The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  Nice to have another Yank here, Bill said, pumping his hand, damn fine.

  Bill Cutler was a generous, friendly sort who always greeted you with a hearty bellow and a full-arm wave. The little man’s name was Dinny Corrigan; he worked the ferry for his uncle Kieran Corrigan. Dinny seemed to have a certain quiet kind of ownership of all things in Baltimore and out on Clear, as he routinely drifted in anywhere he wanted, helped himself to whatever was available, without so much as a word. He was the kind of person who would be in a room long before you noticed him. His hands were ropy with scar tissue, his ears white hunks of cartilage.

  Bill Cutler and Fred set to talking about writing and books while I puttered with the coal pellet fire. Bill had written a novel, a thriller about an illicit trafficking operation that ferried drugs through Cape Clear. He also had a sailboat, Ceres, a J/105 that he kept in Baltimore, and soon Fred had bought him another round on the house. The runty Corrigan sniffled when he wasn’t included and left the pub without a word.

  Don’t mind him, Bill said, he’s always out for a free one. But a decent chap.

  You must come see me on the island, Bill said to me. Most days I’m down at the harbor store in the morning. Some interesting sites on the island; it’s the oldest part of Ireland, Neolithic burial mounds, standing stones, the site of Ireland’s first church and the birthplace of its first saint. Lots of stories to tell.

  Bill agreed to take Fred out for a sail the following day. He finished his beer and arranged his fanny pack at his hip, and strode out the door.

  We didn’t have a single customer the rest of the afternoon and closed down at ten.

  * * *

  We decided to keep the rooms above the pub rather than move. I knew that I would be spending a good bit of time on Clear anyway, and Fred had set up an office, his garret, he called it, in the spare room with the sloping ceiling that neither of us could stand up straight in. Fred kept the small window propped open and the breeze from the harbor would make the pictures and poems that he taped to the walls flutter like leaves. He had nautical charts, books on navigation, sailing techniques, which he pored over while listening to techno music on his headphones. He was writing a novel.

  I’m gonna learn to sail as I write it, he said. Bill’s gonna help me.

  What’s it about?

  About us, he said, like Revolutionary Road.

  He stroked his Vandyke beard and grinned.

  Except we actually make it, he said, we follow through and make it happen.

  There were two other pubs in Baltimore, the Jolie Brisée, which everyone called the Jolly Brizzy, and Bushe’s. Fred and I had been to these other pubs, and each seemed to have its regulars. When it was announced that we were the new owners of the Nightjar, we were welcomed enough, greeted not as adversaries but rather as companions upon a voyage, sharing the hardships. Plenty of business to go around, the other pub owners said, especially in the summer when the tourists show. We were told by Albert the winter season would be scant, and this was reiterated by everyone we met in Baltimore. We only had to survive the winter and come spring, only eight months away, all would be well.

  It seemed that in the off-season a regular night might include only a half dozen customers, more if you happened to snare a gaggle of bird-watchers coming or going from the Cape. Fred gave a free round to each new customer, and in those first few days I think every man in Baltimore came through for that free drink; the vast majority of them we never saw again. Bill Cutler remained true, as well as Dinny Corrigan, at least that first week. Bill told us with some regret in his voice that he would not be able to frequent the place once the weather got rough, he needed to stay out on Clear with his wife.

  In winter, Bill said, ferry service gets sketchy. I’ll be out on the island with the missus, hunkered down, working on my new book.

  Fred ordered a copy of Bill’s novel, which was out of print, and read it straightaway. I could tell by the way he muttered and shook his shaggy head as he read it that he didn’t think it was good. Fred never hid his disappointment well, but he maintained it was a well-conceived suspense novel, adeptly executed. But it was written in the third person, and Fred felt that all the voices sounded too similar.

  The trap of omniscient narration, Fred said. That’s why I do first person only. It’s the true light into the interior of a mind.

  My favorite John Cheever stories are invariably in the first person. But the first person also often has a tendency to melodrama, the feeling the narrator is clutching you about the collar and begging for attention. I don’t know how Cheever was always able to execute that marriage of tone and emotion. I wish that I did.

