Page 10 of The Elements

I have felt no fear since arriving on the island, even here in the comparative isolation of the cottage, but then I’ve never been the type to scare easily.

However, I can feel my heart beating faster inside my chest as my anxiety levels rise.

It crosses my mind that, should something untoward occur, a community like this would most likely stand together to protect one of its own against any accusations levelled by an outsider.

But my mind is moving too fast toward a calamitous conclusion, and I tell myself to remain composed, that it was probably nothing more than some nocturnal animal on night patrol.

I pull on a heavy jumper over my nightdress, slide my feet into my slippers, and step into the cold living room, standing silently in the center, listening, waiting.

All seems quiet now, but it is not a natural silence.

It is the sound of someone trying not to make a sound, a phrase I read in a novel once and that stayed with me.

I reach for my phone, which is charging in the socket by the wall, and press the home button.

The screensaver is a picture of Emma and Rebecca taken on that last holiday in Wexford, the day before Emma died.

They have their arms around each other, and both are smiling, wearing sunglasses because it was a fine summer’s day.

I don’t quite know why I’m bothering—is it simply for the reassurance of seeing their faces?

—for who can I call? There isn’t a police station on the island.

Should a crime occur, a Garda is apparently dispatched from Galway to make the necessary investigations.

Still, it’s in my hands now, so I open the messaging app and look at my most recent text to my surviving daughter.

She’s unblocked me once again and changed her picture.

I press the required button to allow the image to fill the screen, then I save it to my photos.

It was taken in a pub, and Rebecca is sticking her tongue out flirtatiously at the photographer.

The surroundings are familiar to me, but it’s not Terenure.

Somewhere in the city center, I think. Is it Neary’s?

I think it might be. But who took the picture?

Her expression suggests a certain intimacy so it’s probably a boy.

She’ll be asleep now, I assume, so it should be safe to message without suffering the indignity of being immediately blocked.

If I’m still here in Winter , I type. I think it will be hard to tell day from night .

The message sends, a single gray tick appears. I watch it for a moment, just in case it doubles, then turns blue, but no.

Returning the phone to its charger, I move toward the front door, opening it cautiously and looking outside.

It is a fine night, not a breeze in the air, and a waxing moon offers little illumination to the sweep of fields that stretch down toward the sea.

I remember when one of our book club insisted on our reading The Hours , and I could not face it, even though it was short, so watched the film instead, and then read a little about Virginia Woolf online before our meeting, desperate to have something intelligent to say.

I spoke about how she filled her pockets with stones before walking into the river, all her cares scattered behind her like confetti on the riverbank.

Would I be missed if, tonight, I followed her example?

Would I even be found? I read that it took three weeks for the poor woman’s body to be discovered, and who knows what terrible condition it was in by then.

I’d prefer mine to float away and offer sustenance to the creatures of the sea, my flesh becoming one with theirs as my bones sank to the ocean floor, settling peacefully into the sand to rest there for eternity.

When Emma’s body was retrieved from the beach near Curracloe, she was taken to the mortuary at Wexford General Hospital, where Brendan and I identified her together.

He broke down when the sheet was lowered to reveal her face, but I found myself unable to cry.

It didn’t seem real to me at the time. After only twelve hours in the water, her features hadn’t grown bloated, but still, the body that lay before me did not seem like that of my daughter but rather like a poor approximation of her.

Something one might see at a waxworks. The attendant asked whether this was, in fact, Emma, and I said, “I think so,” an answer that did not satisfy him, and so he turned to Brendan, who was less equivocal in his response.

And then she was covered once again, and we were led from the room.

All the time, I felt as if I were in a television show, or a film; it seemed impossible that such a thing could happen in real life.

I step a few feet away from the cottage now, the better to see the roof, but nothing makes its presence felt until a shape darts past my ankles and charges through the open door.

I’m too surprised to scream, and by the time my breath is recovered I see that it is only Bananas, out on one of his late-night hunting sessions.

Relieved, and feeling a little foolish, I’m torn between reprimanding him and wanting to take him in my arms. Despite Mrs. Duggan’s demands that he stay away, he has continued to be a regular visitor, but I’ve stopped giving him food on account of the alleged irritable bowel syndrome.

I continue to offer saucers of milk, though.

I don’t buy the lactose intolerance for even a moment.

He’s a cat, after all. And cats drink milk.

Something draws me down the path that leads to the sea and I make my way along, guided by the moon and the glistening light that dances on the waves like sparks from a flint.

It takes no more than ten minutes to reach the beach.

I stroll along it most afternoons and could find my way there with my eyes closed.

The small groups of teenagers who live on the island generally cavort around it with a mixture of excitement and tentativeness.

Now that the weather is improving, the boys peacock with their shirts off, displaying scrawny chests and thin legs, while the girls tease them by removing their clothes beneath towels before magically reappearing a few moments later in two-piece swimsuits.

In the sea, the young people behave chaotically, unable to control their desires and frustrations.

They are masters of all they survey here, but I wonder how they will survive when adulthood takes them to Dublin, London, or further afield.

They are water babies, nourished by the waves, and they will struggle when they are, by necessity, dragged to dry land.

It was through swimming, of course, that Brendan and I met, when I was twenty-one and he a decade older.

I had a trip planned to Greece with two friends, to the island of Kos, and, embarrassed that I had never learned, I signed up for an intensive course of sessions in my local pool, where Brendan was assigned to be my coach.

