softly. The murmur went on in a sort of mantra for some time, a
drone that was so low and monotonous it could have sent me to
sleep, but then it started to get louder and I looked up at her to see
that her eyes were half closed. She looked almost in a trance.
Then her eyes snapped open and she looked straight at me.
‘A long life, Nicky Ryan of the MacConnors and the MacBeths.
A long life to you, and that means that I can sleep. Born on the
midsummer and conceived on half—night day. A joining and a
rejoining. A life to be saved and a life to be owed, a child of one and
a man child awakes, a storm and a battle. There’s madness here,
and slaughter and there’s hate but there is love. Hold on to the love
for it is for you three and for ever, and greater than you know.’
I didn’t understand a word of that.
‘You cannot write yet. But you will. You fear for your talent, but
you have it. It will come after the bad days are past. The Cu Saeng
reaches out to you and the others. It saps the strength, it snares the
will, it sends fear. But you will win. .
‘Take care of the child. The man will grow. The woman will
hurt .... ’
Her voice trailed off and the fierce look which was drilling into
the back of my eyes softened. She smiled again and her whole
expression changed.
‘The one and onlies?’ she laughed. ‘That was more true than you
could have known. And I suppose you now know what a virginia
is?’
‘How the hell did you know that?’ I asked, astonished. That last
statement, straight out of a ten year old’s memory, threw me right
off balance.
‘I told you before. It’s not how I know, but what I know. And
that you’ve got to learn. That was just to teach you that you should
maybe believe an ancient lady down in a hut at the point.’
Then she laughed out loud at the expression on my face.
So an old woman had told me a tale. An interesting and scary old
tale. And then she’d looked into the bottom of a teacup and she’d
come up with some sort of riddling prophecy and then she’d
plucked a memory out of my childhood and a thought right out of
my head. I liked the legend, like something out of Slaine MacRoth,
my favourite strip cartoon Celtic hero. I couldn’t make head nor I
tail of the riddle, or whatever it was, but the last two threw me, as
you can imagine. I suppose that’s what they were meant to do. I’d
gone down to the windy point to get some fresh air and clear out
the cobwebs that were slowly filling my mind with self-doubt and
I’d ended up just as off balance as before.
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When old Kitty MacBeth had laughed at my expression, she
motioned me across to her and put her arm on my shoulder, using
me as an extra crutch, and half beckoned, half shoved me to the
door.
‘Come on, I’ll show you something} she said, still having a great
old giggle to herself. She reached behind the door into a bag
hanging on a bent nail and pulled out what I thought was a piece of
stiff canvas, and braced herself on my shoulder again. We went
along the path that led to the big standing stone , slowly, while Kitty
half skipped at my side. She placed herself in front of the monolith,
on the south side where the salt-spray-laden wind had weathered
the black face to a polished smoothness.
‘The old folk knew a thing or two,’ she said. ‘Look here. It’s all
smooth with thousands of hard years facing that firth. But you look
at every tree you see. The moss and lichen grow on the north side,
and on this point the winds never come from the north, only the
south and west.
‘Come round here,’ she said, gesturing me to follow as she did
the crab walk round the other side of the basalt spine. ‘Look at
this.’
I looked. She was right. On the straight, slabbed north face of
the stone, a thin sheen of lichen covered the flat surface.
‘And look now,’ she said, taking the piece of canvas in her hand
and folding it around her fingers. It cracked as she wadded the
material.
‘Dogiish skin. It’s as good as any sandpaper,’ she said, reaching
up to scrape gently at the slick green covering. She did that for a
few minutes, then took the skin away and rubbed with a wetted
linger.
On the surface, thin lines appeared, etched in the stone. It
looked like some form of script, but what kind I couldn’t tell.
The whole area, maybe the size of my hand, was completely
covered in tightly drawn figures and letters which were etched in
the stone and had been completely protected from the elements by
the natural insulation.
‘They told the whole story, but people forgot how to read it,’
Kitty said. ‘They told what they did and why they did it, and they
wrote down the way to send Cu Saeng back, but there was not
enough people to do that, not enough of the right people, so it must A
be killed.
‘This part speaks in a riddle. It is a foretelling, and that’s why I’m
showing it to you, Nicky Ryan.’
‘Why, what does it say‘?’
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‘If I tell you, will you believe me?’ she asked.
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know. It all sounds a bit weird to
me.’
