Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

When they came outside the night was in hurly-burly. Teige carried her small case. They came out the kitchen door and at once the wind whipped it from Elizabeth’s hand and banged it hard. They ran then. Leaves flew in circles in the yard as they crossed it. They went to the stables and Teige opened the door on a chestnut gelding that neighed and stamped in alarm and wall-eyed turned about in its narrow confines as if visited by nightmare. Teige approached it palms extended and spoke to it in what seemed tones of urgent beseeching. Then he laid his hands along the horse and moved beside it and so was able to fasten a bridle. He led the horse out then into the storm. He took Elizabeth’s hand and brought her closer and then cupped his fingers for her foot and helped her mount the horse, which sidestepped and made shivers of nervy reaction until he soothed it once more beneath his command. They set off then out of the yard and down the avenue, Elizabeth bareback on the horse and Teige carrying her bag and leading it at a quick trot alongside. The wind sang demented in the trees. The starless, moonless dark seemed itself a creature poor tormented by some flagellant merciless and huge. Noises crashed about. Branches snapped. Boughs moaned in long ache, and still the wind blew. Rain lanced sidelong and vanished and came again. Down the end of the avenue they went, the horse wild-eyed and on the point of frenzy and Teige mastering and coaxing it and taking rearward glances to see if their pursuit had begun.

They reached the gates. He looked to Elizabeth. There was an instant in which they might have turned back at that threshold. She had discarded already her bonnet. It hung in the branches of an oak, where it would be found in the morning. Her face was wet and her hair was blown free of pins and came across her mouth and she moved it aside as he looked at her. Then he climbed up on that horse and she held to him, and they rode off down the road toward the town of Kilrush.

They arrived there in darkness still hours before dawn. They came down the centre of the streets between those buildings where all lay in grim repose, clutched in fearful sleeps while the wind took the slates off the houses. Nothing moved. The air smelled of salt and squalor. Gutters and sewers ran sleek and black like festered wounds opened. The night howled. At the end of the town they came to the shoreline and rode along it to the grassy place where Teige had left the boat. There they got down and stood before the river that now was like the sea. Teige turned the horse about and waved his arms and slapped its back and it went off and was lost into the rent and velvet dark. There, he told Elizabeth, was where the island was. It was not far, he said when she looked and could make out nothing. She stood there while he overturned the boat and laid it on the water. She seemed in all manner one unsuited to such adventure. She seemed too fine and delicate in appearance, too long used to the broad, high-ceilinged drawing rooms and dining rooms of elegant china. She seemed of a different world and stood there on the brink of this in the thrashing of the storm like one not quite awake but lingering in the vestiges of a dream. Her toed shoes were muddied. Spatters, muck splashes, painted her legs.

“Come.”

She stepped into the boat. It dipped and righted itself and dipped again and then Teige had pushed it off and they were fast in the current. The river took them. The tide that had been unruly before was wild and swollen now The boat crashed against waves and was taken without course. Elizabeth cried out and clung to the sides. She called Teige’s name. She cursed. They spun off into the dark and were like the smallest toy of the sea. Teige pulled and angled the oars and tried to steer about in that blackness, and the town came before them and then the mouth of the river and then the island and all seemed as if in some dark dioramic scene played for those watching from above. Teige rowed. He pulled and shouted at the storm as if it were a thing animate. He let out long, wordless cries and these were lost in the wind. Elizabeth’s face was white. She called to him that they must go back. Water slapped in the boat at her feet. She called to him again, and he shouted back to her that they could not. They were in the current fast and strong. Above and about them the storm thundered. It let down its rain in cold sheets and darkened the dawn.

But some time at last, whether by chance or design, the small boat crossed the midpoint of those waters and Teige was able to row it to shore at the eastern end of the island. They came up on the stones and Elizabeth stood and retched and Teige held her about the waist. Then she took three steps and had to sit in a weakness and he let her back into his arms and held her there on the open ground where the rain fell upon them still.

After some time slender light opened to the east as at the rim of the world. Clouds heavy and regally purpled were revealed sailing across the sky. The field the lovers lay in was littered with small leaves and twigs and feathers and other debris. Pieces of sacking, cord, cloth, such things. The wind like a ghost departing moved about the place a final time. And then it was gone. The fields of the island settled in the dawn light, and in that serene and unreal aftermath Elizabeth clung to Teige. They were soaked to their skins. Their faces were cold when they kissed. They stayed there a time still and gazed out and watched the morning come across the fields. It was as if they could not move yet into the new world they had brought about. As if the full realization of what was now their life were only just arriving and they were as yet only beginning to comprehend it. So they held to each other and said nothing, and when she felt the fright of what lay ahead of them Elizabeth kissed him hard. Small birds ventured across the air. Hares that came it seemed from shadows darted out and down the fields and painted tracks of dark in the silvered grass. At last Teige stood up and offered her his hand and they walked off down the island toward the tower.

He brought Elizabeth to the cabin where he slept and he set a fire there and blew the flames alight. Then he left her briefly as if she required privacy to undress and he went to where his mother had slept with his father and was afraid he would find her dead. He stood in the doorway and saw there an image that he would carry with him for the rest of his days. His mother lay small in the arms of his father. Both of them were sleeping. Their breaths came and went in slow, easeful rhythm. Upon their faces was the same expression that was an expression he would return to and see in the air of nights far distant from there and would tell himself was the look of peace and forgiveness. He watched them awhile. He watched them and did not want to step away and did not want the world to spin onward and the rough consequence of all our actions to follow. Then he went out the door and down to the raft house, where already BoatMac was standing on the shore looking for his boat. Teige told him he had taken it and where it lay now on the far side of the island. The boatman looked at the stones.

“It was a fierce storm,” he said.

“It was.”

“Bad night to go out in a boat.”

“It was. I am sorry,” Teige said, and did not know if he would tell more. Then the man’s wife appeared and was standing there and saw him in his drenched clothes and must have read in his comportment some affliction or beneficence, for she asked him:

“Are all well?”

Teige looked at her. Her face was kind. Her eyes seemed to contain deeps he had not noticed.

“She is very wet,” he said.

“Your mother?” said the boatman.