Blasket Spirit Read online

  I gasped at the surface, my whole body tingling. I laughed aloud, as the dolphin circled me, and leaped clear over my head. Each time I duck-dived and swam, he shadowed me, inches from my right side. The more I rubbed and tickled him, the closer he swam.

  After a short time, I was exhausted. I trod water, labouring for breath. What strange, helpless creatures they must think we are. Despite his huge weight and size, he was unconditionally protective and gentle, as if I was a baby in the water. Suddenly I felt his beak nuzzle the soles of my feet from below. I couldn’t oblige him with a reaction. He then swam to my side and stopped. As I ran my hands down his flanks, he began to move forward, gently, towing me a few feet. I was very cautious, afraid that he would feel trapped, but each time I let him go, he returned, offering another piggyback. I avoided his blowhole carefully, stroking from head to tail, as I was towed in circles around the cove. I began to wonder if it was my laughter that kept bringing him back. I felt sheer delight pulsing in every cell of my body. Maybe my voice was familiar to him at that stage. For over six weeks, I had called to him from the beach every morning.

  As I swam towards the slipway, the dolphin kept swimming between the shore and me, but there wasn’t an ounce of energy left in my body to play any more. I felt a rock under the water, and found my balance. I could stand with my head and shoulders out of the water. The dolphin glided over to me, stopping, with his beak tipping my chin. He never moved while I chatted and scratched his throat. Each time I rubbed him, he allowed me to lift his beak farther and farther up out of the water, until his head rested on my shoulder. Once again his eye held my gaze.

  As his head slid gently back down my arm into the water, he opened his beak wide, making chatty clicking sounds. I stroked the side of his head and the inside of his beak before he closed his mouth gently on my hand, as softly as velvet.

  Finally, as I scrambled out onto the slipway, he circled the cove. My feet had absolutely no feeling and I couldn’t stand. Hugging my knees in an effort to get warm, I pulled my shirt around me. All the while, I continued to talk to him through chattering teeth. Only as I disappeared over the clifftop did he swim out to sea.

  Back at the hut, I made a hot pot of rice porridge and drank huge amounts of tea to warm up. I sat on a stone, leaning back against the warm wall, looking across to the mainland, cradling the warm saucepan in my freezing hands. Blue sky and blue sea mirrored one another in all directions. The Three Sisters stretched out into the sea, side by side, leaning on their green elbows, their toes interlaced somewhere back at Brandon Creek. A cow bawled from Firtear’s farm on Slea Head. Cars glinted in the sunshine on the clifftop above Dún Chaoin pier, but there was still no sign of the ferry. The mainland was a world away.

  Half a metre from my elbow, a young rabbit nibbled the grass. The donkeys ambled up the path. The mare was so heavily in foal, her belly was inches above the grass. They stopped below me. ‘No joy today, sorry.’ I called. ‘The cupboard is bare – no apples, no carrots, no donkey food, no rabbit food, no robin food.’ The stallion was having none of it and seized his opportunity to stage a coup. He had cantered up the bank into the hut before I could struggle on to my numb feet. There was barely room for the two of us in there. As he chewed up a page of my journal, I attempted to push him backwards through the door. Turning him around was not an option, unless he was going to clamber over the bunk. In the middle of the struggle, Sue arrived and lent a hand, pulling him back by the tail.

  She shooed the two donkeys down past Teach an Rí, while I made some more tea. ‘No ferry today,’ she announced. ‘Fergal is in Dingle with engine trouble.’ She was delighted with the break. Things had been hectic lately. ‘I’ll get to relax and do a few jobs around the house, catch up on some weaving, and you know what? I might even go to the beach for an hour this afternoon.’

  I handed her a mug of tea, and we settled back against the warm wall once more. It had started and was continuing to be a wonderful day on the island. ‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘I won’t go to the back of the island. It’ll be bliss to stay around the village in the sunshine and read.’ We sat quietly, watching the chough family flying along the cliff line below Páidí’s house. Already the chicks seemed to be as big and as fast as their parents. Down on the White Strand, the Beverley Sisters were hauling out into the sunshine, at the far end of the beach. ‘They must have heard the news too.’