‘Ah yes. That’s the right word. It is your weird. And mine. But it
will get through to you as time goes on, and I don’t think we have
too much of that. You can’t avoid it, so I might as well tell you.’
She lifted her hand and pointed out some lines. They could have
been Greek or runes for all I knew.
‘Yet come three, alone yet one, earth—day born. Awakens one
who sleeps and strays, two return to iight the wrath. Sacred How
and sacred grow and sacred stone to end the rule of Cu Saeng.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked, not entirely convinced that the
old woman could actually read those scratches on the rock, or
even, if she could read it, that she could understand it.
‘Well it could have many meanings, but I think that you three,
your one and onlies, fit the first part.’
‘How come?’
‘Because there are three of you. That’s easy enough. Alone yet
one, only children, single children, but you were close enough then
to be one, at least last time you did whatever you did on Ardhmor.
And you’re all earth-day born. You on midsummer, the girl on the
autumn equinox and the boy in spring.
‘The chances of that happening in a small place like this are
surely millions to one. Especially when you consider that you all
have the blood of the MacConnors and the MacBeths in you,
though a touch more diluted than I’d like, but it’s there.
‘It has to be you, and the other two, and you have to watch the
walls. The bad thing’s coming, for I can feel it, and I cannot watch
the walls.
‘Look at me. Broke my leg like a silly old fool down on the rocks.
Hobbling around like a shore crab. Set it myself, but it takes so
long, and we don’t have long.’
She nodded across the bay to where Ardhmor sat squat. ‘I can’t
get over there, and something’s happening that I can’t see. You
have to be my eyes and hands now. It’s just like last time, when you
were a boy. My mother was dying, and I was away from here. I
came back on the night your grandfather was searching for you
down at the rock. If I had not been away, maybe we could have I
ended it then. And now, with this old crippled leg, I might as well
not be here.’
Kitty took one of my hands in hers and smiled again.
‘Remember, a long life. You can believe that anyway, because I
do. It means that you will beat this thing, although how you will do
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strike me as odd, although it’s not on the same side of the house as
my bedroom or the kitchen. I padded through on my bare feet and
my grandfather looked up from the rocking chair and smiled. His
face was half in shadow and his old, big hands were curled around
the smooth arm of the chair.
I stood there, paralysed. Just as I started through the doorway,
I’d taken a drink of the cold water and now it stuck somewhere
between my throat and my stomach and seemed to want to move
two ways at once.
‘Come in, come in,’ the old man said. ‘Come in and sit yourself
down.’
He motioned me over to the armchair at the other side of the
fireplace where the white coals had long fallen to dust since the last
fire had been lit. I was rooted to the spot, which is a phrase I’ve
always disliked, but it was nonetheless true. It was as if my whole
body was clamped in a block of stone. My heart thudded wildly — I
could hear it in my ears — and from way down in my stomach I could
feel waves of panic layering up on top of each other, building up to
one huge scream.
That’s not what happened. My old grandfather’s eyes caught the
moonlight, black and blue under his brows, and he gestured again
to the easy chair. Some force took my feet and lifted them one by
one off the floor where they’d been nailed down and walked me
across the room and sat me down. I didn’t do it. It happened.
‘Ah, Nicky boy, you’ve grown,’ he said in that big gravelly voice
that I had often remembered with that warm jolt of affection. It
now seemed to come from a million miles away, dry and cold.
‘And you’ve come back to stay with me, eh? That’s good. Very
good.’
He nodded, almost contentedly and his eyes looked into the
fireplace.
‘But you’ve been a bad boy. A very bad boy. I’ve told you not to
go down to the rock, and you went down there.’
He paused and seemed to consider.
‘I told you not to have anything to do with that old witch, but
you’ve been speaking to her, haven’t you‘?’
I sat and stared. No sound would come out of my throat. I could
hardly breathe. .
‘If you want to stay with me, you’ll have to be a good boy.’
He raised his eyes from the fireplace and turned his head slowly
round in my direction. I could hear his head turn on his neck, a dry
sound like old hawsers taking up strain. And he grinned a huge
grin. That wasn’t my grandfather. Of course it wasn’t my grand-
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father, for he’d been dead for years. But whatever this was, it
wasn’t even him. My old grandfather laughed, or he smiled, or he
roared. But he never grinned.
I stared at the apparition. My eyes must have been opened so
wide they were in danger of falling right out of my head.
The grin widened until it showed an impossible array of teeth
that were long and thin and blue in the unearthly light.
