Page 16 of The Elements

There’s a flurry of activity on the beach, and I make my way along the path toward the spot where a group of islanders has gathered.

In among them is Luke’s mother, concealed beneath so many layers that it might be the dead of winter and not a clear summer’s evening.

I wonder if she knows that her son and I had sex, and that we continue to, whenever the mood takes us.

I don’t for a moment imagine that he would have confided in her, but mothers, some mothers anyway, have a way of intuiting these things.

“Mrs. Duggan,” I say, and she looks me up and down as if there is so much wrong with me that she wouldn’t even know where to begin. “What’s going on?”

“Evan Keogh,” she replies. “He took off early for Galway and hasn’t been seen since.”

The name rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it until, at last, I remember her mentioning him to me when she first came to remonstrate with me for feeding Bananas. A talented footballer, if I remember correctly. Didn’t his father want him to go to England for a trial with one of the clubs there?

“Took off in what way?” I ask. “Not swimming, I presume?” If the boy’s been out swimming since morning, I’m not surprised there’s concern.

I’ve read of charity swims between the island and Doolin, so I suppose a distance like that is possible.

But Doolin is only ten miles from here, while Galway is twenty-four.

Only a fool would attempt such a thing without a vessel following in case of an emergency.

“Ah, no,” she says. “He took Charlie’s boat out, and he’s never done that before. Not on his own anyway. And neither sight nor sound of him since.”

I look out across the waves, as if I will see the missing boy surfing toward me on the horizon.

“He couldn’t have got into difficulty, surely,” I say. “It’s been such a fine day. No wind at all.”

“Accidents happen,” she replies with all the pessimism that women like her revel in. “Better things have happened to worse men.”

A little further along, within a circle of protective friends, stands a middle-aged woman looking pale and frightened, even annoyed.

I take her to be Mrs. Keogh, who I recognize from the knit shop in the village.

I bought a scarf from her a few weeks after I arrived and it’s a thing of beauty, made from Merino wool, with intersecting threads of turquoise and tangerine.

I wear it on cold evenings if I’m going to the old pub for a meal.

One of the women tries to place a consolatory arm around her shoulder, but she shrugs it off and marches down toward the shore, fierce in her stride, to where the tide rolls in.

She’s beseeching the water to go against its nature, to show compassion for once, but, like King Canute demanding that the tides fall still, she’s asking in vain, for water is the cruelest of all the elements and will swallow up anyone who challenges it.

“Has someone gone looking for him?” I ask.

“Charlie’s gone, of course. And my Luke, along with two of his pals. They’re away an hour since. We’ll stay here now till they all get back safe, God willing.”

A part of me wants to return to the cottage and hide under the bedsheets. I cannot be here if the men return with bad news, as those two Gardaí did for me on that long-ago holiday in Wexford. I cannot witness any mirroring of my grief.

I remember a small van that, since the arrival of the summer tourists, is usually parked at the top of the dunes, selling teas and coffees, ice creams, and soft drinks from a window hatch, and I make my way back up to the road and walk in its direction, hoping it will still be there, despite the hour.

Sure enough, it is, although when I reach it, the girl inside is packing up for the night.

“Are you still serving?” I ask, and she glances toward the hot-water urn, pressing a hand briefly against its steel surface, before nodding.

“You just caught me,” she says. “And it’s still hot. What will you have?”

“A large tea,” I tell her. “Strong and sweet.”

She takes the largest of the Styrofoam cups from a shelf behind her and drops in a tea bag before filling it with steaming water and reaching for the bag of sugar.

“How many?” she asks.

“Two,” I say, handing across a couple of euros and taking the cup from her, pressing the lid in place, and walking back toward the beach.

To my surprise, Mrs. Keogh has separated herself from the ghoulish gathering and is now alone in the dunes, her arms folded before her.

I approach cautiously and clear my throat so as not to surprise her.

When she turns to look at me, she blinks a little, as if she’s just woken from a dream.

