A Country of Eternal Light

by Darby Harn

  I remember his lips stuck on mine. “Hi.”

  Old Brendan keeps coming over to us. Spittle flecks his red jumper as he talks, his words a mash of Irish and English. There’s no telling what they were to begin with. Each time he sees Gavin, it’s like for the first time. His jaw drops on his toothless mouth and he holds out his hands as if to say, you’ve left me? For him? Are you with him? What’s happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.

  “On your way, Brendan,” I say.

  He wanders off somewhere.

  “He likes you,” Gavin says.

  “That’s me,” I say. “Always attracting old men.”

  Brendan comes back. He stands there a moment, in faux shock. I try to imagine his trouble. All the women on the island seem to be with older men. The young leave if they can. If they can’t, their youth and beauty is spent in service to the old and I left but I am the broken blade of rock carried out to sea on a wave and then washed back in.

  There’s no leaving.

  We stand there a long time, Gavin and I. The music of other voices the only sound between us. Brendan returns, on schedule. He wags his finger at us. I humor him.

  You’re humoring him. Aren’t you?

  I hold the cup to my mouth. “Can’t be very cozy for you, living in an apartment with no windows.”

  “This is all going in my review on Trip Advisor,” Gavin says.

  I look for Aoife in the crowd. Eyes ricochet off mine. Everybody talking. Where did she get off to.

  “There’s music tomorrow night,” he says.

  “Some trad, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe they take requests.”

  “You’ll want to hear something ancient, anyways.”

  “I’d love to hear you sing.”

  I finish off my tea. “They’ve heard enough from me.”

  His smile comes and goes, like rain.

  “The weather’s grand,” I say. “The whole week, you know.”

  He squints, Gavin. Trying to figure me out. “I’ll be here.”

  “There’s no one in after you?”

  “I think it’s just me.”

  “You must be lonely,” I say.

  He wears all his years now. “I don’t want to trespass on anyone.”

  “They’d tell you. If you were.”

  “We could go for a walk. Or something.”

  “Something.”

  So much relief in his voice. “Do you want some more tea?”

  “I can’t taste it.”

  Brendan swings back on his orbit through the hall. The shock of us less this time.

  Coal fragments into the clusters of tiny orange stars in the fireplace of the apartment he rents over the pub. It was easier coming here on the way back from the home and there’s no one down the pier besides. He puts on another log. He doesn’t say much, Gavin. He seems tired. He seems far from me.

  “I read your book,” I say.

  I didn’t know a person’s eyes could get so big. “You what?”

  “I downloaded it. On the tablet, like.”

  “You read my book?”

  “You’re a good writer. You are.”

  “But?”

  Get down off this one, Mairead. “It just felt like… you had something you wanted to say, but you didn’t know how.”

  “Well. I can start anything,” he says and sits in the chair before the hearth. Shadows of flames flicker on his face. “I can’t finish anything to save my life.”

  “Did it do well for you?”

  “It got some good reviews. That’s what people say, when it doesn’t happen. It got good reviews. I thought it was the start, you know? But then… nothing happened.”

  “One thing I didn’t understand was… it’s obviously the island. The geography. But you changed the name. Why?”

  He shakes his head. “I thought I had to create this distance. To be able to write about what happened.”

  “If it’s true, then say it.”

  “Not all of it is for me to say,” he says.

  He looks into the fire. This age in him now. This fatigue. I sit in his lap. His hands like coiled springs.

  “I liked the idea of it, though,” I say. “This world beyond ours. This gate, up at the monastery. You just walk through, and…”

  “I was always wanting to live a different life as a kid. Some other life. We were poor. I was… awkward.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yeah. I suppose it was a children’s story. My book. But, like you said. I didn’t know what I wanted to say.”

  “What do you want to say?”

  He pulls the blanket over us. “Stay.”

  “I need to get on, Gavin.”

