Himself(92)

Something jumps out from the undergrowth and onto on Jack’s back. He hardly falters; it’s as if he’s been expecting it. He drops the shovel.

Thomas Sweeney is far smaller in real life than a bogeyman ought to be. He is ancient and shoeless and bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound to his shoulder.

Jack shakes him off and punches him through a drift of leaves.

Now that Thomas is in touching distance he reaches out to Mahony. Strings of spittle fall from the old man’s mouth and his words come without letters in them.

Mahony can see the stubble on his chin and the fine white hair on his head. His grandfather frowns and looks at him in desperation.

‘I know,’ Mahony says to him. ‘I know.’

The old man’s frown softens, as if he’s just comprehended something. He reaches out to Mahony, his fingers bow-nailed and filthy, and his smile toothless and radiant.

Jack picks the old man up with one hand and leans him against a tree. He takes a knife from his pocket and thumbs out the blade.

Mahony lies at the edge of the world and looks up at the passing shadows of the birds and the clouds moving above. Jack is kneeling next to him, he has his hand on Mahony’s wrist, as if he’s feeling for a pulse, and his voice is low and calm. He sounds just as he did when they sat alongside each other in Kerrigan’s Bar. It could be a joke he’s telling him, or it could be something profound, about this being the end.

In the distance a woman shouts out, her cry strident in the peace of the forest.

Jack stops talking and looks up.

At the side of the clearing Bridget slows her pace and raises her gun for the second time.

Mahony closes his eyes.

He sees her walking towards him, through the clearing, in her too-big shoes, with a twist of a grin, with her dark eyes on his.

She is familiar and lovely, everyday and unforgotten. Mahony knows at once every detail of her: the sound of her voice, the timbre of her laugh and the smell of her hair. He knows her sudden temper and her slow soft tears and the way she moves, with a careless kind of grace.

Now, at the edge of the world, Mahony remembers everything. She holds out her hand in a gesture of supplication, of apology. She smiles down at him, her face lit with love. A dim gleaming rose of the forest.

Jack takes Bridget’s shot like a well-thrown punch. He stumbles forward, his face confused, tears in his frank blue eyes. As if he’s grappling with the agony of memory, like a guest drunk at a wake.

He makes it to the river’s edge, where he rocks a moment, his face lifted to the sky, before he lets himself fall, before he hits the water.





Chapter 60


October 1977


In the forest, past the clearing, is an island longer than a fishing boat and as wide as a bus. It has been hiding under the water all along. And now it has a crow on it.

She picks her way over its gilded surface. As if on cue the sun comes out, burnishing the offerings embedded there. All the warm colours of metal are represented: gold, copper and bronze.

Like most crows she remains unimpressed, even by supernatural magnetism.

She hops over horse brasses and candlesticks; she pecks at christening cups and belt buckles.

In the middle of the island lies an unbroken circle of wedding bands.

It marks a spot.

The crow, with her head on one side, stares at it with her sharp black eye, as the tide changes, as the water rises.





Chapter 61


October 1977


Even in Mulderrig, time passes, although not as you’d notice. A year or so can steal by when the rhythm of your days and nights is quiet and unremarkable. So that now, when Mrs Cauley looks up from under her poker visor, she sees the land let loose its furious display of autumn colour.

She sits on the veranda of Rathmore House, watching for the day’s end, waiting on a good sunset. For a while still the sun will pour warm honey on her wheelchair. It will pool on the table before her, glancing the rim of her whiskey glass and shining up the patterned back of the topmost card of the deck that waits near her hand. She looks out over the forest, where all the mad colours of the trees brawl: vivid drifts of rust and copper and rich bolts of burnt sienna and raw gold.

This is Mulderrig’s last great show of the year.

Now the air tastes of bonfires and dark days, now the land is forgetting warm winds and soft days and remembering bitter skies and keen dawns.

This is a grand time for goodbyes. Mrs Cauley knows that better than anyone and better than the man standing before her searching for a few right words. So when she lifts her glass, she is toasting him. And when she smiles, it’s a benediction.

‘You’ll be all right, so?’ He shields his eyes, looking back at her and into the sun with the light flooding his face.

And there is his smile, the same and different and immeasurably dear to her. With a new scar that twists his top lip on the upward rise. It’s ghosting to white now. A smile almost scoured out, but stitched well and well healed. Only now it is rarer and more cautious, as if it still hurts a little.

And there are his eyes, narrowed against the light, the same and different. With lines at the corners and a softness that wasn’t always there before.

‘You’ll be all right?’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘Don’t I have Doosey for my every need? She’s in there now behind the door with her ears flapping, waiting on my call.’