He flinched away from the thought before his brain had properly formed the words and slung the bags back into the boot fast, slamming it shut with a tinny sound. The heat from the sun-warmed metal scorched his palms.
“All okay?” She sounded drugged, half-asleep again. The car was airless.
“Fine.” No thanks to you.
“Is it much further?”
He ignored her, pulling out into the no-traffic with a flourish. The windscreen was splattered with tiny bodies, smears of red and green and clear liquid like water. Another handful scattered against the glass as he crested the next hill and swooped down, the tarmac smooth under the wheels so even in that fucking jalopy he felt as if he were flying. The road looped and ran in front of him like a roller-coaster track and all he had to do was follow, follow, and feel his stomach disappear when it dropped over the edge . . .
Jesus. Concentrate. The sun or the stress or the travel had given him a wicked headache. No proper sleep for weeks now, the thoughts chasing each other around his skull like a pack of sex-crazed squirrels. The glare off the tarmac was fierce.
“Is there any water left?”
She shook the bottle at him in reply, the last few drops running down the inside. Oh, she was pissed off with him now. That was fine, wasn’t it? What did she have to be pissed off about? The anger stirred, rolling over inside him and he was glad of it. He needed it.
The car roared down the empty road and little birds darted through the dusty air behind it, chasing the insects that survived his passing.
“Is this it?” She was sitting up, looking out, her face already falling into the sulk that was never far away these days. For once he could see her point. The cottage was halfway to falling down, low and sagging on its small plot of grass, the white lime on the walls rubbed and cracked. A small brown boy was squatting on the doorstep, poking in the dirt with a stick. Six, maybe seven. Shorts and a jumper that didn’t fit him properly, winter-thick despite the hot sunshine. He looked up, wary as a stray dog, and disappeared in through the green-painted door.
“Oh, my God.” Her head was swivelling, taking in the tumbledown walls, the weeds growing up the middle of the road. She had slept through the last part of the drive, missing the moment when the fields faded to rough grass and white sand began to edge the road instead of rusty soil. She hadn’t seen the line of the horizon resolve itself into dunes glinting in the sun. Where he’d parked they were out of sight of the sea but salt in the air smeared gauzy dirt on every window and he could smell it on the wind. The tide had to be coming in, he thought, listening to the waves. The sound was disorientating. It seemed to be coming at them from everywhere, buffeting the car.
“There’s nothing here. I mean, Jesus.”
He waited a moment longer, enjoying her dismay a little too much to put an end to it. She had wanted to go to Dubai. This was about as far away as you could get from air-conditioned luxury. Her bottom lip was actually quivering.
“This isn’t it. This is the village. The holiday houses are over the hill. I’ve got to get the key.”
He left her sitting in the car again and swung into the cottage with a rap on the door, the big smile on his face, how are ye and aren’t ye great to have the key ready for us and oh that Conor is a great fella altogether. A lot of nodding and smiling from the old woman, even though she probably understood one word in fifty. She was old, dignified, her face lined like a dry riverbed. Dirt poor, literally. Like an Irish peasant in famine times, he thought, scuffing earth under his foot, a catch in his throat from the wood smoking sullenly on a pitiful fire. She did the cleaning at the cottage. She’d be in every day. She’d look after them. He found a note in his pocket, knew it was too much, put it on the table anyway. Conor was the big man, was he? Well, it was easy to be the big man to people who had nothing. You didn’t have to have very much at all yourself, to look rich to them.
He had his foot over the threshold when the thought occurred to him that Conor felt that way about him and Lisa. Deserving poor. Give them a holiday. Let them see how well I’ve been doing for myself. He wanted to drop the keys in the dust and go, drive away, back to Cape Town. He could book them into a disgustingly lavish hotel and max out the final credit cards for ten stupid, self-indulgent days of spas and five-course meals and flowing wine. Fuck Conor; fuck the lot of them. Fuck the bank and the mortgage he couldn’t pay. Fuck the stupid house that was worth a quarter of what they’d paid for it.
It took him the length of the slow walk back to the car to get over it, to get control of himself. He needed to be there. Because the way out of his predicament was sitting on her arse in the passenger seat with the window down, her stupid ignorant face turned up to the sun.
And he couldn’t tell if it was hatred or pity that was lodged in his throat.
He opened his eyes and the room was already light, white sliding in around the edges of the shutters. The sea was quiet, the waves slurring as they washed over the rocks below. The tide going out, he supposed, without really knowing. Somewhere outside a bird was chanting, a wood pigeon or some such, and he couldn’t help fitting words to the six-note call. It was plaintive, reproachful. And insistent. You said you’d come with me . . . you said you’d come with me . . .
He risked a look. She was still asleep. Her face was flushed, her mouth pressed against the pillow so it slid sideways. Sweat darkened her hair and her skin glistened damply. She looked younger, asleep. She looked different.
