Before the Fall

by Orna Ross

  "I'll have to go away," she said, her fingers so tight on my wrist they were near denting my bones. "He makes everyone do what he wants."

  Again I felt it, that there was more in the words than they were able to hold. Something cold and dead slithered across the pit of me. I looked hard at her and she held me in a horrible stare that made me want to look away, but I didn't. I let what I was seeing pierce me. I kept my eyes up and open to her. I let her truth come crawling out, over and under my skin, and realised that one tiny, secret, buried part of me had half-known all along.

  When she saw for sure that the knowledge had reached me, she let go of my arm. "You see, Peg, I can't stay in Mucknamore if my brother is living here. I just can't."

  1995

  After Rory's wife has left, I feel raw, like a scab that's been picked too soon. All the anger that eluded me while she was there, in front of me, thrashes through me now. But I have learned, this summer, that I don't have to stay within such feelings, allowing them to throw me about. I can write, or run, or swim, or walk: any of those will change the balance, make me bigger than the emotion, shrink it back to its proper place inside me. Not me inside it.

  I check my watch — five hours to sunset — and decide to walk.

  I move awkwardly down the small climb onto the beach, the weight of my bump pulling against me. It is one of the things I most look forward to regaining after the baby is born: my own way of walking. Off I set, doing my best to stride. Onlookers glancing as I pass see only a generic pregnant woman, but inside, I am Fury unbound. How dare she! How dare she! And as for him... If I think of him, lying off in my bed after sex, snoring, I want to kill him.

  I stamp towards The Causeway, ranting and storming, knowing all the while that really it's my own self making me so angry. I am in a mess of my own making. Why didn't I hold to what I said? "I want us to think about what we expect from each other," I had told him, that day we came out here to Coolanagh for the picnic. "I want us to think about where it might take us."

  That was the right tack and I should have stuck with it instead of letting myself be swept along, with nothing clear. After all I'd learned and said and written, there I was, still an absolute fool for him.

  Snarled in thought but mindful of my balance, I negotiate my way out The Causeway, up and down the rise and fall of the dunes. Ahead lies Coolanagh, fern-green against the summer-blue sea. I am going to walk all the way to the far side, which I've only done twice in my life before. The night before I left here twenty years ago, when I first realised it was going to be me in my life, alone. And the night I thought I was leaving again.

  It takes me thirty minutes to get to the Neck, where causeway and island meet. From there I turn right, awkwardly negotiating the shelf that I must climb to get up onto the outer ring path. I find the pathway, bracken-strewn, rising steeply to top the tall cliffs that buttress the southerly side of the island. On this side, Coolanagh is a slow eroder, even to the lash of Atlantic waves. Crags and cliffs, deep caves and extravagant rock formations hold out against the onslaught. A steady climb brings me to the plateau of the southern summit, a high rocky outcrop overlooking a gannet colony. I tiptoe forward, nervously, to the edge. Below me, majestic gannets sweep in and out of home and below them, two hundred feet below, thundering Atlantic waves roar against the base of the cliff. You'd think it a different sea to the one that politely spreads itself across Mucknamore beach.

  To the east, arcs of high cliffs curve away, each covered with thousands of birds: guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and others I don't know. My attention is drawn by an unusual bird above, soaring on an updraft of air. Black as a raven, but with a longer neck and shorter beak, gliding high and elegant. It is so completely itself, so joyous in its swoops and loops through the air, that my vexing thoughts fall from me to wonder at it.

  It's a trigger, taking me out of my head into the moment I am in. I feel the thousands of birds nesting and preening along the cliff face, each one calling its call and feeding its young, is a tiny herald of peace. Deep down, under the tumult of my thoughts, beneath the fury of my feelings, I know what they know.

  After a time, I get up and begin to make my way back the way I came. When I come to a turnoff that cuts down the side of the cliffside, I take it, remembering that it leads to a small cove, the only safe place to swim off this side of the island. Somebody — I wonder who? Nobody has lived on this island for a century and a half? — has cut back the ferns and brambles and nettles, making it passable. The evening sun feels warmer down here: the height of the cliff behind me cuts off the breeze.

