The Blue Pool

by Siobhan MacDonald

  “Oh, never mind,” said Kathy thinking how the others had the cheek to call her disorganised. “You can always go in your knickers. There’s no one else around.”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Sarah. “I’ll just paddle. I don’t swim.”

  “You don’t swim?” Kathy looked at her in astonishment.

  “No, I can’t.”

  Kathy was stunned for a moment, “You can’t swim?” she repeated.

  “No, I was never taught,” said Sarah, flushing. “Ava and Penny got lessons, but Mum was too busy with the pharmacies by the time it came to my turn.”

  Mrs Nugent. What a horrible woman. Shame on her.

  “Does Luke know you can’t swim?” Kathy asked.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” said Sarah, shrugging it off. “Luke can’t swim either.”

  “Okay, Nugent, now I know you’re having a laugh. Luke works on a trawler in the middle of the ocean and you’re telling me he can’t swim? Yeah, right.”

  “No, really Kath, you’d be surprised how many fishermen can’t swim. Luke’s not unusual at all.” Sarah quickened her step. “Anyhow enough about him. It’s boring.”

  Off she marched, arms swinging at her side, heading for the cabin.

  Funny girl, thought Kathy, following behind. So, this explained why she had never joined them diving at Blackrock. They’d go there for a break from study coming up to summer exams but Sarah had always stayed behind with some excuse or other.

  As she followed Sarah up the track back to the cabin, Kathy heard the crunch of gravel. Surely the others couldn’t be back from the village already? They hadn’t been gone long enough, she thought.

  “The others must be back,” shouted Sarah. She’d heard the noise as well.

  Kathy caught up with Sarah. “I’ll take a look,” she said and she hurried around the back of the cabin to investigate. There was no sign of the red Ford Fiesta. Yet Kathy had definitely heard the sound of a car. Whoever it was must have driven to one of the cabins a few doors up.

  “One of the other cabins, I guess,” Kathy said. Sarah had followed her around the back. It’d be nice to have some neighbors, she thought. They’d all felt a little uneasy at their isolation the previous night.

  “I guess,” Sarah agreed, looking around. “Alright then, I’m going inside to try and do something with this hair.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Kathy, grinning.

  “I’ll need it,” said Sarah as she climbed ungracefully over the blue half-door. “See you in a bit.”

  Kathy returned to her deck chair and sat enjoying the feel of the sun on her face. She flicked through a tattered country pursuits magazine she’d found inside. Soon, her eyes felt heavy and she nodded off. She didn’t know how long she’d been sleeping but something had disturbed her nap. There were harsh sounds coming from a nearby cabin.

  ‘Thud, Brrr, Thud, Brrr’ came the mechanical sound of what sounded like a jack-hammer. The ground beneath Kathy’s feet was quaking. The strains of country music and whistling joined the cacophony of drilling. Someone had definitely arrived at one of the other cabins. Someone was very busy. And it certainly was not the type of company that Kathy had hoped for.

  Trying to ignore the noise, she shifted position, angling herself more towards the sun. If this weather kept up, her skin would be as red as her hennaed hair. She loved the feel of the sun caressing her. She found it soothing. She found it healing.

  After she graduated, she planned on traveling for a while and settling in a hot climate. Somewhere warm where she could find herself a steady job and with some luck and when the time was right, a steady guy.

  There was a lot of crap to get through first. She had to make it to final year. Kathy had slogged for these re-sits. She’d had her fill of studying. She’d had her fill of partying too. All that stuff with Josh had soured everything. She’d been about to drop out of college but Ruth had convinced her to stay. The others had convinced her too. Only for three of them, Kathy would have dropped out months ago.

  More tires on gravel signaled the return of the Ford Fiesta. Charlotte and Ruth were back. Considering their meagre budget, they’d done well. There was instant coffee, homemade soda bread, local cheese, sausages, potato waffles, chocolate biscuits, milk, eggs, chocolate yogurt, and crisps.

  “We spent the lot,” Ruth declared.

  Kathy was alarmed. “Anything left for the pub?” She’d been looking forward to a visit to the local pub.