He got out of bed carefully, folding back the duvet around her so she didn’t notice him going. Just after seven, according to his phone. He shut himself in the bathroom, hoping the noise of the shower wouldn’t wake her. Three days they’d been there and he’d developed a routine, walking around downstairs, opening the shutters. He’d go to the shop for milk and the paper. Back at the house he’d make coffee and sit outside, watching the sea while he ate breakfast. The white-painted house was poised on the edge of high ground with nothing between him and the water. He could never get used to it, no matter how long he stared. The colour of the water – that pure cold green like the heart of Antarctic ice. The searing white of the dunes marching into the distance, immaculate and untouched. And the miracle of the whales: a black back suddenly arching from the valley between two waves, or a V-spray of white water snorted at the sky, or best of all, a great surge far out to sea as one of them heaved itself up and out of its element before slamming back down and disappearing. He couldn’t tear himself away.
Lisa didn’t get it.
“You can’t see much, can you? Just a black speck. That could be a rock, sure.”
“They’re the size of ten bull elephants lined up end to end,” he’d told her, reading from a book he’d found in the sitting room. “The adults, that is.”
“Is that how they measure things here? In bull elephants?” She was ripping the piss and he didn’t mind, sort of – he laughed back at her. It was nice. A shared moment. And then she ruined it. “Can we not go somewhere to see them properly? Get a boat?”
“They only do land-based whale watching here. Not to spook them, you know.”
She pulled down the corners of her mouth. “That’s shit.”
They had been hunted to the edge of extinction, but that had stopped years before. They might have a memory that men in boats spelled disaster. Or did they? Did they suspect the low concrete sheds along the shore had been used to cut them up? Did they tell tales to the young ones of the bloodstained sea, the boats riding low in the water with their giant haul, the harpoons and the nets and the killing frenzy?
“They have to feel safe so they can mate and give birth. The next bay along is a nursery for them, it says here. You can see the mammies and their calves. Look.” He turned the book, showing her a picture from overhead of a small whale swimming beside its mother.
“I thought it would be like Fungi the dolphin. D’you remember? Down in Dingle? And you could go out in a boat and say hello to him.”
“I never did th
at.” He put the book down, but not to talk. To end the conversation. Fucking Fungi. It didn’t begin to compare. He’d go into the kitchen for a bit. Make tea or coffee. Or pour a drink, if it was time yet.
“I wanted to see him.” She said it softly, to herself. “I always wanted to.”
He had left her sitting there, on her own.
She slept on until after he had eaten, after the first pot of coffee was empty and the second lukewarm in the sunshine. He’d read the paper. Done the crossword. Folded it over and made shite of the sudoku. The day wasn’t that hot after all; there was an edge to the breeze that fluttered the pages of his paper. He shivered in his T-shirt, looking for fives on the little grid. Every time he looked up he saw the barbecue built against the side of the house and imagined Conor standing there grilling fish caught that morning. This is the life. Oh, Conor would know what he was doing. He wouldn’t. He’d set fire to the thatch or something. He imagined it, imagined himself screaming. My poor wife. Lisa. She’s all I’ve got.
How very true that was. She’d told him after they were married that she couldn’t have children. He’d gone away and cried for them both, but mainly for her. Poor Lisa. It had brought them closer together, at first.
Then her sister let it slip. “Couldn’t have? Didn’t want, more like.”
She’d tried to backtrack but it was out, and all she could say when he pursued it was, “Ah, sure you know Lisa.”
He didn’t. That was the first time he’d realized it. And realized that she liked it that way.
He got up and walked to the edge of the lawn, to the pathetic shin-height fence of wooden sticks that was all to stop you from going right off the edge. It wasn’t a cliff; it was a hill, but steep. It was covered in tussocks of grass that might give you a handhold if you fell, if you had the presence of mind to hold on.
Further down the coast, there were rocks. Proper cliffs the colour of wet cardboard. Sheer drops. It was worth considering.
The bird was still going mental. You said you’d come with me. You said you’d come with me.
People had accidents on holidays. Every year, people didn’t come home from honeymoons. Trips of a lifetime. The papers were full of that stuff. Falling off balconies. Car accidents. Bus crashes. Cliff-top walks ending in disaster.
He chewed his lip, feeling the headache start up again.
It was because you couldn’t say what was dangerous and what wasn’t, when you were away from home. His father had a theory that you were in most danger on the last day of a trip when your guard was down. Could he wait for the last day?
If he did anything.
His palms were wet and he wiped them on his jeans surreptitiously, even though he was alone.
How else did people die? He went back to the paper, flicking through the news pages. Reversed over by a car that didn’t stop. Strangled and left by the side of a road in a township near the airport. There was a picture. A 747 hung over the huddled shacks as it came in to land, the locals staring down at a body in a pink dress that lay at their feet. The main story was about a white couple who’d been shot during a burglary. The picture was a Tamboerskloof mansion with the security gates standing open, police vehicles filling the driveway. Poor bastards.
He threw the paper down and rubbed his hand over his head, hating himself. He couldn’t do it. He had no gun. The knives in the kitchen were too blunt to cut bread; they’d never saw through skin and muscle. He couldn’t imagine strangling her. He would fail, as usual. He would fuck it up and end up in prison, back in Ireland if he was lucky. Sitting in Portlaoise beside some ex-IRA gangster.
