Blasket Spirit Read online

  As the seals returned, and the wheatears’ song disappeared for a third winter, Máire became pregnant with her second child. Eileen nearly burst with excitement for her sister-in-law as the news was whispered to her over the garden wall one bright November morning. She smiled and hugged Máire, but some part of her soul sank with the yearning and emptiness in her own heart. Yet, for the next six months, Eileen was an enthusiastic support and help to her friend. Little baby Niamh was born the following June, on the fourth wedding anniversary of Eileen and Tomás. They were chosen as godparents to the child. As Eileen cuddled and breathed the scented softness of her godchild’s skin, the impatience and ache cried within her. Her own mother’s constant reassurance – ‘All in God’s good time’ – failed to deliver the soothing balm of earlier years.

  After five years, the empty cradle, a wedding present from her aunt, stood neglected behind some lobster pots in the shed. Although banished from the house they heard it cry through every sigh within their walls. A silence settled like a cloud over their home as Tomás and Eileen stopped singing and playing music together. For a time they rode the waves of normality despite the ominous undercurrent. Neither ever mentioned their grief, as if it was some secret to be shielded from the other. Then Tomás began to spend more time fishing, hunting and visiting other houses at night. Eileen found herself alone working in the house, labouring in the field and waiting at night. She began to dread the loneliness of the dark winter evenings. Soon she began to fear the arrival of Tomás at night. Her husband’s anger intensified towards her. She kept the best table and the best house in the village, yet he would find fault: she oversalted the fish; she talked too much; she never salted the fish; she never talked to him. The hope that had lured her from month to month had long since been quenched. Her mother said she must be patient and all would be well ‘in God’s good time’.

  One evening as she waited for Tomás, she wondered if God had forgotten about her. Her husband’s supper lay cold and untouched on the table. The candles had burned out hours before. She sat by the hearth staring at the embers. Tears didn’t come any more. Maybe she had cried them all. The ticking of the clock became a rhythm from another world. The roaring of the waves on the White Strand lulled her into a comforting stillness. She slipped deeper into its soft darkness and silence.

  The fire died and the room grew cold as Eileen slept. Just before 3 a.m. the latch lifted and the door swung violently open, crashing against the side of the dresser. The crockery rattled and a jug smashed on the floor. Eileen gasped with fright, struggling between worlds. Tomás stumbled towards the hearth. ‘You can’t even keep the fire lighting,’ he snarled at her. Her heart thundered as she opened her eyes, disorientated. Vaguely, she was aware of Tomás’ silhouette swaying before the hearth. Suddenly, everything turned red, as a blow struck the side of her face. ‘You can’t even do that right, can you?’ Her brain jolted against the side of her skull, sending a fantail of lightning flashes swirling across her vision. She held her head in an effort to stop it spinning. She felt tingling as her jaw began to swell. She thought that she had spoken, begging to know what she had done wrong. Then she realised that no words had come out. She felt her mouth in the darkness. It throbbed and felt sticky and wet.

  Tomás steadied himself against the settle and spat into the hearth. ‘You can do nothing right, can you? You can’t even give me a child.’ Her heart lunged so violently against her throat, she could not breathe. ‘Can’t even give me a child.’ The words echoed through the room. They grew louder and louder, until they seemed to echo through the whole village. The waves took up the mantra and beat it onto the rocks, over and over. The caves breathed it into the darkness until it resounded faster. She saw An Fear Marbh heave his bulk from the sea and roar to the sky. ‘Can’t even give me a child.’ Then Eileen saw no more as the noise drowned her consciousness.

  The next day the word spread from woman to woman at the well. ‘Isn’t she a terror, the way she do let the fire out, and then can’t see in the darkness?’

  ‘Lord save us, but didn’t she give herself a terrible fall entirely?’

  ‘Didn’t she strike her head on the corner of the table as she went down?’

  ‘Tomás hasn’t left her bedside at all. Sure he’s worried to death about her.’

  ‘Did you know it was three days before she did come back to herself?’

