The cottage was part of a group of five built by the county council for Cable Station workers like my uncle. They were all on one side of the shore road facing the channel, but the grounds of the doctor’s house on the other side were full of tall old trees and you couldn’t see the house, not to mind the channel or the mainland.

--He’s a little fussy, my mother told my aunt. He won’t eat you out of house and home.

--He can eat as much as he likes, my aunt said, so long as he likes fish—and spuds. Sure he’s shot up since I saw him last.

It was true that I was now taller than either Kitty or my uncle Mick. This embarrassed me, as though they might think I was getting a head above myself, as Mick would say about people from town. Or that I didn’t want to visit them anymore because I didn’t come last year.

--As long as he doesn’t let you do a hand’s turn of work about the place, my mother said. If I hear that he’s let you lift or carry anything heavier than a teacup before the baby comes, or afterwards, for that matter…

--So now I have two men waiting on me hand and foot, said Kitty, himself and Mick. Sure I’ll be bored out of me mind. And Mick says we have to get a girl in to help us when Matty goes back to school.

--I’m not going back to school, I said.

--Do you hear him? my mother said. This is what I have to put up with.

 --Are you sure ye wouldn’t like a cup of tea? Kitty asked, to change the subject.

--Ah, sure, we’d better be hitting the road, my father said. It’s a long way back to town.

Kitty was wearing an old tweed skirt with an oilcloth apron over it and a headscarf tied underneath her chin. She’d just come in from feeding the chickens, and she was wearing Uncle Mick’s boots. My mother always said she was after letting herself go since she married him and went to live on the Island. But she was my mother’s younger half-sister, and I always thought she was more like my cousin than my aunt. That was probably why I called her Kitty instead of Auntie, although my mother didn’t like it.

--Go straight home now, Kitty said, giving my father a grin. Don’t take any detours.

--You may be sure he won’t, said my mother grimly, or it won’t be well for him.

That was why my father was in a hurry to leave, so he’d be home in time to go to the pub, if my mother would let him, which wasn’t very likely, though he would say he was entitled to it after driving all that way. He was only supposed to go to the pub on Saturday nights.

My mother took Kitty’s arm and pressed something into her hand.

--Sure there’s no need, my aunt said. Wouldn’t I take him for nothing and think I had the best of the bargain?

We were standing in the living room where there was a big picture window and a glass bookcase with my uncle’s books. He mostly read detective stories and westerns, and all his books had hard covers, which I liked. I had only read about half of them, and he must have gotten more since the last time I was here.

Kitty went to the window.

--Mick is outside with the pony and trap to take ye to the ferry, she said. I’ll walk out to the gate with ye.

--Behave yourself now for Kitty and Mick, my mother told me.

I didn’t look at her. I wasn’t sorry to be shut of my parents. While we were driving to the Island, I pretended to be sleeping in the back seat so they wouldn’t ask me anymore why I wouldn’t go back to school. But they were probably just as sick and tired of asking me as I was of not telling them.

--Don’t mind about anything, Matty, my father said. Just help out around the place, like a good man, and do whatever your aunt wants. Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, whatever you do.

--Sure how could he be a nuisance? my aunt said. Isn’t it dying to have him we are, always? We’ll work him to the bone—won’t we, Matty?

And she gave me a look that was just between the two of us.

--Aren’t they very good to take you for the whole summer? my mother said to me. You’ll go back to school in the fall, no questions asked.

I didn’t bother to contradict her. But there was no way I was going back to that place, no matter what they said.

--All the best so, my father said.

He would have given me a hug, as he used to do when I was younger, but he didn’t know whether he was supposed to be mad with me or feel sorry for me. My mother had no problem knowing how she felt about it.

They went out into the porch. I went over to the bookcase and squatted down close to the glass to find the books I hadn’t read.

--We couldn’t get a word out of him, my mother said, in what was supposed to be a whisper. Did you ever hear the like?

Kitty said something I didn’t hear.

--Jack wants to send him to Lismore. But sure that’s a school for the children of black Protestants, and worse. I don’t think he would ever hear a prayer there, of our kind, at least. It’s out of the question anyway: we’re not made of money. He’ll just have to go back to the Brothers.

I wanted to go to the door and shout: I am not going back there! But I just put my forehead against the glass. They would be gone in a minute, and I would have the whole summer. It was as good as forever.

--Well, it’s an ill wind, Kitty said. Mick is delighted he’s here too. All he can talk about is taking him out in the boat.

--Ye let him walk all over you, Kitty, my mother said. It comes of not having any of yeer own. But ye’ll soon be cured of that, please God.

I knew this would upset my aunt, but she did not say anything. She thought it was bad luck to talk about what was going to happen, in case it didn’t.

--If he says anything to you—my mother started.

--It will be between the two of us, Kitty said, unless he says I can tell you. He’s not a child anymore.

--Oh, go along with you, Kitty. You’re always the same.

--Thank you for taking him, Kitty, my father said quickly. Sure it’ll be a holiday for him. And when he comes back…

They must have walked down to the gate where Mick was waiting and I didn’t hear anymore.

When my aunt came back, I was sitting in my uncle’s armchair with a book in my lap: Sudden Rides Again by Oliver Strange. Sudden, aka James Green, was my favorite gunfighter. But he was a good man who had been wronged and never used his gun unless he had to. I just wanted to sit there and read until the cows came home—or until I’d read all of my uncle’s books I hadn’t read before—and then maybe I’d start over at the beginning. I knew that neither Kitty nor Mick would mind if I kept my nose in a book for the whole summer.

My aunt sat at the table. She never sat in her armchair by the fireplace unless it was after tea and she had all the dishes washed.

--Do you mind a fry for your dinner, Matty? she asked me.

I looked up from the book.

--I don’t mind a fry, Kitty. But you’re not supposed to be doing for me. You’ll have to tell me how to make it.

Kitty threw back her head and laughed. She looked lovely when she laughed, even with the bump of the baby sticking out a mile in front of her.

--Is it teach a man to go in the kitchen and do for himself? I suppose you’ll be up at the crack of dawn to give Mick his breakfast when he comes home from work.

--I will if you let me, I said, sulkily.

Kitty reached into her handbag and took out a pack of Sweet Afton and a cigarette lighter.

--What about an old fag? Are you smoking yet?

--No, thank you.

--Sure? You wouldn’t like one on the Q. T.? My lips are sealed.

--I don’t smoke.

--Aren’t you better off? I’m not supposed to smoke myself until after the baby comes, so I have to smoke out back in case Mick would smell it. But sure what harm? It’s only the odd one. Come on away out, let you. Or stay where you are, if you want to read your book.

I followed her, taking the book with me, through the kitchen and into a small room with nothing in it, save for a couple of folding chairs and some tin bowls for pet food and water on the floor near the door, which was open onto the back yard. A glossy black cat with a torn ear slipped out the door when we came in.

--That’s Scruffy, Kitty told me. He’s not really shy, but he doesn’t know you yet. He sleeps in the corner there on that old cushion. I don’t let him in the house because he scratches the arms of the sofa.

--Is he yours?

--He belongs to the Curtins across the way—you remember your old friend Pat-Joe—but they don’t feed him. He’s an outdoor cat, so they think he can fend for himself.

--Where’s Old Finn?

My aunt didn’t say anything. When I looked over at her, there were tears in her eyes.

--He went off somewhere and never came back. Mick thinks he was swimming in the channel and took a fit and drowned. He was a great swimmer, Old Finn. But he used to get fits and chase his tail.

Old Finn was a black lab, big for a lab, with a head like a bullet and a long tail that stood up. He always remembered me, even if I hadn’t seen him for a year.

--Why didn’t you tell me, Kitty?

--Sure didn’t I think he would come back!

--Maybe he will.

--He never went off like that before, my aunt said. I’m heartbroken after him. I’m never getting another dog.

She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke at the ceiling. That was what she always said when one of her dogs died, but she would always go out and get a new dog before I came again. I was sad because she was talking like Old Finn was really gone. And the way she said ‘heartbroken’ and ‘never’ made me remember what was after happening to me at school and why I could never go back. I was glad she didn’t ask me about it.

--What about an old game of cards? Unless you’re too grown up to play Beggar-My-Neighbor with your old aunt, mister?

--We could play poker, just for a change.

--You play poker now? For money?

--I never play for money, I said quickly.

--Poker is no fun if you don’t play for money, Kitty said. We’d better stick with Beggar-My-Neighbor. Sure it will kill the time.

She went over to Mick’s bookcase and took the cards out of a drawer. She sat at the table and shuffled the deck, faster than you could see, made two piles and folded them into each other.

--Mick is working tonight, she told me while she shuffled. He’ll have to bring the pony back to Driscoll’s and then it will be time for his shift and he won’t be home until the morning. So it’s just the two of us.

She dealt out the cards into two piles, picked up her pile, and looked at the cards, making a face.

--You’re not supposed to look at them, I said. It takes the good out of it if you know what’s coming.

--What’s good about not knowing? she said, laying down a Queen with a little snap of the card. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

I put down a King and swept away the cards and put out another King.

--I wouldn’t doubt you, Kitty said.

She peeled back the corner of her first card and grinned at me.

--Come on, Kitty, I said.

