William James, ‘The Confidences of a
“Psychical Researcher”’, 1909
Lia pushed the sash window up and leaned out. The late-autumn air was fresh and filled with the scent of the sea. For the first time since she lost her dad, she felt like there might light somewhere behind the clouds. She hadn’t reached that place yet, but she sensed it. She knew deep inside her that, for the moment at least, this was where she was meant to be.
She couldn’t see the village, but the acoustics of the water brought the sound of it to her and it was unmistakeably the song of a working harbour. Men called to each other. There was laughter and the cry of gulls. The musical jangle of boats moving, and of human business going on.
She took a deep breath and ducked back into the room. It was a simple but pleasant room, with a lot of wood. Harry meant what he said about no woman’s touches, but she liked his style all the same.
She took a fast shower and used the little hairdryer she found in a drawer to put some discipline into her chestnut tangles. Lip gloss and mascara were enough. She was still tanned from the long summer walking around the city trying to avoid her mother. Dressed in jeans, shirt, sweater and boots, she felt ready to face the day.
She went downstairs and followed her nose to the kitchen. There was evidence that Harry had eaten a fried breakfast. She found a Post-it note stuck to the fridge door.
Eat what you like. I’ll be back soon. H
She smiled at his scrawl and filled a bowl with cereal, eating it as she walked around the kitchen, looking at the rest of the pictures and knick-knacks. She discovered a funny whimsy that she presumed had to be Harry’s. Big tough man though he appeared to be, he had a surprising number of hand-carved animals tucked into corners. She found rabbits, foxes and one gorgeous little badger.
She rinsed out her bowl and left it and the spoon to dry on the drainer. On the window beside the back door she found a tiny carved robin, feathers fluffed up around his neck, eyes half closed. It recalled the carving of the robin above the pub door and she suddenly realised that these must be Harry’s own work. She saw him, as clear as a memory, sitting here alone, carving exquisite little creatures while the rain rattled against the windows. She didn’t know yet if he was a happy man, but she wouldn’t be surprised to find that he was a lonely one, even if he didn’t know it himself. It made her sad. Her parents had fought a lot and ignored each other a lot in their last years together, but Lia remembered a time of their happiness. Was the sadness after worth the happiness that came first? She didn’t know. Harry had chosen his path, or had it thrust upon him by island life, but she wasn’t ready to choose yet. Despite her refusal to go to college this fall, there were things she wanted to do. They were out of sight because she needed to be here, to figure things out, but they would come into focus sometime.
She took out her phone to text this to her mother, wanting to reassure her for the first time about her future, but swore under her breath when she saw that there wasn’t even one bar. She glanced at the landline phone, but that was a bit too personal yet. She left the cell phone on the dresser next to a small fox and, pausing only to fetch her jacket, went out the back door. Harry had left it on the latch, so she did the same.
The daylight didn’t make the big house any more attractive, but Lia wanted a walk and, besides, she was curious about it. Did anyone live there?
She began to walk in that direction. Mist drifted around the base of the house like gossamer skirts. It looked lonely out there.
She could hear seagulls fighting over food, their raucous calls ringing the melody of the sea. Crows, almost her namesakes, were everywhere, as they were all over the world, hardly noticed except when they flocked together to roost. Little birds were flitting around the misshapen hedgerows, which had been trained by the wind to lean away from the sea. Out there though, near the house, there seemed to be nothing moving.
The narrow road was edged by stone walls and even though the sun only broke through the grey clouds occasionally, there was a sense of warmth coming from the old stones. A little flock of goldfinches kept ahead of her, landing and taking flight as she walked. Watching them, and the sea visible across the strip of coarse, spongy grass, she soon came to the gates of the house.
She looked at it with almost a sense of shock, as it filled her senses.
The long avenue was straight and flat, both it and the house itself unadorned and exposed to the wind. The tall gates were secured with a shiny lock but anyone could climb the stone wall back along the road and go through the field to the house. She looked back. It would be easy.
Her goldfinch friends were sitting in silence in a scrubby bush growing from the wall. As she watched, they rose in a colourful cloud and fled silently across the field away from the house. When she turned back to the house, she realised how still the day had become. The clouds had overwhelmed the sun and the small breeze had dropped. Lia held herself still and listened. Somewhere, almost below audible level, there was a deep hum, like an engine running. It was as though she had put her ear to the ground to hear a train approaching. Yet there was something biological about it. Not an engine or a train. More like the sound a doctor might hear through a stethoscope. A hum of blood rushing around the body, pumped by a great heart.
‘Hey.’
The voice broke the surface of the bubble and sound came rushing back in. Lia jumped and turned. It was Ed Wray. He was wearing the same jeans and boots but had a rain jacket on. His camera hung from his neck. She guessed it was a permanent fixture.
‘Hi – you scared me.’
‘Sorry, I know. I was thinking of coughing but that seemed weird.’
She laughed. After their few minutes of acquaintance from the evening before, she already knew that he was weird. He seemed friendlier today however, because he grinned back at her.
‘Well, Lia Crowe, how are you today?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Harry let you stay so. You didn’t give him a heart attack turning up out of the blue like that?’
