Chapter Thirty-Five
After a restless night in Cork, they rise early and head west. Nola Wren sits in the back seat with Faye, flipping through picture books quietly.
Faye drinks her in, thinks about William’s spirit passing right through her, wonders what part of him might cling to her still.
The rolling countryside is the green of beard moss, and the day, misty as a ballad.
At one point, Maeve misses a turn, and they wind up along the wild Atlantic coast unfurling into a churning sea.
“How much farther?” Faye asks.
Molly spins in her seat, shows Faye the map of where they are, near Skibbereen, and where they’re heading, an X on a finger peninsula jutting into the Atlantic.
They make a turn and follow the Durrus River to where it flows into the bay near a vine-covered granary, long abandoned. The seacoast opens up along Sheep’s Head. Faye shudders at the sight of the choppy water.
“Anything look familiar, Mom?”
How memory plays its tricks! Sponged ground beneath tiny toes, the way a skirt moves when the girl wearing it skips in a meadow, warm bread in open hands, a stone in that same palm, musty hay on a lumpy mattress, moonbeams shimmering like schooling fish on a calm bay, the sea smell in a girl’s wet hair.
Faye shakes her head. It’s too hard to describe.
“Let’s pop into a pub and ask for directions,” Molly says. “I don’t see a cemetery on this map. I mean, that’s the first stop, right? Pull over there,” she says, pointing. “I can run in.”
“No,” Faye says. “I should do it.”
“Let’s all go,” Maeve says. “We need to stretch anyway. Maybe they have sandwiches.”
Two empty kegs sit in front of the pub, and the smell of braising meat hits them when they open the dark door.
Inside, there are three tables, stools at a short bar, and men raising pints.
There are no women, and Faye feels it when they enter.
The barman asks if they’re looking for a table.
“Actually, we’re hoping for directions,” Faye says.
“Ah, Americans!” the barman says. “I can tell by the accent. Got a keen ear.”
Faye smiles awkwardly. “Yes. We’re looking for the cemetery.”
“Oh, digging around the family tree, are ye? What’s your name?”
Panic sets in. She glances over her shoulder at Maeve and Molly.
“Not meaning to ask you a hard question.”
An old man in a thick sweater and wool cap turns on his barstool to watch the exchange.
He cocks his head, and Faye can see that he’s rolling his tongue over what teeth remain.
He glowers at her as if he finds Americans in his pub offensive.
“Well,” she says. “My name is Faye Sullivan. These are my daughters and granddaughter.”
“Lots of Sullivans here.”
“No.” Faye shakes her head. “No, I’m not looking for Sullivans. I had a different name before. I’m Fiadh Beatty.” I’m ten years old. “I . . . I . . . grew up near here. My parents were Thomas and Jean. You’re too young to remember them.”
The old man sneers, hands his glass to the barman, who pulls the tap back for him.
“No Beattys around here anymore, if that’s who you’re looking for.
You lads know of Beattys?” The men at the table shake their heads.
“Francis?” The man stares as he sucks foam off his beer.
“Say your name was again?” His voice is made of salt and smoke.
“Faye Sullivan. But I was Fiadh Beatty.”
“Dead Beattys from way back. Boys. They’re out there.”
Faye’s voice shakes now. She doesn’t dare bring up German girls who lived here once. “Out there. You mean the cemetery? Can you tell us how to get there?”
The barman flings a towel over his shoulder—two houses out of town, turn by the playground, stay left, a crown of trees, the hedgerow. “Can’t miss it,” he promises.
“You get that?” Maeve whispers to Molly. “I only understood half of what he said.”
“Thanks for the help.” Faye takes Nola Wren’s hand and follows Maeve out the door. Molly, last to leave, stops suddenly, turns. “Do you know any O’Kanes by chance?”
The men at the table look at each other, then to the bar. The bartender’s mouth opens, and he scratches his cheek with three fingers. The man in the sweater moves his head to the left, like a weathervane catching the slightest wind.
Faye pokes her head back in. “Pix . . .”
Molly’s eyes widen, and she flashes a toothy smile. “Top of the morning to you then,” she says wryly and heads out to the street with Faye.
“I thought the Irish were supposed to be all nice and friendly. That was the twilight zone. And what about Darby O’Gill in there? The way he stared was creepy.”
“Maybe they’re not used to strangers.” Faye says, though her gut tells her it’s something else. “Why’d you go back?”
“I asked about the O’Kanes,” Molly says. “They all clammed up.”
They pass through town and turn onto a narrower road. “Stay left,” Molly says, checking the map against the directions they were given. Dew drips from branches shrouded in white mist.
