He went on, up the slope. This last part was steep and there was mud and dead leaves to make the going treacherous. He smelled wet smoke. Above him the trees were making a troubled, rushing sound. He paused to rest for a moment, leaning forward with his hands on his knees and breathing with his mouth open. His lungs pained him. What was he doing, climbing up here, what craziness had got hold of him? He could die like this, keel over like a tree and die, be here for days and no one would find him. He turned his darkening gaze to the fields falling away behind him, to the house down there, to the beach and the distant sea. White clouds sailed above his head. He seemed for a moment to be airborne, and he felt light-headed. Behind him someone started to sing.
Oh
He came off twice
In a bowl of rice
And called it tapioca
It was one of the boys. He was squatting in the middle of a clearing beside the remains of a fire, poking at the smouldering embers with a stick. He looked up at Croke without surprise. His no-colour hair was wet and plastered to his skull. His eyes were an eerie, washed-out shade of blue.
‘Which one are you?’ Croke said, still wheezing from the climb. ‘Are you Hatch?’ It occurred to him he should carry a cane, it would lend him authority, pointing with it and so on. Hatch went on looking at him with detachment; he might have been looking in through the bars of a cage. Croke, disconcerted by the child’s unwavering regard, tried another tack and pointed to the fire. ‘Go out on you?’ he said.
Hatch shrugged. ‘Pound pissed on it.’
‘I did not,’ Pound said, stepping out of the trees. Pound was the fat one: glasses, cowlick, shoes like boats. ‘He pissed on it himself.’
Unnerved, Croke grinned weakly. He opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say, and stood irresolute, feeling exposed and somehow mocked. He was secretly a little afraid of these two. Hatch in particular alarmed him, with his pixie’s face and violet eyes and pale little clawlike hands.
Pound came and stood by the fire and kicked at the ashes with the toe of his shoe. He cast a sidelong glance in Croke’s direction. ‘He must be gone,’ he said to Hatch. ‘I can’t see him.’
‘Gone to ground,’ Hatch said and laughed.
A gust of wind blew across the clearing, lifting dry husks and the lacy skeletons of last year’s leaves. In the silence Croke had a dreamy sense of slow, weightless toppling.
‘Someone up here, was there?’ he said.
Hatch stuck his stick into the ashes.
‘That fellow,’ he said.
‘Which fellow?’
‘Tarzan the apeman.’
This time Pound laughed, a fat bark. Croke looked from one of them to the other, the fey one squatting on the ground and fatty with his swollen cheeks and infant’s pasty brow. He tried again to think of something to say that would confound them, something harsh and funny, but in vain, and turned instead with an angry gesture and walked away, willing himself to saunter, the back of his neck on fire. Children and animals, children and animals: he should have known better.
He came to the edge of the trees and had to scramble down the first few yards of the slope at a crouch. He felt odd: wall-falling, his father used to say: I’m wall-falling. The ground seemed more uneven than it had when he was coming up, and the grass hid holes in which he was afraid he would twist an ankle (there must be cows, then — or horses, perhaps there are horses, after all). The house was clear to see below him but somehow he kept listing away from it, as if there were a hidden tilt to things, and when he got down to level ground the roof and even the little turret sank from view off to the left behind a steep, grassy bank riddled with rabbit burrows and he found himself toiling along a broad, sandy path with high dunes on either side.
The sea was before him, he could hear it, the hiss and rush of it and the gritty crash of the waves collapsing on the shingle. The sun shone upon him thickly. He stopped and stood there dully in the sun, his head bowed. What had happened to him? He could not understand it. A minute ago he had been up there on the ridge and now he was down here, sunk in this hot hollow. He looked about. The boys were behind him, standing on a dune, watching him. He could not see them very well; were they laughing? He felt dizzy again and something was buzzing in his head.
He went on. Sweat dimmed his sight. The band of his hat was greasy and hot and there was sand in his waterlogged shoes, hard ridges of it under his arches and wedged against his toes, making his corns pain him. The way grew steeper, the smooth slope rising before him like a wall; up there on the crest of the rise the wind was lifting fine swirls of sand and the sky beyond was a surprised, dense blue. A thick stench assailed him. A dead sheep lay crumpled in the sand, the head twisted sideways and the dainty black hoofs splayed. It must have lost its footing and tumbled down the dunes and broken its neck. Something had eaten out the hindquarters; the empty fleece, still intact, flapped in the wind, so that the dead thing seemed to be shuddering in pain and struggling to yank itself to its feet. He passed it by, trying not to breathe the smell, and caught the shine of a glazed muzzle and the black hole of an eye-socket. He coughed, spat, groaned. He hardly knew where he was any more, there was only this slope and the dazzling glitter of sunlight and the burning sand squirming under his feet. He wanted to get to the sea; he would be all right if only he could get to the sea. He heard the music the island makes, the deep song rising out of the earth, and thought he must be imagining it. He stumbled on, his heart wobbling in its cage and the salt air rasping in his lungs. After a dozen paces he halted again and turned. The boys were still behind him, keeping their distance. They stopped when he stopped and stood impassive, watching him. He shouted and shook his fist at them. Why would they not help him? Surely they could see he was in need of help. He was frightened. He thought he was going to cry. There was sand in his mouth now. What is that word? Anabasis. No. Descant. No, no, that thing, that gold thing, what is it! As if in a dream he watched his leaden feet slog through the sand, one sinking as the other rose, then that one sinking in its turn. How had he come to this, what had gone wrong, and so quickly? He saw the canary again, the light in the window of the cramped front room and the old man in the big high bed. Yes, yes, that was it, she had bought the bird for him at the end, to keep him company — To pipe me out! the old man would shout, laughing and coughing, amused and furious. He heard again the harsh laugh and the voice weary with contempt: My son, the comedian. Down the narrow stairs, the years falling away and suddenly he was a child again, the hall with the lino gleaming and that worn quarter-circle inside the door where the flap dragged, and out into the square, hand in her hand, the drinking trough and the cherry trees in blossom in their wire cages, and then the big, wide, echoing corridor ablaze with grainy light and the tall nun’s rapid step on the bumpy tiles — never see their feet — and her thin, high voice saying something about prayers and being good.
Mother! Hold me!
He gained the crest of the slope and stood for a moment swaying, looking out in slack-jawed amazement over the beach and the blue-green vasts of water, smelling the stink of sand and wrack. The wind blew his hat off and bowled it down the slope behind him. He set off across the beach at a stumbling run, yearning towards the ocean, his long arms swinging and his knees going out sideways. At the margin of the waves he halted. Above him the sun was a wafer of white gold shaking and slipping at the centre of the huge blue. He stretched out his arms. He was laughing or crying, he did not know which.