Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  The woman is indicating that I should follow her and so I walk on in her wake. We stride up the slope above the strand, the dog bouncing around us, my feet smarting on the stones. Under a light rain we reach a trail, which I might have missed altogether in its obscurity. It gradually becomes apparent that the trail is marked by a series of cairns, but I am not sure they would be obvious to an outsider. The woman lowers the child to the ground and bends to impress in the mud at her callused feet four dots in a vertical line – they are bodies of water, I believe – and she sketches the way for me. She swoops to pick up the child, and leaves me behind to face the moor, which stretches before me like a lumpy, green sea and gives off a bleak, creeping dampness.

  *

  I am seated now at rest on a cold boulder that time has scribbled all over with several colours of lichen. It sits at the corner of a dismal allotment, rye pushing up among its stones. The toes at the end of my bare legs are digging into the few inches of soil that lie like a threadbare cover on the stone bed of this country. I cannot see how the farmers here have anything much to work with. I have lost the piece of twine Mrs Folan gave me to secure my hair and the wind keeps blowing it into my face. In the background there is the occasional boom of a big wave striking rocks. I am not certain of the way, but Cashel Hill has grown larger in my field of sight. In one of those rapid changes that I associate with the weather here, the light makes off and an unearthly whine begins to rise and fall. It is the wind blowing through countless holes in countless stone walls.

  A horse whinnies in the distance.

  The wind croons.

  And then the muffled clip-clop of hoof-beats. And the swell of voices. I come to my feet, alert, straining to hear. Habitual caution leads me to crouch behind the wall where I may watch through one of its chinks without being seen.

  A cavalcade is approaching.

  My stomach contracts at the thought of my pursuer, that devil I last saw in plain sight at the George Inn in Reading. But then the man leading the string of ponies and mules comes into clearer view. He is a tall, hatless figure in the dark blue garb worn by the men of these parts. A big man, he sits light in the saddle. He rides straight as a candle, controlling his mount on the rough terrain with deliberate, rather graceful movements that seem familiar to me.

  God almighty, is this a vision?

  I stare with amazement.

  He ought by all reason to be a ghost, and yet he could not look more alive. My heart leaps like a hare – the man passing not ten feet away is unmistakably Captain McDonagh! He is not drowned! But my delight is quickly doused by the recollection of his treachery and rage breaks through in its place. Damn your eyes, you perfidious man.

  This unexpected and jaunty manifestation of his, ambling along with a train of ill-gotten goods, is it not a doubling of betrayal? First he gave me over to the Vindicator and then he wrenched sympathy from my heart for his supposed demise.

  I abhor you, deceiver!

  It takes an effort of will not to spring from my hiding place and confront the rogue. Instead I manage to quiet my fury, although it continues to smoulder as I watch the ponies plod by. There are perhaps a dozen of them connected by halters and they are laden with kegs and ankers and oilskin-wrapped bales. Mr Guttery and Mr Robinson are among the convoy. At the tail of the caravan a crowd of ragtag children is following. I slip in among them with the expectation that they will bring me to a village where I may find directions to Mrs Conneely. I comfort myself with the thought that Captain McDonagh has been brought back to life so that I may have the use of him, just as he sought to get an advantage from me.

  As I scuff along at the back of the procession, I ponder what I may get from the captain as a recompense for the way he deceived me. I am furious with him for making me furious. I detest the way he triggers a tumult of emotions in me. I ought to demand that he allows me aboard his ship – evidently he has found another. Surely he is bound, this time, to go to France with goods he will have got here in exchange for his brandy and tea and silk. But even if I could bear to ask, and even if he should agree, is that any kind of reprieve? I may as well hide in this storm-tossed corner of the world as well as anywhere else, although French is more penetrable than the language that is spoken here. In any case, a rope is probably intended for the captain’s neck as well as for mine, therefore it would not be clever to hook my fate to his.

  I wish that someone could tell me why it is that life has so many goings-out and so few comings-in.