  The whole island seemed set for a peaceful day.

  ‘So tell me about Donie.’ I had no idea that Sue had seen me swimming with the dolphin that morning. Just as I began to tell her, it started. It began with the deep, gravelly scraping. Then there was the creaky swivelling, followed by the heavy thud. The whole pattern of noise was underpinned by an incessant whining. Sue looked in disbelief at me, saying nothing for a while. Then she held her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t believe it. He’s obviously got word that there’s no visitors coming in. He’ll be at that all day. I can’t stick it.’

  I knew what she meant. Each evening, as the last tourist ferry left the tranquillity of the Great Blasket Island, the yellow digger emerged from behind the cafe. Since it was a tourist-free day, Sue was probably right. We were in for it! For some reason the noise resounded through the stone village, and was twice as loud at her house.

  ‘That’s the end of my weaving for the day. I’ll go out of my mind listening to that.’

  ‘What is he doing anyway?’

  I had seen quite a difference since my first school visit to the island. Peig Sayers’s house had become a 22-bed hostel. Next door to that, the Buffer Keane’s house had become the cafe, while his old cowshed boasted flush toilets and a rather ripe septic tank. I dreaded further development of the island, yet it seemed inevitable. Since I had arrived, the piles of concrete blocks, white aeroboard insulation and areas cordoned off by yards of yellow fluorescent tape had increased dramatically. Sue still sat with her hands firmly over her ears.

  The ownership battle had been waged for as long as she could remember. Did the Great Blasket Island belong to the nation, the Office of Public Works, the wealthy American, the islanders’ descendants or the local entrepreneur? In poorer economic times, some islanders’ descendants had sold their holdings to the wealthy American who had, in turn, sold the few holdings to a local buyer. The government had failed to make the island a National Monument as the hand of justice ruled in favour of the purchaser, and so the Great Blasket Island entered the era of Ireland’s construction boom. In recent weeks, things had been happening quickly, as the powerboat zoomed in and out to the beach, loaded with building materials.

  As Sue described what she knew of the planned development, I could feel my heart sink. All would be advertised as adding to the authenticity of that Great Blasket Experience, no doubt. The scraping, whining and dumping continued as a rising tide of frustration surged through me. I saw myself mounting my high horse and so I promptly bit my lip. I could see Sue was in a tough position. Living, as she was, in such close proximity to people on the island, and depending on each other, it was difficult to criticise. It was fine for me to breeze in and expostulate.

  I hobbled up to the Dáil with my mug of tea, glancing towards the cafe as nonchalantly as possible. The digger was scraping away the soil, old walls and ditches at the back of the Buffer Keane’s house. I came back to report on the proceedings, but on seeing Sue visibly upset, I changed the subject. I tried to distract her with an animated account of Donie’s earlier antics in the water. My forced jollity served only to make us both more conscious of the persistent noise. ‘There’s no escaping it, is there?’ I conceded.

  We sat for a while longer the sunshine. Only then were my feet finally beginning to warm up after nearly two hours in the water. ‘More tea?’

  ‘I think that tea bag died a few days ago, don’t you?’

  I had to admit she was right.

  ‘I think I’ll stick with my original plan,’ she mused, eyes closed as she leaned back against the wall. ‘I’ll ju
st move farther out, find another island when they develop this one.’

  Her fatalism disturbed me. Yet, maybe she was right; maybe it was inevitable. The spores of the Celtic Tiger were sprouting a blight of holiday homes and so-called authentic Irish PVC cottage complexes all over Ireland’s coastline. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before it spread to the islands. ‘Right. It’s pointless sitting here helplessly, not knowing what’s going on.’ I got to my feet, gathering up the mugs and saucepan.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Sue asked, squinting up into the sunshine.

