As he dropped into the spot he drew from his jeans pocket a tiny gold envelope, which he handed to her.
‘For me?’ She lavished it with wonder, then kissed him. Her fingers raised up a gold chain with a tiny Connemara Marble cross at the end. ‘Tony! I adore it! I’ll put it on now. I adore it. I’ll always wear it, I will.’ She settled in his embrace. ‘I could stay here forever like this, just you and me.’
His fingers threaded through her ocean-damp hair. At the same time, his mind wrestled with his uncertainties, and what his destiny might be.
‘Remember I mentioned a second surprise?’ she said. ‘Well I have one. But not yet. First, I want to know about a truly special man. Who is Tony MacNeill, really deep down?’
He shrugged, made a face. ‘Like anybody else. Not that interesting.’
‘Liar. That’s not who he is. Be serious, I want to know.’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘It’ll be dark soon.’
‘No it won’t. Please, be serious. I understand life and how unpredictable it can be; I’m six years your senior, remember. You’ve had trying times, ups and downs, but so what, we both have. Tell me what happened. Those scars. And about your family.’
Her genuineness induced in him a rare urge to open up. It felt both desirable and dangerous, like the night he spent with her. Foolish to give in to her, he felt, yet he couldn’t deny that that was the yearning in him now.
‘Six years and eleven months,’ he said, and paused as his words hung in the air. ‘You’re March ‘59, I’m February ‘66. Another month, you’d be seven years older.’ As soon as his words were out he hated their superficiality, knew that he had carried his avoidance too far. And he noticed in her a hurt, at least clear disappointment. He owed her more, he realised that, especially for fighting through telling him what had happened in New York and Baghdad, re-enduring such terrors so that he could know her. But could he tell her anything? Tell anyone? His heart was beating hard. Where was his escape?
She knelt forward, facing him, knees buried in the sand. ‘You’re hiding,’ she said. ‘What makes you so afraid? I care about you, a whole lot. I’d like to know you, your life; you’re that important to me. But if you feel I don’t merit your trust, then we’ll just let it be.’
* * *
Though vacillating, he told her how destroyed he had felt when his parents took him out of Ireland. Moving to America wasn’t the adventure it might have been for any other fourteen-year-old. And how in Newark things turned bad from the start. Within three months he had sunk into what he now was sure was adolescent depression. He wasn’t to blame for that; that’s how Kate explained it to him years later, and Joel too. But no one talked about teenage depression then; to some he was just one more moody kid, a trouble-maker. From there he slid downhill but always had one thing going for him: he could fight, better than most. He thought of it as the only thing he did well, not being naturally good at anything else. Dublin had given him a fighting heart, an edge, as he saw it, a way of surviving, the one thing nobody could take from him. In the seediness of Newark, where trouble came free and loose, he would have been dead without that edge. He looked down on the tough kids on the streets, in the housing projects, the jocks in high school. As he saw it, they imagined themselves to be poor, deprived, victimised, but none knew real hardship, nor had ever been really poor or hungry, nor had had to struggle every day because that’s just how life was. Only the immigrant kids, and not all of them, knew such things.
It was with these immigrant kids, he told her, with the grittiest of them, who roamed in gangs, that he found a connection, common cause, common enemies, and he took on a new identity. They were not heartless kids, like some; they wanted only what he wanted: to break out of what they’d been forced into, to find a life, a way up, or a way out. His own thing was one-to-ones, being seen as tough, a fighter, so he directed his own private vendetta against bullies, thugs, street punks. For others the lure was drugs, which never interested him, except for weed, which everyone smoked. The really dumb kids became stick-up men; they robbed stores and people, even cash trucks, and always lost. For him it was enough to have fast hands and fighting skill and opportunities to show off. When he grew up he’d figure out what he wanted to do with his life; then he’d just go do that, become something, somebody; that was the plan.
