The Nature of Water and Air Read online

“What do you mean ‘strange’?” one of them asked.

  “Webbed,” the girl said.

  “Like a mermaid!” someone cried.

  “How terrible,” another girl moaned, gazing up at the dark vaults of the ceiling. “But now she walks bedecked in lilies.”

  • • •

  At the funeral service, the flames of the two altar candles pulsed, long spirals of smoke rising from them, dispersing above on the chapel air. A dizzying lightness flooded the chapel; weirdly spirited air left in the wake of Sister Clarissa’s ascension.

  She had drifted to heaven like a kite cut loose of its string. She’d reached her longed-for place. Through one small, clear pane in the stained glass I could see a bit of blue sky. I whispered her name, “Sister Clarissa,” and felt stratosphere between us.

  Why couldn’t Mare leave so cleanly? Whose inconsolability kept her here so close to the ground; deepening and fading? And deepening again. Whose inconsolability? Mine or hers?

  When I closed my eyes I saw the white arcades of St. Mathilde’s, and heard the “Pavane for a Dead Princess.”

  PART II

  Angus

  THE WEST OF IRELAND

  1980–81

  I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way, And I said “Let grief be a fallen leaf” at the dawning of the day.

  —Patrick Kavanaugh

  · 21 ·

  I HAD BEEN ATTENDING COLLEGE at St. Mathilde’s a year and a half when the Reverend Mother presented me with a notification that upon Sister Seraphina’s recommendation, I had won an apprenticeship. Only one girl was given the honor each year out of the two hundred who attended the school, to be groomed for recitals and concerts in Dublin and in London.

  It was mid-February. So far I had been matriculating three days a week from Mercymount Strand, but because of the rigorous work ahead of me, the Reverend Mother suggested that I move into a dormitory room in September when the apprenticeship was set to begin.

  I walked about the campus looking for Sister Seraphina. When I found her in the chapel she took me in her arms. “Are you happy about this, Cludagh?” she asked.

  “I am, Sister. I am. Thank you,” I said.

  “I think you should perform, Cludagh! We must make use of all that passion!”

  I was surprised by her words and the intensity in her eyes. “What about ‘restraint’?” I asked.

  “One day your technique will be strong enough to carry all that emotion. And I’ll never say that word to you again!”

  I smiled at her, moved.

  “We will work hard together, Cludagh!” she said.

  “Yes, Sister,” I said.

  I rode the bus back to Mercymount Strand in a daze. My future suddenly had shape.

  • • •

  I dreamt that night that I was searching for the sealskin dress in the upper house, in a spot where the wall had caved in. I dug uneasily in softened plaster and dirt until I found it and put it on. In the next moment I was in the sea swimming, tossed about in the cold boil, certain some moments that I’d drown, other moments that I could not get enough of the spinning and turning. I had a desperate wish to go deeper. I pulled myself down until I could feel the floor of the sea with my fingers.

  I woke with my heart pounding and sat up in the dark, certain that I smelled the smoke of a tinker fire. I went outside in the frigid blackness, the inland skies over the fields pocked with stars. There were no fires.

  The salty iodine odor of the sea was strong and in the bit of starlight I could see a great heap of kelp rotting in the sand. I shivered violently but did not want to go back inside. I had a terrible urge to run in my nightgown, barefoot as I was, through the frosty grass to the place on the hill where I’d seen the tinker fire that could have been Angus Kilheen’s.

  When I did at last go back inside I did not go to bed, but to the piano room. I tried to play but felt too restless and stood at the window staring out, pressing my forehead to the icy glass, remembering the time I saw Agatha putting the sealskin dress on in the field before she’d gone to the tinker camp. The animal smell of it conjured itself on the air around me and I felt afraid.

  • • •

  I telephoned Aunt Lily that morning. We’d grown cordial over the years. Occasionally people from Dublin had come to look at the house, but their terms were not satisfactory to her. The search for tenants had gone on for years, but that was not uncommon with these old estate houses, Aunt Lily had told me once.

