Chapter 6 #21
When the division had picked up the labourer’s child at the clock tower, the soldiers had been flabbergasted, the taller sapper saying to the other, Good Lord, it’s a girl—the man’s bringing along his daughter, can you believe it?
They had been expecting the son, like last time, and a female on such an expedition was unheard of.
But then the natives here are unfathomable, always doing what you least expect—there’s no reasoning with them.
As she had clambered aboard the cart, her father barely glanced up or acknowledged her arrival, but the two soldiers had both looked her over, immediately and instinctively, the way they, as men, were obliged to do when a female came near.
She had curled into herself, chin down, avoiding their eyes, gathering her bundles around her, pulling her hat down low.
And they came to the conclusion that she was not worth their notice: a scrawny and stringy type, flat-chested, not of an age or build to excite any particular interest and, what was more, wearing an ancient and patched boy’s jacket, belted at the waist, with her skirts hitched up to resemble britches.
Here on this hellish sea-voyage, her father cuffs her on the shoulder and, as if sensing their gaze upon her, seems to order her to unhitch her skirts, to make herself decent.
“Don’t worry,” one of the laughing sappers calls, “we won’t be laying a finger on her, guv’nor.”
“Nah,” the other shouts, “we don’t like squirrels.”
His comrade bursts into peals of laughter. The labourer turns his back to them, trying to make out that he hasn’t heard them, but the flush on his neck says otherwise.
“We was only joking, Tommy,” the first soldier calls, “just having a laugh.”
To her credit, the girl doesn’t seem to take a telling from her father.
She pulls her skirts straight, as she’s been told, but she argues back and kicks at their luggage, and the sappers let out a supportive cheer.
She may have the face of a squirrel but she’s got spirit and she’s giving her old man what-for.
The argument ends with the father scrabbling angrily to pick up his books, a thunderous look on his face, and the daughter surprising them all. She begins to tap out a rhythm with her knuckle on the side of the boat, and then she starts to sing, in a high, raw voice.
It’s a sea shanty, one the sappers also know, so they take up the song with her, as do both boatmen, and although none of them seem to agree on the words of the verses, or indeed the language in which to sing, all five join together at the chorus, which is a rousing tribute to life on the waves, and the two soldiers feel their spirits lifting.
They have taken a liking to this odd girl after all.
The labourer is the only one who doesn’t sing but sits brooding in the footwell, not meeting anyone’s eye, scribbling away in his books.
They are still singing as the boat pulls alongside a low, rocky landing place, and the girl is the first on dry land, taking the rope and leaping nimbly ashore.
A couple of hundred miles away, the dog, Bran, is not happy.
He paces back and forth along the perimeter line—recognisable only to himself—between the flat ground of the farm and the wilder terrain of the hills.
Inside the house there are raised voices, a crash that makes Bran’s ears flick forward, the rising wail of the baby.
Nothing, Bran knows, has been right since Enda and Tomás went away.
He watches, alert, as the door crashes open.
Liam shoulders his way out, limping and listing on two improvised crutches, and with only a glance in Bran’s direction, he strikes out down the hill.
A moment later, the mother hurries after him, wiping her hands on her apron. She seems about to call his name but stops herself, hiding instead in the lee of the cottage and peering around it.
Puzzled by all this, Bran shifts his eyes to Liam. Both dog and mother watch as Liam staggers jerkily over the pebbles, towards the stream, his bandaged leg held up off the ground.
Bran fidgets, scratches at the sod with his front paws.
What to do? Should he follow the boy, who is clearly in no state to go off down the boreen?
Bark? Go to the mother? Into the house? He lets out a whine of indecision and distress: the house is a complicated place for him.
If all is well, if the air feels right and good, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if there is the smell of food, he can be persuaded into it, but if feelings are running high, if the atmosphere is stitched with tension and yelling, like today, he will not come further than this invisible line.
Bran drops to his belly, rests his muzzle on his paws. He might look to anyone like an animal at rest but far from it: he has his gaze trained with great concentration on the house, on the hiding mother, the limping boy, every muscle tensed to leap up, if required.
A noise reaches Bran’s ears and he lifts his head.
The boy has fallen, the books in his bag slipping, scattering about the ground.
In a flash, the mother darts out and gathers everything into her apron; she has her arm around the boy and she’s half walking, half supporting him back to the house.
The child is sniffling, saying he must get to school, he has lessons to catch up with, and the mother is replying, Not yet, you’re not strong enough.
The two of them go back inside the house, the door shuts.
Bran observes it all, attentive. Not so long ago, the man had strode away, carrying a pack on his back, muttering, Out of the way, you foolish animal, go on home, but Bran hadn’t taken it amiss because rough words and imperatives were the way this man showed love, and the man was given to walking out.
But a few days later, the girl, Enda, went off too, wearing Liam’s clothing.
Bran had circled her three times, sniffing at her feet, the jacket, the jersey, cocking his head to look at her, asking, What is the meaning of this?
Enda had stroked him with a fervour that gave Bran his second instance of misgiving—where was she going and how long would she be and what did it all mean?
What Bran took amiss most of all was this leaving, the brazenness of it, as if it didn’t matter at all, as if they didn’t care that it was Bran’s job, his purpose in life, to keep them all together, here, safe.
They just opened the door and walked away and left, first the man and then the girl.
Unable to bear immobility a moment longer, Bran leaps up from the ground and races around the house in long, loping circles.
He leaps up at the window and the half-door, paws on the wood to look inside, catching a glimpse of Liam being settled by the mother in a chair by the fire, and Rose, her head bent over some task at the table.
Bran then comes to a stop by the wall of the little byre.
The baby, Eugene, has been put out to nap in the fresh air, swaddled in blankets so that only his face shows.
Bran paces twice around the cleeve but he doesn’t rest his paws on it—he has too much sense for that—but he puts his narrow nose over the side and snuffs at the child.
Eugene is awake, eyes open to the sky, and he looks at Bran.
Bran looks at him. Perhaps the youngling can help, can settle matters in the house, perhaps fetch back the missing members of the family.
But he is too small, Bran knows, he can’t even stand on his two spindly little legs yet, and how slow are the young of humans, how vulnerable and defenceless.
Child and dog regard each other, and Bran is suddenly certain that this child is an extraordinary one, that he can see right into Bran, that he knows everything without being told.
It is a sensation both comforting and unsettling.
It makes him want to lie down right here, as close as he can possibly get to the cleeve.
So he does. He stretches out his great paws, his long legs, lays his flank on the sod, and falls into sleep almost immediately, and so does the child, and the two share the same dream: a landscape weighed down from above with great billowing clouds that part and merge, letting in the light and obscuring it, over and over again.
Report of Progress
To the Ordnance Survey Office, Phoenix Park, Dublin
October 1866
From Mapping Division XI___ii
Sapr. P. Carbury
Sapr. D. Bentford
(Also present: Labourer & Chainboy)
Week 1: Access to the largest island has been attained, and camp set up.
For the initial two days the division commenced, as directed by the Office, a walking survey of the island’s perimeter in daylight hours, terrain permitting.
Notes taken of landmarks, topography, notable features, both physical and human: herewith enclosed, with relevant sketches, labelled here as—