In Exile

by Billy O'Callaghan

  The tourists come with their cameras and open their shutters, and I crouch, fastening my nets for tomorrow’s shoals, and listen to them as they snap away. It is always the same, the gradual awareness that they have taken their fill of landscape pictures and are now training their camera’s lens on me. I know I must look a sight, but that is what they want, the idea of a man stooped low over his work well into the last half-lit hour, milking the day of its worth as his grizzled hands toil at binding together his ravaged nets. To them, I am a glimpse of another time, in the same way as Mulgrew and his spinster daughters are, and for the sake of art we can all ignore the fact that they are seeing what they want to see. None of them have ever asked for permission to take my photograph, though I believe that is less out of disrespect or poor manners than that they simply don’t want to disturb me in my work. Maybe they think that I won’t understand, but I do. Posing without meaning to, raising the nets just a little so that they can better catch my profile and so that the ropes of kelp spill some way free of their bunching, my small effort at making the picture feel a little more alive, I often wonder just how many living room walls or mantelpieces around the world carry a framed image of my face. Even as outdated as we have become, as ill-fitting with our present surround, men like me have our uses, it seems.

  The work is just as tough now as it was when I was a boy and starting out, learning the ways from my father. It is all a matter of perspective. Yes, the fish are less in number, but they are still there and I still take enough to make a living, if a frugal one. With so few of us out now, competition is not really much of an issue anymore. The restaurants on the island, Dorney’s over in Missal Bay and the Frenchman’s place, Michel’s, here in Gull’s Cove, need fresh fish to meet the demand. The guesthouses want some too, those that offer evening meals. We have worked out an arrangement that allows us all to get by, though the winters can be lean and when storms come we all suffer.

  Nobody lives a life completely free of regret. The trick, I have often heard it said, is how you cope with the situations that let you down. The worst mistakes, I now believe, are the things left to go unsaid, or undone.

  I am the last of my people here on the island. I have a sister in Dublin but she has long since cut ties with this place, and when my time finally comes the line will stop with me, since I have never married. Such knowledge weighs heavily on a man as he steps into middle age. The tourists sometimes trail young children after them but more usually they appear as couples, and there is something about how comfortable they seem, how intently they share everything, that makes it difficult not to wonder what else the wider world has to offer. All around, there are reminders for me of what my life could have been, but it is the first glimpse of the tourists that really brings the message home. The details of how they look at one another can seem slight but never inconsequential, and the unwavering love between them is as trusting to nature as the freefall sweep of the gulls at feeding time or the flashes of shale that crawl out into the sea from the headland. Watching these couples walking hand in hand, so delightful in their imperfections, forces me to remember Gráinne all over again.

  Two nights ago in Costigan’s the stout had tasted just right to a throat parched to bone by the long shift at sea, and when I had consumed enough to start losing control I got up from the bar and went to sit a while with Flor Howlett. He is usually to be found at the table nearest the door, alone with a single drop of Jameson set carefully on the table before him, and throughout the long evenings he does no more than lean in to breathe of its fumes, his mind counting the hours until closing time and anticipating the pleasure of how, at the last bell, he’ll take the whiskey down in a single hard swallow. ‘I like to save it for the road home,’ he explains, the countless times that the question has been asked. ‘Jameson’s as decent company as a man of my age will likely find.’

  He is old now, and well known on the island for his miserly ways. He says he favours this particular brand of whiskey because of its harshness to the tongue, but we all know that it is because Jameson is the cheapest brand that Costigan stocks.

  Though twice my age, he recognises me as a kindred spirit. Back in his better days he was known as a masterful hand with the thatch, and he travelled far in the company of his brothers while there was still a shilling’s profit to be turned in constructing a well-laid roof, back before slate made everyone too good for the crafted bedding of straw and knitted reed. He has a place a half mile or so outside the village, behind and above the cove, a small rundown cottage that fringes the roadside just where the land peaks above the western inlet. His thatching days are long since done, and his own roof, pummelled thin by years of rain and sea gales and dipping in a critical state, is good for little more now than nesting rats. Since Gráinne’s departure, neatness has lost whatever importance it may once have had, and he claims in a voice everyone believes that the rats don’t bother him at all.

  ‘How’s the fishing, young Finn?’ he asked, and I could only shrug.

  ‘Dead in the water, Florrie.’

  He leaned over his glass and filled his lungs. ‘Like the thatch, so.’ I am allowed to sit with him only because he knows that I will buy him drink. I did what was expected of me, telling him to drink up, and calling with a nod to Costigan behind the counter. Costigan unfolded his thick forearms and pulled a tot from the upturned bottle on the wall, but Howlett has a routine fixed by years of practice and he drank the first whiskey only when he had the full assurance of the second sitting safely before him.

  Gráinne is our obvious connection, or rather the loss of her from our lives, and in our sober moments I am sure that we each spend part of the day holding the other accountable in some way for that. It is always easier to blame someone else for our own mistakes. But drunk, or at least in the environs of drink, such blame matters less than the sharing of pain. An hour or so of casual companionship shapes what words cannot.

