The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  But what he said wasn’t like that. It was almost more like a recitation? Like a prayer?

  That’s bizarre.

  Fred dove the nose of the car into a parking spot under the looming gray edifice of a church, cranked the wheel and nestled us up to the curb, the Peugeot shuddering with effort.

  I know, he said. It’s a strange little world here. Library time.

  We got ourselves settled with library cards at the university, and Fred went to work on his smelting research, nautical charts, and Spinoza. I wandered the literature section of the stacks for a bit and picked up a copy of Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea and a collected Yeats for Fred. Then I did some basic searches on Cape Clear on the computer index and found a couple local histories, Cape Clear Island: Its People and Landscape, Naomh Ciarán: Pilgrim Islander, Fastnet Rock: An Charraig Aonair, all by éamon Lankford. The Natural History of Cape Clear Island, by J. T. R. Sharrock, had extensive lists of bird sightings on the island broken down by season and species. It was the kind of book I figured Sebastian Wheelhouse and his twitchers had in their satchels. Then there were a few like Aistí ó Chléire, by Donnchadh ó Drisceoil, written all in Irish. Most of my searches on the history of the area directed me to one or more of the “Annals” contained in The Chronicle of Ireland, a remarkably succinct record of events from AD 432 to 911. Most years got only one or two sentences, often about who was slaughtered where.

  According to the Annals of Innisfallen, St. Kieran of Saighir, patron of the diocese of Ossory, was born on the island in AD 325. He was consecrated a bishop in Rome and returned in AD 402 to his native district to preach, and the Scholiast of Aengus records that the islanders of Cape Clear were the first to believe in the Cross, thirty years before St. Patrick came to Ireland. Kieran is referred to as primarius sanctorum Hiberniae, the first of the Irish saints. The church he built, Cill Chiaráin, lies under the ruins of a succession of later churches in Clear’s North Harbor, now just a weathered outline of stone with lichen-covered tombstones slanted and scattered like broken teeth, the decipherable names nearly all Corrigan.

  The miracles attributed to St. Kieran include an incident when a young island girl was raped. She became pregnant and came to Kieran in desperation as she did not want to have the baby. St. Kieran prayed for a few days, then went to visit the girl in the hut she lived in with her mother. He instructed her to lie on the dirt floor and then made the sign of the cross over her belly. When the girl arose from the floor, the baby was gone.

  It was St. Kieran who predicted that his clan, the Corrigans, would be chieftains of their race forever.

  By the thirteenth century the Corrigans were already famous for buccaneering and terrorizing the coastal towns of Western Ireland and even England. The southwest tip of Ireland was perfect for this kind of work; the countless channels and small cays ringed by treacherous slabs of rock that, because of the intense geological pressure of the grinding European plate, rose out of the water, part of a vast fold of Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous strata, shale on limestone, the folds at ninety to one hundred forty degrees, developing long, sharp lines, rows of basaltic and igneous like black knives, some hundreds of feet high, others just a few feet under the surface of the water. The Corrigans were able to strike coastal towns and merchant shipping, then retreat into their maze of rock, where no one dared to follow. A good third of the eight hundred or so people living in Baltimore still bear the surname, and Corrigans occupied most of the preeminent positions on town councils and local boards, the guard, and had fingers of influence that stretched up through West Cork and into the national government.

  We came back in the afternoon with the car full of paper products, canned goods, and two large sacks of organic animal supplement that Fred picked up for Patrick. Back at the Nightjar, Fred made soup while I mopped the floors and wiped down the windows. We turned up the jukebox, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, and as the lights in the harbor winked out one by one through the window, we danced across the empty floor.

  Fred held up his glass of whiskey.

  To our new life, he said.

  To our new life.

  We both drank deeply.

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  Yes, it is.

