Thin Air (18 page)

She wanted to drink the water. She believed that it could heal, maybe even reach that frightening wound that gaped darkly inside her mind. But she remembered reading somewhere that water on the surface of the land was often contaminated by cattle and you could get liver fluke if you drank it.

Brigid didn’t want to get liver fluke. She sat on a protruding root of the big old hawthorn, but the peace that she expected did not descend. Instead, she became restless, drawn by a sound far behind the church in the woods that clothed the lower slopes of the mountain. She had gone a long way back into the past, but not yet far enough.

Aine insisted that Thomas get a pole for Specks to jump. He brought a light one from the next field while Trish went to the yard and fetched a couple of buckets to rest it on.

Aine was becoming more confident and getting more action out of the horse. While Trish and Thomas smoked and watched she built him up to a fairly lively trot and faced him at the pole. The first time he sailed straight past. Aine swore at him and drove him round again. This time he slowed to a walk and stopped, looking innocent. Aine screamed and slapped him with the reins. As she set him up for it again, Trish came though the gate, intending to give some assistance. Specks guessed her thoughts and pre-empted her. A good six feet from the jump he sprang, sailing way out over the pole and leaving Aine behind so that she toppled backwards and sideways out of the saddle.

Trish reached her almost before she landed. The ground was soft and she was more embarrassed than hurt. She got up and marched towards the fence, refusing to look at Trish. Trish let her go and went to catch Specks, who stood nearby, looking apologetic.

‘Specks is sorry, Aine,’ said Trish. ‘He says to give him another try.’

Aine said nothing but continued to hide her face.

‘Let you get up on him, Trish,’ said Thomas. ‘He can fairly pop, that lad. You can take him into the jumps field and give him a spin.’

‘No!’ Aine’s voice was shrill and determined. She came out of her sulk, her face still red and tear-stained, and took hold of Specks’ bridle.

‘He’s mine, now,’ she said. ‘Now that Martina’s gone. He’s mine.’

Joseph came down from the island and on to the causeway. The cattle had got bored with watching the boats and were making their way back towards the higher pastures. They gave him a wide berth, bunching up together in alarm as though they suspected his intentions.

With his hands in his pockets he slipped in among the crowds still waiting to be there when the headlines happened. He didn’t need to ask whether there had been any developments. The listless expressions gave him the answer.

Gerard saw him and nodded. He knew that there was something he wanted to tell him and tried to remember what it was. But he forgot about it when a diver popped up beside one of the boats and waved across at Detective Costelloe.

Off he went again with his walkie-talkie. It was absurd, his little, private game. He spoke into the phone and listened and nodded gravely and listened again. Gerard waited anxiously, but Costelloe didn’t return to him. He went instead to his car where Gerard could see him go through the whole set of motions again on a different phone, a different wave-length.

He felt sick. They had clearly found something. He felt sick and then he felt angry, that not once during those two phone conversations had that man looked in his direction. He might have been a fence post. When Costelloe finally came over, Gerard was dizzy with apprehension.

‘Not to worry,’ said Costelloe. ‘Nothing to do with this case.’

‘What do you mean? Have they found something?’

‘They have. They have found something. But it isn’t … I mean … you know.’

‘What have they found?’

‘I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. I’ve told them to leave it where it is for the moment and to get on with this case. It shouldn’t be much longer, now.’

Gerard shook his head in bewilderment. It was like some sort of macabre lucky dip down there, every pick a winner. God only knew what else they would find.

As the first crew set up a marker-buoy above whatever it was that had caused the excitement, there was a shout from the other boat. They were hauling up a tangle of something that made Gerard’s heart lurch until he saw, even at that distance, that it was too big to be a bridle.

He realised that he didn’t want to know what it was. There was a lead weight in his innards and he couldn’t take many more frights. He looked around for Joseph but he seemed to have gone. And Brigid was gone, too, with the car. He asked a police driver to give him a lift home.

Aine was back in the saddle and on her way again. This time Trish ran along beside her, holding her knee and clucking at Specks.

