Andrew Hurley - The Loney

‘What’s it like? Belfast?’ I said.

I’d seen it night after night on the news. Barricades and petrol bombs.

He looked at me, understood what I was getting at, and gazed across the field again. ‘You don’t want to know, Tonto,’ he said. ‘Believe me.’

‘Please, Father.’

‘Why the sudden interest?’

I shrugged.

‘Another time, eh? Suffice to say the Crumlin Road in July isn’t much fun.’

He nodded across the field.

‘I was going to take a walk,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come?’

He parted the wire and I climbed through and did the same for him. Once through, he brushed down his jacket and we walked towards the Panzer, disturbing a pair of curlews that burst out of the grass and clapped away.

‘She means well,’ Father Bernard said. ‘Your mother. She only wants to help Andrew.’

‘I know.’

‘She may not seem it, but she’s frightened more than anything else.’

‘Yes.’

‘And fear can make people do funny things.’

‘Yes, Father. I know.’

He patted me on the shoulder and then put his hands in his pockets.

‘Will he get better?’ I said. It slipped out before I could help it.

Father Bernard stopped walking and looked back at the house.

‘What do you mean by better, Tonto?’

I hesitated and Father Bernard thought for a second before he re-phrased the question.

‘I mean, what would you change in him?’ he said.

I hadn’t thought about it before.

‘I don’t know, Father. That he could talk.’

‘Is that something you’d like? For him to talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t sound all that sure.’

‘I am sure, Father.’

‘Do you think it makes Andrew unhappy? Not being able to talk?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to.’

He considered this with a deep breath and then spoke.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if Andrew will get better in the way you want him to. That’s up to God to decide. All you can do is pray and put your trust in Him to make the right decisions about Andrew’s happiness. You do still pray don’t you, Tonto?’

‘Yes.’

He gave me a wry smile. Even as he asked the question I think he knew that I didn’t and hadn’t for some time. Priests are like doctors. They know that people lie about the things they think will disappoint them.

We came to the Panzer and Father Bernard laid his hand against the rock and felt its texture. He ran his finger up a long crack and picked at a clod of moss, teasing the fibres of it between his fingers.

‘God understands it’s not all plain sailing, you know. He allows you to question your faith now and again,’ he said, looking closely at the fossils, the tiny bivalves and ammonites. ‘Come on now, mastermind, what does it say in Luke fifteen?’

‘Something about lost sheep?’

‘Aye. See, if you can remember that, sure you’re not damned for all eternity just yet.’

He moved around the rock, feeling for hand holds and pulling himself up onto the top. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the view, then something under his feet caught his attention.

‘Hey, Tonto,’ he called down. ‘Come up here.’

He was on his knees, paddling his fingers in a hole full of water. He looked at my puzzled expression.

‘It’s a bullaun,’ he said. ‘We had one on the farm when I was a wee boy.’

He looked at me again and took hold of my hand, pressing my fingers to the edges of the hole.

‘Feel that?’ How smooth it is? That’s not been made by water. It was cut by a man.’

‘What’s it for, Father?’

‘They made them hundreds of years ago to collect rain. They thought the water was magical if it didn’t touch the ground, you see.’

He stood up and dried his hands on his coat.

‘My granny used to make the cows drink out of the one in our field,’ he said. ‘And if I ever had a fever, she’d take me down there and wash me in it to make me better.’

‘Did it work?’

He looked at me and frowned and gave a little laugh. ‘No, Tonto, it didn’t,’ he said.

He climbed down and I was about to do the same when I noticed the Land Rover parked on the road down below. I could tell it was Clement’s by the cross painted on the door, though Clement wasn’t inside.

The two men in the front had their faces turned towards me, though it was hard to tell whether they were staring at me or Moorings or the woods behind. Whatever they were looking at, it was clear even from this distance that it was the two men Father Bernard had asked for help the day before. The one built like a bull and the one with the dog. Parkinson and Collier.

‘What do you think those noises were last night, Father?’ I asked.

‘Between you and me,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

‘But you said it was farmers.’

‘It was a wee fib.’

‘You lied to them?’

‘Ah come on, Tonto, I was just trying to reassure them that they weren’t going to get murdered in their beds. Are you coming?’

‘Yes, Father.’

I looked back at the Land Rover and after a moment the driver set off in a plume of steel coloured smoke.

***

Hanny was still asleep when I got back. Mummer hadn’t yet forgiven him and the effort of rousing him and getting him dressed and nursing his headache was too much for her to cope with. So she allowed him to stay in bed while they went off to church for The Blessing of the Oils and The Washing of the Feet. It wasn’t an integral part of his preparation for the shrine and he would only spoil it if he came.

‘But don’t let him lounge around all day,’ said Mummer, looking up the stairs as they were all leaving.

‘Keep out of mischief,’ Farther added as he plucked his flat cap from the peg and helped Mr and Mrs Belderboss out.

I watched them go and when I closed the front door and turned around, Hanny was standing at the top of the stairs. He had been waiting for them to leave too. Now we could go down to the beach at last. We could leave their world and find ours.

Since we had decided to come back to Moorings, I had rehearsed the journey down to the beach many times, trying to re-imagine the road and what I used to be able to see on either side. Now that I was here and walking across the marshes with Hanny it all seemed to unfold as it should. I remembered the single, twisted hawthorn tree overhanging the road, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck that had staggered inland, torn and cowed by the sea. I remembered the way the wind rasped through the reeds and shuddered across the black water. The way the sea hung between the valleys of the dunes.

This was the real world, the world as it should be, the one that was buried in London by concrete plazas and shopping parades of florists, chip shops and bookmakers; hidden under offices and schools and pubs and bingo halls.

Things lived at The Loney as they ought to live. The wind, the rain, the sea were all in their raw states, always freshly born and feral. Nature got on with itself. Its processes of death and replenishment happened without anyone noticing apart from Hanny and me.

When we came to the base of the dunes, we veered from the road and took off our boots to feel the cold sand under our feet.

I slung the rifle around so that it sat against my back and helped Hanny up. He had insisted on bringing the stuffed rats with him in his school satchel and kept slipping down, gouging deep scars into the sand with his feet.

At the top we could see the grey sea spreading out towards the horizon that was pressed flat by the huge block of sky. The tide was coming in quickly, washing over the mudflats.

Everything here was as it always had been, apart from the botched swastika someone had spraypainted on the side of the pillbox as a companion to the letters NF .