  “Don’t fret,” said Ruth, carrying a large brown paper bag. “We kept some aside for the pub. And just to let you know, this lot has to do us all until Monday so let’s not scoff it all today.”

  “Understood!” Kathy clicked her heels together and saluted.

  “For your cheek, Miss Clarke, you’re on picnic duty,” Ruth retorted.

  “It’s alright, Ruth,” Charlotte interjected. “I don’t mind doing the picnic. We’ll leave our sunshine goddess to relax.”

  “Enough snide remarks, my friends,” said Kathy, delighted to be spared buttering and filling bread triangles.

  It was midday before they were ready to go. With swimsuits, towels and a wicker picnic basket, they piled into the row-boat and headed for Black Island. They were half-way through their weekend. Although she didn’t know it then, it would be the last Saturday the four of them would ever spend together.

  Charlotte

  The Blue Pool

  August 1991

  Charlotte had overdone it. The glow from the sun was turning into a burn. The back of her neck felt warm and behind her knees had started to tingle. She should have worn a scarf. She should have worn sun-cream. But she’d abandoned caution. She’d exposed her milky flesh to the raw Burren sun.

  It was Sunday evening and they were sitting in the pub, woozy from fresh air and beer. Charlotte sipped her drink and was enjoying the steady banter of her friends. She sat quietly as Ruth made the next day’s travel plans. It was always Ruth who made the plans. Indeed, it might appear that Ruth was boss.

  Her assumption that she should always be the one to plan irritated Charlotte. But Charlotte had thought long and hard about this problem. After much consideration, she’d found a way to deal with Ruth’s behavior. Charlotte soon learned how to subtly suggest things and then to gently convince Ruth that the suggestion had been hers all along. Ruth seemed unaware of these tactics and had turned out quite obliging.

  Charlotte smiled. It was she who had quietly stoked Kathy’s fears about Mikey Fahy at the harbour flat. She calculated that by getting Kathy to freak out, Ruth would be spurred into action, and find them somewhere more appropriate to live. Somewhere cheaper, and more importantly for Charlotte, somewhere closer to her boyfriend, Tomas Walsh. Her plan had worked like a dream. Ruth was so obliging. She’d played her like a dream.

  Most of the time Charlotte was happy to let her bossiness go unchecked, but this weekend, she was not going to allow Ruth to dictate what they did. The Blue Pool was Charlotte’s special place. It was her weekend.

  This weekend, she’d decided she’d challenge Ruth on anything she didn’t agree with. Happily, so far it had proven largely unnecessary. She found herself surprised to find that so far at the cabin, Ruth was falling in nicely. For once, it appeared that Ruth wasn’t going to be a problem.

  As all four sat in the pub, with scalded skin and aching limbs, they picked over the day’s events. Charlotte had taken them on a hike over fields and hills, through streams and tunnels of gnarled Burren trees. That same hike that had felt like a penitential rite when she was a child now gladdened her soul.

  They’d walked in twos, along winding roads, hiding, and childishly jumping out on one another. They’d hidden when Sarah had gone to pee, letting her shout and call out for a full five minutes before they showed themselves.

  “I’ll get you back!” she’d shrieked, half-amused, half-annoyed. “You wait and see.”

  It had taken two hours to toil up the stepped and stony slopes to reach t
he plateau that looked out over the bay. With lungs screaming from exertion and wind whipping and tossing their hair, they gazed out at the three mounds that formed the Aran islands.

  After hunkering down behind a large moss-mottled slab, they unpacked the picnic that Charlotte had assembled. It was her second picnic of the weekend.

  “I’d swear they were psychedelic mushrooms we saw back there,” said Sarah as she cupped her tea.

  “Really?” said Kathy perking up. “I didn’t notice any.”

  “If I were you, I’d stay away from that crap – it’s lethal.” Charlotte spoke from experience. The one and only time she’d taken them, Tomas had thought she was having a manic episode. So did she. Then she confessed she’d taken magic mushrooms procured by Kathy and Josh White.

  “I’m going for a look anyway,” said Sarah, taking off over the slab, over the stone wall, and into the wind. They continued with their picnic.

  “This roll-up will not light,” Charlotte said through half clenched lips. She’d managed to make a roll-up but couldn’t light it in the wind.

