On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (39 page)

‘How’d you get over, the water the way it is?’ Cilla asked.

‘Rowed hard. A nightmare. A lot more than a mile. Paddy tried to talk me out of it.’

‘How are we going to get to the mainland?’ Cilla addressed both men. ‘Get to a doctor?’

‘The swells are like hay stacks,’ Leo said. ‘And worse to come. The island could be cut off for days.’

‘With four of us the boat should be more stable.’ Tony said. ‘Shouldn’t it?’

‘Seas like that, even the trawlermen won’t go out.’ Leo paused. ‘Boat’s too small. Dangerous no matter how you look at it.’

‘Two rowing, one holding Lenny?’ Tony said.

‘We have to!’ Cilla said. ‘If the island is cut off, with all those drugs in her we just don’t know. Probably needs her stomach pumped. And that leg of yours, the way it is,’ she said to Tony, ‘if it bleeds again, or, or – ’

As though suspended in private worlds, all three turned silent, gradually displaying a knowing of what fate dictated they must do. And soon their stares colluded and wordlessly signed the covenant.

‘I’ll row,’ Leo said.

‘Me too,’ Cilla said.

Tony glared at her. ‘I can row.’

‘You’re not okay. Blood could burst out of that leg.’

Cilla wrapped Lenny in extra linen, zipped her into Leo’s big olive-green oilskin and snapped the chin-strap. Minutes later the foursome set out through moonless dark and flurries of rain to the edge of Intinn and the ink-black ocean.

Leo heaved both oars, hauled them away into noise and commotion. Beyond the shield of land, big ocean surf attacked the low-lying boat, dropped it into trough after trough and buckled it off course. Leo jiggled the oars, won back stability, and each time righted the prow to point for their sole marker on the mainland, the lighted steeple of St Brigid’s Church.

Low in the bare hull, being flung about like on a carnival ride, Tony cushioned Lenny’s body from the boat’s hard wood. On the forward plank Cilla scooped the bailer machine-like, firing back the flooding brine with a fury of her own.

On it went, until halfway across Leo stopped moving, his gasping almost as loud as the gale. With the oars tearing at their locks, the boat skewed, caught in a squall of wind and current. Cilla dropped the strung bailer, yanked hard at Leo’s slumped form, screeched his name. He stared back with agony. She grabbed one oar, shouted at him to switch places. He moved forward, still welded to the second oar; she prised it free and began fighting to re-set the boat. Braced by the gunwale, Leo began scooping at the ever-rising water.

Each time, Cilla held high the heavy oars as the boat was flung up, re-sank them when it cracked back down, and went on heaving against the force of the elements. As the effort wore on, she moved with expiring strength. With about one-third of a mile to go she began losing the battle with the oars. She recaptured control, managed another half-dozen strokes, and broke again. In a cauldron of noise and almost total darkness the boat whirled wildly. All onboard braced against the constant beating. And now, with a foot of water in the hull, they were off course and sitting perilously low.

Tony pulled at Leo. Leo dropped into the hull, took Lenny, who had been muttering intermittently and opening and closing her eyes. He then scrambled to the forward plank, to Cilla. She acknowledged him only when forced to by his grip.

‘Boat’s too heavy!’ he yelled. ‘Have to move fast!’ He halted her attempt to re-command the oars. With no further protest she manoeuvred to the aft plank.

Stroking shallow and deep, he set his mind against his objecting body, tamed the wild bucketing of the boat and pointed it back toward the steeple. Before long they were moving again toward the mainland, still more than a half-mile away.

But they were going down.

As obsessedly as Cilla threw back the ocean, the ocean returned in greater mass, wave after wave dumping peril into the boat from all sides. Tony fought on, grimacing through each long stroke of the oars.

Leo struggled up out of the flooded hull, motioned to Cilla to take Lenny. ‘I can swim it,’ he shouted at Tony.

Tony snarled.

‘Fourteen stone lighter. You’ll have a chance.’

Tony’s head shook. How could he agree to such a thing, his conscience asked. How could he not? He reviewed his crew: Leo, poised in front of him, willing to sacrifice himself; Cilla compulsive, still fighting, probably in shock, unaware of Leo’s bargain; neither had surrendered, nor panicked, their wills unbroken still. But it was clear what all three knew: that their battle was lost, that in minutes their small boat would sink and the Atlantic would steal four more souls. How could he say no to Leo’s bargain if it offered the other three a chance? Or yes?

Leo turned aside, tipped Tony’s hand.

‘The rope!’ Tony yelled. ‘Tie it to you, stay behind us.’ Leo twisted the rope around his fist.

