Cast a cold eye, p.6
Cast A Cold Eye, page 6
The man was not there. He was neither in the ditch nor in the road, neither up the hill nor down. He was nowhere, gone, not there, never had been.
“Oh, God,” Jack whispered, and stood frozen, trembling, staring at the spot.
Where the man had lain, cold moonlight the color of ice shone on the undisturbed gravel of the road, and on a knotted clump of weeds, stringy dirt still clinging to the roots, that was crushed as if a dying hand had held it.
CHAPTER 5
Despite his troubled sleep after the strange occurrence that night in the road, Jack’s weekend passed without event.
He spent the next several days working in the study on the book, alternately writing a couple of pages on the word processor, revising them, thinking about them, sometimes keeping them. Often, he found, he had to force himself to stick with it, more so than he usually had to do while he actively worked on a book, but gradually, day by day, the story and characters came clear and alive in his mind, they moved and spoke and took on a life of their own, and after his first four or five days of working at it, immersing himself in it, he knew the book was truly started and safe.
He had done some of the basic research already, back in New York, but had limited his reading on the period of the Famine, 1846 and 1847, to a fairly small number of readily available books. He had only a moderate belief in the value of research for a novel. So long as the basic facts and issues remained true-to-life, he had no hesitation in taking liberties with accuracy or inventing whatever he needed for dramatic purposes. Too much research tended to turn a novel idea into an historical study; he’d made that mistake on one earlier book—the reviewers, bless their critical hearts, had seen at once where he’d gone wrong—and he’d sworn he’d never do it again. No, what mattered were the characters, the people of the story, and what happened to them.
As for this trip to Ireland, he was already getting plenty of what he needed: a sense of the land, the air, the weather, the look of the people, the shapes of the houses, the sky and the shadows at dawn and dusk. None of that had changed from the time of the Famine and he was determined to make his book, in those regards, as true as possible. He felt already that he knew well the family at the center of his story. Being here himself, he could only know them better.
And it was his research into the history of the Irish Famine that, later in the night, when the shock had dissipated a little, made him realize what it was he’d seen—thought he’d seen—in the road.
In early June of 1846, the blight had first been seen on the potato crops of several farms in County Cork. By the end of the month, it had spread throughout all of Ireland. The potato crop, the only food of the Irish people—most lived their lives from birth to death without ever tasting meat—was destroyed, reduced to a stinking pulp, and there was, with stark suddenness, almost overnight, nothing to eat. The English landlords, whether absentee or resident, had plenty, of course, but for the peasant Irish who worked the land nothing at all remained. They starved, begged, walked the roads of Ireland, and starved still. And in the wake of starvation came dysentery and typhus and despair. And after the summer of deaths and disease and the burial of hollow-eyed children, came the cold and wet of the winter. Often, while caught up in even the limited amount of research he’d done, Jack had found himself staring at the pages of the books, unseeing, with the visions of men and women starving to death filling his mind.
And that was what he’d seen in the road that night.
It must have been that; the vision matched the very things he’d read. It was not at all unusual, in those two terrible years of the last century, for a man to be found dead at the side of the road, his wife and starving babies left in a hovel or a ditch while he went out to beg for them what he could. Disease and despair tumbled him at last where he stood, even while he pushed himself forward in the endless effort to feed the ones he loved. Many such men, reason having left them and their bodies reduced to little more than skeletons, were found with their mouths stained green from trying to fill their aching stomachs by eating the grass and weeds along the road.
That was what he’d seen. It had to be that: a vision produced by the odd chemistry of the brain, product of his reading, his thinking about the book, his presence here in these rainy, windy hills on the western coast of Ireland where that very sort of thing had happened all too often.
He could live with that idea. He could live with the notion that his mind, half asleep as it was just then, probably almost dreaming—he must have been dreaming—had produced that awful vision. He didn’t like it, but he could live with it.
He got on with his work. By Wednesday of his second week in Doolin, he was into the second chapter of the book and had nearly forty pages to show for his effort.
On Friday, after his dinner—and he wished Father Henning would get in touch with that woman about coming in to cook and clean for him—he went to the Seafoam and spent the evening there, going easy on the lager—two pints make a quart, he kept reminding himself—and listening to the music. There were three young fellows who played the Irish uilleann pipes, both lively reels and jigs and crooning, wailing tunes, ancient as the wind; but all yielded place readily later in the evening to an oldtimer whose hands looked as if they were still shaped roughly to the plow; but when the old fellow was settled at last on a bench against the wall, in the place of honor, the pipes laid across his legs, the bag that pumped air strapped properly to his right arm, the leather pad for the base of the chanter placed just so on his right leg, and a pint of Guinness inside him and another set before him, his fingers floated and hovered and flew invisibly over the chanter as if they were first cousins to the Irish breezes themselves, indeed as if the haunting music he made were itself an independent thing, living on air alone, needing no instrument at all, and the player’s fingers only flew as they did in the effort to keep up the pace.
It was near midnight when Jack, smiling and holding just enough beer to make the smile lasting and easy, drove carefully home on the dark road.
