Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

None of this did Teige and Elizabeth know. Their boat carried them safely to the town of Limerick. There BoatMac left them with subdued farewell after Teige had thanked him and offered in vain to pay from the money Elizabeth carried in her bag. They took a ship that same afternoon and sailed from Limerick up to the town of Galway and spent that night there, where they purchased passage in the morning on the Mary Ann, bound for the coast of Nova Scotia.

In the week after Teige was gone, the BoatMacs moved from the raft house into the unfinished cottage by the shore. Francis Foley insisted on it. He came down with his wife on his arm and asked them please to move there and said he would help finish the building and they would be the first true settlers on the island. It was what Teige would have wished, he said, and was the least they were owed. He told them to take a field and grow what they wanted and take another for sheep or cattle. By the beginning of the following spring, there were lambs born there. The cottage was thatched. Another was built next to it by the boatman and his sons, but when they came to offer it to the old man, Francis said he would prefer to stay where they were and that soon enough there would be takers for it, indicating the oldest of the daughters.

The season was mild and easy that year. The waters of the river ran smooth and blue grey. Swans that had not been seen in some time sailed off the shore. Michael, which was discovered to be the name of BoatMac, came up to the tower one morning and told Francis Foley he had been asked to enquire if other pilots could settle with their families on the island. The old man studied the blue sky where high gannets flew. His wife sat by his side. His gorge rose and fell with some emotion unsaid and he waited a time for it to pass.

“They want to live here?”

“They do.”

The old man nodded. “A village should be made down by the shore,” he said.

And by the early summer then there were seven more cottages under way. Seagoing men with short legs and stout chests and with sons thin and wiry scattered over the stones, hauling and tapping and knocking edges. Walls rose. Thatch was mounded on the sand. Buckets of mud and lime and water were borne along the shore, and soon such traffic made there a printed trail ankle-deep that the tide took in the evenings. By night the pilots sailed away and the assemblage of their unfinished cottages appeared like antique ruins of some earlier time. Doorways and windows looked like eyes upon the starry river. In the silence soft and crepuscular hares, badgers, and foxes visited and moved as shades stealthy and inquisitive. Francis Foley came down then too and walked along the way that would become the street. The dog followed him. He stood in each of the roofless houses where none were there to see him and he touched sometimes details of masonry or joinery and let his fingers rest there. He stood so for long moments, his hand upon a wall, as if such were a connection of profound necessity and it restored him to do so. It did not escape him that these were to have been the homes for his sons, and he thought of them in the world and looked upon the night sky and went up then along the path to hold his wife in her bed.

In the dawns the black currachs of the pilots returned weighted in the water with supplies. The boats were drawn up and turned over on the shore and lay long and dark like strange insects warming in the sun. The cottages rose as in a race, their walls three feet thick with broad sills and deep lintels of hewn oak. With lighter timbers the lattice of roofs were made and seemed in broad day the bleached ribs of sea creatures once great. When they came to the thatching, the pilots were less expert and brought from the town some tawny fellows with dark hair and long needles and hooks and other tools secured in their belts. Bare-chested, these thatchers ran up and down light ladders and worked and sewed above and sometimes whistled and were like brown birds nestled there. They ate and drank in those lofty perches and looked betimes out to the sea as if gauging what weathers their work would have to withstand. When they were done and gone again, the pilots brought their families across. A flotilla of figures wrapped and shawled and bearing bundles, they came from the district of Kilbaha to that island with a quiet and humble gratitude. They moved up about the small village and saw for the first time their homes. Children ran along and whooped and went in and out behind the houses. At once the women went about making their homes. They untied bundles of blankets and put clay pots, earthenware, and tin canisters on sills. They hung crosses and some had other images of their religion and they placed these like shields in corners or over doorways. The pilots meantime stood outside in a small gathering and watched the Shannon. One made small comments on the tide or weather and others concurred in soft mutterings. Their eyes were narrowed and their faces crinkled, grown accustomed to long scrutiny of the horizon. In the evening one among them played a concertina and they gathered outside the houses and smoked pipes and some sisters danced together. Others of the women joined. The men bashful and slow sat or leaned against walls and watched. Only later were some cajoled to step out there, but when these did, their movements light with the drink they had taken, the whole swayed and spilled over and broke with laughter. One sang a song then, shut-eyed and sad. He sang for the drowned and those gone and these sounds travelled out across the mild night, plaintive and grave. Then a hush fell and spread and all said their good-nights and went to sleep there for the first time.

And so another summer drew on. In the first light of each day and in all weathers the pilots launched their currachs into the water and sailed out in a race against each other and were like so many water-borne beetles as they travelled out to meet ships bound for Limerick. Whosoever reached the ship first drew the entitlement of piloting it in through the dangerous currents and past the sandbanks. Others bobbed in the heavy waters and scanned the horizon and waited. They watched the sky for seabirds to tell them if ships were coming. They lived all day on the water and in the falling dark returned and stepped with jaunty gait up the street where children and dogs came to meet them.

These men had little contact with the Foleys. Their wives sometimes went with potato breads and griddlecakes and such up to the house by the tower and they were welcomed and thanked by the old man. But he rarely came down among them. Michael and Mary visited. They sent meals with the children and came themselves on many evenings and told them about the antics of the Brennans or Behans or McNamaras or Scanlans or any of the families that lived there. They told of sea escapades and boats overturned and news brought on the ships from the world outside. And these things the old man and his wife listened to politely and nodded and made little comment, for it seemed news of a place fictive and unreal.

The seasons turned. Cousins of those living there came and built houses, too. A girl of the Griffins married and for her a house was made in the half acre behind her father’s cottage. Winter and spring and summer and autumn chased each other across the sky and the constellations wheeled and the moon rose and fell like hope and still none of the sons of Francis Foley returned there. One night as they sat outside in that silent and peaceful way that had become their custom before sleep, Emer asked Francis to tell her what the stars were like now. She sat there in her darkness absolute and turned her face upward. She knew he had not gone to the telescope once since she had been returned to him and knew him well enough to know that such may have been a pact promised to be kept if indeed she came back.