My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
Somewhere along here, that is where the first kiss happened between them, her little dog sitting down for them to finish, looking out to sea. She had married beneath her. Even the dog seemed to indicate it, by the indifferent set of her head.
My life of life, my saint of saints,
my Dark Rosaleen!
And, ‘Hah!’ she said, because she’d had the pleasure of Pat Madigan for forty years, and ‘Hah’ because he was dead and she was still alive, up here on the green road. Years since she had been kissed on the mouth. Years.
Rosaleen missed her little dog, a little grey pompom of a terrier cross, with a red tartan bow between her ears. Milly. She could feel her almost running along beside her, could feel her brush against her shins. Rosaleen lifted her foot not to tread on her and saw the blackness of the road underneath. If it was the road — it might as well be a river. Whatever it was, she was sitting in it. And there was no dog, of course there wasn’t. She was plonked like a fool on her wet backside, and it was time to get up and sort herself out. It was time to get on with it. Her walk on this road which was the road of her youth.
There was no rain, but everything was wet. Sopping. A deep liquid sound in the ditch on her left, there was a cave somewhere near and Rosaleen was afraid of caves. She was afraid of heights, too. She did not know what she was doing up here — when she thought about it she was afraid of the dark and it was getting dark now, though the afterglow lingered over the western Atlantic; a sky too big for the sun to leave.
It was old age, of course — the fear. Passing cars, children on bicycles, plugs and sockets, escalators: she was afraid of things that beeped, or hummed, she was afraid of looking like a fool, of wearing the wrong stockings, wearing the wrong clothes. She put something on because she liked it and then a while later she realised it was all terrible. Rosaleen was terrified of losing her mind, of saying things or snapping in public — if she hit at a stranger, if she said something rude or obscene, that would be unbearable. She took the precaution of saying very little, any more. Even here on the mountain she kept her own counsel. But she was afraid the stone wall would fall on her and her leg would get trapped, she was afraid of getting raped, and what were the chances of that? On Christmas Day of all days. Who would even rob you up here on the green road?
‘Hah!’
This is why Rosaleen had come up here, to this wild place. She had come to cleanse herself of forgetfulness and of fury. To shout it loud and leave it behind. To fling it away from herself.
‘You see!’ She wanted to roar it out, but her throat didn’t like her mouth opening and the rasp of the cold.
Rosaleen could not see the top of Knockauns or the walls on either side of her. It was truly dark now. There was no moon. The sea was glittering under a black sky and Rosaleen could not tell black from black, except for the sense of motion from the distant water and even that was going dark and still.
She might as well be dead. She might as well be underground.
Except for the movement of her legs, one in front of the other, and the sense under her cold feet, of the rocks and earth and tussocks of grass on the green road.
It was here she walked with her lovely dog, Milly, and with Pat Madigan when they were courting. She cycled out to him, with her little dog in the front basket, and they left the bike against a ditch. It was here they kissed, and more.
Pat Madigan grew silent with the years. After that first rush of talk he said less and less. Towards the end of his life, he said little or nothing.
And that was her fault too.
What did it mean, when the man you loved was gone? A part of his body inside your own body and his arms wrapped about you. What happened when all of that was in the earth, deep down in the cemetery clay?
Nothing happened. That is what happened.
Rosaleen held her hand up to verify it in the black air. She pulled off her glove to see the living whiteness of it, but there was something around her legs — the dog, perhaps — and she was crawling, she was on her knees, with one gloved hand and one hand naked. The cold was in her hand now.
Each breath hurt. She pulled the air into the tiny parts of her lungs. Her flesh was pierced in microscopic places by the air of the vast world as it pushed its way into her blood.
Rosaleen’s head was hanging low like an old horse, she was on all fours and the stones hurt her knees. She wanted to go back and find that glove, but she couldn’t turn back, she had no confidence in the road, she thought it might be disappearing behind her. Because there were gaps between things, and this frightened her. This is where Rosaleen was now. She had fallen into the gap.
BART RANG FROM Florida at seven o’clock.
They sat another half an hour. Dan flicked channels. Emmet read an old newspaper. But they must have been thinking about her, because they each said, when the time came to go out and look for her, that none of them were sober enough to drive.
At half past seven, Emmet walked into town to check with the old ladies above the Medical Hall while Dan went through the phone numbers she had at the front of the phone book, but most of the people listed there were either in the kitchen, or dead. No one wanted to tell Constance, but she had to be told, so when Emmet came back they made the call and, seven minutes later, they heard her car sweep through the gate.
Constance was frantic. And it was all their fault. She was crying and blaming and fretting, she did not know where to sit herself down. She took out her mobile and scrolled through the numbers, despairing at each one. She rang a neighbour, asked them to ring another neighbour. She left the house, still talking, to drive around and look for her mother. Half an hour later she was back with her husband in tow, and he said, ‘Have you contacted the Guards?’
The Madigans looked at him.
Dessie had been drinking. Of course he had — it was Christmas Day.
‘Let’s not panic,’ said Emmet.
The men sat in silence, in the stillness of Rosaleen’s stopped kitchen clock and the sound of Constance making instant coffee through her tears.
It was the nine o’clock news stirred them, the thought that Rosaleen might be a news item herself, by the morning. Or some memory of their fathers, perhaps, saying, ‘Shush, now,’ their mothers saying, ‘Turn on the news for your father,’ the ritual observance of an outside world that had entered the kitchen and filled it, silently, on this night. It was already here.
‘We have to call the Guards,’ said Constance.
Dessie waved his mobile.
‘I’ll try Maguire,’ he said and made a call. He listened a moment and said, ‘Christmas.’
‘Oh for goodness sake,’ said Dan, who picked up the house phone and just dialled 999.
Hanna sat with her hands over her face, for all that followed, pressing down on her eyelids, feeling the flick of her pupils beneath her fingertips as her eyes moved from side to side. She thought about the cliffs. She saw, in her mind’s eye, her mother’s face washed over and again by dark water, her limp body bending with the curve of the waves; the cold, unfeasible weight of her, pulled on to dry land.
‘This guy’s in Ennis. He says it’s the third missing person this evening, Christmas is a busy time. He says to ring everyone, check the outhouses. He says we need a bunch of people to drive around and look for the car. He told me to check the graveyard. He asked about her mental state.’
‘The graveyard?’ said Constance.
‘I said it was fine?’
All of this came out of Dan with a rising inflection at the end of each sentence, as though he was in an American movie, with a camera in front of him, and a future audience of millions. His siblings watched him. They waited for the moment the drama of his life became his actual life — for that shock.