She put the card down, but kept her hand over it so I couldn’t see.

--Your old aunt plays her cards close to the chest, she said. Just like you do, love.

I woke in the very early quiet and remembered where I was, and why. I went to the window and opened it. The cold air came in, and the smell of rain and turf smoke and salt water. My father always said the Island air was like wine; it was different from town anyway. If I really listened, I could hear a sound like someone snoring: the sea.

You could hardly see as far as the gate, with the mist, not to mind the trees around the doctor’s house. A magpie, all black and white, came flying and perched on a branch. It looked like it was floating in the air. One for sorrow. Then another came out of the mist and went into the same tree. Two for joy.

I was in a hurry to take a piss, and I had to go through the kitchen where Kitty was at the sink and I left the kitchen door slam before I remembered I was supposed to be quiet because Mick was sleeping. There were slate flagstones in the back yard, and they were cold on my bare feet, and it was cold in the outhouse too, and smelly. Mick put newspapers in there to read while he was sitting on the jacks, and Kitty said he used them instead of toilet paper to wipe himself when he was done reading them.

When I came back in the kitchen, Kitty put her finger to her lips and pointed toward the living room. There was a pot of tea and a plate with a cover on it already on the table. She came in after me and closed the door.

--I left you a potty under the bed, she said with a grin. But I suppose you city folk would wet the bed before you’d use a chamber pot.

--You’re after turning into an islander, Kitty, I said. You forget what it’s like to have a toilet in the house.

I ate my breakfast—it was rashers and eggs with fried potatoes that Kitty knew I liked—and she sat at the other end of the table, knitting something for the baby. I wanted to read, but I didn’t like to with Kitty sitting there.

The first thing Kitty always asked me when I would visit her and Mick was how was school. She would say, How was school? and I would say, School was…school. Then I would ask her how was the Island and she would make a face and tell me the Island was the Island, time out of mind, and we would have a laugh. The joke, if you could call it a joke, was on my mother because ever since I started going to the Brothers, my mother was killed asking me how was the new school and wasn’t I lucky to be there instead of the old school where there weren’t any Brothers.

But I knew Kitty wouldn’t ask me because it wasn’t a joke anymore. Still, just in case, I had to think of something to say, something that would get her going.

--Would you rather Mick worked days?

Kitty gave a sigh.

--Sure it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other, she said. When he’s on nights, I don’t sleep—except when you’re here, love—and when he’s on days, I’m lonesome here by myself, especially if he’s working Sundays. May God forgive me for saying so, but if I had my way, there would be no Sunday in the week, it’s that long and lonesome, a day with nothing to look forward to, after you come home from mass.

--You look forward to going to mass, Kitty?

--Oh, will you listen to him? At least I put in an appearance anyway, every Sunday, and on all feast days and holy days of obligation. And I perform my Easter duty—which is more than I can say for some people. Does your mother know you’ve lost your faith?

--She knows I go out of the house in time for half past five mass and come back an hour later.

--Where do you go?

--Wouldn’t you like to know?

--Even if I did, I wouldn’t be scandalized, Kitty said, getting a little huffy. And your mother wouldn’t get to hear of it, not from me, anyway.

--I’m sorry, Kitty, I said.

It occurred to me that there was a pair of us in it, Kitty was sad because it was a Sunday, and I was trying to pretend the summer would last forever and my parents weren’t going to come and try to make me go back to the Brothers. My mother just wanted me to study hard and get a job and make a lot of money so she could tell her friends how well her son was getting on. She didn’t care what I wanted or what sort the Brothers were or what happened to me there.

--What are you sorry for? Kitty said, getting up from the table. I’m going to fry us up a pair of mackerel for our dinner that Mick caught off the lighthouse rocks, and after that, the babby and I will lie down and take a rest and you’ll read your Sudden to your heart’s content. Then we’ll have the tay and the old cards to look forward to. Sure what more do we want?

--Do you want me to come with you to the doctor’s? Kitty said.

I shook my head.

--It was your mother asked me to make the appointment, Kitty said. I don’t want you to hold it against your old aunt.

--I won’t.

--I know you don’t want to go. But sure he won’t ate you. He’s a dote. If I didn’t go to see him every other week, he’d be knocking on the door there to ask about the baby.

I didn’t say anything.

--We could tell your mother a white lie, Kitty said. She’d be none the wiser. Sure there’s nothing wrong with you, is there?

--I better go, Kitty.

I went out our gate. It was another misty day. I walked back the road until I came to the entrance to the doctor’s house. There was a green wooden gate across the driveway and a small side gate painted the same color. I went in at the side gate. The driveway was made of white crushed seashells that were noisy to walk on; they seemed to shine, even in the shadows of the trees. You couldn’t see the house from the road for the tall rhododendron bushes and the trees all around it. It was more like a house in town than Kitty and Mick’s cottage; it had three floors, a garage for the doctor’s car, and a greenhouse.

The doctor’s office was like a library, full of books and chairs with straight backs. He made me take off everything save for my underpants and sit on a narrow table for him to examine me. I was afraid he was going to ask me lots of questions, but he didn’t hardly say anything the whole time I was there, except to ask me how was my aunt. He seemed to be as embarrassed as I was. When he was finished, he turned his back and looked out the window at the trees while I was getting dressed.

--What do they think is wrong with you anyway? he asked me.

I did not say anything. He patted me on the shoulder.

--Everything’s in working order, son, he said. Run along. Mind the bugs don’t bite.

Instead of crunching the seashells all the way back to the road, I cut through the bushes until I came to the steps the doctor made out of flat pieces of slate where you could go down to the strand. If anyone from the doctor’s house saw you on the steps, they would make you go around by the road. But the doctor didn’t own the strand nor the slate wall, one flat slate piled on top of another, that went off to either side.

I stepped down, and my feet rattled the shingle. I sat with my back to the wall. No one could see me there from the house or the road.

The tide was out, flat calm, and it smelled of seaweed. You couldn’t see the mainland for the mist. The water was as smooth as a sheet of glass. Sometimes you could hear sounds coming from the mainland, people talking and laughing as if they were right next to you, a donkey making that awful roar like somebody was sticking a knife in it, or a dog barking. But today there were no sounds. The tide was coming, but there were no waves; it just came in, slow and steady, creeping up the strand, and it made a sound like you were pouring water into a glass, and then there was no sound at all. It was like being inside of a huge balloon, you couldn’t see the inside, and outside there was nothing, the mainland was gone, the water was gone, the sky was gone, and there was nothing—except the stones of the strand, each one a different size and color, and the seaweed, the long green hair of one kind, the shriveled pieces of another that crumbled to black dust in your hand, the flat yellow leaves of a third with bubbles you could burst with your thumb…

I wanted to sit without moving while the day passed and everything went away. This day, and then the next, for the entire summer, which was forever, as far as I was concerned. But Kitty would wonder why I didn’t come back from the doctor’s, and I didn’t want to worry her. She wasn’t supposed to let anything worry her until after the baby came.

I woke up drenched in perspiration. But it was cold in the room, and I was after throwing off the sheet and the blanket. I sat up in bed. I could see the tiled fireplace that was never used and the outline of the window. The curtain was blowing, and I knew the window must be open. My breath was doing something strange, like I was running. I was after having a dream. Was I running in my dream? When Old Finn was a pup, he used to sleep by the fire in the living room, and his legs moved because he was dreaming that he was chasing something.

Why was I thinking about Old Finn? It made me sad to think about him.

I rolled out of bed slowly, trying not to make more noise than I had to, in case I would wake Kitty. I stood at the window and put the curtains to one side. I was wearing only pajama bottoms: the air chilled the perspiration on my neck and chest. It was a black night, black as the inside of a coal scuttle, as my uncle liked to say, but I could tell that the things outside were in their places, though I couldn’t see them: the railing around the garden, the trees across the road, the gate pillars, Mick’s hydrangea bushes.

I looked back at the bed. I didn’t want to lie awake with a burning feeling in my chest where my heart was. I didn’t want to remember my dream. There was something in it that kept happening, always in the same way, and it would never be different. That frightened me more than anything.

I went to the back door and opened it as quietly as I could. I eased the footboard over the threshold so that it would hold the door shut, but not latched. I stepped out and walked in my bare feet on the flags to the corner of the house. It was all around me, the night of the Island, a night like you could never have in town. I could feel it expanding to infinity above me, even though there were clouds and I couldn’t see the stars. I felt it stretching away over the dark sea to the Skellig Rocks and the Blaskets. I thought that I might drown in all this empty darkness—but I didn’t want to go back inside. I was shivering, but it wasn’t the cold.

I walked through a gap in the hedge of brambles and gorse that separated the cottage from the field next to it. There was a squeeze stile in the gap to keep the cattle from coming into the yard: two vertical pieces of slate with a very narrow space between them. I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. The stile was narrower at the bottom, and I had to put my hands on top of the slates and lift myself carefully through it, one foot at a time.

My heart was pounding while I was stepping through the stile. I was expecting at every moment to be grabbed from behind—or to see someone or something not of this world, but of that Other World that Mick was always talking about. The Other World is closer than the door, he would say, closer than the vein in your neck. I stumbled out of the stile. I could feel the thick wet grass of the field beneath my feet, and I walked out into the middle of it.

