A Goat's Song

by Dermot Healy

  She put her hand under his jacket and held him.

  “We must stop drinking,” she cried to him. “Every time we drink something awful happens.”

  “I am afraid that if we really start fighting one or other of us could get killed,” he shouted.

  “No,” she shouted, “we’d never go that far.”

  “It happens.”

  “No,” she shouted. “Something would stop us. Something always does.”

  “I can’t take any more arguments.”

  “You can fight dirty when you want to.”

  “I should leave,” he roared, “this is all wrong. Something awful might happen.”

  “Nothing will,” said Catherine and she hugged him. “It’s over now Jack. We’re all right.”

  They found that the interval between the waves washing the pier had lessened. There hardly seemed time to get through.

  “We’re stuck,” she screamed.

  He counted the washes. Then suddenly she ran ahead of him. He followed her. They walked together through the dense fog, taking their steps carefully, hand in hand. The fog stuck to them. Their coats and hair were white.

  When they arrived back from the shore they were wearing white coats of mist.

  They lit the fire and started drinking again.

  “I’m heartbroken,” he said.

  He started to go rigid. Then he left her there. He fell asleep in the study. Hours later Catherine suddenly appeared like a spectre in the room.

  “You bastard,” she whispered into his ear.

  Jack woke bewildered.

  He followed her back out. She had finished all the drink and was sitting by the burnt-out fire. A bruise had risen on her forehead.

  “Do you see what you did to me?” she shouted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You are a drunk,” she said quietly, “do you know that? You are a fucking alcoholic.” He returned to the study.

  Outside a pig blew on a Venezuelan pipe then, more obscenely, a fight broke out among Joe Love’s pigs. He listened to her moving to and fro. Hours seemed to pass. He stared straight ahead at the upside-down trees and flowers on the wallpaper. He heard the clash of Delft. Of running taps.

  “Please, Jack, I’m going crazy,” she whispered through the door. “Please come and sleep with me.”

  “Are you going to start shouting again?”

  “No, I swear it.”

  He got up and walked alongside her to her room. Her eyes were fearful. They lay in bed.

  He looked at her face. She had wiped some talcum across the bruise. The whites of her eyes were painfully white. She had red lipstick on.

  “It was my fault,” she whispered softly.

  “Oh Christ, Catherine,” he said.

  They woke at seven. The driver of the car from Pontoon was pounding on the door.

  Catherine said: “I can’t go in, looking like this.”

  “The taxi is waiting.”

  “I feel terrible,” she said, “I could not bear to face them.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Let’s just stay here. Don’t let’s go anywhere today.”

  “What will I tell him?”

  “Tell them I’m sick. Send him away. Tell him something. Tell him anything.”

  Outside the horn blew.

  “Oh Jesus, Jack, send him away.”

  He went and told the driver that Catherine was unable to accompany him.

  “Why?”

  “She’s not well.”

  “Well she could have rung,” he said, “and saved me the god-damn journey.” And he reversed and drove away.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  He told her.

  “Oh God,” she said, “I’ve fucked everything up, haven’t I?” She started to laugh. The talcum fell away.

  31

  The Cuckoo Mocks the Corncrake

  “Get in beside me,” she said.

  He lay beside her and then when he thought she had fallen asleep again he climbed out of bed and dressed.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’ve got some business to do.”

  “Leave it for a while.”

  “No. I must start.”

  He made his way to the table in the study. Later he heard her downstairs moving around. She was whistling.

  “You sound happy,” he shouted down.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He felt extraordinary relief to hear her singing. She knelt in the garden and wearing Maisie’s gardening gloves she began weeding the flowerbeds. The warm winds of July came soothingly over the Atlantic. Hugh arrived at noon. “We’re only going out for a few hours,” Jack called to her. “OK,” she said.

  At four o’clock next morning she suddenly started up in the bed fully awake. A ghost she couldn’t name was backing off into the corner of the room. She heard him throwing his oilskins aside. She waited and reached out to see if he was there. Jack Ferris, on his back, smoking in the dark. A stranger.

  Jack and Catherine lay together in a kind of stupor. When they stepped out, the pale sun was huge on the Atlantic. Closer inland a grey haze enveloped everything. Ravens tossed themselves over the sea. A starling flew up from under a heap of car batteries that sat on the galvanize roof of a shed. Down below, the seaweed was ticking away in the fog. A coot was dabbing along on a small stream that ran down to the sea. Then came a shot. The coot gave a squawk of fear, and without once looking back at the young who were following her, nor her mate who was following her, she dived.

  “I had a bad dream,” she said.

  “What?”

  She closed her arms about him.

  “It’s lovely to feel you here,” she said.

  “I think there is something wrong with me,” said Jack.

  He sat up terrified. She found he was soaking. She towelled him down. But the band of burnished heat round his temple would not shift.

