Inishbream (4 page)

– Ah, I understand yer meaning, though ye'd be best off to simplify in the odd instance. But yer telling a better story now all right. Will ye have the poteen?

– I will.

And someone piles more turf on the fire, the knitters race each other through the rough wool of their days, dogs twitch, Miceal extracts a tin whistle from his pocket and summons a reel from its heart.

I am walking the island's circumference, past the megaliths and cottages. The sea is alive with currachs, the current and her lover undertow. What I have found: blue mussels, hooked mussels, barnacles, the skeletons of sand dollars, sea snails, tube-building bristle worms, sponges, starfish, mermaid's hair and rockweed, bladder wrack, the crystallized salt around the edges of rock. I have found curious marks on the sand. I think they must be hieroglyphs, the whole intertidal zone literal with their message. Figures, rituals, wildlife. I think I have found the language of the universe.

– Sean, who would have done this and what does it say? (trusting his knowledge of the island's strange events and visitors).

– What are ye meaning?

– This (pointing to the intricate narrative).

– Oh, that. Well, it is only the feet of the top-shell, that spiralled lad ye may see there (pointing to a conical shell just beyond). It is that they feed upon the algae, grazing from bit to bit like a cow may.

I look. The figures decipher themselves, and I see their meaning, not as symbol or the unfolding of allegory, but as the passage of sea animals, quiet, determined and possessing no urgent need for language.

Sean goes back to the picking of carrageen, the queer gelatinous moss which he dries, then sells to the Breton at Cleggan. I follow, though not in his footsteps that imprinted themselves like fossils in the sand.

– But these, Sean? (pointing to the circular carvings on the exposed stone). We might call these petroglyphs in Canada.

– And what is a petroglyph?

– Well, the original people carved pictures directly into rock . . . daemons, monsters, gods, events, the turning of the seasons . . . and it was, I guess, their record of the world.

– Aye, like the carving on the dolmens. But these here are only the marks a limpet will make with his pull. And if ye watch long enough, ye may see them return after their feeding. They will always return to the scar they have made. It is like a home to them so.

Mist lies over the island, potent and mysterious, like God's breath. Although there is famine in the sea and the dogfish raid our nets, tangle themselves, are trapped gaunt and anguished when we find one, something is prolific: protozoa, creating themselves out of brine and the drowned man's sperm, creeping ashore, shaking themselves free of the sea, then splitting, multiplying. They simply exist, mindless, without the cursed memory of falling, wandering, waiting, sinking. They are flesh-eaters at the dawn of evolution, speechless but whole. Every day we are thus renewed, given freely, without pain, without cost, new life to be among us.

There are pale beaches of coral sand, strung darkly with the dead weeds. I walk them endlessly, alert for news of the world: a bottle, an explosive, a book of the saint's voyage enacted on the edge of the Atlantic, a waterlogged crate washed from the deck of a ship.

In those windy cottages, the stories age. Outside, a well runs dry. Pots rise empty on their bleach-bottle floats, the hay rots under the rain's assault. And they stand, all of them, on the rim of the chopping sea, straining to the tide, pulling in the nets of morning. World without end, amen.

IRISH MIST

LISTEN
. There were
weeks
when the sun refused us. At first I thought I could never live in such a place, but then I learned the sweetness of the Irish mist, how it enveloped you and numbed you to any real action or consequence. And you wandered in it, your hair jewelled, and you let yourself drift in great imaginings, where the ruined castle on the coast was made whole and you lived there, where the beached hooker was yours and you mended it. Occasionally a stranger, even more so than yourself, came to find something out. Were there corncrakes, nearly extinct on the mainland but thought to exist on the islands, where a scything farmer would watch out for the nests? There were. Would anyone sell a house to a foreigner for a summer place? They wouldn't.

I never knew whether to believe the tales. A feud so great the Senate was involved. A fortune hidden in the oldest man's bedsprings. They sounded fine if you heard them wound out of a mouth around a pipe and punctuated by bird cries.