  About now, he is due home from work and she will surely tell him that she has been to see me. What will he do?

  "If you want him, he'll go with you," she said. Oh, but I do want him, I might as well admit it, I do. I have only been holding back to protect myself. But is he really prepared to leave her and his two children? Do I really want a man who could do that? If he did, where would we — how would we — live? I couldn't live in Mucknamore and presumably he wouldn't want to be too far away from his two children. I have treaded through these questions many times without ever reaching the finishing line of an answer.

  I picture him arriving home today. Parking the car beside hers, putting down his briefcase in the hall, loosening his tie as he walks into the kitchen to find her waiting for him, her eyes swimming with significance. I see her sitting him down, telling him they must talk. And she's right: they must. Didn't I say so myself?

  No. Stop. Stop all this thinking, I order myself. Like you did up on the cliff. Feel the fading sun on your eyes and the breeze on your skin. Pull yourself out of your head down into your body, the body that can't be in tomorrow or yesterday but only here, where it is.

  This is what I've learned, from reading Gran's diary and Norah's scribblings: that there will always be something to think about, to feel bad about. If it wasn't Rory today, it would be something else. I can let the waves of feeling be, without letting them sweep me away. Underneath the feeling is another part of me, a depth that is tranquil. I can rest back into it.

  And I do. In the middle of my trouble, I let it go and experience again that shift in perception that makes the scene before me seem to recompose itself. Everything in my sights — the black juts of rock fingering the waves, the grains of sand being flattened by my feet, the fading light glancing off the water, the gentle evening air stroking my hot cheeks, everything — seems more completely itself than usual, full of its own living presence. And somehow, simultaneously, more connected to everything else.

  I kick off my shoes, slip out of my clothes, walk into the sea. My skin is porous, no longer a boundary: I am melting into the water and all the world. Joy surges: the same molecules dance in me and in everything.

  By the time I'm back up on the path, the light is being sucked away over the horizon, taking the warmth of the day with it. The breeze sharpens with the advance of darkness, rippling the surface of the sea water and making goose bumps stand to attention all along my arms. Further in, towards the village, the tide has retreated, leaving behind hundreds of tiny sand-pools reflecting the sun, like a scattering of giant, golden coins.

  He was due at my shed over an hour ago. Will he come tonight? Maybe she didn't tell him what she did, maybe she will bide her time instead, watch him leave to go to me as he has every other night this summer. Or maybe they talked and he came anyway. Maybe he is still waiting there right now, wondering where I am. Maybe.

  About halfway back, I stop near the warning signs, slide down the small dunes to the fencing where I prise apart the two strips of wire and twist myself through, evading the wire barbs that want to claw at my clothes. A further slide down the rest of the slope brings my feet onto flat sand. Coolanagh sand. I am not frightened: here, at the edge, I am safe. The danger is further out and it stays out there; you have to walk out to meet it.

  I sit, waiting, watching darkness deepen from blue to indigo to black. No trace of mist or fog on this dry,
moonless night, but still I can see almost nothing. I turn on the pocket torch I've brought with me. Beyond its puny shaft of light darkness swells, immense. It would have been the same with an oil lamp, worse in the thick fog that was down that night in 1923.

  Walking forward, just a little, I stretch for answers to a different set of questions to the ones that have poked at me all evening. How far out did Dan walk on that fateful night? What if he had refused, overcome her, taken the gun, turned it back on her? He was so much stronger; it could easily have gone that way instead. What if he had decided to make a run for it? Would she really have shot him?

  I picture him quick-trudging his way out The Causeway to meet her. In his pocket is the typewritten note that enticed him into the wet night: I need to talk to you, it says, or some such words. Meet me you know where, out The Causeway. Seven o'clock... He walks as smartly as the fog permits, his head down, his shoulders staunch. He can hardly see five steps ahead but he has walked this strip a thousand times. He keeps to the centre and makes steady progress, right-left, right-left, right-left, lieutenant soldier boy to the last.

