Chapter 10 #15
When the slipe is loaded with both dead men, their whips, their gun, whatever clods of sand have soaked up their blood and brains, Eugene and Rose drag it along the path and up the track to the cliffs.
The way is rutted and steep, and this is no weather to be out.
A turbulent wind lashes their backs, snatches at their clothing; rain hurls itself into their faces.
The accusing eye of the moon appears at intervals between the clouds.
At the top, where the land falls steeply away, where half a mile below foams an angry sea, a gale blows so loudly they cannot hear each other.
They have to rely on gestures and glances.
The gentleman friend goes over first, swung between them and released into the air, then his gun and his hat; the viscount’s son is next.
Eugene loses his grip just as they are about to fling him seaward, and Rose falls forward, onto the body, her elbow landing on the soft part of his belly, making her retch, then Eugene yanks her upright, and together, exhausted, they roll the dead man to the lip of the cliff and push him off.
Rose inches forward to see the shape of him fall through the thin light of the moon, as if into the mouth of Hell, coat flapping, legs flailing, jaw stretching wide as if wanting to give an account of himself but finding nothing whatsoever to say.
Eugene is given the task of burying Bran.
He carries him up the hillside and digs a grave just outside the haggard wall, in the sheltered spot where the dog liked to lie in the sun.
Rose and the widow build up the fire and feed into it the bloodstained clothes, her torn skirt.
When Eugene returns, the storm he sensed at the start of this longest of days has begun: the wind is hurling itself at the walls, rattling the doors for entry, rain is scalping the roof, and the widow nods grimly.
Luck is on our side, she says, for now. It will wash away the footprints up to the cliffs, she says, and the tracks made by the slipe.
She serves them both a cup of tea and a slice of bread.
Rose says she cannot eat; the widow says she must. Rose rises from the table and says she will go to bed.
The widow shakes her head. She gestures to Rose to sit down. From out of her apron, she brings a small pouch of worn leather, tied twice around with twine, and a folded letter in an envelope that looks half familiar to Rose.
“The two of you,” she begins, her voice trembling only slightly, “must take yourselves off. Tonight. Now.”
“But where? And how can we—”
The widow holds up her hand. “You know this is the only way. Those gentlemen will be missed. The alarm will be raised. There’ll be people out searching for them by morning.
The bodies might be washed up in a day or two and it might look as if they took a fall from the cliff in the dark, or it might not.
Either way, the pair of you need to be gone. Before daylight.”
Rose begins to cry. Eugene shifts in his seat.
“None of that now,” the widow says. “Unless you want them to string you both up on a gibbet—and they will, you know that—you’ve to keep your wits about you and get yourselves gone.
You’ll walk south to the port. It’s the journey of a day or so.
Take this money and buy yourselves passages across the sea.
You’ll go to Enda, of course. Here is her letter, with the address on it. ”
“We can’t take your money,” Rose says, tears coursing down her face. “It’s yours. We can’t—”
“You can and you will.”
“Then…you must come with us,” Rose exclaims, turning to Eugene, as if seeking his approval, and he stares back at them both, his face blank, as if he’s having trouble comprehending their change in fortune. “We could all go, all three of us. What’s left for us here? We must—”
“I’m too old for all that. And who would mind the cow? I’ll not be going anywhere.”
“But it’s your money, you need it and—”
The widow takes a breath so deep and long that it strains at the seams of her bodice.
“You must know that what little I have was to have been yours. Since your mother went, and then your father, it was always my intention. Who else would I have given it to? This way, you’re only getting it before time. ”
She reaches across the table and, in an unaccustomed demonstration of affection, she cups a hand around each of their faces.
“You’re to get away from here, the pair of you, to find Enda, to live long lives. Do you hear me?”
She removes her shawl with shaking hands and wraps it around Rose, tucking the ends into her belt.
She tells them she will take care of everything, she will go up the hillside and close up their house, will bring the livestock back down with her: they are not to give it all a second thought.