  * * *

  The first week of November brought Sebastian Wheelhouse back to the island. I found him standing before the graveyard in the North Harbor in his gray mackintosh, studying the plaque about St. Kieran and his journey. He had a giant cylindrical lens case with a collapsible monopod strapped to it hanging over his back. I walked past, half hoping he would turn and see me, but he remained facing the plaque, and I trudged up the hill to Nora’s. Finn Cotter creaked up the hill on his bike, overtaking me as I walked, his white legs churning, mop of red hair swaying. When he reached the top he turned and came zooming down, standing on the petals, his face a grimace of seriousness, the wind snapping his clothes like sails.

  Fred was spending his mornings either out in the harbor tinkering with Bill’s boat or working on his smelting project, coming in after noon to eat something and open up the pub. He drank his way through the evening, and after closing he sequestered himself in his office space and tapped away at his massive files, probing the Internet until the early morning hours, occasionally sorting through the pile of scraps on his desk. Sometimes when I returned to Baltimore I didn’t see him for a whole day and night, and we began communicating with cryptic notes left for each other on the main bar. His almost invariably said “on the boat” or “Cork” or “research” while mine merely said “Clear.” Standing in our rooms above the pub, the evidence of Fred everywhere, the smell of him on the sheets in the bed, I felt the insistent longing for his presence, the rising panic that made me pace the hall and the kitchen of the pub, drinking large glasses of juice, staring out the window over the harbor. I found that when I boarded the ferry for Clear such feelings subsided to a point I began to forget about them, and upon returning again to the Nightjar, I would be surprised by the dread of such momentary and subtle isolation. I began staying most of the week out at Nora’s, coming back only to get fresh clothes.

  There were several groups of bird-watchers on the island, but in the Five Bells that evening Sebastian sat apart from the others, elbows on the bar, scratching away at his little bound notebook. When I went to the bar and greeted Ariel and asked for a hot whiskey with lemon he glanced over and smiled.

  How are the birds? I asked.

  Haven’t seen much yet, he said. Though I haven’t exactly been looking.

  Why’s that?

  Can’t say. Perhaps I’m not really a birder at all, just a chap who likes to take long walks. The glasses and camera just a cover.

  What are you looking at then?

  He shrugged. Ariel brought my drink, and I raised it to him.

  Just the thing, I said, for the chill.

  It was the kind of stupid thing that blow-ins or tourists said, trying to sound casual.

  Sebastian nodded, and I told Ariel I’d have the pork chops and went over to my table by the fire. He settled back into his sketchbook. It reminded me of Fred nattering away into his Moleskine notebooks or on the backs of receipts with a chewed pen. Since we’d been in Baltimore he’d taken to using the computer more. He wanted to arrange, rather than compose, he said. He already had loads of material for the novel, now he just needed to get it sorted out. I never once asked to see what he was writing. I think I was afraid of what I would find.

  When I went back to the bar with my plates, Sebastian turned and offered to buy me a drink.

  Like a bit of the hot whiskey, yeah?

  Ariel sliced a lemon and made pinwheels with cloves stabbed through the sections, a shot of Jameson and a packet of sugar, topped with hot water, stirred with a cinnamon stick. We clinked glasses.

  For the chill.

  We drank.

  So you know what I’m not doing here, Sebastian said, what about you?

  Quite similar, I said. Except I’m mostly swim
ming rather than walking.

  He cocked an artful eyebrow. I could smell the sweet cloud of whiskey and sugar on his breath.

  You takin’ the piss?

  I’m not, I said.

  Where? How?

  He signaled to Ariel for another round.

  These drinks are futile, I said. This single measured shot business you have in the UK is bullshit. The free-pour system, like in the US, that’s the method.

  This was something Fred had said once in a pub in Cork. Christ, I thought, suddenly I’m incapable of original small talk?

  Right you are, Sebastian said. But there’s a remedy.

  He turned and called out to Ariel, raising his hand like a student in class. He was wearing a pin-striped oxford shirt under his mack. Birding in a dress shirt?

  Make it a treble for the lady, he said, cheers.

  I became aware, just for a moment, of the other people in the room. We clinked glasses again, mine spilling over the top. It was delicious. Sebastian was leaving on an early ferry to head back to Cambridge. He said he’d return, soon enough. He came to the island all the time.