  “It must have been your sweat I was wading through,” she said, “in the dream I had.”

  Light-headed, she washed his face. The next time she woke he wasn’t there. She found him naked on his knees in the bathroom with his forehead placed against the cold tiles on the wall.

  “Jack – what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to cool myself down.”

  She knelt beside him.

  “Don’t touch me,” said Jack.

  “No, I won’t touch you,” she said.

  “You promise me?”

  “I promise you.”

  “That’s all right then. You can stay there.”

  “Now you will have to look after me,” she said.

  “Don’t leave me alone in the house,” she said. “I dread being alone here these days.”

  “Why has no one come to visit us?” she’d ask. “The only people we see are fishermen.”

  “They have their own problems.”

  “We’ve driven people away with our arguing,” declared Catherine.

  “We’ve made mistakes,” agreed Jack.

  “We are everything I used hate to see in other couples.” She sought out his eye. “Can you imagine a time when we might not be together?”

  He thought a while.

  “No.”

  “And yet we should consider it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I never realized how vulnerable we were,” then she added, “sexually.”

  Everything was touched by a new grave hysteria. They talked of the possibilities of going sober, of remaining together all their natural lives.

  “In Mayo?” asked Catherine.

  “Why not?” he replied.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said, half indignant, and half joking. “I’m lonely enough as it is. It makes me desperate to think of spending my whole life here.”

  “Won’t I be with you?” he said.

  “Will you?” she said.

  She heard the key turn in the door and someone came running u
p the stairs. Sara rushed into her room.

  “My God, Cathy,” she said, “What happened to your face?”

  “I walked into a door.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did,” said Catherine and she laughed.

  When they came down stairs, Sara filled the fridge with parcels of food she’d brought.

  “You look terrible,” said Sara. “Where’s your friend?”

  “He’s out at sea.”

  “Did you go to see a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “You could have blinded yourself.”

  “I’m fine, Sara, it looked worse a few days ago.”

  Sara had bloomed, and yet she had become strangely diffident. Only in short rushes would she speak, and deliberately avoided all conversation about her recent fame. Her voice when she did speak had taken on a new fluent actorly inflexion.

  “Let’s go out for a walk.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Tie a scarf over your forehead,” Sara said. “It reminds me of the time you went bald.”

  Everywhere they went on Mullet people would stop and gather and stare at Sara.

  “Are you Bridie from Glenroe?” people asked, and when she said she was they were astounded to find her there, walking a beach in a remote part of the west of Ireland.

  “I told you it was her,” one lady said to her husband. “He said you couldn’t be, but I said you were Bridie. Isn’t that so?”

  Sheepishly, the husband nodded.

  “I think you do us great credit,” said the woman. “You are the most beautiful looking woman on the television. Isn’t she?”

  Again the husband nodded.

  Sara signed autographs. She stepped into photographs, and herself and Catherine posed for a group of shark fishermen before a sheer fall into the sea at Eachleim.

  “Imagine! Bridie Smith here,” said one local girl when they went into O’Malley’s for a drink. “Imagine that.” And she stared at Sara, and shook her head and put out a finger and touched her. “God help you, but they’re giving you a dreadful time in Glenroe,” she said and clasped her thighs, and delighted by the thought of how fiction removes the pain, she shook with laughter and said: “But you’re well fit for them.”

  “So you missed a part in a film, did you?” said Sara, who had her hair cut in a severe parting. She rested her elbow on a wooden ledge to the right of Catherine’s arm.

  “Yes.”

  She looked into Sara’s eyes seeking there some sympathy, but all she found was ironic detachment.

  “You should leave him.”

  “As a matter of fact I respect what he’s doing.”

  “Oh you do, do you?”

  A pale streak of light cut across Sara’s cheeks. Her eyes were self-absorbed, and full of feminine contempt, except when periodically they reflected the glitter of the overhead lights. With a new and childish widening of the pupil, Sara delicately looked round the crowded lounge.

  “You could have been more discreet,” she whispered in a tantalizing way.

  “I really didn’t want to be disloyal to him.”

  “None of us do, Cathy.”

  Catherine did not answer. She reached for her bag, lit a cigarette and held it far from her with her left hand. The heel of her palm pressed against the table. She studied the cigarette as she blew smoke purposefully from her nose. Lights along the wall came on. Sara spoke, and again Catherine noticed the disturbing actorly lilt. Catherine waited for the words to make sense, but they didn’t, and while she tried to focus on their meaning other words came too soon for her to follow. She got up and went to the toilet. When she got back Sara had another round of drinks on the table and had gone into a provocative silence.

  “We had a few pleasant weeks being sober,” said Catherine.

  “People who can’t hold their drink,” said Sara, looking ahead of her, “are a bore.”

