Chapter 35: How Can the Moon be so Heartless?
Below me, on the main deck of the boat, a sturdy girl wearing a Mayo top was talking to her cow to keep it from worrying. The ferry had plenty of room for the cow and on this morning journey it also carried two mountain bikes, both with a deep-blue metallic finish; one youthful crew member (male, handsome, confident); eight tourists, two of them children; five locals (including the Mayo supporter); the captain in his cabin; and one petite red-haired artist with her backpack and large sketchbook.
‘All good Mags?’ said the ferry worker, one hand on a white rail, the other expertly stowing a rope by making figure-8s between two cleats. You would want that balance, that easy manner with the rope, those untroubled blue eyes.
‘She’s fine.’ The Mayo girl patted the nose of her cow. ‘Isn’t it the best weather for a crossing?’
Head down as he secured the rope, the youth replied, ‘Aye, a beautiful spring day, right enough. The sea is as calm as I’ve ever seen her.’
The girl grinned to herself. She had made that last remark to her cow but was evidently happy to be chatting with the young man up on the gunwale.
The two cyclists were also down on the main deck; the rest of us were on the deck that supported the bridge at the back of the boat, where the captain’s cabin beside me made me think of a medieval turret, mainly due to the flagpole-like radio mast on its roof. I too felt happy as the boat turned away from the harbour wall and slowly pushed through the languid waves of a sparkling blue sea. And although the rumbling motor beneath us generated an oily smell, I didn’t mind. In any case, that acrid tang was soon dispersed by a light breeze.
Was there a safer place for me than this? Not in Ireland, anyway. Even if using a dream hood allowed your location to be detected, there was no way Neo could get to me the same night that I was dreaming. Well, perhaps via a private helicopter from Dublin. But how realistic was that scenario? He’d have to be ready to spring into action at once, with the helicopter standing by, ready for flight, and he’d have to get permission for the flight paths and so on. No, I could relax in the sunshine among beings who were equally cheerful: the cyclists anticipating their rugged challenge among the hills that we were gradually approaching; the American family, looking delighted with themselves, the youngest child sharing that delight with shy glances at me (was it my eyebrow piercings that kept drawing her attention?); the boat itself, never more content than when it was performing the work for which it had been born; and even the cow didn’t mind the temporary inconvenience and unsteady ground. There was the sun on its back and a pleasant murmur in its ears from her small companion standing in front of her face.
Watching a coast as you approach across the sea is always a mysterious experience. The pale, light-blue line is distant, distant, distant. Until it’s not and you can hear the waves sloshing over the rocks and study the glistening dark greens and purples of the seaweed and you can look the gulls in their yellow-ringed eyes. In the case of Clare Island, there was also the rectangular castle at the shore demanding your attention. For nearly a century it had also demanded your acknowledgement of its authority. Now, the castle was mostly senile and this morning it was dreaming of the day the Clare islanders had fought the Achill islanders for the bodies of eight basking sharks that had been driven onto the nearby beach. Old Maura Donel had won the day for Clare, nearly killing the captain of one of the Achill boats with the blow of a shovel. Four disconsolate ravens took off from the castle roof as it chuckled to itself.
Have sketchbook, have explanation for arriving on the island. I was more anonymous than if I was travelling without it. What could be more natural than the arrival of a visitor to the island who wanted to try to capture the beauty of the world? My hostess at the B&B did all the talking, telling me about the best walks for views on the assumption I would be drawing them. Cheerfully, she asked did I want an evening meal and would Irish stew be acceptable? Certainly. Plump fingers handed over my keys and soon I was sitting on a firm bed, checking the Wi-Fi was as strong as promised.
I rang Daniel on my new burner phone and told him all was well. Plan A was go.
‘I’ve some good news and some bad news,’ he said, then added, ‘and some meh news.’
‘Bad first.’
‘Neo has given away thousands of dream hoods to Friends of America’s Future and other far-right organisations. And he’s promised to give a million dollars to a random person who joins forces with him in your dream. He’s planning to invade it.’
‘Invasion of the dream snatchers.’
‘Right.’
‘And the good news?’
‘Your socials are soaring. I wouldn’t be surprised if a million people log in for the dream.’
Good news for Celine perhaps; I could feel that she relished having a large audience. ‘I’m not sure that’s good news for me. It’s terrifying.’
To my surprise, rather than express sympathy, Daniel chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be asleep for it all.’
‘That makes it worse. I’ll probably have one of those dreams where you go to school without your skirt and underwear. Millions of people will feel my shame. I’ll never want to leave here.’
‘Celine will make sure it’s a good dream.’
‘I’m not sure she understands the goal. She’s as likely to send me a nightmare about how I should be reconciliatory towards my dad than to give a message to the millions.’
‘Maybe so. The real point is not the message, though, is it? Isn’t it all about the experience? Whatever happens, millions of people will feel the stirrings of their own Celines. Your art. My poetry. It’s only the beginning of a new era for humanity.’
‘The beginning of the end perhaps. What’s the meh news?’
‘Amanda and the users of her app are coming too.’
‘Meh.’
My lover laughed. The sound of that deep, cheerful rumble made me miss his presence. ‘I wish you were here. And that tomorrow, when I lie in bed dreaming for the multitude, that your arms would be around me.’
‘I am there. They will be. Don’t you feel it? Your radiance is with me always and mine is flowing around you all the time.’
‘I feel it.’ And I did. My old universe had been a cold place with vast regions of empty space, then the occasional lump of matter. Through ruptures in the fabric of that universe had come a vivid blaze of contact with a light beyond. Some of that radiance was Daniel-flavoured and ever since Celine had woken in me, I could experience this love whenever I wished.