I hunkered down and hugged myself. I was sorry I came out without a pajama top, but not sorry I was out there. I lay back on the grass and spread out my arms and legs. The grass was cold and wet underneath me, and I would probably catch my death: that’s what my mother would think anyway. But I didn’t care. I remembered what my father would say when he looked up at the sky in the night: there’s a lot of room up there. You couldn’t see the stars properly in town. I was breathing more evenly. I was starting to relax. I was glad they brought me down to the Island.

Suddenly I heard a rustling of the grass and a pounding and a snuffling, and something rushed upon me, something wet and slippery and black as the ace of spades. My stomach was in a knot. There was a panting and something heavy scrambling over me, scratching my chest, and a wetness upon my face and neck and all at once I knew it was—Old Finn! He tore away in the dark, and I heard him stop suddenly and jump around, and then he threw himself at me again. I was gasping and spluttering with the fright I got and the relief, and I tried to get a hold of his collar but he didn’t have one, so I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his coat. He was as slippery as a fish and about as wet as one, and he smelled like seaweed and cowshit and bog water that was after standing a long time. He squirmed to try and free himself, his tail lashing my chest and face, but I was afraid he’d go off on his own again, and I held on to him.

Someone was standing by the stile, holding a bicycle lamp that lit up a little circle of the field at her feet.

--Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! my aunt said. You put the heart across me.

Old Finn ran to her, and she gave a start and dropped the lamp. It fell on its side, and the slanted light showed her down on her knees, with the dog licking her face.

 --Is that Old Finn?

I felt the great joy in her voice at the center of my chest.

Kitty was at the table peeling potatoes for Mick’s dinner. He was working days, but he still came home late, after Kitty and I already had our tea. Old Finn was lying in front of the fireplace; he was there most of the day, by special dispensation, as Mick said, the prodigal dog. He had to be washed in the bathtub in the yard with rainwater out of the tank at the corner of the house to get the smell out of his coat, the same tub Mick used himself.

--Did you get the talk about the birds and bees yet, Matty?

I had my nose in a Sudden book, and I pretended not to hear her.

--Begod, if you didn’t, I think it’s too late for you, Kitty said. You already know more than is good for you.

The way she said it, teasing me, made me forget that I didn’t want to talk.

--Why don’t you tell me about the birds and bees, Kitty? I said, to tease her back.

--Is it your old aunt should teach a young fellow like yourself? You’ve probably forgotten more than I ever knew, a city slicker like you. Are you going with anyone?

--I never went with anyone.

She stopped peeling the spuds and stared at me.

--Is it codding me you are? A handsome young fellow like yourself?

--You’re a city slicker too, I said, to change the subject. Or you used to be.

--Oh, the Island has taken the shine off me, and no mistake. Sure there’s no life in a place like this, save for the wind and the water.

--Don’t forget the smell of cowshit, I said. You better not let Mick hear you.

--Mick knows what I think of the place only too well. He says I never miss a chance to tell him how much better off we’d be in town.

--Couldn’t Mick find work in town?

--Sure he was lucky to get into the Cable Station: that’s the be-all and end-all of things around here. It wouldn’t be so bad if we got into one of the Residences, but they’re all filled up this long time. Still we might yet; some of those old geezers are coming up for retirement. Mick would be afraid to give up his place for fear he’d never get another like it.

--Do you think he wouldn’t, Kitty?

--Tis hard to know. There would have to be two of him, one living here on the Island and the other in town. But whether or which, I’d still be an old lady with a bun in the oven.

--I don’t think you’ll ever be an old lady, I said.

--Thanks, Matty. I’ll never be a lady, is more like it. Not like your mother anyway.

I wanted to say I was glad she wasn’t like my mother, but I thought she might not like it.

--Town is no great shakes anyway, I said.

--Is that right?

I could see she thought I might tell her something about what happened to me at school. The queer thing was that I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t.

--Would you go away? she wanted to know. When you finish school. What have you left, a year?

--Two years, I said. They put me back a year because I wasn’t eighteen. Maybe I’d go to England. But Mam and Da won’t want me to go. Anyway it would be the same thing there, only more so.

Kitty went back to the potatoes. But I could tell she had something to say.

--I’m only joking you about the birds and bees, Matty. You know that, don’t you? What hurry is on you? You’ll grow up to be a man soon enough—you’re almost there—and you’ll find some nice girl to settle down with.

--Who would want to settle down with the likes of me? I said, before I could stop myself.

--Why do you say that, Matty?

--It could never happen, Kitty.

--Why not, love?

I put my nose back in the book. But I was only pretending to be reading. After a while Kitty gave a big sigh and got up from the table.

--I don’t know what sort of a world it is, so I don’t, but I’d better put on Mick’s spuds or they won’t be ready for him. There’s nothing he hates more than a half-cooked spud.

Kitty would often light the fire because she was always cold. At least she would start to ball up the newspapers, and I would take them out of her hands and lay them in the grate and put the sticks and the coal on top of them. I liked to light the fire and especially to get it to blaze up with the bellows. Kitty told me to open the window if it got too hot for me. I didn’t mind. I read sitting in Mick’s chair in front of the fire and Kitty sat at the table behind me. Sometimes she would sigh and put down her knitting and get up slowly, as though she was carrying a heavy weight and walk out of the room, leaving the door open, and I would hear her bare feet going down the hall to the bedrooms and back again, back and forth, back and forth, and every now and then she would sigh or say something under her breath that I couldn’t hear, and then she would come back in the room again and sit down on her chair with a little thump. I was concentrating on what was happening in my book, would Jim Green get away from the riders who were following him, but I would look up when Kitty came in, just in case she needed something, and we sat there without talking, and you could hear the wind around the house, and sometimes the sea, and I remembered how Mick would say ‘Pity the poor mariner’ when it was stormy, and I wondered what it was like to be out on the sea in the dark, and I was glad to be sitting beside the fire with Kitty at the table behind me and a Sudden book in my hand. It was nicer to be with Kitty than anyone, even Mick or my father, and I never minded if we didn’t talk and neither did she.

--Will you close the curtains, love? You’ll have to light the oil lamp first. Do you remember how to do it?

I got up and lifted the glass chimney off the lamp and worked the wick up a little. I struck a match and lit it and worked it down again and put the chimney back on the lamp font. The glass was all stained with the smoke, and there was a circle on the ceiling directly above where it stood on the mantlepiece.

Suddenly it was dark outside, and the whole room was reflected in the window, only it seemed like a different room, not the room we were in. I watched as someone walked from the mantlepiece to the window and put his hand on the curtain cord. He wasn’t solid: you could see the dark right through him. He was like a ghost. I stopped to look at him, and he stopped and looked back. But you couldn’t see his eyes or the expression on his face with the dark behind him.

--Mick says his father used to tell him if you look out the window on a dark night, you’ll see a hungry ghost looking in. There’s a table with food on it behind him, but he doesn’t know it’s there.

--I see him, I said.

--Sure it’s only a cod, Kitty said. Anyone would know that, besides Mick. The ghost is your reflection, and the table is set for your own supper.

Still I couldn’t see that the reflection was me. I felt that there was someone or something watching me.

--Close the curtain, Matty. You wouldn’t want to mind Mick.

--Right, I said.

I pulled the curtain closed and made sure it went all the way to the window frame and I went back to the armchair and picked up the book. But I couldn’t read it. I kept thinking there was someone standing outside in the dark, looking at the light behind the curtain where Kitty and I were sitting. I felt sorry for that someone.

After a while Kitty got up to go to bed.

--Do you want a cup of tea or anything? I asked her.

--Not for me, love. Are you going to bed yourself?

--I’m not tired, I said, though I was falling asleep over the book.

--Don’t forget to turn that lamp down or it will smoke all night.

After Kitty was gone, I put out the lamp and sat in the dark. It was after getting quiet, no more wind in the doctor’s trees, and you couldn’t hear the sea anymore. After a while I got up and opened the curtains. There was no ghost looking in and no reflection, and you could see everything even though it was dark, the flowerbeds and the lawn and the gate and the doctor’s trees. I wished Kitty hadn’t gone to bed, I was that lonesome. There was a weight on my chest like someone was sitting there, or like I was carrying something heavy. But I was never going back, no matter what they said.

I went out of the gate on Sunday morning, but instead of turning to go to early mass in the Village, I turned the opposite way and wandered off past the doctor’s house toward Chapeltown where there was no mass until the afternoon. Kitty said she wasn’t my mother and I was old enough to do what I liked and she didn’t want to know where I went on Sunday morning so she wouldn’t have to tell a lie if my mother asked did he go out to mass. Mick said if I wanted to go to Hell, I could go there on roller skates, for all of him, and he’d be glad to have my company and he’d leave a light on for me and keep a nice fire going. Kitty always went to mass, but she said you couldn’t expect Mick to go, especially after he worked Saturday night.

When I came back, Kitty said Mick was up and he was going to take me out in the boat to see if it would cheer me up.

--You know how you love that old boat, she told me. Though I don’t know what you see in it myself.

I walked with Mick to the pier in the Village where he kept his boat. Mick knew his business was to cheer me up, but he was afraid to say anything for fear Kitty might say he made matters worse. I felt sorry for him, and I wanted to help him out.