  “Here, Charlie, have mine, I’ve had enough,” Ruth said, handed her the glowing stump of a Benson and Hedges cigarette.

  Charlotte took the glowing stump. It would save on her stash of tobacco that was running low.

  “Port or brandy?” said Kathy, handing out plastic cups with tea.

  Soon ten minutes had gone by, then fifteen, then twenty. But Sarah hadn’t come back.

  “What’s that silly cow up to?” asked Kathy.

  “We’ll have to go and look for her,” grumbled Ruth.

  Annoyed, Charlotte packed up the remains of the picnic. She’d told Sarah not to go. There was something up with that girl. Charlotte couldn’t quite put her finger on it but Sarah had been acting really oddly lately.

  They took off over the wall in the direction they thought Sarah had taken. But she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It was strange. More than strange. Up here, there was nowhere to hide. It was an open plateau with nothing but limestone boulders gouged by grooves and ruts and hollows.

  “Sarah, get your ass back!” cried Ruth, her hair swirling in the wind and sticking to her mouth.

  “We’re off, Sarah!” shouted Charlotte.

  “Come on, you silly cow. We’re leaving. You’re on your own up here!” Kathy added.

  But every shout was stolen by the wind.

  “Maybe if we walk back the way we came – retrace our steps,” Charlotte suggested. “Wherever the dozy cow saw those mushrooms, she saw them somewhere we’ve been already.”

  “What’s the point?” said Ruth. “It’s completely flat up here. If she was here, we’d see her. There’s absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see.”

  It galled her to admit it but Ruth was right. The only other company they had was a nearby herd of cattle whose curiosity they’d aroused. Charlotte felt unnerved.

  “Okay then, how about we go back to where we had the picnic?” she suggested. “Maybe she tripped or fell close by.” Charlotte thought this unlikely, but what else could they do? They had to do something. They were walking round in circles.

  “Let’s just be quiet for a minute, okay? Let’s just listen,” she said.

  Picking their way over the rocks, they listened for anything strange. Suddenly, out of nowhere, they heard a frenzied rustling. Charlotte’s heart was pounding. What the hell was that? She held her breath following the sound.

  “Ugh!”

  All she saw was a black raven feasting on the gutted remains of some small and bloody creature in a hollow. Now, she really felt on edge. The hike she’d planned was suddenly turning sour.

  “Over there, look!” Kathy pointed in the distance. They all looked to where she was pointing but the movement turned out to be a hare bounding over the sparse tufts of grass.

  Still no sign of Sarah.

  Charlotte started to panic. She remembered stories that Cyril had told her as a child, stories of wandering children disappearing into turloughs full of water, only to be sucked into swallow holes never to be seen again. Even though she knew these stories were warnings to keep wandering children in check, they still had the power to make her feel uneasy. She got to thinking about the other things that could cause a person to disappear.

  “Jeeeesus Christ!”

  Kathy’s howling chilled her.

  A few feet away, Kathy stood, staring at the ground. Heart crashing, Charlotte raced over the slabs. As she grabbed on to Kathy, she felt a scream rising in her chest. There, in a gully between the slabs, lay Sarah – motionless, hands crossing her chest, her eyes closed, lifeless.

  “Oh my God, oh no, Sarah…” whispered Kathy bending over the lifeless figure.

  Charlotte gawped in horror, too shocked to move. They were all horrified.

  “Gotcha!”

  Sarah suddenly shot up into a sitting position, eyes squinting in the sunlight. She broke into a gloating smile.

  “For fuck’s sake, you stupid cow, that’s sick,” said Kathy, falling back on her haunches.

  “You scared us half to death,” said Charlotte, ashen.

  “I always knew you were a nut-job, Nugent.” Ruth was shaking her head.

  Sarah was not contrite. “So, it’s alright when you guys hide and scare me to death, but not the other way around? Is that what you’re saying?” she asked, easing herself up and brushing off the grass and moss.

  “We hid for a few minutes,” said Charlotte. “Not for bloody half an hour. And there you are pretending to be dead. That’s really not one bit funny, Sarah,” she said, anger replacing relief.

