False Mermaid (9 page)

Nora was just about to switch off the laptop when her inbox suddenly flickered with half a dozen new messages. Her heart lifted at the sight of Cormac’s name, but it was a pleasure immediately dampened beneath a wave of remorse. She had promised to get in touch as soon as she arrived, and had completely forgotten. The message had been posted just after midnight Irish time. He must have sent it off before going to bed. She checked her watch. Just after daybreak in Ireland now, not a decent hour to call.

The subject read:
Tune.
No message, only an audio attachment. Opening it, she recognized Cormac’s flute instantly, hearing his breath in the low register that seemed to scour up dusky earth, and in soaring high notes that rang with the freshness of spring water and clear air. The music brought back that astonishing moment out on the bog only a few days ago when she knew all the way through to the center of her being that she loved him.

She hadn’t been sure for the longest time, and then suddenly it was a fact, a binary value that switched from zero to one in the space of a single heartbeat. The sound of the flute filled her ears, playing out all the fierce, secret relief she had felt at the sight of him that day on the bog. He would have come along on this journey, she was certain, had she given him the slightest encouragement. But for some reason she had resisted. She couldn’t ask him to follow her, not here, to this terrible place. At least he had not asked for an explanation. She wouldn’t have known how to answer, except to say that since Tríona’s death, things like honesty and integrity and decency seemed strange to her—suspect, almost. After all, there had been a time when she had believed that Peter Hallett possessed all those qualities. Sometimes it felt as if she’d lost the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. The whole world seemed skewed off-center, and try as she might, she couldn’t manage to get it righted.

Cormac’s tune began again, and she let it play.
You’re not a person who gives up,
he had said.
But neither am I
. There was no doubt about the first part, much good it had done her so far. All she could do was to hold out hope that the second bit was true as well. Still, she could never blame Cormac for finding someone else, if he did. Someone who fit his life much better than she ever would. No promises, they’d agreed. Cormac had troubles of his own, without getting sandbagged by hers.

An instant message suddenly appeared on her screen:

—Are you there, Nora?

She could hear his voice in the words, and her heart jumped again. She turned down the music and picked up her mobile. He answered on the first ring.

“Cormac, I meant to call. I’m so sorry—”

“Everything all right?”

How could she tell him the truth? “Everything’s fine. You’re up early.”

“I was going out for a row. Just thought I’d see if you were around.”

“How’s your father?”

“Actually doing what he’s told—for once.”

“I’m glad. Where is his home place, exactly?”

“Just up the road from Glencolumbkille. A very remote spot. Hard to believe, really. I didn’t know places like this still existed.”

“Sounds lonely.”

He hesitated. “I actually like it—the wind and the waves. You know me—the wilder the better.”

“Speaking of which, thanks for the tune. I was having a listen when I got your message just now.”

“So it came through?”

“Like you were right here beside me.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. “That was the general idea.”

“What do you call it?”

There was a slight pause, and she imagined him looking up at her from beneath dark brows—nervous, hesitant, unused to rituals of self-revelation. “What if I tell you the next time we meet?”

“So mysterious. What was it that ancient Greek said about the Celts?”

“‘They speak in riddles, hinting at things, leaving much to be understood.’”

“Some things never change, apparently.”

His voice turned serious. “Still got your hazel knot?”

She felt for it in her pocket. “Right here.”

“Good—hang on to it. I feel bloody useless over here.”

“Cormac, please don’t—”

“Nora—” He was on the verge of saying something more but demurred. “You’re probably knackered. I’ll let you get some sleep. Mind yourself now—and sleep well.”

“Good night, Cormac. Thanks again for the tune.”

She hung up, and placed one hand over his picture on the screen. To her surprise, an instant message popped up beneath her fingers:

—
Oiche mhaith.

Followed almost immediately by another:

—P.S. I like hearing you say my name.