A sound from above: he leaned back to see her opening the shutters, squinting. He raised a hand.
“Is it warm?”
“In the sun.”
“Not shorts weather, though.”
He shook his head.
“I packed too much.” She disappeared from view and a minute later water gurgled down the pipe, into the drain. He could hear her singing to herself, as if she were happy.
They got out of the house that afternoon, driving around, aimless. Lisa put the window down and leaned her head against the car door, the wind blowing her hair around her face. She’d found a radio station that played oldies. It cut out constantly but she wouldn’t let him turn it off.
“I like it.”
It reminded him of when they got together. He had his first car, a third-hand Peugeot, and he’d drive her up to the Hill of Howth or along the Vico Road – anywhere you could see the sea. All of Dublin stretched before them, cradled in the mountains. Theirs for the taking. He’d done his best, he really had. He’d given it everything. His hands and arms ached; he had to keep making himself relax them on the wheel. He just wanted it to stop.
“Did you say something?”
He shook his head.
“I thought you said you wanted to stop.”
“Here? There’s nothing here.”
“Where are we going?” She sat up. “Where even are we?”
A red back road cutting through farmland, wire fences on either side of the earth track. Nowhere at all.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“We’ll know it when we get there.” He took the next turn to the right, and the next, ending up on a dirt road that was bumpy enough to loosen fillings.
“This is insane.”
“We’re exploring.”
The road twisted and snaked through miles of nothingness and he lost himself in the driving. He stopped thinking about where they were going, or anything else. He’d forgotten she was there until she spoke.
“Look.” She was pointing through the bleary windscreen, now crusted with dust as well as insect innards. “Is that a lighthouse?”
“So it seems.” He said it as if that was what he’d planned, as if he’d known it was at the end of the road.
“Oh . . .” She put a hand on the dashboard. “Oh, let’s go to the sea. I want to see the sea again.”
* * *
The beach was perfect – miles long, pure white sand, deserted except for a man line-fishing from the rocks in the distance. The wind was cutting across it, ripping through the low green shrubs on the dunes.
“Will we walk along the beach?” he asked.
“As far as we can go.”
“To the end?”
“To the end of the world.” She grinned at him, her eyes very blue, and he almost kissed her then, even though he hated her. He loved her too – that was the hell of it. He turned and stumbled away from her, horrified by himself. The ground was slipping out from under his feet and he couldn’t seem to stop it.
“What’s wrong?” She caught up with him, holding on to his arm. “What’s the matter?”
“Ah, I don’t—” He almost sobbed.
“Are you not well?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just too much sun.” The beach was so white it dazzled him.
“We’ll go back to the car.”
“No. We said we’d walk.” He pointed at something black on the sand, in the distance. “I want to know what that is. Come on. I’ll race you.”
He outdistanced her easily, the wind searing his eyes. Poor bitch. He’d made her what she was. He’d promised her the world.
By the time he got close enough to the dark shape on the sand to see what it was, he’d pulled himself together again. He put up a hand to stop Lisa.
“Wait there.”
“What is it?” She wrinkled her nose as she reached him. “Is it dead?”
“It’s a penguin.”
“It stinks.”
“It’s rotting.”
“Lovely.” She pulled at his arm. “Come on. Leave it.”
“I’m just looking.”
“Don’t touch it. Are you mad?” She was dragging at him. “Let’s go.”
He couldn’t stop looking at the bird. The feathers, rough and spiky on its breast. The cloudy eye garlanded in flies, the ones that weren
’t slipping in and out of the half-open beak. A penguin. Honest to God.
“You wouldn’t get this on Dollymount Strand, would you?”
“I’m cold.” She’d taken a step away from him. “It’s too cold here, with the wind. No wonder there’s no one here.”
“I don’t mind it.”
“I do.”
“So you don’t want to walk on the beach?”
“What else could we do?”
He couldn’t think of anything. “Go back to the house?”
She looked away from him, her hair blowing around her face so he couldn’t see what she was thinking.
“We’ll be grand once we’re walking.” Why he was trying to persuade her, he didn’t know. He’d be happy enough with his seat in the sun, watching for whales. The beach was no good for it. They were too low down and the surf was running too high.
She started off without him, walking fast. He matched her pace, slipping in the sand that gave under his feet at every step. Tiny flies rose up from the ground to fling themselves at his face. The wind carried handfuls of grit that found his eyes and his open mouth; he spat a couple of times, until she turned around and gave him the look.
“It’ll be easier on the way back. We’ll have the wind behind us,” he said.
“Why do you have to be so fucking cheerful all the time?”
“I don’t know,” he said, hopeless. “I’m not.”
“You are. You won’t even admit the truth to yourself. This is horrible. I hate this place and I wish we’d never come.”
“Yer man’ll hear you.” He was looking over her shoulder at the fisherman, a still, upright figure, dignified in rubber boots and a heavy jacket.
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