Inch Levels

by Neil Hegarty

  *

  Cassie thought: the sea was grey, only a little while ago. It’s silver now, the silver of a fresh fish on the slab in the fish shop, bright and then dark. I know what the dark is: cloud – one cloud and another cloud and another – on the water. And the ripple lines on the water, from splashing fish. She looked at the silver sea, thought of rippling fish: live fish, she thought, that nibble my toes in the sea, if I stand still – and I know how to stand still, I can stand still longer than anybody I know, Sarah says so; and the fish nibble and nibble, and then suddenly I wriggle my toes and the fish rush away. I like live fish, but I like dead fish too: and she remembered now the trout, they had trout the other week, its skin crisp from the pan, fresh and lovely with potatoes and greens. Father Lynch is here, but I don’t have to listen to him going on and on and on, because he doesn’t like me, he doesn’t speak to me, not really, so I don’t have to speak to him either; and that’s better because he is so boring and boring and boring. And now Cassie looked at Brendan and saw his face and his eyes and she reached for Sarah’s hand. ‘You mustn’t cry, Cassie,’ Sarah told her last week or the week before, ‘you mustn’t cry, there’s no need to cry, nothing bad will happen,’ and she’d tried not to cry, and she tried not to cry now. No need to cry. Brendan held out his hand. ‘Come, Cassie,’ and she felt the ripples and she didn’t cry.

  *

  ‘You didn’t need to stop,’ Sarah said – for Martin had pulled the car into the side of the narrow country road. ‘I only wanted to look.’

  ‘Thought you might like to look properly, though: look around you,’ he said. ‘You haven’t been up here in a long time.’

  Sensitive Martin.

  But the car was parked right up against the fuchsia hedge, which was typical of him. Sensitive, but bad at parking. Martin didn’t in fact drive much at all, in spite of his pride in this handsome new car: usually it was Sarah who took charge of the driving, and Martin had no great skills at the wheel. Perhaps there was an opportunity, though, in this latest example of poor parking: it would be too difficult to get out, to get free, to negotiate; better to keep on going. So she shook her head.

  ‘No need.’

  Too late: for Cassie had already pushed the back door open and was clambering out, her face red and burned from the sun; and now her children were following, drifting along the hot surface of the road, looking down over the hedges to the sea. They would get bored in a couple of seconds, Sarah thought, and eager to head for home. But in another second, she had the door wrestled open – ‘sorry about the parking,’ Martin said – and the hedge dealt with; and now she too was out on the road’s warm surface, looking out over the fields.

  There was nothing to see – and everything, of course. The heat, even on this cooling evening, was rising from the tarmac: the view was quivering, hazing before her eyes. Cassie was looking over the hedges: and the children, seeming now to sense an opportunity for information, for knowledge, were pressing in, foisting questions on her. Where? And when? And who? – all flung through the hot air. Where did she play? And what fields had belonged to her? And where, exactly, was the house, and could they go to see it? They sensed weakness, today, and vulnerability after a long day of heat and sunshine: they wanted, they demanded answers about history, family, the past. She stood in the quivering air: her body seemed to be heating, its edges melting into its surrounding – and now she shook her head slightly, and gestured to Cassie.

  ‘It’s too hot, Cassie, to stand here. We need to go home.’

  Time to round up these red-faced children, and deflect any questions. Time to go home.

  ‘Can we get ice cream?’ Patrick asked. ‘On the way home.’

  Sarah nodded. Yes: they could get ice cream, they could get anything, if only these questions ceased, these views – of the past, of the world – were taken away.

  Her poor father, she thought now. Time had blunted the sharp edges, the bruises and the pain.

  Christine was quite old enough to cycle home like this, alone. There was no problem: this was a quiet town by Lough Foyle, a blue-winking, flat-calm glimpse of which could be seen at the bottom of the hill. Hardly anything ever happened here. Only the seasons happened, and the weather. The weather had happened earlier, with bucketing rain while they were in school – and there on the far side of the lough were the same rain clouds, now fading and retreating more with every moment, clearing from the distant basalt cliffs at Benevenagh – black cliffs but glistening gold now in the westering sun. A beautiful evening. A tang of frost in the air, already. The weather was over now, for the day.