She shook her head. ‘I think it might take a lot to give Harry a heart attack.’
He nodded. ‘You might be right.’
For a moment, Lia didn’t know what to say next. She wasn’t that used to boys’ company. Since she had petitioned to move up a year, she had lost touch with the boys in her former class. The older boys thought of her as a kid and a damaged one at that. The girl that studies all the time because she can’t get over the death of her father.
She turned slightly towards the gates and felt Ed take a step closer. Together they stared at the house.
‘So what do you think of the Hall?’
‘The Hall? I don’t know. It’s strange. What’s its name?’
‘I forget. Everyone just calls it the Hall.’
He raised the camera, clicking several times before turning to face her. She was tall, but he was taller. His hair was dusty black and, as she had noticed the day before, he had an unusual eye colour. She had to stop herself from studying his eyes. That colour. It was a stormy dark blue.
‘Look there,’ he said. ‘It’s a buzzard.’
She followed his gaze and saw a huge bird slowly flapping across the sky, its furred legs dangling.
‘There’s lots of them now. They became extinct in Ireland over a century ago but have gradually reappeared, and they’re doing well. I love them, even though they prey on nests.’
He took a few pictures of the bird, following its progress over them. When it reached the edge of the land on which the Hall sat, it veered off and swept towards a farmhouse.
‘That’s our place over there. You’re welcome to come for tea or something. There’s only me and my father, but he’s not home much.’
‘Thanks.’
There was an awkward silence.
He had crinkly lines around his eyes.
‘Well, I’m usually there,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to see the pictures or anything. I haven’t printed the one of
you yet.’
He was tanned, but a flush rose in his cheeks.
‘I was a mess probably anyway,’ she said.
‘No. You looked … you were grand.’
He hadn’t said anything effusive, but she felt herself blush all the same.
‘’K.’
‘So – see ya.’
He turned and crossed the road, hopping the stone wall with ease. Lia stared after him. She didn’t know what had just happened, but something had. He looked a couple of years older than her, maybe eighteen. She shook her head and started back towards home, thinking about the colour of his eyes, forgetting the Hall.
A huge white seagull was sitting on the roof of the pub. It stared at her with a cold eye, unafraid. She studied it, taking in the snowy white of its plumage and the yellow of its hard beak. Without any warning, it spread its wings, swooped and fell towards the water below, curving upwards at the last moment to wheel across the masts and flying bridges of the boats in the harbour. It called as it flew and Lia thought she could stay there forever, with the sound of the birds and the rattle of buoys and bells.
She took in a deep breath of the sea air and entered the pub under the watchful gaze of the robin on the sign.
Harry was sitting outside the bar, studying invoices. He looked up when she came in. ‘Morning, you’re in time for tea.’ He started to get up.
‘No, you stay there. I’ve got it.’
She went behind the bar and got out two mugs and made steaming dark tea, the way he had the night before. She joined him on the public side of the bar.
She wrapped her hands around the mug. She hadn’t realised how cold her fingers were.
‘So, is your curiosity satisfied?’
‘Not in the least.’ She grinned at him. ‘What’s the story with the Hall out on the cliffs?’
‘No story, just a derelict old place. It’s dangerous, so you shouldn’t go near it. One more storm could bring it all crashing in. How did you know it’s called the Hall?’
‘I met a guy. Ed Wray? He gave me directions to the pub last night and he was taking pictures out there this morning.’
‘Ed and his camera.’
‘He looks about my age, sort of.’
‘Ed? He’s eighteen.’ He peered at her over his mug. ‘Why? Do you like him?’
‘No, of course not. Shut up.’
He grinned.
‘Maybe I do. Is he a psycho or anything?’
‘Ed’s alright. A bit of a dreamer, but the world needs dreamers, or so I hear. Just don’t go getting me into trouble with your mother with some holiday romance.’ He paused and raised an eyebrow. ‘Or some running-away-from-home romance.’
‘Hey,’ she said, but she smiled back at him. ‘Anyway, about the Hall. It looks fairly solid from the gate.’ She saw his look. ‘But I won’t go too close, I promise.’
‘Don’t, good girl. No one does. It really is dangerous. We expect every winter to be its last.’ He turned around on his stool and gazed out at the Hall, visible through the big window. ‘Winter is nearly here. We usually have storms before now. A couple in October, then regularly until the end of January, maybe into February.’
‘All through winter?’
He shook his head. ‘Frequent, not constant. But nothing so far this year.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
He dragged his gaze from the window and put another spoonful of sugar in his mug, stirring vigorously.
‘Yeah, course it is, good for the farmers and the fishermen.’
‘Is that how most people make their living here?’
‘It’s mostly small farms and tourism now. The big trawlers do most of the fishing and they go to the mainland to unload. Farther out, the Spanish boats do their work, factory ships, trying their best to empty the sea. But there are still local fishermen. They supply a lot of the restaurants on the coast.’ He nodded his head in the direction of the mainland.
‘They moor here in the harbour?’
