The Godforsaken Daughter (30 page)

“Where can I find the Screamers?”

All went quiet. Three pairs of eyes regarded him with hostility. He swore that even the donkey was glaring at him.

“What would you be wantin’
them
for?” asked one of the passengers. He was a man in his late twenties, slovenly dressed.

“Just curious,” Henry answered, mustering his broadest smile.

“Up at the big house,” the driver said. “Top of this road.” He jerked the reins and the cart set off, back the way it had come.

Henry took his time as he watched it depart. He was trying to imagine how Connie must have felt, all those months before, when she was also seeing the island for the first time. Had she come alone? Or had she been accompanied by one of
them
? He thought of a poker-faced man in a hat, a man with colorless eyes and a predatory manner. How different their perspectives on the world were! The spy dealt in concealment and mystery; the psychiatrist’s job was to coax secrets out into the open.

The little island seemed, at first, to be as deserted as Burtonport. The gulls were his sole companions, as they wheeled above the rocks and rough grass that overlooked the water.

Some distance away, close by a group of cottages, several figures were busy doing something in a field. Female—if their long clothing was anything to go by. They were engaged in work that involved a lot of stooping and collecting. Millet’s
The Gleaners
came to mind. Another throwback to another time.

He made his way toward them.

At his approach, one of the women straightened and appeared to nudge a companion. They stared at the visitor.

In the background: a group of single-level dwellings whitewashed and plain, relics of pre-Famine Ireland. Beyond them: a larger house with smaller buildings attached.

He saw now that the women were young. None seemed older than thirty. All had stopped their work and were regarding him with curiosity.

“Hello!” one of them called out, a tall lady with dark hair tied back.

There was a rough basket at her feet. It was half-filled with clay-soiled stones of many sizes.

“Hello, yourselves,” he said. “I don’t want to interrupt you or anything . . .”

“No bother. Have you just arrived?”

“Yes. Just over for an hour or two.”

He glanced about him, taking in the beauty of the little island: the gentle slopes glowing with the purple heather that had given the place its name. He’d looked up the name in the original Irish. He was thorough that way; it paid a psychiatrist to be thorough.
Inis Fraoigh
: Heather Isle.

“I’m looking for Aurora.”

“You’ll find her over in the orchard,” the tall lady said. She pointed.

“Much obliged.” He hesitated. “Mind your backs with that work, won’t you?”

The woman didn’t return the smile. She looked sullen.

“Are you being condescending? I hope you’re not being condescending. We don’t like that here.”

“Certainly not. I can see you ladies are well up to the job.”

“Thank you. And we’re not ‘ladies,’ by the way. We’re women,
sir
.”

“My mistake. In the orchard, you say?”

“Aye.” And she bent once more to her task. The others followed suit.

Henry recalled something his father had said. “
Connie . . . well, to be honest, she was quite harsh on the subject of marriage. Ideal setup for the male, in her opinion. Women as chattels. You know: the usual feminist guff. Men cause wars and
. . .
”

Was that why she’d come here? To be with her like-minded sisters? Ideal place from what he’d seen so far.

The orchard lay to the rear of the big house with the courtyard. There was a woman in a check shirt and jeans pushing a wheelbarrow filled with grass clippings.

She stopped on seeing him. Attractive, even without makeup. Blonde hair, not unlike
. . .

“Aurora?”

“That’s me.”

“Max told me I’d find you here.”

She tossed her head, making a swatting motion with her hand. “Damn flies. Max! Oh, him?”

“He sends his good wishes.”

“Yes, he would. Do you have any cigarettes?”

“Sorry, don’t smoke,” Henry said, slightly abashed by her directness.

“Your accent is funny. Where are you from?”

“Belfast.”

She was studying him. “We had somebody from Belfast stay with us last year. But you wouldn’t know her.”

“Her name wasn’t Holly by any chance?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Henry . . . Henry Shevlin.” He decided to take a gamble. “She’s my wife.”

“Oh . . .”

“Aurora!”

The call had come from the direction of the house. It was repeated.