  “I,” said Catherine, “am worse than him.”

  Said Sara distastefully: “Do you seriously think he is ever going to write anything worthwhile?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, you left one job to follow him. You don’t want to lose another.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Catherine,” said Sara calmly, “is he beating you?”

  “As a matter of fact we are rarely violent, if ever at all”

  “You are being defensive.”

  “Sad to relate – I’m being honest.” Catherine crushed out her cigarette. “You think he did this to me?” and she lowered the black glasses.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” and she replaced them.

  There was silence a while.

  “You,” said Sara, “were the one who called herself a feminist. Look at yourself now. Take a good look at yourself, Catherine.”

  “Did you ever make love to him?” Catherine suddenly asked. Despite herself, her voice wavered and broke into a comical hiss.

  “After all these years, now you ask me!”

  “Well, did you?”

  “I would not call it that,” said Sara briskly.

  “He has always denied it.”

  “Has he now?”

  “Yes,” she said and her heart beat wildly.

  “It was not very enjoyable,” said Sara. “Trawlers are not romantic places in reality.”

  “I see. On a trawler, was it?”

  “I was only joking. No, we never did.”

  “Sara! You’ve just put me through hell.”

  “You want to get a hold of yourself.”

  “Are we allowed get drunk?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Sara. Catherine watched her sister walk through the tables. The men shouted out greetings. At the far end of the lounge the barman turned up his transistor. Joe Dolan began singing “A Westmeath Bachelor”, followed by John Lennon singing “Imagine”. Then came the news. She got up and rang the house.

  “Jack,” she said, “come down and join us. Sara is here. I need to see you. OK . . . OK, bring them all down.”

  Jack, De Largey, Thady and Hugh arrived together.

  “Sara,” said Jack.

  “Jack,” she said coolly.

  “This is Theo. And Hugh. And my Uncle Thady.”

  “Delighted,” Sara said. “So you are all fishermen?”

  “I was until this evening,” replied Hugh.

  “Hugh’s got himself a job in the Erris Hotel,” explained Jack. “His fishing days are over.”

  “Jack,” asked Catherine, “can I get you a drink?”

  Jack and Catherine walked to the bar together.

  “I like the scarf,” he said.

  “I told her I walked into a door.”

  He nodded.

  “I have never felt so ashamed in my life,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

  “We’ll have a few weeks together now. The salmon season is finished.”

  She kissed his cheek. They rejoined the others. White sunlight was streaming into the lounge and as the sun set a céilí band started playing.

  “Have we to listen to this?” asked Sara.

  “You don’t like the music?” asked Theo.

  “Not particularly.”

  Thady spat generously on the floor.

  “And how is Catherine?” he asked cheerfully.

  “I’m fine, Thady.”

  “The rain came anyway,” he said.

  “It came,” said Hugh, “it came just in time.”

  “Did any of you hear the cuckoo this year?” wondered Jack.

  “I did,” replied Hugh, “and I heard the corncrake.”

  “And how could you hear the corncrake?” asked Thady. “The corncrake is leaving the Mullet. If he has not already gone.”

  “Well I heard the corncrake.”

  “I am disposed towards the corncrake,” said Catherine.

  “Sure the corncrake is the cuckoo when he’s grown old. Isn’t that right, Jack
?”

  “He’s the cuckoo with a beard,” laughed Catherine, “and there’s lots of them about.”

  “Is this conversation some kind of private ritual or what?” asked Sara.

  “Will we go somewhere else?” asked Jack. “What would you like Catherine?”

  “I’d like,” said Catherine, “to get married and have children.”

  “Are you listening to that?” smiled Sara.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “There’s a lot to be said for it,” agreed Hugh.

  Next morning Sara was leaving. He carried her bags to the car.

  “You take good care of our Catherine,” Sara said to Jack.

  “I will,” he said.

  As the car pulled away Catherine said: “I can’t tell you how envious I am of her. She has everything.”

  He worked all morning above in the study then brought the text down for her to read.

  “When casting for the play takes place,” he said, “you should go for the main female role.”

  “I couldn’t,” she said.

  “Yes, you could.”

  “I’m too distraught.”

  “It’s months away yet.”

  “I have other things to think of at present.”

  “I know.”

  “Sara thinks I should leave you. She said you were bad for me. But I told her we were bad for each other and that’s what made it so enjoyable.” She smiled. “Are you sure you want me to appear in a play of yours?”

  “It was written for you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I could do it. I don’t even know if I approve of this woman you want me to play.” She lit a cigarette. “And what would happen if your Eddie person didn’t cast me?”

  “Of course he will.”

  “I couldn’t bear the disappointment after all that’s happened.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  “If I get it, it would have to be on merit. The difference between you and me is that you don’t give a fuck what people think of you but I care what people think of me.”