Thomas couldn’t watch. He wandered aimlessly around the back of the big house, just in time to see the police car coming down the drive. He sat down on a low pile of breeze blocks and stayed there while the car pulled up beside the back door. Gerard got out. A few drops of rain began to fall.

The car pulled away. Gerard shook his head hopelessly at Thomas and went inside. From the paddock came the sounds of delighted laughter. Trish was doing a great job.

The wood behind the church was darker than the glade with closer growth and taller trees; ash and holly and the occasional spindle as well as the ubiquitous hazel. The ground was more uneven, shaped here by huge chunks of limestone which had fallen in the distant past from the towering crag behind. They were all moss-covered, though, all soft and richly green in the filtered light.

The sound that had attracted Brigid’s attention was the rushing of water. The stream that fed St Colmkille’s well disappeared underground very close to the edge of the wood but there was an earlier emergence further on in. Brigid moved towards it. There seemed to be no pathways in this wood, though there was plenty of evidence of life. Fresh earth at the base of rocks marked the entrance to lairs, and everywhere that a rock created a little sheltered overhang, hazel-cup litter had been gathered in large quantities.

Brigid followed the highway code she had established earlier and found that it still held good. It was right that there should be no struggle in there; no pressure. She would travel along ways that were open and avoid ones that were closed. She would not go anywhere that wasn’t allowed.

In that way she came to the place where the stream first came out of the ground. It wasn’t a great amount of water, though the roaring which now came from above made it sound as though it was. It was unusual to find any part of a stream above ground in the Burren, since most of the water-courses ran far beneath the surface, hollowing out circular tunnels and occasional colossal caverns, emerging rarely and randomly.

Above the disappearing stream the terrain rose steeply, a jumble of mossy rocks and scrubby hazel which somehow found anchorage between them. Beyond that the crag rose almost sheer to the top of the mountain. From where she stood Brigid could see no sign of water on the face of it, so the sound must be coming, somehow, from underneath the rocks.

She had no inclination to go any further. She did, though, decide to ignore the danger of liver fluke, and she stooped and collected water in her cupped palms and drank it. It was so cold that it made her gasp. It was wilder, fresher, more delicious than anything she had ever tasted. She drank more, and then more again. It wasn’t a thirst that needed to be satisfied but another kind of craving that she couldn’t name but knew was associated with what she felt when she was in these woods.

The water ran down her chin and spilled on to her chest. She drank until her stomach was stretched and she could drink no more. As she straightened up, a scything sound above her head made her flinch and look up. It was the raven, just barely clearing the tops of the branches. Behind it came another one.

The house was empty. Gerard remembered his mother standing at the range boiling up small potatoes in a bucket for the pig. Then he wondered if he really remembered it or just wished that he did. It would have to have been a very early memory. He was sure that if she hadn’t died so young she would have been at the range still and that the range would never have been cold. Brigid was not that kind of woman. It was small wonder that things went wrong.

The back door rattled and Joseph came in, his trainers and the hems of his jeans wet from walking across the fields. He looked shocked when he saw his father.

‘How did you get here?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, how did I get here? I flew, that’s how.’

It might have been a joke but it wasn’t. Joseph edged across the kitchen into the hall.

‘Take off those wet shoes before you go upstairs,’ Gerard went on.

Joseph mumbled something in a hollow voice, then the front door opened and closed.

Gerard grimaced and shook his head and slumped on to one of the kitchen chairs. He knew what he had said and how he had sounded but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. The boy drove him mad. He was like a lodger, coming and going as he pleased, turning up at meal-times and sloping off again. He was useless to him; worse than useless. He didn’t even seem to realise that there was anything going on.

And where the hell was that woman? He was starving; weak with the hunger. The three cold pots were still sitting on top of the cooker but he didn’t want cold food. He began to slam around the kitchen, pulling out sausages and beans and a frozen loaf. Thomas came in.

‘No news?’ he said.

‘Don’t you think I’d tell you if there was?’

‘You’d never know what you would or wouldn’t do,’ said Thomas. He patted the range, then leaned against it. ‘Where’s Brigid?’ he asked.