  “Aunt, I’ve been awarded an apprenticeship at St. Mathilde’s College,” I said. “They want to prepare me to play recitals in Dublin. And maybe even in London.”

  “Clodagh!” she said, her voice pitched brighter than I’d ever heard it. “Well, I’m . . . I’m so pleased. That’s wonderful!”

  “Thank you, Aunt,” I said.

  She let go a flustered breath. “Your father would be so proud of you for this, Clodagh.” For the first time I felt her claim me.

  • • •

  The third week of April I received a telephone call from Aunt Lily, inviting me to come for a visit.

  “Clodagh, Kitty’s feeling so well! She’s up and around now for three days . . . . If you could, this would be a wonderful time to come. Her mood has been so consistently good. Anyhow, I know you have school, but I told her your great news and she said she’d love to see you.”

  I went to Sister Seraphina and asked if I might take a fortnight off from school, explaining the situation to her. She went to my other teachers, who were happy for an opportunity to accommodate me. I had applied myself academically with diligence at St. Mathilde’s, and Sister Seraphina said that I could tie up the loose ends of the term on an individual basis with my teachers whenever I returned from the west, even if that wasn’t until some time in the summer.

  In the last week of April, I left for the west.

  • • •

  Aunt Lily picked me up at the train station in Galway. She seemed thinner and less formal than I remembered her. We drove uphill along rocky dirt roads, with little green anywhere around, and I remembered Mrs. O’Dare describing Galway as “a rough and unearthly place.”

  As we approached Drumcoyne House we entered an indigenous oak wood, “A rare occurrence,” Aunt Lily explained, “this close to the force of Atlantic winds.” She said it had to do with the shape of the cliffs fronting the woods, serving the land like rocky battlements, preserving the acres from the gales.

  I could see the porticoes of the house and the front foyer window lit up with lamps, bright yellow light cutting the dense shadows of oak trees, bramble and holly. Black mulch rotting under leaves made the earth around the house spongy.

  Aunt Lily led me into the front room where Aunt Kitty sat by the fire, peering at me over her shoulder, wide eyed and reticent across a great expanse of polished, firelit floor. She clutched her teacup in both hands.

  I went in and greeted her but she did not respond except to look at me with damp, surprised eyes.

  Aunt Lily led me along uneven floors, through vast, high-ceilinged rooms painted aqua and cream. Ornate stucco crustaceans intertwined with foliage of the sea. She pointed things out that I might get my bearings for the evening. I had an eerie feeling that I knew this place, it seemed so truly a sister house to the one on Mercymount Strand. But Drumcoyne House was larger, and well furnished, the floors covered with great faded rugs, threadworn and dulled by light.

  The guest room where I was to stay had deep green walls and a lumpy bed under a white crocheted coverlet. A painting of a stern-faced girl in a pink bonnet standing before a dark backdrop hung above the bed. Winged stuccowork angel heads festooned in leaves and acorns enhanced the wainscoting.

  From the small garret window I could see the horizon in uneven washes of light, a vague delineation between sea and sky. But it began to rain and that separation dissolved and the horizon became all mist and amorphous distance. “The edge of the world,” as Angus Kilheen had told me.

  • �
�� •

  Early the next morning I stood on a cliff looking down at the Atlantic Ocean pounding the high rocks near Dunshee Beach, spume whisking inland from the breakers.

  On a long stretch of shore, herons alighted and rose again with effortless grace, their legs trailing after them on the airstream.

  The sky was broken in margins of overcast light, the wind whistling in the cliff rock. I stared out into the tumultuousness of the sea, thinking of my mother, the air cold and biting, causing me to shiver, to pull my jacket tightly around myself.

  My eyes raked the shores for seals. Down on the rock beach I saw an old woman in a wind-battered skirt and a red coat, moving through clotted kelp caught in the boulders. She bent forward, pulling something loose of the kelp, cleaning it off. From the distance it looked like a small shoe. After examining it she threw it aside, then tied her skirt in a clump at her hip, navigating the rocks toward the land, barelegged, the water eddying in.

