TransAtlantic

2012

THE COTTAGE SAT AT THE EDGE OF THE LOUGH. SHE COULD HEAR the wind and rain whipping across the expanse of open water: it hit the trees and muscled its way into the grass.

She began to wake early in the morning, even before the children. It was a house worth listening to. Odd sounds from the roof. She thought, at first, that it might be rats scuttling across the slate, but she soon discovered that it was the gulls flying overhead, dropping oysters on the roof to break the shells open. It happened mostly in the morning, sometimes at dusk.

The shells pinged first, silent a moment as they bounced, followed by a jingling roll along the roof until they tumbled down into the long grass, spotted with whitewash.

When a shell tip hit directly, it cracked open, but if it dropped sideways through the sky it wouldn’t break: it lay there like a thing unexploded.

The gulls swooped, acrobatic, upon the broken shells. Their hunger briefly solved, they flapped off towards the water once more, in squadrons of blue and gray.

Soon the rooms began to stir, the opening of windows, cupboards and doors, the wind off the lough moving through the house.