  Our conversation had a drab familiarity, spare efforts at throwing up subjects of no real consequence. Between talk, we listened to Mulgrew fiddling a variation of O’Carolan, some melody that fit well enough above the incessant background chatter of the tourists. Their snapping accents seemed rich with curiosity when set against the guttural snarls of our own words. At some point in the night, I found a way of asking after Gráinne. ‘Have you heard from herself at all recently?’ Something like that, said casually, as I sat with my arm outstretched along the back of the snug’s three-cornered carpet seating, and I averted my stare, feigning some interest perhaps in the music or in a face across the bar.

  I never like to use her name much, and I don’t suppose he likes hearing it. We both knew exactly who I meant.

  ‘A letter came,’ he said, his tone careful but well enough mannered, probably in the hopes of more whiskey. ‘A week back, I’d say it must be. The usual kind of thing. Everything’s grand. The twins made their Confirmation, and Jim, that’s the husband, is after getting a bump up the ladder. He’s deputy head of something or other now.’

  There was nothing left for me to do but swallow deeply from my pint. I know Jim is the husband, and I know that his good job in the bank has been able to provide her with a decent home and nice things. But I can do without hearing it again, even if I am fool enough to ask for it. The curve of the glass pulled my mouth into a clownish smile, and it held there of its own accord, mocking me, as I pretended to digest the news.

  ‘She says she’s content now,’ he added, a final nail for the coffin, after we had listened while the tune played itself out. Across the bar, Mulgrew scratched his cheek with the heel of the bow and then for good measure pulled a scream from the fiddle strings. One of his daughters, Cait, leaned in and offered a suggestion, and off they went again, not counting it in, not agreeing on a key, just playing, in perfect synch with one another. When they are lost in the music nothing else matters to them.

  If Gráinne had stayed, and if I had been a better sort of man, she’d be sharing my home now and not some
banker’s, and if there had to be children then they would be my children, speaking with my accent. I’d still be fishing, I suppose, and it would be difficult for us to make ends meet on the little that I earn, but one thing would be different: I’d be happy. I am convinced that she knew how I felt about her, but she could only wait so long for something that I didn’t know how to say. I realise that she’s better off where she is, but I’m not better off without her.

  What we had together, the lovely year that closed out our late teens, might seem slight when put down as words. It was a lifetime ago, and at nineteen errors in judgement are allowed, even expected, so maybe we were both just unlucky to stumble across our big moment at what was surely too young an age. Or maybe I knew what we had but was too headstrong or too afraid to take the chance. No particular detail from that time carries any greater importance for me than the next, but I think upon that year now as my golden time because it still shines so brightly in my mind. A long-ago year that has reduced all the rest to a sort of half life. I can’t imagine how Gráinne must look now but I can still see her as she was back then. Even the smallest detail of her face is only a thought’s distance away, and a thousand early mornings have found me out in the boat, alone and with nothing in any direction for the eye to see but the torpid heave of waves, when it has been nearly possible to believe that she is there with me. The past can exist as a ghost; I have learned that much with certainty. We are haunted by our very worst mistakes, and sometimes the wind across the water sounds just like the murmur of her laughter.

  Flor Howlett’s features have all the softness of a wild clawing briar, but as gentle as Gráinne was she had the same eyes, the murky green of shaded grass, and the very same way of pinching her mouth when she considered a problem. His opposite in every way I could ever imagine, yet she was undeniably her father’s daughter. When Costigan’s closed I walked up the hill with him, feeling some need to see him home safely. It was an unnecessary gesture, of course; he is well used to the road and the darkness and could well have done without my company because, even feeble as he has become, there is no place for him to fall that threatens any more harm than that treacherous, rat-infested cottage.

  ‘Will you come in for a few minutes?’ he said, when we reached the gap where a rusted iron gate had hung for years beyond count before simply disappearing, but I glanced at the cottage’s sunken roof and the small windows thick with the crud of years’ accumulated dust, salted wind and long abandoned meshes of cobweb, and I shook my head.

  ‘I won’t, Flor. The Brill are in and I’ll have to get the boat out early. Thanks all the same, though.’

  The way he tilted his head told me that he knew what I wanted to ask: Whether or not she ever mentions me at all in her letters. But I didn’t even try to find the words because I was afraid of what the answer might have been, and something kept him from speaking it anyway, some fear of his own.

  ‘Well,’ said Howlett. ‘Goodnight, so.’

  I waited until he went inside before turning and making my way back down the hill. The breeze that started up carried a sound that might have been the rats wailing themselves awake in the thatch, rousing with the intent of a night spent foraging, or might have been nothing at all but the voice of the wind. On the island, every element has a tale to tell, and the wind no less than the water.

  My unasked question lingered, and I shifted it in my mind as I followed the road down, all the while telling myself that I was better off not knowing one way or the other. I suppose that’s right. Some will say that it does no good to mire ourselves completely in times gone by, but I say it does no great harm either. What it comes down to is acceptance. I have seen and done enough to know that I had my chance, and there is only room for that sort of chance once in a lifetime. Settling might bring a certain amount of joy, and there are plenty who have made good out of second-best or even less, but that is not for everyone, and I don’t think it is for me.