  The house smelled of apples. Her mother was delighted with the McDonnells across the way: for they’d had a bumper apple harvest this year; and had delivered a box of Bramleys on Sunday afternoon. The box was stowed with pleasure in the garage; and now the garage, the whole house, smelled of apples.

  What will we do with them all? So she’d asked. Don’t worry, love, and never fear: we’ll find a use. So said her mother: you don’t need to worry yourself about that.

  She’d heard them talk, later. She’s a little worrier, that one.

  But Christine wasn’t worried now. She was glad she had on her warm anorak, zipped up to the very top. There was stew for dinner, and maybe an apple pie. Stick to your ribs, her dad told her: he made his stews the night before, always; he made the best stews.

  She looked across the fields as she cycled – at the lough and the cliffs, and the town below, from which she had just cycled: white houses and dark slate roofs and the Green on the water’s edge, with its bandstand and its stone seats and its white shingle beaches and its little spring that gushed from a rock carved into the shape of a horse’s head, and poured across the path in its channel and emptied into the sea. But now, as Christine turned her bicycle off the country road and into the lane that led to her house – a couple of hundred yards away, no more – these views vanished and the hedges closed in, meeting almost overhead. They hadn’t been cut, not really cut, for some years: everyone had become a little lackadaisical, she had heard her mother murmur, in the matter of hedging and ditching.

  Not that Christine minded: in fact, there was something exciting about spinning down this tunnel-like lane, this lane she knew so well, with the hedgerows cool and dripping, and the hawthorn bright with red berries now at summer’s end. It was quite exciting – though she was too old to say so. She knew better.

  She was practically grown up.

  She knew about the hawthorn. Maria Coyle had brought a bough of hawthorn into school, in May, to decorate the May altar. And Miss McNamara had grabbed it, they said afterwards in the playground, really grabbed it, like a cat grabbing a rat, and snatched it from Maria Coyle’s hand and taken it out into the playground and thrown it over the fence: just like that! All in a minute. Then she had come back in: and now she had a big red face, though not as red as Maria Coyle’s face was – no way, José, they said afterwards in the playground; Maria’s face was a whole lot redder – and she took Maria Coyle and she said, ‘sorry, Maria’; and someone said that the hair that grew out of the big mole on Miss McNamara’s face stuck out like a bit of wire, as if it had had an electric shock. ‘Sorry, Maria,’ Miss McNamara said, and then she rested the palm of her hand on Maria’s head; and Maria, who had been about to cry, didn’t cry, because Miss McNamara told them a good story – about the hawthorn and the fairies and the fairy rings that had hawthorn planted on them. ‘Why hawthorn?’ said Miss McNamara – and Christine had put her hand up, and ‘yes, Christine,’ said Miss McNamara; and Christine had told them why.

  She had told them why, because she knew why: there was a fairy ring in the field along from their house; and her mother had told her why she must never go near it; and especially must never touch the hawthorn that grew there. ‘Because of the fairies, Miss,’ Christine had said. ‘Because the hawthorn is the fairy tree, Miss, and they don’t like us to touch them, or take a branch.’

  ‘Or take a branch; that’s
right,’ said Miss McNamara. ‘Or anything like that. Now,’ Miss McNamara said, looking around the class, ‘who believes in all that? Who believes in the fairies?’ Nobody put up their hands; nobody at all, and Miss McNamara laughed. ‘Well, I don’t either – but I’m still not going to annoy them!’ Then she turned around to Maria Coyle and said, ‘Well, Maria, and isn’t that right?’ – and Maria, who’d looked like she was about to cry, to burst out crying, suddenly didn’t look like she was about to cry; she laughed instead, and Miss McNamara laughed and all the girls laughed. And Christine laughed.

