Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  She could hear the rise and fall of voices, and laughter, which came from the people bound for the saint’s island. She recalled the queer breeze that had stirred the dust in the doorway the night before, and wished she had said a prayer against it.

  I stumbled into the yard, tousle-haired and heavy-eyed with sleep and cried, ‘Brr, it’s cold, Mama!’ The goat lurched and Nora placed her hand on the beast’s flank to calm it. She said, ‘Shush, Molleen. You’ve given her a start. Put your hand on her now like this and give her a stroke and you will feel warm altogether as well.’

  I pressed my hands against the goat’s hide and Nora went on with the milking, watching with satisfaction as the frothy level in the pail climbed higher. I yawned and flopped against my mother. When the goat was empty, Nora moved the pail of milk out of the way and scratched the goat underneath her chin. She said, ‘Your turn,’ and chucked me in the same way. I twisted away, laughing, pressing my chin into the hollow of my shoulder to escape the tickle, and the goat backed away in consternation.

  While Nora mashed the potatoes with the milk for breakfast, Josey dressed and pegged back the door flap to release smoke from the house. The still air carried voices from the strand, and they heard the clunk and splash of boats being launched. ‘They will want to hurry to catch the tide,’ Josey said, and sat down to his breakfast.

  The O’Hallorans ate without speaking. She and Josey both, Nora observed, seemed to be in a reverie of attentiveness: Josey was watching me toss from hand to hand a ball he had made for me from the dried holdfast of a sea-rod and Nora found herself aiming at the cat an unswerving gaze that made him shift uncomfortably and frown over his striped shoulder at her.

  Presently, Josey stood up and said, ‘Well, my pretty girls, there’s been that much loitering you wouldn’t credit. It’s about time I went to my work.’

  Nora followed him out of the house with a basin of laundry on her hip. She noticed the beginning of a stoop in his posture, influenced by the loads both manifest and unseen that were persistently set upon his shoulders. She was aware of her own alterations, too. Many parts of her had coarsened – her once lissom waist, her hands, her feet, and the Lord knew what in her interior.

  They came out into a morning of impossibly limpid light, and Nora exclaimed, ‘Isn’t it a pet of a day?’ There were a few clouds folded on top of one another near the horizon, but an otherwise faultless pale pink sky streamed over their heads. Out on the flat golden sea, shouts of excitement and the splash of oars rose from the fleet of boats swarming towards the saint’s island. Josey’s gaze, however, lingered on a hut in the field across the boreen that belonged to Liam Black. On the slope of its roof, a dozen or more big flatfish were laid out to dry in a dovetail pattern.

  Nora could almost see the boat-shaped thought that occupied Josey’s mind. He was exasperated by the want of his own vessel. The O’Hallorans’ drying hut had nothing better in it than a score of pouting, a desperate, meagre fish at the best of times, but beggars could not be choosers. His brother-in-law, Colman Mulkerrin, was a gentleman who did not care to be bested in any arena, and on the intermittent occasions that he permitted Josey to come fishing with him, the good cod with its wide mouth went as a matter of course to the house of Mulkerrin, while Josey took home the cod’s lesser relations.

  Josey said, ‘Right-oh, jewel, might as well make the most of this weather,’ and the earnestness of his smile reminded Nora of that heartbreaking spade he had carried on his arrival at the island. He set off at a lope in the direction of the kiln and Nora turned to the basin, which she had set down on the wall of the boreen, and began to wring Josey’s shirt. Although he worked at his limit, the kelp and the turf earned little, which left the O’Hallorans vulnerable to the outbreak of hard times. A man with a boat might pursue the fat shoals of herrings and mackerel that flooded the bays twice a year, and sink lobster pots and dredge for oysters in the autumn. He might fish for wrasse to put up for the winter at his own convenience, and there was always work to be had rowing woolpacks out to the illegal French ships. It was a secretive coastline and the contrabanders who anchored in its hideaway harbours easily bore away the wool from under the noses of the revenue men in exchange for tea and silks, wine and brandy. Had Colman Mulkerrin been a decent character he would have made his brother-in-law a partner in his fishing boat, but it gratified him to keep Josey at a disadvantage. And since the passing of his father there was no one to rebuke his conduct. As Josey could only go to sea at Colman’s whim – no other crew would invite him for fear of aggravating the disputatious Mulkerrin – possessing a boat of his name was an aspiration that gnawed at him with increasing bite, although the getting of wood for a boat in this treeless place was as troublesome a prospect as the amassing of a fee for the boatwright.