--What do you think happened to Old Finn, Uncle Mick?

Mick got a gleam in his eye, like he was going to be mad with someone.

--I’d say someone tried to steal him, he said. But he pulled his head out of the collar. There are no flies on Old Finn.

--Who do you think it was?

--I couldn’t tell you, he said. Probably some so-and-so from Port or Caher. It wouldn’t be anyone from the Island.

Mick’s boat was a lobster boat with a little cabin like a small outhouse standing up in the middle of it. Mick didn’t keep lobster pots, but he sometimes took tourists to the Skellig rocks if the weather was good.

The boat was moored between the two piers, and Mick had to use a punt to get to it and bring it alongside the slip. After I stepped down into the boat, he uncovered the engine. Once he got it going, it was too noisy for us to talk. The exhaust smoke floated over the stern and got in my nose and made me cough. But I liked the smell because it was part of being in the boat. Mick went into the cabin and opened the throttle a little, and the boat backed away from the pier in a long curve of smooth water. I lounged in the stern seat, already sleepy with the sunshine and the noise of the engine.

We motored down the middle of the channel. On the right hand we passed the trees around the doctor’s house that hid the cottages from view. Then the village and the pier of Port were on the left, a hillside of rough fields on the right. The land opened out, and the ocean was clear and bright all the way to the horizon, a line straight as a ruler between the sea and the sky. A cold wind came off the water and chilled my face. I started to feel the swells, the boat rising and falling, the cabin pitching back and forth. Mick looked over his shoulder with a grin and said something I couldn’t hear, but I knew what it was. Where are your sea legs? I’d never hear the end of it if I was seasick.

On our right was the Head, where the cable came ashore, and the old tower house, a ruin, on the very top, that the British built for a lookout. You could see the sky through the empty doorway and the high windows, and if you went inside, you could see the marks of the disappeared floors on the walls and a fireplace hanging in the air like an altar under the open roof.

There were boats ahead of us on the sea. We were walloping through the waves, spray was wetting my face and clothes, but the other boats seemed to be frozen in place, as if the water was thick like porridge out where they were. They did not get closer or further away, but the wake of the nearest one spread out to either side on the surface of the water. Ahead of them, sticking up out of the sea, breaking the straight line of the horizon, there was a pair of rocks like teeth, the Skelligs, and the other boats were crawling toward them like flies in soup, while we were tossed up and down behind. Out beyond the rocks, there was—Nothing! That was where I wanted to go. Already I couldn’t remember what it was like to stand still and be dry, without the roar of the engine and the mad tossing of the boat.

My uncle made me stand beside him in the cabin where I wouldn’t get so wet. When you came closer to the two rocks, you could see that the farther-away-looking one was nearer and smaller. It was all white, and while we were passing it, I saw that every inch of it was covered with gannets, big white birds with black faces and long beaks. The cliffs were white too. That’s what polite people call guano, Mick shouted in my ear—because they can’t say a big pile of shit! You could tell that my uncle enjoyed not being one of the polite people.

The rock stunk to high heaven while we were close to it. Mick cut the engine, and the racket the birds made was as bad as the smell: you couldn’t hear yourself think with them. Mick grinned and started the engine again, and the breeze blew the smell away.

The other rock got bigger and bigger until it was high over the boat. Mick cut the throttle back, and we puttered into a little cove where one other boat was standing off a small flat pier only a few feet above the tide. There was still a bit of a swell, but that didn’t stop Mick. He waved to the other boatman and pulled his boat in close to the pier and made me step out at the top of the swell, which was the sort of thing would give Kitty or my mother a heart attack. Then he threw me a rope to slip through a rusty iron ring on top of the pier and tossed the old car tires over the side to protect the hull from knocking against the pier and stepped out himself and moored the boat with another rope.

--Now you’re laughing, boyeen, he said.

--I’m not laughing, I said.

--Sure it could be worse, Mick said. You could have been a monk stuck out here on this bit of rock in all weathers. Think of that! Or the ghost of a monk that’s probably still here.

We climbed the monks’ steps, big slabs of stone, me first. The cliffs were very steep on either side of me. Mick said not to look down, but I did anyway: there were gulls flying beneath me. We came to a little green place at the top, the only grass on the rock, and that was where the monastery was. There were stone huts shaped like beehives and the walls of a small chapel, not even as big as Kitty and Mick’s cottage. The beehives were taller than your head, and there were stones sticking out of the sides and a low dark opening at the ground, but no windows.

--What’s in there? I said.

--Go and see for yourself.

I got down on my hands and knees and crawled in. I couldn’t see anything for a minute, and I was afraid in case there was a hole in the floor. When I looked up, it was dark, but I had the feeling there was a lot of space up there, just like my father said about the sky of the Island at night. It was very quiet and empty: the ghosts of the monks were gone, along with everything else. You would never know you were on a rock in the middle of the ocean. The whole world was gone. I didn’t mind that. It was what I wanted. Maybe I would be a monk.

I sat on the dry dirt until my uncle called me.

--What did you find, boyeen?

--Nothing, I said, crawling out.

--What was it like in there? It must have been like something.

 --It was like being in a church, I said.

--Ha! my uncle said. The Church of Nothing.

--Why don’t you go see your old friend Pat-Joe? Kitty said. He’s at a loose end. He says he’s not going back to school either.

--Why not?

--His mother says he wants to get a job on the lifeboat. That would suit him alright: he’d only have to work when there was a storm and someone caught out in it.

She was looking down at her knitting, and she moved the needles as fast as she could shuffle the deck of cards.

--But I mustn’t say anything about your friend, she said. I’m sure he has something on his mind. Why don’t you ask him yourself?

She could have said, What’s on your mind? But Kitty wasn’t like that.

--I haven’t seen him since the year before last, I said.

--Why didn’t you come down last year, love? Sure I suppose you’re tired of the Island.

--Mam and Da wanted me to go to the Canary Islands with them, I said. The weather is better there. But they decided they couldn’t afford it.

It was a lame excuse, and we both knew it. The truth was I wanted to spend the summer playing mixed doubles at the tennis club in town. But that was before I went to the Brothers.

--Well, you were always great with Pat-Joe, my aunt said. And while you’re at it, you can ask him if Scruffy went home to his own house. He hasn’t been around here since Old Finn came back.

I knew she was thinking that talking to Pat-Joe would ‘take me out of myself.’ I got up and went out just because she wanted me to, not because I really wanted to see Pat-Joe. I walked between Mick’s potato drills until I came to the fence that divided our garden from Pat-Joe’s. Then I yelled out for him, the way I used to when we were both little. I felt a bit of an eejit, and I was afraid his mother would come out and tell me to pipe down or ask me why didn’t I come to the door—or tell me that Pat-Joe was gone somewhere. But nobody came, and I was about to go away, kind of relieved, when Pat-Joe came walking up the road.

I almost didn’t know him at first. He was bigger and taller than me, and now he looked like a grown-up. He had a big bush of curly hair and big red hands coming out of the sleeves of his jersey that were too short for him. He looked at me like he didn’t know me either.

--Hello Pat-Joe, I said.

He didn’t say anything, but he was killed looking at me. Who else did he think it could be in Kitty’s garden?

--I was calling for you, I said, to help him out.

--So you’re down for the summer again, he said—which made me think he knew who I was all along.

--Yeah. I missed you last year.

--Yeah. I wasn’t here mostly. I was in Caher.

Then we just stood there, looking everywhere but at each other, as if that was the end of it.

--What do they play at your school? Pat-Joe asked me.

--Rugby.

--Rugby is a game for blackguards played by gentlemen, he recited in a silly sing-song.

--We’d rather play soccer, I said. But they won’t let us play at school. We have to play in the park when the hurling field there is not being used.

--Soccer is a game for gentlemen played by blackguards.

--Well, if that’s the case, I said, Gaelic football is a game for blackguards played by blackguards.

Gaelic was what they played on the Island. I was getting kind of annoyed with him. He wasn’t very friendly. Maybe he didn’t remember me after all.

--I don’t care, he said. I don’t play. I have better things to do.

--Kitty told me you’re not going back to school.

--She did? How did she know that?

--Your mother told her, I said. Is it true?

--That depends.

--On what?

--On whether I find a job in Caher.

Caher was the mainland town nearest to the Island. It wasn’t really a town like Waterford; it only had one long street.

--Besides, he said. I’m tired of sitting on my arse in school. I’m not a swot like you.

When you called someone a swot, you meant that they weren’t good for anything but doing their homework and sucking up to the teachers. But I pretended not to notice. I’d never call for him again.

--What’s in Caher anyway?

--I have an ol’ doll there, Pat-Joe said, with a grin.

I was sorry I asked. I tried to think of a way to change the subject, but I wasn’t quick enough.

--Do you have an ol’ doll? he asked me.

Someone yelled for Pat-Joe behind the fence.

 --Paaaat! Come in to your taaay!

It must have been his mother.

--I’ll see you, he said, and ran the rest of the way to the gate.

I forgot to ask him about Scruffy.