She packs dried fish and dulse and hard bread into their bags.
Eugene stows the puppy in his shirt, and the widow gives its head an awkward pat.
Go now, she says to them, and be quick. Don’t stop on the road. I won’t say goodbye.
They go through the door, the widow, Rose and Eugene, and Rose is crying again, her chest heaving, high-pitched sobs coming out of her, and the widow shoos them away, like errant geese, and she cannot watch them leave, will not see the road swallow them.
She gives them a single nod, then turns and blunders into the byre, latching the door behind her; she crouches down, her hands groping for the milking stool, the bucket, anything.
She should fill the churn; she could make a start on the butter. She might. She could.
But instead, she lets herself sink into the straw. First her own children and now these ones, who were delivered to her by God and His goodness, to fill one of the empty houses. Her life has seen too many endings, too many leavings, more than can be borne by one woman, and that’s the truth of it.
The widow kneels on the straw in the byre, clinging to the lime-washed wall. She leans her face into the warmth of the cow and, despite herself, strains her ears above the sound of the wind to hear the footsteps of Rose and Eugene as they walk away.
Liam stands in his schoolroom in Cochin, hands clasped behind his back.
It is, he is telling himself carefully, a day like any other.
It is a Tuesday—no, a Wednesday, an ordinary morning.
He has risen, he has prayed, he has breakfasted, and now he is here, teaching these boys.
He is not in the vegetable garden today but the school.
It is just another day, with nothing remarkable about it.
He has placed himself at the front of the class, the better to keep an eye on the rows and rows of boys seated at desks.
His hair is combed down with oil; from his sash hangs a cane switch for the punishment of bad behaviour.
He has a frown on his face and looks for all the world like a mathematics master, listening as his pupils recite an algebraic theorem, a studious Jesuit who will brook no inattention, no breach of discipline.
Look more closely, however. Today his face is turned not towards his pupils but to the street outside.
His lids are half lowered against the diamond-cut dazzle of the sun.
His left foot twitches up and down, up and down, hinting perhaps at restlessness within.
The switch at his waist is supple with lack of use—the boys in their desks know that they are unlikely to receive a beating from this particular master and they like him for it.
They are not to know that Liam has been chided for this by his superiors.
If a person was standing close enough to Liam, or Father Gulielmus, as he is known here, they might catch a hint of clove, even hibiscus, and that person might ask themselves is it normal, is it permissible for a Jesuit to wear scented oil in his hair, would that not be considered a somewhat worldly indulgence for such a man?
Liam shifts his weight from his right foot to his unquiet left, and lets out a just-audible sigh as his eyes follow the progress of a tonga across the street and then up the slope, the horse straining between its shafts, the ding of its harness bell leaving a bright shivering circle of sound in the warm, saline air.
Cochin has long, straight streets lined with awnings, beneath which open-fronted shops sell spices and silks and bales of printed cotton and towering triangles of coconuts and jasmine blossoms threaded on strings.
There are clusters of palm trees, the leaves of which rattle like swords in the wind, and a seafront where rows of elaborate fishing nets stand with elegant, outstretched arms that can be lowered, like genuflecting pilgrims, into the water.
The wealthy colonialist families live in pink-tinted houses with ironwork balconies; they travel about town in huge-wheeled rickshaws, high above the dust of the street.
Liam sees their gloved fingers drawing up the pleated canopies so that they may shield themselves from the sun.
The poor—among whom Liam spends a great deal of his time, when not in the classroom, perhaps a little too much, his superiors have observed—live near the swamp, a hollow depression in the landscape, hidden from view, filled with huts put together from whatever materials can be found.
“Scalpeens” is what these dwellings would be called at home, Liam has reflected, but here the Order refers to them as “shacks.” The trodden-dirt pathways of the swamp-village are familiar to Liam: he alone knows his way through the straw-and-clay cabins, for he has taken it upon himself to draw a map of the place.