Inch Levels (16 page)

‘What time?’ she asked again; and her father murmured, a few other people in the crowd murmured, noon. They were ranged across the crest of the hill: below, soldiers – ‘
our
soldiers’ – had closed the approach roads to the fort. ‘This is as close as we can get,’ her father told her, ‘so we might as well make ourselves comfortable,’ and he took off his green-flecked tweed jacket – his good jacket, he was too warm, his face reddening a little bit – and spread it on the heathery ground. He sat and Sarah and Cassie sat and others along the ridge followed their example, and sat too. Her mind strayed from history: she worried about the stew Cassie had made and left for tea; gone too long and it would dry up. She sighed; Cassie glanced at her.

They were all there, the great and the good amid the crowd: a teacher or two, and a priest or two; one or two posh shopkeepers from the town. Sarah knew all these; her father knew other priests, farmers, other shopkeepers from other towns and from elsewhere in the county. He nodded, said hello; she and Cassie bobbed their heads, bobbed them again. Father Lynch appeared: clever, full of facts – handy at such a time. He looked now down onto the fort. ‘The French,’ he said. ‘They built this to keep out the French. Poor Wolfe Tone: they caught him out there on the water.’ He smiled, too brightly, at Cassie; he turned to Sarah. ‘Do you remember, Sarah?’

She remembered, how they caught him and dragged him to Derry and then Dublin, where he opened his – what, his windpipe? – with something – with a pen knife? – and he died a horrible death, a ghastly death; they did this at school. ‘Well, no more British ships on Lough Swilly,’ the priest went on in satisfied tones, ‘not after today.’ A pair of grey warships was floating just off the fort, resting, lining up on the grey water. ‘Getting ready to move off,’ said the priest, ‘in an hour or two. And that’ll be an end to that.’ He pointed to the strange flag fluttering above the battlements. ‘The royal ensign,’ he said, bobbing up and down on the heels of his polished black shoes. ‘That’ll be coming down.’ She nodded. He knew everything.

And in fact, it took less than an hour or two. After half an hour, her father opened the waxy packet of sandwiches and they ate; and a few minutes after that, a volley of shots; Cassie was shushed; and the flag slid down, and a tricolour was raised in its place. The grey ships moved off, smoothly on the water; in a matter of minutes they rounded the point and disappeared into the open ocean. A single Irish ship took their place, resting just offshore; and that, it seemed, was that. ‘Time to go home,’ her father said. He sounded flat, somehow; she felt flat too; the crowd was quiet, sober as it looked out across the water, as it broke up. Cassie said, ‘Are we going home now?’

Father Lynch reappeared.

‘We got rid of them, girls,’ he said. ‘At last,’ he repeated: Sarah watched him there on the ridge of the hill, the shadowy water, the view of blue hills fading now into afternoon mist. He paused, rubbed his jaw. ‘At last,’ he said again and seemed now to gather himself. ‘And no last-minute problems either,’ he added with more energy. ‘It was the last-minute problems that I was afraid of, but everything went well in the end.’ He finished gathering himself now, and looked at Sarah indulgently.

‘And what did you think, Sarah?’ He paid no attention now to Cassie, who paid no attention to him.

‘It was a little quiet, Father. I expected something more exciting.’

Her father looked at her too, but Father Lynch merely sucked his teeth thoughtfully.

‘Well, Sarah,’ he told her, ‘the event is exciting enough in its own way. That’s the thing to remember.’

‘No, I know, Father – but maybe the government should have made it more public. I mean, more of a ceremony; something like that.’

Now everyone seemed to be looking at her. Cassie took her hand. Father Lynch nodded, spoke in bracing fashion:

‘Indeed, Sarah, but that’s not really the point. The spectacle isn’t really the point, is it? Not the main thing.’

‘I know, Father, but surely –’

Her father cut in. ‘How will you be getting back, Father?’

‘Dr Harvey has kindly offered me a run home,’ the priest told him. He nodded across at the doctor and then nodded at them, dismissed them, began to move away. ‘So I’ll bid you good day.’ The two men strode off.

Her father said: ‘You can never just hold your tongue, can you? Always this cleverness. He didn’t want to hear you, didn’t you see that?’

Sarah blushed, painfully. ‘He asked me and I told him. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘It isn’t your place to go talking back and giving cheek to anyone – and to priests least of all.’ He spoke quietly, always a bad sign. All the same, Sarah opened her mouth once more.

‘Be quiet, Sarah.’

Cassie turned, stared.

