Death and Nightingales

by Eugene McCabe

  ‘The priest . . . that’s what they call that.’

  She looked back at him and said:

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  For five minutes or so she let the gaff dangle beside her leg. When she was certain he was not looking, she hooked it through the rusted cup-hook on the bung. The priest. The end, no absolution. She let it lie thus on the floor of the Curragh for another five minutes. What next? If the bung came out easily, the bottom of the boat would fill slowly. Would he suspect, and then discover? Would he try to kill her? To what purpose?’ No, she could get out and swim away. He couldn’t follow in a water-logged cot. I’m being stupid, she thought. All I have to do is to take out this bung and cover it with my foot; the boat will fill, he’ll panic and start to row. Long before the island she would tip the boat, push it away and he would have nothing to cling on to. He’d go down like a stone. What could be simpler? She would have to time it carefully because the water was cold for a long swim. But swimming itself should take care of that, and if she got tired she could float most of the way.

  They were a little over half-way towards Corvey Island. She would have to decide now. Yes, now, a voice said. Do it now . . . now. She began to unlace the buttons of her boots and pull them off one by one. He glanced at what she was doing, indifferent. She heard herself say, ‘these boots are new and tight.’ He did not reply. She placed the boots where they would block the view of the bung. She then took off the jacket of her costume. He was still in no way alerted. Her skirt would slip off easily once in the water. She dangled the gaff, linking it into the cup-hook of the bung. Ward had begun to whistle.

  She watched his mouth move as it shaped notes, an American melody she could not place. Should she jerk or turn? She began to turn slowly with both hands exerting an upward pull. Yes, she could sense the bung turn and there! – a sudden uprush of water, the coldness spilling about her feet. She placed one foot over the bung-hole to stop the flow, put the gaff back in the side of the curragh and stared out across the lake. It was a full three minutes before Ward noticed. His feet were up on the frame, well above the rising water. She had heard him mutter:

  ‘Heavy old brute this.’

  ‘I think’, she said, ‘we must have a leak somewhere.’

  Ward stopped rowing, stared down at the water on the floor of the cot and said:

  ‘Jesus! You’re right.’

  She nodded up towards his end.

  ‘It’s from behind you somewhere.’

  As he twisted round he said:

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Keep rowing,’ she said, ‘we’re over half-way.’

  He began to row strenuously. As he did she took her foot off the bung-hole. The water was now so deep on the floor that the swirl as it came up could not be detected. She could see the veins standing out on his neck and forehead. The boat had become dead-weight, almost static. When she leaned to one side it almost shipped water and he gave a hoarse cry:

  ‘Quit! Take care; you’ll cope us!’

  There was such naked terror in his face that she looked away unable to say what she thought. She might say:

  ‘I saw where you were digging with Blinky, now it’s your turn to make your peace with God, to put on bravery.’ Instead all she could say was:

  ‘May God forgive you, my love, and me.’

  There was nothing in his face but incomprehension and terror. As she shifted from the centre of the stern seat to the side, the curragh slipped over as easily as a toy boat. The water was bracing, so wintry-cold she scarcely heard the gurgling scream. She surfaced, arched her back, placed her feet on the stern and pushed the craft with all her strength. It moved away easily, more quickly than she had imagined. She followed, pushing it ahead of her, swimming away from the threshing and screeching in the water a few yards away, away from the horror of her name being screamed out again and again . . . ‘Beth! Beth! Beth!’ She was well away when she stopped pushing the curragh, turned on her back and floated, covering her ears tightly with her hands and kicking with her feet, both as a ploy to kill off the sound of Ward’s drowning voice and to lessen the seizure of grief and horror which possessed her, body and soul.

