The Dead of Achill Island
Page 5
“Is this about the restoration of the Deserted Village?” I asked.
“Partly,” said Frank. He cleared his throat, as if it was hard for him to talk about this. “Bert had a grand design,” he said, raising one hand dramatically. “He had vision, your uncle. He could see that Achill was ripe for development and we could bring in double or triple the number of tourists with the right combination of attractions. For starters, we’re building a boutique hotel at the entrance to the causeway, where the old railroad station used to be. There’ll be no place as posh in all of County Mayo. Then Bert thought of turning the Deserted Village into an outdoor museum with some of the cottages restored to the way they were. We’ll hire local people as guides to demonstrate the old ways of life and that sort of thing.”
I could picture it already: a theme park with women in period dress showing tourists how to spin wool and hawking souvenirs and chocolate bars. No wonder there was opposition to it.
“His grandest plan,” Frank continued, “was to bring back a section of the railway that used to run between Westport and Achill. They closed the line in the thirties. Then they tore up the tracks and made the railbed into a greenway for hiking and biking. Mind you, we’d only use a sliver of it for a new stretch of track. We’d bring in an old steam locomotive and a passenger car for a ride from Westport right up to the hotel. Families with kids love that sort of thing. It’d bring visitors to the island and be good for economic growth. And there’d still be plenty of space left for the bike path. But we’ve got a bunch of angry environmentalists trying to block the project. There’ve been protests and smutty letters and even threats. It’s ended in this.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “Are you saying someone who was against the project killed my uncle?”
“It’s a good bet,” said Frank. “People on the island are fuming about the rail project.”
“Is there anyone in particular you suspect?” I asked. The surest way to clear Mom of suspicion would be to identify the real assailant.
“I’ll not mention names here. But you can be sure I gave the guards plenty of leads.” He reached over and squeezed Laura’s hand. She held on with the grip of a drowning woman.
“What will happen to your plans now?” asked Angie.
“It’s not up to me alone,” Frank answered. “Others are involved. We formed a syndicate. I’ve a feeling they’ll want to push ahead. In fact, I’m on my way now to a meeting to discuss it.” He stood up, with Laura still gripping his hand. “Laura, I just stopped by to tell you I’ve been to the guards. I have to go now.” He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry for your trouble. Truly I am.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, until he broke away. I had the impression he wanted to stay longer and would have done so if Angie and I had not been there.
“I’m glad to know you,” he said to us, “in spite of the occasion.”
“We should get back too,” I said to Laura and Emily. “Again, if there’s anything you need . . .”
“Thank you,” said Laura. I felt we hadn’t been much comfort to them, after all. We exchanged another round of awkward hugs and moved to follow Frank out.
“Don’t worry. We’re okay,” said Emily. She turned away before we reached the door. She had certainly changed since our youth. Maybe it was maturity, or maybe it was grief. Her skin, once creamy, looked as thin as skim milk. Her movements, once expansive, were now stiff and awkward. Her clipped sentences were nothing like the lively monologues I remembered. She seemed diminished.
4
WALKING OUT INTO THE MOIST ISLAND AIR, I considered what we had heard about opposition to Bert’s development plans. Frank Hickey had pointed the guards in that direction. Maybe Mom had nothing to do with Bert’s death, but it didn’t resolve my dilemma about her lost button. I was still holding it back.
Angie’s voice cut through my brooding. “Wasn’t that supposed to be a condolence call? I don’t think we were very consoling.” I couldn’t disagree.
By way of distraction, we made a game of trying to identify plants by the side of the road. Ferns abounded, but we didn’t know the types. The rosy purple bells bunched on stalks looked like the lupine in marshland back home; they were profuse along the ditch at the verge. When we came to the farm at the end of the lane, there were masses of calla lilies. The farmer’s wife must have planted those, I thought. But the farm didn’t look as if a wife lived there. A woman wouldn’t let an old tractor rust in the side yard next to a muddied hatchback. And though it was picturesque to see a rooster strutting around the tractor while his harem picked at the grass, the hens were a little too close to the road for safety.