Seeing Pat-Joe only made me feel worse. He didn’t really want to see me. He thought I was a swot and a city slicker. The Island people were very clannish, according to Kitty. They said she was a blow-in, even though she was married to Mick whose family lived on the Island for ages. I didn’t want to think what they said about me, when I only came down for the summer, and not even every summer.

--Isn’t that someone calling you outside on the road? Kitty said.

I wasn’t even listening. I had my nose in my book.

--Go on out quickly, she said, or they’ll think you’re not here.

I went out the back door and along by the side of the house. There was Pat-Joe standing outside the railings. I could hardly believe it.

--The old people are going to Kilorglin for Puck Fair, he told me.

That was what he called his parents: you’d think they were at death’s door.

--Why don’t you come over after your tea?

--I don’t know, I said. I’ll have to ask my aunt.

Pat-Joe leaned over the railings and put his hand up to his mouth.

--There’s lashings of drink in the house! My father will never miss it.

I didn’t really want to go because I didn’t believe Pat-Joe was my friend anymore. But I thought I should tell Kitty anyway. She wouldn’t hear of my not going.

--What if you need something, Kitty?

--Sure you’re only next door. I’ll send Old Finn over for you.

She reminded me after my tea before I could settle into Mick’s armchair with a new Sudden. I left the book on the armchair and went out the front gate and walked up the side road between the cottages.

It was a calm clear evening, the kind of evening I would remember when I was back in town. There were distant sounds very sharp in the still air, and the sun was still high in the sky. It felt like it would never really get dark.

I rang the front door bell instead of calling out.

--Jaysus, boy, Pat-Joe said. I thought you were the priest come for his dues, or something. Nobody else uses the front door.

--Are your parents gone?

--Like snow on the water. While the cat’s away.

He took me into their front room. All the cottages were the same, but Pat-Joe’s front room wasn’t like the living room in my aunt’s house. There was a huge black kitchen range where our fireplace was and a slate floor in front of it all covered in ashes from the fire. The table had an oilcloth covering, and there was a smell of boiled cabbage. My aunt cooked on a gas stove in the kitchen, and when we weren’t eating at the table in the living room, she always took the tablecloth off so you could see the mahogany finish.

--Why didn’t you go to the fair with your parents? I asked Pat-Joe, just to say something.

--My mother goes to her people in Killarney, and my father would want me to go with her, so he could let his hair down. There wouldn’t be much crack in spending three days with my mother’s people: they’re the church-going, tee-totaling sort. But my father doesn’t want me tagging along with him. He’ll give the first day trying to buy a horse in every bloody pub in the town—and sell it again the following day if he has any luck. He’ll be drinking until three in the morning every night: we’ll be lucky if he gets home by next Saturday.

My father liked to go to the pub, and he sometimes had too much to drink at a wedding or a funeral. But you never said anything about it, especially outside of the family. If my mother was mad with him, she just wouldn’t speak to him at all.

--Besides, Pat-Joe said, I’m going up to Caher tomorrow.

He went over to a kitchen cabinet that was between the two windows—just where my uncle had his bookcase—and he opened the doors. It was full of bottles of stout: fat pint bottles that were short and squat, and small skinny bottles, the kind they called a nip or a stick.

--We can drink the sceilpíns, Pat-Joe said. My father only drinks stout out of pint bottles. He thinks a half or a third of a pint doesn’t taste the same.

--Why does he get the small ones then?

--He has them delivered from the Village. Johnny Reidy sends out sceilpíns when he doesn’t have enough pint bottles.

Pat-Joe gathered an armful of the small bottles and put them on the floor in front of the stove. He pulled over two kitchen chairs and placed one for me. He was about to sit down when it suddenly occurred to him.

--Do you drink stout, boy?

--I usually drink lager, I said.

The truth was that I’d only had the one drink in my entire life, a lager my father bought me coming home from a funeral at his own place in Tipperary. I didn’t like the taste of it, but it was like a secret I shared with my father that my mother did not know about. She wouldn’t have approved of him giving me drink.

--Lager! Pat-Joe said. Sure you might as well drink piss water. Take a slug of this.

He flipped the caps off two of the sceilpíns, passed one to me, put the other to his lips, and tilted his head back. I watched the muscles of his neck bulging while he poured the whole bottle down his throat. He put the empty bottle down on the hearth where it fell over with a clatter. He picked up a full one, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

--Pat-Joe smells the stout, he said. He finds that it is good.

I took a mouthful from my bottle. It didn’t taste like anything you would ever want to drink. It was very sour and gassy, but when you swallowed it down, which I did in a hurry, there was a sort of creamy aftertaste that was almost sweet. I took another mouthful and swallowed that too. It wasn’t hard to get it down, and it gave you a full feeling in your stomach. I couldn’t tell if it was going to my head or not.

Pat-Joe was on his third bottle, and for every one he drank he opened one for me and lined them up on the hearth. I didn’t like to fall behind so I picked up a bottle and drank it off. It went down like water. My head felt a little light, but I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t worried about anything.

Pat-Joe went to the cabinet and came back with two pint glasses. He poured two of the sceilpíns into each glass and stood them in front of the stove. Then he opened the door of the stove and slid the end of the poker into the fire.

--This is the way my grandmother takes it, he said with a grin. She says it’s good for what ails you.

What ails you? my father said, when he first heard I wouldn’t go back to school. There is something that ails me, I said to myself. But I don’t think anything is good for it. Except maybe stout out of a nip bottle.

Pat-Joe took the poker out of the fire. The tip of it was red hot. He put it into my glass, and the stout foamed and bubbled.

--That’ll put hair on your chest, he said, handing me the glass.

He put the poker back in the fire until it was red hot again and then he put it into his own glass. He picked up the glass and took a long swig and put it down on the flags. I still hadn’t taken a swig of mine.

--Come on, boy, he said. Drink up and look cheerful.

I took a swig and almost burned my tongue. I couldn’t tell you what it tasted like.

--What are you going to do in Caher? I said.

--Go to the pictures with my ol’ doll.

I took another swig from my glass. I meant what was he going to do for work, but I didn’t bother correcting myself.

--She’s a good thing, Pat-Joe said, with a silly grin, hunching his shoulders and leaning over the open door of the stove, giving me a sidelong eye. I mean, she wouldn’t let you put your hand up her frock or anything. But she doesn’t mind if you try. And she’s always on for shifting, when the lights go out.

--I didn’t know there was a picture house in Caher, I said, just to say something.

--It used to be the old lifeboat hut down by the bridge. They put in benches that get higher as you go away from the screen, and the projector is always breaking down. The ol’ doll and me sit in the last row where the benches are the highest. You don’t want to make a sound during the picture or they’ll shine the torch on you, but you can go to town during the Pathé News because it’s so loud. You just have to be careful not to fall off the bench. It's so high your feet don’t touch the floor.

I wanted to go back and sit with Kitty and read my book. But I didn’t know what to tell Pat-Joe. It was easier just to sit there and listen to him going on about his ol’ doll. I didn’t even have to listen; he wouldn’t care so long as he was able to talk.

--Will I tell you something? Pat-Joe said.

He leaned toward me. I could tell by looking at his face that he had drink taken. I wondered if he could tell the same about me.

--We’re not really doing a line, he said. Last time we went to the pictures, she told me she didn’t want to go with someone who lived on the Island. What will you do during the winter when the ferry can’t cross? she says to me. If you can’t live in Caher, I’m going to go with some fella who does.

He sounded almost like he was going to cry. Was that what happened when you got drunk?

--She’s still in school herself, but she’d like to have a fella with a job who’d spend money on her.

I took another swig from my glass and finished the warm stout. There were ashes from the poker in the bottom of the glass.

--What are you going to do?

--I don’t know, boy. Hit the hard stuff, I’d say!

 He got up in a hurry and came back with a glass bottle of Schwepps tonic.

--What’s that for? I said.

--It’s not tonic. Here: smell it.

He unscrewed the cap and passed it to me. I put the mouth of the bottle to my nose. It smelled like the paraffin for the lamps my aunt used, mixed with sugar.

--It’s poteen, boy. My father gets it from a fella who lives up in the hills behind Caher. Here: give me your glass.

He sloshed some of it into my glass and took a swig from the bottle himself.

--Uisce Beatha! he chanted. Water of life!

I put the glass to my lips. I was curious to know what it tasted like, and I took a good mouthful and tried to hold it in my mouth. But it burned my tongue and my throat and I started to cough and spattered it out all over the stove. The drops sizzled and dried up immediately.

--Jaysus! Go easy, boy. This stuff is the devil to come by. You don’t want to waste it. Wait now.

Pat-Joe got us two teacups and put them on the flags in front of the stove and poured from the Schwepps bottle into each cup. The cups were white, and the poteen was no color at all. He handed me my cup and raised his own cup and touched the cups together.

--Here’s mud in your eye!

He threw back his head and swallowed what was in his cup. I did the same thing. I swallowed it quickly so I wouldn’t taste it, and I put my cup down on the floor next to Pat-Joe’s and he poured the two cups again. We clinked our cups again and drank off what was in them.

--Slainte! Pat-Joe yelled. Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo aris.

That meant we hoped to be alive this time next year, and I remembered that I said I wasn’t going back to school. But it didn’t seem to matter anymore whether I went back or not. I felt like I was wrapped in cotton wool, like I was wearing a hood over my head, or sitting inside a beehive hut, looking up into the dark.

