Danielle McLaughlin - Dinosaurs on Other Planets

Sarah became conscious of the in and out of her own breath, the soft drumming of someone’s foot, perhaps her own, on the kitchen tiles. She thought of gathering up the mugs and taking them to the sink to wash them, but before she could do anything, she heard Jonathan say to his brother, “I’ll go with you.”

Aidan’s hand left the back of his neck and began to caress the bony contours of his skull. “You’re maybe accustomed to a different kind of boat these days, Johnny,” he said. “It’s not a yacht, now,” but this time, nobody laughed.

“I sailed the half-decker to Tory the summer our father died,” Jonathan said. “And I sailed it to Rathmullan the time of the oyster festival the summer after.”

All of the years he had lived in this place before he met her, all of the time they had been strangers to each other, unaware of the other’s existence, settled upon Sarah, heavy and impenetrable. She felt a small, quiet panic rise up inside of her. It was the panic of a swimmer who has drifted out, little by little, on a rogue current and who suddenly discovers herself to be far from shore. She had a sense of something slipping away from her; it was something she could not quite identify, but she could feel its ebbing nonetheless.

“That was a long time ago,” Aidan said. “You haven’t been out since. Likely you’ve forgotten, and maybe you’re better off.”

“You know rightly there’s no forgetting.” Pauline stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. Her belly swung low and heavy as she walked across the kitchen to the airing cupboard and switched on the water heater. “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going back to bed, and you boys can go to Shroove or to any damn place you like.”

As Pauline left the kitchen, Sarah had a sudden image of her naked: the distended belly, the hair, black and wet and sleek, writhing in worms around her shoulders. She saw her in the small, dark bathroom in the shadow of the boat shed, standing under the shower as the water sluiced over her, a sea creature lured to dry land.

—

OUT ON THE ESTUARY, a trawler had dropped anchor for the night, light from the engine room pooling on the water. As Sarah drove along the narrow coast road, she saw matchstick figures moving about the floodlit deck. Beside her, Pauline emerged from the grip of a contraction and sank back in the passenger seat. She pushed her hair, damp with sweat, from her face and took out her phone. “I’ll try him again,” she said. They were a mile beyond Greencastle, past the fishery school and the holiday homes clustered in the shadow of the fort, heading toward Shroove.

On the other side of the estuary, a string of evenly spaced lights, brighter than street lights, ran along the edge of the peninsula. Sarah had asked Jonathan about them the night before as they took their luggage from the boot of the car. “Is that a hotel?” she said, and he had laughed, shaking his head as he walked toward the back door. “That’s Magilligan Prison,” he said. Later, he told her how as a child he had gone there with his father to visit a cousin. “What was it like?” she said, but he had been unable to remember much, only some Nissen huts from the war and a soldier walking four or five dogs on a chain. The prison glittered now across the water, its perimeter lights threaded like a string of bright beads along the ragged coastline.

Pauline swore as Aidan’s phone clicked once more into voicemail. “Likely they’re still at that job,” she said, “and if they are, they’ll not hear a phone. Or if they hear it, they’ll not answer.” She reached for the holdall at her feet and hauled it onto her belly, rooting through nightdresses and slippers until she found her cigarettes. “Try Jonathan,” Sarah said and she began to call out the number, but Pauline cut her short. “I already have,” she said. She lit a cigarette and rolled down the car window to let the smoke out.

Her hair appeared blacker than usual against the pallor of her skin, her dark brows like slashes of war paint. “My daddy’s a fisherman,” she said. “My granddaddy, too, same as Aidan’s.” She touched a hand lightly to her stomach. “And there’s days I’m standing at the end of the pier and I could swear that this wee babby knows. I can feel him straining for the sea, the same as if he could see it or smell it.” She took a drag of her cigarette, blew out a mouthful of smoke. “But it’s a dirty business, fishing. Dirty and hard. You’re lucky, with Johnny.” She tossed the cigarette out the window and clutched her stomach. “Here comes another one,” she said, and she doubled over, resting her forehead on the dash.

Coming out of the boglands, they were forced into the ditch by a small car that careered toward them in a blaze of headlights. It bounced off the road, temporarily airborne, then sped away, a boy in a dark hoodie sunk low in the driver’s seat. “One of the Shaker Sweeneys from the Malin Road,” Pauline said, and Sarah waited for her to say more, but she leaned back and closed her eyes. In the rearview mirror, the taillights of the receding car flickered red and were gone, extinguished, the road returned to darkness.

Pauline didn’t speak again until they passed the sign for Shroove. A pub rose out of the blackness, an oasis of light on the otherwise desolate stretch of coast. “I had my debs there,” she said. “Four years ago last summer.”

Sarah had thought of Pauline as older — not older in the way that her parents were older, but older certainly than herself and Jonathan. Now she realized they were practically the same age. “Did you take Aidan?” she said. She tried to imagine Aidan in a tuxedo, a grown man awkward in a room full of teenagers, his hands red and calloused below the white cuffs of a dress shirt.

“I didn’t know Aidan then,” Pauline said. “I took Johnny. Johnny and I were at school together in Carn,” and as the lights of the pub fell away behind them, she said, “Here! Turn in here,” and she pointed to a gap in a field.

The grass was littered with cans and the charred circles of spent fires. The field ran to a line of low cliffs, with the sea, dark and choppy, stretched out beyond. Sarah stopped the car. Pauline was bent over, moaning, and when she lifted her face from her hands there were tears running down her cheeks. “They’ll be down at the shore,” she said. “Tell him to hurry.”

Sarah found a flashlight in the boot and followed a trail through the grass to the edge of the cliff. Below her, she saw lights bobbing on the water and, when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the outline of a boat. There was a secluded beach: a strip of white sand, stark against the black of the surrounding rocks. The sea was silvered by the moon and by the lights of Magilligan across the estuary, and as she watched the boat cut ripples through the water she was struck by how very beautiful it all was, beautiful and unspoiled, and how, if it were not for Pauline waiting in the car, she would have liked to stay.

She began to descend the steep path to the cove, clutching at reeds to steady herself. The slope propelled her forward so that she was unable to stop even if she wanted to, and in the end she half-ran, half-fell onto the small beach. The cove was quiet, apart from the slap and fizz of waves breaking on the sand. The men had cut the boat’s engine and Jonathan jumped overboard, began to wade toward her. He was wearing a dark-colored oilskin, the hood pulled tight around his face. “What are you doing here?” he said when he reached her, and she realized that it was not Jonathan, but Aidan. He had something long, like a stick, tucked under his arm.

“Where’s Pauline?” he said when she did not answer, but she was transfixed by a shape twisting out beyond him on the water, something thrashing and struggling, the sea churning white all around. She thought with sudden fright that it was a body, but then she saw that there were many of them, and they were moving slowly inland, plowing furrows through the dark sea. They looked like divers in wetsuits, but as they got closer, she saw that they were seals, black and lustrous. They were rolling in on the waves, disappearing below the water, then surfacing again, moonlight glinting on their sleek heads.