Kate blurted, “Above what?”
“Above what’s too close to your noses, young Kate!”
“Above the world?”
All four friends stared at Padraig as he shook his head at their lack of comprehension. He spun around a quarter circle and he lifted his face to the mountains that rose to the south of where they were gathered, their lower slopes cloaked in his own woods.
Kate said, “You mean, above the Comeraghs?”
“Not just these foothills. The proper mountains that lie behind them.”
Kate stared up at the foothills, which seemed quite mountainous in themselves. She had lived in the shadow of the Comeraghs all her life but she had never attempted to climb them, not the real mountains.
On the Roof of the World
Setting out before eight, they cycled the five or six miles to Ballymacarbry. They had planned it all the day before, with the best route highlighted on the Ordnance Survey map which traveled with them in Alan’s backpack. They took the turn for the Nire Valley. Then, in single file, with map-reader Alan leading, they cycled another three or so miles through the cool morning sunshine until they came to the bridge. After another twenty minutes of twisting and turning, they found their way to the parking lot at the base of the mountains, where they padlocked the bikes and started out on foot. Here, in the long shadows of morning, they sipped piping hot coffee from Kate’s mammoth thermos, high-fived with nervous laughs, and then set to climbing straight away.
Of course not a single one of them really knew what they were doing here. On the compass, which was Kate’s contribution, they took a bearing on 76 degrees, northeasterly toward the Gap. Within minutes they were out of the shadows and squinting up into the face of the sun, weaving a path through mauve bell heather still soaked with overnight dew. They filed one by one over a stile made of lichen-coated stones, stopping to look upward. Alan pointed to a series of white posts in the distance that indicated the way to the Gap.
Mark offered to high-five Kate.
She hesitated. “No more stuff about Conan the Barbarian.”
He grinned. “You want to know the truth? You were supposed to melt when I saved you—like throw your half-naked and bleeding body into my arms. But even in my fantasies you wouldn’t play along. You’d say stuff like, ‘We’ll always be friends.’”
Kate shook with suppressed laughter.
“Don’t ever stop laughing at me, Kate.”
She punched his arm, then returned the high-five.
Mark couldn’t help but be pleased at this. But Alan looked questioningly at Kate, who was now continuing to climb. He quizzed Mark. “You tell Grimstone why we’re here?”
“It’s the only reason we’re still with you.”
“He wasn’t suspicious?”
“The whole idea was to get him suspicious.” Mark did a pretty good take on the Grimstone growl. “‘What were his
words—I want the very words, and the manner he spoke them—when the old man asked you this?’”
“What planet’s this guy on?”
“All I know is he has suddenly taken it into his head to go back to London. He’s going to be away for two weeks, leaving Bethal in charge.”
“Huh-huh-hooray!”
The boys turned to look at Mo, who had been trailing behind at this point but had taken advantage of the exchanges with Kate to catch up to them.
“But it was a close thing. I could see he was thinking maybe he should take us back with him if for no better reason than he knew we wanted so much to stay. Look, I’m really sorry, Alan, but I told him he was probably right about your grandfather. You know he thinks he’s some kind of pagan. Like a druid or something. I told him there was something going on—a lot more than Padraig is telling us.”
Alan pinked with anger.
“We couldn’t let him take us away, not now. And I could see it in Grimstone’s face, he was really thinking of doing that.”
Mark didn’t add Grimstone’s words, as those eyes came close to peering directly into his own.
“You trollop’s whelp! Do you think I haven’t sensed the lust in you whenever you’ve been within a mile of that red-haired Jezebel? You’ve filled that confounded camera thing with pictures of the harlot.”
“Kate isn’t a harlot. You see yourself in everybody!”
Grimstone had taken hold of his ear on one side and slapped his face with all of his might on the other. Mark’s ear was still swollen, and there was a sound in his head like a high-pitched whistle.
Mark pressed on into the stiff breeze, which was whistling through the heather. Forcing the memory of Grimstone out of his mind, he followed in Kate’s wake.
From where she had once again fallen twenty or so yards behind the others, Mo watched Mark increase his pace to catch up with Kate. Mo’s blue anorak was already stained with the gold of pollen from the heather. They were all approaching the pass Alan had circled in red pen on the map. Thankfully, she had escaped last night’s interrogation. But she had seen poor Mark’s face when Grimstone had finished with him, and she hated the price her brother had paid for the fact they were here.