  In the mornings Bill began taking us sailing, an enjoyable experience despite the banging and slapping of the choppy seas of Roaringwater Bay, and the momentary disasters of tacking in heavy wind. I stayed up on the middle of the boat, rail meat as Bill put it, working from side to side for weight adjustment as the boat heeled over. Bill and Fred rode in the back, where Bill tried to explain the multitude of ropes and sheets that snaked back into the cockpit. It was amusing to see Fred with his handful of ropes, baffled by their purpose, his face wrinkled like a bulldog’s. When we returned around noon to open the pub he would be flushed with excitement, and in the evenings he shut himself up in the garret and tapped away at his laptop, building his imaginary universe populated with people very much like us.

  * * *

  The Five Bells pub on Cape Clear was full for lunch the next Friday, the builders with their cash payouts crowding the bar and a clutch of bird-watchers in for the weekend gabbing at the tables, comparing journals and drawings. A young woman named Ariel doled out the sandwiches and soup from the back and washed glasses as Sheila poured a steady stream of beer.

  After a bit of screechy tuning the portly fiddler at the next table leaned far back in his chair, his lips pursed, and arranged his instrument under his ample chin. He slowly wandered into a set of soft reels as Ariel brought me my bowl of lamb stew and soda bread. Her fingers wrapped completely around the bowl, extra long at the final joints, like the soft appendages of a gecko. She returned my smile, revealing teeth the color of weak tea and arranged at odd angles. Back behind the bar she plied her flanges into the recesses of a glass with a rag, washing with an absentminded air, her head tilted to the sound of the creaking fiddle. She had the globed, glistening eyes of a medieval Madonna, heavy-lidded, blinking slow and languid.

  After a few minutes Ariel began to sing. She had a voice as slender, frail, and ancient-seeming as she was, and it began almost as a whisper, a muted whistling as she dried glasses, her eyes downcast, and the various patrons at the pub quickly went quiet. Everyone began to look away and take their attention elsewhere, as if by acknowledging her singing the spell would be broken. Her voice, clear and precise, slipped in and around notes like wind. The bird-watchers sat in their silent groups, their heads bowed, pawing their journals, Sheila standing at the end of the bar and gazing out the window at the rushing sea, the fiddler rhythmically sawing, boot padding the floor, his eyes closed and a smile on his lips, even the builders in their crusted coveralls set their glasses down with silent care, their faces averted reverently. Then the fiddler seemed to grow weary, or the song was coming to an end and the tune wavered, and Ariel’s voice trailed off into silence.

  Sheila brought the fiddler a fresh pint and he smacked his rubbery lips in anticipation, his face sweaty from effort. He put his fiddle in a burlap sack and took out a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers. He caught me watching him and grinned, his face flush and ruddy.

  ’Fraid I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

  He bent close to the table, tapping his chest with one fat finger.

  Got the heart, I have, he said. But little stamina for it. Some only have a few songs in them. What can you do?

  He took a big drink and plunked the glass down.

  Well, you aint no birder. Unless pe’haps you a puffin, are ya?

  Sorry?
<
br />   He made wavy motions with his arms, his cheeks bulging as he held his breath.

  I seen you swimmin’, he said, slippin’ off the rocks like a puffin at Blananarragaun. Thought you turned into a seal. And me, sober.

  His name was O’Boyle, he said, and he quickly wanted my surname. I told him.

  Ah, he said with an air of satisfaction, rubbing his whiskered cheeks, that makes sense it does.

  How?

  Lemme show ya.

  He shifted his bulk, scootching his chair over to my table, pushed my bowl and plate aside and took out a pen from his shirt pocket. He wore enormous floppy rubber boots and the general disheveled appearance of a character from a Balzac novel.

  Lemme see that notebook of yours.

  I turned to a fresh page in the back and handed it to him.

  Okay, O’Boyle said. You’ve heard of Mary Magdalene, right?

  Sure.