Yet all the time, when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, he never wanted to be what he was. A gang member. Because he knew he would never be like them, deep down nothing about him was like them. Only circumstances. His real ambition, he realised later whenever he looked back, was to rise above them, be better than all of them, show friend and foe how superior the Irish were, how superior he was. It was immature and stupid, but that’s what he was always fighting for. He understood much later that he was fighting in a way too for the country that had been taken from him. Never just for glory, or power, or to be the leader. Maybe a leader, but never just that. This rage that destroyed his adolescent years and a good part of his life, he was later told, came out of rootlessness.
A year went by, then two, then three. He managed to stay out of serious trouble. Out-ran and out-foxed the cops when he had to. And he out-fought opponent after opponent in the manner that he alone dictated: one-to-one ritualistic battles, tough against tough, fair and square, no weapons, not even brass knuckles. He was skinny, at best a middleweight, but he fought them all, and conquered all who were brave enough to fight clean. And he became a kind of street king, a king for others to de-throne, which meant constant battles, and constant satisfaction. By seventeen he’d given up believing in the future that wasn’t showing up, and he was angry and disturbed.
* * *
He resettled against the rock and fell into quiet. Lenny hugged her knees to her chest, looking ready to soothe the pain if called upon. A minute passed. Only the rumble of the ocean intruded. Then two.
‘Something happened,’ she said softly. ‘If anyone can understand, Tony, I can.’
* * *
He turned to her, as though signalling a breaking-in to an inner place. ‘Trouble with the law,’ he said. ‘That’s all over now, a long time. I was seventeen. Eighteen when they sentenced me. Nine years of my life. Taken. I went straight to Arizona when I got out, in February of last year. Maybe Arizona because that’s where Joel Vida grew up, the prison psychologist I told you about, always talking about Arizona. Seven months after getting out I met you, last September at the train station. I almost hit Boxer that night; you couldn’t have known that. It was that close. Anyhow, I didn’t. So I’m here now. Twenty-eight. Guessing every move. Learning how to live.’
‘What did they charge you with?’
He sighed, wanted to jump up, go, get away, but the unfairness of doing so kept him next to her. ‘Not now,’ he said.
‘That’s fine. We can talk about other things. What would you – ’
‘Two things.’ He searched her face. ‘Where did you go Thursday, when you disappeared? And all those pills; are you sick?’
‘We’ll have time later to talk about all those silly things. And the things you are not comfortable talking about.’ She sprang up, reached down to him. ‘Come. I’ll show you the other surprise I have for you.’
He ignored her request. His eyes lifted to her, her slender form teasing him through a translucent veil. She tossed his hair, moved away gaily. He chased after her, caught her hand, let her take him.
They’d been hiking for five minutes through scrubland when a small stone cottage appeared in front of them. He gazed at it, amazed. Much of the open space around it had been taken over by vegetation. Yet it did not have the appearance of being abandoned.
‘Like it?’ she asked. ‘It’s old, we own it. Nobody uses it anymore. Except me. Rarely.’
He trailed after her across the face of the cottage to a giant sycamore whose massive bough curved down to the ground before turning up again. They sat there together
, staring out, as the sun descended and Intinn and the Atlantic glowed with fire.
‘When I was very young I’d try to come over here when I could,’ she said. ‘I’d sneak out, implore the trawlermen to drop me off as they sailed out to the fishing grounds. None would take me. When I got to sixteen, those long summer days off school, then it was easy, sometimes a problem. They’d want to hang around me, and the island. They couldn’t comprehend that I wanted none of them near here, or me. I wanted no one here. Intinn was mine. For me only. I hated them, those men. Hated them being near me. Hated them stepping foot on Intinn.
