by Lucy Foley
Then I come across one that stands out because there’s nothing growing over it. In fact it’s in good nick: a little jam jar of wildflowers in front of it. From the dates – I do some quick maths – it must have been a child, a young girl: Darcey Malone, the stone reads, Lost to the sea. I look towards the sea. Many have drowned in making the crossing, Mattie told us. He didn’t actually tell us when they drowned, I realise. I had assumed that was hundreds of years ago. But maybe it was more recent. To think: this was someone’s child.
I bend down and touch the stone. There’s an ache at the back of my throat.
‘Hannah!’ I turn towards the Folly. Aoife stands there, looking at me. ‘It’s not that way,’ she says, then points to where the path continues at an angle away from the chapel. ‘Over there!’
‘Thanks!’ I call to her. ‘Sorry!’ I feel as though I have been caught trespassing.
As I get further away from the Folly any sign of the path seems to disappear completely. Patches of earth that look safe and grassy give way beneath my feet, collapsing into a black ooze. Cold bogwater has already seeped into my right welly and my foot squelches inside its soaked sock. The thought of the bodies somewhere beneath me makes me shiver. I wonder if anyone will know tonight how close they’re dancing to a burial pit.
I hold up my phone. Full signal, as Aoife promised. I ring home. I can make out the tone at the other end over the wind, then my mum’s voice saying: ‘Hello?’
‘It’s not too early is it?’ I ask.
‘Goodness no, love. We’ve been up for … well, it feels like hours.’
When she passes me to Ben I can hardly make out what he’s saying, his voice is so high and reedy.
‘What was that, darling?’ I press the phone to my ear.
‘I said hello, Mum.’ At the sound of his voice I feel it deep down inside, the powerful tug of my bond to him. When I look for something to compare my love for the kids with it’s actually not my love for Charlie. It’s animal, powerful, blood-thick. The love of kin. The closest thing I can find to it is my love for Alice, my sister.
‘Where are you?’ Ben asks. ‘It sounds like the sea. Are there boats?’ He’s obsessed with boats.
‘Yes, we came over on one.’
‘A big one?’
‘Big-ish.’
‘Lottie was really sick yesterday, Mum.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I ask, quickly.
The thing that most worries me is the thought of anything happening to my loved ones. When I was little and woke in the night I’d sometimes creep over to my sister Alice’s bed to check that she was definitely breathing, because the worst thing I could imagine was her being taken from me. ‘I’m OK, Han,’ she’d whisper, a smile in her voice. ‘But you can get in if you want to.’ And I’d lie there, pressed against her back, feeling the reassuring movement of her ribs as she breathed.
Mum comes on to the line. ‘Nothing to worry about, Han. She overdid herself yesterday afternoon. Your dad – the dolt – left her on her own with the Victoria sponge while I was at the shops. She’s fine now, love, she’s watching CBeebies on the sofa, ready for her breakfast. Now,’ she says to me, ‘go have fun at your glamorous weekend.’
I don’t feel very glamorous right now, I think, with my soggy sock and the breeze stinging tears from my eyes. ‘All right, Mum,’ I say, ‘I’ll try and call tomorrow, on our way home. They’re not driving you too crazy?’
‘No,’ Mum says. ‘To be honest—’ The little catch in her voice is unmistakable.
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s a nice distraction. Positive. Looking after the next generation.’ She stops, and I hear her take a deep breath. ‘You know … it’s this time of year.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I get it, Mum. I feel it too.’
‘Bye, darling. You take care of yourself.’
As I ring off it hits me. Is that who Olivia reminds me of? Alice? It’s all there: the thinness, the fragility, the deer-in-headlights look. I remember when I first saw my sister after she came home from university for the summer holidays. She had lost about a third of her body weight. She looked like someone with a terrible disease – like something was eating her from the inside out. And the worst part was that she didn’t think she could talk to anyone about what had happened to her. Not even me.