“Coming!” the girl called back. She turned to Henry. “Have to go. What did you say your name was?”

“Henry. Wait. Did
. . .
did Holly ever mention me?”

She looked furtively about her. Then said in a low voice: “Meet me back here in an hour, okay? I can’t talk now.”

He watched her go toward the house, pushing the wheelbarrow. He looked at his watch: 5:15. He had enough time before the boatman returned at seven.

He set off to explore the island. It was exceptionally beautiful, made even more so by the sun in the western sky, causing the trees and rocks to stand out starkly. He noticed that there were few homes, and half seemed to be abandoned, the fields surrounding them long grown wild and unkempt. There was a certain wildness here that he found exhilarating. He guessed that it was the wildness that had attracted the Screamers.

He trekked across the untilled land beyond the homesteads, heading for the island’s highest point. Having scaled it, he gazed out across the ocean. Burtonport was plainly visible beyond the sound, its harbor and buildings bathed now in the late-afternoon light. He wondered again about the strangeness of the whole place.

“Connie, Connie, Connie,” he said aloud, confident that nobody might hear him, “what in the name of God brought you here? Why here? Why?
Why?
”

In that moment, he experienced a sense of utter desolation. He had never given up hope of one day being reunited with his beloved wife. He mentally ticked off on his fingers the number of avenues he’d ventured down.

One: he thought she’d committed suicide, perhaps because she’d been depressed at turning thirty and resorted to reading the morbid poetry of Sylvia Plath.

Two: he thought she’d run off with another man. That man had turned out to be a double agent, not a love rival.

Three: he’d feared that she’d met with an untimely end because she’d got involved in Republican politics.

Four: he thought she’d left the country immediately after her disappearance. The British secret agent had more or less intimated as much.

Five: Finbar Flannagan, a not too reliable source, had suggested that she’d been here on Innisfree.

Yet Finbar had been correct. A certain Mad Max had confirmed that. Now it looked as though a woman who called herself Aurora was about to corroborate Max’s story.

He saw her again as he was halfway to the little orchard where they’d met. She was dressed in the same clothes but had pulled on a jacket. Her blonde hair was being tossed on the breeze from the ocean. With sadness, Henry saw that in the distance she bore a striking resemblance to Connie. His moment of greatest sadness—what a psychiatrist friend called the
Tiefpunkt
—had passed. He’d allowed the tears to flow. There’d been no witnesses apart from the wild creatures, and that was good.

“Walk with me,” Aurora said.

“Where are we going?”

“A place Holly loved. The wildflowers are beautiful there.”

It turned out to be a secluded cove some way up from where Henry had disembarked. The gentle water of the sound lapped at their feet as they sat on a rock overlooking the mainland. Behind them and on either side grew an abundance of heather, daisies, buttercups, violets, and many other blooms Henry could not identify. He could well believe that Connie would have felt in her element there. The wild child at home in the half-tamed wilderness.

“Holly used to take her sketchbook along,” Aurora said. “She was never without it.”

“I know,” he said wistfully. “I can see why she liked it here.” Then: “When . . . when did she come here? To the island, I mean.”

“Last year. June, I believe.”

He was stunned. June: immediately after she disappeared. She hadn’t gone abroad. She was right
here
, in Ireland. If only he had known. But he’d no way of knowing. The powers that be had seen to that. Inwardly, he cursed them. Cursed their lack of pity, their lack of human feeling.

He turned his attention back to Aurora. He had some more questions she might be able to answer before the boat returned.

“Did you ever notice a small tattoo? Right here.” He indicated the spot on his right wrist. “A butterfly . . . blue.”

“No. But come to think of it, I rarely saw her in short sleeves. She complained about the cold, a lot. It’s never too warm here, though. That breeze off the Atlantic . . . skin you sometimes.”

That sounded like Connie, too, with her Raynaud’s syndrome. There was one sure way of knowing, and Henry carried it next to his heart: in his wallet. He reached for the wallet, and drew out the little snapshot, the one he’d shown to the RUC constable on the night of Connie’s disappearance.