But there were days when I wanted something more to happen. I'd arrange to be left off on the strand, or I'd row myself over in an available currach, and I'd walk the northern portion of the Sky Road. It was nice to use the muscles the mist had allowed to become soft and to really stride out the few miles to the Westport road. Once there, I knew the dilemma: north to places unknown and even a friend to visit in Mayo; south to Clifden and the monotonous streets; back the way I came. I went north once. Sometimes south for an unexpected afternoon in the town, rummaging in the magazine shop for something to read and once finding
The Tree of Man
, having tea in the lobby of the Celtic, talking to anyone who talked to me first. Often back the way I came, walking down the Sky Road's vistas into soft rain and the fuchsias.

At home, they wanted to know about my day; you could never row away unseen or return unheralded, if only by dogs. And Sean was always a little hurt, not knowing the need to ever leave except maybe of a Sunday when the football matches were played and replayed in every Clifden pub and the beer was particularly well drawn. If you could last long enough there was a dance in the hall at half-eleven, some pop band off-key on the improvised stage. Or you could always find an after-hours, the owner peering out at you first as you knocked on the bolted door, recognizing you and squiring you downstairs, where it seemed the whole town, including the Garda, had gathered for a last drink that became another and another. Maybe someone had a fiddle or a tin whistle, maybe it was even Miceal, and there'd be good crack and all your favourite tunes in the smoky, illegal air. Coming back was spooky, the rowers miraculously sober (though you'd not support them in a court of law) and a few singing and no lights to be seen west, but you knew you'd find land and your home and with luck the last of a fire.

And listen, I want to say what I felt. Sometimes I could not believe my arrival and the subsequent stay. I'd come for a holiday, not a life. And then I was charmed by the stones, believing them holy and omnipotent. And then I felt a prisoner, chained to respectability by the watching and the talk, barred from island life in its true estate by the fact of my alien blood (three parts Romanian, one part Scot). I was happiest walking alone on the north end, where you could look for miles beyond Slyne Head and see nothing but the restless sea, maybe a boat on a lucky day, and often even the horizon was invisible. If the wind was down and your own ears good, you could hear the throaty seals on Carrickarona. There were things to be found though you could not lay claim to them: threads of rope, fishing floats (and not the magical Japanese glass ones which you had in your old home, no, these were rusted metal), a boot that made you wonder, a little piece of wood with Mandarin stencilled on it. The landscape made me sad in a bittersweet way. I was overwhelmed by the pale colours, the mists and the stones. Music, when released from Miceal's whistle, as it was nightly, or the wireless, was obviously bred out of the land, sad with hardship and lost love, soft-edged by the weather and keening like the wind. I felt lured by it and to it, though I knew my kinship was assumed and not organic.

THE BRAND

–
SAINT BRIGID OF THE MIRACLES
, I ask to be forgiven.

– But it is not to me that you should come with your confessions . . .

– My Lady, the priest comes over the sea in a miraculous way with wafers and a flask of bitter wine. He arrives in his mysterious robes, and his neck is thick with beads and a cross. He talks of obedience, of fear and trembling. He threatens. He does not come to listen to me.

– And what is your sin?

– I have wanted more than I was given. I have sat on stone I came seven thousand miles to find, and I have cursed its coldness. I have been sad at the sea's edge, looking west to another land. I have cursed any acceptance of the fourteen images of the doe-eyed Christ. I have found all devotion difficult.

– Your sin is the common sin of an exile. The brand of the traveller is impressed upon your breast.

– My Lady, it is because I have lain with him.

There is no one to blame. That day began simply as a journey to the town. I was alone, having rowed myself over the waves to Eyrephort Strand, anchored down the currach with stones, planted my oars in the sand. I wanted to walk. A brilliant day in Connemara under the sun, and the seven miles of hilly road unravelled before me through a glory of fuchsia and marsh marigold. The camp of the travelling people bloomed under one hill like an exotic hybrid. Two caravans, orange canvas, bright clothing planted in the gorse, a sorrel mare haltered to a stunted tree, a wisp of smoke.

– Good morning to ye. It's a fine day and that's His truth. Will ye take a cup of tea?

– I will.

A cup of potent tea, paled with cow's milk. I could see not a cow in the tinkers' proximity but knew Paddy Bourke's herd grazed nearby. A cup of tea, offered in the enamelled cup of the gypsies.

– Ye'd not be Irish, I'm thinking.

– I'm not. But I'm living on Inishbream.

– Ah, the one ye can see from Eyrephort.

Children swarming in the gorse, dogs, a few men smoking, indolent, against one caravan. I drank my tea.

