O’Boyle sipped his tea, swallowed.
’E never said much after that.
* * *
That night I slept fitfully, everything seemed uncomfortable. I lay in bed with the mental image of a tangled knot of springs and wires, all twisted and straining around some central force, the whole spiny mess about to explode and fly in all directions.
* * *
The Spring Regatta was held every year in April to mark the beginning of the tourist season on Cape Clear. The Ineer was packed tight with yachts and sloops from all over Europe, and in the Five Bells they were four deep at the bar, the stone patio serving as the dance floor, and O’Boyle and a few others played all hours of the day and night.
Fred closed the bar and we came across on the sailboat with Bill and Nell. We had a thin stream of people coming through on their way to the island, stepping in to have a pint while waiting for the ferry. But they didn’t stay long.
Fred had assumed a consistently belligerent manner with customers, as if each one who came in was a kind of intrusion. On the bar he had long, narrow hunks of iron ore, and in between pulling beers he was trying to bore out the barrel. In a large bowl-shaped stone he had powdered charcoal that he was grinding with a piece of granite, the handle wrapped in seaweed. A wooden box held chalky hunks of sulfur that made the bar smell faintly like rotten eggs. In the alley behind the bar he had a six-foot pile of manure mixed with potato peels, leaves, and other food refuse. Twice a week he went out and poured a bucket of his urine over the mixture. In a few weeks he’d be able to extract the potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, to complete his gunpowder recipe. None of this was helping business, but Fred didn’t seem to care. He shrugged off anything I said about it, maintaining that we only needed to hang on until the summer season. His book would be finished, he said, and he could devote himself fully to the business. I didn’t believe him.
By this time we were lucky to have sex more than once a month. In the beginning of our marriage Fred was so desperate for me that he would actually pine and beg for my naked body, to have his hands upon me, to be inside me. Now we mostly had brief, awkward encounters, mechanical in tone, that seemed to make Fred more relieved than anything else. I did not fake or overplay my enjoyment of these acts, and Fred seemed fine with this as well. I wondered if he had grown tired of my body, that what had attracted him to begin with was the strangeness of my size and shape, and after time I merely became ugly to him. I would lie in bed at night, Fred snoring beside me, and touch my arms and stomach, feeling my skin, the thousands of tiny bumps. I didn’t know how it felt to him.
That heat Fred had for me, was it displaced somehow or alleviated at some other portal? I never felt for a moment that Fred would cheat on me with another woman, rather I suspected mostly that he was cheating with himself. I do not know which is worse. There is a lot to be salvaged in being displaced by a fantasy, a memory, a projection of the mind, rather than an actual person. But I was a real body, here, waiting, and to be left aside for a thought was another kind of unpleasantness that is difficult to consider, now, after all that has passed.
* * *
It was a bright and sunny day, though the winds still tore through Roaringwater Bay. The boats that made the journey actually under sail, as we did, did so reefed and lashed, and Fred scrambled about the foredeck as Bill bellowed commands from the cockpit. I hadn’t been on the sailboat with them in a while, and Fred attacked lines and rigging like an old salt, hauling away and swinging around the halyards, grinning at me like a fool. Some part of me was reluctant to have him on the island. Clear had become a kind of private kingdom for me.
We had chilled oysters with hot sauce and great mounds of Sheila Flaherty’s potato salad, apparently made without mayo or mustard, bound together by some other ingredient I could not name. The Five Bells patio was a babel of languages, the yachting set in their linen pants pouring liberally from magnums of champagne, birders with their lenses askew across their chests, imbibing, always with one eye to the hillsides. Fred slipped off with the woofers and came back goofy-eyed and chatty, massaging my neck and telling me how much he loved me. I watched Bill, one arm clamped around Nell, the two of them beaming as they watched the furious activity of the harbor at sunset.
There were several especially large sailboats drawn up at the quay, and people sat on chaise lounges on the teak decks with cocktails and glass bowls of peeled shrimp. A three-masted schooner at the far end of the dock flew a large American flag, the deck oddly empty. It was the same sailboat that we’d seen anchored behind the Calf Islands when Bill attempted to sail us out to Fastnet. I saw a tall man emerge up the steps from the cabin, adjusting a camera bag and putting on a pair of sunglasses. He turned to take in the scene up the hill, and the afternoon sunlight fell on his face. Sebastian. He stared for a moment, but I do not know if he could pick me out in the crowd.
* * *
Later in the Five Bells we got drunk with the woofers. I was tired and sort of half listening to their talk, watching the windburned tourists at the bar feeding each other drinks, resisting the urge to go outside and walk down to the Ineer to see Fastnet. Fred, Gus, and Magdalene were bent over a scrap of paper. Fred was making a list with a pencil, tallying a set of numbers.
This guy owns a chain of pubs, Fred said, all through County Cork. I’m talking like forty pubs. He loved the stuff. The cheeses especially. People love the organic thing. They may not give a shit in places like Baltimore, but in the cities it’s all the rage.
No way we could produce that, Gus said. Too much.
