The Night Swimmer (30 page)

A few months before Maeve died she locked herself in the old castle, refusing to come out or to take visitors. She said that her sister told her she must die there. When they finally broke in the door after many weeks of silence, they found her moldering in the corner, covered in a fuzz of mossy toadstools. On the castle walls she had scratched with chalk in letters a foot high:

Insa Chonair chlúthair ar thaobh na gréine,

sea a dhein Ciarán Naofa ar dtúis a chill

In cosy-sheltered Comar on the sunny side,

Holy Kieran first built his church.

Then in English she had written:

A brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,

Dashed all to pieces. Oh, the cry did knock against my very heart.

Those blown in on the easterly winds, they will sink them all.

The blind priest, animal spirit, the cliff walker with cloven feet,

Night swimmer, who watches the drowned and the yet unborn,

All will lament as the great eye is swallowed by wind and water.

I was drowsing on O'Boyle's reclining chair, the caravan dim. As he talked, his dark shape hunkered over the table, I had half dreams of fish people in the waves of the Ineer, elfish children scurrying around Fastnet Rock, I saw Highgate standing on a windswept cliff, inches from the edge, his arms outstretched to the sea, the giant turning arms of the wind turbine above him. The drumming on the roof had stopped, and the only sound was the gurgling, ticking noise of the island draining, the water pouring through the vast honeycomb of limestone bedrock. The air in the caravan was fetid and close and I asked O'Boyle to open a window.

What time is it?

Just past four, he said.

Really? Was I asleep?

No, he said. I've been talking a long time.

Do you mind if I take a nap?

O'Boyle got up and brought me a bottle of water and a thin wool blanket. He spread the blanket over me, tucking it under my chin. I was warm, and the chair felt unbelievably soft. My muscles felt like melting butter.

What about Kieran? Aren't you going to tell me about him?

Yes, I will. And then we will go.

I was rapidly falling into a quiet hole, my body letting go. I closed my eyes.

Where?

O'Boyle's voice sounded like it was coming from far away, like it was echoing down a long tunnel.

To Highgate's, he said. To see Miranda.

*  *  *

I had a dream that I was lying in a shallow pool, a muddy bottom, with twigs and leaves floating in the brackish water. There was an intense pressure and my stomach began to twist and swell, growing
larger, and I sat up and gripped it with my hands. It was perfectly round like a snow globe, and inside I could see a rounded bay, like the Ineer, full of beautiful blue water, ruffled to whitecaps in a gentle wind. In the water were hundreds of moving things, swimming at the surface and below, and as my stomach grew I could see that they were faces, human faces, all paddling and stroking around, moving among each other in a kind of choreographed mix. They were all tiny children. Then the figure of a man rose up, an old man in a cassock with a wooden cross on a leather thong around his neck. He waved his hands over my stomach and everything went black.

*  *  *

I awoke in the dark, lying in my bed at Nora's. I was in my underwear under the covers and my body felt sore and wracked like I had swum for miles in heavy chop. A shadow crouched by the bed, and by the smell and the breathing I could tell it was O'Boyle. He was crying. I sat up.

What? What is it?

Oh, Elly I'm sorry, he blubbered.

What?

He wiped his face on his arm, rubbing it back and forth like a dog.

What did you do?

You never meant anything, O'Boyle said, you never meant anything but goodness to me. I knew that once you saw her out on the rock. We knew you would come.

What are you talking about?

Fastnet, he said. You saw her, on the tower. Elly, I'm sorry but it was the tea that first time. You wouldn't listen to me. The second time . . . I couldn't save you. Nobody could. But she was protecting you. Otherwise—

You drugged me? I said. Why? Why did you do that?

We had to do it, he said. You don't understand. You don't know what he can do.

O'Boyle stood and shuffled to the door. When he opened it the
light from the hall revealed his face wet with tears. He was covered in mud and brambles, his pants torn.

I'm sorry, he said. You never meant anything but goodness.

*  *  *

In the morning I packed up my bag and walked down the hill to the South Harbor. The ferry wasn't due for another hour, so I sat on the seawall of the Ineer and watched the swells roll in and push themselves up the stones. I wanted to leave, to get back to Fred and the Nightjar, to take a long shower and then sit downstairs at the bar with him, a cup of coffee, and his scribbling, listening to music we both loved. I couldn't bring myself to go back up the hill and to Highgate's farm.

Time passed, and in the North Harbor the ferry came and went. Why would O'Boyle want to find Miranda so badly? Had I led him to her? I would at least go see Highgate, make sure everything was okay. Maybe it would be nothing, and I wouldn't have to tell him what I had done.

I know how this sounds, now. I'm not proud of it.

*  *  *

Highgate seemed happy to see me. He had been out in the fields tending to the new kids and his fingers were cramped up with cold and we sat down in the living room to warm up. I stirred the peat fire and adjusted the damper.

Wonderful to have you here, Elly, Highgate said.

