The Night Swimmer (23 page)

*  *  *

Conchur Corrigan's salvage craft was long and wide and flat-bottomed, with all manner of cranes, cables, winches rigged like webbing along its length. Essentially a low iron box, it seemed like a boat that should
not be able to move, much less float. The men aboard looked like the survivors of a mining disaster; the bleak pallor of their skin contrasted with the blackened smudge on their faces and hands, their stained canvas jackets.

Conchur sat beside me while we steamed back to Baltimore in the streaming rain. He was an outsize man in every sense of the word; his head looked like someone had hewn a set of eyes, nose, and mouth into a block of speckled pine, his chin squared, lantern-jawed. He was nearly seven feet tall, and broad in the shoulders. The men clustered around chattering in Irish, and Conchur grunted a few syllables in reply. They were all inspecting me carefully. Where was O'Boyle? Did the boat swamp? Was he safe?

My teeth were chattering hard, despite the blanket, and I wasn't sure if I was going into shock.

Conchur finally addressed me in English:

What the fuck were you doin' out there?

Swimming, I said.

He looked at his compatriots and they all shrugged and raised their eyebrows.

Where?

To Fastnet. And back.

That set off a string of Irish.

Conchur leaned in close. The one item about him that was off: his eyes were small, deep-set, vaguely pinkish, like the eyes of a pig.

Don't do that. Swim. Out here.

He put a large hand on my shoulder, his thumb at the base of my throat and forefinger curled over my spine. He could have wrung my neck like a chicken.

You should stay in Baltimore, he said. Or even better, back where you came from.

He wasn't hurting me, but I started to cry, ducking my head and sobbing into the blanket. Conchur gave me a pat, then took his hand off my neck. More rattling Irish with his comrades.

Did you see them killers out there? he said.

What?

Them killers. Killer whales. Sea wolves.

I think so, I said.

Almost had ya, they did.

Where's the little girl?

Conchur squinted at me.

She was on the lighthouse, I said. A little girl.

Conchur turned and said something in Irish to the men, and that set off a new round of curses. I was shaking and crying, my flesh swelling as it warmed. I couldn't shut my eyes.

There's nobody out there, he said. Just you.

*  *  *

Conchur dropped me on the quay in Baltimore and before I turned around they were already backing the salvage ship off, the smokestack belching gouts of black smoke, heading out into Roaringwater Bay. Conchur stood at the rail, and when I looked at him he shook his head and raised one giant hand and waggled a finger at me.
Bad girl.

The sky behind him, over Roaringwater and out into the Atlantic, was broken with blue, the winds calm and the seas mild. The storm had come and gone in less than an hour.

When I staggered into the pub, wrapped in a blanket, Fred was setting up a round of drinks for a small crowd of people. Standing at the bar I saw the shaggy form of Gus the German, Akio, and Magdalene. Patrick stood off to the side with the American girls Stacy and Sara. He was describing something and building shapes on the bar with his fingers. Fred saw me and started to smile, then his eyes widened and he rushed around the bar.

Jesus fuckin' Christ, Elly!

I'm sorry, I said. Please don't be mad.

I burrowed into his shoulder, and he held me, feeling my back and arms for injury. The bar fell quiet, the Smiths' “Cemetry Gates” playing on the jukebox, and I could sense everyone's eyes upon me. I felt a sudden exhaustion, like a spirit leaving my body.

I just need to lie down, I said.

Upstairs Fred hustled me down the hall into our rooms.

Let's get you in a hot shower.

I peeled the remnants of my suit off of me, the blood caked and half-dried all over my body. There was no way to hide it.

Elly? What the fuck happened?

I hit some rocks, I said.

After a shower I lay on the bed and we examined all of the cuts and Fred dabbed the bleeding spots with wads of toilet paper and taped cotton balls on the largest scratches. He was trying to be tender but his hands were clumsy and he swiped at the cuts, leaving swaths of blood. His face was loose, and he shifted from side to side. He wasn't drunk as I thought. I knew this look. He was
high;
my husband had been smoking pot with the woofers. I looked down at my body, the rising swell of my breasts, crosshatched with cuts, the poke of my hips, the soft pad of my stomach and pelvis, the looseness of my thighs. I pulled the sheet over me and started to cry again.

