I’m not the only one who’s spent as much time as possible on deck. Last night Malachai became convinced he needed to wrap the terns in blankets and take them into his cabin to keep them safe and warm. I had to assure him captivity was no way for the birds to spend their last migration and that it’s early yet, they’re still strong, still happy to be in flight. I caught Léa singing to one, and, despite orders, Basil has been sneaking them bread crumbs they have no interest in, even though feeding the birds is moronic since we’re meant to be following them on their hunt for food.
The crew appears now. I warned them that when the weather changed the birds would leave, so they’ve come to say goodbye.
The first to rise is mine. I have taken to thinking of her as mine because she has burrowed inside and made a home in my rib cage. With the sun setting golden, she lifts and spreads her wings, hovering. Testing the air, her hunger, perhaps, her desire. It’s right, whatever she feels, because she flaps once and it’s as if she floats up into the sky, effortlessly higher and higher and unbound.
As the others of her kind follow her, the crew members wave, call their farewells, wish the birds a bon voyage.
Samuel uses meaty fingers to dash away his tears. When he sees me looking, he spreads his hands and says helplessly, “If they’re the last…”
He doesn’t need to finish.
“Don’t go too far,” I hear Anik tell one of the terns softly as it takes flight.
I find mine in the sky again, leading the way. She is smaller and smaller, halved and halved again.
Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave.
But I know she must. It’s in her nature.
7
NUI, GALWAY, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO
“You skipped my class,” a voice says as I’m scrubbing the bowl of a toilet.
I glance over my shoulder, then get back to work.
“What’s the point of cleaning this shithole if you’re not even attending your lectures?”
“It’s called a job. There are worse places to clean.”
“Why clean at all?”
I flush the toilet and straighten, annoyed at his privilege. He’s blocking the stall door, taller here before me than he was behind his lectern. “Excuse me.”
Professor Lynch tilts his head to better study me. His eyes probe the way they must probe a specimen he can’t figure out. He’s wearing a lilac bow tie with his suit today. It looks stupid, but I think that might be the point. “If you skip again I’ll have to mark you absent and your credit goes way down.”
I smile. “Good luck with that. Now move or I’ll smear my shitty gloves all over you.”
He rears back. “What’s your name?”
My gloves come off with a snap and I throw them in the rubbish, before removing the whole bag and carrying it in the direction of the bins.
“What are you doing here?” he calls.
It’s a damn good question.
The next time I see him I’m sweeping the courtyard outside the university café. He’s with several of his colleagues, drinking Americanos in a rare moment of sunshine between the clouds. His eyes fix on me across the courtyard; I don’t know how I know because I’m very careful not to look at him. I just feel it. I start sweeping closer because it’s my job, I have to, and so I reach the table next to his, where a mound of hot chips has been spilled. I stoop to sweep them up, laughing as a seagull lands and tries to pinch them from me.
“All right, then, you win, greedy guts.” I leave the chips for the bird, realizing as I do that it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen one in this courtyard, when once you could barely eat a meal out here without getting invaded by a flock of them. It’s much quieter now, without their raucous battling for scraps.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice says and I look up to find a plate being shoved in my face. It’s one of the women from Professor Lynch’s table, and her plate is covered in half-eaten food. I’ve seen her around—she’s another professor in the science department, thirties, charming, apparently racked with impatience.
“I’m not a waitress,” I say. Plus everyone knows they have to take their own tableware inside.
“What are you?”
“A cleaner.”
“So … here.” She thrusts the plate even more forcefully so I have no choice but to take it.
“I’ll take it inside for you, shall I?”
Her eyes swivel back to me, surprised. They narrow, as if she’s only just noticing me for the first time and not liking what she sees. “That’d be great.”
“Want me to accompany you to the toilet, too? I’m great at wiping arses.”
Her mouth drops open.
I carry her plate inside, and I don’t know what possesses me but I wink at Niall Lynch as I pass him. His expression, for the briefest moment, is utterly mystified and makes the whole thing worthwhile.
* * *
My front tire is punctured, which is why I’m walking my bike along the headland tonight when I see him for the third time in one day. Seated on the bench I love, he holds a pair of binoculars with which to watch the seabirds caterwaul and fish for their dinner. The diving cormorants, forcing their way bravely through the dark water.
I stop beside him. The sun is beginning to set, but this time of year it’s a little too far north to see where it hides behind the headland, and a veil of clouds besides. The light of the world is ashen, the sea at this hour rough and impassioned and searching.
After a little while I say, “Hey.”
Professor Lynch jumps half out of his skin. “Jesus. Fuck. You scared me.”
“Payback.”
My eyes graze his binoculars and without a word he passes them over. And like that the birds are no longer smudges, but elegantly detailed and purposeful and real. They steal my breath as they always do, these creatures who think nothing of having wings.
“I’m Niall.”
I don’t take my eyes from the birds. “I know.”