  My hand closes around his wrist and he pulls and I push and we struggle for the blanket. I poke him. He lets go. The softie. He’s not so soft right now. He’s all this tension. He’s warm with the friction of it. He’s so warm.

  “Colm said I should leave you alone,” he says.

  “He did what? Why?”

  “I know I’m trespassing on you. I am. I know. I just…”

  “You’re not trespassing,” I say.

  “I know you’re going through a lot and you’re kind of… I’m not trying to take advantage of anything.”

  I can hear them all now. Has it even been six months? It is strange, this want. But it’s not strange, to put ice to a bruise. To bandage a wound. You’re meant to wait, with grief. You’re meant to postpone everything, even your own suffering and we don’t have time. What if we did. How would we act then.

  Do you know.

  “When I got pregnant… Ma told me to go to the UK. To get an abortion. Don’t, she said. Don’t bring a child into this hell. But I lost Da and I was losing her and I was so alone.”

  He holds me close. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “I thought… it won’t happen. It can’t. God wouldn’t give him to me to take him away. The black hole will miss us. We’ll be saved. I’ll be saved and I’m being punished for my hope.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Mairead.”

  “I should never have left him…”

  He holds me, Gavin. The embrace of the condemned.

  “They all talk. They all whisper. ‘Serves her right.’”

  “Mairead… I don’t think people say things like that. I think everyone feels terrible for what happened. So many people depended on you and I think they feel like they let you down. Life let you down. You didn’t deserve this.”

  “Then why did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.” He holds me tight. “I don’t know.”

  We rest a long while in front of the fire. Me wanting to get back down the road. Him wanting me to stay. This tug of war between us and neither of us moves a muscle. I feel this weight on me. This soreness inside. I have to get rid of it. I want to.

  I poke him.

  He grabs at my hand.

  “Don’t start,” I say, and poke him again. He pinches me so hard I squeal and I don’t know. I take off running. The dog chases after the two of us on our lunatic parade through the apartment and before the bedroom door is closed behind us my knickers tear away in his hand. My exhaustion stolen by surprise. We fall into bed, his lips dancing from mine to the nape of my neck, my breasts, sore for him. I hold him close and only let him go to smooth down between my legs. His tongue slicks its way up my back, slow to my lips. I taste myself on him. My youth and my fear and the salt kiss of the island. I never left. I want to leave. Inishèan, this world, this life. I want to be more than this body can contain. I climb on top of him. I press against his chest, my fingers gripping, sinking into his skin and I am open. Unleashed. His salt mixes with mine. His sweat. His blood.

  I only want.

  My grief a deep yearning. I suppose I have to fill it with something. I take to him like some famished castaway. My hunger insatiable. Frightening. This isn’t me. This isn’t a woman whose son has just died. Yet the thought of him triggers this flood of app
etite strange as the pangs when I was pregnant and we devour each other, Gavin and I. All night long. Our kisses volley from soft dabs to hungry grabs. My lips hurt. My legs. My skin, taut from the residue of dried sweat. From him. We’re like virgins, discovering our bodies and potential for the first time. What begins as cautious and slow, soft and delicate becomes competitive. A race. A dash to get our fill, before.

  Years we have to make up for.

  The room falls away. The island, the world and its suffering to only our naked living. The exhaustion of love. I ache, and not just from us. It’s this tension. What now? Come morning I’ll go out to the shore, and then what?

  And then what.

  In the morning, he’s gone. I hurry up and dress. In he comes with a bundle of fish. This light in him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  “I actually caught this myself. Somehow.”

  “I should get out to the shore,” I say.

  The light goes out in him. “Eat something first.”

  “It's half nine already. I usually don't sleep this late.”

  “Do you… do you want me to…”

  “Maybe I'll not have you come out today.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll come by yours,” I say. “After dark, like.”

  “Ok.”

  “I’ve got to get her some tea before I go. Her pills.”