The meadows around the house stretched far back, so far that no other houses were in view. In the distance, grazing sheep seemed planted in the grass like daisies, sometimes singly, sometimes in clumps. Angie slowed up, assessed the site, and said, “You know, this is just the kind of place I’d like to live in. Life would be simple—your garden, your animals, and a view of the ocean or the mountain any time you wanted to look. It feels like God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” (All’s right? Only if you don’t think about it. Bert’s death, family strife, our mother under suspicion of murder. There’s no getting around the problem of evil.) Instead of saying anything, I smiled. I protect my sisterly bond with Angie by keeping such thoughts to myself.
Angie gave the place a longing glance, and we turned to face Slievemore Mountain. The soft green of summer grass blended with the gray of the ruins clinging to the slope, but the noonday sun caught a patch of stark white. That would be the evidence tent over the ruin where I had found Bert. I also noticed a van in the parking lot below. White, with yellow stripes. “Looks like the only people visiting the village are official,” I said. “The guards must have closed it to tourists.” I wondered if the technical team had found any useful evidence.
“Oh, rats,” Angie complained. “I wanted to see it up close. Let’s at least go read those panels.” She pointed at information boards across the parking lot, next to the gate to the village. The first one offered nothing but rules and regulations. The other gave a history of the site. It mentioned megalithic tombs but didn’t disclose where they were. It attested to settlement from the Middle Ages till the Great Famine that began in 1845, when villagers abandoned the site and moved closer to the sea, a sure source of food. From that time, families sent their sheep and cattle to the mountain in summer, accompanied by youngsters who would spend the day tending them. The shepherds would use a ruin as a day-house and would carry milk down the mountain to the family at evening. I wondered what they did on a rainy day, with no roof overhead. Maybe they made a tent like the one over the crime scene.
The blast of a horn made me jump. Someone was driving up the dirt road fast, honking like a seal. The car halted ten yards beyond us, and a spotted black-and-white dog sprang out. It ran at full speed up the hillside, on a mission to corral a flock of sheep that was grazing below the line of ruins. Sharp whistles came from inside the car. A tall man jumped out, whistling and calling. The message to the dog was clear: Get those sheep out of where they don’t belong. The dog barked roughly and darted back and forth, frightening the sheep up the hill, forcing them into a run toward the crumbling walls of the village. Most of the flock headed where they had been sent, but the dog kept running to confront outliers, pushing them up the hill.
When the sheep were assembled in a single group, the man knew that his dog needed no more signals to get the job done. Waving cheerfully to us, he called, “Hi! How are ya?” and apologized for the ruckus. He explained that his sheep belonged farther up, on the steeps. During the night they had drifted all the way down to the road. No one complained until four sheep wandered into the graveyard below the west end of the village. Then he got a phone call from the lady who keeps a guesthouse in the old presbytery. “Good thing she didn’t call the guards,” the man said, nodding toward the white van. “They’re trouble and strife.”
Hmm, I thought. He’s the flirter. Angie’s the flirtee. And I’m the duenna who needs to be won over. Bobby was easy to look at, probably closer to my age than Angie’s. His flat-weave fisherman’s sweater, gray with wear, stretched tightly over wide shoulders and a full chest. Snug jeans, tucked into muck boots, revealed a slim lower half. Back home I would have taken him for a swimmer or a quarterback, but it was hard farming that gave Bobby his barrel chest. While his body looked strong and controlled, his face was free, expansive with laughter. I noticed Angie noticing, as well as Bobby noticing that Angie was noticing.