He stands with the kind of jerking speed that tells me immediately something is wrong. I lower the binoculars, follow his pointed finger to the shape, lift them once more and see. It’s a rowboat. I recognize the little vessel as the one that lives down on the shore, years beyond its capabilities in the water, its work now purely to advertise Nan’s Florist. There is all the strange paraphernalia about its hull, the plastic flowers and streamers and the like, and there, yes, the golden scrawl about its nose that reads Nan’s. Usually there’s an anchor keeping it on the rocks, but perhaps it’s been lost or removed because that boat is no longer safely beached but drifting swiftly out into the water, tugged along by the red-and-yellow beach umbrella that has been opened to catch the wind’s teeth. In the rowboat’s belly sit two boys.
“Wind’s got them,” Niall says.
“That rip will be next.” I can see it out there, waiting patiently and mercilessly for its prey. The dark line where waves meet.
Niall starts removing his shoes.
“Are you a strong swimmer?” I ask him. Inside I’m already moving. My body knows.
“Not really, but—”
“Get help. Find a boat and call for an ambulance.”
“Hey!”
My useless bike hits the ground. I leave my shoes on to run. Entering the water here would be foolish—along the headland a delicate finger of land reaches into the sea; from its end the swim to the boat will be easier, less directly against the current. The earth is uneven and thoughts flicker through my mind: how glad I am to have worn sneakers this morning, how I must try not to waste all my breath on the run when I will need it more for the swim. How cold the water will be. How far the boys have already been lured and how very fickle that boat looks.
Several minutes pass before I reach the white-tipped tongue. My discarded jacket tumbles behind me, caught on an eddy. My shoes scatter and my first few running steps into the sea are a familiar shot of adrenaline to the heart. I’ve swum this ocean all year round, at any time of
day in any weather. I swim it morning and night as often as I can. Which has taught me not how to best it nor even, truly, how to survive it, but simply to be aware of its capriciousness even after so many years. It could take me tonight just as it could have done when I was a child or may do when I’m gray. Only a great fool, my mother once told me, does not fear the sea.
When I’m far enough out I take a deep breath and dive under. It’s cold but I’ve felt worse. Problem is how quickly my own temperature will drop. Nothing for it now, no use worrying about that. Focus instead on the lift and reach of arms, on the smooth arc of shoulders, the swift kick of socked feet and always, always the air feeding my lungs. The breaths must be perfect, the tick of a metronome, as steady and sure.
I stop often to find the boat ahead and adjust my trajectory. It seems farther from me each time. The current is dreadful. I have dread of my own, begging me to turn back. I don’t want to die. There are far too many adventures yet to be had. Over and over I think, Now, now’s the point of no return, now you will probably drown out here with the children, and what would that be for? But I keep swimming until the boat is near enough for them to hear me over the wind.
“Shut the umbrella!”
The boys struggle to do my bidding but the wind shrieks and they’re no match for it.
My fingertips at last find the tin of the hull, then the edge of the boat. My arms shake with the effort of pulling myself into the dinghy. It feels too much, and I imagine the relief of sinking back into the water’s embrace, until—small hands clutch at my wrists, trying to help me. They bolster me for the fight, and then I am hauling myself up and over with a low animal groan.
I grab for the umbrella and wrestle it closed. Our passage slows considerably. There are oars, thank god. I strike out for land but quickly realize I’ll never get us there.
“There’s an inlet south,” one of the boys says.
I look at them for the first time. Eight or nine, maybe. One with ginger freckles, the other a dark fringe obscuring darker eyes. Both astonishingly calm.
The ginger boy points south and I realize he is right, the inlet isn’t far now, and will be easier to reach on the waves. I angle the boat south, leaving one oar submerged to give us a wide arc around the headland.
“The boat’s not gonna last,” I say. “Can you swim?”
“A little.”
We come around and I start rowing properly, hard and fast toward the closest line of land. But the boat takes on water, as it was always going to. Our ankles swim, then our knees.
“Right, jump in, stay close to me.”
We roll into the sea and strike out, and oh, these boys and their courage, and oh, their uselessness in the water, their tiny flailing limbs and “a little” turning out to be not really, not in any way that will help us. So in my left hand I take the backs of their jackets, the scruffs of their necks, and with my right arm I paddle, and with my feet I kick like a mad creature, like a hellbeast, dragging them along with me at this snail’s pace.
Land finds us in twenty minutes, an hour, two—who knows—and though I would never admit it aloud, I’m not sure I could have kept swimming. Not with the extra load hitched to my muscles, muscles I had thought were strong but now seem feeble. There’s no easy end to this, because there’s no gentle sand waiting to catch us as there is on the beaches in Australia; there are only hard-edged rocks and sullen waves to deliver us. I do my best to land first, pulling the boys atop me and saving their bodies from the impact, but fire erupts in my side as I’m dragged along the sharp teeth.
There’s no time to dwell because the next wave that comes will slam me harder and I have to get us out of its reach. I hurl the boys up toward the shallow end and tell them to crawl and quickly, and they do—they slip and slide and make their way onto the dry rocks, and I scramble clear, too, just as the next wave dumps, and the three of us sink onto our bums and could just as easily dissolve into the earth, I think.