It was hot next to the stove, and when I tried to push the chair back, I almost fell over. Pat-Joe took a fit of laughing and put his face down on his knees.

--Go ’way, boy. You’re langers drunk.

Is that what I was? I didn’t really mind it. But I was afraid to move in case I would knock over something.

Pat-Joe went out and came back with some cream crackers and some Calvita cheese in little wedge-shaped packages of silver foil. He sat on the floor and stretched out his feet, and I got down next to him carefully. We lay there on either side of the stove and ate the crackers and opened the cheese and drank poteen out of the Schwepps bottle until there was none left. There were pieces of the crackers scattered all over the floor and empty bottles everywhere.

I was almost falling asleep with my head on my hands when I heard Pat-Joe say:

--My mother says if I leave school now, I’ll end up kicking my heels all day against the clock tower down at the harbor and go to the dogs like my father.

I sat up and put my elbows on the seat of the chair. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.

--But Mags is grand, he said. I might never get another chance to go with a bird like her.

It was like he wanted me to tell him what he should do. But what did I know?

--Why don’t you want to go back to school anyway? he said. You could really make something of yourself, you’re such a swot.

I didn’t say anything. But he sounded like he almost wished he was a swot like me.

--Hey, don’t fall asleep! Why don’t they want you to play soccer there anyway?

--Because the Brothers want to pretend that they have a snotty English public school where they only play rugby, I said.

--Ah, Pat-Joe said. The game for blackguards played by gentlemen. What happens if they catch you playing soccer?

I sat up and rested my forehead against my knees. I didn’t feel good.

--What do you think? I said.

--I don’t know, Pat-Joe said. I’ve never been to the Brothers.

I was burning up with the heat from the stove. I crawled away until I was next to the window, and I sat up with my back against the sill. Pat-Joe was looking at me with a grin on his face.

--Would they bate you?

--For nothing at all, boy, I said.

--Like what?

--Like one time we wanted to play soccer and they kicked us out of the rugby field next to the school. So we went out to where they had new playing fields and new dressing rooms that weren’t finished yet and we got in a window and used the dressing rooms and played on one of the pitches. There was only four of us, but they found out about it.

--What did they do?

Pat-Joe was lying next to the stove with the bottles scattered around him and his head on an old cushion off one of the chairs and his hands behind his head, lifting it so he could look at me. I couldn’t figure out whether he was laughing at me or whether he really wanted to know. But I wasn’t myself, and I wanted to tell someone.

--They called an assembly of the whole school and the Head Brother McGrath said the new dressing rooms were vandalized and he knew who did it and would the boys who did it step out to the line because if they didn’t, everybody would be punished and the school wouldn’t get the half day the mayor was after giving us. So I had to step out to the line and so did the three fellows that were with me. It wasn’t my idea to use the new dressing rooms, but it was my fault as much as the other fellows because I was there.

Pat-Joe sat up and put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, like he couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.

--You must have been shitting yourself, boy, he said. What did the Head Brother do?

--He made us come down to his office, one by one. I was the last one. I was waiting outside the door and I heard him hitting the fellow who went in before me with a leather he kept in the drawer of his desk. He gave him six on each hand, and before he was done, you could hear the fellow crying and saying Oh please brother, please don’t hit me anymore.

--How many did he give you?

--He didn’t hit me, I said.

--He didn’t hit you? What did he do?

It was like Pat-Joe was disappointed. He wanted to hear that McGrath beat the shit out of me. I stood up by the window. I thought I was going to suffocate. I put my hand on the windowsill to steady myself. The curtains weren’t drawn and you could see the reflection, just like in my aunt’s window, but there was no light in the room and all you could see was the fire in the stove and Pat-Joe’s face all red on one side and the light shining on all the bottles around him.

--I have to go, I said. My aunt will be wondering what happened to me.

--Wait now, Pat-Joe said. You never told me what the bastard did.

I turned in the direction of the door. I thought I knew where it was, but I walked into it and hit my forehead. I got it open and went out into the hall where it was pitch black and I could hardly see anything except the skylight over the door. Pat-Joe came out and put his arm around my shoulder.

--What’s your hurry, boy? he said. The night is young.

I threw his arm off and put my hands out in front of me and found the door.

--What’s the matter with you? Pat-Joe said. There’s no need to get your rag out.

I could tell he was surprised. But I had to get outside and get some fresh air. I got the door open and went out into the porch.

--Fuck off so! I heard behind me, and the door was slammed.

I stood there until my eyes got used to the dark. I put my hand up to my forehead, and it came away wet. I must have broken the skin when I walked into the door.  I didn’t feel any pain—but what would Kitty say when she saw me?

The road was pale in the dark and I walked alongside the railing of my aunt’s garden until I came to the side of the house and then I put one foot on the bottom rail and I climbed over. I must have missed the bottom rail on the other side because I fell into the garden, but it was on the grass of the lawn so I didn’t hurt myself.

I walked past the bedroom window where Kitty and Mick slept, trying not to make any noise on the gravel. The kitchen door wasn’t closed properly, which wasn’t like my aunt, and the light was on in the living room. But I didn’t want to meet her with the blood on my face, not to mind I was langers drunk. I stood on the bathtub in the yard and looked in through the living room window. There was no one in the room. The door to the hall was open, and the fire was out. It felt strange to be outside looking in; it was like I was after turning into the ghost I saw before I drew the curtains and I would never be able to go inside again.

My reflection was in the glass, and I couldn’t see it, but it was there. The ghost wanted to tell something, and so did I. Everyone was asking me what happened, and I wanted to tell, but I couldn’t. Your reflection can never escape from the glass. I couldn’t speak, or if I did, no one would hear me.

Next thing I knew I was lying on the gravel next to the bathtub. When I closed my eyes, everything was going around, which was what people always said about being drunk. I got on my hands and knees and vomited next to the wall of the house. I was a long time about it and I felt a little better when I was done. My aunt must have heard me though, and I waited for her to come. She was going to be upset.

There was something wet rubbing the side of my face: it was Old Finn licking me.

--Old Finn, I said.

He gave a sort of sleepy bark and went back in his kennel. I could hear him turning around in there and then he flopped down with a grunt.

Old Finn was a big dog, and it was a big kennel. I got on my hands and knees, and I crawled into the kennel with him. There was plenty of room for both of us, so long as I didn’t try to stand up. Old Finn didn’t mind. He turned himself around and flopped down again, so that he was leaning against me. I let my arm rest on his back, and he didn’t move away.

Then I told him what McGrath did and why I couldn’t go back to school. McGrath told me not to tell anyone, not even the priest in confession. It was enough that he knew about it, he said, and he forgave me. But he didn’t say I couldn’t tell a dog.

I woke up as soon as it was light, and I crawled out of the kennel on my hands and knees. Old Finn came with me, licking my face and wagging his tail like mad. It was like he thought I was after turning into a dog and he was happy about it. I could hardly open my eyes for the headache I had, and my mouth was so dry I thought I was going to choke. I remembered my father saying that bad poteen could blind you. But I could still see. That was something to be thankful for.

The back door was still open. I went into the kitchen, and Old Finn followed me, even though he wasn’t supposed to be in the house. There was no one there. I walked into the living room, and I walked back the house to the bedrooms. The door to Kitty and Mick’s bedroom was open, and the bed wasn’t made. I went back to the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do. Old Finn kept nuzzling my hands like he was trying to tell me something.

I drank some water from the bucket underneath the kitchen sink, and I washed my face and hands in the basin and I felt a little better. But I was afraid that something was after happening to Kitty, and it was my fault because I wasn’t there. I had to go to the Cable Station to tell Mick.

I went out the kitchen door and climbed over the railings instead of using the gate so Old Finn wouldn’t follow me. It was very early, and there was no one out. Birds were making tiny sounds in the hedges; the channel was as flat as a sheet of glass. I passed the Cable Station terrace, and there was a light in the end house, but not a soul stirring. I was walking fast, and I thought maybe I should run, but I was afraid I would frighten Mick if his shift was over and I met him on the road.

What in the name of God was I going to say to him? Kitty is gone, Uncle Mick. Where is she? I don’t know. You don’t know. Where were you?

All the lights were on in the Cable Station and one or two in the Residences on either side of it. There was the noise of machinery that got louder as you went up the gravel driveway. I went into a glass porch on the side of the building where I always went if Kitty wanted me to bring something to Mick that he forgot to bring himself. The noise got even louder when I opened the inner door and stepped into a corridor. My heart was beating. The Cable Station always made me nervous; I was inclined to think if you weren’t careful in there, you could break something that would start a fire or a flood over in America.

A man who worked with Mick came along the corridor, and when I asked him where was Mick, he said Mick was after taking Kitty to the hospital in Caher. Then he said I should go home and wait for them to come back, and he opened the door for me and let me out into the porch.

I walked down to the gate and stood looking at the channel and the fields of the mainland. I wondered if I should go to Caher after them, but it was still early, and I would have to wake the ferryman and I didn’t know where he lived. Mick might have taken his own boat, and if he did, he would have been able to go up the river and dock at the town pier. The ferry only went to the Point opposite the Village, and you would have to walk or get a lift to Caher.