‘You be a good boy,’ he hissed behind that row, ‘and I’ll let you
stay with me.’
He started to giggle and the skin started to flake off his face.
Hee-hee-hee. High pitched. Mad. And the more he laughed, the
more the skin shrivelled up like leather on an old boot and split
down the seams of his face and inside his head seemed to swell. The
eyes got bigger and paler and the noise of old twisted ropes tearing
and twisting got louder. The rocking chair creaked as it swung back
and forth as the thing that had looked like my grandfather swelled
and split and giggled.
Then the glass that I’d been holding in my right hand suddenly
gave way in the pressure of my grip and a jagged edge went straight
into my palm with such a force that blood just spouted out. That
was enough to get my breath back and I let out a scream that must
have been heard from the far side of the firth.
I leapt out of the chair in terror and instinctively hurled the base
of the glass and what remained of the water, plus, no doubt, a fair
quantity of the blood that was pouring out of the gash in my hand,
right at the thing in the chair.
In slow motion I watched the glass tumble in the air, catching
that light, and smash right into the writhing, giggling thing. It hit
with a muffled thump, and then a crash as it struck through and into
the turned risers at the back of the chair which tipped over with a
thump. The thing just disappeared in front of my eyes as if it had
never been there, leaving me in the middle of the fioor cursing in
words that I thought I’d forgotten, a stream of invective that
reverberated back at me from the walls until I stopped, gasping for
breath, and sank back down into the chair.
The light from the early morning sun awoke me through the
space in the curtain that I’d meant to close the night before, and I
suddenly jerked awake with the vision of that thing still in my head.
Everyone has experienced that moment of awakening when a o
dream disappears. I rolled over and out of bed, breathing deeply,
still shuddering from the visual memory, and I crossed the room
and opened the curtains fully to let as much daylight in as I could.
As I did so, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my hand as it brushed
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against the curtain fabric. I looked down and there in the centre of
the palm was a small, crescent shaped cut that was just beginning to
scab over.
Instantly I got a vision of the dream again but I shook it off. I’ve
had falling dreams when I’ve ended up on the floor, or fire—engine
dreams just when the alarm goes off. I couldn’t remember cutting
myself, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened yesterday, maybe
down at the point. I probably just hadn’t noticed it. By the time I
got dressed and slunged my face with cold water, the shaky feeling
was receding. The day looked Hne and fresh and I felt like frying up
a good breakfast and then getting out into the fresh air and away
from the house for a while. I’d fixed up with Barbara Foster to take
her and Paddy across to Loch Lomondside for a picnic, so I
thought after a stroll I’d go up to the shop to get whatever we’d
need for a day out.
In the kitchen I had the pan sizzling with good Belfast ham and I
threw in some mushrooms and set a couple of eggs on to poach.
The kettle boiled quickly and I had a cup of tea while I was cooking
and another one while I ate. I felt a whole lot better after that.
I took a third cup, which was quite strong and thick by the time
I’d finished and cleaned up the kitchen leaving the plate to drain
beside the sink, and carried it through to the sitting room.
There I promptly dropped it on my foot, which would have been
badly scalded if the tea hadn’t cooled down.
For the rocking chair lay on its back at the far side of the room.
And there was a broken glass and shards lying beside it.
The burn from the tea was painful enough to make me cry out,
which I suppose helped release the breath that was getting ready to
back up in my lungs, but the pain quickly receded. All sorts of
explanations began to line themselves up in my head, but before I
could think of any of them a face loomed into the window frame so
suddenly that I jumped backwards in fright.
If I’d thought rationally, I suppose by this time I would have
been getting a bit pissed off at the number of shocks my poor little
thudding heart had been given in quick succession. But when the
figure looming at the window lifted a black arm to cut off the
reflection and peer into the room, I recognised Father Gerald
O’Connor. He wasn’t wearing his motorcycle gear, but the normal B
black suit and white collar. I motioned him around to the front
door and he was standing there in the sunlight when I opened it.
‘Sor1y if I gave you a fright,’ he said affably. ‘You look as if
you’ve seen a ghost. What were you doing in there? A war dance?’
‘No, I spilled some tea on my foot.’ We both looked down.
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There was a light red weal where the tea had splashed. It wouldn’t
come to anything.
