Sunrise with Sea Monster (14 page)

I thought, I said, if I bided my time one of you would come to me.

Wise, he said.

Because as we both know, I said, the walls have ears.

The times that are in it, he said.

What about them? I asked.

Turn your friend into your enemy.

And vice versa, I ventured.

But you're clean, he said. Above suspicion. You went with the commies to the bother in Spain.

On an impulse, I told him.

So where does your interest in the Hun come from?

England's difficulty, I told him, is Ireland's opportunity.

He stared at me hard, one hulking shoulder covering the moon. I held his stare, wondering would my story hold water.

Write back to him, he said. Tell him you've made contact with us. Tell him we'll come up with a shopping-list.

He turned abruptly and walked back up the barnacled steps.

Where do I reach you? I shouted after him.

You don't, he said. You'll see us when you see us.

I walked back to the house and felt unease in the air, like an evening mist. I took out the yellowing copy of the Heisenberg
paper and scribbled on the flyleaf—have made contact. Shopping-list will follow. I then thumbed through the pages of equations,
descriptions of Jean's mirrored cube, of ideal coal-dust and ideal perceptors and matched each letter of the note to a number.
I wrote each number down on a virgin piece of my father's notepaper, stamped and addressed it and left it on the bureau. I
woke to the same unease, walked down the promenade to post it. Then, with the envelope half inside the mouth of the letterbox,
I changed my mind and pulled it back. They would intercept it, I knew, in the Castle, and I could save myself the bother and
any further suspicion by handing it to them myself. So I walked over the tracks towards a waiting train.

Mr Soames, I requested of the guard in the hut in the cobbled yard. Tell him Scarlett wants to see him.

Your own name would do, Soames said, when I eventually reached him.

Aren't pseudonyms mandatory in these affairs? I asked.

What affairs are these? he asked.

Affairs of betrayal.

Who are you betraying? he asked.

Just about everyone, I said. And now that burly bogman who threw stones at my window last night.

Ah, he said with an air of someone reaching the inevitable. What was his name?

Wouldn't say. But he'd got hold of my letter.

How?

Through you?

He let me stew without an answer for a moment.

Said he was from the movement. So I wrote a reply and was about to post it to Germany, but thought I'd save you the trouble
of intercepting it.

I handed him the letter. He let it sit there between us like an unspoken secret.

What does it say?

That I've made contact. That they'll be in touch with me later with a shopping-list.

You enjoy this, don't you? Soames said.

Not at all, I said. I thought I'd no option.

But you're good at it. The dead-pan delivery, the unconcern. You don't care, which allows you to enjoy it.

What I would enjoy most, I said, is to get out of here.

He smiled, and I stood. I moved across the room, then hesitated.

Can't bear to leave? he asked.

The letter? I asked.

What about it?

Will you send it to them?

Why do you need to know? he asked, and I thought about it.

Thank you, I said. I don't.

On the train back I thought of whole stories of conspiracies and betrayals sitting on his desk, unknown to anyone but him.
I wondered could I take comfort from that thought. As I trundled through the hills of eucalyptus bending towards the sea,
I stared out the window and could see Rose, myself and father as a triangular cocoon, an equation known only to ourselves
that related to no known numerical system. There were energies there yet to be discovered, like the ones now blowing the world
to shreds.

The weather itself seemed to match our triangular mood. Over the next week the sky stayed filled with a low cloud; there wasn't
a hint of rain, but only the humid heat that brings the flies out. I worked my boats, tried to forget the business of betrayal,
got to enjoy the muscular ease with which I could draw the nets. I stayed unwashed for the most part, left my body covered
in a film of salt. The humidity kept the fish way down, so we began to journey further out in search of them. From the Kish
lighthouse to Howth, in a wide arc from Howth to Wicklow town, past tankers and coastguard ships and the distant specks of
frigates on the horizon. The coast became a thin line behind us, our nets became entangled with porbeagle and basking shark,
as if in the depths below us a more essential life was emerging. The swells were slow and strong, the sky seemed lower each
day and yet the heat kept on, encasing us in its humid bubble. Then late one afternoon, four miles out from Baltray, the storm
broke.