  Just as Nora shook out the folds of the wrung shirt with a snap, a shadow darted at her and made her jump.

  ‘God be with you, Noreen. Did I frighten you?’

  It was Kitty Conneely with her black mantle drawn low over her head and a wicker creel strapped to her back. She raised a hand – there were links of dried heather wound around one of her wrists – and pushed behind her ear a lock or two that had strayed from beneath her mantle. Her hair had lost its brilliant colour and was faded to the same russet tone as her petticoat. The vividness had gone out of her since the losses of the great cold, although she was not alone in that.

  Nora said, ‘I am only surprised to see you, friend. Did you not think to go to the saint’s island yourself?’

  ‘Ah, no, it’s the quietness of the shore will suit me more.’ Kitty lifted her head at an angle like a bird and cried, ‘Molleen! How’s yourself?’

  I was a little shy of Kitty, but I tried to oblige her by coming forward and allowing myself to be petted. ‘Look, jewel,’ Kitty released from her wrist the twist of heather. ‘I have something for you.’

  ‘Have you no use for such a pretty thing yourself?’

  ‘Ah, it is only coming in my way, Noreen. Let the child have it.’

  With the necklace in place, I peered down my nose to view the tiny purple-pink blooms. Kitty never rested but she obliged the O’Hallorans with an over-brimming fondness that seemed to find no other outlet than to dote upon the little family.

  Nora anchored Josey’s shirt on the wall with a stone, and said, ‘What is wrong with me I do not know. I have not yet made up a bundle for our dinner.’

  ‘I have potatoes galore at me. They will do for all of us.’

  ‘That is a great help, Kitty.’

  Nora found my basket and a knife whose blade was sunk into a piece of sea-rod for its handle. I settled my doll into the basket and waited with an impatient jiggling foot while Nora gathered herself. As soon as I left the house I raced ahead and Kitty strode after me. Nora paused, however. She felt compelled to cast a backward look at the house – it seemed to loom at her in a clinging way, as if it thought she was about to abandon it, and a shiver passed through her. What a fierce morning for feelings it was. She turned away from the house and walked down the path, trying to shake the sense of misgiving.

  Nora passed among the seaweed cocks above the strand, hurrying to catch up with Kitty and me. Josey was at work near the kiln, preparing a beacon, and Nora stopped to watch him as he raised a knee and broke a piece of kindling across his thigh. In the event that men of the militia put in an appearance, he would light the beacon to signal the people on MacDara’s Island that their pattern was in danger of discovery. He looked up and caught sight of Nora. He waved his cap and Nora lifted an arm in reply. She pressed a hand against her breast to quiet the thud of her heart. She could feel Josey’s love running through her like her own rivers of blood. She watched as Josey picked up his ash pole and began to saw it back and forth as he teased apart tangles of weed. She could not seem to tear her eyes from her man.

  A shriek sounded from the bank nearby. I had tumbled on to the flat of the strand and my doll had flown from my basket. I began wailing over its
wreckage. Kitty tried to distract me by asking me if I would help cut a load of weed that would do as food for the potatoes. As Kitty hurried me to the lower shore, Nora felt, and not for the first time either, a twinge of irritation at her friend’s covetousness towards me – then she reminded herself that Kitty could not be faulted for an impulse that came out of loneliness.

  Nora joined us on the shelves of rock where clumps of yellow-brown sea thong were heaped damp and heavy like clippings dropped by a titan’s hairdresser. Kitty’s hand rested on my shoulder. She bent to me, saying, ‘It would be a great help to us if you would fill a basket, jewel.’