  The Stormy Peninsula, Connemara

  May, 1766

  The cavalcade has reached a settlement of a couple of dozen cabins with peeling walls and moulting thatch. It is not difficult to keep out of the captain’s sight, since there is a huge jam of humanity in this little place. The arrival of the convoy is greeted with a great cheer by the wild-haired crowd in their homespun clothes. Some of them are unloading what look like woolpacks from battered mule-drawn carts and others are stacking the packs in front of the largest dwelling in the place, which for all its prominence is hardly three chambers wide. Women press around a weighing table, watching as their casks, containing I know not what – butter? meat? – are marked by a man in an archaic frock coat, and there are a good many children and hounds running about in a state of enthusiasm.

  The people fall back as two of Captain McDonagh’s smugglers carry between them a chest reinforced with iron into the principal dwelling. They are followed by the captain himself. Then the two smugglers come out and stand on either side of the doorway with their pistols to hand. Evidently this village is a transfer station for smuggled wares and a point of payment for those who have brought their goods for export. I am hazy about the reason for this. Perhaps there are restrictions on trade in Irish wool. I imagine the growers are only permitted to make legal export of their fleeces to England. As a consequence they have taken matters into their own hands.

  The English language is spoken in this place, I hear, which makes me feel less conspicuous approaching likely candidates, women mostly, who may be able to set me on the path to Kitty Conneely. But none of my enquiries yields a helpful result. I go about in the background, my antic cries of ‘Cashel? Conneely?’ ignored. The people are convivial, but their clustering with one another increases my sense of aloneness.

  A queue has formed outside the house of business – the exporters are to receive their payments, I assume. When Captain McDonagh appears at the door of the house, I will him to look my way. Why do this? I cannot say. Perhaps I fantasise that he will catch sight of me and offer the abject apology that I deserve. Perhaps I simply want his attention, as he remarked to me on the deck of the Seal. But of course he does not look my way. It would be quite out of character for him to be so obliging.

  He sets out at a stroll, hat in hand, in the direction of his pony. I find myself striding towards him with a recriminatory flashing eye. At first he does not recognise the tattered peasant in his path, but then he slows his step with a knitted brow and rubs the stubble on his chin.

  As I reach him, he says casually, ‘By God, Miss Smith, you are quite the one for coming in my way.’

  ‘How dare you?’ I cry, and push him hard in the chest with my accusing finger. ‘How can you look me in the face after what you have done? You betrayed me and I would be dead now if it were not for the grace of God.’

  He must be startled, but he will not show it. He steps around me to arrive at his pony. He stands there with his weight on one leg, one hand on his saddle to steady his mount, and regards me with an inscrutable stare. My first flush of anger has ebbed somewhat, but it irks me that he refuses to admit the least amazement at our encounter. He does begin to say something, but I cut him off. ‘Nothing that you can say will overcome my distrust of you.’

  He says infuriatingly, ‘What is wrong with you that you are surprised, madam? Did you think I would let a revenue man take me?’ He lets a pause occur, then he adds, ‘I told you I was a villain.’

  ‘And you have the devil�
��s luck, it seems. I thought you were shot.’

  ‘I feigned the injury and got away.’

  ‘The revenue cutter was wrecked on a reef, do you know that?’

  ‘So I heard. Naturally I am glad that you survived.’ His face seems more than ever like a stern cliff. He says, ‘I will find someone to take you to Galway. You do not want to wander around in this backwater.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Captain. In fact I have business here. Perhaps you can assist me.’

  The bow he offers me has an ironical tinge, as usual. I suppose it is the captain’s savage opinion of the world that compromises his sincerity.

  ‘I see you are well acquainted with these people. I am in search of a Mrs Conneely, who dwells, I am told, near Cashel Hill.’ There might have been a glint of interest in his face at that. Or perhaps it is only his habitually watchful air and the impression he gives of staying his hand against the right opportunity. ‘Will you find someone to lead me to her? I believe that is not too great a favour to ask.’ He gives no sign of having registered the latent grievance in that last sentence.