The windows are down, and Faye undoes Nola Wren’s seatbelt so she can spy the bubbling creek lined with tall grass.
Sheep and shrubs dot the sloping countryside sectioned by stone walls.
Ferns and vines form a thick border at the edge of the asphalt.
“The plants are eating the road,” Nola Wren whispers.
Faye has to agree. It seems it would take no time at all for signs of humans to be consumed by the wild greenness around them.
They drive beneath a canopy of trees, past windowless stone farm buildings until the wall next to the road becomes more refined.
The sea and a patch of blue sky appear. “This must be it.”
“It’s a burial ground, all right,” Molly says. Maeve stops the car, and she and Molly turn in their seats. Beyond the iron gate is a tidy path that leads past limestone crosses and headstones to lichen-covered ruins of an old cíll and the white-blue bay beyond.
An eeriness sets in. Faye feels like she’s passed into another realm, that it’s possible she’s dead.
She wants to ask, “Is this goodbye?” She pushes the iron gate open and walks into the graveyard.
If she is Fiadh Beatty, the bay where she drowned spreads out in front of her.
Faye wanders along graves haunted by ground mist that moves with new life as the breeze picks up.
Ancient letters and dates, names as familiar as home since so many families made their way to America.
Coughlans and Dalys, Driscolls and McCarthys and Donovans and, yes, Sullivans.
She looks around at the sea of stones. Where in this earth would they bury a German child?
“Mom! Come here!” Maeve shouts, waving her over.
Faye goes to where the girls stand. The stone is low and white, the engraving difficult to read. But the surname is clear. Beatty.
Maeve reads slowly, tracing each letter with her fingertips. “Erected by Thomas and Jean Beatty and daughter Fiadh . . . Oh, Mom! Okay. In memory of sons . . . sons and brothers who departed this earth . . . John and . . . is that Patrick? I can’t read the dates.”
“She went crazy when they died, your grandmother. That was the story. They called her Batty Jean.” Clumps of memory rise like peat.
“Those O’Kane boys teased Fiadh with it.
Taunted her until she threw rocks at them.
I hardly talked then and didn’t understand what anyone was saying half the time.
I don’t think your grandmother ever recovered from losing them.
And then Fiadh. I wish I’d thought to bring flowers. Maybe we can come back later.”
“It all makes me so sad,” Molly says. “Just being here.”
“I’m sad too,” Nola Wren says, hugging Faye’s leg.
“At least the fog is lifting,” Maeve says. “See?”
In the distance, Carbery Island appears, a breaching whale.
Faye exhales and time slips backward. She sees girls frolicking there before all was lost. We foot it all the night, weaving olden dances, mingling hands and mingling glances, till the moon has taken flight.
She shakes her head in disbelief, the way her father’s Yeats rings in her ears.
She points toward the island. “I’m heading that way. Let me know if you see anything.”
Before Molly can grab her, Nola Wren steals a handful of tiny yellow wildflowers from a nearby grave and chases after Faye. “Mom!”
Faye turns, waving that it’s okay for the little girl to accompany her. She bends at the waist to accept the stolen flowers. “Careful,” Faye says, showing Nola Wren how to tiptoe. “We’re not meant to step on graves.” Wind whistles through the headstones.
“What do you think’s going through Mom’s head right now?” Maeve asks. “I mean, it keeps hitting me. I try to imagine Mom as a little girl on a ship crossing the Atlantic with strangers who’ve basically kidnapped her. I still can’t get my head around it.”
“Yeah, imagine how hard that had to be, knowing that you asked to be taken and then your sister died. I mean, trust me, I get that she felt damned either way. A million times I thought I’d ruined Nola Wren by leaving her.
But, honestly, Maeve. If I hadn’t . . . I didn’t know what else to do.
Maybe that little German girl didn’t either. ”
The sound of tires on gravel breaks the moment. Another car pulls up next to theirs. From the passenger seat, an old man emerges.
Molly’s face twists with confusion. “Is that Darby O’Gill from the pub?”
The man scans the graveyard, then bends to talk to someone in the car before standing again. This time he closes the door and puts his hands on the roof. Another man emerges, and the two of them talk over the top.
“Was that guy in the pub too?” Maeve asks.
“I don’t think so?”
“Are we trespassing or something?”
The men are together now, their attention focused on Faye and Nola Wren in the corner of the cemetery nearest the sea.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Molly says. “I mentioned the O’Kanes, and everything got really weird. C’mon. Let’s warn Mom. Be casual, though.”