  Nora added, ‘We might get the yellow out of it, too, and use it to colour our cloth.’

  I brought out the knife and crouched down with a purposeful air. ‘Mind that blade,’ Kitty cautioned. ‘It is that sharp you could shave a sleeping kitten with it.’

  As I hacked a bunch of long, sappy, branching thongs from the rock, Nora cried, ‘Harvest it, child, don’t murder it.’ She pointed to the succulent discs dribbling at the ends of the stalks I was holding and said, ‘See? You have torn away the holdfasts and now the weed cannot sprout for another day.’

  I tried again, my tongue working in the corner of my mouth with the effort of concentration, and made a meticulously executed stroke through a single thong. I laid it carefully in the well of my basket.

  Nora laughed. ‘That’s a start, at least.’

  Leaving me to my harvest, Nora and Kitty hung from their shoulders the goatskins that they used to protect themselves from the chafing ropes of the creels. As they wriggled the bulky creels into place again, Nora looked towards the kiln. Josey was putting his back into his labour, going at a few big chunks of kelp clinker with a mallet.

  ‘God bless your work,’ Kitty said.

  ‘And yours too, friend.’

  They splashed through the eddies until they drew parallel with the craggier reaches of rock, where the low tide had laid bare ruffs of glistening brown oarweed. They began to strip the laminate blades from the clawed holdfasts, working quickly while the water was low.

  On occasion Nora glanced heavenwards to note the progress of the sun. What a morning. You would not want to swap it for Paris. A canopy of marvellous blue sheltered a shore that was more used to having its ears boxed by the savage winds and sullen clouds that stormed in from the Atlantic. Instead, the breeze was a caress and the sky compassion itself. And would you look at the rippling oarweed there, gilded by the sun like a meadow of liquid gold.

  All morning Nora and Kitty waded ashore with creel after dripping creel of the stuff. When they tipped it on to the sand the weed sprang from its confines with a gasp as though shocked at its dislocation.

  Eventually, swells of the incoming tide began to flood the rocks and the water rose until it was slapping at Nora’s thighs. Undulating tangleweeds wrapped themselves around her legs as though determined to pull her off her feet. The weeds came alive once they were submerged. When they were severed they gave out a groan that boomed eerily from beneath the water.

  Nora hoisted a foot on to a shelf of rock and hauled herself and her streaming petticoats from the grasp of the sea. She cupped her stinging fingers around her mouth – they had been nearly rubbed raw by her work – and called to me. I was canted over a cleft in the rock watching ribbons of black weed as they stirred languidly in the sun-dappled water of a pool. I picked up a mermaid’s purse that I had found and waved it at my mother.

  Bold waves were scrambling up the face of the rocks, and Nora shouted at me to retreat to the sand. Then she shrugged her shoulders to ease the groaning load on her back. ‘Kitty!’ she sang out. Kitty was returning from the shore with her umpteenth emptied creel. ‘It would not hurt to stop for a bite, I think.’

  Kitty lifted a hand in assent.

  The mermaid’s purse was lying where I had dropped it next to the rock pool. I had not gone far. I was sitting on a boulder waggling in the air a foot that had got something sharp and niggling in it. Nora gathered me up with an effort – I was nearly too big to carry – and brought me to the sand at the high-water mark, where Kitty had already laid out on her mantle a heaping of cold roast potatoes as well as the mussels that she and Nora had pulled from the rocks. Josey had scooped from the sand a bed for a fire and was filling it with stones and filaments of dried wrack.

  ‘Will you look at Molly’s foot, Josey? She has a prickle in it,’ Nora said, setting me down. Then it was every kind of relief to let slip the creel from her shoulders. Josey lit the wrack in the fireplace with his flint, and turned to inspect my foot. Nora emptied the creel and wrung the seawater from the hem of her petticoat.

  ‘There’s the devil,’ Josey said. He squeezed the prickle from my toe to the accompaniment of my squeals and ordered me to hop down to the sea on my good foot and to give the other one a dunking. ‘Go on, hop as quick as you can, and if you fall, don’t wait to get up.’