On Saturday evening, he thought he’d try Nolan’s. There was music there too, but it seemed to be exclusively of a somber cast, the clientele of the pub equally somber, and older, many of them speaking only Irish, and Jack finished a single pint and left. He went on to McGlynn’s and spent the rest of the evening there, listening to the music, seeing many of the same faces that he’d seen the night before at the Seafoam. The way of it, he observed, was to drift around from pub to pub in town, sharing your custom evenly among the innkeepers.
He made some acquaintances in the Seafoam and in McGlynn’s, a few people from the town, mostly men but there were women too, some from the farms in the surrounding hills, and some, mostly younger couples, who had come here only for the weekend, staying at the few local farmhouses that did bed-and-breakfast, just to hear the music. Some of them brought their own instruments, bodhrans, tin whistles, fiddles, and a few sets of uilleann pipes that might have been handed down from father to son, and joined in for a bit. Jack thought them all good and decent people, friendly for the most part, and willing and eager to make a stranger feel at home. These two, the Seafoam and McGlynn’s, would be his own pubs. No one at all had spoken to him in Nolan’s.
On Saturday afternoon, that second weekend in Doolin, he had braved the wet weather on foot for the first time and walked all the way to the village to buy some milk and bread. It was raining hard and he was walking on the narrow sidewalk with his head bent low when he bumped shoulders with Father Henning. They spoke only briefly because of the rain and the lack of a handy doorway for shelter, but the priest, as soon as he recognized Jack, told him he’d be speaking with Peggy Mullen in a day or two and he was certain it would all work out just fine. He’d phone, he said, or possibly even drop by to let him know the outcome, and of course Jack was not to forget that he was always welcome in the priest’s house, don’t be forgetting that.
He spent some time exploring this new world, a world new to him but incomprehensibly old and familiar to everyone else. The stony slopes and dizzying cliffs leading down to the ocean and the foaming, roaring surf were unfenced here as far as his eye could gaze to the south. And to the north, across a narrow crease of land, was the Burren. He drove out one day on the dirt road, little more than a rutted track between centuries-old stone walls, that led to Doolin Point, past Roadford Doolin, a tiny hamlet where a stone bridge crossed over the bubbling waters of the Aille River. A section of the Burren spilled southward here and the road ended abruptly at the edge of the rocky surface. In the distance, across the gray plain of tumbled limestone blocks worn flat by the weather, he could see the monstrous waves hovering and crashing at the shore. Twice he drove here, but each time he arrived, the rain, pounding and hissing on the stone, arrived with him. But there was no hurry. His stay in Ireland still stretched long before him: plenty of time to explore Doolin Point and the Burren.
It was all very pleasant—the work going well, the cozy pubs, the wonderful music, the promise of help with the house—and, though he didn’t forget it, the windswept, nighttime vision of the deathshead face with the mouth stained green receded to the back of his mind, hidden behind the welter of new sights, new details, new rhythms of words and expressions, even new scents—the acrid-sweet aroma of burning turf was always in the air—all of it melting together to take new shape later in the book. He made scribbled notes on much of what he was taking in. He made no notes on that nightmare vision, however. If he needed it for the book, it would, he knew, be quite fresh still in his mind.
Among the better parts of those first days were his conversations on the telephone with Grainne.
She had been to the movies with a girlfriend that night he’d called, she told him, and he wondered if that information was meant to relieve his mind. She sounded as genuinely delighted to hear from him as he was glad to hear her voice. Their talk was easy and comfortable, at times like that of new friends eager to know all about each other, at other times like old friends eager to catch up.
They talked about Dublin and about New York, about the schools they’d attended, about books and friends and movies and music, and Grainne frequently interrupted to worry about the size of his telephone bill.
When he called the third evening in a row, she sounded just as pleased as she always did but not at all surprised.
It was the Wednesday evening of his second full week in the house, almost the end of September now, that he raised again the question of her possibly coming for a visit. Jack had spoken to her so much already about Doolin and the places he had yet to see that he felt she must already feel she knew it nearly as well herself. When he broached the subject, the suggestion was natural, uncalculated, and surprised him, he thought later, more than it seemed to surprise her.
“I might,” she said, her voice as soft as ever on the phone. “It might be nice.”
He heard in her words the familiar deprecatory tone of the Irish, forever afraid to say a thing is nice for fear it’ll be spoiled or taken away. The legacy of a people long in submission to another.
“Please come,” he said, before he even fully recognized the import of what they were saying. “It’d be so good to see you. I’d love to see you.”
“Well, I might,” she said.
“I’ll come to Dublin, if you’d like, and pick you up and drive you back.”
Oh Christ, he thought as he said it, and her with her Irish Catholic parents, and me the horny Yank come pounding on the door to ruin their little girl!
“Oh no,” she said, “it’s silly to put you to all that when I can drive as well myself.”
“Then you’ll come?” he said. And waited.
“I will,” she said.
“Come tomorrow.”
“I can’t.” He thought he could hear a smile. “I have to keep the shop. I’ll come on Friday.”
“Terrific!”
“If it’s really all right.”