‘Ah, tea. I’d love a cup,’ said the young priest, eagerly, inviting
himself in. ‘I’ve been up since five o’clock this morning. I’m the
duty man on the emergency service. I think I’ll get a siren and a
flashing light.’
‘What was the emergency?’
‘Oh, nothing serious. Mrs Black found her father at the foot of
the stairs and thought he’d had a heart attack. She decided he
· needed extreme unction. What he needed was extreme black
coffee and I suppose he’ll have an extreme hangover later this
morning. And when you think of the voice his daughter’s got, you
can expect he’ll wish he had died before the week’s out.
‘What gets me is that she’s not even a Catholic, but that’s the
third time she’s called me out in the past year for the old man.’
I put the kettle on and the priest- he said I should call him Gerry
— said he’d shoot his granny for a bacon sandwich, so I fired up the
pan and put a couple of rashers in to sizzle.
‘I just thought I’d drop by in the passing,’ he said. ‘I never got a
chance to meet you up at Alan’s house the other day. I’m sorry if I
gave you a fright. Most people are glad to see us. We’re on the
good side, you know,’ he winked Conspiratorially.
‘No, it wasn’t you,’ I said. ‘It was something else entirely}
‘Why, what happened?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Try me. I’m a good listener. It’s all the hours we spend sitting in
a little box.’
I’m not a religious person, but strangely it seemed a relief to talk
about it, even to a young priest who ran about on a racing Honda. I
- sat there and told him about what had happened last night, and
how I’d woken up thinking it had been a nightmare, and then come
back down and seen the rocking chair lying in the corner. Just
before the kettle boiled I took him through and showed him.
‘What do you think? Am I going crazy?’
‘Not at all,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’ve been sleepwalking. I used
to do it all the time when I was small. My mother was worrying but
my old man said as long as I didn’t pee the bed he didn’t mind.’
‘I’ve never walked in my sleep before, and I’ve been getting bad
dreams almost every night? `
‘You’re probably tense. Are you worrying about anything?’
‘Nothing that should make me feel like I’ve seen a ghost. I’ve not
been feeling great, but what happened last night scared the hell out
of me.’
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‘Well, that’s pretty normal. But I wouldn’t say you’re crazy. I’d
just put it to the back of my mind ifI were you. Things always look
different in the daytime.’
I made the tea and fixed up the bacon sandwiches. He started
eating them with obvious appetite.
He took a gulp of tea to wash down a bite and said: ‘The world’s
got a lot worse to throw at us than ghosts, you know.
‘Look at that poor woman who killed her son and then took her
own life. And there’s that farmer, Mr Gillon; you were there,
weren’t you? If ghosts were all we had to worry about I’d be
delighted.’
‘That’s another thing,’ I said. ‘Those two accidents, I mean.
What could have caused them?’
‘Accidents happen. No rhyme nor reason. And we’ve just got to
try to help after they do.’
‘Have you ever thought that these accidents might not have been
accidents?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Not yet anyway. But I’ve got a funny feeling. Ever
since I’ve come back to Arden, things haven’t gone right. Like
those deaths. In a small place like this two freak accidents seem
more than coincidence.’
‘I could say something trite, like "The Lord giveth", but I
won’t,’ Gerry said. ‘These things happen. I can’t explain them.
Nobody can.’
‘What if . . . ’ I said, but I stopped.
‘What if what?’
‘Nothing. I’m just a bit shook up. Shaken up, I should say. I’ve
spent too long in the States.’
‘You’re a bit too worldly wise for me to give parental advice,’ he
said, ‘even though I am a priest. I know what I’m like after a
nightmare. But at least we always wake up. I don’t believe in
ghosts and ghouls. The Holy Ghost maybe, but that’s between me
and him.’
‘I can’t say I’m much of a believer,’ I confessed.
‘Don’t worry about that. I’m not an evangelist. Even priests
have their own doubts}
‘So have journalists who aspire to be writers. Lots of them. Let’s j
hope you’re right.’
He finished his tea and we exchanged some chat as he was
leaving.
‘Will you be coming to the festival?’ he asked at the gate.
‘I suppose so. Everybody else will be there}
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‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it. They’re getting things ready up
at the seminary, so I’ll be kept busy with that for a day or so.
Listen, why don’t you come up and see the place? You’d like it. I’m
still amazed, being a city boy, how self-sufficient the old timers
have got it. Been doing it for hundreds of years, I’m told.’
I said I would come up sometime, and Gerry suggested
Thursday — not having anything planned I agreed.
108