‘May God go with you, Attie Blessing, and his blessed mother and may all the angels and saints guard and defend you.’
Blinky’s mouth opened a bit. He stared with disbelief, glanced at Ward, shrugged, then suddenly left.
15
As Ward moved to close the door, Beth knelt by the hearth where she began raking through the ashes. She knew that Ward was standing behind her, could feel his eyes:
‘Have you matches, Liam?’
‘On the salt box.’
She placed a brass of heather and broken twigs on top of crumpled newspaper, lit the paper. Pulling the crook over she lowered the kettle two notches down onto the flames:
‘My grandmother, my mother’s mother over in Tirkennedy had a fire like this in a house like this. The boast was it never went out for a hundred years. A shroud-maker she was during the famine; only for the trade in death-robes, they’d all have died of hunger. They all clung to the pot when there was nothing to put in it but they were all buried decent. Terrible times. It’s left us all half-hungry and mad greedy, or that’s what they say. Only for all those shrouds, I wouldn’t be here now wondering how you’re going to kill Billy Winters.’ She didn’t look round. There was quite a silence before Ward said, ‘Quit the talk of killing will you; there’s going to be no killing.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You’re right . . . This is our honeymoon in the magic month. We’re eloping, Liam; this is our love-cabin and all the world is warming, the brown in the mountains is greening, Christ is risen and we’re alone now that your friend Blinky is gone.’
‘He’s no friend.’
‘But you work through him and with him. He helped you bury that cow a year ago the day we met; he helps you cut turf, he helps you in the quarry, helps you make your hay: he’s your friend, Liam.’
‘He’s a neighbour; I pay him. He’s no friend.’
‘I’m glad. It’s the screechy noise he makes through the side of his mouth and the bony look of him . . . though Mary Blessing must be proud of him, she’s like a dumb-bell herself, a big proud dumb belle . . . Can you imagine sitting in that house, listening to the two of them squawking at each other? I’d rather spend a night in hell . . . I’m glad he’s not your friend, Liam, but in truth, love, he is a friend of sorts, is he not?’
She turned round. Ward was looking at her, his expression impassive; then he said quietly:
‘It doesn’t matter what he is.’
‘Oh but it does, if he was your brother you couldn’t help that – not your fault; but friends you pick, and they do matter, but in a way you’re right. We’ll be on the high seas soon, or have you other plans now? You see I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. This place could be lovely but it needs a woman’s hand; there’s a smell in your bedroom, love: stale, we can freshen it. Out of the back window you can see a hazel hedge and bracken, you can cook and eat the little fronds of bracken and there’s wild rosemary and foxglove and bog-thyme and wild garlic and acres and acres of meadowsweet; we could stuff our pillows with that and sleep for centuries. And then there’s no end of bilberries for jelly and wine and you’ve got ash and whitethorn: you can make chutney from ash keys and haws; and I know you have rhubarb and we could grow potatoes, and you could put in a stripe of barley. Even without a cow this little place could be a kind of paradise and you could catch fish with that otter-board miraculously, but a man can’t live on fish and barley only. You could run “the cratur” for yourself. I wouldn’t be jealous: it wouldn’t blight our bed would it? You’re too long-headed Liam, too far-thinking to get drunk every night. But I’m wondering why we must run away from paradise? If you pay rent to Billy Winters, you can stay here; we’d be the happiest people in the world. I’d make damson wine and we could eat trout with new potatoes. I’d go to the bog with you, you could cut and I could catch, and maybe in time we’d have children who could wheel and spread and turn.’
She missed a mutter from Ward and said:
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘You’re raving, I said.’
‘I’m sorry, love, he knocked my wits sideways, I’ll try to talk less but talk I must, true love they say never runs smooth and if all the maxims come true finally, then you must believe that true love conquers all, in the end!’
‘You’re still raving.’
‘Then I’ll stay quiet and listen. Tell me, what are we to do?’
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘I know that.’