  A slew of gulls rode in on an air swell, screeching as the incoming tide broke, splashing and filling the spaces between the rocks, rushing the woman’s legs so she swayed, struggling to keep her balance. The sea must have been freezing and I wondered how she stood it.

  She waited for it to retreat, then clambered from the rocks onto the sand and stood squeezing out her dress.

  A weatherhead moved inland and the sky rumbled as the woman walked south on the beach, disappearing behind a cliff.

  • • •

  I sat with both my aunts at the fire drinking tea.

  “Isn’t Clodagh like her mother?” Aunt Lily asked Aunt Kitty.

  Aunt Kitty looked at me wanly and did not answer.

  “About the eyes, the bones of the face,” Aunt Lily said again.

  “Yes,” the other answered and turned away, her face shaking. “She is a bit like Agatha. But her hair isn’t as white.”

  “No, you’re right, Kitty. It is darker and there is a bit more curl in it. Agatha’s hair was so long and straight and white blond.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Kitty frowned and stared at the fire.

  Lily watched Kitty, though she addressed her question to me. “How do you like St. Mathilde’s, Clodagh?”

  “It’s very nice.”

  Lily nodded her head.

  “I like it very much,” I said.

  “And do you have many friends?” Aunt Kitty asked suddenly, turning to me.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good,” Kitty said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And it’s wonderful about your apprenticeship.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Clodagh’s promised to play the piano for us later, Kitty.”

  I reached for a biscuit and bit it carefully. The clock ticked and I felt Aunt Lily searching for something to ask, but the silence went on.

  “This is a lovely tea service,” I said.

  “Spode Copelandware,” Lily said. “Very fine collector’s set. Very old.”

  “Agatha stole a butter dish,” Kitty said crankily, narrowing her eyes at me.

  “I’m sure that she didn’t, Kitty,” Lily said.

  “I’m sure that she did,” mumbled the other.

  “How is Mrs. O’Dare?” Lily asked.

  Before I could answer, Aunt Kitty clutched a little bell hanging around the arm of her wheelchair and rang it furtively. The serving woman came in from the kitchen and wheeled her around to the conservatory window. “Give me the beads,” she snapped. “All of them!” The woman gave her three sets of rosary beads and Kitty poured them on her lap then waved the woman away. I looked at Lily but she shook her head as if to say that this behavior had no explanation.

  “I’m sure you want to spend more time outside. The rain should stop tomorrow,” Lily said, rising.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel it. The mood of the air is changing.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “It will still be cold, mind you.” She coughed and the tiny beads on her bosom trembled.

  The sound of the rain stopped and the room was suddenly lit with the sun. She stood and went to the window, peering up at an area of sky above the oak trees. “This time of year the skies change so violently in the course of an afternoon.”

  The serving woman, Mrs. Dowling, adjusted the screens around the fireplace, the turf embers deepening as her skirt whooshed the air around them.

  As I moved past Kitty to go upstairs she stirred through the beads with her hands, whispering to herself. I saw that her eyes were full of tears.

  • • •

  I ventured out into the damp sun. I reached the cliffs, transported by the vast unearthliness of the place.

  When I’d walked about a half mile south along the headland the sky went dark again and I was caught in a rainstorm. I found shelter at a little isolated hotel called the Hibernian. The restaurant inside had massive windows overlooking the sea. In a connected pub, local men drank and played darts.

  The rain went on a long time and I ate a smoked mackerel salad and looked out the window. Only one other customer sat in the restaurant, in a shadowy corner booth. A thin, fair-haired young man poring over a heavy volume. He looked up and gave me a smile, which I returned. He blushed faintly then looked back at his book.

  The waitress, an older woman with dark hair piled up on her head, came to give me a fresh pot of tea. “Awful weather to be wandering out in,” she said.

  “Yes. This is a nice place, though. I’m glad for the rain or I might not have come in.”

  She smiled then went to the young man in the corner.