  While I bounded on one spindly leg towards the shallows, Josey fed the fire, and when the flames had calmed down, Nora threw the mussels among the smouldering wrack. She watched me stamp my foot in the lacy foam at the water’s edge. It was uncanny to find the sea so deserted. On such a fair day the waves ought to have been crowded with men rowing to their lobster pots or further out to lift their nets. I returned at a skip and Josey said, ‘You will be right as rain now.’

  While we ate the potatoes and drank the water Kitty had brought with her, the wind dropped almost completely until there was hardly enough strength in it to trouble the air. In the strand’s muffled hush you could hear a sort of faint whistle, which was the sound of the mussel shells springing open. Josey snatched them from the embers and set them down to cool.

  Kitty said, ‘What have you in your basket, jewel?’ I showed her a snarl of sea thong and soft straps of bladderwrack.

  After we had eaten, we stretched out and watched the lazy, curling waves slide on to the shore and break and roll back, while gulls and terns swooped over the rush of foam, their cries falling and fading. Nora’s aching back and shoulders were glad of the rest. Josey wondered how the holy pattern was unfolding on the saint’s island and Kitty said she hoped the water from the well was abundant enough to duck those who came to it with afflictions, God bless them.

  Nora began singing a song, but she went astray in it, distracted by her thoughts. Oh, the gorgeousness of a quiet, sunny day. The unquenchable delight of it was almost enough to make up for all the freezing, depriving days of which there were no shortage. It was the kind of day you sought to keep alive in your memory by making a song or a story of it as a counterblast to hardship. In that way the soul of yourself and your people would be unforgotten. On a day such as this you almost could not recall drudgery and the toil of gathering weed in a numbing rain and the icy winds that raced down from the north, and the discomfort of clothes that were always damp and salted so that they chafed the skin and sowed disease in the lungs. What could you do when faced with the heavy burdens of life but bend to them? Either that or surrender your life – and God knew there were those who did that through despair and drink.

  I crawled on to my mother’s lap and looked up at her with a steady, soulful gaze. The colour of her eyes shifted between blue and green like the sea. She looked back at me and saw a clean, sunny world reflected in mine with not a bad thing in them. She stroked my hair.

  For people such as us, my heart, she said in a silent communication to me, the spark of ourselves is all that we own and we must not give it up without a fight. The landlords of this world will try to extort rent from our spirits as well as our purses, because it is in their nature to accumulate, but their grasp cannot come inside us if we will not let it.

  What was it that Kitty was saying? Nora turned to her friend. The salty light had a sort of scouring effect on Kitty, Nora observed. It rendered her almost transparent, like one of those relic jars filled with frightening, agonised components that the occasional wandering priest would bring out from underne
ath his bog-spattered cloak to amaze the people. Kitty repeated herself. Ah, she had a thought to cross to the inlet at the western end of the strand to cut the yellow weed and bladderwrack for fertiliser.

  Nora was reluctant. Strictly speaking, the inlet was not their ground. For as long as anyone could remember, the shore was divided among the people as far down as the bottom of a low spring tide according to their landholding. People veered now and then across one another’s territory, but still, it would be a discourtesy to the Molloys and the Maddens, who had the lion’s share of the inlet. But it would have mortified Nora to be picking limpets here and there, like an idler afraid of work, while another was all industry with the creel and the hook, and she found herself falling in with Kitty’s plan.

  There was Kitty even now up on her feet, shaking crumbs from her mantle, smothering the fire with handfuls of sand. She had always been a propulsive woman – and the more despondent her mood, the more urgent were her deeds. Nora, however, tended latterly to dreaminess as if she wished things to stand still and even to evade the perturbing forward thrust of time and its spiteful surprises. Ah, to be a lingerer in the beauty of small moments, like this one … watching adorable Molleen as she popped the air sacs of the bladderwrack, the girl gurgling with delight. A smile unfurled across Nora’s face. That pop sounded just like the soft report of the kisses she liked to plant on her daughter’s plump cheek. She sighed and marvelled anew at the way in which love refreshed the world.