Chapter 10 #27
When he came out of the sea, it was onto jagged rocks; they cut his palms and the knees of his britches.
He was cold to his bones, his fingers white and withered, his hair streaming, and he was clawed by regret.
He yelled, mouth wide, for all he had lost. He kicked at the brine, the seawrack that flipped itself back and forth in the shallows.
After a while, sore and bleeding, he crawled towards the sand, pulled himself upright, shook the water from his ears and hair, and he made himself put one foot in front of the other.
He walked. He kept to smaller paths, woodlands, bogs, skirting villages, avoiding the straight walls of estates.
He ducked into ditches if he heard the cloppetting sound of large horses.
He headed north, then north-west, then west, adjusting his course according to the Pole Star.
He slept under trees, in the shelter of walls, in the ruins of abandoned cottages.
If his feet sprouted blisters, he lined his boots with moss; if he was hungry, he searched for bilberries on low-growing bushes; he cracked open mussel-shells on the rocks he pulled them from; he leaned over the wall of a pigpen and stole fistfuls from the bucket of swill; he crawled into a henhouse late at night and broke the eggs, raw, into his mouth, swallowing down the slippery mess.
When he finally reached the peninsula, he kept to the higher ground, coming up and round behind the cottage, so that he descended towards it from the mountain.
He lifted the latch, he stepped inside, he sat down at the table.
The air was cool and still, dust motes circling in the shafts of light, a soft and forgiving darkness lying over the stacked bowls on the shelf, the fire grate, the balls of wool in a basket.
Eugene looked around: he took his time over this.
He cast his eye over every spoon, every cupboard, each chair, the rungs on the ladder to the loft, the flags on the floor.
Then he bent over to remove first one boot, then the other.
He laid his head down on the warm wood of the table, and he breathed and he breathed.
Several days later—long enough for Eugene to have cleared the grate and got the fire going, to have filled the buckets with water, to have washed and dried his clothes—the widow made an appearance.
Eugene came upon her, standing with her fists on her hips, as he rounded the haggard wall, a bundle of kindling in his arms.
“Mother of God,” she said slowly, when she saw him. “What in the name of…?”
She came towards him, and seized him by the arm, which was something he did not like. “What are you doing back? Where’s Rose? Is she inside?”
Eugene extracted his arm from her grip. He shook his head.
The widow moved towards the cottage, distraught, one hand pressed to her back, her stick gripped in her gnarled fingers, and pushed open the door. “Rose?” she called. “Rose!”
When Eugene came in behind her, dropping the kindling into the basket, she turned on him. “Where is she?” she demanded, raking his face with her eyes.
Again, Eugene shook his head.
“Are you alone?”
Eugene shrugged.
The widow frowned, her eyes boring into him. “Did she…sail on the ship?”
He nodded.
“And you?”
Eugene was still for a long time. Then he inclined his head, once, and he lifted a hand, forming his fingers into a curve, which he brought down in a swooping dive.
He looked up at the widow, to see if she understood.
He mimed swimming, and more swimming, then walked his fingers along through the air, for a long time.
The widow put a hand over her mouth. She lowered herself into a chair, his mother’s, which normally would have bothered Eugene, but he found he didn’t mind the widow sitting in it.
“Dear God,” she said, then: “Poor Rosie.”
She stared at Eugene for a long time, so long in fact that he decided to get on with laying the fire.
“Whatever will we do with you?” she murmured, then rose to her feet and disappeared down the hill.
The following day, she was back, a hen under each arm.
They were for him, she said, handing them over.
They belonged to him by rights. Take them out to the islet on the lough—he was going to need the eggs to feed himself.
Then she told him to listen, and proceeded to say many things, some of which Eugene understood, most of which passed him by: the people at the big house did not seem to be looking for him, or for Rose, she said, but still he had to be careful.
He was to stay up here, not to come down the hill, not to walk into the manor land, not to go to the village or the town or the chapel or anywhere.