  Right, we startin’ with Jesus. Most think he was crucified and then ascended, et cetera. The truth is that Jesus was a man, a man who simply survived a crucifixion. Nothing so special about that. No floatin’ up to the right hand of the father, no supernatural shite. Just a carpenter with some good ideas, follow? So he gets out of there, and he and Mary Magdalene, who was his true love, they run off together, settle in a place in the south of what is now France, called Cathay, right?

  O’Boyle started sketching diagrams in a hatched script. He connected his own name, O’Boyle, with an ancient race of traveling musicians, descended from Abel—of Cain and Abel—who entertained the Mongol emperors, and my last name, my maiden name, he connected to an ancient race of Gallic swimmers who swam the English Channel with copies of the teachings of Zarathustra tied to their heads. O’Boyle signaled for more drinks, and we were served by Sheila with a knowing grin. The man gulped his beer like a horse, so I was soon coughing up for another round.

  Noah was the life giver, O’Boyle was saying, the new breath of life for mankind, starting fresh after the purge. And God gave him the name Noah, as an illustration of this new breath of life. Listen to it; No——

  O’Boyle inhaled deeply as he pronounced the first syllable.

  ——ah!

  Exhale.

  Now you do it.

  So O’Boyle and I are doing breathy chants of No-ah in unison and I notice the place is clearing out, the builders packing it in. When the builders are done, you should be too, in my opinion.

  I really gotta get back, I said. It’s a good walk you know. You should come to our pub, the Nightjar? In Baltimore?

  Aye, O’Boyle said, fixing me again with his queer, apple-shaped eyes.

  I gathered the sheets of scribbled paper that O’Boyle had spread across the table and made a pretense of arranging them and shoving them into my bag. I did think that perhaps this would be something I would want to examine later, but upon the light of day I swear it was like another language. In fact, a lot of it was another language, what O’Boyle called Celtish.

  O’Boyle’s caravan was on the western side of the island, but he walked me as far as the South Harbor, where we would part, I going to the left up the hill to Nora’s, he to the right.

  You are a seeker, O’Boyle was saying as we walked, a prospector of truths.

  This man is insane, I was thinking. But I enjoyed his frank and open friendliness and attention.

  O’Boyle pointed off to the right, up the road that led to the western head of the island.

  See that stone house there? he said, just beyond that is Lough Errul, the lake, and the West Bog. Follow the path past the lake and to the edge of Coosnaganoa, near Dún an óir?

  I’ve never been to that side of the island, I said.

  Then follow that path, he said, and down inna wad of trees you’ll see me chimney poking through. Tomorrow I want to show you something. Unless you have something else to do?

  I’m gonna swim a bit, I said. Though that’ll be in the morning.

  Aye, O’Boyle said, the cormorant needs to dip her wings. Flop out with the sea dogs on Pointanbullig. I’ll see you sometime after noon. Bring the husband, eh?

  He’s gotta run the bar, I said.

  Right, some other time then.

  You should come over to the Nightjar. We’d love to have you play. Certainly we’d stand you some drinks.

  That’d be nice, he said. But ’m ’fraid I don’t get off the isle much.

  He hoisted the sack with his fiddle over his shoulder and waddled up the road, his jacket flapping in the wind.

  * * *

  On my walk that afternoon I crossed the windmill plateau and went down the eastern slope of the island, wading through waist-high gorse, the trail just a faint trace, stepping over the intermittent stone walls that ribboned across the hillside. Below, at the water’s edge, was a small section of beach nestled in a slot of jagged black rock, a place called Coosadouglas, or Douglass’s Cove. There was a long concrete boat ramp stretching into the water, mucked over with a rusty coat of algae and mosses. In the gravel lot at the top of the ramp, an old VW beater sat idling, a man behind the wheel.

  He was staring straight ahead through the murky windshield, looking out over the water to Sherkin and the mainland. I sat on the stone wall on the hill and for a few moments we both enjoyed the sweetness of the fading afternoon light. A little later the dull thrub of the ferry engine reverberated off the rocks in faint echo and soon the ferry chugged around from the left, heading to the mainland. The man stepped out of the car and walked down the boat ramp to the water’s edge. It was the hatchet-faced man with the small dog again. He stood watching the ferry as it rounded into view, navigating a low cluster of rocks, barely visible above water. The man pulled out a Polaroid camera and took a picture of the boat as it showed us her stern, heading east to the mainland along the northern edge of Sherkin. After it receded into the fog of the swelling sea, he walked back to his car, flipping the picture between his fingers, the small panting face of his dog in the front seat, wet nose pressed to the glass, looking at me.

