The Loney

Chapter Seven

Late in the night, I heard far off voices. Shouting. Whooping. Like a war dance. It only lasted for a few seconds and I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but in the morning everyone was talking about it around the breakfast table where the smell of toast mingled with the stew Mummer had been making since first light.

‘I didn’t sleep a wink afterwards,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ said Father Bernard. ‘It was probably just farmers calling in their dogs, eh Monro?’

He reached down and rubbed at Monro’s neck.

‘At three in the morning?’ Mrs Belderboss said.

‘Farmers do keep odd hours, Mary,’ said Mummer.

‘Well I wish they wouldn’t.’

‘I thought it sounded as if it was coming up from the sea,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘Didn’t you?’

Everyone shrugged and finished drinking their tea. Only Miss Bunce passed any more comment.

‘At Glasfynydd, it’s totally silent at night,’ she said.

Mummer looked at her and took the dirty plates and bowls out to wash.

I didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t be certain that the wind blustering around the house in the early hours hadn’t tricked my ears, but as I’d lain there in dark, I was convinced that the voices were coming from the woods.

I wondered if I ought to catch Father Bernard as everyone was leaving the dining room and tell him, but there was a crash from the kitchen and we could hear Mummer shouting.

When I went to see what had happened, she had Hanny tipped back over the sink, her fingers inside his mouth. Hanny was gripping the edge of the basin. The dish of stew that was to be eaten later that evening lay in pieces on the floor in a slick of beef and gravy.

‘Spit it out,’ Mummer said. ‘Get rid of it.’

Hanny swallowed whatever was in his mouth and Mummer gave a sigh of exasperation and let go of him.

Father Bernard appeared behind me. Then Farther.

‘What’s the matter, Mrs Smith?’ said Father Bernard.

‘Andrew’s been at the stew,’ she said.

‘Sure, he’s not had all that much,’ he laughed.

‘I told you, Father. He’s got to fast, like the rest of us,’ said Mummer. ‘It’s very important. He’s got to be properly prepared.’

‘I don’t think a mouthful of casserole will do much damage, Esther,’ said Farther.

‘He’s had half the lot,’ said Mummer, pointing to the brown puddle that Monro was sniffing with interest.

Father Bernard called him away but Mummer flicked her hand dismissively.

‘No, let him eat it, Father. It’s all it’s good for now.’

Hanny started to lick his fingers, and Mummer gasped and grabbed him by the arm and marched him over to the back door. She opened it to the hiss of rain and pushed Hanny’s fingers further into his mouth until he emptied his stomach on the steps.

***

It took a long time for Hanny to settle. I tried to get him to go back to sleep but he was still wound up and kept on wandering along the landing to the toilet. Each time he came back he looked paler than the last, his eyes red and sore. In the end he came and sat on the edge of my bed and rattled his jam jar of nails.

‘Where does it hurt, Hanny?’ I said, touching him on the temples, the forehead, the crown.

He put his hands over his head like a helmet. It hurt everywhere.

‘Try and sleep, Hanny,’ I said. ‘You’ll feel better.’

He looked at me and then touched the mattress.

‘Yes, alright,’ I said. ‘But only for a little while.’

I lay next to him and after a few minutes he began snoring. I extracted myself as quietly as possible and went outside.

It had stopped raining and the last of the water was trickling down the old gutters that ran through the cobbles to a large iron drain in the middle of the yard.

Outside, as well as in, Moorings felt like a place that had been repeatedly abandoned. A place that had failed. The dry stone walls that formed the yard were broken down to a puzzle of odd sized rocks that no one had ever had the skill to rebuild, only thread together with lengths of wire. There was a small, tin-roofed outhouse in one corner, locked and chained, and plastered with bird muck. And beyond the yard stretched wide, empty fields that had been left fallow for so long that the rusting farm machinery that had been there since we’d first come here was now almost buried under the nettles and brambles.

The wind came rushing in off the sea, sweeping its comb through the scrubby grass and sending a shiver through the vast pools of standing water. I felt the wire moving forward and Father Bernard was standing next to me.

‘Andrew alright now?’

‘Yes, Father. He’s sleeping.’

‘Good.’

He smiled and then nodded towards the sea. ‘You used to come here every year, Tonto?’

‘Yes.’

He made a quick sound of disbelief with his lips.

‘Can’t have been much fun for a wee lad,’ he said.

‘It was alright.’

‘It reminds me of the place I grew up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t wait to get away. I tell you, when they sent me to the Ardoyne, the place they gave me in The Bone was a paradise compared with Rathlin Island. It had an indoor toilet, for a start.’

‘What’s it like? Belfast?’ I said.

I’d seen it night after night on the news. Barricades and petrol bombs.

He looked at me, understood what I was getting at, and gazed across the field again. ‘You don’t want to know, Tonto,’ he said. ‘Believe me.’