  So say that again, he said. Where you have been swimming.

  The ocean, I said.

  Sebastian stared at the bottles behind the bar, his mouth slightly slack.

  You are havin’ me on. That water’s too fucking cold and rough.

  Nope.

  I’ll be buggered.

  He turned on his stool to face me fully. His top lip formed a single arch, without the normal dip and curve under the nose, the bottom lip thin like a turtle’s. His eyes were clear and bright, the pupils flexing and expanding, his glasses speckled with dust. I looked right at him, and it seemed like he was vibrating. Or maybe it was me. There was a singular focus of attention that I had forgotten. Either way, I realized then that I had been thinking about his hands on my body.

  Yep, I said. It’s true.

  * * *

  Back in Baltimore there was a note from my mother to call. My sister Beatrice was pregnant again.

  She seems deliriously happy, my mother said. But of course your father and I are concerned.

  She didn’t say anything about the father and I didn’t ask.

  She’s still in Delaware, my mother said. Anyway we’re hoping she’ll come back here, to have the baby and all.

  I told her to tell my sister that I was happy for her and that if she needed something to let us know. I’d fly back in a second.

  Oh, my mother said, you know Beatrice. She won’t ask for anything, then she’ll let us know how we let her down. Again. Be careful, okay? Take care of yourself.

  When I told Fred he whooped and picked me up in a bear hug, carrying me across the bar and out onto the sidewalk into the bright November sunlight, boat motors humming in the harbor. We kissed there on the street, Fred swinging me from side to side.

  That’s fantastic, Elly, he said. Oh, wow. That’s gotta be wonderful, right?

  I hung on to him and kissed him, hard.

  It’s a good thing, he said, right?

  * * *

  The next night I crouched at the bottom of the steps and spat in my goggles. The waves of the Ineer washed up over my hips then sucked away, pouring over the mossy stone. A few lights on the northern hillside, the Waist and the pub, Bill’s place up behind me, but these small embers were dwarfed by the full grace of the moon, so bright I could see my shadow on the water. In the center of the Ineer the water was nearly flat, the moon rippling streams of light down into the water like a giant searchlight. The shaft of light illuminated the bottom of the bay, creating a golden bowl of water.

  I dove in and swam to the middle of the bay, then porpoised down, equalizing pressure once, twice, three times, to the bottom and held on to a piece of jutting rock. At the open end of the bowl, a deep black slot, the darkness of the open ocean. A few small forms flitted about, coming into the light and disappearing. The smash and bubble subsided in my ears and was replaced with the deep thrum and crackle, and I looked up to the surface, allowing myself to slowly rise, pulled by the chest, the air in my lungs, my head back and arms trailing like a puppet with cut strings.

  I thought about Fred, sitting on a stool behind the bar, a glass of bourbon in front of him, the ice nearly melted. Was he thinking of me? Was he watching the harbor, the shapes of the islands to the west, hoping that I might come up the road and through the doors? I had a sudden longing for the feel of his body on mine, his arms around me, and as I ascended through the water my loneliness felt like a place of habitation, a comfortable room that I could enter and stay. It was as if I was inside my own loneliness. It wasn’t the panic of absence, rather the contentment of safety, like I could rest in this place without worry.

  On the surface the howl of the wind and the immensity of night sky was like poking my head through the skin of a world of giants. The faint orange stripe of Fastnet swept across the hills creating quick images of windswept grasses, twisted gorse, and crumbling fence lines. There was a flash of white, a shape in the grass, and as the Fastnet light came around again I could see a figure standing at the edge of the field, looking down into the harbor. Miranda. Watching me swim.

  I floated on my back, rising and falling with the push of the sea, looking up into the fullness of the moon.

  Chapter Nine

  I spent a week at the pub, trying to relieve Fred, but he insisted on staying behind the bar and serving customers. He had Crock-Pots of French onion soup going in the back and fresh rolls, and he moved among the tables like a dervish when we had a crowd. He’d announce the ferry departures in a booming vaguely Irish-accented voice and had developed the knack for carrying three pint glasses cradled in each hand. A group of English birders came in and after a couple rounds gave him “one for yourself.” Fred dramatically poured himself a whiskey neat then capped off a Murphy’s pint and slid the beer down the bar to Dinny.

