The Voyage of the Dolphin (13 page)

McGregor and Doyle looked at each other and a wordless exchange took place. For a moment the only sound was of dripping water and the creak of the steering gear. McGregor reached forward and wrenched at a lever and a faint clanging came from deep within the ship. ‘Hold hard, Mr Doyle,' he cried. ‘If she stalls we're f—ing done for.'

The black mountain toppled towards them and the
Dolphin
rose into the face of it, surging upwards at an impossible angle towards a peak that would not come, seeming to tremble on the edge of gravity. Untold tons of sea crashed over them, shattering the glass in the pilothouse windows and dousing the last of the lanterns. The skipper and the bosun were both at the wheel, straining to steady it, McGregor yelling through mouthfuls of brine. The ship cleared the apex of the wave – Crozier had the impression they hovered for an instant in mid-air – then plummeted headfirst into the trough.

The gull
(Larus glaucoides)
appeared as a spot, a trick of the light on the horizon, beating a straight, high path towards the southwest. The sky in which it flew was a wash of pale grey and the sea, though in pensive mood, was largely untroubled. Apart from a throb of fresh wing-strength as it entered the cleansed air of the storm zone, the bird registered few signs of the recent violence. The ocean's surface was empty in every direction, rolling away to the edges of the world. The buffeting of the wind at this altitude made a rhythmic sound that was lulling and the gull had fallen into a kind of trance. Now, its attention was caught by an object in the distance and after a moment, almost imperceptibly, it adjusted its flightpath.

Sliding sideways on an updraught to maintain position, the bird surveyed the devastated vessel below. White with encrusted salt from the overwash of the tempest, the
Dolphin
drifted on the waves, her torn sails flapping in the grip of her bedraggled rigging. A sheared foremast, the wreckage of it tangled in the cordage, had destroyed her symmetry; the creaking of her timbers, as she rolled with the current, sounded like faint groans of despair. Nothing moved on her ruined decks. The gull jockeyed on the wind for a different view but, detecting no vital presence nor potential for food, relaxed into the breeze, dropped a fraction, and locked into a glide back on its original course.

 

Some four hundred leagues to the southeast, another of the gull family,
(
Larus argentatus)
, was perched on a ledge above the main portico of Dublin's Custom House, a yellow eye fixed on the restless surface of the River Liffey below. In recent days the city's migration patterns had changed; unusual activity was taking place. The cargo ships and fishing smacks, touchstones of the scavenger's routine, were not where they should be. The street hawkers were absent. The alleyways behind the grocery shops and bakeries were devoid of scraps. The air was pungent, and it rippled at intervals with sudden gusts of turbulence that made for uncertain flying.

Nearby, a boat was anchored at an angle to the river, her upper works reflecting darkly in the water, and at that moment a loud report issued from her bow. Startled, the gull launched itself from the parapet and flew towards the far bank, soaring above the quayside terraces and leaning into an arc towards the centre of the city. In the streets below, large clusters of people formed ever-changing shapes, like agitated shoals of fish: first one way, then another; surging forward, falling back. Lines of men on horses snaked among them. A rumbling sound rolled across the river and great billows of dust began to fill the sky above Liberty Hall.

In the grounds of Trinity College the bird came to rest on the dome of the campanile. In the front square, men in uniform marched back and forth, their boots clacking on the cobbles; others hurried between doorways, carrying boxes. On the rooftop opposite, more men were ranged about, some kneeling or lying down, others moving in an awkward crouch. Every few seconds there were cracks and thuds followed by puffs of blue smoke. There was shouting.

The gull swooped at a diagonal across to the sill of a high window and plodded along it. Within, three figures in black robes were peering out, goblets in their hands. One of them leaned forward and rapped on the pane with his walking stick and the bird set off again, this time in a straight line, heading for the tranquility of the duck pond on Stephen's Green. But here also was strangeness: no crumb-rich people taking lunch on the grass or scattering bread on the water, no children running among the flower-beds, no background gauze of human voices. And the ducks were gone.