  I laughed too, she thought as she cycled along, and it was far better that Maria didn’t cry. She didn’t know, that was all; that was the only reason. Christine laughed again as she sailed down the lane: she laughed aloud, ducking her head from time to time to avoid snagging her hair into hawthorn branches that dipped and dripped into her face again, and again and again. It was far better that Maria didn’t cry; I was glad that she laughed instead, that Miss McNamara made us all laugh. That was ages ago, she thought: ages ago, now. Months and months ago.

  In the school lobby this afternoon, the statue of Our Lady had been surrounded by red autumn leaves and red dahlias from the convent garden. In the spring it was May flowers: bluebells picked from the hedgerows and crowded together in those big glass coffee jars given in by Sister Perpetua’s brother who owned the cafe in town. ‘He’s a bit of a wheeler-dealer,’ her parents said. ‘A bit of a wheeler-dealer,’ they said, ‘that one.’ These big glass coffee jars were all over the school; they were always being used, all year long. In the autumn, the big girls rehearsed a musical, and the younger girls had to find branches and stems for the stage. And in the Christmas concert, for the local St Vincent de Paul, they had branches sprayed red and glittery white. And bluebells stuffed into the jars for the May altar.

  The bluebells wilted fast. The jars were kept topped up with water, of course, but the bluebells wilted just the same.

  And now, autumn leaves. Christine had hardly looked at them today: not that she was in a hurry, because she had time to kill. She just didn’t look at them, that was all. Instead she’d grabbed her bike, they’d all grabbed their bikes if they had bikes, they’d all turned this way and that way, heading for home. She’d free-wheeled down the main street, through the town square, over the bridge with the sea at her left hand, then up – what a puff – up, up, up the steep road that climbed from the lough, up to where her house stood on the crest of the hill, with its big garden. Plenty of room, everyone said, for a growing family. How many times had she walked and cycled up here? Oh, it was dozens, hundreds of times in her life; and now that she was a big girl, she was allowed to do it on her own.

  There were houses, people, traffic coming and going. She was nearly home.

  And now suddenly there was a van there on the lane, behind her, on the hedge-shadowed lane, where there had been no van a minute ago. Where did that van come from?

  No time to wonder. Christine fell backwards and for an instant she felt pain as the back of her head hit the ground – and then, nothing at all for some time. Or almost nothing: a blur of pain, swimming in and out of pain; and water, and darkness. And movement: for a little while, it felt as though she was moving.

  For a little while. But her head, her mind, were shattered: and before too long, she reached oblivion.

  8

  Robert on the railway, picking up stones.

  Along came the engine and broke Robert’s bones.

  Oh! said Robert, that’s not fair.

  Oh! said the engine driver, I don’t care.

  How many bones did Robert break?

  One, two, three, four…

  Two children squabbling in the hospital corridor: shrill voices raised – outraged, furious, complaining. A boy, a girl, two girls; the boy being blamed. And a mother’s ineffectual shush-ing.

  ‘Shush, shush! There are sick people here!’

  ‘But he –’

  ‘I never did!’ – the boy’s voice, raised and wailing in distress.

  ‘He did, he did!’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  And now the mother’s voice. ‘James, that’s enough! Be quiet!’

  And now a nurse’s squeaking shoes running: the family bundled away; and Robert opened his eyes. There was the room, the bed, the thin outline of his brother-in-law’s body under the blue coverlet, the beaky profile, the loose skin, the plastic tubes.

  *

  Run, boy, run.

  The clearances were beginning. Belfast voices crowing. They were coming.

  Stones rained. The families on either side of them had left Bombay Street in daylight, taking the advice of the priest, the police, their own bawling instincts. ‘Let’s go too,’ Robert said. He smelled fear in the air – but his mother was bloody-minded: and she’d dug her heels in. She’d not be thrown out of her own house by anybody. They’d take her out in a box, first.

  That was her decision. She had a little time to think about its consequences.

