Chapter 10 #26
So, why not go into the copse and visit the sacred well? He is an educated man, a wage-earner, a husband, a father. There isn’t a shred of superstition or religion left in him. Let him stand before it for the last time: the well cannot touch him now.
Liam steps into the trees, smoothing the front of his waistcoat, surrendering to the green-lit glow.
For a moment, he wants to laugh at himself, at the boy he was.
How could he ever have been frightened by this place?
It is a cluster of trees, nothing more, really quite unremarkable—stones, a network of streams. Some oak, some ash, a blackthorn there at the edge.
Evidence of higher water, perhaps even minor flooding, in wetter seasons, low-lying layer of fern, small insects, a butterfly, birds overhead.
A branch catches him on the cheek, and as he twists away from it, it rakes through his hair, disturbing it from the neat lines into which he combs it every morning.
Really quite a pleasant place, after all, Liam is thinking, not anything to be—
The pool appears sooner than he had remembered. Natural bowl of granite, his mind is telling him, worn by the action of the spring over thousands and thousands of years. Water extremely clear. Remarkably deep, actually.
At the sound of a crack behind him, Liam’s mind empties of thought.
There is a shrivelling sensation at the back of his neck, a prickling, as if something has passed across it—a trailing cobweb, a tiny hand.
He feels his heart falter and hesitate, the blood in his body stilling, then restarting at a galloping pace.
He has, he cannot deny it, the distinct sense that he is being watched, or that he has somehow stepped outside linear time, that he might very possibly turn to find himself as a frightened child, standing there, regarding him.
Liam does not shift his gaze—he will not.
He keeps himself motionless, just as he was, head bowed, not in any religious or superstitious sense, just because he was examining the well.
He is annoyed to realise that he is clutching his hat in his hand, as if about to pray.
A muscle just below his eye starts up an abrupt twitching, distorting the edges of his sight; it is tempting to reach up and rub at it but he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to attract attention.
He will stay still, until this sensation, this suspicion, has passed, because he is not going to give in to any foolish illusions or tricks his mind might play on him.
There is nobody here. Just him. Nobody at all.
A flash, a movement across the surface of the pool, as if something within it has writhed or moved, or someone has dropped a pebble into it, is all it takes.
Liam flinches, turns, drops his hat, all in one movement, and then he is fleeing, hurrying and stumbling through the trees, and for the second time in his life, he is sprinting through the copse and out, away from this place, as fast as he can, and this time, he is swearing to himself, will absolutely be the last, for he is never coming back here again.
After this sudden flight, the man crashing and flailing through the branches, slipping on the moss and ferns, letting out noises of panic and fear, there is silence in the copse.
The trees lift their arms to the wind and clack their fingers together.
A bird hop-stitches its way up a trunk, from root to twig, before becoming distracted by a woodlouse hiding in a crevice of bark.
The four silver streams flowing from the pool continue to weave towards each other and apart.
The pool sits, implacable, inside its necklace of stone.
After a long interval, a shape might be seen moving through the trees, if indeed anyone were there to witness it. It picks its way soundlessly, with a certain grace, through the moss and the stones, placing its feet with care so that no footprints are left.
It looks one way, then the other, before bending to pick up the hat, which it examines for a moment, before reaching out to hang it off the outstretched limb of a tree.
Eugene—for it is he—has no idea that this hat belongs to Liam.
He hasn’t an inkling that the man he had been watching from his private perch in the canopy of an oak tree was in fact his brother.
He had been weeding his vegetable patch, laying dung around the plants to make them grow strong, when he had heard a commotion in the boreen.
He had canted his head to one side, listening to the unaccustomed sound of someone struggling up the old path, swearing and cursing the bushes and trees, fighting with the branches that he, Eugene, had eased together, woven one into another in order for them to grow into a mesh, a net, so that none would come this way.
But, thought Eugene, leaning on his loy, whoever this was must be a determined, headstrong sort.
When he heard the person’s footfalls getting nearer, despite the thicket of briars he had cultivated, Eugene had laid down the loy and run to conceal himself in the copse, as had always been his habit on the rare occasion anyone made it up here.
He had watched the smartly dressed gentleman walk up to the cottage door—and Eugene doesn’t like the gentry, the fine fabric of their clothing, the marks of combs in their oiled hair, but he isn’t going to think about any of that—and rap upon it with his knuckles.
Eugene had peered out from behind his tree as he examined the vegetable garden, the haggard wall, the stack of turf.
When the man had made his way towards the copse, Eugene wasn’t worried: he has myriad ways to make himself invisible.
He had merely stepped further into the trees and up off the ground, rendering himself as still as a branch, as a rook, and watched.
It did not occur to Eugene to wonder who the man was.
It did not cross his mind that this person might have any connection with him, beyond disturbing his day’s work.
That the man had hair the colour of copper did not register with Eugene: this is not the way his mind works.
The concepts of familiarity or resemblance are not ones he comprehends.
To him, his brother, Liam, is a lanky boy who wished to train for the priesthood.
That years have passed and that Liam might have grown up and now look different does not occur to him.
Liam was his brother who caused arguments and went away; this is a bespectacled man in a fine suit of clothes who is alarmingly curious about Eugene’s home.
When the man leaves, finally, beating his way back down the boreen, Eugene waits until the cottage’s shadow is almost tucked away under it before he ventures out.
If asked, Eugene wouldn’t be able to say how long it is he has been here alone, how many years ago it was that he plunged into the sea, off the side of the ship, handing over the puppy and leaping into the waves.
He is not one to examine motives. He doesn’t think about the past, as such, because he sees no delineation between past and present, between the now and the future.
He lives much as his ancient forebears did: on and by the land, watching the weather, feeling one season blur into the next.
He knows that when the frost retreats back up the mountain it is time to dig and turn the soil; he knows that a wet spring will mean fewer apples on the tree by the lough; if a summer is dry, he should lift the crop early; if the bog-cotton is plentiful, there will be a good yield; when the mornings become cooler and mistier, he knows it is time to start footing the turf.
In the early days, he cried a great deal.
He remembers this. He plunged off the boat, without forethought, without pause.
When he saw the rocky shoreline sliding by, the patchwork of fields, when people around him cried out that it was the last glimpse of their land, it was clear to him: he would not be leaving, he would go back.
And so he flung himself off and the sea claimed him greedily, the waves cold and choppy, reaching their huge arms over his head and forcing him down.
He could feel beneath his wildly trampling feet the vast depths, filled with fish and monsters and currents, and he was sorry then: he longed for Rose, up there on the ship, and he longed for the pup, its sleek head, its wise gold eyes, but he could not leave.
When his head broke the surface, he hawked and coughed, spitting up all the bitter water, he gulped at the air, and he knew not to stay still, to kick his legs, to sweep his arms, pushing one handful of water behind him at a time, keeping his eyes on the shoreline in front of him.
There were times when the land seemed to get no closer, despite his efforts, despite the ache in his limbs and lungs, and he thought he wouldn’t make it, or not alive, and every hundred strokes he had to turn onto his back and float there, like a starfish, to gather his strength.
And there were times when the waves were unkind to him, angry with him, when they dumped themselves over his face or pushed him off course.
But he felt after a while that the tide was with him, the water racing towards the strand, hauling him with it, so when he became so exhausted that he thought he couldn’t move any more, all he had to do was keep afloat and the rollers would carry him to shore.