Blasket Spirit (2 page)

View of the
Dáil
from inside Ray Stagle’s cowshed
.

It was 6 a.m. It had been my first uninterrupted night’s sleep in over four years. I lay for some time in the warmth of the sleeping bag, aware of the unfamiliar feeling of rest and peace of mind. When I rose, I pulled on my raincoat and went out to the well to fill the saucepan. The air was cold and damp and the mist was still drenching. The living houses of the weaver and the ferryman and the hostel still slept. Their doors were closed. The dead houses of the village slumped against the hillside, their crumpled shells gaping stark and open. A rabbit nibbled furiously in the empty doorway of the old
Dáil
where the little girls had been the previous evening. I smiled now when I thought of them. I tried to convince myself that they could not have seen me at the cliff edge.

I read for most of that day and took the odd walk along the White Strand, accompanied as usual by the Beverley Sisters. Back in the hut I wore out a path between the chair and the door, keeping an eye out for the two little girls. Yet if I were to meet them again, I did not know if I would be able to bring myself to talk to them. I had my chocolate bar, the highlight of my rations, waiting for them on the shelf. By nine that night I had not seen them. The only people I had spotted all day were the four Canadians kicking a ball in the drizzle on the beach and the weaver emptying a basin of water out of the back of her cottage in the afternoon. It was dark now. I closed the door and wept. The radio usually distracted me, so I turned it on but, to my dismay, the exhausted batteries failed almost immediately.

It was then that I had my second encounter with the children. As I turned off the radio, I heard them giggling outside. I opened the door, casting a square of candlelight onto the two little girls who stood there, hand in hand. They both smiled and the smaller girl waved shyly at me. In the light I got a much clearer look at them. The smaller girl had thick black hair cut dead straight just below her ears, and an equally severe style of fringe. Her broad smile revealed a big gap in the front where her baby teeth had been. She must have been six or seven years old. First Holy Communion photographs are synonymous with toothless smiles. ‘Hello’, I said. They just giggled. I tried my best ‘
Dia dhuit
’. That elicited no response either. I should have said ‘
Dia dhaoibh
’. Perhaps my feeble attempt at Irish was nothing they could understand. We continued to smile at each other. The little girl stood with her feet turned in, each set of toes taking turns to cover the other. The weaver always walked around barefoot too: it seemed the most practical thing to do on the island, but not the warmest on such a wet night. I asked the children if they would like some chocolate. True to form, they continued to prattle in Irish, and ignored what I’d said. In anticipation of the robin’s dawn visit, I had put the chocolate in my robin-and mouse-proof jar. When I came back to the door, the children had gone; I just glimpsed them disappearing into the ruins below my path. By the time I had my coat on, and had found the torch, there was no sign of them. I wondered at their parents allowing them to wander around in the dark. Then I wondered at my own judgmental attitude. This was surely the way to bring up children: laughing and carefree. Two grubby faces with two equally grubby dresses, playing with rabbits, donkeys and lambs, in sand, sea and heather.

I ended up below the ferryman’s house. Inside, the fiddle started up and shadows passed across the butter-yellow of the candlelit squares. I guessed the girls were running between the cafe and the ferryman’s house. I considered knocking on the door and leaving in the chocolate for them, but lost the courage before I had barely formed the idea.

When the robin woke me on his dawn expedition the next morning, I realised that, once again, I had had a full night’s sleep. I turned over and watched him pecking at the crumbs I had left on the floor beside my boots, which stood dark, heavy, cold and sodden with water. I decided that I would not bother with them that day. (In fact, I never bothered with them again for the rest of my stay on the island.)

The thrill of walking on wet grass, peat, heather, sand and sea in bare feet never diminished. My feet felt alive. I felt alive! I walked around the northwest of the island in the rain. My feet slid into puddles of brown peaty water, then gripped on dead heather roots at the path’s edge. I reached the place known as the crossroads, the belt buckle of the island where the north and south roads join. From here, the paths merged and disappeared up along the spine of the island and into the mist. I opted to return on the southern path that I had walked the previous evening in the dark. One false step and I would tumble almost 300 metres to my death. It would be like falling off a roof, the steepest and highest roof in the world. I shuddered when I realised how close I had been to that fall.

