Stay

by Aislinn Hunter

  Copyright © 2002 Aislinn Hunter

  Anchor Canada edition published 2013

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Anchor Canada is a registered trademark.

  Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available upon request

  eISBN: 978-0-385-68063-9

  Stay is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: Jennifer Lum

  Cover image: John Carey 2011/Getty Images

  Published in Canada by Anchor Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  For Glenn

  and

  for Kerry,

  and

  in memory

  of

  Stella Laidlaw Shaw

  “What would the living do

  If they had not the dead to see to?”

  —Dermot Healy

  “mo ghrá thú*

  With me, so you call me man.

  Stay: winter is harsh to us …”

  —Michael Hartnett

  * “I love you,” in Gaelic

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  I Recensions

  At the Church of Saint Éinde

  Carrying On

  He Rearranges the Furniture

  Spar

  The Bay Road

  Going Out On the Town

  In The Yard

  The Sky on Its Axis

  Bonaventure

  The McGilloway Girl

  There is No Night

  II Excavations

  A Drink at the Door

  The Wake

  The Space Between

  All Our Wreckage

  Arrivals

  Maam Bog

  The Traps

  Frank

  Into the Muck

  Going Under

  The Unfenced Country

  Best Deals Travel

  The Bog Man

  Dialectics

  Closing Time

  III Finally Away

  The Director from Annagassan

  The Breakwall

  Climbing Bray Head

  Between the Cottage and the Bay

  Found

  The True Love Show

  Bellowing in Greatness

  Loony Toons

  Another’s

  Isle of the Dogs

  Settling

  The Bridge House

  The Heritage Service

  Odds

  IV All and Sundry

  Wending their Way up the Coast

  Minding

  Starting In

  Last Tethers

  Standing at the Close

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  ALL eyes were on the church. The door had just closed and Father Whelan, two officers from the Garda, and a young man sent over from the Independent were safely in. Workmen on their way up the coast had pulled over; they sat behind their steering wheels in a row of cars that lined the near side of the road. They’d heard about the whole production last night on their tour of the pubs, the barman in Rossaveel relaying the news as he’d handed over their pints. So now they waited, arms hanging out their driver-side windows, stereos on RTE, music trailing over the grass to where twenty or so people had gathered in front of the building, their heads angled sideways, ears perked as if waiting for an explosion.

  For a long time, no one moved. The church stood with its back to the bay and did nothing. Above, the gulls swung tight circles, one eye to the ground. A cleft in the clouds opened and the stained glass window over the main entrance winked, illuminated for an instant by the sun. At the front of the crowd a mobile phone rang, and Mrs. Keating pulled it from the depths of her shoulder bag, put it to her ear, whispered into it, “No, nothing yet, Maeve. Nothing’s happened.” By the iron gate, a group from Spiddal had gathered. Conneely stood quietly with the rest of them, chewing his bottom lip and stuffing his hands farther into his back pockets. He was already telling the story in his head. Next to him Dermot Fay snorted through his nose at the tension.

  Over the next hour more people arrived and cars filled the parking lot. Murmurs gave way to full-blown conversations. A good half of the crowd was running late for work. A general air of impatience welled up; people considered moving on. The Bord na Móna lads in their cars by the road grew restless. One of them eyed his side mirror repeatedly, waiting for the foreman to signal that it was time to go. Dermot checked his watch. It was nearly ten.

  Overhead, the clouds that had been pinned over the bay started to move in from the water. The sky turned a dull shade of blue. People bundled themselves farther into their coats, scanned the throng for their spouses and children. Over by the gate: a girl wearing bunny ears and a boy with a wand. Eventually the sun passed behind the clouds and some of the crowd took this for a sign. Then the bells, a slow belaboured series of gongs. The church door opened and one of the garda, Charley from Oranmore, stepped out, the walkie talkie at his hip giving off static. He stopped on the top step, stunned by the size of the gathering, although crowds had been known to appear when reporters came around—something about news in the making and having been there. Coming down the walk, he eyed the motley group, tipped his hat.

  “How’s it?” one of the locals asked.

  Charley lifted his chin. “He’s using the holy water now.”

  A few minutes later, the priest came out; a second officer and the reporter flanked him on either side. He stood on the steps, his grey hair tousled, and announced to those assembled that it had gone as expected, adding “She’s gone back,” without any real conviction. The Independent reporter lifted his camera to take a few photos of the crowd. Dermot moved behind Keating and kept his head down. Tomorrow it would be in all the papers, he thought. “County yobs gather for a church exorcism.” Things like that still played well in Dublin. In front of him, Keating shifted her ample girth, rummaged again in her bag for the mobile, dialed her sister’s number in Spiddal. Some of the crowd picked up their briefcases or gathered their kids. A good number stayed put and stared at the church entrance. Father Whelan blocked the doorway, arms at his sides, wearing a look of near-exhaustion. There were murmurs of disappointment from the crowd—that they were not allowed in, that something miraculous had happened and they’d missed it. The reporter moved around and, in his little notebook, jotted down statements, an inventory of what people had seen and heard: the church bell ringing at odd hours, a fine mist surrounding the congregation on a Sunday in mid-March, a sing-song voice coming out from behind the velvet curtain of the confessional. This last report followed by a quickly drawn sign of the cross. Dermot snorted through his nose again.