  He says, ‘Who is Kitty Conneely to you?’

  ‘She is the sister of the woman who took me in when I came ashore. The people tried to put me back in the water, you know.’

  ‘I would not doubt it. They fear those who escape from the sea. They think they are in cahoots with the crowd on the other side and that the only reason they have been spared is to snatch some fine person and take him away.’

  ‘So I have gathered.’

  ‘Kathleen Conneely keeps her own company and she has been made strange by it. The people do not like to meddle with her and nor should you.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Two or three fellows here that you may trust on my honour are returning to Galway imminently. I will furnish you with funds and with apparel, so that you may make your way there with them.’ He adds, shortly, ‘My father was a man of this place. I was born to boats.’

  ‘I do not wish to go to Galway. What would I do there?’ Not for the first time during an exchange with Captain McDonagh, I have to restrain myself from stamping my foot. This man has an unerring knack for bringing out in me the vexed child. ‘I will find Mrs Conneely with or without your help.’

  He shrugs. ‘I cannot stand here disputing with you. There is a French ship at anchor in the bay waiting to receive our cargo.’ He frowns at the sky and then consults an improbably glamorous pocket watch, which he brings out from his rough coat. ‘Very well,’ he says with a sigh of irritation, as if I have forced him to a position, ‘since you are determined to turn your back on Galway, I dare say we can manage to take you to France. But you must come now. I have a task to be getting on with and it will stay with me until it is finished. We rendezvous with our ship at midnight.’

  I am completely taken by surprise. Is the captain capable of compassion after all? I sense the abrupt stalling of my mission in the face of this tempting offer. In the cold light of this mercantile little village it seems preposterous that I should continue stumbling through bogland that will swallow me if I put a foot wrong on the off-chance that a barbarous hermit woman, who by all accounts of her is hopelessly touched, and to whom I have been directed in the first instance by a peasant who mistook me for a ghost, should be able to tell me anything at all about my long-disappeared people. Face the truth of it, Em: despite all your longing and projecting and the intense mental effort you have expended in order to make her your familiar, your mother, child, does not exist. The wrongheadedness of my storytelling hardly differs, except in its degree of elaboration, to those hollow tales Eliza used to tell when we were young of her adventures with Johnny. And weren’t they a bleakly inadvertent demonstration of what was not? Only a fool would continue this wild goose chase instead of sailing to asylum in France. Certainly the captain has assumed that the matter is settled. He is in discussion now with one of his men. Good heavens, didn’t I throw myself at the Seal for exactly this – to be rescued and carried away? To choose a wraith over a place where safety may give me leave to breathe easy again … there is no sense at all in clutching at phantoms.

  ‘Captain.’ He half turns from his conversation and glances at me with a you-still-here? expression. ‘Captain, I think … I think, on reflection, I must refuse your kind offer. I am bound to find Mrs Conneely.’

  Dear God, what have I said? How the course of one’s life hinges upon such moments. But against all reason I cannot ignore the powerfully insinuating nature of this coast and the insistent feeling that it has significance for me. I find that I cannot walk away from any possibility of you.

  Captain McDonagh regards me at length, weighing my reply. Perhaps he sees that sorrow fuels my lunacy, because he says with almost a trace of kindness, ‘You have a drop of brave blood in you, Miss Smith.’

  At that a foolish flush comes to my cheek.

  *

  My mule is a shaggy brown beast with a white nose, my guide a youth who goes by the name of Tag, who has dusty ropes of black hair hanging down his back and a habit of cracking his knuckles. When Captain McDonagh asked him to take me to the house of Kitty Conneely, Tag said with eagerness that he would do so; but he has developed a dull-eyed look since our meeting the hour previous and I wonder if he has been pouring strong-waters down his throat, for there is a torrent of them in the village. Or perhaps his rolling gait comes naturally to him.