I start walking. And then I stop, look about me. I’m not sure I’m going the right way but it’s not obvious which way is right. I can’t see the Folly or even the marquee from here, hidden as they are by the rise of the ground. I’d assumed it would be easier going on my return, because I’d know the route. But now I feel disoriented – my thoughts have been somewhere else completely. I must have taken a different way; it seems even boggier here. I’m having to hop between drier tussocks of grass to avoid soft, wet black patches of peat. I plough on. Then I get a bit stuck and chance a big leap. But I’ve misjudged it: my footing slips and my left welly lands not on the grassy hillock but on the soft surface of the peat.
I sink – and I keep sinking. It happens so fast. The ground opens up and swallows my foot. I lose my balance, staggering backwards, and my other foot goes in with a horrible slurp of suction, quick as the black throat of that cormorant swallowing the fish. Within moments, the peat seems to be over the top of my boots and I’m sinking further. For the first few seconds I’m stupid with surprise, frozen. Then I realise I have to act, to rescue myself. I reach out for the dry patch of land in front of me, and grip hold of two hunks of grass.
I heave. Nothing happens. I seem to be stuck fast. How embarrassing this is going to be, I think, when I get back to the Folly absolutely filthy and have to explain what happened. Then I realise that I’m still sinking. The black earth is inching over my knees, up my lower thighs. Little by little it is drinking me in.
Suddenly I don’t care about embarrassment any longer. I’m genuinely terrified. ‘Help!’ I shout. But my words are swallowed by the wind. There’s no way my voice is going to carry a few yards, let alone all the way to the Folly. Nevertheless, I try again. I scream it: ‘Help me!’
I think of the bodies in the bog. I imagine skeletal hands reaching up towards me from deep beneath the earth, ready to drag me down. And I begin to scrabble at the bank, using all my strength to haul myself upwards, snorting and growling with the effort like an animal. It feels like nothing’s happening but I grit my teeth and try even harder.
And then I am aware of the distinct feeling of being watched. A prickle down the spine.
‘You want a hand there?’
I start. I can’t quite twist myself round to see who has spoken. Slowly they move around to stand in front of me. It’s two of the ushers: Duncan and Pete.
‘We were having a little explore,’ Duncan says. ‘You know, get the lay of the land.’
‘Didn’t think we’d have the pleasure of rescuing a damsel in distress,’ Pete says.
Their expressions are almost completely neutral. But there’s a twitch at the corner of Duncan’s mouth and I get the feeling they were laughing at me. That they might have been observing me for a while as I struggled. I don’t want to rely on their help. But I’m also not really in any position to be picky.
They each take one of my hands. With them pulling, I finally manage to yank one foot from its hold. I lose the boot as I pull my foot from the last of the bog and the earth closes over it as quickly as it had opened. I pull my other foot out and scrabble on to the bank, safe. For a moment I’m sprawled upon the ground, trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline, unable to find the energy to rise to my feet. I can’t quite believe what just happened. Then I remember the two men looking down at me, each holding one of my hands. I scramble to my feet, thanking them, dropping their hands as quickly as seems polite – the clasp of our fingers suddenly feels oddly intimate. Now that the adrenaline is receding I’m becoming aware of how I must have looked to them as they pulled me out: my top gaping to expose my grey old bra, cheeks flushed and sweaty. I’m also aware o
f how isolated we are, here. Two of them, one of me.
‘Thanks, guys,’ I say, hating the wobble in my voice. ‘I think I’m going to head back to the Folly now.’
‘Yes,’ Duncan drawls. ‘Got to wash all that filth off for later.’ And I can’t work out if I’m reading too much into it or whether there really is something suggestive in the way he says it.
I start back in the direction of the Folly. I’m moving as fast as I can go in my socked feet, while being careful to pick only the safest crossings. I suddenly want very much to get back inside, and yes, back to Charlie. To put as much space as possible between myself and the bog. And, to be honest, my rescuers.