‘And I can’t leave yet.’
‘But we were both leaving this morning!’
‘That was different . . . you can’t stay here now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because every beggar goin’ the road, every other huntsman, every school child, every nosy old woman for twenty townlands would know you were here . . . there’d be talk. Billy Winters’d come, then you know what’d happen.’
‘Tell me what would happen?’
‘He’d take the whip to you again, maybe, and to me if I let him.’
‘Are you afraid of Billy Winters?’
‘Afraid for you.’
‘Then tell me what you plan, what’s in your mind, love?’
‘You’ll have to go.’
‘Where can I go? tell me where can I go? I’ve nowhere to go!’
‘You must have friends.’
‘I can’t live with friends; I want to be with you. Why can’t I stay? Nobody need know. I’ll stay inside; I can use that pot in your bedroom and you could empty it for me. I’d do the same for you if you were sick or hiding. For you, for love I stole, what can you do for me? You took no risk, you’ve not been whipped or driven out, you’ve lost nothing, love, and if young girls can strangle infants, surely you can dispatch a hateful, brutal man for me, for love.’
She paused and added quietly:
‘And for gold?’
‘You said you loved Billy Winters in a way.’
‘No longer, I now have murder in my heart.’
‘It’s stupid; I’d be caught and hung.’
‘But death is a little thing, so everyone says.’ Ward shrugged angrily and moved away.
‘I thought you might jump on him, the way you jumped on that rat, remember; but if you can’t, you can’t. Anyway it’s better to rue going than to wait around forever, there’s a tide in the affairs of men, a moon in the affairs of women and they say a bad start bodes a good finish. Why don’t you answer, love?’
‘About what?’
‘Where I must go.’
‘Elsewhere, and you’ll have to stop talking . . . you’re making my head light.’
In the silence that followed, she watched as he stood at the open half-door looking out into the street, his face angled away. There was no way of telling what was in that mind. Anger? Guilt? Boredom? A mix of all three. So great was her curiosity, she was tempted to say now, ‘I saw where you were digging my grave with Blinky Blessing so I expect this conversation must be very odd for you, certainly it’s very odd for me.’ What would he do? Give one startled glance, walk out of the house like his father, and away forever? Small punishment for the most callous and mortal of crimes. Aloud she asked:
‘Where elsewhere?’
Ward glanced round:
‘You wait for me in London or Boston, when I’ve this place off my hands I’ll follow.’
He could lie so easily, so effortlessly. He wanted her gone from his house; away elsewhere, anywhere. She was a nuisance now, useless. Again she felt hatred deepen and an almost deeper anger with herself for being so stupid:
‘No matter where I am or where you are,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to pick a name. It’s going to be Christmas, love, or thereabouts; that’ll narrow the choice depending on gender.’ Ward did not react or seem to so she went on: ‘Nicholas if it’s a boy, how about Nicholas? I don’t think you’re listening fully, love . . . I’d no idea I’d find myself thinking so much about names but Nicholas I think is quite good.
You expect Nicholas Ward to be somebody and of course he would be because he’d be your son, Liam, and mine. And then again if it’s not a boy, which is of course what a girl is, we’d have to settle for Noelle, Nicola, Noleen, all of them somehow shrill; you feel they bite their nails and tend to be nervy, prone to fainting fits, silly a bit, given to talking overmuch like me: when I’m upset.’
He had turned and was walking towards her. She kept talking:
‘Corrie, that’s a good name, the Corry’s are a branch of the Maguire clan, a good Fermanagh name; Corrie Ward: now she sounds clever, wide awake. You feel she could give a good account of herself, manage her life, because none of us can tell what we’ll stumble into in the next ditch. Last week on a lovely April morning, there was a dead rat in the hall . . . a long-tailed brute: Terrible.’
She was unprepared for the effect, imagining he would shrug it off or feign a smile. His face not only looked suddenly haggard but the unreadable eyes seemed suddenly vulnerable:
‘You shouldn’t’ve kept that from me till now.’