If he lit a fire, he should make it a small one.
If he went anywhere, he was to make sure it was only after dark.
And he should fill in the boreen, make it impassable, cover it over with old branches for now, and no one would come bothering him. Did he hear her? Would he heed her?
Eugene nodded. He turned these orders over in his mind. And he followed them to the letter, as was his way, for the rest of his life. He did as the widow told him. He collected fallen branches, he kept his fires small, he ate eggs for his dinner, he went down the hill only after dark.
If the people below knew he was back, living in the old cottage, nothing was said.
On occasion, during one of his night excursions, he found a warm loaf there, at the base of the path.
Outside the widow’s house, near the threshold, there might be a scarf, knitted in blue wool.
People—he didn’t know who—left mealcakes, a round of goat cheese, a head of cabbage, a pair of stockings when it got cold.
Even when the widow passed on and other people moved into her house—Eugene could smell their strangeness, their newness, when he stood beside their windows at night—he kept to her rules, faithfully, doggedly, keeping himself apart, hiding away.
He took only what he needed, and always left something in return.
A pair of britches might vanish from a drying line, but the next day their owner would find a pail of cockles left at their door, gathered at dawn’s low tide.
The sharpening stone in a man’s byre disappeared for a week or so, but was then returned, and attached to it was a donkey’s harness, perfectly crafted from flax, interwoven with cowrie shells.
Further along the shore, a currach might be borrowed overnight: the fisherman arrived in the morning to find it weed-streaked and briny, but pulled up carefully beyond the tide line, the oars neatly tucked beneath.
A hammer was taken from a house on the other side of the estate, and in its place was a door-knocker, carved from birch.
In this way, Eugene lived his life, undisturbed, as he wished.
He stands, now, at the edge of the copse, under its canopy, watching the boreen, making sure that the man with the straw boater hat (or indeed without it) has left and isn’t about to reappear.
When he sees the interloper emerge down below, onto the village road, he steps out of the copse, putting one cautious foot before the other, scanning his land, his empire, for marks or transgressions.
He looks over the vegetable patch and sees that the man’s shoe has crushed only two seedlings; these he straightens with careful fingertips.
He walks to the door and wipes with his sleeve the place where the man rapped his knuckles; he checks the stack of turf, he touches each stone of the haggard gate, he stands at Bran’s grave.
When he is assured that all is as it should be, he returns to his work.
The day is still warm, the sun high but slipping behind the rath now; the wind is low.
He chip-chips at the earth, up one row, down the next, loosening the straggling weeds and stowing them in his basket.
After the fertilising is done, he will wade out to the hens and collect the eggs, which he will eat for his dinner.
Then he will repair the boreen—he will work all evening, if need be.
At set of sun, he goes back to the copse.
He needs branches and foliage for the boreen, and it has occurred to him that the hat might make a fine gift for someone in the village—he could leave it in exchange for something grand, a kid goat, perhaps, for he has a liking for the company of goats, their peculiar oblong-centred eyes, their inscrutable obstinacy, and he could keep a couple here, for the milk and the cheese.
Eugene moves sideway into the trees, turning his body first one way, then another, gliding between trunks, bending below branches, placing his feet only in those places he’s stepped before.
He carries in his head the detailed and precise cartography of this place: he could find his way in the pitch dark, if called on.
The air is dank and peculiarly still. Eugene cocks his head, sniffing, he swivels his eyes up to the sky, down to the ground.
There is something charged about the copse tonight, some alteration or shift, as if the man who came here has brought with him a breeze from a new place, or opened up some channel running through the trees.
He places a hand to a trunk, as if to read the passage of water through it, as if to communicate his presence.
All is well, he wishes to tell it, the intruder has gone.
He bends to lift a fallen bough from the moss, then another, both broken by the man in his haste to be gone.
The branches feel slippery against his palm, not unpleasantly so.
He moves further in, the light dimming: the leaves above him sigh and shift; a bird somewhere whirs its wings against the heavy air.