AOIFE
The Wedding Planner
I sit at my desk going through the plans for today. I like this desk. Its drawers are full of memories. Photographs, postcards, letters – paper yellowed with age, handwriting a childish scrawl.
I tune the radio into the forecast. We get a few Galway stations here.
‘It’s likely to get a little windy later today,’ the weatherman’s saying. ‘We have conflicting evidence about the Gale-force number, but we can say that most of Connemara and West Galway will be affected, particularly the islands and coastal areas.’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Freddy says, coming in to stand behind me.
We listen as the man on the radio announces that the winds will hit properly after 5 p.m.
‘By that time they’ll all be safely inside the marquee,’ I say. ‘And it should hold fast, even in a bit of wind. So there will be nothing to worry about.’
‘What about the electrics?’ Freddy asks.
‘They’re pretty good, aren’t they? Unless we have a real storm on our hands. And he didn’t say anything about that.’
We have been up since dawn this morning. Freddy has even made a trip over to the mainland with Mattie to get a few last-minute supplies, while I am checking everything is in order here. The florist will arrive shortly to arrange the sprays of local wildflowers in the chapel and marquee: speedwell and wild spotted orchids and blue-eyed grass.
Freddy returns to the kitchen to put the finishing touches to whatever food can be prepared in advance: the canapés and hors d’oeuvres, the cold starters of fish from the Connemara Smokehouse. He’s passionate about food, is my husband. He can talk about a dish he’s thought up in the way that a great musician might rhapsodise about a composition. It stems from his childhood; he claims that it comes from not having any variety in his diet when he was young.
I walk over to the marquee. It occupies the same higher land as the chapel and graveyard, some fifty yards to the east of the Folly along a tract of drier land, with the marshier stuff of the turf bog on either side. I hear frantic scurryings ahead and then in front of me they appear: hares startled out of their ‘forms’, the hollows they make in the heather to bed down in. They sprint in front of me for a while, their white tails bobbing, their powerful legs kicking out, before veering off into the long grasses on either side and disappearing from view. Hares are shapeshifters in Gaelic folklore; sometimes when I see them here I think of all of Inis an Amplóra’s departed souls, materialising once more to run amidst the heather.
In the marquee I begin my duties, filling up the space heaters and putting certain finishing touches on the tables: the hand-watercoloured menus, the linen napkins in their solid silver rings, each engraved with the name of the guest who will take it home. There’ll be a striking contrast later between the refinement of these beautifully dressed tables and the wildness outdoors. Later, when we light them, there’ll be the scent of the candles from Cloon Keen Atelier, an exclusive Galway perfumer, shipped over from the boutique at no small expense.
The marquee shivers around me as I do my checks. It’s quite amazing to think that in a few hours this echoing empty space will be filled with people. The light in here is dull and yellow compared to the bright cold light of outside but tonight this whole structure will glow like one of those paper lanterns you send up into the night sky. People on the mainland will be able to look across and see that something exciting is going on on Inis an Amplóra – the island they all speak about as the dead place, the haunted isle, as though it only exists as history. If I do my job right, this wedding will make sure they’ll be talking about it in the present again.
‘Knock knock!’
I turn. It’s the groom. He’s got one hand up and he’s pretending to knock on the side of the canvas flap as though it were a real door.
‘I’m looking for two errant ushers,’ he says. ‘We should be getting into our morning suits. You haven’t seen any sign of them?’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Good morning. No, I don’t think I have. Did you sleep well?’ I still can’t believe it’s really him, in the flesh: Will Slater. Freddy and I have watched Survive the Night since the start. I haven’t mentioned this to the bride and groom, though, in case they worry that we’re crazed super-fans who are going to embarrass ourselves and them.
‘Well!’ he says. ‘Very well.’ He is very good-looking in real life, more so even than he looks on screen. I reach down to straighten a fork, in case I’m staring. You can tell he’s always had these looks. Some people are awkward and unformed as children but grow into attractive adults. But this man wears his beauty with such ease and grace. I suspect he uses it to great effect, is clearly very aware of its power. Every movement is like watching the working of a finely tuned machine, an animal in the peak of its condition.