– I'll be leaving now. Thank you, the tea was nice.

One man struggled himself free of the group. I'll go along with ye.

A hero of a man, dark, and blue-eyed as the devil. We walked quickly, matching stride, not talking until we reached the last hill. I could see the town's spires, Catholic in the centre, Protestant (and lower) on the edge, sticking into the sky. And far below, the currachs of Inishbream preyed upon the lobsters of Carrickarona; the coral strands of Ballyconneely startled my eyes.

– Yer no man's woman, I'd say. (out of the blue, and sharp as a knife).

– Why would you say that?

– Ye've the look of a mare no man could ride, all impatient with ropes and angry. Ye've a sad look in yer eyes. His own eyes pierced me like the fangs of a serpent, the banished serpent of Patrick's wrath.

Below the rise, he led me through the broken hedge, through the tangled remains of a castle garden. By a little stream, we lay down together. There were no eyes of a dead mother to watch nor the eyes of a priest to condemn. I heard the tide breaking below, heard the far-off barking of the seals.

I went back alone through the vines, parted the hedge, stepped onto the narrow road.

Christopher, Christy, saint of the wayfarer, saint of the traveller.

When I returned along the road from the errands, the tinker camp was deserted. The halter of the sorrel mare was hanging empty on the tree.

(The brand of the traveller there on my breast.)

– Had ye a good day?

I was putting away the parcels, filling the kettle.

– I did. It was a nice day for walking the Sky Road.

– Peter says there's the tinkers up by Paddy Bourke's.

– I saw them. They gave me tea.

– Ye'd be best off not taking from the tinkers. Tis a strange life they live, always moving, never settling.

– And you, Sean? Do you never think of leaving? There are so many parts of the world to see, so many things to do . . .

He was silent. Then: It is only when the great flights of geese go over us when we are out in the boats, so many of them that ye could not count, and they have no thought of alighting, only of flying forever across the sea, it is only then that I want to go off. They would not know things the way we know them, it would be the wild places they'd be wanting, and would ye just think of the trees, the fishes, the openness they'd be knowing that we'll be dead and never see.

Those were more words than I had ever heard from him, forced from the soul of him, flung from the tongue of him into the room like wild misplaced animals, scattering, hiding, first in the inglenook, then in the eaves.

– And you? Are ye unhappy here?

– Seaneen, I love Inishbream. You know that.

– Aye.

And then I put aside my wool, the ribs and imperfect cabling of my residence, and I went out walking. There was a new, new moon, thin as a thought, and only the nightjars calling. I walked to the crone's house, the farthest house, and she had made a brew of comfrey leaves (
for the arthritis, ye know
), and offered me a mug, my own ache as physical, though not located in the joints or sockets and easily treated.

– It is a wonder the faeries don't take ye, walking as ye do under new moons, hair unbound and not even that ould dog to protect ye.

– He won't stir after the six o'clock news, I'm afraid. But are there faeries on Inishbream?

– There are strange things that happen, as is the way in any place of their seeing. The sorrows. Aye, and there is a ring of stones of the south commonage, and do not take it upon yerself to step inside. That is where the cows go to spill out the dead calves. They are helped by the faeries, like.

– What about the stones themselves?

– Ah, the stones are a quare lot. The one that is the colour of heaven, lapis, it will cure the melancholy. The stone of the East, the sapphire, it will make the mind pure, it will make peace.

I saw the traveller again, on the second Thursday of the month, the cattle fair day. He was driving some skinny heifers along the Sky Road, and I was cycling, my shopping basket hanging from the handles of the borrowed bicycle.

– Ye look like ye've ridden over the waves.

– No, it's Seamus McGrath's, the man who has the holding above Eyrephort.

– Tis a fine day for the riding.

– Yes, isn't it? Will you sell all the heifers?

– I will try. But tis the same in every town, no one wanting to buy fair from a travelling man because they think tis stolen or diseased cattle they will be getting. Sure and these are the local cattle I have bought fair and square. But they'll argue and complain that it's cheating them I am up to.

Those eyes. And the hands of unusual ways and knowledge.

– Christy, I'll be riding on now. Perhaps I'll see you in the town.