  “Finished your food, love?” she asked him, turning to me as she collected his plate. “Denis’s father owns this hotel, Miss. Denis is going to begin at Trinity College, Dublin, in September. To study literature.”

  His mouth tensed into a crooked smile.

  “Yes,” the waitress said. “He’ll be a poet himself one day, or a teller of tales. He’s full o’ the blarney, Miss, so be careful of him.”

  “Please, Mrs. Shea. I can speak for myself,” he said.

  “Well, why don’t you then?” she asked. She gave him a haughty look and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “What’s your name, Miss?” he asked.

  “Clodagh.”

  “I’m Denis,” he said.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  He closed the book and I read the words engraved in gold on the jacket: War and Peace.

  “I’ve not read Tolstoy,” I said.

  “Are you in school, Clodagh?” he asked.

  “I study music at St. Mathilde’s,” I said.

  His eyes brightened. “Music? What do you play?”

  “Piano. And harpsichord,” I said.

  “Harpsichord! Do you know Bach’s Trio Sonatas?”

  “Yes, of course! I play them!”

  “Is that right? I heard them performed at the Royal Dublin Society by a woman named Hilda Fitzgibbon. Have you heard her?”

  “Only on a recording. She’s wonderful.”

  He stood, smiling widely at me, extending his hand toward a chair at his table, inviting me to join him.

  “Are you from Wicklow then, Miss?”

  “From Bray. Just south of Dublin. I’m here visiting relatives. The Sheehys.”

  “Lily and Kitty Sheehy?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The Sheehys know my family, the Lanagans, well.” He looked at me thoughtfully, trying to figure out who I might be to them.

  “A cousin or some such, are you?” he asked. It was striking that if his family knew my aunts well, that he did not immediately know who I was. Clearly, my aunts did not speak of me or of my dead sister and mother. Having banished us to Mercymount Strand, they’d almost succeeded in erasing us.

  A feeling of shame stopped me from telling him the truth. “Yes,” I said. “Distant cousins.”

  “How is Miss Kitty Sheehy feeling these days?”

  “Not wel
l.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry to hear it.” He paused.

  “Yes . . . ,” I said.

  “St. Mathilde’s. That’s not at all far from Dublin,” he said.

  “No. A twenty-minute bus ride.”

  “I am really looking forward to school in Dublin, Clodagh. I saw The Plough and the Stars at the Abbey Theatre the last time I was there. I have the list of plays for the fall.” He fumbled through some papers in a notebook, but gave up looking for it all at once, looked up at me with his face a bit flushed and said, “You should come to Dublin for recitals.”

  “There are buses that girls can take in from St. Mathilde’s for particular events,” I said. “I’ve never gone to any, though. You see, I’ve been matriculating. But starting in September I’ll be living on campus.”

  “Well, you’ll have to come to Dublin for plays and recitals. The Royal Dublin Society often presents symphonic music.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, smiling at him. It would be nice, I thought, to meet him in Dublin; to be ushered about in his enthusiasm.

  “Everything’s there, Clodagh. You can see the hall that houses the Book of Kells from the dormitory I’ll be in. There are Rodins in the National Gallery. Do you like sculpture?”

  “I know very little about it.”

  “Well, in Dublin you can learn. I’ll be happy to show you around.”

  “Thank you.”

  He gave me a flushed, captivating smile. “You have to forgive me. I’ve never met anyone who can play Bach’s Trio Sonatas on harpsichord.”

  “Lily Sheehy has a piano that she just had tuned for me. Maybe one day soon you can call around and I’ll play for you.”

  “Grand,” he said.

  When the sky cleared we went outside and walked a ways down the cliffs. The rain had left its fragrance in the rocks and a silvery light in the sky.

  “Have you lived here all your life?” I asked.

  “Yes, right in the hotel.”

  “Is Dunshee really the edge of the world?”

  “Yes, ’tis. A beach where the two worlds meet.”

  “Which worlds?”

  He looked out over the pewter-colored waves. “Do you know the story of the selkie?”