Oh, honey, Fred said. Please, I'm sorry.

You better go back downstairs, I said.

You sure?

Yeah, I'll be fine.

Okay, he said. Come down and tell me all about it.

He bent over and kissed me on the forehead. Laughter from the pub downstairs and the insistent wind tugging at the windows. I pulled the covers up to my chin and stared at the ceiling, blinking away tears.

*  *  *

They implored me to tell them what happened, so I played down any real danger because I thought that Fred was going to be upset about me doing the swim without him. The woofers were dutifully impressed, some I think even incredulous that I would attempt such a thing. The American girls eyed each other over their beers. Akio was touching my arm and saying,
no no no, don't do that.
I didn't mention the girl on the Fastnet Lighthouse or the killer whales.

Patrick was shaking his head with a serious frown. Standing among the crusty woofers and my husband, Patrick looked like an accountant who'd wandered off the golf course. He was clearly sober.

You don't want any part of Conchur Corrigan, he said.

Why? I asked. What are they doing out there?

Salvage operations, Patrick said, essentially scavenging shipwrecks, garbage, anything that becomes lost or damaged at sea. The old salvage laws still apply around here. You leave a wreck unmanned and it becomes fair game, and few places in the world have as many shipwrecks as this area. You don't want to mess with that area around Fastnet.

Ja,
Gus said. He's right.

And Fastnet sinks ships, Patrick said. Been doing it for a thousand years. Those rocks are littered with wrecks, Spanish galleons, tankers, military ships. A hell of a lot of personal craft, sailboats.

There's a fucking U-boat down there, Gus said, just a quarter mile west. Ships down there, stacked up deep.

And the thing is, Patrick said, nobody else can get to them. The Corrigans have laid claim to the whole area. His crew takes what they want, and nobody else gets any. Like their own personal junkyard.

The other woofers were nodding in agreement, sipping their drinks.

They saved me, I said. Conchur Corrigan, his boat, they saved me out there.

Fred put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. It was quiet for a few moments. Rain beat on the front windows, and I looked at the hot cup of tea in my hand, the swirls of milk, and felt like I was about to cry.

Don't you think, Patrick said, it's funny how they just happened to be
right
there?

Fred slapped his hand on the bar.

Another round of shotguns, he bellowed, for Conchur and his band of pirates!

I'm sorry, I said, I gotta go to bed.

I'll come up later to tuck you in, Fred said.

Sure. Good night, everybody. Have fun.

*  *  *

I slept through the night and well into the next day, awakened by the sounds of truck horns in the harbor. My body was dotted with the tiny bandages Fred had put together, blotched with dried blood. A few of the cuts stung badly, and peeling back the tape I could see the yellow crust of infection, likely caused by some kind of toxic barnacle on Fastnet. I replayed in my mind the vision of the girl on the lighthouse, her lizard speed and staring, blank eyes. Her body had been smooth and almost asexual. Perhaps it was some trick of the weather and my vision. After a few hours of swimming your eyes will often swell, filling your goggles, and this often affects your eyesight. Conchur and the other men on the boat must have thought I had lost my mind, bug-eyed and babbling about a girl climbing the side of a lighthouse. And where was O'Boyle?

I dragged myself out of bed and surprised Fred on the computer in his office. He had his headphones on like he normally does, and when he sensed my presence he quickly alt-tabbed away from whatever he was looking at. I didn't see the screen clearly, but it was obviously some images, fleshy oblong shapes, human forms.

You okay?

Yes, I said. I don't know what happened. It wasn't that long of a swim.

Elly, you swam to the fucking lighthouse.

Just a few miles. You know it isn't that far.

And you didn't have a boat, someone with you?

Yeah. It was that guy O'Boyle I told you about.

The busker? Well, what happened to him?

Not sure. The weather got weird, got rough pretty quick. He might have lost me.

