This Is How It Ends (27 page)

W
HEN ADDIE GOT SICK
, it was Bruno who nursed her. Della sat for hours on end and read to her. Simon took charge of her medical care. He liaised with the doctors. He put in place a care plan and he ordered up a range of ominous accessories that would be needed further on down the line. Strangely shaped cushions appeared, some kind of a winch. An electric airbed. The others watched the arrival of these things in horrified silence. To everyone’s surprise, Hugh deferred to Simon without so much as a murmur. He was just a foot soldier now, if anything he seemed relieved that someone else was in charge.

Hugh’s job was to walk the dog.

“My nemesis,” he called her. “My nemesis and I are going for a stroll.”

They were reluctant companions, Hugh and Lola, each of them equally reluctant. Every morning Hugh would arrive to collect her. And every morning Lola would have to be hauled out the door, her hind legs dragging along the ground behind her, her jaw rigid with her determination not to go. Nobody could tell if she didn’t want to leave Addie or if it was just that she didn’t want to go with Hugh.

“Don’t worry,” he growled, once they were outside on the street. “I don’t like you much either.”

The other dog walkers kept asking after Addie. “Oh, she’s fine,” Hugh had said, the first time he was asked. “She’s just gone away for a while.”

Even as he was saying it he was aware that it was a strange thing to do, to lie about it. He was aware that he was digging a hole for himself that it might be awkward to get out of. And so it was. Now they all kept asking when she was coming back.

“Oh, not for a while,” he would say, turning to the dog for help.

She wouldn’t cross the road for him. When they got up to the beach road, they were standing at the traffic lights and the lights went red and Hugh started to walk across but Lola wouldn’t budge. He didn’t want to drag her across, not with people watching.

So he leaned down and scooped her up in his arms, cursing her under his breath as he staggered across the road. The smell of her, he couldn’t drop her quick enough when they got to the other side.

“Go on,” he roared, “off you go.” And he gestured at the expanse of beach ahead of them. “What are you waiting for?”

But the dog kept coming round in front of him, hopping up and down expectantly, her eyes on his. He had to stop walking so he wouldn’t trip over her.

“I don’t have a ball to throw for you, you stupid hound.”

He made shooing gestures with his arms. “Go off and have a run, you stupid dog. Isn’t that what we’re here for?”

There was a pleading tone to his voice that surprised him. But still she didn’t get it. She was skibbling backwards as he walked towards her, studying his face. As if she expected him to produce a ball from his pocket.

“Go on now, you’re being a nuisance.”

At last, she gave up on him. She started charging after some birds, whirling around in a triumphant arc as they scattered into the air. He was relieved that she’d found something else to do. And yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d let her down, that he was an inadequate dog walker.

He walked, looking down at the ground as he went, his hands clenched in his pockets. The pattern of the sand was interesting to him. It had deep heel marks etched into it, as if thousands of hooves had left their imprint. He couldn’t imagine what had made that pattern. It must have been the water.

His left eye suddenly went into spasm. He squeezed the eye shut, wiping away a big drop of water with his finger. A drop of rain, it must have been. It must have fallen right down inside his glasses, plopping into the corner of his eye. The first drop of rain, there were more of them coming down now, big wet globs of rain. The sky was still blue. The rain seemed to be coming out of nowhere.

He plowed on, his head hanging low as he walked. There were bird prints in the sand, he noticed now, thousands and thousands of them. Tiny three-pronged prints, as clearly defined as if they’d been marked out with a penknife. What birds did they belong to? he wondered. They must be tiny little things to make such delicate prints. He looked around him and saw only big white birds. Not seagulls, they didn’t seem to be big enough to be seagulls, so what were they? He didn’t have a notion. Nearly forty years he’d been living on this beach and the birds were still strangers to him. An odd realization, it made him feel utterly at sea.

He looked around and saw the expanse of beach slanting away from him, the water curving around the sand like molten glass. And the dog, crashing through the shallows. She, at least, was at home here.

He became aware of an unbearable silence, of the quiet sky above him, and the empty beach all around. Suddenly he remembered the iPod Addie had given him for Christmas. It occurred to him in a flash that he had it in his pocket. He had slipped it in there with this very situation in mind. He had imagined himself striding along the strand like a character in an opera, the sky a blazing backdrop behind him.

He unraveled the wires and managed somehow to stuff the earphones into his ears. Holding the gadget in his left hand he started prodding at the dial with the middle finger of his right hand. Addie had shown him how to do this but he’d forgotten what she’d said. After some trial and error he managed to bring up the menu and with another stab he brought a list of artists up on the screen. One last stab and, miraculously, the music started flowing. He was flooded with a sense of achievement. He tucked the thing back into his pocket and began to stride out towards the water’s edge.

The piece of music was familiar to him. He’d heard it before, but he couldn’t identify it. A trill of wind instruments, a sense of anticipation. He pushed his shoulders back and puffed his chest out as he walked. He could feel his heart swelling in his breast.

A plucking of strings, he waited for the voice that he knew was coming:

He followed that beautiful voice in its rise and fall, his throat tightening with emotion as he listened. He was forced to stop walking. He stood and let the music wash over him.

There were other women’s voices too, they separated and came together again. He had a curious notion that it was his wife and his daughters who were singing. He had a sense of them all around him, the women in his life.

And before he realized what was happening, he was crying. He was crying openly, he didn’t care who saw him. He was crying for the wife he’d loved and lost, for the daughter he loved so much and would now lose. And for the daughter he’d never been able to love enough, the one who would be with him until the end.

There was a pattern to it all, he could see that now. There was a pattern he’d failed to see. Suddenly it seemed to him that he had never understood anything until now. He had stumbled through his life without seeing anything around him. And now that he could see it, he felt as if his heart would break.