In the end I walked back to the cottage. Old Finn was waiting for me, and when he saw me coming, he started barking and running up and down inside the railing. I went into the kitchen and closed the door. I went into the living room, and there was a note on a pad of writing paper on the table. Taking Kitty to the hospital. Wait till we get back. It took me a minute to make it out: it looked like it was written in a great hurry. It must have been there all along.

I went into my bedroom, lay down on the bed in my clothes, and slept. When I woke up, it was the middle of the day, a windy overcast day, and they weren’t back. I made myself some bread and butter and a cup of tea. I thought if they came home soon with the baby and everything was alright, I wouldn’t have to think about how I wasn’t there when Kitty had to go to the hospital. I sat down with a Sudden book, but I couldn’t concentrate, and I kept looking out the window to see if they were coming.

Finally I got up and went out and called Old Finn and took him with me down to the strand. We took the long way around by the road because I was afraid if I took Old Finn through the doctor’s grounds, the doctor’s dog would bark and the doctor would come out and ask me how was my aunt. It was so cold I wore my duffle coat and I sat with my back to the wall and pulled the hood over my head. Old Finn went exploring along the edge of the tide and he ran back and forth to me, looking for me to throw a stick into the water that he could swim out to and bring it back for me to throw again. But I didn’t feel like throwing sticks, and so he came and sat beside me and I put my hand on his wet coat and together we looked out at the channel and the mainland.

When I came back to the cottage, it was almost dark. I went in the living room, and there was someone sitting at the table. I got a fright, and I stopped in the doorway. But it was Uncle Mick. He had his face in his hands, like you do when you receive communion at mass. I thought he didn’t know I was there, but after a minute, he raised his head and looked at me.

--She lost the child, he said, in a hoarse voice that was like a whisper you’d make in church.

Then he put his head down on the table. I could see his shoulders shaking, and I knew he was crying even though he didn’t make a sound.

I was terrified. I’d never seen a man cry before, though my father sometimes had tears in his eyes, especially after he came in from the pub. She lost the child: it was terrible to hear. And it was all my fault. If I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened. I was supposed to be at Kitty’s beck and call, instead of which I was letting that eejit Pat-Joe make me drunk, the last thing I wanted, really. That was why they sent me to the Island, to look after Kitty. And I couldn’t do it.

Mick looked up, as though he was surprised to find me still there.

--Go to bed, boyeen, he said. We’ll talk in the morning.

Kitty didn’t come home from the hospital in Caher for a week. She came in the door and gave me a hug and then she went straight into the bedroom with Mick and they closed the door. Mick and I were after making dinner, but she never came out to eat it. We sat at the table together, and neither of us had a word to throw to the other.

Kitty was like a ghost around the house, very pale and quiet, not like herself at all, and I followed her around like a little dog, opening doors for her, making her cups of tea, scrambling eggs for her breakfast, trying to know what she wanted before she knew herself so that I could give it to her without her having to ask. And all the time I was frightened of my life she’d ask me where I was the night she went to the hospital and why I wasn’t there when she needed me.

Mick had to go to work, and he wanted to have his sister come and stay with us, but Kitty wouldn’t hear of it.

--Haven’t I Matty to look after me? Besides, there’s nothing else can happen to me now, is there?

That only made me feel worse. They were thinking all the time it was my fault, but they were too nice to say it. My aunt spent most of the day lying on the bed in her clothes. She would get up to make me a fry for my tea if Mick was working nights, but then she would go back in her room instead of sitting at the table knitting or playing cards with me. She didn’t tease me about the birds and the bees or tell me to go and call Pat-Joe. I tried to read Sudden, but my heart wasn’t in it. When the weather was fine, I was outside with Old Finn, sitting among Mick’s potato drills or down on the strand before the doctor’s house trying to skim pieces of slate along the surface of the tide if the day was calm. Old Finn seemed to know that something was after happening, and he wasn’t as frisky as usual, even if I threw a stick for him. When I talked to him, he would turn his head and look at me out of his big eyes that were like two pools of black water. I knew he didn’t blame me for anything.

I heard my aunt’s door open in the middle of the night, and I heard her go down the hall. She was in her bare feet; if she was wearing her slippers, you would hear them sliding on the lino. Mick was at work. I knew Kitty didn’t sleep at night because she was always falling asleep during the day. I didn’t sleep either because when I got into bed, I would start thinking it was my fault what happened to her and it would have been better if I never came down to the Island at all. I never would have come if McGrath hadn’t called me into his office and told me not to tell anyone what he did. It was no use thinking about that, but I did think about it.

I kept waiting for Kitty to go back in her bedroom, but she didn’t go. There was no sound in the house, and it was quiet outside, you couldn’t hear the wind in the trees around the doctor’s house or the sound of the ocean far away. I got up and put my duffle coat over my pajamas and went down the hall. My aunt wasn’t in the kitchen. I stood in the living room door. There was no light, but the curtains were open, and I could see her sitting at the table, looking out the window at the dark.

I remembered that when someone died, you were supposed to say to their relations, I’m sorry for your trouble. But were you supposed to say that for a baby that wasn’t born properly and never lived at all? I never said a word to Kitty one way or another. I knew that wasn’t right.

--I’m sorry, Kitty, I said, in a whisper.

--Thanks, love, she said, just like we were having one of our talks. So am I. But there’s no help for it.

But maybe I was only sorry because it was my fault. It made me feel worse to hear her say there was no help. There was no help for me either.

I sat across from her, and we both looked out the window. It was a clear night and the moon made it as bright as day. The big hydrangea bush that Mick was always trimming with the shears looked just like a big soccer ball sitting on the lawn. It would have made me laugh if I didn’t want to cry.

--Go back to bed now, Kitty said. I’ll be alright.

I didn’t say anything. I knew she was sad, and I was bound and determined I was going to sit there with her, even if we didn’t talk, until she decided to go back to bed.

We sat there in the dark without talking, and I was falling asleep in the chair. My head would droop and my chin would touch the pegs of my coat and I would wake up and lift my head. I was drifting off again when I heard Kitty say in a voice that wasn’t like her at all…

--Where is he, my little one? Where did he go?

I thought she was talking to me.

--He’s in Heaven, Kitty, I said.

--Oh, Matty, she said in a tearful voice, as though she’d just remembered I was there. He can’t be in Heaven. He wasn’t baptized.

I was an eejit not to have remembered that. If you were a baby that never committed a sin, but you weren’t baptized, you went to Limbo, and I didn’t remember if you could ever get out. It was all a cod: they didn’t know any more about it than I did. But the baby must be out there somewhere, like the ghost that came to the window. There was plenty of room out there.

--Poor Mick, Kitty said, in a voice more like herself, it’s very hard on him. Sure he wanted a child of our own more than anything.

She got up slowly and walked over to the window and stood looking out. Suddenly she turned to look at me, the side of her face all white in the moonlight.

--Whatever happened to you in that school, Matty?

That was a shock. Suddenly I felt like I was standing in the corridor outside McGrath’s office, and I saw his shadow through the frosted glass. He was raising the leather over his shoulder to hit Sheaser. He wasn’t supposed to raise it higher than his chest.

--McGrath made me come into his office, I said.

I felt like I was speaking in a dream.

--Did he hit you, love?

I shook my head. I was breathing like I was running, and the blood was pounding in a vein in my neck.

--Did he touch you? Kitty said.

I nodded. I couldn’t get the word out. I thought I was going to choke on it. I heard Kitty take a breath in the dead quiet of the room.

--How did he touch you?

The smell of his chalky soutane came to me, as though he was standing behind me, and the shaving cream he used, and the stink of his fingers that were yellow with tobacco stain. I got up suddenly, knocking over the chair, and went to the door. I ran through the hall and the kitchen, opened the back door, and as soon as I stepped into the yard, I was sick all over myself. I walked away between the hedges and into the potato plants, bent over in the dark, throwing up.

I came back, wiping my mouth with my hands and my hands on my coat. Kitty was standing in the kitchen door, with the light behind her. It was like the light was coming from her, and I wanted to be inside out of the dark, so that Kitty and me could talk and laugh like we used to and tease each other and play cards. But that was all gone, along with Kitty’s baby, wherever he was.

--I’m sorry, Kitty, I said. I was supposed to be looking after you.

--What? Sure I went over to the doctor’s house and he drove me to the Cable Station in his car and then he drove us to the boat. He would have been upset if I went to the hospital without telling him. Come in out of that, for the Lord’s sake. Look at the state of you.

I went back in the kitchen, and Kitty wiped my face and my coat with a wet dish cloth.

--Listen to me, Matty, she said, holding on to the pegs of my coat and looking into my eyes. What happened to me wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. God did not grant, and that’s all about it. But what happened to you is different, so it is.

She turned away and did something at the sink. I thought maybe she was crying and she didn’t want me to see.

--Go to bed now, she said, like a good man. It will be alright.

Mick woke me the next morning, which he never did before, by coming into the room and standing by the door. The first thing that occurred to me was that something was after happening to my aunt.

--Kitty is gone to town, he said. I just took her to the ferry. She’s taking the train from Caher.

--What is she going to town for? I said.

--I don’t know the hell. She wouldn’t tell me. I suppose we’ll hear about it by and by.