  And one for Dinny!

  Dinny neatly caught the beer in his mottled hands, gratefully lining it up with a couple other full ones. He and Fred raised a glass and silently toasted.

  The Murphy’s is still free, he told me when I gave him a look. They fronted sixty kegs. Besides, Dinny deserves it.

  He was almost belligerently trying to stay true to his word about me not working in the pub. I told him to forget about it, that I didn’t mind pouring a few beers, but he was adamant. I made some sandwiches and generally cleaned up. The regular pub patrons of Baltimore consisted mostly of men covered in brine and bottom mud, farmers bringing in manure and the green sheen of grassy fields, people who had recently been handling livestock and fishnets, bird-watchers back from their long slogs on the Cape, and the occasional tourist trucking in all manner of shite from all points, everyone wading through puddles and bogs in the gale season, which meant the floors always needed mopping. Fred was developing a tendency to let such things go.

  We made a deal, he said. This was my idea, my plan.

  It was our plan, I said.

  Despite Fred’s relentless efforts we had little repeat business and mostly subsisted on whoever strolled in on their first visit to Baltimore. Fred may have been pushing it, his type of overbearing interaction failing with the sullen-faced locals who shuffled around the harbor. When we walked around town, it felt like we were totally alone. It wasn’t like we were ignored or shunned, but there was this curt indifference, a willingness to pass by without a nod or look. It wore on Fred especially.

  Fred sat on the barstool in his T-shirt and flip-flops, sipping a Murphy’s and milling through a pile of rocks in a tin bucket, tapping them thoughtfully with a small hammer, scratching them with his fingernail, making notes in a spiral notebook. He’d been collecting samples from hillsides outside of town. The end of the bar farthest from the door was turning into a kind of satellite office, covered with books, papers, rock shards. I didn’t say anything about it. The few customers gave the arrangement some strange looks, but nobody seemed to mind. This was a part of Irel
and where it wasn’t unusual to see a blind, mangy dog sprawled on the floor, a wet pile of boots and slickers on the bar, or an old man sleeping in the corner with a piece of buttered toast in his fingers.

  Okay, I said. What can I do?

  I just want you to swim, to enjoy yourself. I want you to be happy.

  I shrugged and began wiping down the tables. I wanted us to be happy. I wanted to say I just want to be with you.

  * * *

  The next morning I came downstairs with my bag to catch the morning ferry and found Patrick sitting at the bar, inspecting one of Fred’s rocks in his delicate hands. He was wearing a blue blazer and boat shoes, like he was heading to a yacht club social.

  Hey, Elly.

  He stood up, straightening his coat, giving me his awkward smile. He pointed at my bag.

  You’re headed to Clear.

  I am. What’s going on?

  Fred offered to help us out with a delivery. I’m picking up. Wanna ride over together?

  Fred came out of the back room cradling a small pallet and a couple bundles of peat sticks wrapped in plastic. Patrick opened the front door and retrieved a dolly and helped Fred ease the packages down.

  Just a couple more boxes, he said. Make sure you have everything.

  Fred reached down and worked a couple small boxes out of the plastic wrap and handed them to Patrick.

  Don’t forget these. I’m sure the old blind man needs his moisturizer and chocolate sprinkles.

  Fred wiped his hands and gestured with his thumb at Patrick.

  This dude’s buying some gifts for some lady friends.

  Patrick flushed and tucked the boxes back into the plastic.

  We thought the sprinkles would help with ice cream sales, he said.

  Whose idea was that? Fred said. And the bottles of facial moisturizer?

  Patrick sighed and put up his hands.

  What do you want me to say?

  Fred punched him in the arm.

  I’m just messing with you, bro! Loosen up.

  When Fred ducked back into the kitchen Patrick pulled a wad of bills out of his blazer pocket, held it up to me, then went over to the cash register, punched the register open and dropped the money inside.