  I see him slow his pace as the light below The Causeway catches his attention. Not in Lover's Hollow, where he expected, but a little further on. He steps down towards it — no barbed wire then to slow his progress — skids down the side through the top, damp layer of sand, not thinking to be fearful. As he comes close to the light, she says his name, hesitantly — "Dan?" — and when he confirms it, she tells him to stop where he is. He does what he is told, halted by surprise. Underneath the glow of the lamp is the barrel of a gun — Barney's gun — pointing his way.

  Poor Dan. He thought he was on his way to a tryst with a woman who once loved him: who had, he reckoned, a soft spot for him still. He went to meet her, expecting...what? Not to find a rifle, this rifle, pointing at him, intent on revenge.

  Arrogant man.

  She blocks his way back to The Causeway and gives him a choice: a close-range shot in the chest or a walk across Coolanagh sands. He picks the chance of unsafe sands over the certainty of a bullet, just as she knew he would. The gun points him in the direction she wants him to go and he goes, walking upright, disdaining to pick his steps. He has taken only a few strides when he feels the ground shift and then collapse.

  He is down, sucked by quicksand.

  Then he knows fear, oh yes. Freezing, wet, chest-clutching, fear. "Help me," he calls out to her, the lady of the lamp. "Help me...Please."

  Oh, sunken, shrunken man: did you really think she would?

  Back at my shed I find nothing, no sign of whether he came or not.

  I think not. I shine my torch around the door, along my table-desk where I left pen and paper handy if he should want to write. I turn on the lamp to have a closer look, but there is no sign of any visit.

  I'm calm, I know what I must do.

  Taking my torch, I cross the field, picking my way through builder's mud, to the back door of the house. It's late but there's a light glowing in the kitchen window. Even if they are asleep, I intend to wake them. I need Hilde to make the arrangements tonight.

  She will think this odd, but I will insist — it must be tomorrow morning, no later — and odd or not, she will comply, not only because she is so obliging, but because it will suit her and Stefan to get it done, to see me gone. They have been holding off for me.

  * * *

  Next morning, I am up at first light, heading eastwards towards Rathmeelin, stopping only to pick wild daisies to place on the grave.

  As I approach it, up the cemetery path, I see it is a mess, covered in rotting bunches of flowers, plastic wrappings still swathing some of the decayed clumps. I can smell them, fetid in the morning air. Among the wilted stalks, a single carnation clings to a faded shade of its former colour, pink. The whole thing looks terrible, like nobody cares. But who is there to tend things like the family graves now Mrs D. is gone?

  I check the inscription on the headstone. Maeve wants to know it is precisely right before she pays the stonecutter. It seems to be just as she ordered: Maureen Devereux, née Delaney. Born 25.5.1923. Died 12.5.1995, aged 71. Go nDéanfaidh Dia Trócaire ar a hAnam. The new-chiselled letters, black on the old grey stone, stand out strong and bold, as if Mrs D's death is the one that really matters.

  Some of her rotting flowers have slid across onto Auntie Norah's patch. I pick up the rotting stems and they shrink in my hands, oozing slime. Holding the mess away from my body, I carry it down the slope and over the wall, onto the soft sand of the beach. I dump it there, then go back up for another handful. And again until I have cleared it all away. On the beach then, I kneel and dig a hole with my hands, scrabbling like a dog at sand that is soft on top, like pale brown sugar, but darker and damper underneath.

  When the hole is big enough, I transfer in the stinking vegetation and cover it over, pat it down. I stand to finish the job, dragging soft sand across with one foot, stamping it flat.

  Then I lay the new flowers I've brought.

  Back in the shed, it's still only seven a.m. I haul the two suitcases I packed the night before up to Hilde's house. One is light, with the clothes I brought from San Francisco; the other heavy, packed with papers. I sit on the heavy one, beneath her new kitchen window, to wait, emptying my head of thought, knowing I am doing right.