I had expected a woman to teach me and felt slightly unnerved when this tall, good-looking man approached in shorts and T-shirt, with bare legs and feet, to introduce himself.

Naturally I was in my swimsuit at the time, which felt like a strange way to encounter a man for the first time.

I was glad when he invited me to descend the ladder into the water, for although I was confident that I had a decent body, it was unsettling to stand in such near-nakedness before him.

He was a good teacher, calm, patient, and deliberate, and it only took about six classes before my confidence grew.

His too, I suppose, because he invited me out for a drink then and, having developed a crush on him, I said yes.

It was so strange to go out on that first date, when both of us were fully dressed for the first time, my hair combed and not hidden beneath a cap.

Goggle-less. There was a curious sensuality to it; the opposite experience of most couples who, over time, move from clothed toward a state of undress.

I didn’t keep up the swimming after we were married, only starting again when Emma was a baby, when I took to driving to Dún Laoghaire after lunch every day and taking a dip in the Forty Foot.

You could always rely on two or three other young mothers with children to be there and we would entrust our offspring to each other as we dived into the icy water and felt the good of it on our skin.

Part of the fun was the fury on the faces of the men, who still resented the presence of women in this once sacrosanct area.

Some even continued the ancient practice of swimming naked in the hope that this would intimidate us into leaving them in peace, but it would have taken more than a bunch of fat sixty-year-olds with flabby bellies drooping over sagging cocks to frighten us away.

When he learned of these afternoon trips, Brendan accused me of keeping this from him, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.

I wanted something for myself, even if it did echo his activities as he ascended the ranks of the National Swimming Federation.

He was one of those who believed that women had no business being at the Forty Foot and, when he asked me whether there were naked men there, I said there were, on occasion, and he went into one of his moods and wouldn’t come out of it for days.

Unwilling to argue, I asked would he prefer that I didn’t go there anymore, and he said he would, sure wasn’t there a perfectly good swimming pool in Terenure College and it had a ladies’ morning every Wednesday and Friday, when both Emma and I could get into the pool together.

And to keep the peace, I did as he asked. I never returned to the Forty Foot, nor did I ever again meet the friends I had inadvertently made.

On the beach now, I remove my slippers and my toes burrow into the cold, moist sand.

It has none of the pleasing, warm sensation I am accustomed to from daytime, so I step forward into the water itself, intending only to wet my ankles, then feel the tide hurl itself against me in a fury, surprised and enraged by my intrusion.

It dampens the base of my nightdress as if to say, Away you, away!

It is cold. Oh, it is so cold. Was it as cold as this when you walked into the sea in Wexford, Emma?

Did you plunge down into the water to break the shock of it, or did you step gingerly forward, one eye on the horizon, uncertain whether you really meant what you were doing?

And how far out were you when you knew that there was no way back, even for a strong swimmer like you?

In that moment, did you feel panic? Regret?

Fury? Relief? I have so many questions for you, my darling girl, but you aren’t here to answer them .

I recall Rebecca’s question of me, after it all came out.

Did you know all along and just didn’t care?

I plunge down into the water now, submerging myself up to my neck, and when my body has adjusted to the temperature, I sink lower again, beneath the waterline.

Immediately, the sounds change. It’s a different universe under here.

A song from an old Disney movie that the girls watched hundreds of times when they were children forms in my head and I open my eyes, looking for friendly lobsters and dancing prawns.

But I am alone down here, except for the microscopic life forms moving around me, each one wondering why this interloper has disturbed their agreeable night.

I don’t feel cold anymore but know that when I raise my head into the world again, I will.

I anticipate this with regret, even anger.

I would rather stay down here, like Emma did, and, tomorrow, float in on the tide.

Water has been the undoing of me. It has been the undoing of my family. We swim in it in the womb. We are composed of it. We drink it. We are drawn to it throughout our lives, more than mountains, deserts, or canyons. But it is terrible. Water kills.

I can’t stay down here any longer. With no stones in my pockets, my body forces me back to the surface, and I emerge, gasping.

Instinctively, I put my hands to my forehead to brush the hair out of my eyes but, of course, it is gone, scalped close, not daring to grow back in case it provokes me to get the scissors out again.

I drag myself back toward the beach, weighed down by the sodden nightdress and the woolen jumper, and look up toward the sky, feeling strangely calm now, before making my way back toward the path that leads me home, if home it is.

And it is then that I feel eyes on me, like a torch pointed toward my heart.

Turning my head in the direction of the Duggan farm, what light the moon offers reveals a figure in the distance, observing me.

I cannot make out his face—he might be a scarecrow for all the movement he is making—but there is a moment of connection, where we are the only two people in the world.

I pull off my jumper, for it is too heavy, the saturated wool weighing me down, and then, in an act of defiance, I slip out of the wet nightdress too and march naked toward my door.

Why shouldn’t I, after all? It is my door. It is my body.

Watch me all you like, Luke Duggan, if it makes you happy.

Back inside, I feel in desperate need of a hot bath and a cup of tea.

Bananas has left me a gift by the kitchen table, but what use have I of a dead mouse is a mystery to me.

Later, when sleep returns, I dream of the boy on the hill, but this time he is not just standing there watching, he is making his way down toward the sea too, only it is a different sea, an unfamiliar one, and he is throwing himself into the waves with the grace of an Olympian.

He vanishes from sight for a moment, and when he emerges, he draws the air back into his empty lungs, but he is not empty-handed. No, he has found my daughter.

He is holding Emma in his arms.

He is carrying her back to the shore, back to safety, back to me.