Walk the Blue Fields (15 page)

As for the child, he was nothing like Stack. For years he waited to see some mark of himself in his own son but none came. It mystified without surprising him. It was as though Margaret had spit the child or laid him. As a
mother
she was ferocious. Stack saw her bare her teeth at
neighbours
who stroked the child’s hair. And she gave him his own way at every turn. During his infancy, she rocked him until she had him ruined. Stack hardly got a wink of sleep. Margaret didn’t seem to need sleep. She’d be up at dawn and up every five minutes to check the child was
breathing
, then fall back into dreams which made her kick him, and often he got up and went back to his old bed.

Michael never crawled. He got out of his chair one day and made it all the way to the front gate and back. One day Stack went in to milk Josephine and found there wasn’t a drop of milk in her teats for the boy had sucked her dry. When the boy got hardy he went around the bogs with Stack, jumping ditches with a pole, wading in bog-water and was never sick a day in his life. He’d eat nothing only fish fingers, turnips and sweet things, rode Josephine
around the front lawn, bought ducks and pushed them around the narrow roads of Dunagore in his own pram and grew tall as a stake. He could write his name
backwards
and upside-down. He made up stories, told lies when he was bored and walked around the house in his sleep. Margaret wouldn’t let him go to school, said there was nothing the people of that parish could teach him that she couldn’t teach better.

Michael was seven before Margaret gave up on the parishioners’ ailments and apparitions. She’d had enough of them and knew, if she sent her child to school, that he would suffer. But it was a long time before the people of Clare gave up hope and stopped leaving jam and sticks and herrings for Margaret Flusk and started doing her harm. One morning she got up and found peacock
feathers
stuffed through the letter-box. On another morning, all her tyres were flat. She herself could withstand anything but her fears hovered round the child.

Stack knew she was going before she went. She let the fire die one night, and the following morning Stack found
himself
walking down to the edge of the strand. He wanted to be there when it happened. He stood at the water’s edge and stared west. The day was calm. Soon a fishing boat full of Island men came into Doolin and a boat was lowered into the sea. The strangers rowed slowly to shore, their oars
cutting
neatly into the salt water. When they reached the land they tipped their caps but did not speak. One man looked familiar. When Stack turned, Margaret was looking him straight in the face then wading out, climbing without a word into the boat. The boy cried but Stack knew he would not cry for long. He held his son in his arms then let him go.

The morning was fine, the sea glassy. Nothing stopped him from getting on board, nothing at all. For a moment
the men waited and it seemed that all he had to do to make his future happy was to climb into that boat and be carried away on a tide cut by the strength of other men. Instead Stack stood on the strand and watched the only woman he had ever loved vanish from sight. It didn’t take long. Closer to the shore a pair of gulls screeched over the water as though there was something down there only they could see. Stack watched them until his eyes grew sore then he climbed back up the hill.

When he got home, he let Josephine off the rope and soon she had her forelegs on the table, eating all that was left of a rhubarb tart. The track of Margaret’s thumbs was baked into the edge of the pastry. He was glad of Josephine. He could at least fulfil her needs. He sat down and looked for a long time at the bare, clean rooms. The sun shone on the teapot’s lid, the lino, the polished wood. So Margaret was gone. Hadn’t he always known she’d go? Hadn’t the dream told him? But he couldn’t judge her, not even when she took his son’s hand and rowed away with strangers. They were, after all, divided by nothing but a strip of deep salt water which he could easily cross.

Josephine licked the plate clean and stared at Stack. He followed her into their old bedroom, shut the door and closed his eyes. Tomorrow he would go down to Doolin and buy a bag of cement and brick up that wall. He would buy a bottle of whiskey, some fig rolls, and leave the television in to be repaired. He would not be idle. Winter was coming. The turf would keep him busy, and fit. There’d be long
winter
nights and storms to blot out and remind him of the past. Although he was no longer young his near future was a
certainty
. But if he lived for a hundred years he would never again venture up to a woman’s house in the night nor let her come anywhere near him with feetwater.

The quicken tree is another name for the mountain ash or the rowan tree. It is believed to be a tree of formidable magical and protective powers. It is mentioned in
mythology
as having the power of enchantment. The Irish name,
caorthann
, derives from the word
caor
which means both a berry and a blazing flame. The name ‘quicken’ refers to its quickening or lifegiving powers.

Lisdoonvarna is a small town in County Clare famous for its match-making festival.

The words of the mother’s song: ‘What will we do for timber now that the woods are gone?’

A pucán is a sexually active male goat.

Inis Mór is the largest and most western of the Aran Islands.

Wicklow people are nicknamed goatsuckers.

Placing the tongs across the pram is said to prevent fairies from stealing the child and leaving a changeling in its place.

‘Surrender’ was inspired by an incident recollected in John McGahern’s
Memoir
, concerning his father who sat on a bench in Galway and ate twenty-four oranges before he married.

The author most gratefully acknowledges the assistance of The Arts Council of Ireland, The Society of Authors and The Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation in London.

Thanks also to The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at
Annaghmakerrig
and The Blue Mountain Centre in Upstate New York. To Brian Leyden for the Leitrim names; Viv McDade, James Ryan and my editor, Angus Cargill, for their
insightful
criticism and to Gerald Dawe, Ian Jack and Fatema Ahmed for suggesting titles.

The author would also like to acknowledge the work and care of students and staff while resident at Dublin City University, University College, Cork and University College, Dublin. Special thanks to David Marcus, Colm Tóibín and Declan Kiberd for their generous
encouragement
and support.

An earlier version of ‘Close to the Water’s Edge’ was published in
Birthday Stories
, The Harvill Press, selected and edited by Haruki Murakami.

‘Night of the Quicken Trees’ was published in
Arrows in Flight
, Scribner/Townhouse, edited by Caroline Walsh.

‘Dark Horses’ won The Francis MacManus Award, 2005; it was subsequently broadcast on RTE, Radio One and published in
These Are Our Lives
, The Stinging Fly Press, edited by Declan Meade.

‘The Forester’s Daughter’ was published in
The Faber Book of Best New Irish Stories 2004-2005
, edited by David Marcus.

‘The Parting Gift’ was published in
Granta 94: Loved Ones
.

Claire Keegan was born in 1968 and grew up on a farm in Wicklow. Her first collection of short stories,
Antarctica
, was completed in 1998. It announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Her second short story collection,
Walk the Blue Fields
, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won her the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. Claire Keegan lives in County Wexford, Ireland.