He charmed us for more than an hour, long enough for me to have to sidle over to the gate for something to lean against. With Angie’s encouragement, Bobby the Shepherd gave us his life story, and more. He had been kicked out of school for being too wild, he confessed, and he was glad of it. “Those uni types are soft,” he declared. “No confidence. Confidence comes from hard work and discipline.” He learned that from his first big job, in England, as foreman at a Goodyear plant. “I’d take one of our young Irish bucks for ten of their city lads. Weaklings, they were. Yell at ’em once, and they quit the job.” He was glad to return to Achill after eight years, with pounds in his pocket. His parents gave him the homecoming of the prodigal son.
“I’m one of many,” he said. “We left when there was no work here, returned when there was no work there. All my old pals came home—from Canada, the States, Australia, England. They brought families back too, every one of ’em. I should have done the same, but now I’m an Irish bachelor taking care of me old dear and five hundred fat sheep.”
“Five hundred? That’s amazing!” Angie’s big blue eyes said the same.
I asked, “Are all five hundred up the mountain? That’s a lot of sheep for Blackie to herd.”
Bobby smiled at our ignorance. “I don’t send more than a hundred to one spot. Don’t want to overgraze the common land, nor my own neither. I’ve got four meadows just over there.” He nodded toward the farm we had passed, the one Angie had admired. I could see it coming. Angie lit up with pleasure and, in the most innocent way, flattered the man silly with praises of his home. What could I do but let the scene play out?
This wasn’t the first time I had watched Angie fall for a guy and the guy fall for her, even if he was totally inappropriate. Last year it was a French gendarme who didn’t mention he was engaged. The one before that was a barista with plans to better himself by stealing motorcycles. There were a few others too. Lovely, naïve Angie had a history of falling into the arms of the wrong man. The family was dubious when, after the barista breakup, she announced she was entering a convent. We had a feeling that this spiritual romance would prove as short-lived as her more earthly ones. Instead, she was more faithful to Grace Quarry than any of her lovers had been to her. She kept the promises of a “sojourner” for a full year and then had a slip right under the nose of her mother superior, who, in the spirit of infinite mercy, took her back. Angie spent the next year working in a shelter for battered women. At the end of that term, she decided to put off taking final vows. I had feared that seeing the sufferings of women abused by men would solidify Angie’s choice of the celibate life, but instead, it seemed, the job forced Angie to face hard realities. She began to suspect what everyone else already knew: she did not, after all, “have a vocation” as a nun. For Angie, this trip to Ireland was a strategic break from the convent, a time to consider reentering the world.
“The sheep are just my day job, you know,” Bobby went on. “I have a band too, the best on the island. You should come hear us. We’re playing tonight.”
“Really?” Angie said. “What’s your instrument?”
“The fiddle. The banjo too. And I sing. We’ll be at the Annexe, just over in Keel.” He gestured toward the sea. “Why don’t you come?”
“What time do you play?” asked Angie.
“The usual. We start at nine and go until closing. You should both come.” He looked my way, making a conscious gesture to include me. I thanked him for the invitation and, just to be polite, I said we would try to make it.
“Super!” said Angie. “We’ll be there.”
5
OUR COTTAGE WAS EMPTY when I got back. I welcomed the solitude and crept into bed. As soon as I stretched out, I felt myself sliding into a heavy sleep, the kind that comes from emotional weight.
I was deep into a thought-obliterating snooze when the sound of a strumming harp jerked me up fast. On one elbow, I located my phone and answered the call, feeling invaded and cranky. It was my one friend in Ireland, Maggie McBride, an art historian from Dublin. We had met the previous winter at a conference in France and managed to stay close through emails, texts, and FaceTime. Maggie was fun, and Toby was fond of her too, so we had asked her to meet us while we were on Achill. She accepted, on her own terms: namely, she would find her own lodging, and she couldn’t say just when she would come. This call announced her arrival. She was at a teahouse nearby and could be with us in minutes—bearing chocolate cake and her dog, Happy.