‘Describe the feeling?’ he asked of me.
‘Warm. Loving. Deep. Like Kant’s sublime, I suppose, only sexier.’
‘Oh. That’s a thought.’
‘What?’
‘Help me get off?’
I laughed. ‘From the sublime to the erogenous.’
‘Let me feel your fingers on me. Tell me. Describe how you undo my clothes.’
‘Later. After dark. I want to go drawing now while the sun is high and the sea and the mountains are singing.’
‘Fair.’
Thirty minutes was enough of a walk to get the most heart-lifting views of Clew Bay and the mountains that fringed it. Exposed limestone, full of cracks, provided me with a niche big enough to sit in with my sketch pad upon my knees, protected from a wind that would otherwise have made me cold. It was easy to imagine that I was on the prow of an enormous flagship that was approaching Ireland from the Atlantic.
My first sketch began with the three-quarter moon, whose presence gave a perspective to the scene that made even the mighty Crough Patrick seem inconsequential. For millions of years as this land had drifted in ultra-slow motion from the equator, the moon had been drawing the sea too and fro against the shores of the land. The moon had seen these coasts writhe, the mountains rise, the stones crack at night to pour scree into the bay. The moon noted the pretensions of the mountains with detached amusement and gave no thought at all to the lives and deaths of humans.
As I sketched in communion with sun, sea, rock, and wind I found myself listening to the seabirds.
Curlew: Where is your father now? What happened? Why were you away for so long?
Fulmar: Why do you intrude with such questions? My father is in Scotland, near where the dragon nests. Now you should fall in love with my beauty; I’ll break your heart. I’ll peck at it and fling it on the rocks.
Plover: Human. Moves her hand. Danger? Danger?
Curlew: Silly. That’s not a bow and arrow. Fly away if you are scared.
Plover: I want to admire Fulmar. I want to stay.
Fulmar: Look, as the wind ruffles my white chest.
Plover: So lovely.
Fulmar: She can understand us.
Curlew: Silly. Humans no longer have the language of birds.
Fulmar: She listens with knowledge. Wren! Wren! Talk to her.
Wren: You have drawn shadows that are from the underworld and not to be found on this island.
‘I have.’
Wren: You have a message for someone.
‘Only love.’
Wren: I will go there and tell her. Who is she?
‘My mother.’
Wren: It will not take me long. She is close.
Plover: Wren! Wren! Where did you go?
Curlew: Silly. Silly. Wren goes where we only go at death. Wren can come back.
Plover: So can the moon.
Curlew: Not silly.
Fulmar: I am here and there too.
Curlew: Nor that.
Plover: Her hand has formed you.
Fulmar: I am beautiful. My breast flutters, though it does not move.
Curlew: Now me. I am there. Worshipful.
Fulmar: Doomed.
Plover: Why not me?
Fulmar: You are not pretty enough.
Curlew: You are not clever enough.
Plover: Why is she not moving?
Fulmar: If she is dead, I want a lock of her red hair for my nest.
Curlew: if she is dead, I want a taste of that tear on her cheek.
Plover: Wren! Wren has returned!
Curlew: Silly. I told you.
Wren: She knows. She feels your love constantly. She says, ‘Do not be afraid.’
‘I am not afraid. I am, however, increasingly distracted by your friends. Could you ask them to move away?’
Whether it was co-incidence, or whether I really was hearing the birds speak, the fulmar jumped upwards, to be carried downhill by the wind, with the curlew and the plover hurrying after it. Head turned sideways, the wren gave me an appraising look, then it flew away in the opposite direction, towards the hilltop behind me.
My next sketch was of the sea, which seemed to me to be goddess with a thousand blue veils. Then I drew the cluster of buildings near the shore, a gossipy group, eager to share the news of their human occupants. Lastly, I sketched Clew Bay once more, this time allowing the mountains to have their say, with almost no sky between their peaks and the top of the page.
I was in shadow now, the sun well on the way down, beyond the bulk of the island behind me. And I was cold. Cold but content. If only the moment of ego dissolution could endure. Was there anything of Cyn Sweetwater present in the sketches? Perhaps a melancholy in the first. They were all good though and irrespective of that, the act of drawing and studying a world with so much air and light and reflection had dissolved me into that mercury-like oblivion that never failed to free me from self-censorship.
Back in the B&B, the jolly landlady was mixing a jolly G&T.
‘Care to join me in a drink before dinner?’
I didn’t, particularly, but Celine drew my attention to a china cat on a windowsill, as if to say that the warmth of a real cat was much missed in this home and that the plump lady in the apron was lonely. Aren’t we all lonely? Even me, through whom flowed love from my mother, Daniel, and Niall.
We sat; we drank; we talked about the good weather. Then my hostess asked would I mind showing her my sketches? I did not mind.
‘Dear Lord!’ She laughed heartily. ‘It’s as though you’ve known us all for decades.’ Soft hands carefully turned the page over from the image of the settlement to that of the sea. ‘Goodness. The lady of the sea is so beautiful.’ My landlady’s eyes lifted to a window with a view of the bay. ‘I’ll never be able to look through that window again without seeing her. These are gorgeous.’
The next page showed the fulmar on a rock, with the curlew below her. ‘Why, it’s like they have characters! She’s a vain one, to be sure, and that poor fella’s on the road to heartbreak.’
Then my landlady turned the page to the first drawing. Her hand leapt to cover her mouth, fingers trembling. And her eyes, when she finally lifted them from moon and mountain were moist. ‘Oh, how can the moon be so heartless.’