  How long does it take to drown a man? Unwanted pups and kittens, about three minutes. That she knew, and this thing of surfacing for the third, fourth or fifth time? True or false? Could she count up to a hundred? She began, and through the counting she could hear his voice . . . ‘Beth! Beth!’ . . . Aloud she began very slowly:

  ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and in Jesus Christ His only Son Our Lord . . . our only son . . . our only child . . . died and was buried . . . he tumbled down to hell . . . with the poor crooked . . . the third day he rose . . . by any other name . . . ‘Beth! Beth! Beth!’ . . . Oh sweet Jesus, he’s still howling . . . how long . . . the third time he rose again from the dead . . . is that it? Is he gone now? He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father . . . it’s my left hand is smashed . . . and where’s my father all my life? Where’s he now? The Emperor of Russia was my father . . . Oh that he were alive now and here to see the flatness of my misery with eyes of pity . . . not revenge . . . oh no, sweet Jesus, no: it’s not sweet . . . it’s bitter and horrible. Silence . . . sinking, sinking, sinking to eternity, to hell? . . . Is he? Gone?

  She opened her eyes, rolled over from floating to swimming and looked about. The mist had cleared. Silence. Nothing to see but swallows skimming over the calm surface of the lake. Above, a vast empty sky. After a while she saw the black shape of the capsized curragh, now a hundred yards away. It was too awful to contemplate or comprehend. She said to herself:

  ‘My true love, my false love: gone. Farewell forever and forever and forever and forever, farewell.’

  Gulping in water, choking with grief, she turned on her back again, floating, and said:

  ‘Don’t girn, idiot, swim or you’ll join him.’ She began to swim.

  Aware of her skirt and shift dragging she wriggled out of them and set out with a steady breast-stroke towards Corvey Island, now quarter of a mile away. Between floating and swimming it took her the most of an hour to reach the island. The sun was high and warm as she walked ashore. For ten minutes she rested in the grassy hollow of the garden, then made her way up to the bothy, found the key, unlocked the door and set about lighting a fire.

  The matches were so damp that she had to strike most of a box before one ignited. When the kindling began to blaze, she wrung out vest and knickers, hung them on a chair near the fire, opened the settle bed, wrapped herself in blankets and closed her throbbing eyes. She found herself at the bottom of a river or lake, in a dark cavern. All round her were infants crying soundlessly and floating past, warriors staring bitterly with gaping wounds, old men and women grief-hobbled, and the red dwarf with a wattle creel on his back, gold spilling out of it. He was pointing and laughing. She realised she was herself underwater. Terrified of drowning she began to swim upwards towards the light and broke the surface with a great cry as her lungs gulped in air. She swam ashore. Someone was calling her name, a familiar voice. She realised it was Liam, her love. She pointed across a small bay at rowanberries on the other bank and said, ‘Those berries, be sure to bring me some,’ and he swam back and brought a branch of the berries in his mouth and it seemed to her now that nothing in the world could be more beautiful than to be watching him cross the dark pool, his white body perfect and his black hair and the green of his gold-flecked eyes, a youth without fault or blemish, the branch of red rowanberries between his throat and shapely face. When he got out of the water she could not see him, only feel him, and then realised it was the top of his head. He seemed asleep. She sat up and grasped his buttocks, astonished at the ease with which his head slipped into her body, without forcing, without effort. When he began to struggle she crossed her ankles, tightening. Relief was slow in coming. Part of her mind wondered a little about his breathing, another part said: ‘Good enough for the mu
rderous brute.’

  Pleasured, she pushed him away with violent disgust, and saw with even deeper disgust the swollen tongue lolling in his mouth, his eyes upturned, and heard herself say: ‘He’s dead, fish-dead, my love has eyes like Parnell, and he’s fish-dead,’ and again she heard a familiar voice calling her name. She could see now, through the open bothy door, the evening light on the lough.

  Then she saw the familiar figure of Billy Winters, running towards the open door. He stood, arms outstretched, leaning inwards, blocking the light.

  When his eyes became accustomed to the half-light, Billy Winters saw Beth on the settle bed half elbowed-up and staring towards the door with one desolate and one dark-rimmed eye. Gradually, as she began to make out his features, it occurred to her that the same face which had manifested such hatred and incomprehension twelve hours ago now seemed haunted, taut with guilt and concern.