A visit from Maggie was just what I needed. It didn’t take long for us to get sloppy with cake and frosting. Pretty quickly I got sloppy with emotions too. Somehow, my redheaded, cheerful friend drew all my feelings to the surface. She got to see the strain I had been hiding from my parents and listened patiently to my story, edited to exclude the button. After a while, I composed myself and we looked at my uncle’s death from every angle, although I didn’t share my deepest fear about Mom. Then Maggie slapped her hand on the table. Happy barked assent. He had been a frisky puppy when I had last seen him. He was almost fully grown now but just as rambunctious and affectionate.
“We’re going out,” Maggie announced. “You need to clear your head.” What Maggie had in mind was the Atlantic Drive, a touristic circuit of rural roads leading to miles of seaside cliffs. It would be my first chance to see the rest of the island, and I leapt at the idea. I hoped that Toby and my parents were doing the same, not wasting a fine day at the garda station.
While driving swiftly, way too swiftly, past bogs and scruff, Maggie brought me up to date on her love life. Toby and I had met her at a conference in France at the beginning of her romance with a graduate student named Thierry, who was younger than Maggie by more than a decade. We liked him very much. Maggie’s dalliance with Thierry (pronounced tee-ary) had blossomed into a love affair, which lasted the six months of Maggie’s research leave in France. It would be put to the test this fall, with Maggie back teaching in Dublin. She was frank about the challenge of maintaining a long-distance relationship but didn’t sound deeply concerned. I was concerned for Thierry, however, when I learned where she was staying on Achill.
“My friend Declan has a cottage on Keel strand. He’s putting me up.”
“Is he one of your exes?” I asked. Maggie, I knew, had gone through a number of “friends” before Thierry. She referred to them in the plural as her exes.
“He is, and we’ve stayed in touch. You’ll meet him. He owns a gallery in Dublin specializing in Irish paintings. He collects for himself as well.” Maggie’s description of the collection intrigued me, and I was equally intrigued by the warmth in her voice when she spoke of her ex. It led me to wonder if he was really exed-out or if he was more an ex-plus.
A sharp turn off the main road put us on a narrow, gently curving road lined with pink rhododendrons. Beyond th
e bright bushes lay bare flatlands massed with yellow gorse. For a stretch, land that had been harvested long ago was now a bog. The black turf, cut into trenches and boxes, was blanketed by mauve grass. Soon the bog gave way to sandy flats, and suddenly at our left lay the waters of Achill Sound, gray and unruffled. A passing cloud had put land and sea in shadow. It was in that moody light that I first saw the ruin of Kildownet Church.
Maggie tilted her head toward the church, acknowledging the presence of a site worth exploring. She slowed as we approached an acre of ancient tombstones, both small and grand. We pulled to the side, well before the church, and Maggie let Happy out. “My boy needs a run,” she said. “Walk around and get the feel of the place. Then I’ll tell you about it.” She took off after Happy, who was dodging standing crosses as he ran toward the water.
I felt myself drawn to the old church. The roof was completely gone, but the stonework stood firm. Someone had strewn pebbles over the floor of the nave. At the east end, right where it belonged, stood an altar constructed of a four-foot base stone topped by a slab the size of a coffee table. The structure looked new, perhaps only a guess at what stood for an altar eight hundred years ago. Visitors had treated it like a tomb, placing rocks on the tabletop in tribute to the dead.
Outside, I roamed among plots studded with blunt stone crosses buried up to their arms, a section behind the church with slabs flat on the ground, and a graveled terrace close to the sea. I heard Happy scampering and saw Maggie coming. She told me I was treading on the Famine grave, filled with the bones of starved men, women, and children. “The anonymity of all these dead is humbling, isn’t it?” she said. “In the other field, you see headstones you can read. They’re trying to fight oblivion with a stone and a name. Can’t be done for this poor lot.”
That led my thoughts back to my uncle. Burial in a cemetery back home would include a gravestone giving him the dignity of a name, but only a successful investigation would establish responsibility for his death.