Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  And then: the herring girls of Parkgate swim into my mind. I see them waist deep in the Dee, washing the fish oil from their arms. Some of them liked to frolic in the water, driving themselves quite a long way out. How did they do it?

  With head up, I reach forward and drag a hand through the sea, and repeat the action with my other arm. Yes, they turned their arms like a windmill.

  Again, I reach up, reach over and pull. And again, and again, and again … My shoulders burn with the effort, but I plough onward. Onward, onward, onward. Sweating and freezing at the same time. I cannot go on, but I must. I do not want to die in this lonesome way, I do not.

  I alter the movement of my desperate arms, pushing the water away from my breast. The propulsion is less effective, but I lack the strength to do otherwise. How very tired I am, and the thought of the dark, silent fathoms beneath, the malign profundity of them, is dangerously paralysing. I force myself to crane my neck as far as I can out of the water and it is then that the moonlight shows me a shape in the swells, rising and falling. I do not know what it is. My eyes are stinging from the salt.

  Something grazes against my leg, something finny, and its slithery touch so appals me I find the energy to kick out and continue.

  The only thing anchoring me to life is the screaming pain in my muscles. Overarm again. Rotate right arm, slap into water, slap and scoop, now the left arm. An object is bobbing nearby. With a cry I seize hold of it and find myself clinging to a wooden grid about the size of a small door. It is one of the Vindicator’s hatch covers!

  I begin to cry then, out of gratitude for the hatch cover, and there is even some fleeting comfort in the heat of my welling tears. Oh, this beautiful raft. Surely it will save my life. Very cautiously, I wriggle on to it, lying on my stomach. The thing dips a little, but it holds my weight. My entire body is shaking with cold and I dare say I might freeze to death, but it is bliss to rest my cramping arms. For a long while I simply drift, with frozen fingers clamped to the grid. It occurs to me eventually that I am being carried on a current.

  And then I wonder if I am drifting further out to sea into the great abyss of the Atlantic.

  I beat away the thought, silently shouting at it to leave me alone.

  But what can I do except drift?

  The noise of the sea is one unceasing roar.

  Who can say how many minutes or even hours I have been dawdling on this sea? I rise up and down the swells in a trance. Up and down. My feet and my hands grow numb. What a pity that the elegant mantle the captain gave me has gone to its doom. And I lament my poor French slippers, drifting down on their long journey to the bottom of the sea.

  There is something amiss. My raft is waterlogged. It is sinking! In a panic I slide off the hatch cover and begin to kick. I kick desperately, hanging on to the cover. I am pure will, for to give up is to go under. I pretend there is nothing in my mind, no fear of death, no horror of annihilation. I am nothing but kicking feet. I hang on to the hatch cover and I kick my feet.

  I am exhausted and the raft is exhausted too. It wants to go under.

  I manoeuvre around the thing so that I am lying on my back, clutching the raft to my chest as though in an encouraging embrace. The raft and I stay afloat, but now I have a view of the black sky and the pitiless beauty of its stars. They glitter at a distance that is so terribly remote it seems the definition of loneliness.

  I turn away from the stars and take up the grind of pushing the raft and kicking.

  And then, up ahead, something shining! Oh, thank God, there are lights, yellow and a strange blue-green. With a last burst, I drive towards the brightness.

  I discover a sight as hopeless as it is enchanting. The lights are only the glowing emanation of a school of fish. At my approach, the luminous creatures swim away, fanning out in a glittering formation of green brilliants, like a gorgeous necklace ornamenting the vast body of the sea. As though cast down by this disappointment, the raft decides it is unable to go on and it submerges itself – not entirely, but enough so that I cannot make use of it except to hang on to a corner of it as I watch the phosphorescence fade.

  I am in a state of isolation that it is beyond me to bear. I tread water slowly, wearily, spent now. My limbs feel as though they are broken. All that is keeping my head above the surface is the thought, delirious though it is, that you wait for me on a shore somewhere, near or far. The thought of you is the same thing as life itself.

  Ah, is there anything left in you, Em? Just try. Go on.