  ‘I’m going to ask him out straight what he’s doing.’

  ‘He’s not going to tell you. To be fair, I’m sure he’s only told each day what work he’s to do.’

  ‘Well, if I don’t ask, I won’t know that.’

  Sue slid down onto the path. ‘Good luck. I’m going to try to weave for the day. Call down and let me know if you wangle anything out of him.’

  Inside the hut, the noise of the digger engine reverberated. I packed my backpack for a day at the back of the island. There could be no pleasure on the east side of the island with that constant droning. I had no food left to take with me, so I had the perfect excuse to interrupt Seán. I would buy some food and strike up a conversation.

  The Ghost at the Buffer Keane’s

  I set off towards Peig’s house. The scraping, swivelling and dumping got louder as I approached. The padlocks were closed on the half-doors. Bobbles of aeroboard swirled on the ground between Peig’s and the Buffer Keane’s. The yellow digger was in action behind the Buffer’s house. ‘Hello,’ I roared at the top of my voice. The scraping of metal on stone was deafening. The cab rotated mechanically from side to side between the stone walls and the dump truck. All the while, Seán’s back was facing me. I lifted the fluorescent yellow tape and ducked underneath. The back of the cafe was littered with yellow gas bottles, abandoned batteries and fish boxes full of glass bottles. I winced on the sharply broken rock underfoot. ‘Hello,’ I called again, with a little less conviction. I was not quite sure how he was going to react to halting his work for the sale of a jam scone.

  He looked at me curiously for a few seconds before he turned off the engine. Silence. I could imagine Sue’s relief at the other side of the village. Since he did not move, I hobbled over painfully. ‘Hello,’ I called again, managing the biggest smile I could muster. ‘I was wondering if I could buy a few things in the cafe?’ That sounded better than saying one scone, which I could obviously have got from Sue. ‘Sorry for interrupting. My supplies are getting a bit low.’ He still did not move.

  I began to feel quite a fraud. For all the times that I had been over to the hostel to visit Laura and Sigrid, and into the cafe to buy Aisling her lunch, I had never really spoken to Seán. Suddenly, there I was, beaming at him as if we were great friends. Eventually, he climbed off the digger and approached me.

  ‘Sorry for disturbing you. I was wondering if I could buy a few things in the cafe. I’m running a bit low.’ The hypocrisy of it! Swearing not to encourage commercial development on the island while I proceeded to buy scones and chocolate from him. Sue had pointed out, however, that a fact-finding operation could be classified as mitigating circumstances, so I didn’t feel quite so bad about purchasing the items. I followed him around and into the cafe.

  ‘You’re staying over in Ray’s house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s fairly basic, as far as I remember.’

  ‘I suppose it is really, but it has everything I need. It’s great to have the use of it.’

  ‘Haven’t seen you around much.’

  ‘No, I usually go walking every day.’ Suddenly, his little puppy, Captain Jack, appeared from behind the counter and took an instant shine to my bare ankles. Having dodged around the tables several times, I ended up squatting on one of the chairs, laughing with the enemy. It turned out that, like me, Seán was from County Kilkenny. He had worked only a few miles from my parents’ home, before taking the job on the Great Blasket Island. Gradually, he appeared to be less and less of the commercial ogre I had previously imagined him to be. He loved working on the island, especially in the winter before the tourist season, when it was quiet. I sat in amazement. Sue had a lot more in common with Seán than she realised. Somehow, I could not reconcile this gentle, island-loving and puppy-loving man with the development around me.

  ‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you.’ He handed me a mug of tea, as I continued to crouch on the chair in an attempt to keep my toes out of Captain Jack’s mouth. Seán drank his tea gazing down at the surf breaking on the White Strand.

  I directed all my attention to patting Captain Jack’s head. What was I doing here? To mention the digger, the building plans or anything else, seemed inappropriate now. I adored the strong tea. It was a far cry from the coloured water I had shared with Sue earlier. ‘The old wooden counter is very nice. I haven’t been inside here before.’