‘Then one day I figured out how to keep them away. By putting the fear of the banshee woman into them. I made up a story. I swore that I saw corpses here, dead people walking the island, disturbed spirits who talked to me. When word got around, someone in the village reported me to the bishop. I told all of them the same story: this house, Rock Cottage, was still home to the soul of an old woman with sunken eyes, a very tall emaciated woman nearly invisible inside a hooded shroud, an angry spirit with a chalk-white face, ready to devour any man or woman who violated her threshold. A banshee through and through. Her name was Liza Murtagh; this cottage was once her home. Her two children were murdered here in 1920 in the War of Independence, by British soldiers. Their graves, near where we landed, are the only graves on the island. What happened here is well known; poems and songs have been written about it. The Black-and-Tans tortured a mainland couple into betraying Fintan Murtagh, Liza’s husband, a rebel, one of Michael Collins’ men fighting for Irish freedom. He wasn’t here when they came for him, and Liza would never have known his whereabouts. But that didn’t satisfy them; they wanted information. They forced her to watch both her children being drowned in a cattle trough. Some said later that they didn’t intend to kill the children, that the children were sickly with TB. True or not, they fabricated a story to cover up what they’d done. You probably remember from school, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries were British forces sent to Ireland to teach the Irish a lesson; they murdered civilians at random, showed no humanity, and were answerable to no law. W.B. Yeats wrote Reprisals, a poem about their brutality.
‘I told everyone that Liza told me she would never rest, that her dying wish as I heard her tell it from her own withered lips, was to forever possess Intinn, the holy soil that held her poor innocent offspring, and that’s why no one to this day has ever found her body. I swore that she moved through walls and bushes, that she waited for anyone foolish enough to come here, and if a person dared to cross her doorstep she’d very quickly bring that person the most horrible end.
‘When someone died in the fields on the mainland, or out of a currach, I’d tell them that that was Liza Murtagh taking revenge against locals for betraying her, and that she’d go after any trespasser even if he fled to England or America, and even the sons and daughters of trespassers. She’d wait for her victim in the dark of a lonely lane; the person would hear a cry from hell that would sink fear into the bravest man, then he’d see her coming for him in a long burial shroud, closer and closer, until her chalk-white face floated out of her hood and she tore the soul out of him, then she’d carry it off with her so that he’d never see the face of God, or rest in peace. Because that’s what she was, the banshee, and here, Intinn Island, this was where she kept every wailing soul she had taken. And Rock Cottage would be her home for ever more.’
Her recitation stopped abruptly. ‘They said I was mad. But they were afraid. Superstitious people. Doing novenas, saying Rosaries. Other girls were forbidden to talk to me. But it worked; from then on they all stayed away; they knew I hated them here. None of them belong here. Intinn is for me and Liza and her children. Now it’s yours too.’
An intensity beamed in her, the sight of which chilled him. He was lost again, he thought. What did he know of such terrors? Cold sweat down his back caused him to shiver. How could he hide from her? Where? He needed to breathe. His body was getting beyond his control. He had to stop acting like a scared child, a coward.
‘Tony!’ she said with a startle. ‘What’s wrong? It’s not true, none of it, I made it up. About the banshee. I made up the whole thing. Are you alright?’
‘What do you expect?’
‘What do I expect?’
‘Think.’ He willed his body to be still. ‘No evil spirits or banshees where I’m coming from. Locked in every night, all that time, never needed to worry about things like that.’
‘You mean . . . Oh my God, how insensitive of me. I’m so foolish; I’m truly sorry, Tony. I shouldn’t, oh – ’ Her hands drew him nearer until their foreheads touched and they settled in to an edgy embrace.
In and out the silver moon waltzed, large and crisp across his world, brilliant against the always visible blues of the Irish summer sky. For a while his thoughts surfed the unrelenting waves. If only he could rid his mind of Liza Murtagh, the ghost woman, he thought, be certain she wasn’t real, be able to think about sensible things again.
‘Up there, this morning, on the cliff, what happened?’ he asked firmly.
Her expression turned, as though the asylum they were sharing had been breached.
‘I need to understand, that’s all. You and Aidan, you were up there, I bet, on the top, weren’t you? And you came here to Intinn Island too.’
She went on staring into the distance, and with each passing second seemed to recede further.
‘Lenny . . . Lenny.’