‘I only said –’

‘We’ll be getting back.’ He took her arm firmly; she wriggled, for his grip was painful, but he merely grasped her more tightly and pulled her along. ‘Come, Cassie,’ for Cassie was hanging back, agitated, threatening tears. ‘Cassie,’ he said again, ‘come.’

The evening at home was quiet, quieter even than usual. They’d been away too long; the stew was ruined. ‘You’re spoiling it for yourself,’ Brendan said once, between breaths. Scholarships were slipping away: the priest didn’t like girls to be too clever. She took the beating silently. That was the first time.

*

Brendan watched the priest approach, picking his way through the thinning crowd, over the rocks and springy, blooming heather.

‘Well, Sarah? What did you think of all that?’

He felt a small welling of pride. Father liked to distinguish the girl, liked to pick her out of the crowd. She was clever, she read and studied hard; she’d be up for the County Scholarship, maybe, in a couple of years. But Brendan’s fear was pressing this pride away. Too few avenues available to his daughter: what her ambitions might be, he could not say – but whatever they were, she would most likely have to put them away. His finances could no longer cope with the expense of her schooling; if the Scholarship didn’t come along, they’d have to make other arrangements for her. That was clear.

‘It was a little quiet, Father. I expected something more exciting.’

He watched as the priest and his daughter wrestled politely. Again, a tentative flutter of pride, shot through with pain; others were watching, others observing her brains, her will; again, he set these sensations firmly aside; he must maintain his neutral, impassive expression. ‘The spectacle isn’t really the point,’ the priest said – though not with heat, Brendan saw, but rather mildly, with amusement. With appreciation? – though no, there was a look in the priest’s eye that Brendan saw, and understood. An intervention was necessary: too many people were listening, and Sarah already getting a name around town for being too clever by half. It was a deadly game, this: for the future might keep her here; she must be roped in for her own sake.

He took her arm and rounded up Cassie and they moved along smartly towards the distant station; and he felt – not for the first time – a sensation of heaviness in his throat. God knows, he was familiar with this sensation by now: he might have wept once, though never in public – but he lost this ability, long ago.

*

Cassie thought: the sea was grey, only a little while ago. It’s silver now, the silver of a fresh fish on the slab in the fish shop, bright and then dark. I know what the dark is: cloud – one cloud and another cloud and another – on the water. And the ripple lines on the water, from splashing fish. She looked at the silver sea, thought of rippling fish: live fish, she thought, that nibble my toes in the sea, if I stand still – and I know how to stand still, I can stand still longer than anybody I know, Sarah says so; and the fish nibble and nibble, and then suddenly I wriggle my toes and the fish rush away. I like live fish, but I like dead fish too: and she remembered now the trout, they had trout the other week, its skin crisp from the pan, fresh and lovely with potatoes and greens. Father Lynch is here, but I don’t have to listen to him going on and on and on, because he doesn’t like me, he doesn’t speak to me, not really, so I don’t have to speak to him either; and that’s better because he is so boring and boring and boring. And now Cassie looked at Brendan and saw his face and his eyes and she reached for Sarah’s hand. ‘You mustn’t cry, Cassie,’ Sarah told her last week or the week before, ‘you mustn’t cry, there’s no need to cry, nothing bad will happen,’ and she’d tried not to cry, and she tried not to cry now. No need to cry. Brendan held out his hand. ‘Come, Cassie,’ and she felt the ripples and she didn’t cry.

*

‘You didn’t need to stop,’ Sarah said – for Martin had pulled the car into the side of the narrow country road. ‘I only wanted to look.’

‘Thought you might like to look properly, though: look around you,’ he said. ‘You haven’t been up here in a long time.’

Sensitive Martin.

But the car was parked right up against the fuchsia hedge, which was typical of him. Sensitive, but bad at parking. Martin didn’t in fact drive much at all, in spite of his pride in this handsome new car: usually it was Sarah who took charge of the driving, and Martin had no great skills at the wheel. Perhaps there was an opportunity, though, in this latest example of poor parking: it would be too difficult to get out, to get free, to negotiate; better to keep on going. So she shook her head.

‘No need.’

Too late: for Cassie had already pushed the back door open and was clambering out, her face red and burned from the sun; and now her children were following, drifting along the hot surface of the road, looking down over the hedges to the sea. They would get bored in a couple of seconds, Sarah thought, and eager to head for home. But in another second, she had the door wrestled open – ‘sorry about the parking,’ Martin said – and the hedge dealt with; and now she too was out on the road’s warm surface, looking out over the fields.