  ‘Isn’t she blessed with the kind, patient man she do have?’

  Norah kept house for her daughter through her illness. She never pried, but her presence eased Eileen back from her fright, until the dam burst and her tears flooded forth. Finally, through sobs, the words came: ‘Tomás says I can’t give him a child. I can’t even do that.’

  ‘And how is Tomás so sure that he has the child to give, alanna?’

  Eileen stared in amazement at her mother. Never did it occur to her that anyone but she could be at fault. For a long time, she had begun to believe her husband: that she could do nothing right. She could neither cook nor sew. She could neither tend a fire nor conceive a child.

  ‘What did your grandmother tell you about putting blame on other people?’ Eileen pointed her finger and looked down at it. She remembered the words so well.

  ‘Every time you do point an accusing finger at someone, you do be pointing three at yourself,’ she answered, as she looked at the three fingers pointing back at herself. ‘So maybe Tomás is afraid that it is he who can’t father a child for me.’

  ‘Maybe he is, Eileen, and maybe he’s afraid and angry with himself, and not with you. Sometimes, it’s harder for men to accept these things. Whatever it is, with the help of God, we’ll find a way.’

  From that day out, Eileen and Norah set to work. Eileen told Tomás that she knew it was time that she found a cure for their sorrow. They had never given it words before, except for the night that Tomás had struck her. Men and women did not talk about these things; they just happened. Tomás looked at her, confused. Her new composure and confidence took him by surprise. As he spoke, he reverted his gaze to his mug of tea.

  ‘Well, you women do know more about these things. I’ll leave it to you to solve your problem.’ He never looked up, just continued with his food. For the three days of each of the next five full moons, Eileen and Norah collected green herbs and roots. Eileen boiled them for three hours. At sunset, she cooled the infusion. She strained a full bowl of the brown liquid, added three drops of holy water and drank the full amount before she lay with her husband.

  Tomás seemed to have faith in the knowledge of the women. He relaxed and resembled the Tomás of old in many ways. After five months of herbal infusions, Eileen felt ill but not from pregnancy. It was time to visit Nell, the island healer. Norah visited her alone first, saying, ‘It wouldn’t do to have the whole village discussing your sorrow.’

  The following morning, after Tomás set off fishing with Páid, Norah came through the door. ‘Nell tells me that Tomás was very sick as a teenager, with mumps.’ Eileen stood by the door with Norah, watching the naomhóg slice through the rolling sea. Eileen did not understand the significance of what she was being told, until her mother explained that mumps could lead to impotence in a young man. Now she understood that it probably was not her fault.

  ‘Tomás is the man you want as your husband.’ Eileen looked at her mother puzzled. She was not sure if this was a statement or a question.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered finally.

  ‘But you want a child?’

  ‘More than anything in the world, Mam. We both want a child.’

  It was then that Norah took Eileen up to see the old healer, Nell, who explained about the cure on the mainland. Nell told her that it was the only way to conceive a child, and keep her husband.

  Word was quick to spread from the well.

  ‘Isn’t it great for Nell, going across for to see her sister on the mainland?’

  ‘It is, and she the great age that she is. Sure, it is only that Eileen and Norah
agreed for to take the old woman that she can go at all.’

  ‘And what do an old woman like her want to make that trip for? ’Tis at home saying her prayers she should be.’

  There was always one with the bitter word.

  ‘Isn’t her old widowed sister sick and maybe dying. Would you be begrudging her a last visit?’

  There were nods all round, and that was an end to it. The women sent their prayers with Nell for her sick sister, and they praised Eileen and Norah for giving up their time to look after a cranky old woman on such a trip.

  Meanwhile, Nell explained to Tomás the importance of the plants growing on the mainland. In on the island, there wasn’t the variety. The island herbs that she had tried had not worked for Eileen. It was vital that certain plants on the mainland were picked and prepared during the full moon. As Tomás knew, it was then that the sap was at its richest and most potent. The herbs had to be picked and consumed within the same moonlight. Eileen and Norah would stay with Nell in her sister’s house. He need have no worries about his wife. Tomás was grateful to the old woman; he firmly believed her story of the herbal cure on the mainland for Eileen.