But now, gazing around her at the increasing drama of the mountains, inhaling the scents of wildflowers, Mo wondered what it was that Padraig had been hinting at yesterday. What were they supposed to find up here? Was Padraig really some kind of pagan priest? The truth was that she had no answer to those questions. Yet it seemed to her that Padraig did not talk or behave like somebody steeped in any kind of religion. He talked about nature more the way she had felt about it all her life. Where most people saw, or heard, or even smelled, the seasons—Padraig lived them. She recalled
Padraig’s words:
I think you won’t have to look very far before the power finds you!
As the morning wore on and the heat increased, they took to a rhythm of climbing in silence. Alan wondered if Mom had climbed these same mountains at his age. It was another way in which he felt the sickening intensity of her loss. Step by step, he found himself mulling over the deaths of his parents. Had it really been an accident? Or was there, as Padraig believed, some . . . some what? Some kind of conspiracy?
Oh, my God—what if Grandad was right and the idea had been to kill him and not Mom and Dad!
But why would anybody want to kill him?
It made absolutely no sense. But try as he did to dismiss it as superstitious nonsense, the whisper would start up again in his mind. He just couldn’t shake the idea that weird things were happening—they really were happening—things that seemed to stretch coincidence.
Well, okay! So weird things did happen. It didn’t mean you had to believe in unseen forces, or murderous conspiracies.
But then the little voice began to whisper again. It said: alright, but you know Grandad has a point because you really were supposed to have been in that chopper with Mom and Dad when they crashed. And you know that Kate was actually right there too. She was with her parents when they were murdered. She had only
escaped being murdered by a hair. She lived because an African nun cared so much about her that she shoved Kate out of sight and died herself. And Mark and Mo—what was the real truth there?
Oh, man!
Alan shook his head, trying to clear the confusion from his mind. Then he looked around and realized they had arrived at the Gap. He sat down on the heather and opened the backpack so he could take another look at the map. The Gap was a pass between the Comeragh Plateau to one side and the Knockanaffrin Ridge on the other. The Plateau would take them higher, but the climb was going to get more difficult.
He waited for Mark and Kate to catch up with him before asking them, “Guys, what do you think? Do we head left? Make for the Ridge?”
They agreed to do that. Meanwhile the slope got steeper and the going tougher. In places they were forced to climb on all fours. But the scenery was worth it. The view was breathtaking.
The blue of the sky seemed to have washed over the ground so the sheen of high summer glowed in the rocks, the crystals glinting purple and gold, indigo and lilac. Alan waited a little longer so Mo could catch up.
“Look over there!” He pointed to a peak in the distance, dotted with what looked like tiny puffs of steam. “Mountain sheep?”
Kate corrected him. “Goats—not sheep!”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, but isn’t it glorious!” she exclaimed. “I wish we’d brought binoculars. The goats look really cute. I’ve seen pictures of them in classes at school. They have these long curved horns. And just look at the flowers!”
Alan grinned. “You spot any endangered species?”
“Ah, knock it off! You just don’t have a clue. I bet you couldn’t name a single one of them?”
He shrugged.
“I knew it!”
“So—enlighten me.”
She nodded at a spot a few feet from where they were standing. “You’ve been putting your oversized feet within inches of squashing these. They’re bee orchids.”
“Why’re they called that—bee orchids?”
“The lowermost petal is shaped like a bee.”
“Which part of the bee?”
She was too smart to fall for that one. “Even their scent is designed to mimic the female bee pheromone. So the bees are confused into thinking it’s the female!”
“This I got to sniff for myself!”
She saw where it was leading and slapped his shoulder. “You boys only ever have one thing on your minds!”
The way he was grinning at her made her smile back in turn.
“I really like it when you smile like that.”
“Get lost.”
“I do. It reminds me of the day we met. When you were showing me the single plant you’d rescued, in the bed down by the river.”
“Oh, isn’t it just ravishing!” She threw her arms wide at the Suir Valley far below them, like a gigantic folded counterpane of pea-green and flag-yellow oblongs and stripes.
“It sure as hell makes me giddy.”
By the time they got to the top of the mountain, it was after eleven. They rested, gazing down onto Coumduala Lough, so far below them the waves on the surface looked like threads of fine white cotton. The sun and breeze had had a few hours to dry the dew out of the heather and they sat comfortably in it, fishing for sandwiches and drinks from their backpacks. Kate lay flat on her belly and marveled at the panoramic view of the Suir Valley heading eastward towards Waterford.