Gerard lifted the pots off the stove and banged a frying pan on to the front ring.

‘How the feck am I supposed to know where Brigid is?’

‘Well if you’re not supposed to know, I don’t know who is!’

Gerard concentrated on the sausages, breathing deeply. Fury and terror fought a blood-red battle inside his forehead, wave upon wave, clash upon clash.

‘Someone would want to watch out for her, anyway,’ Thomas went on. ‘Or she’ll be away with the fairies.’

‘There’s only one person around here away with the fairies,’ said Gerard. ‘Don’t you know that women don’t want anyone to look after them any more?’

‘I didn’t say look after,’ said Thomas. ‘I said look out for.’

‘Same difference,’ said Gerard. ‘They don’t want it. They want jobs and freedom and money of their own. Sure, half of them don’t want men at all!’

‘Well,’ said Thomas, standing up straight again and heading for the door. ‘It’s well for you that you know so much about everything. I hope you’re right.’

He closed the door behind him. Gerard looked at the fat, pink fingers sitting in the pan. His appetite had vanished, but he reached out for matches and lit the gas.

As Brigid walked back across the mountainside she startled a solitary goat kid that was sleeping beside a rock. It ran a few yards from her then stopped, staring around in bewilderment. Brigid stood very still. The kid bleated, a small sound in the mountain’s grey silence.

Brigid looked around. She couldn’t see any more goats. The kid seemed to be completely on its own, as if abandoned. It wandered forward a few steps, then bleated again. There was no answering call, but from the nearby slopes a small troop of goats appeared. They saw Brigid and gave her a wide, wide berth, as such goat bands always did. But to Brigid’s surprise, one of them didn’t. An old, black goat and her small, black kid broke away from the group and made a wary detour past the solitary youngster. It bounded up to them, bleating urgently but the goat walked on past with apparent indifference. The kid was disappointed, but it tagged along behind the pair as they altered their course again and rejoined the herd.

It was a neat little exercise and Brigid was moved. She wanted to stay, to wander in the hazel, to learn more about the goats, to drink the wild water at the foot of the crag. But she couldn’t, not yet. There was a reason for her to go back, even though she wasn’t willing to think about what it was.

On automatic pilot she walked to the car and drove home. The rain started in earnest as she pulled up beside the house and she ran from the car to the door. The kitchen stank of burnt fat. Gerard sat at the table in front a black and greasy plate.

‘Where have you been?’

‘I was …’ for a moment she forgot. ‘I was up at the winterage. Counting the cattle.’

‘Good of you. Were they all there?’

The number that she had filed so carefully was gone. ‘How many were there supposed to be?’

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘That’s right. There were twenty-nine.’

‘Good.’

Gerard picked up the empty plate. ‘They didn’t find her, yet.’

It was like a small explosion in Brigid’s solar plexus, hot flack spreading outwards to her arms and her temples and her calves. She sat down at the table and remembered to breathe, and waited for it to go away.

Aine and Trish had beans on toast and jam tarts and hot, milky tea. Then they cleaned the tack. Gerard came to check on Aine but he didn’t stay. Aine was happy with that. There was a storm blowing through the heart of the family. Her father was standing straight in rigid defiance of it, but he was exhausted; he might just crack in the middle. Her mother had bent so far in front of it that she had become misshapen. Neither of them offered any shelter. Worse, they made her uncomfortable. Thomas was better and Trish was better than Thomas, but Specks was the best. He was her pal.

She cleaned the tack with a thoroughness that surprised Trish. Afterwards she stayed and helped to tidy up the tack room, rolling up bandages and finding pairs for the brushing boots. When they were finished they had more tea and more jam tarts. Aine would have stayed but Trish said it was time for her to go home. To be on the safe side, she brought her to the door.

The phone was ringing as Aine went in and she grabbed it, but Gerard was beside her and taking the handset away before she could find out who it was. He always seemed to say the same things: No, no news. I will, I will. Thanks for ringing. She wondered why none of her friends rang up any more. Perhaps they did. Perhaps she just wasn’t allowed to speak to them.