We sit quietly, not speaking. Over the roar of the sea I can hear the distant ambulance siren.
It’s fucking cold.
Professor Niall Lynch arrives with my bike. “You guys all right?”
The three of us nod.
“Your parents are coming,” he says, and I realize belatedly that he’s managed to ride my bike to reach us, despite its flat tire. There’s a flock of figures approaching along the hill. Niall puts his jacket around the two shivering boys, but it doesn’t really fit and starts sliding off.
I stand. My body hurts, but only as a vague afterthought. I suspect the pain will find me later, and strip me bare, but for now I am dazed and too aware of my teeth.
“You’re bleeding,” Niall Lynch says.
“Nah,” I say, even though I am.
I bend for my bike; he reaches for it a second later and we lift it together. He hands me my shoes and jacket, which I didn’t realize he’d collected. “Thanks,” I say, and then he’s watching me too closely, so I look back to the boys.
They meet my eyes. Smile. And it’s enough, it’s more than enough. I don’t want the parents and the ambulance and the hospital and the questions. The smiles are plenty. I flash them a grin of my own, a quick wave, and then I start pushing my bike back up toward the grassy hill.
I glance back once. Niall is staring at me in a way that seems to imply I should have said something, so I say the only thing I can think of, which is “Seeya,” and head for home.
* * *
Blood sluices down the drain. My toes are pruned, mind blank. I’m curled on the floor of the shower and the hot water is starting to fail; in moments it will be gone and I’ll be frozen again, but still I can’t move.
I forgot to ask the boys’ names. I suppose it doesn’t matter, only now I wish I knew. I wish I were back in the sea.
Two shards of rock are embedded in my hip; my ribs and thigh have a layer of skin scraped free. Bruises are forming. The ache of the swim is bone-deep.
When I can put it off no longer I get awkwardly to my feet and turn off the taps. Even the act of drying myself takes effort. I perch on the toilet lid and use a pair of tweezers on the gravel in my flesh. I don’t have any disinfectant so I pull on undies and singlet and search the kitchen for tequila. A splash for my hip, a shot to swallow.
My housemates find me sitting on the kitchen bench, halfway through the bottle. It doesn’t surprise them. They reach for glasses and join me, but soon trickle away until I’m left, alone again, only now my tequila bottle is empty and the pain has melted into the background and there is a pounding beat of adrenaline in my pulse. I’d like to be outside but I’m glued to the spot, swaying just a little, too astonished by life and the world to move.
I think of my mother: she was always aware of life’s marvels and its perils, and of how closely entwined the two are. I ponder what led her across the ocean and into the bed of a monster. I wonder if she knew what he was all along, and I think that she might have. I think she might have thrilled at what he was, even though it would see her abandoned once again. I wonder if anything was able to press through the wall of anger that led my father to tighten his hands around another man’s neck. Was there a flicker of regret, even as he did it? A momentary revelation of the horror of the thing he was making of himself? I wonder what he thinks of, in prison, and if his anger feels like a worn old friend or a passionate lover even now. Perhaps he hates it, perhaps he left it buried in the throat of the man he killed.
Fuck. I’m drunk. These are the things that creep in uninvited.
I slide off the bench and drift to the bedroom I share with Sinead and Lin. They’re asleep, Sinead’s soft snoring evidence. I think of the sea to fall asleep, but tonight her rhythms are uneasy and offer no calm. I am altogether too alive for calm.
* * *
At 3:00 a.m. someone knocks on our front door. I know because I’m awake and staring at Lin’s alarm clock when the sound reverberates through every paper-thin wall of the house. Whoever’s responsible for that will b
e in trouble. All seven other occupants of Wall Manor, as we have named it, let free a stream of filth the likes of which would make a sailor blush.
Henry, who is closest to the front door, gets up to answer it and we all listen to his feet pounding along the floorboards.
“What? You know what time it is, man?”
“I believe it’s 0302,” a voice replies, and I know that voice. “Sorry to disturb.”
I sit blearily upright.
“Does Franny Stone live here?” the voice says, and a chorus of groans travels through the Manor.
Sinead and Lin throw their pillows at my head while I stumble to the door.
Niall Lynch is on our front step, bathed in silver Galway moonlight. He’s in the same clothes he was wearing earlier tonight, and he’s smoking a cigarette. He looks lean and pale. What is it about him that so enamors everyone? I can’t see it. Not when he isn’t talking about birds.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not coming in.”
I blink. “Correct.”
“Want one?” He holds up his self-rolled ciggie.
“Yuck. No.”
“Here, then.” This time it’s a calico bag of things. I look through it curiously and make out a few items: bandages, disinfectant, painkillers, and a bottle of gin.
“Thanks. I mean I have stuff…”
“I assumed.” He spreads his hands helplessly. “You did that and then you just walked off and you looked like shit and no one even said thank you.”
I process this. “So you’re saying thank you?”
He shrugs. “Aye. I guess.”
“Okay.”
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