  “Right,” he says, and sets down the fish on the counter. “Absolutely. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Tonight,” I say, and I’m gone.

  Chapter Seven

  There’s a line out the door when I get to the nursing home. A dozen or more huddle in the car park, or sit patient in Domnhall’s buggy. Given it’s full up, a fair number must have walked here. The island is seven miles one end to the other. Old or infirm or both, that’s no Sunday stroll. They’re all big, empty sacks of jittering bone and teeth.

  “Where have you been?” Domnhall says as I walk up.

  I push through the crowd. “What’s all this?”

  “For the daycare.”

  “I don’t have staff for these people.”

  “You said at the meeting things were back to normal.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You’re back, though.”

  “Nothing is normal,” I say, sharp enough this gets through his age. “And nothing is coming back. Daycare is for folks I don’t have beds for. I’m not running a clinic. What did you do, go round knocking on doors?”

  He shrugs, Domnhall. “I offered to take them.”

  “For a Euro?”

  “Two’s as easy.”

  “Take them back.”

  Moira Twombly grabs hold of my hands. “I need me heart pills. Mairead, you’ve got to have them today.”

  “I’m sorry. Nothing has changed.”

  They go off like rockets, like. Fuck’s sake. What are youse complaining for now. You had your chance to go. You knew what it was staying. We all did. Those rocks the waves leave in the road will soon be left in our kitchens. Our kitchens will soon be left in Rossaveal. Doolin. Outer space.

  “Listen,” I say, and their voices go up. “You’ll be hearing me now. The mainland can no longer support us. There are no supplies. There will be no supplies. That’s it. It’s done.”

  The lot of them looks at me in shock. Gasps. Whispers. This fear dawns in Moria’s eyes. Her grip on my hand tightens.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Aoife cracks open the lobby door and pulls me in. She locks it behind me. They’re banging on the plywood covering the broken window. Lord God. This isn’t happening.

  “Fuck off you zombies,” Aoife says. “Go and die with dignity, or at least with the telly turned up.”

  “We’re entitled,” I hear Angus say.

  The crowd echoes Angus. It would be genuinely terrifying if they all weren’t about to keel over from a heart attack. The plywood cracks. They force their hands through and pull open the tear. Christ. It’s like Alien or something, but in slow motion. I’ll have to have Gavin fix this now.

  Angus reaches in for the door lock. I slap his hand. “Did you leave your hearing aids at home?”

  He wags his bony little wizard wand of a finger in my face, Angus. “You’ll see me today, Mairead.”

  “You’re a referral, Angus.”

  “You’ll not refer me!”

  “You’re all fucking referrals, like.”

  “I demand medical attention. My heart’s going.”

  “On account of your screaming and shouting. Go home and sit in your recliner and drink a glass of water.”

  “The tap’s gone dry,” Angus said, pulling off his hat again, twisted up in the misery of it all. “The reservoir’s low. When are they going to come back with the tankers?”

  “They’re not…”

  I lean against the door. There’s no energy for all this. It only gets worse. “Go boil some sea water like the rest of us. Let me do my part while the phone still works.”

  “You can’t turn us away.”

  “I’m not even the proper nurse,” I say. “By rights I shouldn’t be here. They’ll sack me when they find out.”

  “Who will sack you?”

  “The HSE, like.”

  “I’ll paste them on the wall, they lay a hand on you.” Now he’s bleeding. The eejit. He cut himself. “I’m making color.”

  “Look what you’ve done… when I open this door, you’ll behave yourself or it won’t open again. Do you hear me, Angus?”

  “I’ll be civil.”

  “The same goes for your mob, like. We’re going to open and I will only see non-referrals. You got something I can bandage, set or stitch I’ll see you but everyone else gets a referral to the mainland and you’ve got to follow up with them. If you don’t let me do my work, I’m no good for finding any more medicine. I have to do rounds. You have to understand, I can’t help you.”