  I will turn forty in October. I have been fishing from boats since I was six years old, taught by my father how to read the water for signs and also the proper way to cast and haul and how to ride the waves when the swell thickens. That I never learned to swim a single stroke is the way it should be, according to our island ways, and I have never questioned the logic of it, only accepted. Overboard means the end to everything, and there is a peculiar sort of comfort in such an assurance.

  What makes reaching forty so difficult for a man like me is that I know I am too old now to change, and I am being left behind as the world, even the island, moves ahead into a new age.

  The coming of summer reminds me of my loneliness, April leading into May, and the first arrival of the tourists. Winter is better, because there are no distractions, only the enduring worry of rough seas and strong Atlantic winds, only the danger of slipped concentration or the side-on freak assault of a tumbling wave. The fish have become scarce, but I never worry too much about that. Even when the icy shards of sleet gives the day a suicidal edge I take my chances, squinting my eyes and steering my boat out of the cove, wading through the pale ochre swaths of foam that crawl outward from the timber breakers and on out into the churning sea, out to where the land, even the island, becomes little more than myth. Thinking of what might have been, I find a place to fish and cast my nets.

  Put Down

  By first morning the wind gloated in its vigour. McCarthy filled the doorway, his big shoulder pressed against the jamb. The sky, even with the dawn, was black and up here the air snapped cold threat. He scratched his sunken cheek for the three days of beard to bristle dryly. There’d be no storm, thank God, but that wind was still enough to keep him landed. The door jamb had his weight and he slumped against it, giving up, in no hurry now for anything.

  Somewhere behind him in the darkened cottage, Bríd worked noisily at her kitchen chores, her irritation as volatile as this February weather. Soon he’d catch the hiss of the bacon in the pan, the spit of the lard. Already she had collected the morning’s yield of eggs from the small hen house. He knew that she’d be thinking of the money lost but the seethe of her anger came from a place deeper within, an anger made of the conspiracies of all the things wrong with her life.

  McCarthy studied the sky and tried not to think about her yet, and down from the village the bilge of ocean roared explosions against the shoreline’s creep of shale. He watched the road for the first inevitable approach of Dinny Shea, that small lope pulling up into the sweep, up from the village to here. But the night’s darkness was slow to lift and the road remained empty yet.

  His head ached, as much from the lateness in getting to bed as from the few pints down in Harrington’s, the pulse ringing sharply behind his eyes. But in the doorway he could breathe, and the day that stretched out before him was a sanctuary now where last night it seemed a hangman’s noose. Today there’d be no sea, none of that trauma even for a man who had given up the bulk of the last thirty-four years to its needs. He’d find work in need of doing, but mending nets and knitting lobster heads and scrubbing out the iceboxes and priming the hull and overhauling the motor never felt bad from the safety of the port, never felt like work in the way that starting out cold and tired beneath a heavy dawn into the bloated gape of a winter’s sea did.

  He stood awhile, content just in the way the bare silhouettes of the roadside sycamore branches tapped out small code rhythms and swayed to the pull of the wind, or how the chorus of the birds rose upwards against the wind in melding, shifting altos, voices wrapping in harmonious virtue. It was good to hear, birdsong an antidote this morning to the sea and the plaintive westerly gale, just as it was always good to see them finally take to flight, sweeping up in torrents from the cloak of trees, black against the slowly lightening sky, free to go wherever they might, in flight bound to nothing but their own craven need to soar.

  The kitchen had the cluttered, worn feel of a used place. McCarthy slumped heavily into a chair in the corner. It moaned against his heft but he tipped it back anywa
y until the chair’s front legs and his own booted feet cleared the linoleum long rubbed clean of its pattern and his big shoulders could press supportive against the wall. His left hand clutched one extended leaf of the fold-out table for support, fingers clipping out drum-tap arpeggios.

  His mouth was dry. Porter never tasted right in repeat.

  The electric light left the morning hollow, stripping it of dimension. It always raised in him a longing for the intimate times of the paraffin lamp.

  Bríd loitered at the stove, feeding the pans with the ­bacon strips. She made no acknowledgement of McCarthy’s presence. McCarthy stole glances at her, hoping maybe for a thaw.

  In the electric light she looked every bit her age. How her hair hung long and lifeless past her shoulders, giving up the last of its tabby dye colour and letting the dirty ash grey have its way. Her hard face concerned itself with breaking eggs into the pan and cutting slices from a pound of white pudding on the counter. She used to smile once. From her pretty youth, she had grown hawkish. There was nothing pretty about her any more. Her flesh hung in pale ropes, heavily folded with worry lines from her constant cringing and the bones wore that flesh with defiance, protruding from their place like ridges of stone from the softer earth. Her large hooked nose, her cheeks like knuckles beneath the sunken pits of her small jade eyes always staring and always suspicious. And her mouth the judging slash, tight with the repression of things unsaid. You would have to know her well to know her as more than old.