He had defined himself by what he was not. And it was very clear to him now. He wasn’t a good person. Almost deliberately, he had contrived not to be a good person.

How long since he had cried? Not since his wife had died. Had he cried even then? He had no recollection of it. But he cried now. He stood there at the edge of the water, and he howled in pain. The rain was coming down hard and he was getting drenched, but he hardly noticed. His glasses were streaked, he could see nothing through them. He wrenched them off and stuffed them into his pocket, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. The music had finished and he could hear his own sobbing. A pathetic sound, it made him cry all the more. He held his face up to the sky and he let the rain beat down on him. The water was streaming down his face along with his tears.

He would never know how long he stood there. It could have been a minute or it could have been an hour. He might have stood there forever, if he hadn’t begun to notice something. The water was moving towards him, he could actually see it coming in around his feet. The sea was pooling into the ripples of the sand, it was as if it was advancing. Little tiny waves rippling through the shallows. They were coming his way.

He moved back one step and watched with fascination as the water moved with him. He moved back again, and again it followed him. He noticed the birds now. They were gathered along the edge of the sand, little birds pecking away at the tide. He wondered why they were all gathering there. The dog was standing beside him, her head held stock-still as she watched what he was watching. As if she was trying to figure it out as well.

He looked to his left and right but it was all a blur, he couldn’t see a thing through the rain. Then it occurred to him that he’d taken his glasses off, that was why he couldn’t see! He took them out of his pocket and tried to dry them on his sleeve. When he put them back on the glass was all streaked and cloudy. But at least he could see.

They were stranded.

They were standing on a spit of sand, perhaps a hundred yards wide, a couple of hundred yards long. Himself and the little dog in the middle. Around the edges, a fringe of tiny birds. And all around them, the sea.

He turned to face the shore. He could see the Martello tower. He could make out the long gray line of the promenade, and above it the houses along the Strand Road. Between here and there, an expanse of gray water.

He wasn’t frightened at first, he was just furious with himself. “Of all the stupid bloody…” He didn’t even finish the sentence. “Of all the bloody idiots…”

He was angry with the dog. “Could you not have warned me? Could you not have barked or something? You stupid bloody hound. Useless, that’s what you are.” And Lola just stood there and looked at him. She looked like she was pleading for some reassurance but he didn’t have any to give her.

He had no phone with him, he knew that straightaway. He wondered for a moment did the iPod have any kind of communication mechanism on it but he discounted that thought. By a process of elimination, he arrived at the only course of action available to him. He would have to walk. It couldn’t be that deep. He was soaked through anyway, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. And the dog could swim. The dog could swim, couldn’t she?

He stepped boldly off the sand bar, striding forward into the shallows. It took a moment for the water to seep into his shoes but when it did, it was surprisingly warm, it was almost comforting. The dog was splashing along beside him, maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal after all. It was a bit of an adventure, that was all. Already he was imagining himself telling the story later. He would provide them all with a bit of entertainment, he would offer it up. He would let them have their money’s worth. It would be a good diversion.

The water was up past his ankles now, the fabric of his trouser legs plastered to his skin. His feet were numb. The dog was in as far as her belly, much deeper and she would have to start swimming.

The rain had stopped, thank God, but it was getting colder and the light was going down. How long would it take to get dark? He didn’t know. It wouldn’t be much fun if it got dark.

He was making slow progress as the water got deeper. His coat was heavy at the bottom, it was dragging him back. You had to push your way through, it was surprisingly hard work. He concentrated on his technique. Big steps, he used his hips to charge the weight of the water. He turned round and saw the little dog chugging along behind him.

The iPod! He thought of it just in the nick of time. The water hadn’t got into his pockets yet. He took it out, congratulating himself already on his foresight. He clutched it in his hand, holding it high up above the water as he walked.

It seemed like he wasn’t making any progress. The promenade looked as far away as ever. He looked behind him to measure how far he’d come, but the sandbank had disappeared. He was surprised by how dark it was getting. The water back there looked almost black, the sky a slate gray.

He was wading up to his waist in the water now, his body convulsing with the cold. He was holding his arms up above his head as he walked, as if he were carrying an invisible rifle. He tried not to think about what would happen if the water got any deeper. Would he be able to swim? He wasn’t so sure. Not with all these clothes on, he didn’t see how he would be able to swim.

This is how people die. Only now did that occur to him. Every week, you read about people drowning, you read about these things in the paper and you can’t imagine for the life of you how it actually happens. But this is how it happens.

He couldn’t die. What an inconvenience that would be for everyone, along with everything else that was going on.

It was almost pitch dark now. The lights were coming on in all the houses along the front. He could even make out his own house, a dark space sandwiched between its cheerfully lit neighbors. The tower was a flat shape against the sky, the trees and shrubs inky black. He could see the promenade up ahead of him. It was just a dark outline, shadowy people walking up and down. If he called out they might even be able to hear him. He knew he wouldn’t call out.

How absurd! He found himself almost laughing at his situation. At the possibility that he might die here, within sight of his own house. Within earshot of dozens of people. What a ridiculous way to go. He could imagine people reading about it in the
Irish Times
, he could imagine their horror.

There would be a tinge of mirth. He thought about the tragicomic figure he would cut in death and he shuddered at the thought.

That’s what he was thinking when he stumbled. His foot hit on something under the water, a rock perhaps, and he fell forward. He thought he was going all the way down. In his panic, he thought he was going under. But he landed on his knees, his chin just above the surface, his hands desperately pushing at the water to keep himself up. The iPod was gone, he realized. He had let it go as he fell.