“I brought you some tea,” I say, handing it across. “I put some sugar in it. I’d have put whiskey in if I’d any to hand.”

“That’s kind of you,” she says, taking it and warming her hands on the cup’s surround.

“Would you like me to leave you alone?” I ask, conscious that she might have changed position for privacy’s sake, but she shakes her head.

“Stay if you like,” she says. “This is all a lot of fuss over nothing. Evan’s a good sailor. No harm could come to him on a day like this. He’ll have docked on a beach somewhere and gone into the town for the afternoon.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I say, wanting to reassure her.

“He’ll come sailing back any minute now and throw a fit over why we’re all acting like he’s drowned.”

I bristle a little at the casual use of the word but decide not to pick her up on it. I don’t know if she’s trying to persuade herself or me.

“We haven’t met, have we?” she says eventually, sipping on the tea.

“Not really,” I say. “Although I’ve been in your shop. I’m Willow Hale.”

“Maggie Keogh. You’re famous, you know.” I frown, unsettled by this remark.

“Sure everybody was talking about you when you first arrived,” she explains.

“The Pope himself wouldn’t have garnered so much interest. A woman from Dublin and not a husband in sight!

” She indicates the men and women gathered on the shore before us, who seem to have forgotten about her and are locked in chat as they wait to see how this drama will play out.

“That’s what they were all saying anyway.

Gossips, the lot of them. They drive me around the bend with their nonsense. ”

Something in her voice makes me realize that she is not a native islander.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Wicklow,” she tells me. “I met Charlie when I was too young to know any better and allowed him to drag me here.”

There’s so much bitterness in her tone that it shocks me. It makes me think that she is already anticipating the worst and has adopted the persona of the grieving mother earlier than necessary. Each of us does it differently, of course.

She takes her phone from her pocket and taps a couple of numbers on the screen before lifting it to her ear, waiting a moment, then sighing in frustration as she returns it to her pocket.

“This is what I don’t understand,” she says, looking to me as if I can offer an explanation.

“He never turns his phone off. Evan, I mean. He has it on him all day long and he always answers. And now it’s just going to voicemail.

What does that mean, do you think? Might it have been stolen from him? ”

Until now, I have assumed that the islanders are merely creating a commotion to give their day a bit of excitement, but this makes me wonder.

Perhaps the boy has come to mischief, after all.

I take my own phone from my pocket, open the messaging service, and there is Rebecca’s photograph, only it’s changed again.

Now it is a picture taken from behind, and she is standing much like I am, on a dune somewhere, looking out to sea.

Which sea is this, I wonder? And what is she doing there?

I check when she was last online. An hour ago. I type a message.

I miss you. I am well.

I wait to see that she has received and read it before returning the phone to my pocket, hoping for the sound of a reply but anticipating none. Maggie Keogh looks at me.

“Who were you texting?” she asks.

“My daughter,” I say.

“Do you have just the one?”

I find this a complicated question to answer. The intimacy of the truth would be too much in the present moment.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Rebecca.”

“She didn’t come here with you?”

“Oh no,” I say. “She’d go out of her mind in a place like this.”

“Sure we all do that,” says Maggie. “Most of us lost our minds long ago. Would it surprise you to know that I haven’t set foot on the mainland in eight years?”

“Why not?” I ask her.

“He won’t let me,” she says.

“Who won’t?”

“Charlie.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shrugs her shoulders, as if she’s long since stopped thinking about it. “Neither do I,” she says.

What a strange existence, I think, to spend so much of one’s life in a place like this, ruled by the whims of a man, and to know so little of the world.

Never to have climbed the Eiffel Tower, or walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or stared into the depths of the Grand Canyon.

To settle for a barren rock in the Atlantic Ocean where you could probably spend a lifetime and encounter only a few hundred different faces.

I think of those Japanese soldiers who lasted for decades on small islands in the Pacific, still believing the war was going on.

“So he’s run away,” I say. “Your son, I mean. He’s escaping his father.”

“He’s frightened.”

“Of your husband?”