  After he left I went down to the beach and picked around the rocks and boat ramp, the plasticky strands of sea thongs and channeled wrack strewn about, almost artfully placed on the rocks. The ramp was slick and pocked with small whelks and barnacles, but with care it could be a decent swimming entry. Sherkin lay about a mile to the northeast and that could be done quite easily if the weather was clear. Nobody had used the ramp in a long time and I wondered why someone constructed it here, on this end of the island.

  Walking along the beach to the north I came across a deep canyon at the base of the cliff. A mangled pile of metal and rubber drifted among the glossy rocks, the water sloshing around the tires and fenders of smashed vehicles clearly driven off the cliff. A few molded mattresses wedged among the rubble, a shattered armoire, stacks of Sheetrock, concrete hunks with whiskers of rebar.

  The hatchet-faced man with the dog returned to Douglass’s Cove every afternoon as the late ferry passed, and every time he took a picture of its stern as it turned to Baltimore. I spent many afternoons there, and I began to enjoy our shared moment, I on the bluff above, the dog licking the car window, the hatchet-faced man and his solitary vigil.

  * * *

  That next afternoon I arrived at O’Boyle’s caravan, set down in a crease in the boglands, wedged in a stand of what seemed to be bamboo and elephant ears. His caravan was a faded blue and white striped egg set on rocks, a stovepipe cutting through the roof at a jaunty angle. Under the caravan was a nest of rusted cans, rolls of wire, car parts, and a sleeping black and white sheepdog. A set of oil drums sat by the door, brimming with reddish fluid, a stack of crab traps, a tangled wad of fishing nets. Behind his little grove a square space of earth had been cleared by machine, a kind of foundation dug and two walls of cement block, and the skeleton of a kitchen cabinet set. The caravan rocked as I neared, and O’Boyle came banging out the tiny door, his jostling bulk in a white tank top and black cargo pants, barefoot, carrying a mug, bellowing an
Irish greeting.

  Projects, O’Boyle said when I inquired about the oil drums and nets, a bit of work I’m doing.

  I asked him what his occupation was, besides the fiddle playing, which he told me he did only for free drinks.

  Bit o’ this and that, he said. Odd jobber.

  And the walls?

  Oi, that’s me new home, he said. Kieran’s buildin’ it for me. That’s our arrangement.

  What kind of arrangement?

  I does the odd jobs, O’Boyle said, ’e builds the house. Each job is a bit more, you know what I mean? I do a bit for ’em and he puts up a wall, a bit more and perhaps I get a gas range, chest o’ drawers, that sort of thing.

  O’Boyle led me back on a narrow trail wandering over and around boulders on the edge along the sheer cliffs overlooking Roaringwater Bay. Past the spine of a hill, when we climbed over the last fence, the ground dropped away in a steep, grassy slope to a field of water-slicked boulders covered with lichens and barnacles. The sea dashed itself here in broad strokes, foaming black into small pools brimming with spiny urchins and sea lettuce. A spit of crumbling land led to a grassy plateau held out over the water like a platter, and there perched the remains of a small castle, its interior walls and floors exposed on the island side. The causeway was long gone, and to get to it would require ropes and some measure of rock-climbing ability.

  Dún an óir, O’Boyle said, the Castle of Gold.

  The castle was built around 1450 by the Corrigan chieftains, O’Boyle told me. In 1603 attackers hauled their ship’s cannon to the hilltop overlooking the castle and pounded it into submission, which is why the land-facing side of the castle is destroyed and the sea side fully intact. The finger of land pointed west to the spire of Fastnet, and it was called the Castle of Gold because of the way the setting sun exploded through it. O’Boyle told me that an alternate legend was that a seventeenth-century Corrigan chief called Finn the Rover hoarded his pirated gold there, but nothing was ever found.