Cilla screamed.

But Leo’s plunge was over. He was gone, consumed by the ocean. Her tirade cast curses at the powers that demanded such a sacrifice.

Tony thrust his oars deeper, exhaling half-formed words with each stroke. Now, sitting higher in the swells, the boat caught a number of shore-bound breakers, and continued closing the distance to safety.

Then, with just a couple of hundred yards to go, the oars ripped from his grasp, knocking Cilla on her back. She quickly righted herself and grabbed Lenny, who seemed still oblivious of the mayhem. Tony’s hands boxed the air for the jumping oars, until he forced them back under his control. But now his self-talk was louder, more fragmented, and his shoulders and arms burned. He’d get them in, he swore in each breath; he owed it to each of them.

Closing in on the mainland his rhythm broke, hand working against hand, matter against mind; his racked body was mixing up strokes, rejecting his orders. He berated himself. Where was Anto MacNeill, he demanded, where was his iron will, the power that got him through the streets, through nine years in the pen? Inside! a voice answered, the same voice that always answered. Inside! Where Joel Vida said it was. Where everything is.

His shoulders won back a slow-firing rhythm, oars cutting deep again; pull after pull he was still driving the boat shoreward, at a cost he feared could not continue. Where would he find the strength? In faith, the voice said, in faith, and only to the extent that he believed. Just then a mountain of water crashed onto them, sank the boat precariously low. His self-talk struck back: one more, one more, one more; and he pulled and pulled, an extra breath always there when all felt used up. Then a mantra took over: forward, drop, pull, back; forward, drop, pull, back. And the voice and rhythm and pain endured into delirium. Until out of the dark a hand shot into the boat, then another, bodyless hands reaching up out of the sea, grabbing the boat, serpents’ hands, he thought, now four hands, voices in the tempest, dark figures in the water, and from beneath came a roar, stones, the stony shore, Paddy McCann, Liam Foley, trying to swing them in, oars scraping shingle, arms pumping still, until Cilla stilled him. They were in, in, directly below the steeple of St Brigid’s.

Balancing in the flooded boat, Cilla pulled at the rope, rapidly at first, then slower, until the end arrived. ‘Leeeo! Leeeo! Leeeo!’ she called into the maelstrom through cupped hands.

Liam Foley fought his way to her.

‘I’m alright,’ she said. ‘Someone better look after Lenny. I’ll help Tony.’

But Tony’s body refused to move, his eyes tightly closed. Cilla and Liam set about easing him out of the boat.

‘Leo Reffo. Lord be good to him,’ Paddy said. His large frame leaned into the flooded boat; he lifted Lenny over the side and made for the boat-slip, talking continually: ‘The Volvo’s just beside us,
mo chuisle
; nice and warm and comfy, it’s all going to work out grand, completely grand, mark my words, you’ll see.’

‘Already in heaven, good man like Leo,’ the priest said, helping Tony along. ‘Looking down on all of us right now. God’ll reward you both for all you did this day. We’ll get you warm and dry in no time, get a few hot toddies into you. You’re home now, son; it’s all over.’

Just then the taxi’s headlights beamed down the boat-slip, followed by the silhouette of Paddy hurrying back. He and Liam carried Tony to the car and sat him in next to a fidgety but still semi-conscious Lenny.

‘Where’s Cilla?’ Paddy asked with alarm. Liam’s gaze shot to the water. Both men charged toward her. Out beyond the boat, defying the treachery, Cilla combed the darkness, still calling to Leo.

Liam reached her first. ‘Time to go, child, get us all inside out of this pagan weather.’ She stood firm as the surf knocked them about. Liam held on to her, his free hand moving in consecration, sending blessings to Leo, somewhere in the dark Atlantic waters.

‘You’re a credit to the village, to the whole country,’ Paddy said, securing his arm around her from the opposite side. ‘You’ve done enough now, more than any human could be asked to do.’

‘More than Christ would ask of you,’ Liam said as they shepherded her past the boat and toward the boat-slip.

Then above the roar of wind and sea came a call, a cry not of the elements. The trio turned in unison. Out of the black ocean a form splashed toward them. Then an old watery baritone boomed.

‘Here I am! I’m here!’

It entered the spill of the car lights.

‘Lord Almighty!’ Paddy said.

‘Holy Jesus!’ Cilla cried.

‘Suffering God!’ said Liam.

Leo’s stout frame grew bigger, clearer, face glowing. Paddy and Liam made signs of the cross. Cilla just stared. Then all three made for him.