Alan asked her, “You seeing or feeling anything of what Padraig was hinting at?”
“I don’t care any more. I just want to lie here and soak it up.”
Hunching forward, Alan began to rub the aching muscles of his calves. “Me too. To tell you the truth, the only thing I’m feeling is my legs complaining. And here comes Mo—five feet nothing and not even a hint of flagging.”
“So what do you really think?”
“I think maybe Grimstone is a crazy-livered bully and Grandad is just a mite eccentric, like I’ve been telling you guys all along.”
Kate glanced over at Mo, who was resisting Mark’s attempts to get her to listen to a tune on his phone. “Mo—isn’t she what dear old Bridey would call a ‘quare one’?”
“She’s different—I’ve got to grant you that.”
“What is it about her that makes her avoid technology?”
He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. You get to thinking why Mark and Mo put up with it. I mean the way Grimstone’s been treating them all their lives, why don’t they go and complain to the authorities?”
“I asked her.”
“You did?”
“Grimstone is very powerful, highly connected in his local community in London. What if the authorities didn’t believe them? Then they’d have to go back home and face him.”
“Shee—it!”
“You really care about them, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
She nodded. “I think maybe you’re all the only best friends I’ve ever had.” Kate blinked for what seemed longer than the few moments it really was—she didn’t want him to see the stupid tears in her eyes.
Alan nodded. “I think so too. I just want it to stay like this. I don’t ever want it to change.”
Kate hugged his arm.
He said, “Makes you want to get back at people like Grimstone. Teach him a lesson he’ll understand.”
“Is this your Irish mother talking?”
“Maybe I got a dose of that from both sides. Dad told me never let a bully get away with it. You do that and it will only get a whole heap worse. I tell you, Kate, if somebody had done to me what Grimstone’s been
doing to those kids, I’d have found some way to put a stop to it.”
The sun came out from behind Alan’s shoulder, making her squint to look at him. “So what would the brave Alan Duval have done?”
“I don’t know—but something!”
“I keep thinking of you, just standing there that day with the swans. I’m beginning to think there’s a major streak of stubbornness in you.”
At the summit of the mountains, Mo felt dwarfed by the enormous landscape that stretched away to the horizon on all sides.
There was so much to think about that her thoughts reeled through her mind like the flight of the swallows wheeling overhead. She recalled the moment Mark had explained things to Padraig. A baby abandoned on a church step somewhere in a small town in Australia, like a cruel offering on a cold slab of an altar. To an outsider, the church must have looked solid and respectable. Did whoever it was who had abandoned her know that Grimstone was there? Did he or she know exactly what lay concealed beneath his holy veneer? Perhaps he, or she, even knew who Mo really was, knew her real name, the name that had been given to her by her birth mother? It was something Mo had thought about a lot over the years. When parents gave the baby they loved a name, that was when the baby became somebody, a new and
unique human being. Kate and Alan knew who they were. They had their names, given to them by parents who brought them into the world and loved them. She knew instinctively, like a self-evident truth, that Maureen was not her real name. It was the name given to her by Bethal and Grimstone, people who did not love her.
Who am I?
Mo whispered to the world.
A sudden, overwhelming feeling clutched at her heart as she tried to imagine what it must be like for a mother to bear a child, a daughter, and then abandon it. How could a mother forsake her baby daughter?
Am I truly an orphan?
Could she imagine what such a mother would feel? She tried to, but it felt so awful she couldn’t bear the thought.
Am I a witch spawn as Grimstone says I am? Is my mother dead, like Kate’s and Alan’s? Or is she alive and doesn’t care about me?
She had long ago realized that there were advantages to being nobody. When you are nobody you can pass people by and they don’t notice you. Meanwhile you make up for it by noticing more about those who are somebodies.
Mark had always been stronger than she was. Somehow, he had found the strength to fight back. Even his sarcastic humor—and his constant self-deprecatory jokes—was his way of fighting back against the hurt. She watched him now unrolling his earphones, getting ready for some solitary listening. Alan was flat on his back in the heather with his head pillowed by his
backpack, chewing on a stalk. Kate was sitting next to him, hunched forward over her drawn-up knees, uncapping a bottle of water.