It was a southwesterly, whipping from the tip of Lambay Island, turning the sea into a garden of white. The boy yelled at
me when I was dozing at the rudder in the heat and I turned to see the white froth around the island, the dark water advancing
before it with the rainclouds over, as if being pummelled by unseen pellets. I kicked the engine into service and turned the
rudder towards the mouth of the Boyne, where the pillars round the estuary sat still bathing in unnatural sunlight. It seemed
impossible the one vista could be so peaceful, the other so full of fury, and I kicked the outboard motor into as much action
as it would bear, the kid's hands bleeding trying to drag in the nets while his brother grabbed him by the waist to give him
more traction. Then the wind hit us first, slewing us northwards; after it the rain and hail, like pebbles from above trying
to pound us back into the element that held us, and after that the waves. Then the light was gone, and everything was water,
the spray the waves threw round us, the rain driving from above, the shore vanished in a driving haze. There was exhilaration
in the chaos, in the loss of all reference to boundaries of land, sea or air. I yelled at the kids to let the nets go, grab
whatever they could while I hung on to the stern and managed to turn the boat straight into the breakers. The crash of each
wave seemed strong enough to tear the boat asunder but I guided it straight into each crest, sensing any other course would
pitch it over. I saw a guillemot whirled by upside down, a sheaf of lightning course through the hanging curtain of rain then
saw Lambay pass by me and realised the wind was changing. I was being driven out to sea and southwards. I thought of a grave
in water: not a quiet meditative one, but the chaotic murderous wetness that surrounded me, and as a mountainous wave came
towards me prepared myself for it. The one boy ran towards me and screamed, and then the other, the first with his hand held
out and I grabbed, the other grabbed his and then the wave hit, as if the sea had been turned upside down to pummel us from
below, then suck us in a long low wash towards itself but we, all three of us, managed to hang on. And after that wave had
coursed down the gunnel and I saw both kids gasping at the stern, I knew, whatever it would throw at us, that we would survive.

Four hours later it abated; we found ourselves three miles east of the Kish, the motor silent. We pulled the oars out and
rowed. The moon came through the scudding clouds and after a time even the clouds stopped moving. The wet and freshened air,
an unnatural, clean severity about it all, not a breath moving, but the slow reluctant swells of the water as if it remembered
what had gone before. The moon, percolated in the moving sea, and the sense of having survived, the godly certainty of it,
the exhaustion behind every movement and the knowledge that after all that, one was still alive. There were fish leaping clear
of the water but we couldn't be bothered to lower the nets. We rowed relentlessly towards Dublin Bay and thanked God we weren't
a sailboat.

We found our way to the harbour and tied the boat to its cousin and I walked then, past the pub and boathouse to the terrace.
There was a foot of water flooding the promenade. The lights in the house were on and she was standing at the door.

She had the kind of relief in her face that would have been unwarranted by anything but the flood, spreading down from the
houses towards the Head, the moonlight reflected in it. She ran towards me, throwing up arcs of brine with her slippered feet
and fell on to my shoulders. Rose, I said, Rose, stop it, but I knew the words were no use, the gladness was unstoppable.
It was as if I had arranged the chaos for her. I lifted her out of the water and waded through it myself, her chin embedded
in my shoulder. She had lost one, she whispered, and couldn't bear losing the other. I told her to stop it again but knew
I was lost in turn.

She brought me into the kitchen and stood me by the range; grabbed towel after towel out of the hot-press. I remembered her
standing there all those years ago, Maisie drying her clothes off the range and wrapping my father's greatcoat around her.
She wrapped the same coat round me now. Where is he? I asked her. She told me he had sat at the upstairs window all day, looking
out on the storm. He always enjoyed storms, I told her, the play of lightning on the water. I bent my head to the towel she
held out and let her dry my hair. Her fingers, strong like a peasant's, drew shivers from my scalp. I put my arms round her
waist and undid the bow that tied her smock. The smock fell open and I traced my finger down her slip and felt the sharp bones
of her hips and the suspenders beneath them. Donal, she said, Donal. I know, I said, what you are about to say. You don't,
she said, and pressed her thighs against my hand. I drew her slip upwards and saw the garments beneath them, much like the
ones she draped on the range when I was so much younger. There was the soft tinkling of the rigging of the boats out on the
harbour. She kept kneading my hair until I raised my head and brought my lips to hers. She let me kiss her, her lips flat
and surprised, her eyes wide open. I drew my hand up and traced the lines above her cheekbones. I've watched you grow older,
I said. I drew her through the kitchen then, to the room where the piano was. I put the Rachmaninov on the gramophone and
as the first chords filled the room stood looking with her at the water covering the grass outside, lapping up against the
walls of the smaller houses, the moonlight tracing a broken line from above the Head. She drew me down to the couch then,
opened my father's coat and put her arms around me.