‘Took the da,’ Leo said, breathing hard. ‘And two of the brothers. The bitch. She wasn’t getting another Reffo.’

‘Mother of God, I don’t believe it,’ Liam said. ‘Jesus of Nazareth, Lazarus of Bethany, now Leo of Aranroe.’

‘Saw the lights, saw the lights and kept going,’ Leo said. ‘Blessings on the work.’

‘Y’can’t kill a good man. Can’t kill a good man . . .’ Paddy’s words ran wild, as did his tears.

The men circled their arms around Leo’s sopping bulk. Then Cilla joined in and all four clutched for a moment, knee-deep in the raging surf.

* * *

From Horslips Hotel above the loch, Cilla called Dr Lappin, arranged for him to meet them at Lenny’s apartment, then drove on ahead of the others.

With Paddy and Liam up front and Lenny between Leo and Tony in the back, the taxi careered out onto the road. Throughout the short journey Paddy chattered and hummed, mostly to himself. And from the front seat, Liam’s lustrous face distributed joy to all. At the crest of the hill the taxi turned onto Claire Abbey’s meandering drive and crunched to a stop. Cilla’s Escort was waiting for them, as was the doctor.

A short while later Dr Lappin emerged from Lenny’s bedroom, informed the five storm-beaten figures that she was doing fine; he’d be staying with her another hour, for observation. It would be best, he stressed, if the ordeal was not mentioned to her; there was a distinct likelihood that her brain had not recorded the trauma. Leo and Cilla offered to relieve the doctor. But no, he responded, he had brought the woman into the world thirty-five years earlier, as a consequence of which he saw it as his responsibility to administer to her well-being. Notwithstanding this, he said, he would relinquish responsibility temporarily to Fr Foley while he tended to the others.

In another bedroom he inserted thirteen stitches in Tony’s thigh, praised Cilla’s bandaging for stemming the bleeding, and advised staying off the leg as much as possible for at least two or three days. He then rubbed ointment into Tony’s raw, swollen hands and dressed a half dozen less serious lacerations to his back and shoulders. The ribs, he said, appeared intact, probably just bruised, but should be x-rayed at Castlebar Hospital. On looking into Leo’s eyes and listening to his chest, the doctor pronounced him in need of a good night’s rest but not a whit the worse off for all the wear and tear he’d been through.

By this time Cilla had returned in a grey tracksuit retrieved from her staff locker in the hotel, bringing with her Tony’s backpack of dry clothing from the car. She declined to be examined, citing only sore hands and icy fingers and toes, no more than she was used to as a hiker, she declared.

‘There’ll be a grand fire tonight up beyond,’ Leo said. ‘Whether I’m really still here or only think I am, that’s where I’m off to, to sit in front of a bit of heat and raise a glass in thanks.’

‘You’ll need getting out of them wet clothes first,’ Cilla said. ‘Paddy and Fr Foley too.’

‘I’ll drink a toast first,’ Leo said. ‘To us all. One glass.’

‘A hot Tullamore Dew; that’ll do the trick.’ Paddy rubbed his palms together. ‘A drink, Liam, drowned as we are, or need I ask?’

‘A toast to life should never be turned down. Let’s wet our lips, lads and lassie, and let the fire do the drying.’

They ambled out into the castle grounds, all linked together, rounding big sycamores dropping globules of rain, blithely crunching gravel, and arrived at the Abbey’s rear entrance. There, pulling five wooden chairs together, they sat around a log fire that drew musty steam from their clothing. In this almost empty lounge, all but Tony recounted the terrors and triumphs of the day.

Then Paddy got to his feet and saluted the group.
‘
Sláinte to gach ceann acu, mo cháirde, ar oiche seo faoin shonas.
Here’s to good friends,’ he said, his glass high. Then he grimaced, as though interrupted by an unseen intrusion, but pressed on. ‘Tell y’all a true story. Thirty years ago, couple of days before Christmas 1964, the bitterest cold day, Leo and Liam and meself, the three of us, we got out of the car outside Concannon’s Bar. But we didn’t go in for a pint, as was our custom. We didn’t. We walked down to where the five of us stood not an hour ago – ’

‘The day we buried Róisín,’ Liam said. ‘Lord rest her.’

‘The very day.’ Paddy’s voice weakened. ‘And the very spot.’

‘Aye. A toast,
mo chairde,
’
Liam said, punctuating the lull that had fallen. Leo rose to join him, followed by Cilla, and finally Tony. ‘To wee Róisín Doyle. And to her da, my old pal, Tommy.’