John McGahern - Creatures of the Earth - New and Selected Stories

As he disappeared, Heslin handed the canvas bag to Murphy. He took a ball of fishing-line from his jeans, made a running noose on the end of it and cut off five or six feet with a penknife. Then he found a long, flat piece of rock and knotted the cut end of the line round its centre. Gingerly he inserted his arm into the bag Murphy still held. The cat cried, then went still, and he searched about until he could grip the fur on the back of the neck. Quickly he slipped the noose over her head before she could claw herself free. The cat shot away but was held by the line and rock. More strain and she would strangle herself. She tried to claw the noose free but it was too tight.

The two men fixed the collapsible stools on the sand, opened beer bottles, placed a towel between the stools, and Murphy cut the pack of cards and dealt two hands face down on the towel. Heslin turned the transistor high and drank the first of the bottles of beer. Behind them the black cat struggled against the incoming tide. An oldish, wiry man with a white terrier came on to the strand and seemed to notice the struggling cat. As he approached, Murphy and Heslin turned their stools to face him directly, lifted their beer bottles and put the transistor up to its full volume. The man paused and then, very reluctantly, turned away. A few times he looked back before leaving the beach. By then the black cat, through drowning or struggling or pure terror, floated about like any lifeless thing on the end of the line. The tide now washed around the stools, and the two moved further in as they continued playing cards and drinking. As they did so, they looked back for a long time at the incoming tide, but they weren’t able to pick out the cat being tossed about on any of the low waves.

*

Murphy and Heslin kept moving in, letting the tide take their empties. When the strand was half-filled, two curraghs were taken by a group of men from the concrete hut and carried upside down to the water. There were four men to each curragh. The men’s heads and shoulders were covered by the black canvas so that the curragh looked like an enormous insect with eight legs advancing into the water. There they floated the boats and fixed the oars in their pins, and a white nylon net was passed between them before they rowed apart. After they’d stretched the net, a man in each boat waved what looked like a crudely made spear to a watcher on the high cliffs, who blew a shrill whistle by way of recognition. Heslin and Murphy stopped playing cards to watch.

The crude spears were made from the leaves of old car springs, sharpened to a blade and attached to the long poles. The men were fishing for basking sharks. The watcher, high on the cliff, was able to see the shadow on the bright sand as soon as the shark entered the bay, and through a series of whistles was able to tell the men in the boats where the shark was moving. Obeying the whistles, they rowed in a wide arc until they had encircled the shark with the pale net, and then they drew the net tight. They killed the shark with the homemade spears. What they had to be most careful of as they thrust the spear into the flesh was the shark’s tail: a single flick would make matchwood of the boats. They could sit out there in the boats without anything happening for days on end, and then two or three sharks could come in during the course of a single evening.

Murphy and Heslin watched the boats for some time as they bobbed listlessly on the water, the men resting on their oars with occasional strokes to keep their position, but as nothing appeared to be happening they went back to playing cards. They kept moving in ahead of the tide, playing for small stakes, till they had the six-packs drunk. The tide was three-quarters full, but still the men rested on the oars in the boats out on the bay without anything happening. It was easier now to make out the watcher high on the cliff.

‘I wonder what the fuck they’re waiting about there in the boats for,’ Murphy said.

‘I don’t know and I couldn’t care less,’ Heslin said fiercely as he slapped down a winning card.

The two men then decided to have a last game. Whoever lost would buy the drinks in Gielty’s on the way back. Then they folded the stools and towel and put them into the canvas bag. Several cars passed them as they climbed the hill up to the main road. As there was an evening chill in the breeze, they put on and buttoned up their shirts. It was very dark in Gielty’s after the sealight. They ordered pints of stout, and Heslin paid.

‘Would you fancy a second?’ Murphy offered as they rose to leave.

‘No. We have the whole night to get through yet,’ Heslin said. ‘And if we hit fish we better be able to reel them in.’

They rose and left the bar and walked back down to the village. A white Mercedes stood in front of the cottage. Further up the small stream a boy was dabbling a worm in one of the larger pools.

‘They must be rich,’ Heslin said as they walked nonchalantly past the cottage.

‘Wouldn’t you just love to send them a video of what happened to the fukken cat?’ Murphy replied.

Mrs Waldron missed the cat as soon as she came through the gate, so constant was her wait by the escallonias. She looked at the stone in the stream and saw the boy fishing, and then about the house, and thought no more about it. Perhaps she had caught a mouse or a bird and was sleeping somewhere. In the excitement of Eileen’s return, the cat was forgotten. The presents she brought — a silk scarf, soft leather gloves and different kinds of mushrooms and herbs from a market in Rennes — had to be examined and admired. Readily, Eileen answered her mother’s questions about the towns she’d stopped in, the hotels, the restaurants, the markets, the shops, châteaux, museums, cathedrals, but there was a slowness in the responses, as if something weighed on her mind. Seeing this, her mother concentrated on the preparations for dinner, content to wait. Over the sea trout, mushrooms and the bottle of dry white wine she’d brought back from Nantes, Eileen spoke about what had been on her mind since her return.

‘I didn’t like to tell you till I saw how it went … I was in France with someone I’ve been seeing for months.’

‘I can hardly pretend to be surprised. Did it go well?’

‘I think so. I’m afraid though that Father might not have approved of him.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He’s not a professional man. In fact, he manages a supermarket. His name is John Quinn.’

‘If he’s decent and hard-working and kind, I don’t think your father would have minded what he was. I hope you’ll be happy.’

‘Did anything happen to Fats while I was away?’ Eileen asked suddenly, missing the cat for the first time and anxious to change the subject. ‘It’s not like her to miss fish of this quality.’

‘She was here all morning, but I missed her when I got back. I am worried but I didn’t want to bring it up. She always waited for me by the gate.’

‘Why don’t we look for her while there’s still light?’

They searched the road on both sides of the cottage. The ocean pounded relentlessly on the strand.

‘She might come yet through the window during the night.’

‘That would be happiness.’

Two days later, Mrs Waldron said, ‘Fats won’t come back now. Something has happened to her.’ The sense of loss was palpable. It was as if the dull ache of the surgeon’s death had been sharpened to a blade. He was gone, and now the whole irrelevant playful heart of that time had gone too. They counted back the years that the cat had been part of their lives. She had been with them almost thirteen.

‘I sensed it at the time and now I know it. Fats marked thirteen years of intense happiness … years of amazing luck … and they could not last. Yet we had all that … It’s hard to imagine now. All that.’