  A tugging in the sea passes over the skin of my legs. The current wants to push me.

  The raft has gone, but I float, somehow I stay afloat, and the current draws me onward into an underwater forest. Fronds of seaweed rise and fall around my legs. I had no idea that seaweed could grow so tall from the bottom of the ocean. I wonder if there truly are miracles under the waves. Seagardens and mansions made of coral and shells. Abby’s world under water. Where people live as we do, only better. I am very curious now to see such a place. It is just a case, surely, of letting go and drifting downwards in order to find myself in a palace made of pearls.

  My feet seem to brush something fixed, grainy, but then a wave lifts me up and the firmness underfoot recedes. But my salt-stung eyes have made out a sort of blackish stripe at the base of the inky sky, and a little moonlit frill.

  Waves washing against rocks.

  That distant sound is the whisper of breakers.

  *

  A flowing tide has washed me ashore. I crawled through rushing surf, I clawed through heaving shingle, and lie now on my bed of sand, one cheek pressing into cold softness, one eye open, listening to the waves clasp the shore and then cleave from it. The smell of brine is very strong. Turning my tired head, I see that I am surrounded by collapsed kelp, flung up fresh from the sea, strung with sprinkles of blue and green, glowing like ghost seaweed. What a night for creatures being alight. I am, too. Alight and alive. Spasms of cold shake me, but I understand in every fibre of my being that just to be alive is enough.

  PART FOUR

  The Long Strand, Connemara

  April, 1766

  The air smells of smoke and there is a pearly cast to the sand that stretches away towards a scattering of low rocks. I haul myself to sitting and vomit up salt water. The light is flushing pink. It illuminates a bank of scant grass above the strand where I have washed up. At my back the tide is retreating, exposing long fingers of rock and glistening red seaweed. Out to sea a line of tall, jagged rocks – is that where the Vindicator came aground? – and further towards the horizon a violet smudge, which may be an island. I turn over a speckled stone and a dank green crab scuttles away from under it. My limbs feel sluggish. As I watch the waves expend themselves against the outcrops I must fight the urge to stretch out again on my sandy bed. I begin to make my way on hands and knees towards the narrow strip of land that slopes down to the sand. It is occupied by sombre hillocks, shaped somewhat like haycocks, and at its foot numbers of small, sleek black boats lie upturned like giant beetles. A cloud slides in front of the sun and subdues the light and I feel a shivering in my skin as if some bad thing is near, but it only prefaces another bout of vomiting.

  As I look up from my retching, I seem to glimpse shadowy indistinct figures moving among the brooding hillocks – and presently I detect a low murmur of voices in the distance. The approaching creatures seem peculiar, misshapen. Ah, I see that many of them are carrying tall baskets on their backs and others are transporting upside-down boats on their heads, which lend them the look of fabulous beasts. I watch their advance as though in a reverie, my mind enjoying the hope that my arduous journey will end in deliverance.

  A fisherman in cap and wide-legged breeches rolled up to his knees has noticed me. I wave him onward with a weak hand, but he has halted as though frozen in fear at the sight of me in my soaking rags and dripping hair. He stretches out his arms like a barricade, and gradually the people clustering at his back fall silent. They have a wil
d look about them, a stark look, especially the women dressed in black and red like emblems.

  I manage to get to my feet. The action causes a collective intake of breath among the watchers. As I take a staggering step forward, I sense that these people are mortally frightened. Some of them are making the sign of the cross. A large fellow clutching a long sort of pike calls to someone in the thick of the crowd and the people stir and mutter among themselves. They are armed with implements, I see, with pikes and knives and little sickles.

  I wait patiently.

  Seabirds are flying all around.

  I turn my gaze towards the complication of islets and skerries that lies beyond the slopping low waters and a feeling of giddiness comes over me. The huddle of people parts, allowing a tall, bony woman to pass through. She is in her fifties, perhaps, barefoot, raggedly attired like her fellows with a knitted mantle criss-crossed over her bosom. Her broad face has evidently been much buffeted by wind and sea spray. She regards me with hooded pale eyes full of misgiving and addresses me in a language I do not recognise.