There was nothing to see – and everything, of course. The heat, even on this cooling evening, was rising from the tarmac: the view was quivering, hazing before her eyes. Cassie was looking over the hedges: and the children, seeming now to sense an opportunity for information, for knowledge, were pressing in, foisting questions on her. Where? And when? And who? – all flung through the hot air. Where did she play? And what fields had belonged to her? And where, exactly, was the house, and could they go to see it? They sensed weakness, today, and vulnerability after a long day of heat and sunshine: they wanted, they demanded answers about history, family, the past. She stood in the quivering air: her body seemed to be heating, its edges melting into its surrounding – and now she shook her head slightly, and gestured to Cassie.

‘It’s too hot, Cassie, to stand here. We need to go home.’

Time to round up these red-faced children, and deflect any questions. Time to go home.

‘Can we get ice cream?’ Patrick asked. ‘On the way home.’

Sarah nodded. Yes: they could get ice cream, they could get anything, if only these questions ceased, these views – of the past, of the world – were taken away.

Her poor father, she thought now. Time had blunted the sharp edges, the bruises and the pain.

Christine was quite old enough to cycle home like this, alone. There was no problem: this was a quiet town by Lough Foyle, a blue-winking, flat-calm glimpse of which could be seen at the bottom of the hill. Hardly anything ever happened here. Only the seasons happened, and the weather. The weather had happened earlier, with bucketing rain while they were in school – and there on the far side of the lough were the same rain clouds, now fading and retreating more with every moment, clearing from the distant basalt cliffs at Benevenagh – black cliffs but glistening gold now in the westering sun. A beautiful evening. A tang of frost in the air, already. The weather was over now, for the day.

The house smelled of apples. Her mother was delighted with the McDonnells across the way: for they’d had a bumper apple harvest this year; and had delivered a box of Bramleys on Sunday afternoon. The box was stowed with pleasure in the garage; and now the garage, the whole house, smelled of apples.

What will we do with them all? So she’d asked. Don’t worry, love, and never fear: we’ll find a use. So said her mother: you don’t need to worry yourself about that.

She’d heard them talk, later. She’s a little worrier, that one.

But Christine wasn’t worried now. She was glad she had on her warm anorak, zipped up to the very top. There was stew for dinner, and maybe an apple pie. Stick to your ribs, her dad told her: he made his stews the night before, always; he made the best stews.

She looked across the fields as she cycled – at the lough and the cliffs, and the town below, from which she had just cycled: white houses and dark slate roofs and the Green on the water’s edge, with its bandstand and its stone seats and its white shingle beaches and its little spring that gushed from a rock carved into the shape of a horse’s head, and poured across the path in its channel and emptied into the sea. But now, as Christine turned her bicycle off the country road and into the lane that led to her house – a couple of hundred yards away, no more – these views vanished and the hedges closed in, meeting almost overhead. They hadn’t been cut, not really cut, for some years: everyone had become a little lackadaisical, she had heard her mother murmur, in the matter of hedging and ditching.

Not that Christine minded: in fact, there was something exciting about spinning down this tunnel-like lane, this lane she knew so well, with the hedgerows cool and dripping, and the hawthorn bright with red berries now at summer’s end. It was quite exciting – though she was too old to say so. She knew better.

She was practically grown up.

She knew about the hawthorn. Maria Coyle had brought a bough of hawthorn into school, in May, to decorate the May altar. And Miss McNamara had grabbed it, they said afterwards in the playground, really grabbed it, like a cat grabbing a rat, and snatched it from Maria Coyle’s hand and taken it out into the playground and thrown it over the fence: just like that! All in a minute. Then she had come back in: and now she had a big red face, though not as red as Maria Coyle’s face was – no way, José, they said afterwards in the playground; Maria’s face was a whole lot redder – and she took Maria Coyle and she said, ‘sorry, Maria’; and someone said that the hair that grew out of the big mole on Miss McNamara’s face stuck out like a bit of wire, as if it had had an electric shock. ‘Sorry, Maria,’ Miss McNamara said, and then she rested the palm of her hand on Maria’s head; and Maria, who had been about to cry, didn’t cry, because Miss McNamara told them a good story – about the hawthorn and the fairies and the fairy rings that had hawthorn planted on them. ‘Why hawthorn?’ said Miss McNamara – and Christine had put her hand up, and ‘yes, Christine,’ said Miss McNamara; and Christine had told them why.