  It was Friday morning. The sky was clouding over, the breeze getting cooler, although earlier there’d been hope the sun would last. Herring gulls and crows careened over the roof of Saint Brighid’s and around the church steeple. Father Whelan, confident no one would try for the door, took off his stole and came down the steps to circulate amongst the parishioners. He shook hands with the people he knew, nodded
amicably at strangers, patted the head of the girl wearing the bunny ears before she hopped away in search of her brother. Finally, the mood of the crowd lifted. Music was turned up a notch in one of the parked cars—an upbeat pop song, the kind of music people might dance to. The crowd thinned and headed off, content with the knowledge that things were right in the world. There was the dead, and there was the living, and nothing in between.

  Keating heaved herself into the driver’s seat of the bakery van, and from the window offered Conneely a lift back to Spiddal. The old man accepted and slowly climbed in. Over by the gates a spaniel, his leash looped around a finial, barked twice then fell quiet. Dermot started the walk back to town, waving once at Keating’s van as it passed him. It was only eight miles to the cottage, along the bay road. If he still felt out of sorts when he got home, he could keep walking, maybe as far as Inveran. Or he could just head past the cottage, and across the back field to old Saint Éinde’s. Go from one church to another, like a sober man doing a tour of the pubs. Either way, he wasn’t ready to go home. Abbey would be up by now and he didn’t know what to say when he saw her.

  In the parking lot of the church the last few cars pulled out and turned onto the road. Standing on the sidewalk near the hedge, Father Whelan, ready for an early lunch, took a quick look over the trampled front lawn and then headed for the rectory. The gulls circled one last time and then flew off towards the bay. Over by the road, the Bord na Móna foreman in the Nissan truck put his arm out the driver-side window and waved once in the direction of Maam Bog. Five cars started their engines in near unison. The stereos went up another notch. Then one after the other they pulled out onto the road, making their way up the coast.

  I

  Recensions

  At the Church of Saint Éinde

  DERMOT enters old St. Éinde’s through a gaping hole that was once an entrance to the nave. Goat willow grows up the wall to the left of him and as he steps over the threshold, over a pile of loose stones, he reaches out to steady himself, his palm pushing up against the willow branches. Over by the south wall, the noise of a small animal skittering away. Dermot walks towards the transept looking up at the clouds that sit framed by the walls of the nave, touching the tops of the rotting wood pews as he goes. Towards the altar, a plastic bag in a puddle of water, two empty cider bottles, a soggy Hello magazine. He stands over the magazine and looks for the date. Some pop star or other on the cover. Dermot sits down in the first pew, a crushed take-away box at his feet. The edge of the roof above him exactly, so that if it starts to rain he’ll only have to lean forward to stay dry.

  On his way to Éinde’s, Dermot passed the cottage, looked in the bedroom window and saw that Abbey was still sleeping. The light coming in and settling on her arm, her face buried in the blankets. He left a note scrawled on a tear-away sheet from his note pad. It said “at the church” and now he imagines that at any minute she’ll step out the front door and see it under the stone on the mat, that she’ll pull on her boots and cut across the field to find him. And then what will he do? Dermot pushes his back into the bench and the dampness from the wood moves through him. Last night she said she had to go. Just the week, to Dublin for work. Then back. “You’ll barely notice I’m gone.” And he didn’t say anything, just listened to the sound of the tap dripping in the next room, stared at her as if it was starting all over again, the coming and going.

  When Abbey walks into the church a half-hour later, Dermot’s on bended knee undoing the laces of his left boot. He throws the boot at the wall over what was once the altar. Then he yanks his right boot off, throws it too. It cartwheels once and drops ten feet in front of him. He walks up to it and kicks it with his socked foot, picks up both boots and starts again. Aims for what was once a rose window. Puts everything he has into it. The faint thud of the rubber sole pounds into the stone. Finally, the one boot makes it through the opening, hitting the alder tree beyond. A crack of branches and Dermot, and Abbey behind him, both listen to see if the boot finds the ground. His thin black socks are half falling off his feet. After a minute Dermot turns to Abbey, looks at his socks and laughs. Says, “How long have you been here?” A dozen mossy rot-wood pews between them.

  This is when Abbey loves him most: furrowed brow, lines around his eyes, a look that says he’s been caught at something. Shaking his head he says, “I don’t know Ab,” as if he ever knew, as if any day he might figure it out, find the equation. Dermot is fifty-five and looks his age entirely. Abbey’s twenty-six and she’s been with him almost a year. Going over to him, she takes his hand. Waits for him to look at her.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  Dermot says nothing, lets go of her hand. Sits back down in the first pew, eyeing the clouds above. After a minute he says, “You’re already gone,” turning to her after he says it.

  Back at the cottage Dermot fills the bathroom sink with warm water and starts to wash up. He rounds the corner with a towel in his hand and looks into the bedroom. She’s packing her things.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t go.” Dermot hunches over, the bedroom ceiling two inches above his head. He doesn’t want her to leave on a sour note. He wants to be in the clear.

