Алекс Баркли - I Confess

Darkness had travelled loyally with Pilgrim Point through all its incarnations, as if passed in the handshake between each fleeing owner and the hopeful successor whose eye he could barely meet. This anvil-shaped promontory on the south-west coast of Ireland had once been a battleground, and at various times in the centuries that followed, had been fought over, lost, regained, or relinquished.

The sufferings of each owner — and there were many — would at first be borne privately, but the anguish of their aggregate would eventually sound like an alarm, travelling east to Castletown, where it would turn to whispers at a retreating back. Pilgrim Point, now empty of life, would release into the silence a siren cry that would always be answered. Deep and discordant, it called to those of a darker persuasion. The greater surprise was the fine gold thread of its lighter melody and how its gleam, though rare, could attract to Pilgrim Point, in equal measures, those of more noble intent.

Perhaps its grounds had swallowed the consequences of so many sins that, under the feet of sinners, it felt like home and under the feet of the righteous, like a summoning. This despite stories of strange apparitions and untimely occurrences. There was also the curious fertility of its grass — stark against the dark stones of the ruins that marked it. This trick of nature kindled even the faintest hope of triumph, when it was doubtless nothing more than a pleasing cover for what lay beneath — the roots of sin itself. From under this vibrant green bed, it released a pale malevolence that rose like smoke to disappear into the late-evening mist.

Were you to pass through the black gates of Pilgrim Point now, you would find yourself on land cloven by a bitter feud between brothers. The path you must take marks the dead centre, its course as unbending as the will of the men who occasioned it. As you follow this path, you will feel as though the landscape is unfurling around you, ahead of you, and for you — in time with the fall of your foot or the galloping hooves of your mount. You will be rewarded, then, at the cliff edge with such astonishing natural beauty; this anvil pointing towards nothing but sky and wild Atlantic. Turn left or right and you will catch glimpses of lesser headlands, like runners that have fallen behind in a race. You have won. Or so you think. You won’t know yet that, in fact, you have been won. Through the powerful sweep of the wind and the steady crash of the waves, you won’t hear the voice of the true winner:

‘I am Pilgrim Point, host of rulers and battles, victors and vanquished, the rich, the poor, the faithful, the lost. Who are you? And what will I make of you?’

For what does an anvil do but allow a thing to be hammered and moulded? And what confusion comes when it plays blacksmith too.

I should know.

I once lived there. And, I now believe, died.

Pilgrim Point, Beara Peninsula

4 August 2015

‘If you have a rich imagination you will never be poor.’

Edie’s mother, Madeleine, had heard that from her starving-artist parents throughout her childhood, so although she grew up in a home blessed with the freedom of passionate creativity, it was caged, in her mind, by penury. Madeleine mentally rejected the advice, never realizing that she had, in fact, taken it — she married a rich man, having fallen in love with a version of him she had used her rich imagination to create. Before they married, she had brought Edward home to meet her parents, and Edward, weary of the constraints of his upper-class upbringing, had been charmed by her parents and their ramshackle home. He came alive in their company and expected their daughter would bring out the same spirit in him. It wasn’t long after they married that he realized they were both running towards the life the other wanted to leave behind. Edie’s mother was happy with her beautiful home and her beautiful things, and a husband who travelled for business and left her to enjoy them. When he returned from his trips, she seemed as disappointed by the reality of him as he was by the sense that she might pick him up, look around, and try to find a suitable place to put him.

It was only when Edie was born that her father’s dormant spirit and warmth found a home. He poured all his love into her, gave her all his attention. There was never any disappointment on Edie’s face. She loved him just the way he was.

When Edie was eight years old, he brought the family to Beara on holiday. He had spent his most magical childhood summer there and had told Edie stories about fishing at sea or from the rocks on a pebble beach so secluded he used to pretend that it was his, that he had won it from a pirate in a game of cards. He told her about hiking mountains and hills, swimming in lakes and waterfalls, and diving off piers into the freezing Atlantic Ocean. He told her about friendly locals, and warm welcomes, and nights filled with laughter, music, singing, and dancing.

He made sure that Edie’s first summer there was filled with all the same things, and for Edie, every day was like living in a fairy tale. Her father had spent the whole month of August with them, and by the end of it, had bought a beautiful house on a sheltered harbour. They called it Eventide. It had a boathouse and a summerhouse and a lawn that sloped down to a short rocky strand. By the following summer, she and her mother were living there full-time, and her father visited as often as he could.

He always stirred her sense of adventure, bringing her out to sea with him, or to storytelling nights in a candlelit cabin in Eyeries — a tiny village where all the houses were painted in different colours. He would leave books by her bedside, tapping their hardback covers, and saying, ‘You’d like this one, Edie,’ ‘You’d get a kick out of this!’

They used to drive by the gates of Pilgrim Point, in those days a convent, and she would always look out for the mismatched stone finials on the pillars — one a lion, the other an eagle. Her father told her it was once a manor built by two English brothers, the Rathbrooks, who fell out, accusing each other of all kinds of transgressions that led them into a series of stand-offs that began with the alleged theft of a finial at the gate and ran right down to the edge of the cliff where one brother accused the other of regularly appearing, ghost-like, to frighten him. Both men denied the accusations levelled at them, abandoned the manor, and died estranged.

‘Never be too proud, Edie!’ her father had said. ‘But don’t let anyone get the better of you, either!’

Edie’s mother, meanwhile, played only a bit part in Edie’s childhood adventures. Her role would come when Edie had outgrown them, when she could prime her to do as she had done: look beautiful and marry well.

And in the middle, torn between who she was and who each of them wanted her to be, was Edie. But there was one thing her parents did agree on — her beauty. That, she realized, was her safest ground. When the waters got choppy, that’s where she stood — fair-haired, smiling, long-limbed, and sunkissed — and that’s where Johnny Weston found her. She had first seen him when she was fourteen years old. It was the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend — the beginning of what was officially called the Beara Festival of the Sea, but was only ever referred to as ‘Regatta’. It was the highlight of Beara’s social calendar, when the town was filled with people, and the harbour filled with boats.