‘Please, Father.’

‘Why the sudden interest?’

I shrugged.

‘Another time, eh? Suffice to say the Crumlin Road in July isn’t much fun.’

He nodded across the field.

‘I was going to take a walk,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come?’

He parted the wire and I climbed through and did the same for him. Once through, he brushed down his jacket and we walked towards the Panzer, disturbing a pair of curlews that burst out of the grass and clapped away.

‘She means well,’ Father Bernard said. ‘Your mother. She only wants to help Andrew.’

‘I know.’

‘She may not seem it, but she’s frightened more than anything else.’

‘Yes.’

‘And fear can make people do funny things.’

‘Yes, Father. I know.’

He patted me on the shoulder and then put his hands in his pockets.

‘Will he get better?’ I said. It slipped out before I could help it.

Father Bernard stopped walking and looked back at the house.

‘What do you mean by better, Tonto?’

I hesitated and Father Bernard thought for a second before he re-phrased the question.

‘I mean, what would you change in him?’ he said.

I hadn’t thought about it before.

‘I don’t know, Father. That he could talk.’

‘Is that something you’d like? For him to talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t sound all that sure.’

‘I am sure, Father.’

‘Do you think it makes Andrew unhappy? Not being able to talk?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to.’

He considered this with a deep breath and then spoke.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if Andrew will get better in the way you want him to. That’s up to God to decide. All you can do is pray and put your trust in Him to make the right decisions about Andrew’s happiness. You do still pray don’t you, Tonto?’

‘Yes.’

He gave me a wry smile. Even as he asked the question I think he knew that I didn’t and hadn’t for some time. Priests are like doctors. They know that people lie about the things they think will disappoint them.

We came to the Panzer and Father Bernard laid his hand against the rock and felt its texture. He ran his finger up a long crack and picked at a clod of moss, teasing the fibres of it between his fingers.

‘God understands it’s not all plain sailing, you know. He allows you to question your faith now and again,’ he said, looking closely at the fossils, the tiny bivalves and ammonites. ‘Come on now, mastermind, what does it say in Luke fifteen?’

‘Something about lost sheep?’

‘Aye. See, if you can remember that, sure you’re not damned for all eternity just yet.’

He moved around the rock, feeling for hand holds and pulling himself up onto the top. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the view, then something under his feet caught his attention.

‘Hey, Tonto,’ he called down. ‘Come up here.’

He was on his knees, paddling his fingers in a hole full of water. He looked at my puzzled expression.

‘It’s a bullaun,’ he said. ‘We had one on the farm when I was a wee boy.’

He looked at me again and took hold of my hand, pressing my fingers to the edges of the hole.

‘Feel that?’ How smooth it is? That’s not been made by water. It was cut by a man.’

‘What’s it for, Father?’

‘They made them hundreds of years ago to collect rain. They thought the water was magical if it didn’t touch the ground, you see.’

He stood up and dried his hands on his coat.

‘My granny used to make the cows drink out of the one in our field,’ he said. ‘And if I ever had a fever, she’d take me down there and wash me in it to make me better.’

‘Did it work?’

He looked at me and frowned and gave a little laugh. ‘No, Tonto, it didn’t,’ he said.

He climbed down and I was about to do the same when I noticed the Land Rover parked on the road down below. I could tell it was Clement’s by the cross painted on the door, though Clement wasn’t inside.

The two men in the front had their faces turned towards me, though it was hard to tell whether they were staring at me or Moorings or the woods behind. Whatever they were looking at, it was clear even from this distance that it was the two men Father Bernard had asked for help the day before. The one built like a bull and the one with the dog. Parkinson and Collier.

‘What do you think those noises were last night, Father?’ I asked.

‘Between you and me,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

‘But you said it was farmers.’

‘It was a wee fib.’

‘You lied to them?’

‘Ah come on, Tonto, I was just trying to reassure them that they weren’t going to get murdered in their beds. Are you coming?’

‘Yes, Father.’

I looked back at the Land Rover and after a moment the driver set off in a plume of steel coloured smoke.

***

Hanny was still asleep when I got back. Mummer hadn’t yet forgiven him and the effort of rousing him and getting him dressed and nursing his headache was too much for her to cope with. So she allowed him to stay in bed while they went off to church for The Blessing of the Oils and The Washing of the Feet. It wasn’t an integral part of his preparation for the shrine and he would only spoil it if he came.

‘But don’t let him lounge around all day,’ said Mummer, looking up the stairs as they were all leaving.

‘Keep out of mischief,’ Farther added as he plucked his flat cap from the peg and helped Mr and Mrs Belderboss out.

I watched them go and when I closed the front door and turned around, Hanny was standing at the top of the stairs. He had been waiting for them to leave too. Now we could go down to the beach at last. We could leave their world and find ours.