The gull landed with an untidy splash, sending ripples into the green shadows beneath the weeping willows. It cruised around for a while, nipping at the surface, but there was little to be had. It was finding the absence of other pond life, and the silence, unnerving. There was another lake in a park not far away, and with memories of an afternoon of abundance, the bird took off again, emerging above the trees and veering southeast along the curve of Baggot Street.

Crossing the Grand Canal, it spotted a raft of ducks paddling upstream and stalled briefly, considered joining them, but there was a noisy commotion at the next bridge along and it pressed on towards the park over the Georgian rooftops of Waterloo Road. At number sixty-two, the lady of the house was arranging a bowl of red tulips on the breakfast-room's gleaming oak table and listening for the arrival at the door of her sister-in-law.

Mary Rafferty, who had set out from Phibsborough on the other side of the river two hours earlier, was a brisk walker but her journey had been complicated by successive deviations away from the boom of artillery on the main thoroughfare and the stutter of gunfire further along the quays. At that moment she had made it as far as Great Brunswick Street, which was unusually quiet, and in between the Ionic columns of the Antient Concert Rooms she sat down on the steps to catch her breath. She watched black smoke drift on the skyline from the direction of Sackville Street and felt a hot stab of anger. This whole affair would be put down in double-quick time, her husband had said. Nothing to worry about, just a shower of chancers with rusty guns. Well, it hadn't been, and now it was out of hand. Who did they think they were, holding the city to ransom, stopping people going about their business?

Another volley of shelling, from Trinity College, reverberated through the streets. She wondered where her husband was at that moment. Safe in his office, with any luck, away from the shenanigans. Cup of tea and a nice scone. There was a time when he would have been well able for the rough stuff – enthusiastic even (if truth be told) – but he was slower now: creaky knees and a clickety hip. The groans out of him sometimes in the morning. She smiled. Silly old goat. Realising she was hungry, she rummaged in her bag for a mint and tried to picture what Florrie might be planning for lunch. She hoped not soup. Florrie wasn't a bad cook – her shortcrust, for instance, was decent enough, and she could turn out a passable sponge – but her soup! God have mercy. That chicken broth last time, fat half an inch thick on the top of it. Just about kept it down.

She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her face. Wrong choice of coat for the weather. Unseasonably warm. She thought of Frank up there in the snow, her mind struggling, as it always did, for a point of reference. So unimaginably distant. She dimly remembered a plate in an issue of
National Geographic
skimmed in a waiting room: bleak figures etched against mountains of ice; wastelands of frozen sea. But mostly it was just a big blare of whiteness. What had they been thinking? Their only boy out on the wild ocean. And him terrified as a child of water, could hardly get him in a bath until he was ten, screaming the place down, Mrs Hennessy banging on the door once, convinced there was murder. And little Frank with his eyes all pink from the soap and the crying, his hair all spiked up like a drowned kitten. Poor little chiseller. She blinked away the blur that had welled up. They should never have let him go, his head filled with nonsense by that dandypratt Fitzwhatsisname. She intoned a brief plea to God, crossed herself and stood up.

A man was approaching at speed. His brown suit was dusty and he was holding his hat in place as he ran, the heels of his boots ringing out in the empty street. She began to walk. The man slowed a little as he came near and she tightened her grip on her bag. He was looking at her as he passed: a quizzical expression. His face was streaked with dirt and he had a cut across his nose. She averted her eyes.

She turned right and then left onto Grand Canal Street. Not far now. Fifteen minutes and she would be sipping lemonade behind the tall windows of number sixty-two, with its vases of flowers and perfume of beeswax polish. Not that Florrie ever did a hand's turn, mind you. Married well, the girl. Surprising, seeing as she hadn't much going on upstairs. No, that was unfair…

She had reached Macquay's Bridge and, stepping down into the shade of the towpath, she was assailed by the cool breath off the water, the sweet stink of vegetation. So peaceful by the canal. She always enjoyed this part of the journey. As she proceeded she became aware that someone was yelling and she glanced up at the buildings across the road. A man was leaning from an open window. She looked around. Was he addressing
her
? She couldn't make out what he was saying but there was definitely foul language involved.
Ruffian
. She marched on. At the end of the path there was an upward slope and some exposed rocks and she had to take care not to lose her footing.