She looks at me with an expression on her face that’s difficult to read. This is a woman who needs to unburden herself of something. “Partly,” she says.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I say, stating the obvious. “It’s your business. Did I hear that he wants to be a professional footballer?”

Maggie laughs bitterly. “He has the talent, that’s for sure,” she tells me.

“You’ve never seen such skill with a ball.

But he doesn’t want it. He has no interest in the game.

His father is all for it, though. He likes the idea of Evan lining up in Lansdowne Road, singing ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ at the top of his voice as the television cameras pass by. ”

“And what does Evan want?”

“To paint, apparently.”

“Is he good?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her face filled with emotion.

“But you’ve seen his paintings, I presume?”

“Oh. You meant his art.”

“What else would I mean?”

She smiles now and shakes her head. “That’s the problem,” she says. “I don’t think he is. He doesn’t have the talent to do what he wants, but he has the talent to do what he doesn’t want. So there’s a conundrum for you.”

I nod. “Yes,” I say.

“They all think he’s drowned,” she continues, nodding toward our neighbors.

“But he hasn’t. He’s run away, that’s all.

He’s frightened. He’s hiding. I hope they don’t catch him.

Let him go to Dublin or London or somewhere further afield and escape all this.

” She waves her hand around, as if conjuring a spell.

“I should have done it myself long ago.”

She closes her eyes, breathing in the cool evening air as if desperate to cleanse her lungs. I consider placing my hand on her arm to comfort her when a roar rises from the beach and we both startle, looking out toward the horizon, where the sun is starting to set.

“It’s them,” she says, and, sure enough, a small boat can be seen in the distance making its way toward the shore.

She drops the cup in the marram grass that protrudes from the sand, and the lid falls off, tea spilling out and darkening the sand like a spreading sin, before making her way hurriedly in the direction of the water.

I reach down to pick the cup up, unable to litter a beach, and follow her.

Like the neighbors that I’m so quick to condemn, I’m eager to know how this evening’s story ends.

There’s a sharp buzz among them as the boat draws closer, and I can see the large handsome shape of my lover, Luke, on board.

We have formed an easy friendship, based on conversation, intimacy, sex, and a mutual understanding that neither of us wants anything more from the other than what we are willing to give. It is uncomplicated and it is welcome.

Behind Luke, I can make out his two friends, and an older man, sitting near the stern, with a cap pulled down over his forehead.

I take him to be Charlie Keogh, and he does not look like a brute, but, of course, appearances can be deceptive.

I blink, thinking I must have missed someone, and look at each again in turn.

I want to tell someone, to shout that the boy is missing, drowned, dead, but who am I to spread such a terrible alarm?

If the worst has happened, then let Maggie Keogh enjoy what time is left to her before she is forced to become a—what?

There are widows. And widowers. And orphans.

But there is no word to define a parent who loses a child.

The language is missing a noun. Perhaps because it is so unnatural.

The babble dies down when the boat pulls into the shore, and no one moves as they see what I have seen and make their own calculations.

I catch Luke’s eye and offer him an expression of support.

I admire this heroic side to his character, the young man who will take to the water to search for a missing islander.

His friends rise and then, behind them, hidden from view until now, I see the boy.

The crowd howls in relief as he pulls himself to his feet, looking around in fury and humiliation.

Even from here, I can see the black eye that is blossoming on his face, no doubt the result of his father’s violence.

He waits until only Luke is left on board before stepping onto land, and I wonder where his boat is, the one on which he tried to make his escape.

In Galway? Or sunk? How has he left in one vessel and returned in another?

And I see his face even more clearly as he turns and looks in my direction, unwilling to accept the embraces of those who have known him since birth. Our eyes meet and I realize that he is the boy I saw in the church that day. The boy who went to confession in the certainty that he had sinned.

His mother runs toward him, her arms outstretched, but he will not allow her to enfold him. Instead, he charges up the dunes, his runners finding quick purchase in the sand, and disappears over the top, to a place where he can be neither seen nor hurt.