‘Yeah, most of them. Every year now it seems that we lose another family of fishermen. Rose’s husband Frank sold his boat last year and turned the shed into a craft store. Rose sells knick-knacks to the tourists and works here part-time. It’s an easier life for them now that they’re older.’ He took a big swallow of his tea.
‘Better to be a publican then?’
‘Sure is. Dealing with drunks is easier than battling winter storms any day or night.’
‘So maybe you can teach me how to be a bartender?’
‘We’ll see,’ he said with a grin that lit up his eyes.
‘Oh – we’ll see. I know what that means.’
They smiled at each other in a companionable way and Lia marvelled at the way they had so quickly fallen into being comfortable.
In the late afternoon, Ed came in from the yard to make dinner. He was a few minutes early, so he plugged the camera into his laptop at the kitchen table and uploaded the pictures to a new folder. Behind him, the oven was pre-heating. He had a chicken ready to roast for dinner. He wasn’t a fancy cook, but he was better than his father and someone had to feed them. It was only a matter of bunging the chicken in the oven and peeling the spuds.
There were days, and many of them, when he decided that he’d had enough, and he was going to leave the island behind. Those were often the days when storms seemed likely, when the birds were hiding in their safe places and the sun was doing likewise behind the lowering clouds.
There wasn’t enough money to go to college, but he knew he would make it away from the island, even without a degree. But then he would come across his father leaning on a wall that he was supposed to be fixing, tears running down his broken-veined face and snot hanging off his beaky nose.
Ed missed his mother, but in a different way. She had wanted very little from life and it made his stomach burn to think she hadn’t even had that very little. Instead, she had a husband who became someone different with drink in him. She had borne her bruises with no complaint, but Ed was left with the anger that she should have had. He didn’t blame her when she couldn’t protect him from his father’s fists. He knew she wasn’t strong enough to protect either of them. He vowed that he would protect them instead and many times he had come between his father’s fist and his mother’s face. Once the cancer came, and both he and his father realised that there was nothing either of them could do to save her, the violence stopped, although the drinking didn’t.
Ed had to give him that much, whenever he found him crying. The old man had at least stopped when she was sick, when she was dying. Despite the years of suffering her husband’s blows in silence, the cancer made her cry aloud, calling for her own mother in the depths of the pain. The doctors finally gave her enough morphine to quieten her, to make her sleep. Then, on Good Friday, her sleep became so deep that she wouldn’t ever wake from it again.
Ed had stopped calling his father ‘Dad’ when she died. If he had any reason to call him anything, he called him Dan. His father hardly noticed because he was too busy drinking more than ever. He drank so much that Ed managed the farm whatever way he could and had fed them what felt like a million roast chickens over the last year.
Despite everything, when he found the old man crying it made him sad. Somewhere inside there must have been love of some kind, corrupted by alcohol but originally true. It was this lingering hope that made him stay.
Once he had got his growth spurt at fourteen and farm work had filled out his chest and shoulders, the old man didn’t hit him anymore. In the deepest hours of the night, when the wind was howling outside and the old man wasn’t in the house, he let the anger rise up in him, tasting like blood in his mouth and making him burn with the desire to give his father all the pain that he had ever inflicted on his mother. In those dark moments and hours, he would gladly have killed his father. With the storm pressing against the glass, he watched for some movement in the night. Something about the violence of the elements stirred fury and vengeance in his hear
t.
When the wind died down, often with the coming of the dawn, he would go downstairs wearily to find the old man slumped over the table, wetting his sleeve with tears. Ed knew that the tears were mostly of self-pity, but there was that something in there that was about more than indulgence. There was real sorrow. So, he stayed. They barely spoke, but he stayed. He knew it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing did.
He loved his birds and the pictures he took of them. To him, they felt like a silent moment at the heart of a symphony. His vague impossible dream was to make a living from that still moment. The new pictures were part of a plan. A year of island birds, to make beautiful colour plates. He didn’t want captions or explanations. The birds would speak for themselves, as they always did.
He moved slowly through the pictures from the morning and afternoon, discarding those that were bad or ordinary. He took a lot and discarded a lot. He had caught a lovely one of the goldfinches in flight. He paused before moving to the next frame. He knew what it would be.
She had been so still, staring at the Hall. Even on a mostly dull day, her chestnut hair shone. The picture showed this image of her, exactly as he saw it in his mind’s eye. Slender, still, facing away, somehow lonely with the Hall looming in front of her.
The photograph was ambiguous. Was she staring in wonder or loss? She could have been a girl leaving a place she loved, never to return. Or a girl taking a last look at somewhere she never wished to see again after that moment. It had the mystery that he found in his best photographs. He could never tell if the picture made him feel sad or happy. Those were the ones that he knew would last and perhaps get him somewhere other than here.
He hadn’t taken any pictures of her face when she turned but when they were looking at the buzzard he had caught her staring up, her throat exposed. The picture was no good, taken at a bad angle, as he was trying to hide that he was taking it at all, but he didn’t delete it. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t. He went back to the first picture of her, from last night. She had a quizzical look on her face. She was beautiful. A mystery.
Daughter of the Storm Page 3