  The three women set off in the naomhóg with Tomás and Páid. The tide was high because of the full moon. Eileen sat breathless in the bow of the boat, her body glowing with anticipation and anxiety. Tomás noted his wife’s flushed face, and prayed to God to find her a cure this time and end his shame. Eileen gripped her bag nervously, avoiding his gaze. She watched the cliffs of Dún Chaoin rising before her, as she had done on the morning of her wedding five years before.

  As the two older women made slow progress up the slipway at Dún Chaoin, Eileen turned to wave at the small black naomhóg. Páid’s voice carried over the water. ‘Don’t you be drinking too much porter with your sister, Nell. We don’t want you falling into the waves on the way back.’ Eileen sat down on the coffin step halfway up the slipway.

  ‘Tomás thinks I’ve come out here for a cure,’ she sobbed, covering her face in shame.

  ‘It is a cure of a kind you’ve come out for, alanna,’ Nell gasped as she reached the coffin step.

  ‘Don’t you want to keep your husband and have a baby?’ her mother asked her.

  ‘You know I do, Mam.’

  ‘Well then, let’s go, for it’s a long walk to the church.’

  The three women linked arms and set off slowly, leaving the sea and Nell’s sister’s house far behind.

  Three days later, as they stood on the clifftop, looking across into the island for the first sign of the boat, Nell quickly gathered a bunch of herbs and pressed them into Eileen’s hand. ‘Make sure he sees you boiling these tonight. Give him half the tea to drink and you drink the other half. And don’t forget you must lie with him within the week. You’ll both be very happy. God works in mysterious ways.’ With that she set off, hobbling down the slipway. Norah gave her daughter’s hand a reassuring squeeze and they followed.

  The following month Eileen knew she was with child. Her breasts ached, and she felt a warm glow throughout her body. She sang from morning till night, treasuring her happiness privately until the time was right to tell her husband. Tomás came into the house to take a burning ember from the fire to patch the naomhóg. ‘Put that back,’ she scolded happily. ‘No ember can leave this house until the things that are inside are out.’ Tomás knew the significance of the superstition better than anyone. He dropped the tongs in shock. He kissed her, holding her as if she were a fragile china cup. Before the first woman had reached the well that Sunday morning, he had spread the news to every house on the island. As he set off to mass on the mainland, he was the proudest man on the Great Blasket Island.

  When he returned from mass, he bounded up the cliff from the pier like a new lamb. He presented Eileen with a holy medal of the Virgin and Child, wrapped in soft white paper. ‘Father Muiris blessed this for you and the baby, when he heard our good news. He asked me to be sure to give it to you.’

  Eileen felt the flush surge from the base of her neck. She took the medal and stared at Our Lady and the Infant Jesus in her arms. She could not speak. It was Tomás, not she, who added, ‘He’s a grand man. Sure if it’s a boy, can’t we call the baby Muiris after him?’

  Eight months later, Eileen had a fine healthy son. He was baptised by and named after Father Muiris, the priest in the church in Ballyferriter. The womenfolk said that the baby would be twice blessed for it.

  Russian Requiem

  Routine began to restore the security and predictability that had been stolen from my life for so long. I regained control and felt free. During the month of August, I found and followed my own daily schedule. I swam first thing in the morning under the watchful eye of the Beverley Sisters, then had breakfast, filled my water bottle, collected a scone and jam from Laura at the cafe, and set off on my adventure to the back of the island.