  ‘That’s the pub counter that was used in the filming of Ryan’s Daughter.’

  ‘Really!’ I was captivated. Operation Fact-Finder was on permanent hold.

  I began to describe the film scene as it played out in my memory. ‘The village idiot, played by John Mills, sat on a stool at the bar counter. He grinned inanely at Christopher Jones, a shell-shocked First World War officer, who sat drinking, drowning his sorrows at a bar table, about there. The idiot kept kicking the counter. Bang, bang, bang. It got louder and louder. The camera zoomed in on his boot, kicking and kicking. The sweat broke out on the lieutenant’s face, until the banging exploded into gunfire in his mind, and he collapsed to the floor, a helpless wreck convulsed in spasm. John Mills was brilliant. I’ll never forget that boot kicking the counter. I’m surprised there isn’t a dent in it from all the kicking.’ I went over and checked along the bottom of the counter – not a mark.

  ‘How many times did you see the film?’ Seán was looking at me in astonishment.

  ‘Twice. I was quite young the first time, and it was then that the kicking really impressed me. I think it was because it shocked me so much. It was frightening, I suppose.’ The second time, the scenery, the storm on Coumenoule Beach and the views of the Blasket Islands impressed me most.’

  I was economical with the truth, omitting to say that it was the love scene in the bluebells that held the greatest appeal for me as a teenager. During my boarding-school days, every second Saturday, we were shown a suitable film with the projector in the study hall. Any time that there was a threat of romance, Sister Ursula’s censoring hand was clamped over the projector, blacking out the screen, to the groans of a hundred pubescent girls. On the night we saw Ryan’s Daughter, she was called outside the door for a message, at the most opportune of moments. The bluebells left a thrilling impression on my teenage imagination.

  I finished my tea and replaced my mug reverently onto the Ryan’s Daughter counter. ‘I better let you get back to work. Thanks for the tea, Seán.’

  ‘No bother. I was stopping for a break anyway. I’ll keep at it till it gets dark. Need to catch up, while the ferries are off. Call in again.’

  ‘Thanks. Bye.’ I set off, along the north path, up at the back of the Buffer Keane’s, and the yellow digger roared into action again. As I rounded the turn and met the westerly breeze and the soaring kittiwakes, the digger ceased to exist. I spent until mid-afternoon wandering the cliffs and watching the birds at the back of the island.

  On my return I hesitated at the crossroads. Taking the south road would mean passing Sue’s house without a wisp of information. Taking the north road would mean passing above the cafe and hostel again, getting a bird’s eye view of the work in progress. I took the north road, changing the bag to my left shoulder to protect it from the sun beating down from above An Téaracht. An Fear Marbh lay basking in the heat, hands clasped serenely over his great stomach. We had made our peace. I watched the changing shadows over his huge bulk until I rounded the path
towards the village, leaving him behind. I braced myself for the noise of the digger. There was none. The closer I got, the clearer it became that the digger and dump truck had not moved from where Seán had left them that morning. As I passed, he suddenly appeared from the side of the hostel and waved at me. I waved back and began to zigzag down the hill.

  ‘Good walk?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks. There’s going to be another amazing sunset tonight.’

  ‘I heard the lunchtime forecast. We’re in for another scorcher tomorrow too.’

  I glanced over towards the digger. ‘Are you on strike?’ I smiled. I knew he hesitated. I could see him looking for an answer.

  ‘Ah, the ground is too slippery under the digger.’ I looked at the earth. It appeared to be bone dry to me, but I said nothing. I adjusted my bag. I could feel that I had definitely got too much sun.

  ‘Will you have a cup of tea? I was just making one.’ I accepted gratefully. ‘So, when are you off back to work?’ he asked.

  I could feel my stomach lurch. I had succeeded in quashing the thought of leaving up until then. I greeted and made a fuss of Captain Jack in an attempt to avoid the question.