I was dunking a biscuit in Akio's milky-weak tea when Gus burst through the front door.

Ravens, he yelled, the fucking ravens!

Highgate leapt from his chair, hands tucked in front of him like a boxer. The dogs were already at the door, setting up a low whine, hair raised. Highgate moved to the door, and by the time I got outside he was sprinting down the back fields to the sea, the dogs flanking him. The sun had broken out of the clouds for a moment, and the air over Roaringwater Bay was dazzling. At the first fence Highgate took
a few long strides then stepped up and over, cut right, and headed north, skirting the heavy section of undergrowth and bramble. He must have counted the paces to the fence. The old man was
moving,
outpacing the dogs through the heavy grass.

We hustled after him, and when we came around the bramble rise to the north field Gus drew up, pointing into the sky. Heavy black shapes moved in slow concentric circles, broad-winged ravens, a couple dozen or more descending and ascending like a silent black funnel to the ground. The wind shifted and howled, impossibly hard, and I instinctively put my hands to my ears, and the harsh overcast sky and bright colors made everything lose focus and telescope like a flickering filmstrip: white flashes on the ground, Highgate in his parka glistening wet in the patches of sunlight, the dogs leaping around him. A kid struggled on its side, its face a gory mess of blood and bone. Gus shouted something to me I couldn't hear in the buffeting wind. Highgate knelt on the ground, his hands searching the goat's body. The dogs kept a tight circle around him, their eyes pinned on the cone of ravens that screamed and banked over the blind man's bowed head.

Gus and the woofers worked quickly to gather the other kids and got them back into the barn. Back at the house I waited in the living room while Highgate and the woofers disposed of the body. I could hear them murmuring in the kitchen, something like a prayer. Highgate shuffled in and joined me on the couch, kicking the stove with his bare feet to determine if it was hot. I scooped some peat out of the bucket and arranged the flue.

Sorry you had to see that, he said. It is a rare thing.

How can you stop them?

You can't, he said. You can only hide the kids, hope the mothers protect them. The problem is that the ravens work in pairs; one distracts the mother while the other goes after the kid. They always attack the eyes, blind them first, so they don't know where to run. But a whole flock . . . that just doesn't happen.

He took off his hat and ran a hand through his white hair.

They are harbingers, he said. It's been many years since they've come. The old islanders called them the messengers of woe. Something else is on its way.

What?

The stove hissed as the draft was sucked across the coals. Highgate set his tea down on the table with a rattling hand and turned his sightless eyes to me. He looked genuinely afraid.

I had a sudden image of O'Boyle, standing among broad leaves and engorged blossoms, the sky a cloak of glistening stars. It wasn't like a remembrance, more like a scene played out in my mind. He was in a small valley with heavy vegetation, and I could smell the intense odors of foxglove and ragwort, the musk of goat. O'Boyle turned and said something to another figure standing nearby. A woman, wearing a large man's coat, her long hair wet and hanging down the back, her hands shaking. There was no wind, and the powerful animal smell hung heavy in the air. I could hear the faint plink of water dropping into a pool. I couldn't see her face.

It was me.

There were others there in the dark, other men moving around us.

*  *  *

You need to go, Highgate said. Get back to Baltimore, your husband. I'm afraid they are going to come for you, too.

He knew.

*  *  *

The wind rattled the phone booth behind the post office. I had to use my flashlight to see the numbers on my phone card and to dial the sixteen-digit number to reach my parents. A man answered. His voice was strangely electronic, and for a moment I wasn't sure if my parents had gotten a new answering machine. But then the voice paused and was obviously waiting for an answer.

Hello? Dad?

Yes? the voice said.

It's me, it's Elly. Can you hear me?

There was a cloud of static and then the line became clear. It was my father.

Something terrible happened, he said. Your sister . . .

More static like an electronic sea.

. . . done it to herself like that. We don't know what to do. Your mother . . .

Hello, Dad? You're breaking up.

My mother got on the phone. She was crying.

Hello, Elly? Oh, my goodness, you wouldn't believe it. Have you been watching the news?

No, Mom, what's going on? What happened to Beatrice?

Your sister . . . hospital yesterday, but no one really knows . . . fires across the river and the smoke you wouldn't believe . . .

Mom? Are you guys okay? Is everyone okay?

Yes, yes, she said. Don't you worry. We're fine.

 

My sense of morality is that life is a creative process and that anything that chafes and impedes this forward thrust is evil and obscene. The simplest arrangements—trees, a line of bathhouses, a church steeple, a bench in a park—appear to have a moral significance, a continuity that is heartening and that corresponds to my whole sense of being. But there are speculations and desires that seem contrary to the admirable drift of the clouds in heaven, and perhaps the deepest sadness that I know is to be absorbed in these.

We rise from sleep all natural men, boisterous, loving, and hopeful, but the dark-faced stranger is waiting at the door, the viper is coiled in the garden, the old man whispers lewdly to the boy, and the woman sits at her table crying.