‘What better day? It’s my birthday, the first day of our new life together, so I thought I’ll tell you as we leave together.’
Astonishingly, incredibly, he was now hunkered beside her, his arms around her so that her chin was resting on his shoulder. She could see his neck, the dark hair curling at the nape, the whiteness of his skin, the familiar smell of whiskey and tobacco, and what she felt now was an extraordinary feeling of both revulsion and pity; like that March day long ago when a farmer called Irwin had tracked their sheepdog from the Cuilcagh Mountains to the back yard at Clonoula. The dog had come in trailing one shattered leg. She could remember the angry look of the farmer and his voice saying to Jim Ruttledge:
‘There was a yella dog with this brute, I got him; he’s dead . . . Between them they’ve kilt six ewes and eleven lambs.’
When Jim Rutdedge had gone in with the farmer to talk with Billy she remembered how she had looked and looked into the dog’s gentle eyes, trying to understand the savagery that had driven it to kill and kill and kill. When Jim Rutdedge came back out, he said what any country man would say:
‘Only one thing you can do with a bad dog, put him down; no choice.’
Now on Ward’s shoulder she said quietly:
‘Yes, I’ll have to do that, I’ve no choice.’
Ward kept his arm round her. She could feel a slight trembling. She drew back. Pulling his face round she was astonished to see his eyes were glazed over with tears:
‘Crying, love? Really and truly crying . . . are you?’
For a moment Ward was unable to answer. When composure returned he said:
‘I’d no notion you were that way.’
‘Nature’s a terrible tinker, full of tricks and contrariness.’
True, because that moment of emotion just now, as he hunkered close, was real. All right to butcher her for Billy’s gold, not all right to bury his own child within her. That was upsetting. Poor fellow, all of a-tremble, almost in tears. Clearly a heart of gold. It would have to be wrenched out of him and left for rats, scaldcrows.
‘I know where I can go,’ she said, ‘Corvey Island.’ Ward looked at her. She could see that he was relieved at the idea of her going anywhere. He muttered, ‘You’ll have to eat . . . you’d starve out there.’
‘It’s only for a few days, a week at most till you’re finished here. I can live on bread, butter, watercress, black tea . . . that’s no hardship.’
‘You could be right,’ he said.
‘I know I am.’
Without looking at her or making further comment, he went to the dresser and began to gather bread, butter, tea and sugar. She watched him fold the tea and sugar into small squares of brown paper, wrap the bread in a sheet of newspaper. She then saw that he was putting butter into a dish, covering it with a saucer:
‘I don’t need the bowl and saucer.’
‘The paper print,’ Ward said, ‘it’ll stain the butter . . . blacken it.’
She looked at the back of his head with disbelief. The words ‘stain’ and ‘blacken’ echoing darkly in her mind. She could be lying now in the blackness of a grave, blood-stained, and here he was talking about ink stains on butter. He put the butter in a bowl, covered it with a saucer, wrapped both in newspaper and put all into a small hessian bag. He then turned to look at her, clearly relieved that she was leaving:
‘We should go; it’ll be broad daylight in an hour.’
She got up from the hearth, walked towards the door and out onto the street, watching as he locked the door of his cottage. Conscious of the grey stillness, the calm beauty of the bog, she heard herself say:
‘Farewell, paradise . . .’
Ward did not respond. As he put the key in his pocket she asked:
‘What time is it?’
He took out the gold hunter, opened it and said:
‘Almost half five.’
‘How long will it take us?’
‘It’s half an hour from here to the shore, an hour to row out.’
They began walking down the lane. Not wanting to be alongside him, she slowed. Twice he eased his stride, allowing her to catch up. Each time she deliberately lessened her pace. When this happened for the third time he stopped to ask:
‘Are you tired?’
‘A bit,’ she said, ‘you walk on, I’ll keep you in sight.’