I started to get out of bed. I didn’t know what I was going to do, unless it was to go after her.

--Go back to sleep, boyeen, Mick said. I’m sorry I woke you. I’m going to bed myself. I have to work again tonight.

Kitty was gone for almost a week. Mick was working nights and I didn’t see much of him. I had the feeling he was glad Kitty went to town; he’d been at her to get outside, even if it was only to walk around the yard. I was glad too. I knew it was more like Kitty to make up her mind to go off like that without telling anybody the why or the wherefor.

I let Old Finn into the house every night she was away, after I’d wiped his feet with newspaper in the kitchen so he wouldn’t make a mess. I sat in Mick’s chair reading a Sudden, and Old Finn would eventually settle down in front of the fireplace. I felt like I was an older Matty, twenty or thirty years on, sitting in front of my own hearth, with my own dog at my feet. There was nobody sitting in the other armchair, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t lonesome. I had Old Finn and all of Mick’s books.

Kitty came back on a Sunday. She telephoned Mick at the Cable Station Saturday night to say she was coming. He was working that night, and he wanted to get up in the middle of the day to fetch her with his boat from Caher, but she wouldn’t let him and she took the ferry and got a car from the Village to drive her back the road.

I was sitting in the living room when I saw the car pull up at the gate. I went and opened the front door, but Kitty was after going around the back of the house. When I opened the back door, she was standing at the chicken coop with a shopping bag in each hand, talking to the chickens. Then she looked up the garden to see how Mick’s potatoes were coming along, and then Old Finn was jumping all over her, and finally she came to the door where I was standing. I took the shopping bags, and she gave me a peck on the cheek and stepped past me into the kitchen. The first thing she did was to lift the kettle to see was there water in it for tea.

--Will you have a cup of cha, Matty?

--That’s funny, Kitty. I was about to ask you the same question.

--Great minds, she said.

I let her make the tea. She was all business, opening cabinets and putting away her packages, and I decided I didn’t have to take care of her anymore, not that she ever let me, really.

I managed to carry the tea tray into the living room and put it on the table. She sat down and poured the tea. Mick came shambling out of the bedroom in his pajamas and gave her shoulders a squeeze as she sat there. She just smiled. She looked like herself. It was hard to believe that you could have something like that happen to you, to lose a baby that was like a part of yourself, as far as I knew, not having ever had the talk about the birds and the bees, and you could still be yourself.

--It’s all settled, Kitty said to me. You’re going to Lismore.

I was struck dumb. But at the same time I realized that I knew why Kitty went to town and I was counting on her to arrange things so I wouldn’t have to go back to the Brothers, wherever I went.

--Honest to God, Mick said. Isn’t she the limit? Well, say thank you to wily old aunt, boyeen.

--Thank you, Kitty, I said.

--But how in the name of God did you manage it, Kitty? my uncle said. Sure they said they couldn’t afford it.

--I went to see your man McGrath, Kitty said. I told him if he didn’t pay up and look cheerful, I’d go to my husband’s nephew who works for the Times in Dublin. He’d be disgraced, even if he wasn’t prosecuted, or defrocked, or whatever they do to brothers. They look after their own, but they’re not above caring what people think about them, by God.

--Will the Order really pay for it? Mick wanted to know.

--They will. The Christian Brothers will foot the bill for the next two years of my nephew’s education—at a school for the children of the other persuasion.

--Be the hokey! Mick said. It must be a bitter pill.

--I hope so, Kitty said. But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If people don’t think well of the Brothers, the Lismore fellows will be tarred with the same brush. So they’re not above making a deal, no matter if they don’t see eye to eye in church and chapel. They’re all well off, and they don’t want any trouble.

She turned to me.

--Your mother wanted to say No. What if he loses his faith in a place like Lismore? she says. I didn’t tell her she was trying to close the stable door after the horse was gone. Jack got around her in the end. Sure it’s like a scholarship to one of the best schools in the country, he says to her. Matty will go on to be the Taoiseach! How could she turn it down?

Mick leaned back in his chair, a big smile on his sleepy face.

--Well, I wouldn’t doubt you, Kitty. It’s no more than the fellow deserves, to have his order cough up the fees. Maybe they’ll transfer him to Ballymuck into the bargain. To think they still beat the youngsters today in their schools. They have a lot to answer for.

--Let you go back to bed now, Mick, Kitty said. Sure you’re on again tonight, so you are. You don’t want to fall asleep in front of one of those terrible machines.

When Mick was gone:

--Are you alright, Matty?

--Yeah, I said. I’m glad I don’t have to go back to the Brothers.

--There was no question of that, Kitty said.

I felt a little shaky, like I’d just missed being run over by a bus or something, but I didn’t know how to explain it to Kitty.

--Mick thinks he beat you, and I didn’t enlighten him, Kitty said. If he knew what really happened, he might go up to town himself and give the fellow a hiding. I wouldn’t put it apast him. And then where would we be?

She got up from the table and went around the room, putting things back in their proper places on the mantlepiece and the bookcase after me and Mick had moved them around.

--Now you can enjoy the rest of the summer, she said, without looking at me. I suppose it’s the last round-up. You’ll be studying hard during the year, and come summertime you’ll want to see the bright lights and the Big Smoke instead of coming down to this God-forsaken Island to play Beggar-My-Neighbor with your old aunt.

--Maybe you’ll come back to town, Kitty, I said.

--I’d come in a minute, if I could get around Mick. But sure he’d be a fish out of water in town, especially now.

I knew she was thinking about the baby. I wondered if he was after wandering away beyond the world or if he would always be close by, standing outside in the dark or caught in his reflection in the glass of the window.

--I’ll always come down, Kitty, I said. I promise.

--Oh, go along with you, she said. What use is a man’s promise? Sure yeer all the same.

I was upset that she wouldn’t believe me, and she must have seen this.

--I’ll tell you what you can do for me, mister, she said, with a little grin. Remember your old aunt on a Sunday, will you? The lonesome-est day of the week. Imagine you’re standing out there in the dark looking in. I won’t open the curtains, but I’ll know you’re there. Every Sunday, mind. Is it a deal?

I nodded. I was afraid to open my mouth.

--If you have the time after sitting through the five o’clock Mass, she said, and made a face at me. I know how much you hate to miss a minute of it. But that’s between you and me and the wall, isn’t it?

I was standing outside next to the railing with Old Finn when I saw Pat-Joe coming down the road between the houses. I didn’t want to meet him, but I had to stand my ground.

--Well, boy, he said.

He had a big smile on his face.

--Well, I said.

--How’s the body?

--Alright. How’s yourself?

--Couldn’t be better! he told me, as though he was doing me a favor.

I wanted to say, Are you sure? or something smart-alec like that, but I was waiting to see what he would say about the way I ran off out of his house the night we were drinking.

Instead he leaned on the railing and tugged Old Finn by the ears.

--How long are you here for?

--Till the end of the summer, I said. Then I’m going back to school.

--I thought you said you weren’t going to go back.

He actually sounded interested.

--I’m going to a different school.

That made him think of something, and he forgot the dog. Old Finn nudged his hand.

--Stop it, Finn, I said.

I didn’t like that Old Finn was so friendly with Pat-Joe.

--Oh, it’s alright, Pat-Joe said. I have to be going.

--Where are you going? I said, like an eejit.

--To the pictures with the ol’ doll in Caher, he said. Did you ever see Audie Murphy in Apache Rifles?

--Naw, boy, I said.

--It’s great gas. The ol’ doll and me went to see it last week, and we’re going again. Of course we don’t have to watch it this time.

He smirked, taking a few steps backward down the road.

--I’ll see you, I said.

--I’ll see you.

He turned to go, but then he stopped.

--Hey, he said. Do you want to go?

--Where?

--To see Audie Murphy.

I couldn’t believe he was asking me. When you were at the pictures, you forgot about everything else. And when you came out at the end of the picture, it was like the picture was more real than anything, for a while anyway. I didn’t care what the picture was or who was in it. But I was afraid Pat-Joe was only taking the piss.

--Now? I said.

--Well, Pat-Joe said, with his smirk back in place. If you don’t mind being a spare leg. You’d have to find an ol’ doll in a hurry.

There was nothing I could say to that. Pat-Joe knew I had no one to go with. He just wanted to rub my nose in it.

--To tell the truth, Mags and me don’t have a lot to say to each other, he said. She keeps telling me to make up my mind, and I keep saying I’ll think about it.

I was waiting for him to go away. I didn’t want to let him see that I minded. But still he didn’t go.

--I could ask Mags if she has a friend, he said. The four of us: wouldn’t it be gas?

I couldn’t say anything. My heart was in my mouth.

--What about next week?

--I’ll ask my aunt.

--Why don’t you do that, skipper? he said, putting his hand to his forehead and giving me a salute and turning away.

He went a few more steps and then looked back over his shoulder.

--You’d have to be OK going with someone you’ve never seen.

I didn’t say anything. What could I say?

--Sure they’re all the same in the dark, boy, he said, with a laugh.

He was walking away down the road, the bush of hair on him, and his long arms and legs swinging.

Maybe she won’t have a friend, I said. But whether she did or not, I had a whole week to think about it.