We awoke with the first light. It was pale and aqueous, coming through the front window. I could see the calmed waters spreading
down the length of the promenade. Rose's head was in my arms, her hair spreading over my chest like seaweed. I drew my arm
from under her slowly and placed his coat over her dishevelled body. I went to the window. The water covered everything, the
telegraph poles sprouting from it, the railings, occasional cars, everything suffused in its greenish glow. I thought of father
nearby and wondered had he felt her absence. I went into the kitchen, prepared some hot milk and took it to his room.

He was in his chair by the window, the blanket over his knees, staring in perplexed concentration at the vista outside. I
stood by the door for a moment, waiting for him to turn. When he didn't, I walked towards him and held the cup to his lips.

Did you enjoy the storm? I asked him. The eyes turned towards me for a moment, the same perplexed, furious blue. They met
mine, then turned to the window again. I brought the cup to his lips again and he drank, still looking outside. Did you miss
her? I asked, to myself as much as him, and his eyes kept staring outside while he drank, obediently, like a child. I wondered
what cognition went on behind those eyes, whether it was as innocent, as intuitive as the child he seemed to be. Then I wheeled
him towards the door and along to the kitchen.

I cooked breakfast for the three of us. After a time Rose came in, everything neat now under her smock, her hair tied into
a bun behind her head. Her eyes flashed to mine with a mixture of guilt and desire and I put a plate in front of her. Did
he sleep? she asked me and I told her that I could only assume he did. Her foot reached mine underneath the table and as I
fed him strips of bacon I could almost imagine I saw in his face the hint of a smile. Look Rose, I said, he's smiling. Bacon,
she said. He always liked it.

Over the next few days the floods subsided, leaving a patina of brown sand over the promenade. I fixed my boats, bought some
new nets and in between times wheeled him along the prom through the diminishing waters. He seemed inert and strangely peaceful
as if the lapping water everywhere brought a kind of quiet to him. I pushed him up the path to the Head and bumped him along
the cliff walk to Greystones. I pointed out cormorants to him, a guillemot, a kestrel flying by with a mole in its claws.
Do you remember, I asked him, you did the same for me? She was between us like a glue, it seemed, like the fringe of mist
that sat on the horizon, merging the sea with the sky, merging the present and past into a continuous wave. I would return
him to her in the house by the harbour, take the boats out when the tides were up and work the bay as long as there was light
left. I would come back, stinking of fish, and find her at the piano, him sitting in the kitchen by the warmth of the range.
The last traces of the storm had vanished from the promenade, but with it everything was changed. He was like a child between
us, following our movements with his eyes, waiting on our ministrations, and we looked after him like one.

She became someone quite different. I noticed the odour of dried flowers, the feeling of an empty room in a country house
on a hot summer's day. There was a field and we would wander through it, lie down on the places where the hayricks had been,
mushrooms pushing up through the haystalks to fondle our backs. The traces of flour and baking powder on her fingers would
bring me back, to the country again, to a kitchen that opened out on to a cobbled yard where hens pecked and scrabbled at
the handfuls of meal she threw them. She would lie on the sofa, the afternoon sun coming through the window, striking the
dust we had risen from the cushions, and button the blouse again around her breast, Chopin playing on the gramophone and she'd
smile, as if she was thinking of something a long way away and tell me the
Polonaise
was about to end. Then again, she'd say, draping her hair over the edge of the settee, you could always put it on again.