Her aspect caused him to regret bringing Aidan back to life, especially now, in this ghostly place. But that’s what he had done and now could not re-bury him.
‘Why is that important to you?’ she asked. ‘You’re supposed to be a present person. Remember? No living in the past for you. Aidan is the past. Dead. I love you. Here, now. Is that enough?’
He searched inside him for how to tell her how much he felt for her. And that his caring for her was real, as were his concerns and hopes. But in the seconds allowed, the right words would not come.
‘Yes, I was up on the cliff with him. Once. We stood on the summit. That same day we came here to the island. Is that what you want to know? If it makes a difference, tell me.’
To him it did make a difference, though not in the way she meant. He didn’t have the experience to quarrel with a woman this smart. But in listening to her, in dwelling on her anger and her power, he saw her more akin to himself, closer to his own unrequited core. Her tenacity came from a security that is born out of terrible suffering, the bluntness of the survivor, and from spirit. He knew that kind of anger. He could carve it in the dark into cell walls – and had.
‘Well, does it?’ she asked.
‘Not one bit. Not at all.’
As they sat in separateness, incoming clouds obscured the sunset.
‘It’s just that I was scared up there. Very scared. I thought I was going to die. You too. Without even knowing why.’
‘Scared? I’ve lived with fear every day of my life. Since I was five. I learned to accept it. Then I met Aidan and forgot about fear. Then it came back. I’m afraid now I’m going to lose you. Can’t you see? I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t know. Is it something we can put behind us, move on? Or not?’
‘What if it happens again? Ignore it? I’ve been there, trying to deal with things I knew no one could understand. A year before I got out they offered me counselling. I said yes, to get a break from the low-life I spent twenty-three hours every day with. No other reason. Joel, the psychologist guy from Arizona they assigned me to, it took me months to trust him. He was a jerk, that’s all I knew; what could he know. I was dead wrong. He taught me things; taught me that I always had a choice, in everything I did, that nobody could take that away. Stand up, slide down, it was always up to me. He showed me how to think in ways I’d never have known. Joel Vida. Smart man. I was dumb. But for him I wouldn’t be here today. Would you talk to someone like that? About what you were feeling up on the summit, what happened to Aidan, the
bombs, all that shit in Baghdad?’
‘Go on, be brave, say the word. Psychiatrist, shrink, psychologist, witch doctor, shaman. Find out if I’m crazy? Think I’m crazy, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m not saying that. No one is one hundred percent sane. I’m not. We can all do with help, at times. If you’d met me in Newark, you’d never have wanted to know me. But I’m not that person now. I never was. I just believed I was, so I acted that way. At first, when Joel talked to me, I thought he was a fool. But he got me to prove things to myself, got me to dig out the real me, up out of a grave. When I look back now, he was brilliant.’
She shook her head. ‘No shrink did that. You made yourself smart. Prison changed you. You grew up, became an adult. It’s that simple.’
‘Wrong. You’re wrong. You didn’t know me then. It’s more than growing up. I had to be the toughest, fastest, bravest; nothing less would do. No choice, zero. Maybe I was for a while, all those things, tough. But life was hell. Now, I just want to live a normal life.’
‘You’re saying a shrink made you what you are. That’s juvenile. Give yourself a break.’
‘Remember the train station last year, when Boxer gave me a problem? I could have hurt him; I knew I could. But I didn’t. Because I’d learned I didn’t have to give in to thoughts like that. I decided that. Me. Not Joel Vida, not Lenny Quin, not Boxer Dunne. In Newark I never knew I could think that way, especially when someone was in my face. Just want you to know that. And Kate was good, too; she helped me; you’d like Kate.’
‘Aidan talked like that, the miracles of talk therapy. I wasn’t persuaded then and won’t be now. He’d been through wars, spent every day dealing with genocide, disease, drought, inhuman suffering, thirteen years of watching people die. Told me he’d had dozens of sessions with counsellors, employed by his agency. Maybe people who’ve spent years locked up need the same type of help.’
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