Inch Levels (31 page)

She looked at him.

‘That’s the deal, Sarah,’ he said again. And after a moment, ‘And something else too. You weren’t loved here, in this house: or not by everyone.’ He looked at her red, swollen wrist. ‘That’s plain enough. But you’re making a mistake if you think that because of this, you can never be loved anywhere else. That’s a mistake, Sarah,’ he said and now he got up from the chair. ‘There’s plenty of love to go around,’ he said, ‘and you need to remember that: and there’s still time.’

Without another word now, he left the kitchen: the door closed behind him and she saw him nod to Cassie and go to his jeep. He was gone.

She waited until the sound of his jeep vanished into the distance, and then she went out into the yard to where Cassie was standing: there, on the frosted triangle of yard where, at this time of the year, the sun never reached. She must surely be freezing, standing there for so long in that chilly, deeply shadowed yard, and her hands damp besides. But she showed little sign of it if she was: her nose was perhaps a little more red and the rest of her face a little more white than usual; her hand, when Sarah took it in her own, was cold. But she wasn’t shivering and her teeth weren’t chattering: she remained still and motionless.

‘Will you not come into the warm?’ Sarah said. Cassie shook her head. ‘But you can’t stand out here all day,’ Sarah said, ‘can you? Come into the warm, Cassie.’ But she shook her head; Sarah clicked her tongue in exasperation and turned to go. Do as you please, she thought but did not say; instead, a few beats of silence, broken only by the crunch of her feet on the frost-covered ground. Do as you please. You’ll catch your death out here, but do as you please.

Then Cassie spoke.

‘You should have gone with him.’

Sarah paused, looked back, shrugged.

‘I couldn’t.’

‘You should have,’ Cassie said. ‘You should have gone back with him.’

Sarah shook her head again. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘It’s what you should have done,’ Cassie said.

The same sentence, again and again: Sarah’s hands flew up in frustration, her temper broke suddenly.

‘I couldn’t,’ she screamed. ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t, it was a mistake, don’t you see that?’

But Cassie only said, again, ‘It’s what you should have done.’ She seemed to gather herself. ‘You can begin again. You can begin again. Can’t you?’

‘And what will you do?’

Cassie’s clear, light laugh. ‘Follow you, maybe. But I’ll look after Brendan, first.’

Brendan?

‘He gave me a home. I’ll stay with him, until it’s all over.’

‘And then what?’

But now Cassie had said all she could say. That was plain: and in the face of this, Sarah walked across the frost and into the house, leaving Cassie and the tub of wet laundry standing in the middle of the yard. Sarah wanted to shout, to bawl back through the open door:
and then what? And then what?
But she knew Cassie: knew she had said her piece, would say no more; and besides, there had been enough raised voices this morning. Brendan might come pounding across the frozen fields if there were any more, and then there would be hell to pay.

For a while, she moved around the dark kitchen, from table to sideboard to table again; the fire was dying in the grate; the room was growing cold. She expected Cassie to appear at the door, but no figure appeared framed in it. At last, Sarah moved in exasperation to close the door, to keep the heat in; but before she did – before she gave it a good, satisfying slam – she peered out into the icy yard. She expected to see – what did she expect to see? Not Cassie standing in the same chill corner: for even Cassie could not continue to stand in the one spot for ever. What, then? Perhaps Cassie engaged in some chore: sweeping the place out, or something. But no: the yard was empty, except for the laundry. There was nobody in sight, not a soul.

After a moment, she realised something else: that the din in her head was gone. That silence had taken its place – that the past was in the past, yes; and that the future was a clean, empty space – and that surely twenty minutes must have passed, twenty-five, perhaps, since Anthony left.

And quickly now, she caught her coat from its hook and her bag from the ground, and left the house and began pounding up the lane. Towards the white gate posts, towards the town, towards the sea.