The flecked eyes blinked and then stared impassively. What had she said? What was the expression in hunting, and war? In sight? On sight? Sighting? Meaningless without a gun. What could he possibly suspect when she herself did not know what she would or could do? An opportunity might or might not arise. If it did she must seize it as quickly as he had jumped on the rat. Yes. ‘Watch and seize’ . . . the Winters’ motto.
As they passed the bog-hole where the cow had died, he thumbed. She nodded, forcing a smile. They went on through the magical bogland of Brackagh round Laban, past the small reeded lake, and on through a succession of small fields, keeping close to the ditches, crossing the county road well below the thirty-acre scrub of Clonoula avenue. From there on the land sloped downwards leading to the ravine which dropped two hundred feet to the small rivulet cutting its way towards the lower lough and islands.
Ward found a downpath leading to the floor of the ravine. It went sideways. She followed him in a silence so absolute they could hear each other breathing as they slid from tree to bush to rock, down and down again through greying light into the primal gloom of fern and stone, of moss and twisted thorn. Like this for ten thousand years or longer: oak, elm and birch. It was like entering a great green wooded cave and far below the sound of water running over brown stones.
Once he had to take her hand to help at a steep place. The sudden mix of horror and heartbreak was so overwhelming that her vision became blinded, her speech thickened, and she could not hear what he was asking and kept saying:
‘It’s all right, it’s nothing.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ knowing that far from being ‘nothing’, everything, the entirety of her life, had altered to nightmare.
He stopped, watching, as she wiped at her face with the back of her hands, carefully avoiding the swollen part around her left eye. When she had regained some control, she saw that he was still looking at her closely with an expression which could almost have passed for concern. Feigning? Smile and smile and be a villain? What where those lines about killing the thing you love most? For him it was killing the thing he loved least. For gold, not me: gold. But then he might be smiling just a little at the mother of his child. It seemed to her now, looking at Ward, that no creature in the world could ever be more dangerous than the creature he was, than the creature she was, than the creature within her.
Once down, they set out along the bank of the rivulet through elongated birch and alder, twice fording it to make the walking easier. She followed, aware that the ravine was widening above, a sense of greenish-grey light c
oming down. They must be nearing the lake shore. She asked the time again:
‘Almost half six.’
Then suddenly, from the greenness of the rivulet, the openness of water, the immense sky and islands beckoning through a low mist. Like birth she thought . . . or death?
The tarred curragh was keeled up on a natural pier jutting into the water from the gravel shore. Ward righted it, pulled it to the water and held it steady while she stepped in. He then got in himself, pushed the boat away from the shore punt-wise, sat and began rowing strongly, rhythmically towards Corvey Island. The water was so still she could hear the whispered swish of the prow between oar-splashes. It was three miles or more from the lake shore to the island. It would take him well over half an hour to get there. Every chance she could, she studied his face: closed, clenched, absorbed. Once when he looked back, she glanced down and saw a small wooden bung on the floor of the curragh. In the middle of the bung there was a rusted cup-hook. It had been inserted into the floor with a piece of cloth. Clearly the bung had shrunk. It should not be too difficult to remove. Her heart began to argue with her breathing in a rapid familiar way. Supposing . . . Yes, but she could bloody her fingers trying to pull it out. He would see what she was doing. No, that would not work. She stared away across the lake. By now they were quarter of the way out. Every now and then her eyes were drawn back to the bung. It was when she saw the gaff, prised into the frame of the boat, that the battle between her heart and her lungs became so loud that she wondered if Ward could hear. For a minute or two she found it difficult to breathe. Gradually her heart settled. She glanced over at Ward. She saw him swallow and give a sallow smile. He said:
‘Are you boat-sick?’
She pointed at her throat and muttered something in response. Soon they would be half-way there. Her whole body was on the edge of trembling. With an effort of will she controlled it. She began to think, decided, reached for the gaff, took it out, turned it over in her hands, looking at it with pretended indifference till she heard Ward’s voice saying:
Death and Nightingales Page 18