‘I’m pleased you slept well,’ I say.
‘Ah,’ he says, ‘although we discovered a slight issue on going to bed.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some seaweed under the duvet. The ushers’ little prank.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ I say. ‘I’m very sorry. You should have called Freddy or me. We would have sorted it out for you, remade the bed with new sheets.’
‘You don’t have to apologise,’ he says – that charming grin again. ‘Boys will be boys.’ He shrugs. ‘Even if Johnno is a somewhat overgrown one.’ He comes to stand beside me, close enough that I can detect the scent of his cologne. I take a small step back. ‘It’s looking great in here, Aiofe. Very impressive. You’re doing a wonderful job.’
‘Thank you.’ My tone does not invite conversation. But I imagine Will Slater isn’t used to people not wanting to talk to him. I realise, when he doesn’t move, that it’s even possible he sees my curtness as a challenge.
‘So what’s your story, Aoife?’ he asks, his head tilted to one side. ‘Don’t you get lonely, living here, only the two of you?’
Is he really interested, I wonder, or simply feigning it? Why does he want to know about me? I shrug. ‘No, not really. I’m what you might call a loner anyways. In the winter it just feels like survival, to be honest. The summers are what we stay for.’
‘But how did you end up here?’ He seems genuinely intrigued. He really is one of those people that has you convinced they are fascinated by your every word. It’s all part of what makes him so charming, I suppose.
‘I used to come here on summer holidays,’ I say, ‘when I was little. My family, we all used to come here.’ I don’t often talk about that time. There’s a lot I could tell him, though. Of cheap strawberry ice lollies on the white sand beaches, the stain of red food colouring on lips and tongues. Of rock-pooling on the other side of the island, filleting through the contents of our nets with eager fingers to find shrimp and tiny, translucent crabs. Splashing about in the turquoise sea in the sheltered bays until we got used to the freezing temperature. I won’t tell him any of this, obviously: it would not be appropriate. I need to maintain that essential boundary between myself and the guests.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think you had the local accent.’ I wonder what he expects. Top o’ the morning and to be sure, to be sure and shamrocks and leprechauns?
‘No,’ I say, ‘I have a Dublin accent, which perhaps sounds less pronounced. But I’ve also lived in different places. W
hen I was younger we moved around a lot, because of my father’s job – he was a university professor. England for a bit – even the States for a while.’
‘You met Freddy abroad? He’s English, isn’t he?’ Still so interested, so charming. It makes me feel a little uneasy. I wonder exactly what he wants to know.
‘Freddy and I met a long long time ago,’ I tell him.
He smiles that charming, interested smile. ‘Childhood sweethearts?’
‘You could say that.’ It’s not quite right, though. Freddy’s several years younger than me and we were friends first, for years before anything else. Or perhaps not even friends, more clinging to one another as each other’s life rafts. Not long after my mother became a shell of the woman she had once been. Several years before my father’s heart attack. But I’m hardly going to tell the groom all of that. Besides everything else, in this profession it is important to never allow yourself to seem too human, too fallible.
‘I see,’ he says.
‘Now,’ I say, before the next question can form on his lips, whatever it may have been. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d better be getting on with everything.’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘We’ve got some real party animals coming this evening, Aoife,’ he says. ‘I only hope they don’t cause too much mayhem.’ He pushes his hand through his hair and grins at me in what I think is probably intended to be a rueful, winning way. His teeth are very white when he smiles. So bright, in fact, that it makes me wonder if he gets them specially lightened.
Then he moves a little closer and puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re doing a fantastic job, Aoife. Thank you.’ He leaves his hand there a beat too long, so that I can feel the heat of his palm seeping through my shirt. I am suddenly very aware that it is just the two of us in this big echoing space.