Later, back in the hut, I was absorbed and busy. I swept out the sand and the grass with a bunch of dead heather branches that I had tied together with a hair band. I washed out some clothes in a basin by the well. I searched the beach for hollow stones, which would act as safe holders for my candles and tea lights. Finally, I made a little pot of vegetable stew, adding wild thyme and nettle leaves picked on my walk. In the glow of my new candlelight arrangement, I sat down to enjoy my dinner. Just then, I heard the two little girls approach the door. I was ready with the chocolate this time as I opened the door. They stood there, hand in hand yet again, beaming at me. Before I could say a thing, they waved at me and took off down the hill and into the ruin.

I called out and followed them. There was no sign of them in the ruin, but I knew they were watching me. ‘Well, if you don’t want your chocolate, I’ll just have to leave it for the rabbits.’ With that, I held up the chocolate bar and pretended to place it on the crumbling windowsill. ‘Enjoy it, rabbits.
Slán
.’ I sauntered back to the hut, watching out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t spot them but I knew they had me under observation. I giggled to myself back inside. How long would it be before they ran past again, looking for their chocolate on their way home? By the time an hour had passed, I had heard nothing, so I sneaked down to the ruin. There was no sign of them.

Next morning, the robin woke me and the sound of thundering waves surged through me. I lay there feeling quite pleased with myself. I thought of the two funny little girls, and laughed aloud. The bird stopped pecking and looked up, startled by the unexpected sound. We looked at each other momentarily; then he resumed his breakfast. I quietly opened my book,
The Blasket Islands
by Joan and Ray Stagles, and picked up reading from where I had left off the previous night. A seagull feather marked the chapter on the village and its houses; a small map on the next page showed each dwelling-house on the island, and gave its owner’s name. I searched for the little cowshed in which I was sleeping. It was Joan and Ray Stagles who had put the roof on the cowshed, which was clearly marked on the map below the well called Tobar na Croise. With the seagull feather I traced down to house number 3, the building that my two little friends always played in. It was marked as the old National School. I fell asleep again.

I woke some time later to the sound of water sloshing outside at the well, where my ferryman stood, toothbrush in hand and a blue towel draped around his shoulders. ‘I’m taking the Canadians off the island this morning. There’s another huge depression coming in, and the long-range forecast is bad, so if you want to get off the island, you’d better be ready at the slipway in ten minutes.’

I was stunned. The urgency of what he was suggesting was out of sync with my pace of life over the previous few days. Realising he needed to clarify himself, he added, ‘Seán is closing the cafe and going out to the mainland too. We’ll be taking the ferries into shelter in Dingle, so you’ll have no way off unless you come now.’

I didn’t know what to do. Why would I go back to the mainland? ‘When will you be coming back to the island again?’ I asked.

‘Isn’t that what I’m telling you? I don’t know. The long-range forecast isn’t good. It will only be yourself and the weaver on the island if you stay.’

‘So you’re all going off. You’re taking your family off too?’

‘Lorcan’s taking his own boat across.’

From his look, I knew he was losing patience. ‘And the children – you’ll be taking them across too?’

‘I don’t have children.’ He looked at me impatiently. ‘Now are you coming or what?’

‘Sorry. They must belong to someone in the hostel then.’

‘There are no children in on the island. There’s Seán in the cafe and Laura, four Canadian walkers, me, my brother and three other fellas, the weaver and yourself. Now, are you coming?’

All I wanted to do was run inside. The heat of confusion burned through me. There
were
children on the island. I had met them
three
times. I could not understand why he would deny their existence.

He started off down the path, calling ‘You’ve got ten minutes. The weather won’t wait.’ I went back into the hut and sat on the chair. I could not get motivated to roll up my sleeping bag and pack my stove and the few things. After ten minutes, it was evident that some part of me had made a decision. I was going to remain in on the Great Blasket Island.