See, this is how you do it. You give them everything you got. Then if it sells, they will front you the money to expand. A kind of partnership.
Are you serious? Magdalene said. Is this real?
It was Patrick’s idea, Fred said. I just happened to meet some of these guys through Murphy’s. I think it could work.
The American girls, Stacy and Sara, were whispering to each other. They looked sorrowfully drunk.
Stacy put her arm around her friend in consolation, and I realized in that moment that it hadn’t been Patrick digging out an unattainable romantic vision of love, rather it was Sara who had fallen for him. The girls held hands and looked into their empty pint glasses. They still thought that he killed himself. I wanted to reach out across the table and touch their faces, say that I was sorry. I wanted to tell them that Patrick did not kill himself, that he did not throw himself off the cliff. I know this because I was in the water that night with his body. I was there because he had to tell me.
* * *
After midnight we were in the Five Bells on the bench by the fire. I was nearly asleep, resting my head on Fred’s shoulder. Fred was still high and lecturing the woofers on some matter of Herman Melville. There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
I felt a touch and Ariel was standing there, one of her gecko fingers on my wrist. She could stand beside you and you would still not know she was there. It was as if she had no discernible presence, until she wanted to. She gestured to the patio outside.
You should see this, she said.
We all tumbled out onto the near-empty patio illuminated by sputtering tiki torches. The band was winding down, clearly exhausted, and the only pair on the dance floor was Bill and Nell, dancing a rather formal waltz. The moon hung over the waters of Roaringwater Bay like a watch on a chain, the streak of buttery light stretching into the harbor mouth.
He does it every year, Ariel said.
Her globed eyes flashed in the torchlight. The song ended and Bill went over and engaged in a short discussion with the band, and they nodded and smiled and took up their instruments again for one more. As they began to play Bill took his wife into his arms and held her close, Nell burying her nose into his chest with obvious delight.
I forgive you,
’cause I can’t forget you
you’ve got me in between
the devil and the deep blue sea
<
br /> It’s their wedding song, Ariel said. Every year he has it played for the last song.
We watched them stagger along the patio’s edge, two people who spent so much time in each other’s arms.
Ariel sighed and hugged her thin arms. It isn’t often you see a love like that, she said. It’s a rare, true thing.
The woofers wandered away, despondent, crawling under the hedges to sleep. Fred put his arm around me, cigarette clutched in his teeth. He was golden from the sun and wind, and his teeth were strong and white in the moonlight, and we watched the old couple stretch out that moment. Bill and Nell were really lost in each other, edging around a few square feet of flagstone, and as the song ended Bill bent over his wife like an aging willow. They were lucky people. I turned to say this to Ariel, but she was gone.
I am grateful that Bill and Nell got to share such a moment, over and over, that brought the past and present together with such sincerity and joy. I wish I had the words to tell it.
The wind shifted and brought the smell of cattle and bramble wrapped in the salty Atlantic, the smell of the west. I could feel it on my back, the warm wind of America, coming across all that expanse of blue, a breath or exhalation, and the remaining pockets of illumination slowly faded out, all the cities of America, in the house of my parents, Fred’s father, in the homes of everyone we ever knew.
Fred chucked away his cigarette, angrily. His eyes were wet with tears.
That has to be, he said, the most romantic fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
* * *
The days began to warm, and the howling wind turned to the steady pounding gale that was springtime on Cape Clear. Fred went back to Baltimore to open up the pub and I spent another few days on the island to swim. I promised Fred that after this I would spend more time at the Nightjar to help with the spring crowds that were due to descend upon us. It was a struggle, however, and I spent much of my time circling the Ineer, an eye to the open ocean, or sitting on the seawall watching the slender line and flash of Fastnet. Each strobe of the light was like a heartbeat. There was something so attractive about swimming such a long line in deep water, all that open space on every side. The sensations of my body, that tiny speck of gristle moving in its spasm across such a vast space, gave me a feeling of incredible power and utter insignificance. There was great comfort in this. Maybe it’s like a kind of reverse astronomy, the inverse of stargazing. This is something Fred would have been able to put a name to.
I could feel Miranda up on the cliffs, watching, and one evening I saw her standing on an outcropping, her white hair whipped by the wind. I held up a hand, but she only turned and disappeared into the heather. I knew what she wanted me to do. But I just couldn’t do it.
* * *
A few days later when I got off the ferry in Baltimore and came up the quay the air was thick with nightjars soaring through the dark, silent as moths. They came up from the harbor in waves, sweeping up the street and rising at the last moment over the storefronts, working through the streetlights and signs with a few turns, searching out the insects. Fred was hosing down the floor and squeegeeing the water out onto the sidewalk. He was humming some kind of Irish tune, bobbing and shuffling his bare feet. Under the streetlights I could see he was still smudged around the neck from his forge and his shorts were stained with black handprints.
Put that down, and come out here for a second, I said.
I put my arms around him and kissed him on his furry face and he murmured his appreciation. He was drunk, with a three-day musk on him.
Look, I said, pointing at the birds flashing in and out of the light.