  Then he was kneeling beside her, holding her and kissing her hands and forehead, moving from her awful bruised face and back to her swollen left hand, all the while sobbing as she had once heard him sob at her mother’s grave. Twice he tried to speak. Each time he was so overcome he could not utter. He kept shaking his head until finally he said:

  ‘I was certain you were gone; I saw one of your boots below in the shallows near Ward and I thought, she’s gone; she’s dead, the light of my life, I’ve driven out, I’ve killed the only thing . . . I . . . I’ve . . .’ and again he was overcome. She watched him till control returned. He got off his knees, took over a stool and sat by her. As she pulled the blankets about her neck like a bib he said:

  ‘There’s a bad twist in you, girl, do you know that?’

  ‘I do . . . but there’s worse in you, Sir, and you don’t know it.’

  Silence.

  ‘How did you guess I was here?’

  ‘The Dummy McGonnell . . . Did they harm you, girl?’

  ‘Nothing visible; you did that.’

  ‘A terrible mistake . . . but you were robbing me, girl, for him, for Ward, for your lover . . . could you not guess what he was? Murderous, evil brute.’

  ‘And what are you, Sir . . . or any man . . . I loved him.’ Suddenly overwhelmed, she averted her face and began crying into her hands. When she stopped she could hear his voice as though far away under water or through glass, as in a dream, and it was saying:

  ‘The lowest of the low. Could you not guess?’

  ‘I loved him; surely you can understand that, can you not?’

  For a long time neither said anything. She did not venture to speak. Eventually he asked: ‘How did he drown?’

  ‘Loudly . . . squalidly. I think his bowels must have opened.’

  ‘Yes; but how?’

  ‘He can’t swim; I pulled the bung; the curragh filled with water and went down, and he with it . . .’

  Billy Winters thought about this.

  ‘A drowning accident, “death by misadventure”, that’s what they’ll call it.’

  ‘I don’t care what they call it.’

  ‘Nor do I but I care deeply about you, daughter.’

  ‘I’m not your daughter.’

  ‘Can you forgive me ever, Beth?’

  ‘Not today, nor tomorrow, not ever, maybe.’

  ‘The broken tree forgives the storm.’

  ‘And stays broken.’

  ‘It can grow again: I’d care for you different from this day out.’

  ‘I hate you, Billy Winters, and if I’d courage enough I’d kill you too, and feel nothing.’

  She saw him glance at her. He was shaking his head:

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘I would; for what you did to Mama, to me, to God knows who else. I will always hate you.’

  ‘I will always love you, Beth Winters.’

  When Beth did not respond he moved towards the bothy door to look out on the heart-breaking loveliness, the seeming peace of a May evening. He became aware then of the island shore-line and the amber darkness where Ward lay in the shallows – or was he floating now in a deep current down the lough towards the mother of all, staring up at the stars through a haemorrhage of dying light? A raven gliding over from Tirkennedy circled the sunken garden three times before alighting near the well. From cupped hands they had drunk there on that other May day long ago, one calendar month before God withheld his mercy to allow the slaughter of his wife and unborn child.

  For about a minute neither spoke. Then he said:

  ‘We’re a pair, we two: cangled both to treachery. Maybe we should marry, go elsewhere?’

  Beth put her hands under the blankets onto her womb, and lay back, turning her face to the wall. When he saw this he asked:

  ‘Are you hurting . . . are you sick, Beth?’

  ‘Unto death, Mr Winters . . . unto death.’

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409002901

  Version 1.0

  Published by Vintage 1998

  Copyright © Eugene McCabe 1992

  Cover photograph © Elisabeth Morgan/Millennium

  The right of Eugene McCabe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  I am grateful to the Clogher Historical Society, and its editor, Theo McMahon, for permission to refer to the diary of James Donnelly, Bishop of Clogher, 1865 to 1893, edited by Patrick Mulligan, late Bishop of Clogher, 1970 to 1979. For images and details of eighteenth-century fur-trading in Canada I am also indebted to Peter C. Newman’s history Company of Adventurers. I am aware that aficionados of Percy French will know that he was closer to thirty than fifty in the year 1883.

  First published in Great Britain by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd 1992

  Vintage

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library