  North of the settlement, the landscape turns out to be, against all probability, even starker and we travel on a trail that becomes, in short order, imperceptible. My braying mule refuses to go on and I must dismount and pull at its halter to persuade the beast forward. Then I discover that Tag has disappeared. I find him nearby in a dip in the ground, snoring on a bed of tussock, and no amount of shaking his shoulder or shouting his name will rouse him. Since the mule is a native of this place, I decide to trust its knowledge. It must have a little inkling of the way to a cabbage dinner, surely. I urge the animal on and indeed it plods patiently for a while, but eventually it dwindles to a very slow walk and then stops as though its mechanism has wound down completely. Must I get down and carry this animal across country myself? And is it even worth mentioning that it has begun to rain again?

  We have reached a spot that is irredeemably cryptic. All around, hillocks of granite merge with the wet sky and I cannot figure how to get out nor even how I got here. I am surrounded by a great deal of stubborn silence. The silence has a quality of misgiving, too, as though a lull between an event and a consequence. I have had the whole day ahead of me for hours, but now I am in danger of darkness.

  I have the feeling that I am being followed or watched. It is because of this overwrought landscape, I tell myself – it ripples with import. One can come to believe anything out here, I am sure. I resolve to press on, one footstep at a time, but the wretched mule is of an alternative mind and digs in with a desperate hee-hawing. Yet I ought not to say anything against it because if it had not been for its racket, Captain McDonagh might never have unearthed me. Tag, it transpired, made a dazed reappearance in the settlement that alerted the captain to the lad’s dereliction of duty and he came to find me. He regarded me with an air of weary inevitability, then without a word he bent over and made a stirrup of his hands. I raised a filthy foot and placed it in his palm and with one hand against his shoulder to steady myself, I let him hoist me on to the back of the mule.

  *

  The rain had become a relentless downpour now, making our passage thoroughly miserable. Captain McDonagh shouts over his shoulder, ‘It will not hurt to shelter until the weather passes,’ then veers away and urges his horse over a slight rise. Where the land beyond falls away into shadow, I can make out the shape of a tired-looking cabin hunched against the elements. Captain McDonagh leads his pony directly through the empty doorway and I follow suit with the mule. The place is derelict, its single chamber damp and dark with a floor that inclines slightly downhill towards the remains of a byre. The captain settl
es our mounts there before a drinking trough that is supplied with rainwater, and then glances at me with a frown and says, ‘Will you make yourself comfortable or will you stand like a post?’ He indicates a rotting mattress in the corner. ‘Hell’s bells, girl, sit before you fall down.’ At my collapse on to the flaccid mattress, a displaced mouse scurries into the squally outdoors. I ask the captain if his rendezvous is in jeopardy, but he says that the bad weather has led to a change of plans and the French ship will not leave until noon the following day. He does not repeat his offer to bring me with him.

  Captain McDonagh travels well supplied with victuals and a fire-making bag. He moves to and fro establishing order: feed for the animals, a fire kindled on the sooty hearthstone, potatoes quartered with his knife and put to roast and water to boil in a makeshift kettle. Gusts batter the walls of the cabin. Raindrops go astray in the fire with a hiss. The water gurgles in the kettle … a picture of Mrs Waterland comes to mind. She is unlocking her tea caddy, while glinting crystals watch secretively from behind the glass doors of their mirrored palace on the chimney piece. Her image is awfully distant as though painted as a miniature.

  The pony twitches as a gust of wind enters at a lurch and sets about worrying the fire. Captain McDonagh crosses to the byre and mutters something to the animal. He glances in my direction and says, ‘I will admit I am curious to know what has set you on your course and what Kitty has to do with it.’

  He returns with the saddlebags and brings out from one of them a twist of tea. He cocks an eyebrow at me as if to say, ‘Well then?’

  I ask him if he has ever heard of a woman from these parts by the name of Nora Mulkerrin or O’Halloran.

  ‘I have not, although Mulkerrin is a common name here. What do you want of her?’