And I did, I saw him in the square of deals and bartering. Eamon Kelly was assessing one of Christy's heifers, running a hand over the bony hock, examining the nostrils, fixing a suspicious eye on the rectum (
no worms that I can see, but these tinkers are a crafty lot
).

Not many islanders had come for the sale. I'd a list of shopping and errands (
Would ye ever pick me up a box of tea? the mail? see yer man in the post office about me pension cheque?
) which I proceeded to do in my own sweet time, pausing to talk to the postmaster, pausing to take the sun with some of the town lads by the statue of some hero of the Troubles. Then: Will ye have a drink? and Christy was there, and then we were walking to the little pub at the bottom of the market street.

– Did you sell all the heifers?

– I did. And I took less than their worth, which is a right joke for a tinker. But I am not one to wait around a town to feed the beasts up to look swell and fat. I bought them thin local and I meant to sell them that way, too. I am thinking a beast is more than the flesh on its bones so. And we are ready to move on.

The Guinness was good. Thick, warm, black as the devil's heart. The pub we took our pint in was an alchemist's workshop of bottles, fruit, sweets and the alchemist himself, Mossy O'Malley, divided in half by a white apron and a man to mind his own business. A few drunk farmers. A smell of dung and the sweat of man.

– What of yerself? Will ye stay on so?

I did not know how to answer, how to say I am as happy here as I'd ever be, which is not particularly happy, but a part of the sea and land if not the people and content enough. O that.

– Ye seem a traveller, too (when I did not answer).

– I am. I mean I was, have always been, but I'm not now. Or, at least, I can't be.

– Ye've a man then? Ye seem not to be a woman with a man in her heart.

– He's not in my heart. But he doesn't mind. We get along well enough.

– I am thinking yer fooling yerself there. A man wants always to know where he is with a woman. But, now. Have ye the children? Ye seem not much more than a child yerself.

– I'm old enough all right. But no, I haven't a child, and perhaps I never shall. It just doesn't seem to happen. The islandwomen mind about that, of course. They mind terribly. People marry to have children, they think, and there is something spiritually wrong, morally wrong, with the woman who does not have a child within the year of her marriage. Or, God knows, perhaps she is barren and not blessed by Saint Jude. And maybe they're right in my case. But I love fishing, and if I had children I wouldn't be able to go for lobsters. I'd hate having to be in the house all day, it would drive me mad. Fishing is good work, Christy, even on the roughest days.

– Ye do not love him.

A statement. A fact of life, and death as well, because I think I shall enter the grave having loved no man on earth. I did not say this to Christy.

– Let's have another drink and then I must go.

We did that. And then we were walking past the church spires and over the hills, pausing to embrace by a thorn tree but not lingering, and finally we were at the camp of the tinkers. I walked my bike and Christy walked beside me, his hand resting on the empty saddle. It touched my back, entered my hair and held the back of my head gently.

– If ye liked, ye could come with us. There's room in the caravans, no one minds another.

– Where are you going?

– We will be going north, to Sligo, where some of the others have preceded us. There are the ceilis all summer, and my father is a fiddler. We shall be going around to them, to make a few quid, like. There's good crack all around and a chance to see other country. We'll maybe be going to Donegal after that. Now that's fine, with the wind and the wild sea and a chance to turn the horses out on the moor where there aren't so many farmers to complain.

– No, I guess I've chosen Inishbream and I'd better stay.

Then we were at the border of the camp, and he was looking at me with those eyes and asking with them Will ye come? and All I could give you, and I was mounting the bike like a difficult horse, and I was riding away, away, and I was gone.

– Seamus, here is your bike and thank you for lending it.

– Ah, it's there in the byre whenever ye need it, and yer welcome to it.

I dragged the currach down to the sea and loaded in the parcels, took up the thole-pins and the oars. The ride across was rougher than I was accustomed to meeting, the currents difficult and a wind rising. The currach lugged in the tempest of sorts, and my shoulders ached, the sweat of my brow stung my eyes. At the quay Sean met me and we made the boat fast.

– Ye were a long time. Ye must be tired.

– A little. The crossing over was difficult.

– It is not good for ye to cross alone. I have said that. Ye never listen. The next time, I'll row over with ye and we can arrange a time for yer return, or I'll watch out for ye so ye will not face the rough passage alone.

– We'll see. Many lobsters?