  ‘Forgive me, madam, I cannot understand you.’ My voice is hoarse, little more than a whisper.

  She clears her throat. To my surprise she says, ‘I have a little English, if that is what you speak now. I had it from Mike, don’t you remember?’

  What does she mean by Do I remember?

  I croak that my ship was wrecked, but I do not think she hears me. She says, ‘I beg you to leave us alone! I know that Kitty must have called you back, but you have come to the wrong place. She does not live at us these days. She means only mischief now.’

  I stare at the woman, blinking with incomprehension. ‘We cannot let you come back,’ she cries. ‘It is a terrible thing when people like you come walking about among us!’

  I am mystified by her meaning. I feel befuddled, as if I might faint, but somehow I raise an arm to point at this lady, who looks so hardy and yet so improbably terrified. ‘Who are you?’ I ask with great weariness.

  ‘You know very well that my name is Mary Folan.’

  It has not escaped my notice that the people on the strand have begun to inch forward in a stealthy manner that makes me uneasy. The woman before me, Mrs Folan, gives the impression she is screwing up her courage – it is the squaring of her shoulders, the narrowing of her eyes. She leans forward and shows to me the palms of her hands. For a second I expect to see something there, a gushing from those sacred wounds that Papists believe in or some such. But she pushes her hands at me with a loud shriek. ‘Go back, Nora,’ she cries. ‘Go back.’

  ‘Who is Nora?’ I mumble.

  ‘Yourself, of course.’ Mrs Folan gives a snort of grim laughter.

  My mouth opens to tell her who I am, but I hear Captain McDonagh’s words ringing in my ears. Do not volunteer information about yourself that can be used against you. Then it strikes me: is this not a wonderful opportunity to escape the identity of Mary Smith and her taint of crime? If Miss Smith is traced to the Vindicator, it will be assumed that she drowned when the vessel foundered. And even if these grim peasants are questioned, what can they say about a drenched creature discovered on their strand, but that she was a person called Nora. A marvellous feeling of letting go comes over me then at being released from the burden of Mary Smith. I feel euphoric all of a sudden. I escaped the sea with my life and now I have a new one!

  It seems that Mrs Folan has lost interest in questioning me, because she turns to her people with one shoulder raised, as if to suggest that there is nothing more that she can do, and pivots on her heel and strides towards the embankment. What a strange, desolate place this is, but with a wild beauty, too. The land is low and the sky is awfully high. I watch Mrs Folan pass among the odd hillocks, which stand like morose sentinels guarding the shore, and set off along a path. Far beyond her diminishing figure, huge clouds are floating on the horizon. Or are they hills? I cannot quite make them out for there are splinters of light in my eyes.

  At first the hissing seems to belong to the sea. The waves have been washing up sibilantly in the background, but that sound is gentle, lulling. This is a noise that is made to deter an intruder or a predator. The people on the strand are hissing between their teeth. They press towards me, making flicking motions with their fingers as though shaking off something unwelcome.

  One of the fisherwomen springs forward and pushes me hard on to the sand, and all at once hands are reaching for me in a tumult of haste and grunting. Someone seizes my arm and begins to drag me through the sand.

  I realise with horror that they mean to drive me back into the sea.

  I am outraged. This treatment is undeserved!

  A roar of protest rises from my core and rumbles out of my mouth. Frightfulness is all that I have for a defence against these people. The awful noise shocks them, and in the split second of their faltering I fight free and run towards the rocks. I have no idea of a route of escape, except to follow the direction taken by Mrs Folan. Perhaps it leads to a road or to woodland, where I can hide. I hardly know what I am doing, except that I must flee. This has become the condition of my life.

  I turn towards the embankment. Somehow I have the wit to know that I will make quicker progress leaping from rock to rock than labouring through the sand. I am amazed at the surefootedness of my bare feet. It is as though they know exactly where to place themselves. But surely my pursuers are equally fleet of foot. With a glance over my shoulder I see that the people are coming at me, but they do so in a crowded little knot, which makes me think they are sticking together for safety.