Lost you? How . . . how could you lose a swimmer in the open ocean?

I don't know, I said, but I don't think it's his fault. I was fine until about halfway, when I reached the lighthouse. Then . . . things kind of got strange.

Like how?

I don't know. I was seeing things. Things in the water, on the lighthouse.

I sat on his lap, wincing as the cuts on my waist folded and rubbed. I put my arms around him and rested my cheek on his head, rubbing my face in his hair. He was still slightly smoky and funky from the night before, and I could tell by the tension in his body that he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed about what he had been looking at before I came in.

What'd you see out there? he said.

Promise you won't make fun of me.

Of course I won't make fun of you.

Yes, you will.

I swear I won't.

I saw a girl. On Fastnet.

On the island?

Actually on the lighthouse. Like, climbing up the side?

Wait a minute, he said. Tell me exactly what you mean.

So I described to him how I felt during the swim and what I saw.

Killer whales? Are you fucking serious?
Jesus,
Elly.

They are extremely rare, I said. And there is no record of a killer whale attack on a swimmer.

That's just because the water is too fucking cold! Nobody swims in water like that except you!

But the girl, that's the thing . . . I can't understand.

Maybe an effect of light or exhaustion, Fred said. A hallucination. But killer whales . . . seriously, you have to promise me you won't do that again.

Okay. I won't.

Fred squeezed me and nuzzled my neck.

Weren't you scared?

Yes, I said. I was.

I don't know how you do it.

Me either.

You should have told me.

You would have tried to stop me.

Fred took my face in his broad hands and put his nose against mine.

No, he said. I would never do that. I would have helped you.

*  *  *

A note arrived at the pub the next morning, sealed and addressed to me.

E— The fulmars, bonxies, and shearwaters will be filling the skies over the Bill. The hedges will be full of nightjars. Cheers, Seb

T
he next week I took morning walks across the bogs of Ballyieragh and along the southern path to the Bill of Clear to sit with Sebastian and watch the skies. He was there to catch the single migratory refugee as it beat through the winds to the island. But when I sat with him in the tussocky grass, cross-legged and passing his binoculars, Sebastian making notes in his book, he had a way of making me feel like his attention was never divided. The conversation was casual, but comfortably steady, and Sebastian mostly asked me questions. When I talked he would watch me, turning to the sky for a moment, then back, but he always let me play out the thought until I was done.

I didn't really know what I was doing with Sebastian out on the Bill, but I did like to hear him talk about birds. When the bird-watchers gathered in the pub, it was impossible not to eavesdrop. Bird names sound like the ravings of a madman. Greenshank, chiffchaff, firecrest, glaucous gull, teal, wigeon, scaup, shoveler, coot, kittiwake, and black redstart. Such hallucinatory verbiage, like the vibrant language of insanity. Sebastian had an endless supply of these absurdities at his disposal, and he would pepper his sentences with goldcrest, bonxie, pipit, wagtail, rook, pochard, plover, merganser, shelduck, turnstone, ring ouzel, wheatear, crake, ruff, brambling, and lapland bunting.

Fred had this saying he liked to trot out at gatherings with literary scholars.
Literary theory is to writers like ornithology is to birds.
It
was just another way for him to lighten the responsibility, a bullshit way of alleviating the need for an explanation while sounding profound.

Sebastian and I seemed content to respect the relative privacy of our personal lives. One afternoon as we were perched on our usual crag on the Bill, I found myself crossing this boundary.

Do you have a family?

No, Sebastian said, not at present.

Were you married?

No, he said. Almost once. But no.

Brothers or sisters?

I had a younger brother, Mick. He died a few years ago.

How'd that happen?

Sebastian ran his fingers through his hair and leaned over and inspected the grass at our feet.

Look at this, he said. Shrews.

There were a couple of tiny rodents, smaller than my thumb, tumbling among the roots of the thick grass. Their tiny pink faces came to fleshy points, their back legs spinning, crawling over each other.

He killed himself, Sebastian said. Cut his wrists in the bathroom of a chip shop.

We kept watching the shrews struggle.