  “Yes, you did.” Abbey avoids his eyes. The entire contents of the dresser drawer shoved into her backpack; the blue knit scarf he’d given her knotted around the strap.

  “Abbey, you’re just back.” Gripping her wrist now, trying to get her to stop packing. She glances down at his hand and he lets go.

  They’d been through this last night. He remembers now. He’d said he wouldn’t stand for it, her leaving again.

  “Whatever I said,” Dermot starts in slowly, “what I meant was that I wanted you to stay.”

  Abbey closes the dresser drawer and watches the two of them in the mirror above.

  “Abbey, listen.”

  She looks at him, not sure if he’s asking her for something or if he’s getting ready to state something. Dermot poses everything as if it were a question, his Irish lilt an upswing at the end of every thought. Even when he says “I love you,” it sounds as if he’s asking.

  “It’s just a week,” she reiterates.

  Dermot walks to the bedroom door, taps the curling edge of the old carpet with his toe. “I’m too old for this.”

  At the door, Flagon starts barking, her tail hitting the side of the couch. She loops round to the bedroom, knocks Dermot’s knees, goes out again into the front room, comes back. Dermot walks over to the front door with her, lifts the latch and the Border collie takes off as soon as the door is open, chasing after Mrs. McGilloway in the postal van.

  “Are we over?” He asks it from the living room. Abbey pulls the drawstring on her pack, then goes out with it, sets it on the couch. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him again and again, trying to convince him that she’s coming back.

  An hour later, driving towards Galway, the Mini chugs and sputters, clunks along like it’s losing power before surging forward again. Outside the window: low-rolling fields, a maze of stone fences, heavy clouds coming in. The dark hump of Inishmore barely visible across the bay. Abbey watches Dermot for a minute before turning towards the fields. When they get close to Furbo, Dermot points out the church, tells her about the exorcism, the Garda and the reporter, Father Whelan stumbling out of the building like a man who’d come through a wind storm. He tells her about the kids playing football in the parking lot while the parents looked on. He remarks there was a good-sized crowd from Spiddal, adds, “I should have brought you down.”

  Abbey looks back out the window and tries to imagine an exorcism. The priest holding the cross out in front of him, altar boys carrying holy water, a look of absolute terror on their faces. What then? Biblical verses and incense? How exactly do you stop the dead from haunting the living? How do you pinpoint that presence and say “it resides here”? For the first time in her life it occurs to Abbey that revenants might exist. Maybe the dead do come back, the way her father has
been with her since the funeral. Not quite here, not quite a whirly spirit, but in her head. Knocking around.

  “All right?” Dermot drops his left hand onto Abbey’s thigh.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  Changing gears to pass a transport, Dermot’s knee hits the underside of the dashboard. The Mini is still giving up its grief. When they get by the truck there’s the line of the bay again, a row of new bungalows going up along the coast road, some only blocks of foundation, some nearly finished. Two-storey peach-coloured stucco buildings dot the fields. A group of similar bungalows is going up on the lot next to Dermot’s cottage. Only their foundations are done, although Bord Fáilte plans to have them ready for the tourists by the summer.

  “It’s just a week.” Abbey says it once again to reassure him. “I promised I’d cover Aileen’s shifts.”

  When she looks over at Dermot he is squinting at something up in the distance. He turns the windshield wipers on and lets them flap a few times each way even though it isn’t raining.

  “And then I’ll get work closer to Spiddal.”

  Dermot scratches the bottom of his nose with his thumb.

  Being with Dermot has never been easy. But Abbey knows that’s part of what draws her to him. She’s been waylaid, which is exactly what she’d wanted. It was the Old Bailey that did it—Dermot, two hands around his pint glass, saying, “I can’t help but feel I could have done something more with my life.” Abbey’d only just met him. Angela, already sorry she’d introduced the two of them, said, “Fuck off, Dermot,” as she dropped her purse on the chair, went over to the bar. Later, she told Abbey she’d heard it all too many times before.

  “As if I was on the cusp of something,” Dermot had continued, ignoring Angela. And Abbey’d tried to nudge her chair closer to Dermot’s, the back leg getting caught in the carpet so that in the end she had to stand and pick it up, lift it by the arms, place it next to his.

  Eight miles outside of Galway, Dermot drives off the asphalt onto the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under the tires. An alder tree on the far side of the shallow ditch. Hitting the brakes, Dermot brings the Mini to a full stop. Turns the ignition off. Abbey half expects him to get out and kick the tire, open the boot, root around for a wrench to beat the engine with. But part of her knows nothing’s wrong. He’s buying time. Dermot gets out of the car and stands in the open door, laying his arms over the roof, tapping his fingers on the metal. Abbey turns towards him and finds herself looking at his shirt buttons, the one above his belt gaping open. It makes her think of the photos she’s seen from his days at Trinity, how needle-thin and angular he was, his hair dark and trimmed. Dermot kneels down to face Abbey, neck craned sideways.