell, this trudging along, forcing himself to keep going. There was nothing else he could do here, he could not read, or listen to music, or sit in the garden. He hated going into the house. At least now at the end of the day, on arriving home at nightfall, he could sleep the whole night long. He was occupied walking; it kept him going. As he lay there in the afternoon haze on the empty strand beyond Curracloe he knew that he could not turn back, that he would have to go forward for an hour or two more, before making his way home.

The sky had become clear by the time he started back. He walked up a long lane, past a few white-washed farmhouses and along a well-worn track across a field, before hitting a by-road which led to the main road from Wexford to Curracloe. He took off his canvas shoes and put on the stronger leather shoes which he carried in his rucksack. The blister on his heel had become more painful and he felt a pain, too, in the back of his legs each time he took a step. Walking was more difficult on the road. Each step became an ordeal, but he knew that he still had miles to go.

The weather had settled, and the late afternoon sun was strong. He tried to concentrate on patches of white in the sky,
small impermanent wisps of vapour like he had been taught to imagine the soul would look when it would fly out when you died and soar into the sky if you had no mortal sins. He believed in nothing now, no soul, no cloudy spirit offered him consolation. He believed that death was absolute, the body died and became dust.

He was tempted to stop and have a drink in the village pub, but he knew that alcohol made him broody and morose, even one drink turned his mind towards self-pity. Also, he was afraid to go into the pub to have an orange juice or a glass of water because he did not want to stop now, he knew how hard it would be to begin walking again. He turned from the village back down towards the strand. It was important, he knew, not to think about how near or how far he was from his destination. Everywhere was far. He walked: took step after step and only allowed himself to think about the ground he had already walked along.