  That day, I followed the cliffs over past the beach and continued to the Gravel Strand. Sitting on the clifftop, I watched the familiar grey seals hauled out on two small islands of rock, Carraig Fhada and Oileán Buí. Daydreams and stories were far from my mind. My thoughts were in the cold darkness beneath the waves. I had heard the news of the Kursk, a Russian nuclear submarine lost miles beneath the freezing Barents Sea in the Arctic, with the trapped crew believed to be still alive. As one of the seals slid in off the rocks and submerged, I wondered what it saw in the deep waters off the Great Blasket Island. The Quebra, a First World War munitions ship, was down there somewhere. Perhaps the seal would swim over the cargo of wire and artillery shells scattered in the gullies, 15 to 27 metres below, her shadow gliding between the huge boilers that still stand upright on the wreck. An army diver had told me that the wreck was intact, the hull was very sound and a recoil spring from one of the ship’s guns was still visible, owing to the protection of the cliffs. I imagined that the seal would ignore that, being more interested in the shoals of fish feeding around the wreck. My thoughts returned to the Kursk crew and I shivered in the sunshine, as I thought of the freezing temperatures and silent darkness that the lost men would be experiencing. Closing my eyes, I willed through every atom of my being for them to be rescued and hauled back up to the sunshine.

  After some time, I stirred myself and continued on my way, following the jagged cut in the cliff towards the Seal Cove. As I drew closer, my pace quickened in anticipation. Each morning, I loved to check in on the island’s only baby seal, and see how he was getting on. I lay down on my stomach with my head peering over the steep cliff. Sixty or seventy metres below me, the inlet was strewn with what looked like large rounded boulders. I watched intently, waiting for one to move and clap its fins together. As I waited, kittiwakes rose before my eyes on updrafts of air, filling the sky with their cries. Suddenly, what I had thought to be a round white boulder caught my eye as it rolled over and stretched its neck towards a stem of oarweed. Through the binoculars, I could see his antics clearly. As he tugged at the air, missing his target every time, one of his flippers swam frantically like a clockwork toy, in a vain attempt to propel himself forward. He had moved a good ten metres down the beach since the previous morning. I wondered how he had done it. Each time, his mother came in to nurse him, she nudged and pushed him back up to the cliff. It was a laborious exercise, but vital for his survival, as this little ball of pure white fur could not swim yet. It would take a full three weeks of suckling his mother before he would have enough blubber to survive in the sea, and he was not even two weeks old. Junior was oblivious to the incoming tide, and with every stretch for the weed, he inched farther down the beach.

  ‘Get back up there where your mother left you,’ I roared, not thinking that he would hear my voice over the thundering of the waves, but he did. He stopped his quest suddenly, lifting his head towards me. Through the binoculars, I could see his two huge black eyes staring in my direction. The incoming tide was only a metre or so from him. I scanned the rollers beyond the bay entrance, but there was no sign of his
mother. I knew he would not survive if he were swept out to sea. I barked at him as loudly as I could. He responded by barking and rolling onto his back where he clapped his flippers together, as I had seen him do every time he was enjoying himself playing or suckling. As we continued this banter, I wondered if my babysitting game would distract him from his progress towards the water until his mother returned or the tide turned. So far it was working. Gradually, instead of making towards the sea, he was stretching parallel to the tide in my direction. I stood up slowly, keeping my head in view over the clifftop as I walked away from the sea. Every few metres I stopped and we re-established contact. After an hour and a half, I was hoarse and exhausted, but the seal pup was at least three metres back up from the sea.

  I had just resolved to sacrifice my walk for the day in order to keep an eye on Junior, when I was relieved of my babysitting duties. The huge cow hauled herself out onto the beach, trailing a dark, glistening path in her wake as she slid over the hot stones. The pup was yelping and shaking in anticipation as she came close to him. He began pucking her belly excitedly, searching out her teats, but she was having none of it. Unceremoniously, she rolled and jostled the pup in front of her, until he was well up beyond the high-tide line. Below me, under the shelter of the cliff, she began to nurse the pup. Beyond the surf, the distinctive big head of a bull seal kept watch over the mother and wayward child. On the beach, the earlier playground of the pup was now submerged, and the single stem of seaweed had been swept away. Relieved to hand the responsibility back to Mother, I set off up to the fort.