“Grainne, please come,” he said, shocked and short of breath, heart pounding, at the sudden wave of longing he felt, the stunning conviction, realized only this instant, that all would be complete the moment she appeared. “Please come.”
“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll be there on Friday, God willing.”
They were both silent for a long time after that before either spoke again, but the silence was deep and rich and warm.
Late on Thursday evening, a wall of thick gray fog rolled in from the ocean, swept quickly over the crashing waves and rocks at the shore, and hurried up the hills, wetting weeds and stones and earth, wetting the limestone blocks of the Burren, dripping moisture on the windows of houses, smothering all in a silence as gray as itself.
Jack was busily straightening up in the house. In the short time he’d been there, it had already come to resemble his comfortably cluttered New York apartment, books and folders and piles of papers, little notes to himself, scattered everywhere. He paused for a moment, thinking maybe he’d stop by to see Father Henning tomorrow, before Grainne got here, and see if the priest ever meant to speak with that woman. Then, on further reflection, he thought maybe he’d let it go for a while. Wouldn’t that be a pretty picture: the pious country widow looking from the grinning Yank to his pretty Irish sweetheart, the willing lamb being led to the slaughter. Maybe he’d just wait for Father Henning to take care of it in his own good time.
Smiling, he walked over to look out the living room window, at the fog that pressed itself up against the glass. He was humming with the record being played on the radio, the latest Cliff Richard hit—he was traitorously listening to the BBC, rather than the Irish station—when he clearly heard a baby crying outside in the fog.
It can’t be, he told himself.
Cliff Richard continued singing in the background, going now for the big note of the chorus.
Jack stalked across the room and turned off the radio, then walked back to where he’d stood before.
He heard the baby again, distant now, farther away. It was crying piteously, like an animal, the wail broken only by painful sobs.
A rabbit, Jack thought, wishing he knew more about the ways of the countryside. It has to be a rabbit.
He listened, waited. There was nothing. He listened. It cried again. From down the hill?
It was not a rabbit.
Feeling suddenly trapped, put upon, but compelled outside nonetheless, Jack walked back to the bedroom, pulled on a heavy wool sweater and jacket, his scarf and cap, being grimly determined about the whole procedure, and, fully dressed now, went into the kitchen to get the flashlight. It occurred to him as he reached for it that he hadn’t touched the flashlight since that other night. He came back into the living room. He was walking toward the door but, halfway across the room, he veered instead to the window and stood there, listening for the cry to come again. He waited. It was gone. It had never been.
And he heard it, just the same as before.
It was not a rabbit.
He turned to the door, pulled it open, and went outside into the fog.
The fog was pearly gray, brighter than he’d thought it from the window, as if it carried its own radiant light within the particles of moisture. It drifted and shifted about him, curled around his legs and into the open doorway behind him. The light from the room spilled into it, making it yellow at his feet, but as he stepped down to the ground and away from the house, there was only the thick and enveloping gray. It touched him with a chill, bringing goosebumps to the back of his neck and his arms, and a sudden shiver to his shoulders. It seemed to swallow sound, even the crunch and crush of his shoes on gravel.
He took several slow steps and stopped, listening again. Dimly, through the fog, he heard the dull, distant rumble of the ocean at the bottom of the slope. He glanced behind him. The wall of fog hugged the house, held it, seemed to move it back up the hill and away from him. The yellow light from the windows and the open door glowed in a yellow blur, a brighter mist, all details of rooms and home now thoroughly obscured. The damp chill slipped through his clothing and made him shiver. He waited, listening.
He switched on the flashlight with a reassuring click. He aimed it out before him. It shone only on the shifting pearl-gray wall. He turned it downward to the stony ground at his feet. It made a milky white pool in the moving fog.
The baby cried again somewhere off to his right. It was a feeble cry, but lasting, clear in the night and the drifting mist but weak and frail and barely audible.
“Hello?” Jack called. “Who’s there? Does someone need help?”
His voice was drowned in fog.
Sweeping the flashlight beam slowly back and forth in front of him, he began moving to his right, across the slope.
“Hello! Where are you?”
The baby cried again, the wordless voice a little stronger for an instant, then dying away to nothing.
“Hello!”
He kept moving in the same direction. The fog, glowing bright at his feet from the flashlight, closed in dark around his head. He swept his gaze from side to side but there was only gray fog and greater darkness, nothing at all to see.
The baby cried again, still ahead of him, but now a little to his left, downhill.
Don’t voices travel farther in a fog or mist? Something to do with moisture in the air. He struggled to remember but could not. He kept moving, slowly, carefully, the fog glowing around his feet and legs, trying to judge the distance and direction he’d moved from the house. He stopped, looked back uphill. The house was gone, taken by the mist.
“Hello,” he called again.
A woman’s voice, without age or shape or words, came out of the fog, farther away, he thought, than the baby’s cry, but clearer, stronger.
He shouted now. “Hello! Where are you? Keep yelling!”
He waited to hear it again. He was panting now, mouth open. This was real, not like the other. Someone was lost, hurt, in trouble.