“That’s her,” Aurora said at once. “That’s Holly.”

He sighed with relief. At last.

“I think she found peace here,” she went on. “She never told me anything, mind you, but she was running away from something.” She looked at him sidelong. “Would I be right?”

He nodded but said nothing.

“I hope it wasn’t anything illegal. That wouldn’t have been like her. She was really sweet. Everybody loved her. But you never know with people, do you?”

Henry felt a lump rise in his throat. He feigned a cough to banish it.

“Why do you want to find her?”

It was an odd question. “Why? I should think that’s obvious.”

“It’s just that when we come here we’re deprogrammed. The con
ventional concept of marriage goes right out the window. Women like us get to taste the freedom that you men take for granted for the very first time and it’s exhilarating. We sleep with whomever we choose. We have children with whomever we choose. It’s a complete role reversal.”

“Did Connie
. . 
. ?”

She glanced at him and giggled.

“Oh, you’re such a
man
. Perhaps she did. That’s why the men in Burtonport didn’t like us and chased us over here. Claimed we were into black magic and witchcraft. Always a good old ruse to discredit women when they try to assert themselves, don’t you think? Calling them witches . . . saying they’re loopy.”

“I see . . . Don’t seem to be many men round here for you to sleep with, though.”

She sniggered. “Yes, enlightened men are hard to find.” She was teasing him. “But you’d be surprised . . . how docile and pliable they become when you lay down some ground rules.”

He thought of Mad Max and Finbar Flannagan. Yes, they were certainly the type that Aurora would consider “pliable.”

He checked himself.

“Did she . . . Holly
. . .
did she say where she was going?”

He didn’t expect a straight answer, but the psychiatrist in him noted the impact of his query. The telltale psychomotor agitation: the shifting of the knees, heels digging deeper into the sand, the twisting of the stems of the daisies she’d plucked.

Aurora had him down as a stalker.

“No . . . but even if I did know, I wouldn’t be telling you. She just disappeared one day without saying good-bye.” She looked sidelong at him again. “Why are you so certain she wants to be found anyway?”

Why indeed? He’d never had the courage to ask himself that. Was he being selfish? Was Connie’s involvement with Halligan and her flight to this place her way of showing him that?

“Why am I so certain Holly wants to be found?” he repeated. “I just
know
. . .
know in my
heart.
”

Aurora made no reply, letting the crash of the breakers and the shrieking of the gulls answer for her.

Then: “Your boat leaves soon?” She was gazing in the direction of the harbor. “Best not to miss it.”

Before he knew it, she was on her feet and walking away from him.

“Thanks . . . thanks for talking!” he called after her.

She waved a hand but didn’t look back.

He returned to the jetty and clambered aboard the boat, the sole passenger. A sadness, greater and deeper than anything he’d experienced before, fell about him like a funeral shroud.

That woebegone feeling Aurora had left him with. Oh, the cold, harsh loneliness of it all! The desertion.

Nowhere to go now, but home.

A ways out on the water he glanced back and saw a figure atop the rise, her loose blonde hair fluttering in the breeze.

Aurora. She raised a hand. He gave a cursory salute.

Atlantis, the Screamers, Innisfree—the island, now fast receding from him, was truly the realm of the lost. Women went there to lose themselves among the hills and the heather. In that wilderness they screamed away their despair and shared it with the cries of the gulls, the sighing of the winds and sea.

Connie had been there. That much he now knew for certain. She’d been lost there for a while on that island. Perhaps he shouldn’t have gone. He’d left her in Belfast all those months ago, in a dimly lit room with a warning from an enigmatic man in a hat. “
Step back and let us do our job. If you want to see her again, stop looking
.”

He’d done precisely as instructed. Had ceased searching. Locked the memory of her away. The decision, finally copper-fastened with his move to Killoran and some kind of different life.

Then that tiny stumble, the quiver on the tightrope that was Finbar Flannagan. “Holly Blue . . . thirty . . . married . . . an artist . . . poetry . . . running away from something . . .”

How could he
not
find out? How could he
not
go looking for her?