  Angus turns round to the clustered faces in the window behind me. “You’ll be civil, or I’ll paste youse on the wall.”

  I turn to Aoife. “You be civil, too.”

  Her smirk can barely contain itself. “What laws do you want me to break?”

  “Keep two lists. One for referrals. Another for in-patients we treat today. The referrals, you’ll enter their information in the system like always. That’s all.”

  “We’re referring them to..?”

  “Proper physicians and specialists on the mainland.”

  “Which they can’t get to.”

  “What else can we do, Aoife?”

  She hurries behind the visitor’s station and takes up position in the chair. “We should have done this before.”

  “We’ll be doing it tomorrow,” I say, and open the door.

  The telly in the nurses’ station crackles with news of millions of starving Indians flooding into China, gone to dust in earthquakes and I’ve no strength to stand for this. I’ve no strength to walk home after twelve hours nursing the dying through another night but I pull on my coat, like someone else is pulling it on. This isn’t me, drafting a schedule. This isn’t me, penciling my vanishing mother into the renewed rotation for the daycare, and this isn’t me walking down the road in the pissing rain into Kilbanna, round the bend of the harbor to the pub. This isn’t me walking up the stairs on the side of the building, through his door, into his bed and into his arms.

  This isn’t me, sleeping sound and easy.

  He wakes me with his lips. I pretend to still be asleep. Dawn comes, as if it’s lost the plot.

  Days of this.

  Someone knocks at the door.

  I don’t know if I should answer. Who would it be, anyways. Who would be looking for him besides Colm and he’s out with Colm boarding up the entire bleeding island dawn to dusk. I won’t answer. I’ve been waiting on someone at my door since you’ve gone and I open the door. My disappointment must be obvious.

  The Italian kids on the stairs have this look on their
faces, like they’ve disturbed the dead. A boy and a girl. Not even ten. Swimming in their clothes.

  “Scusami,” the girl says, and looks past me, confused, into the apartment. “È signore qui?”

  “He’s not,” I say.

  The stairs clang as they ran down to the courtyard. I keep to the landing, waiting. Wanting. Across the empty harbor, the sun flattens into the sea. Waves wash over the eastern curl of the island, over the runway and the far, crumbling shore beyond.

  Friday comes due. I renew him. Another week. The two of us a good story. A distraction, and yet I can’t quite get through it. I’m out nothing if I get to the end of this or not.

  It isn’t something you keep.

  Rainwater spills down the steep pass to Dún Nead, pooling in reservoirs created by stone fencing graze land on the terraced cliffs of the island rim. A dead cow floats in uretic slime. Black headed gulls circle above, diving and then sinking with the cow into the rank water. A steep climb over loose rock becomes steeper, until the island plateaus into uneven ground. Gavin holds my hand the entire way and I don’t know I could have made it without him. I made the same climb a dozen times as a girl. Now it seems positively treacherous.

  I squeeze his hand. “Here?”

  His hand touches the bulge in his coat pocket the way it does any time we come to some place. This moment. Scattering the ashes. Releasing his obligation.

  His guilt.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  A ring fort makes a loose horseshoe on the edge of sheer cliffs three hundred feet over the Atlantic. The distance less all the time. People think the monastery is the oldest settlement on the island, but this isn’t true. Dún Nead has not survived as well as others, like Dún Aonghasa over on Inishmore so it doesn’t attract as much attention but for centuries, the fort was the site of the most brilliant observation of Samhain in all of Ireland.

  Lines of piled stone curve and bend near the outer wall of the fort and we are inside the dun without knowing it. I’ve only been here once before. I got the sense as a kid the fort was like the rusted old tractors in the fields, or the old buildings caving in on themselves no one buys, not even for the land; it’s no use. Let it go. Gavin found use for it in his book. He changed the name, but otherwise the fort is the fort, down to even the placement of the stones. The ground like the jawbone of some impossible creature.