Our namesake.
Fred squinted into the lights, hands on his hips.
Nightjars, I said. They’re feeding.
Ah.
If you look close you can see the mouth gape, I said. They can unhinge their jaws, almost like a snake, fly wide open and funnel the insects right in.
We watched their graceful turns and quick arcs, their long tails rippling with each quiet beat of their wings. Fred looked out over the harbor, the faint lights of Sherkin, shimmering.
Who told you that?
About nightjars?
Yeah.
I read it somewhere. They also have special feathers that allow them to fly without sound.
Fred put his arm around my waist and gave it a squeeze. We stood there quietly for a few moments and watched the birds swoop and feed.
That’s pretty cool, he said. It’s a good name for a pub, either way.
Yeah, it is.
I love this place, he said.
I know.
It’s like a new world, he said. I don’t know what I would do without it. I think maybe the Nightjar saved me.
It’s our world. It saved us.
I love you, he said.
I love you.
Not as much as I do.
Oh, I think you are wrong.
Fred turned me in his arms and we rubbed noses.
No, my husband said, this is one thing I’m sure about.
* * *
We clutched each other in the hallway, shuffling on the floor, Fred kicking over a stack of books as he fumbled with my shirt buttons. His breath was hot and sharp with whiskey, his beard scratching my neck and chin. I clutched at his broad back with both hands. I wanted to lie down and have him loom over me, to fill me entirely, to blot out the world. On the bed he peeled off my jeans and buried his head in my crotch, and I saw clouded shapes in my head. Something was forming, a shape gathering in the dark knot of Fred’s hair as he clutched my ass and put his tongue inside me. I was dreaming of an animal, an animal rising up between my legs, as Fred was putting my knees over his shoulders and entering me, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. I shuddered with the fullness of him, cried out, and pushed myself up to meet him. I grabbed handfuls of his chest hair, put my fingers through his beard and into his mouth. I felt swallowed up, as if I was being consumed by an epic force, and warmth spread up my spine and took my brain in its hands and held me, carefully cupping me like a small bird. I held on to him.
Chapter Eighteen
O’Boyle was sitting on the edge of the quay, his fat bare legs dangling, sandals hanging from his toes. I crawled up the slick steps, stripping off my goggles and cap. He grinned at me and swigged from a can of Old Peculier.
Oi, a good one?
Yeah, I said. Good time.
Stayin’ in the Ineer these days?
Yeah.
I stretched my arms over my head, bending side to side to loosen up. I had finished a few quick laps across the inner mouth of the bay, just enough to saturate me. I wrapped myself in a towel, and used another to dry my hair.
Like a drink? O’Boyle said, pulling another can of beer from out of his pocket.
No thanks.
He cocked his ear for a moment, like he was listening to something, then sighed and looked at his hands.
I have to ask you something, he said.
Yeah?
You’ve seen her, he said. The one who walks Highgate’s fields at night?
You’ve seen her, too?
You know . . . where she lives then?
He gave me a shaky grin.
Where she lives?
Yeah, O’Boyle said, Highgate hasn’t . . . he hasn’t shown you where she lives?
He tried, I said, but she didn’t want to meet me yet.
I opened my gear bag and took out my jeans, sweater, socks, and shoes. I sat next to O’Boyle to dry my feet.
But, you have a general idea, yeah?
Why don’t you just go ask Highgate?
O’Boyle crumpled his beer can and kicked his legs on the quay, looking down in the water.
’Fraid I can’t do that, he said.
Why not?
Highgate doesn’t like me much.
Really?
Yeah, well, the dogs definitely don’t like me.
Why not?
O’Boyle stood and cracked the f
resh can of beer.
You wanna come back to the van for a smoke?
It was still early, not even noon, and the clouds were streaming in from the sea to the west, low and purple, which meant heavy rain.
You have anything to eat? I said.
I make a wicked grilled cheese. Plenty of lager.
* * *
The rain thrummed on the roof of the caravan, the shifting wind causing the plates and glasses on the table to wobble. I picked at the crusts of my grilled cheese, made with heavy soda bread and hunks of Irish cheddar. The ground outside the window was already a giant mud puddle. His new house now had the skeleton of a roof, a door cutout, and a small wooden gazebo to one side. Through the door you could see a sodden leather armchair and an iron bed frame with an ornate scrollwork headboard. The barbecue kit in the yard had an orange sheen of rust. O’Boyle tidied up around his hot plate, washed his hands, and handed me the glass pipe and lighter. He was such a slovenly fellow, yet remarkably fastidious in the kitchen. The hash in the pipe looked like tiny squares of chocolate, but it tasted like deep earth.
You’ve spent a lot of time with Highgate, eh?
A bit, I said. He’s an interesting guy.
That he is.
What’s the problem?
O’Boyle stretched and shrugged.
Usual blow-in stuff, he said.
The smoke pooled on the roof of the caravan in shifting shadows. The gas lantern on the table began to fluctuate and flicker, and I knew that I was getting high.
The Night Swimmer Page 22
