I grab for the umbrella and wrestle it closed. Our passage slows considerably. There are oars, thank god. I strike out for land but quickly realize I’ll never get us there.
“There’s an inlet south,” one of the boys says.
I look at them for the first time. Eight or nine, maybe. One with ginger freckles, the other a dark fringe obscuring darker eyes. Both astonishingly calm.
The ginger boy points south and I realize he is right, the inlet isn’t far now, and will be easier to reach on the waves. I angle the boat south, leaving one oar submerged to give us a wide arc around the headland.
“The boat’s not gonna last,” I say. “Can you swim?”
“A little.”
We come around and I start rowing properly, hard and fast toward the closest line of land. But the boat takes on water, as it was always going to. Our ankles swim, then our knees.
“Right, jump in, stay close to me.”
We roll into the sea and strike out, and oh, these boys and their courage, and oh, their uselessness in the water, their tiny flailing limbs and “a little” turning out to be not really, not in any way that will help us. So in my left hand I take the backs of their jackets, the scruffs of their necks, and with my right arm I paddle, and with my feet I kick like a mad creature, like a hellbeast, dragging them along with me at this snail’s pace.
Land finds us in twenty minutes, an hour, two—who knows—and though I would never admit it aloud, I’m not sure I could have kept swimming. Not with the extra load hitched to my muscles, muscles I had thought were strong but now seem feeble. There’s no easy end to this, because there’s no gentle sand waiting to catch us as there is on the beaches in Australia; there are only hard-edged rocks and sullen waves to deliver us. I do my best to land first, pulling the boys atop me and saving their bodies from the impact, but fire erupts in my side as I’m dragged along the sharp teeth.
There’s no time to dwell because the next wave that comes will slam me harder and I have to get us out of its reach. I hurl the boys up toward the shallow end and tell them to crawl and quickly, and they do—they slip and slide and make their way onto the dry rocks, and I scramble clear, too, just as the next wave dumps, and the three of us sink onto our bums and could just as easily dissolve into the earth, I think.
We sit quietly, not speaking. Over the roar of the sea I can hear the distant ambulance siren.
It’s fucking cold.
Professor Niall Lynch arrives with my bike. “You guys all right?”
The three of us nod.
“Your parents are coming,” he says, and I realize belatedly that he’s managed to ride my bike to reach us, despite its flat tire. There’s a flock of figures approaching along the hill. Niall puts his jacket around the two shivering boys, but it doesn’t really fit and starts sliding off.
I stand. My body hurts, but only as a vague afterthought. I suspect the pain will find me later, and strip me bare, but for now I am dazed and too aware of my teeth.
“You’re bleeding,” Niall Lynch says.
“Nah,” I say, even though I am.
I bend for my bike; he reaches for it a second later and we lift it together. He hands me my shoes and jacket, which I didn’t realize he’d collected. “Thanks,” I say, and then he’s watching me too closely, so I look back to the boys.
They meet my eyes. Smile. And it’s enough, it’s more than enough. I don’t want the parents and the ambulance and the hospital and the questions. The smiles are plenty. I flash them a grin of my own, a quick wave, and then I start pushing my bike back up toward the grassy hill.
I glance back once. Niall is staring at me in a way that seems to imply I should have said something, so I say the only thing I can think of, which is “Seeya,” and head for home.
* * *
Blood sluices down the drain. My toes are pruned, mind blank. I’m curled on the floor of the shower and the hot water is starting to fail; in moments it will be gone and I’ll be frozen again, but still I can’t move.
I forgot to ask the boys’ names. I suppose it doesn’t matter, only now I wish I knew. I wish I were back in the sea.
Two shards of rock are embedded in my hip; my ribs and thigh have a layer of skin scraped free. Bruises are forming. The ache of the swim is bone-deep.
When I can put it off no longer I get awkwardly to my feet and turn off the taps. Even the act of drying myself takes effort. I perch on the toilet lid and use a pair of tweezers on the gravel in my flesh. I don’t have any disinfectant so I pull on undies and singlet and search the kitchen for tequila. A splash for my hip, a shot to swallow.
My housemates find me sitting on the kitchen bench, halfway through the bottle. It doesn’t surprise them. They reach for glasses and join me, but soon trickle away until I’m left, alone again, only now my tequila bottle is empty and the pain has melted into the background and there is a pounding beat of adrenaline in my pulse. I’d like to be outside but I’m glued to the spot, swaying just a little, too astonished by life and the world to move.
I think of my mother: she was always aware of life’s marvels and its perils, and of how closely entwined the two are. I ponder what led her across the ocean and into the bed of a monster. I wonder if she knew what he was all along, and I think that she might have. I think she might have thrilled at what he was, even though it would see her abandoned once again. I wonder if anything was able to press through the wall of anger that led my father to tighten his hands around another man’s neck. Was there a flicker of regret, even as he did it? A momentary revelation of the horror of the thing he was making of himself? I wonder what he thinks of, in prison, and if his anger feels like a worn old friend or a passionate lover even now. Perhaps he hates it, perhaps he left it buried in the throat of the man he killed.
Fuck. I’m drunk. These are the things that creep in uninvited.
I slide off the bench and drift to the bedroom I share with Sinead and Lin. They’re asleep, Sinead’s soft snoring evidence. I think of the sea to fall asleep, but tonight her rhythms are uneasy and offer no calm. I am altogether too alive for calm.
* * *
At 3:00 a.m. someone knocks on our front door. I know because I’m awake and staring at Lin’s alarm clock when the sound reverberates through every paper-thin wall of the house. Whoever’s responsible for that will be in trouble. All seven other occupants of Wall Manor, as we have named it, let free a stream of filth the likes of which would make a sailor blush.
Henry, who is closest to the front door, gets up to answer it and we all listen to his feet pounding along the floorboards.
“What? You know what time it is, man?”
“I believe it’s 0302,” a voice replies, and I know that voice. “Sorry to disturb.”
I sit blearily upright.
“Does Franny Stone live here?” the voice says, and a chorus of groans travels through the Manor.
Sinead and Lin throw their pillows at my head while I stumble to the door.
Niall Lynch is on our front step, bathed in silver Galway moonlight. He’s in the same clothes he was wearing earlier tonight, and he’s smoking a cigarette. He looks lean and pale. What is it about him that so enamors everyone? I can’t see it. Not when he isn’t talking about birds.