  They are afraid of me!

  Encouraged by this advantage, I scramble up the embankment and zigzag among the hillocks, which reek of rotting seaweed, and duck behind one of them to catch my breath. There is no other cover.

  I peer out from behind the seaweed cock and finding that the people hesitate to pursue me, seize my chance and continue inland, staggering across a stony field. I do not know where I find the strength for this. I climb over a stone wall draped with drying loops of seaweed and enter a smaller field of tough grass studded with mottled stones and boulders. The field drops away into a ragged inlet with a narrow channel of water surrounded by hanks of kelp and on the far shore of the inlet there is a handful of whitewashed cottages dispersed among tiny fields. I can make out small children at play in front of some of them. My eye alights on a figure striding the lane that passes along the line of the shore. Impossible to say if it is Mrs Folan.

  My throat hurts as a consequence of the seawater I have swallowed and I am dreadfully thirsty. I ask myself how I will find shelter and sustenance in this austere place. Casting many anxious looks around me, I negotiate the rocks below the field and descend into the inlet. I have no scheme to put in play, only the hope of eventually finding a stream to drink from and a barn where I can sleep. There must be a village somewhere in this county or even a town.

  Each footstep sinks deeply into the inlet’s muddy sand floor and the hem of my smuggled silk gown is soon weighted with mud, but at last I reach the other side of the inlet and begin to pick my way among rock pools. There is a dark cloud hanging overhead like an enormous straining bag, and within seconds its bulging underside bursts and the rain teems down. I labour on as best I can, shivering, with dripping hair, but managing to catch some raindrops in my mouth.

  There is a donkey honking somewhere. Perhaps it has a byre I may share. I find myself hurrying through sheaves of slippery greenish-black kelp, its bladders popping underfoot, until I gain a hummocky piece of land. It gives me a view of a low cottage on the edge of a blunt point. A donkey, snuffling at thin turf, stands under a sod awning attached to the cottage. He looks up in surprise as I approach. The cottage overlooks another rocky, seaweedy inlet. Through the sheets of rain, I see that someone is pushing aside the hide that covers the entrance of the cottage.

  Her mantle discarded and with faded hair hanging like skeins of seaweed, Mrs Folan fills the frame of her doorway. I hesitate – wil
l she call on her people to attack me? But there is a good chance I will die in any case if I remain exposed to the conditions of this place, and so I creep forward in my bedraggled clothes. I have, oddly enough, the impression Mrs Folan is expecting me. She raises a hand and lets it fall as though powerless in the face of whatever the Fates may bring her.

  The floor of the cottage is set a little below ground level, which gives the feeling of being in a cave. The only light comes from the glow of the hearth and a lamp of rushes burning in a scallop shell. The table is made from a tea chest. I can make out some sort of bed on the floor and a wooden churn in a corner and a barrel. On one of the walls lobster pots and nets hang from hooks. I am drawn at once to the heat of the stone hearth with its bricks of burning turf. Without a word, Mrs Folan removes the cover from a tin pail and hands me a wooden dipper.

  When I have drunk my fill, she says, ‘Will you tell me what it is that you want, Nora, and then I beg you to go.’

  I note the quaver in her voice. She is terribly frightened of me or of the woman she calls Nora. I confess that my spirits lift at that. I see that it may benefit me to manipulate Mrs Folan’s fear. I, Mary Smith, have no power at all, but the baleful Nora seems to wield a great deal.

  I ask her whether she has a husband or children and she replies sharply, ‘Would I still bear the name of Folan if I did?’ Then she looks wary. ‘Is it a riddle you mean to try me with?’

  ‘I only wish to know if you live alone.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then I will ask one small favour of you, and you will never hear from me again. You see I am soaking wet. Let me rest a night or two with you and dry my clothes. Only you must swear not to tell a soul that I am here.’

  I can tell that Mrs Folan is loathe to have me under her roof, but she says at last, ‘Very well, so you may, but I beg you to be on your way to Cashel just as soon as you can.’