She recalled the first time she’d spoken it aloud, in the conservation lab at Collins Barracks in Dublin. They were standing over an exam table, discussing the fate of the red-haired girl from the bog, and in her agitation she had touched his hand, addressed him by name for the very first time. “Cormac,” she said aloud into the darkness.

They were both treading across no-man’s-land, unsure where to put a foot down. She reached into her pocket for the hazel knot, studying the faint wrinkles in the greenish bark, the dark brown marrow of its angled ends. A charm against mischief, he had said. A protection. She couldn’t tell him how it had rescued her from danger this very night. Nor could she ask the host of questions that tumbled around inside her brain—how long did the charm’s peculiar powers last, and just how far did they extend? What if she wasn’t the one who needed protecting?

Cormac leaned forward, pulling hard on the oars, pushing against the aft seat with his legs. Another twenty minutes and he’d be completely spent. It was just after seven o’clock, but the sun had been up for nearly three hours, and glorious light fell against the wall of black clouds that obscured the western horizon.

The conversation with Nora had unsettled him, but at least she seemed pleased with the tune. He should have told her the name—what had stopped him? He poured his frustration into the rowing, pushing himself against the limits of his own strength, feeling the strain in his shoulders and thighs. The distance between him and Nora seemed to grow in that brief conversation, and for the first time he understood that it might be a span he couldn’t leap. But he’d made the decision, booked the ticket. It was too late now to turn back. With each oar stroke, he tried to wipe away his fears of the future, to concentrate on the task at hand.

The water was relatively calm today. Of course this wasn’t the smooth river sculling he had grown accustomed to in Dublin, more like the rough seas he’d plowed back home in Clare. But the motion was the same, tucking one oar handle under the other in a thoughtless, rhythmic repetition he found calming. It cleared his mind, helped him to see things outside the clutter and noise of everyday life. The first morning up here, he’d inquired at the local post office at Glencolumbkille, asking if there was a local rowing club, or anyone who might let him take a skiff out for an hour or so. He’d headed off to Teelin harbor this morning before anyone at the house was up, hoping to get in a good workout before going back to tell his father that he was leaving, booked on a plane that took off from Shannon tomorrow morning.

As he rowed below Sail Rock, a group of seals pushed up alongside him, heads poking out of the water. The frank curiosity in the dark, liquid eyes made it easy to see the connection people felt with them. There was something almost human in their aspect. What else could
have fueled the long-held suspicions that they could slip from their skins and walk about on land, even bear human children? How amazing it must have been to live in an age where gods and men, animals and spirits mixed together freely, where shape-shifters and hybrid creatures were taken for granted. Or perhaps the old beliefs masked a darker reality. If what Roz was discovering was true, the story of Mary Heaney’s disappearance might implicate a whole community in her violent death. How much better if the villagers of Port na Rón could somehow convince themselves that she was a mysterious changeling who had simply returned to the sea?

Cormac looked into a pair of heavy-lashed, dark eyes that followed him silently from the water’s surface. People said seals were fond of music, that you could call them just by singing or playing an instrument. He watched the animal’s nostrils flare, trying to catch the scent of food, its flipper raised in unmistakable salutation. For one moment, it seemed possible that these creatures might carry knowledge of a young woman’s strange disappearance. The seal beside him opened its mouth to sing in a strange, vowelish language, and others in the group responded. At last the whole pod, evidently concluding that he had nothing to offer, dived deep and abandoned him. If they did know anything about Mary Heaney, they weren’t telling.

He’d almost completed his circuit out from Teelin, and now started to row back to the harbor. He stayed as far as possible from the base of the sheer drop, where, no matter what the weather, the sea boiled and churned around the rocks below. The Devil’s Chair was barely visible here at sea level, proving once again that point of view was all. In only a few days, he had developed a fierce attachment to this stretch of rough coastline, to its seals and seabirds, the beaches and tiny harbors tucked up beneath the soaring cliffs. And yet he felt himself already halfway across the ocean, already parted from this place before he had even left.