*

At the corner of the lane, Cassie stopped, looked left, looked right, looked straight ahead, looked right again. Danger could come from any direction, but right was the real danger, what Father Lynch would call the True Danger, though he was talking about sin: right was the sharp corner, and right was the town too, and the shops and the Green leading down to the sea. Right was – too many people, too much noise; she felt tight and dry-mouthed there in the town, in the shops, doing what needed doing. It had become a little easier, maybe, with practice: with Sarah away, she had had to do the shopping, do what needed to be done; she was used, now, to people saying
hello, Cassie
, and
that’s a nice day, Cassie
and staring at her, taking her right in. She was used to it, but that didn’t mean she liked it. Her mouth was dry now, as she turned right and bent around the corner, and towards town.

The road, never busy, was empty this morning: the hedges on the other side were white with frost; and the road itself glittered under the cold sun. The icy air stung and her mind stung too: I’m not properly dressed, she thought, I’m not warmly dressed. I’m a holy show, she thought, and they’ll all be looking at me and looking at me even more now. But I have to go. She knew she had to go, she had to see if she could find him.

This had come upon her, in the second after Sarah had marched into the house, leaving the door open wide behind her, letting the heat leak and flow out of the house. She stood for a moment, watching the black rectangle of the doorway – and then moved quickly: out of the yard and up the frosty lane. This was a thing she had never before done: what? to leave the farm, the house, her work in the middle of the day? and all driven by – but driven by what? Driven by something she could not have expressed, even if Sarah sat her down hard in a chair and grasped her shoulders and said
tell me, tell me!
She couldn’t have told her. She only knew what she had to do, which was to go after that man, Anthony, and beg him to come back. What would she say? – even supposing he had paused in the town, even supposing she could by some fluke catch him and speak to him. That was all; that was all she knew.

No: not all. There was more than this: I have to, I have to find him, she thought, walking, swinging along the icy road. The first houses were coming into view now, the blue sheet of the icy sea to the left, the distant cliff face on the far shore shining under the winter sun. I have to, I have to; Cassie, you have to. Her hands were fists, balled into her pockets. I have to, she thought, and if I don’t find him, it will be too late. She thought of a ball of wool unravelling, rolling away into a shadowy corner. I have to find him: that was all she thought as she half-walked, half-ran down the incline of the road and into the town square.

And there he was: his jeep parked by the stone wall that marked the edge of the Green, by the flight of old stone steps that descended into the Green and so down to the shingled foreshore. She ran down the steps and onto the pinched winter grass – and there was Anthony himself, sitting on a stone bench and looking down at the sea. There he was; and Cassie stopped and looked and drew a breath. Here was a chance to say what she wanted to say, and she took it.

‘This is her chance,’ she said, ‘to get away from here, from Brendan, to begin again – and I’m afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t.’

And that was it. That was all. That was what she wanted to say.

That was what she was afraid of: a hole, shadowy and terribly deep, that was opening up in front of Sarah, in front of all of them, if she didn’t get away.
She has to get away,
cried the voice in her head. ‘This is her chance to get away,’ she repeated, and then it seemed as though she ran out of words, suddenly, all of a sudden. She had nothing else to say.

He cleared his throat.

I will howl, she thought, like a dog. Like a dog on a bad, wet day, when he wants to get inside, when he sits and howls at the door, like their farm dogs. He won’t, he isn’t listening; if I howl like a dog he might listen.

But she couldn’t howl, not like a dog or like any animal. Her throat was caught.

And then he spoke.

‘I can help Sarah,’ he said, ‘if she wants to come away. If she wants to stay at home, then she can stay at home.’ He shrugged, ‘and if she wants to come with me, then she can do that too.’ He looked at his wristwatch and said, ‘And she has about thirty minutes to decide. Thirty minutes. Can I call you Cassie?’

She nodded.

‘Well, we have time to kill, Cassie. Let’s take a little walk in this park, and you can show me what there is to see.’

He was trying to be kind; and she smiled a little.

‘Those steps,’ she pointed, ‘and we’ll be at the water. We can walk for a few minutes by the water. To Shell Beach and back.’

‘Shell Beach,’ he repeated. ‘That’s pretty. A few minutes, you say?’

She nodded.

‘Let’s do that, then.’

