The Guest List(3)

‘Would you be a bit wet up there?’ Mattie calls.

I’m laughing but I’m having to force it a bit because it was pretty frightening. The boat’s motion, somehow back and forth and side to side all at once, has my stomach turning somersaults.

‘Oof,’ I say, feeling the nausea sinking through me. The thought of the cream tea we ate before we got on the boat suddenly makes me want to hurl.

Charlie looks at me, puts a hand on my knee and gives a squeeze. ‘Oh God. It’s started already?’ I always get terrible motion sickness. Anything sickness really; when I was pregnant it was the worst.

‘Mm hmm. I’ve taken a couple of pills, but they’ve hardly taken the edge off.’

‘Look,’ Charlie says quickly, ‘I’ll read about the place, take your mind off it.’ He scrolls through his phone. He’s got a guidebook downloaded; ever the teacher, my husband. The boat lurches again and the iPhone nearly jumps out of his grasp. He swears, grips it with both hands; we can’t afford to replace it.

‘There’s not that much here,’ he says, a bit apologetically, once he’s managed to load the page. ‘Loads on Connemara, yeah, but on the island itself – I suppose it’s so small …’ He stares at the screen as though willing it to deliver. ‘Oh, here, I’ve found a bit.’ He clears his throat, then starts to read in what I think is probably the voice he uses in his lessons. ‘Inis an Amplóra, or Cormorant Island, in the English translation, is two miles from one end to the other, longer than it is wide. The island is formed of a lump of granite emerging majestically from the Atlantic, several miles off the Connemara coastline. A large bog comprised of peat, or “turf” as it is called locally, covers much of its surface. The best, indeed the only, way to see the island is from a private boat. The channel between the mainland and the island can get particularly choppy—’

‘They’re right about that,’ I mutter, clutching the side as we seesaw over another wave and slam down again. My stomach turns over again.

‘I can tell you more than all that,’ Mattie calls from his cabin. I hadn’t realised he could overhear us from there. ‘You won’t be getting much about Inis an Amplóra from a guidebook.’

Charlie and I shuffle nearer to the cabin so we can hear. He’s got a lovely rich accent, does Mattie. ‘First people that settled the place,’ he tells us, ‘far as it’s known, were a religious sect, persecuted by some on the mainland.’

‘Oh yes,’ Charlie says, looking at his guide. ‘I think I saw a bit about that—’

‘You can’t get everything from that thing,’ Mattie says, frowning and clearly unimpressed by the interruption. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, see – and my people have been here for centuries. I can tell you more than your man on the internet.’

‘Sorry,’ Charlie says, flushing.

‘Anyway,’ Mattie says. ‘Twenty years or so ago the archaeologists found them. All together in the turf bog they were, side by side, packed in tight.’ Something tells me that he is enjoying himself. ‘Perfectly preserved, it’s said, because there’s no air down in there. It was a massacre. They’d all been hacked to death.’

‘Oh,’ Charlie says, with a glance at me, ‘I’m not sure—’

It’s too late, the idea is in my head now: long-buried corpses emerging from black earth. I try not to think about it but the image keeps reasserting itself like a glitch in a video. The swoop of nausea that comes as we ride over the next wave is almost a relief, requiring all my focus.

‘And there’s no one living there now?’ Charlie asks brightly, trying for a change of conversation. ‘Other than the new owners?’

‘No,’ Mattie says. ‘Nothing but ghosts.’

Charlie taps his screen. ‘It says here the island was inhabited until the nineties, when the last few people decided to return to the mainland in favour of running water, electricity and modern life.’

‘Oh that’s what it says there, is it?’ Mattie sounds amused.

‘Why?’ I ask, managing to find my voice. ‘Was there some other reason they left?’

Mattie seems to be about to speak. Then his face changes. ‘Look out for yourselves!’ he roars. Charlie and I manage to grab the rail seconds before the bottom seems to drop out of everything and we are sent plunging down the side of one wave, then smashed into the side of another. Jesus.

You’re meant to find a fixed point with motion-sickness. I train my gaze on the island. It has been in view the whole way from the mainland, a bluish smudge on the horizon, shaped like a flattened anvil. Jules wouldn’t pick anywhere less than stunning, but I can’t help feeling that the dark shape of it seems to hunch and glower, in contrast to the bright day.

‘Pretty stunning, isn’t it?’ Charlie says.

‘Mm,’ I say noncommittally. ‘Well, let’s hope there’s running water and electricity there these days. I’m going to need a nice bath after this.’

Charlie grins. ‘Knowing Jules, if they hadn’t plumbed and wired the place before, they’ll have done so by now. You know what she’s like. She’s so efficient.’

I’m sure Charlie didn’t mean it, but it feels like a comparison. I’m not the world’s most efficient. I can’t seem to enter a room without making a mess and since we’ve had the kids our house is a permanent tip. When we – rarely – have people round I end up throwing stuff in cupboards and cramming them closed, so that it feels like the whole place is holding its breath, trying not to explode. When we first went round for dinner at Jules’s elegant Victorian house in Islington it was like something out of a magazine; like something out of her magazine – an online one called The Download. I kept thinking she might try and tidy me away somewhere, aware of how I stuck out like a sore thumb with my inch of dark roots and high street clothes. I found myself trying to smooth out my accent even, soften my Mancunian vowels.