Despite the relative calm, the western wind off the Atlantic was never indifferent, and it took all his strength to keep from drifting too close to the rocks at the cliff base. Although it was July, and he was rowing flat out, the chill would have cut through him entirely if he hadn’t thrown on a windcheater over his fleece. He turned his rowboat toward the harbor and was tying it to a ring on the concrete jetty just as the dark clouds now settled overhead let loose their first few drops of rain. Time to head back and face the old man.

The house was dark when he arrived. He tried the switch inside the front door, but the wind had evidently knocked out the power—the second time in as many days. As he made his way through the darkened sitting room, he heard a slow creak from the back of the house. Someone else was up early. His father had been sleeping until at least half-nine every morning—following his doctors’ advice. The same creaking sounded again, followed by a sudden crash.

Cormac followed the noises to his father’s bedroom at the back corner of the house. The door was ajar, and in the half light, he could see Roz kneeling on the floor next to the old man, holding his hand, calling his name. He pushed the door open.

“Roz, what’s happened?”

“I don’t know—he just collapsed. We’ve got to call for an ambulance—quickly.”

Cormac felt himself moving automatically, fishing the phone from his pocket, pressing in the number for emergency services, and holding the phone fast to his ear, hoping to God that his father wasn’t going to die right here, right now. If Roz hadn’t been in the house, if he’d gone rowing just a few minutes later or hadn’t turned around exactly when he did—

“Yes, we need an ambulance—” He heard his own voice, calmly answering the operator’s questions, while his eyes got used to the half darkness. On the floor before him lay his father, naked but for a flannel dressing gown open to the waist. Joseph Maguire’s eyes were open but unblinking. That this could be the same man who had spoken so blithely about his “spell” the other night was inconceivable.

“They’re on their way,” he said to Roz. “They said to keep him warm.”

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness in the room, he suddenly realized that the duvet from the bed was wrapped around Roz. Her shoulders were bare, her loose hair in disarray. Conscious of his gaze, she reached for a bathrobe that lay on the floor and pulled it about her.

“Cormac, I know how this must look—we’ll have to talk about it later. Help me.” She took the duvet and began tucking it around his father, speaking in a low voice: “Everything’s going to be all right, Joe—an ambulance is on the way. Can you hear me? Please don’t leave us.”

At the hospital, Roz sat beside Cormac in the waiting area at Casualty and handed him a plastic cup of weak tea, purchased from a woman pushing a food trolley through the wards. She took a deep breath. “Cormac,
I know how things looked this morning, but it’s not what you might think—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Roz—”

“No, I do. He’s your father—”

“The man walked out when I was a child, Roz. I didn’t see him again for ten years. We’re barely acquainted, if you want to know the truth.”

“I know. He told me everything. About leaving Ireland, about his work in South America, all the people he knew who just disappeared. He told me about your mother—and you.”

“Me? He doesn’t know the first thing about me.”

“He does. And he cares about you, Cormac, more than you know.”

“He’s certainly had a very odd way of showing it.”

“You say he doesn’t know you, but what do you know about him? He’s such a remarkable man, Cormac. Do you know anything about his work in Chile all those years, the thousands of people he treated with no concern for his own safety—all the lives he saved? Did you know how many times he was arrested and tortured? And in spite of all that, I’ve never met anyone so…” She searched for the words. “I don’t know—so completely engaged with the world, so alive.”

“Why is it every person who tries to convince me what a great humanitarian my father is, just happens to be someone he’s shagging?”

Roz looked as though she’d been slapped.

“Please forgive me, Roz. That was a rotten thing to say. I’m so sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment. “We’re both upset.” A tear escaped and trickled down her face. She brushed it away, and then smiled. “Do you know what’s funny? We haven’t actually—I’d only moved my things down to his room on that day you arrived. He wanted to send me packing back upstairs, but I told him he was being ridiculous. For God’s sake, I said, we’re all adults. He kept insisting that he didn’t want to be unfair to me. Almost as if he knew—” She buried her face in her hands. Cormac moved closer and put his arm around her.