I walked down the path to the cliff overlooking the slipway. The two brothers were lowering the inflatable dinghy into the water. The dark-haired man and the woman from the hostel climbed aboard with their bags and a little pup. Two other young men followed, carrying an empty gas cylinder. The ferryman shouted at the third man, who had remained on the slipway to help people aboard. The sea was choppy, spray soaking the passengers and their bags as the dinghy struggled out to meet the red ferry, which swayed up and down like a demented rocking horse. As I watched, the four Canadians hurried down the path behind me, straining under the weight of enormous backpacks. ‘Hello there. We didn’t see much of you for the past few days!’

I just smiled. ‘No’ was all I could think of saying. The first man lingered, seeing that they were on time for the ferry after all.

‘Are you staying out on the island?’ Strange the way he said ‘out on the island.’ The locals and the old islanders always said ‘in on the island.’ The island was the heart, the centre, the ‘in’.

‘Yes, I’m staying in on the island.’

‘Gee, you could be in for some pretty rough weather!’

‘Not too bad I hope. Is everybody else leaving the hostel too?’

‘Yep, Seán and Laura have gotten down there before us. It’s all shut up now.’

Only Seán and Laura, who managed the cafe, had gone down before them with the ferrymen and the three other men. There were no children to be seen. I stood on the cliff and watched the two ferries disappear across the Blasket Sound and around the headland into Dingle Bay.

I was baffled. The only people with whom I had had any contact over the past few days were the two children, and yet nobody in the hostel or in the ferryman’s house knew anything about them. As I came back up from the landing slip, I could see smoke rising from the weaver’s chimney: she would regard my visit as odd, after my apparent unfriendliness over the previous five days.

The yellow door was open as usual. I called out, unable to see anything in the darkness inside. Her voice answered. ‘Hello. So you’ve not left then? Come in.’

I stepped inside the room. I couldn’t see a thing. Outside, the brightness of the sky dropped into the sea on all sides. Inside, two tiny windows, cluttered high with books and baskets of wool, ensured that the small room remained almost totally dark. As my eyes adjusted, I met her smile. ‘Clear a space and sit down,’ she said. She stood at the table, elbow-deep in a bowl of flour. I didn’t know where to start. Stacks of woven rugs, shawls and baskets were everywhere. Balls of different coloured yarn littered the floor, like dozens of young feeding off the great wooden loom in the centre. I stepped onto the hearth, the only free space available. ‘Just put the rugs on top of that lot and you’ll find a chair,’ she said helpfully. I moved as much stuff as I could, and then perched myself on the edge of an ancient-looking chair. ‘So are you enjoying your stay in Ray’s?’

‘Yes, it’s got everything I need, thank you.’

‘You won’t be able to walk too far for the next few days. The weather’s set to turn bad. Fergal and Lorcan will be sheltering the ferries in Dingle, so you’re in for a quiet time here.’

‘Yes, one of them told me.’

She began to knead the dough on the table. After a while she asked, ‘Did you get to walk to the back of the island yet?’

‘No. I’ve only been over the hill to where the two cliff roads meet. The mist was too bad to go any farther. Is it far to the end?’

‘Three miles. From the crossroads, you continue on up the next hill to the Iron Age fort. From there, the path is close to the cliff, and it’s a 300-metre sheer drop to the right. The island falls at the western end to a site with the remains of beehive huts and then there’s nothing but sea. I don’t get to walk to the back of the island much in the summer, except when there’s no ferry running. Then I can catch up on some weaving and close the door when I want to and go walking.’

She continued flouring a tray and cutting a cross in the top of the bread without once throwing a glance in my direction. Her ease and detachment made me relax. She was well used to hundreds of curious tourists passing through her one-room island shop. I was just one more. I watched her fill the bowl with hot water from the kettle and wash up the baking things. I offered to dry and she handed me a teacloth.

‘Now we can have a cup of tea,’ she smiled. As I relished my scone and jam, she told me that her name was Sue, that she was Welsh, and that she had been living on the Great Blasket Island for seventeen years. She made her living weaving and selling her work to summer visitors on the island. During the very bad winter weather she stayed out on the mainland.

By the time I had finished my second cup of tea, I still had not mentioned the children. Part of me was beginning to wonder if I had finally lost my mind. I rose to leave, aware that she had to make the most of the daylight to do her weaving. ‘Were there any children staying on the island over the past few days?’ I suddenly heard myself blurt out, as I stopped in the doorway.