Emerging onto the next bridge, she stopped. Streaming along Northumberland Road towards her, still some way off, were hundreds of soldiers, four abreast, in full kit. She had to hold her hand up against the sun, but she knew by the glint of tunic buttons that it was a British battalion, and not, by the look of them, from one of the usual regiments. She nodded to herself. Not before time. Have a bit of law and order back around here. She checked to her right for traffic – apart from three men standing in a doorway, the junction was deserted – and crossed at a diagonal towards the continuation of the towpath. It occurred to her that she was late and that Florrie might be worrying, and she quickened her pace.

Just then, rapid footsteps sounded behind her — the men from the doorway — and at the same moment shots rang out on Northumberland Road. She saw the soldiers scattering in disarray, heard shouting, and shrill blasts on a whistle. More guns crackled nearby, a volley of rifle-fire and the boom of something heavier, and she broke into a run. Figures were appearing now from several directions (she thought she recognised one of her neighbours, pistol in hand, a bandolier across his chest). If she could just dart between them onto the canal path, it would lead her to safety. There was a man in the way, squinting along the sights of his raised rifle, and she tried to push him aside but he was immoveable and the effort threw her off balance. She went down. Bullets ricocheted off the side of the bridge. Twisting in the air, her impression was that someone punched her in the back as she fell, a sharp, hard blow to the ribcage that knocked the wind out of her.

Lying there, her cheek against the cold granite, she looked up at the trees, the sky robin's-egg-blue between the branches, the leaves translucent jade. So lovely to see the new growth, she thought. So pale and delicate. She and Jack should take a drive in the Phoenix Park soon; the horse-chestnuts would be beautiful around now. A couple of faces peered down at her. Their mouths were moving but she couldn't hear their words. In fact, she couldn't hear anything. Had the guns stopped? Her back felt very warm. It was comfortable here. She hoped no one would try to move her. Although, she was very thirsty. Above her the leaves were shaking as though a long breeze was passing through them and the sunshine danced and sparkled, a blizzard of tiny lights. She pictured bubbles racing up through lemonade and imagined herself rising with them, up into the leaves, fizzing out through the treetops and into the broad expanse of blue. And, as the thought dissolved, Mrs Rafferty was gone.

 

Later that day, outside the mining village of Hulluch in northeastern France, a murmuration of starlings
(Sturnus vulgaris)
, disturbed by a stray mortar shell from behind German lines, rose from a birch wood and, in a flexing, warping cloud of wingbeats, vanished across the flatlands towards the west, skirting the fetor of the trenches. All but one, which slowed after a quarter of a mile and peeled off, descending to a slagheap where it ambled about for a while, pecking at the scrub. For the first time that afternoon, the artillery fire that had been a continuous din, like a frenzy of bass drums, had ceased, though smoke was still undispersed above no-man's-land. All around, the ground was churned and scarred, and littered with mounds of refuse. In the distance, two towers squatted on either side of an abandoned pit head, the wheels and spokes of the winding-gear black and intricate against the sky.

The bird paused to gulp down a beetle. Below the hillock where it foraged, a large crater yawned, two bodies sprawled on the lip of it, a third thrown clear. The bloodied carcase of a horse, its teeth bared to the heavens, lay on its back amid the mangled remnants of the machine it had been pulling. The starling made a short fluttering flight down the slope and waited. Nothing moved. Performing a series of airborne leaps, it arrived at the corpse furthest from the impact point: a man reclining on his side with his head resting on his arm, as though just taking a nap after a good picnic, his body unmarked apart from a missing left foot.

The bird bustled forward and made a tentative lunge at the spilled contents of a mess tin. Still nothing. There were a number of other objects in the mud: a pistol, half submerged; a crumpled helmet with the ace of spades — insignia of the 9th Essex – painted on it, and a silver cigarette case, engraved in one corner with the initials ‘
P.S
'
. The starling hopped onto the man's hip and stood there, steadying itself with an occasional twitch of its tail. The breeze as it came gusting across the plain made a thin whistling sound and it ruffled the bird's feathers. A minute passed. And another. Then the guns started up again.