  Regiments of cloud are mustering on the horizon, the morning air has an autumnal tang and the sea dances friskily under an offshore breeze. After a time, the hum of a car approaches and slows to a stop out on the road. A door bangs, the engine revs away and one of the workmen comes through the passage at the side of the house. The one with the mermaid tattoos. In his hand, he carries foil-wrapped sandwiches and a flask; under his arm is a tabloid newspaper. He doesn't see me.

  A demolition machine sits with its steel ball expectant. He climbs into it, ignites the motor. It coughs into a roar and lumbers across the field like a tank, pulling up beside my shed. He turns off the engine then, evacuating the air of noise. Across the dunes, the sea surf sounds again. Opening his flask, he spreads a newspaper across the steering wheel and takes a sandwich from his pack. He eats and reads. In the distance, a dog barks.

  Soon the others are arriving, taking out their tools: sledgehammers and mallets and picks. One of them notices me and nudges another, who says something, then they all turn their heads for a look. I stare back at them, protected by distance. The man in the machine switches the ignition again, diverting their attention. With another spluttering cough, it is primed, ready for action.

  The time has come. He hoists the jib on high, tugging the chains and yanking the steel ball from its mooring, so the heavy globe plunges towards the ground. It is stopped, mid-drop, by its chain, and it reels and jerks like a fish at the end of a line, but the chain holds strong and it settles, a solid black orb, level with my shed's windows. The other men stand back and I rise to my feet. We all watch as the steel ball swings clumsily and strikes.

  One whack is enough: down she goes, my little shed, my childhood refuge, my summer sanctuary, gusting up puffs of dust. At the centre of the collapsed brick and corrugated iron is the bed I slept in, still creased with the imprint of my body. The second machine closes in, bucket tilted to scoop it, and all the rubble, away.

  Two other outhouses are also to be knocked, but I can't watch any more. I pick up my bags and go round the front to rouse Hilde who has made me promise that I won't leave without saying goodbye.

  1923

  The Wexford Weekly

  12th December, 1923

  * * *

  "FREE STATE OFFICER FOUND DEAD AT MUCKNAMORE!"

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning last, fisherman John Colfer of Mucknamore was taking to the sea in commencement of his day's work when his attention was caught by a body trapped on Coolanagh strand. The sands at Coolanagh are deceptive, appearing firm, but in fact being subject to a "quick" condition, and this person appeared to have got into trouble there overnight.

  A
s the deceased was dressed in a Free State Army uniform, Mr Colfer returned to land and proceeded with haste to inform the military barracks at Wexford. The military arrived and, with the aid of planks and ropes attached to the military lorry, proceeded to try to extract the body from the sand, a scene which attracted a great number of people from Mucknamore to observe proceedings. The operation took upwards of two hours and engendered great excitement among a growing crowd.

  The deceased was identified as Lieutenant Dan O'Donovan of Mucknamore, a National Army officer, and the death has caused a sensation in Mucknamore and surrounds.

  It is presumed that he inadvertently wandered off the Point out onto Coolanagh sands in the dark. On the night in question, this area was submerged in fog, and there is much speculation as to what would have taken him out on the Point at Mucknamore in such dangerous conditions. While not a native of these parts, Lieutenant O'Donovan had lived here for some years and it is thought unlikely that he would not have known of the dangers associated with Coolanagh strand, notorious as it is throughout south Wexford.

  The remains have been transferred to the morgue, awaiting inquest. Pending investigation, further details will be provided.

  Surge

  1923

  The two brown doors of the public house were closed, which was strange, because it was almost twelve o'clock, well beyond opening time. Brigade Police Officer Patrick-Joe Brosnan turned up the collar of his military coat against the rain and banged on the door again with his fist, one last time — thump-thump-thump — no longer expecting an answer. The motor engine was growling behind him and he turned and shrugged his shoulders at Private O'Dwyer, sitting dry at the wheel of the army lorry, enjoying a cigarette. O'Dwyer made a gesture back at him, but the downpour was so thick he couldn't properly see.