They descended carefully the further flight of stone steps that led down to the sea. Her shoes crunched on the frost; the frost furred the grass on either side of the path; the water ahead was smooth, like a sheet. And blue, she thought, as blue as – as anything could be. Bluer than the sky, bluer than – than my hands; and she looked at her blue-tinged, icy hands. Bluer than anything; and now they reached the foot of the steps and turned left, taking the footpath along the shore. We’ll walk, she thought, and Sarah’s angry face and tears rose into her blue face. We’ll walk a while, and then we’ll turn and there will be Sarah, waiting for us.

A little gang of six or seven boys were on the path: they were kicking a football ahead of them; they pushed ahead, heading for the beach too; they disappeared around a turn. Otherwise, all was calm and silent: nobody else was about on this chilly morning; the only other moving creatures the gulls, white with black throats and black eyes and black wing tips and the tips of their beaks red like blood, hanging and wheeling over the water or perched motionless on the rocks. She remembered again the oystercatchers that walked so fast – so fast! she thought, by the edge of the water, their little feet, their little legs, they moved so fast I couldn’t even see them. She laughed, almost, at the thought. Her spirits were rising now. We’ll walk to the beach and then we’ll walk back and Sarah will be there.

But at Shell Beach, a shallow crescent between tall jagged piers of rock, they stopped. The football lay abandoned on the fine sand: and the boys had formed a little curving line ten feet or so from the object on the sand. There were gulls here too, many of them poised motionless on each rocky pier: motionless, but now these creatures turned their heads, their red-tipped beaks in unison, their black, bead-like eyes watching with avidity as Cassie and Anthony stood there, arrested on the path; before turning in unison again to watch the curving line of boys on the sand.

And now in a moment, Anthony swore and jumped from the path down to the sand, bellowing a warning as he crunched across the shells. But already two or three of the boys were moving towards the object, which was glossy black and very large – three, four feet across, three, four feet high – and set with black spikes. An ugly thing – and she knew what it was. One final frozen moment of watching the scene there on the sand below her: the gulls silent, intent, greedy; and Anthony pounding across the fine white shells; and the boys turning and scattering – but not all of them, for now one stretched out a hand to touch these vicious spikes. And now Cassie ducked behind one of the tall piers of black rock, just as the world seemed to erupt around her.

As the sea mine exploded, the black-eyed gulls rose into the air as one and flew north into open ocean, south into the lough, east towards the far shore. On the little beach, a wide crater yawned where the sea mine had lain on the sand; the strand was empty now of life.

*

Sarah ran down the stone steps and onto the grass. The sun was shining now brilliantly on the sea, and she raised a hand to shade her eyes. She had seen them from the road, walking slowly north along the coastal path towards the beach: she was on time, she had a stitch in her side and her bag jiggled in her hand – but she was on time. She was leaving Cassie, she was making Cassie explain to her father, later – but she was on time.

She reached the coastal path herself, now, and turned north. They were only a minute away, two minutes away – and now as she turned a corner, the force of the explosion lifted her off her feet. She fell heavily back on the grass and lay for a moment, dazed and shocked – but already she knew what it was. She knew the dull thump and report of torpedoes exploding out to sea, she was accustomed to going down to the shore in the days that followed, accustomed to the sight of what they saw there: a foreshore littered with bodies, bloated, nibbled, their humanity barely in evidence.

But this sound was different, closer, more violent: this was no secure cataclysm at sea. This would affect them all. She staggered to her feet, she dragged herself on along the path, she turned another corner. There was Cassie, on hands and knees at the foot of the black rocks. There was the beach and the crater. Nobody else in sight. Nobody else alive.

*

Sarah built up the dying fire into a decent blaze: soon, the chilly kitchen would warm up nicely. The short December day was already over, the furry frost was returning to the yard, Cassie in bed on the doctor’s instruction, Brendan in his room with the door closed. Sarah sat down now at the table. The backs of her legs pulsed and stung. She hardly knew what she had to do, although she understood that she had little time in which to do it: the word had gone out; and soon a neighbour or two would be calling on them. But in her mind’s eye, the town fell upon them in force; she saw rivers of people filing out from the town and descending the lane and filling the yard and encompassing the house, all in silence. She had scant time, but for the moment she sat and looked at the fire.