  First, for a moment when the kitchen window came in; then again, as they stood in the narrow hall, as the walls of the small front room glowed in the light of the flames. They were coming: the mob – though the firemen weren’t coming, they wouldn’t come, so they had heard. Bombay Street could burn, first. And it was burning as they left: there was a screen of young men and boys holding the line to the left as they scurried like rats to the right, to shelter, with bags, with bundles, with whatever they had been able to lay their hands on; screams and whistles and bellows. Run, boy, run: stones raining over the screen: and Robert turns to look, sees flames, sees crowds, sees a red light in the sky and a Red Hand and a union flag amid the smoke and the flaming light. And turns again, and sees the blood running from her scalp down and onto his mother’s face. A stone has met its mark; and there is a hotness of vomit in his throat. She stumbles, picks herself up, catches his hand and they run.

  Run, boy, run.

  *

  They never went away: these memories, these sensations of humiliation. That little boy out in the corridor, pecked and blamed and scolded: that was it, in a nutshell. That was me, Robert thought, and he ran a hand over his forehead, over his skull. That was me.

  Robert on the railway…

  The skipping game – but he had run into the crowd, fists flailing. He had learned not to waste time in words. Yes, he had learned early to use his fists. His dreadful temper: he had never tamed it. Instead, the world flamed red before his eyes, and then black; and before he knew it, his fists met their mark.

  How many bones did Robert break? – many bones, in fact: many bones over the years, the bones of other people. He never broke his own. The little, petty humiliations year by year: well, the thought of broken bones had corrected the balance a little.

  And now the figure in the bed moved, woke. Eyelids flickered, eyes focused, looked, and looked away.

  ‘Oh, what did I tell you?’ – a reedy voice, a petulant voice. ‘I told you not to come again.’

  Robert leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘I came to say sorry. To tell you I’m sorry.’

  A pause, a beat.

  ‘Don’t be telling me. Why are you telling me?’

  Which was a point: why was Robert sitting in this over-heated hospital room? Why was he saying such things?

  ‘And I thought I told you not to come back,’ Patrick added. High, yes: reedy – an old man’s voice in a young man’s body; but still capable of loftiness, of a little of the astringency of old.

  ‘I mean I want –’ said Robert, but Patrick had already closed his eyes again, and now he moistened his dry lips and spoke again.

  ‘I know what you want. You want me to shower you with admiring kisses. But it isn’t me you should be apologising to. Go away, Robert,’ he said, mildly now. ‘This is pointless. Apologise to someone else – as if apologising will do it. And call the nurse: I want some tea.’

  True: this was pointless. Robert grasped his coat an
d left the room.

  *

  Too much. Too much.

  So Patrick thought. He opened an eye to check that the unwelcome visitor had departed – and yes, the coast was clear. Another bolt of material, duly stashed away. Too much material: this fabric going on and on, unfurling dementedly. Like, he thought, one of those rolled-up parchment maps flung across tables in adventure films, pirate films, revealing itself in a cloud of dust.

  At least those rolls of parchment tended to show the way home, the way to the treasure, to Shangri-La. But there was no treasure trove, no Shangri-La at the end of this adventure, Patrick thought. My ma and Robert have taken care of that, between them. This adventure cost too much, too much in materials and labour and tears. Too much in consequences – too much for anyone sane to want to embark upon it.

  It was too much. And he laughed, then, stretched in his blue bed: and it wasn’t as if he had all the time in the world, either. Which was the problem with memory, with history: too damned much of them both. They expand, they go on expanding, exponentially, especially once they are paid the smallest amount of attention. They’re like – and here he paused – yes: they’re like certain children and domestic pets I’ve come across, squalling, pawing and poking, running around hissing and flapping, like ganders in a farmyard. They can never be satisfied.

  But the children analogy was hardly in the best of taste. He knew that too.

  ‘You know those balloons,’ he said to Margaret – this was lately, he thought; the days continued to blur now – ‘that people have trouble blowing up?’

  ‘She moved her chair a little closer to the bed. ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘You can’t start them off, sometimes, is that what you mean?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he murmured.

  ‘You need a bicycle pump.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘So, what about them?’

  He said after a pause, ‘Well, once you get started, the things sometimes seem to go on and on, don’t they? It’s like you can never get them filled. That’s what it’s like.’