  “You’ve got a warped sense of humour, Sarah Nugent,” added Ruth who still shaking her head. “Absolutely warped.”

  “Aw, c’mon guys, lighten up, it was funny. You know was.”

  Charlotte, Ruth, and Kathy stared at her in silence.

  * * *

  It was only now, much, much later in the comfort of the pub over a shared bowl of chowder, that Charlotte could see the funny side. To be fair, it was usually Sarah who was the butt of any joke. But she’d paid them back this time alright. Good and proper.

  The last few days had taken their minds off exams. Despite agreeing that there should be no post-mortems or any speculation on results, snatched private chats had taken place.

  The previous day, as she and Sarah had paddled in the shallows on Black Island, Charlotte voiced her concerns. She felt she’d let Richard down, as well as her brothers in the States. They were the ones funding her university education. She had kept a running tally of what she owed them and she was going to pay them back every penny.

  Charlotte had a code – a borrower nor a lender be. One more year to go and she’d be out in the world earning her own money. She’d pay her brothers back within two years. That was her aim. She hated owing money. Hated it.

  She suspected the others thought her prudence miserly. She resented that. In her view, she was being responsible. She couldn’t imagine leaving her purse behind on the train like Sarah. It wouldn’t have happened. And because of that, their night in the pub was compromised. Sarah’s earnings should have funded the evening but instead of that Sarah had again spent the last ten minutes lamenting the loss of her purse.

  They’d shared bowls of chowder and only the dregs of their drinks remained. Their money was gone, there was only a few measly pence in the kitty, yet no one wanted to go back to the cabin. It still seemed way too early to end the evening.

  Everything about the pub enticed them to stay. The glow of the peat fire. The sing-song in the corner where a man with fat fingers was playing the tin-whistle. And a party of four athletic men had just come in to order food. Charlotte noticed they’d taken a leisurely look in their direction. She’d also noticed Kathy’s response. For a woman who had turned her back on men, Kathy was ogling. The girl couldn’t help it. She was a slut.

  “Our last night,” said Kathy, her gaze locked on the men. “Home tomorrow, what a bummer.”


  “I’m not looking forward to it.” Sarah was swishing the last of her foamy lager around the bottom of her glass.

  “It’s been a blast, hasn’t it?” said Ruth.

  Charlotte warmed. Praise indeed. The weekend had been a success. Another drink or two in the pub would have cemented it. But it wasn’t to be. They should make a move to go back to the cabin.

  “I’d love one more,” said Sarah. “God, I could scream about that bloody purse.”

  So could I, thought Charlotte.

  “Perhaps all is not lost,” said Kathy, smiling slyly. “We could always invite those guys over,” she said, flicking her hair. “You’d never know. They might stand us a drink.”

  “Kath, have you got any scruples?” Ruth was aghast.

  “You know she hasn’t,” said Sarah.

  “Get lost,” said Kathy, staring at the men.

  “It’s a pain being broke,” said Charlotte.

  Charlotte racked her brains. Didn’t there used to be a bottle with copper coins in the cabin? And then it came to her. That’s when she had the brainwave. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  “Of course, there is one way we could stay for one more drink…” she said tentatively. “If you all agree that is…”

  “Without selling ourselves?” asked Sarah looking at Kathy.

  “Unless of course Kathy wants to…” said Ruth.

  “Bugger off, the lot of you,” said Kathy, fixing her hair and smiling at the men.

  “Tell us your cunning plan,” said Ruth.

  “Well, I have a couple of quid put aside,” said Charlotte.

  “What?” snapped Kathy now. “You’re a dark horse, Charlotte. What else have you kept from us? A secret stash of ciggies in the coal bunker?”

  “Of course not,” she retorted. “Don’t be nasty. It’s the money I put aside for petrol home. I have a little left.”

  “Oooh, happy days!” Kathy was rubbing her hands in glee. “What’s the hold up? Let’s just spend that…”

  “Hold on a minute, Einstein,” Charlotte said. “The petrol-tank is nearly empty. I need a fill up to drop you guys back to Ennis and head home to Westport. Unless of course…” Charlotte took a breath waiting for the penny to drop.