Mrs Burke finished off the whole day by telling them all what both Irish and American had in common, Clare Islanders and Long Islanders. ‘The main thing is,’ she said, ‘that we speak the same language, and that’s good, because it means we can understand one another better. We are both free countries and democracies, and we’ve that to be thankful for. Do you know what a democracy is?’ No one answered. ‘Well, it means that we Irish vote for what we want; and so do you Americans, don’t you, Jack?’
‘I guess,’ said Jack.
‘Take for instance, last night,’ Mrs Burke went on, ‘when we had our Island Meeting. A perfect example of democracy in action. Almost everyone was for the gold mine, and just two were against. So like it or not, the gold mine is coming. No one can stop it now. That’s the power of democracy for you.’
Jessie could not leave it like that. She had to speak up, she had to defend her mother. Her anger made her suddenly brave. She put her hand up.
‘Yes, Jessie?’ said Mrs Burke.
‘My mother says that voting is all very well, Miss, but just because a thing is popular, she says that doesn’t make it right. She doesn’t think the gold mine is right, and neither does old Mister Barney.’
Mrs Burke glowered at her for a moment over the top of her glasses and then looked up at the school clock. ‘I think that’ll be all for today,’ she said. ‘Tidy your tables, children.’
They were in the playground at the end of school, shrugging on coats when the skirmishing began. It was Marion Murphy that started it all. She sauntered up to Jessie with that lipcurl of a smile on her face, the smile that Jessie always knew meant trouble. She was a head taller than Jessie and big all over, a great round face and a mouth to match.
‘Your mum,’ she said, ‘is she mad in the head, or what? My mum says that your mum just likes the men to look at her – that’s why she gets up and talks like she does. A bit of tart, my mum says. Married a lousy blow-in too.’
‘You’ve a filthy mouth on you, Marion Murphy,’ Jessie said, fixing her with her most contemptuous and withering stare. But the sneer on Marion’s face was still there, so Jessie had to go on, ‘My mum’s got a perfect right to say what she thinks about the Big Hill – and besides, she’s right and the rest of you’s wrong. You shouldn’t go cutting the tops off mountains just for a lump of gold, and they will poison the water like she says, and there won’t be work for everyone either, and they won’t put it all back as good as new when they’ve finished, like your daft daddy says. It’s all lies. And if the men look at my mum, that’s because she’s beautiful, and if they don’t look at your mum, that’s because she’s an ugly old cow.’
She had gone too far. She knew it, but she just could not rein herself in. She was trembling with fury, and with fear too. She was probably safe enough from physical attack – there were some advantages to being the way she was. And anyway, Marion was all mouth – she hoped. There was a crowd closing in round them now, almost the whole school. Jessie was glad to find Jack there beside her.
Marion’s face was scarlet. ‘Cripple!’ she screamed at her. ‘You’re just a cripple, you know that, just a cripple. My mum says you shouldn’t be allowed in the same school with us. They should send you away so’s no one’s got to look at you.’
Jessie had never liked Marion, and she knew Marion had never liked her, but she’d never said such a thing before. No one had. They might have thought it. Jessie had often caught sight of a side-glance here, a lowering of the eyes there, and she knew what they meant well enough, but it had never been spoken out loud before. It was suddenly out in the open, and the shock of it took her breath away. She was stunned to silence. Jack spoke up.
‘We’re going home,’ he said, taking her elbow. The crowd parted for them and seemed a little disappointed it had come to no more than harsh words.
‘I hate her, I really hate her,’ Jessie said much later, as they walked away past the abbey ruins. The post van came down the hill past them. Mrs O’Leary, postlady and pub-keeper, waved at them cheerily.
‘What’s a blow-in?’ Jack asked. ‘Marion said your pa was a blow-in.’
‘Someone like you – foreigner, English, Irish, no matter what. If you weren’t born here, you’re a blow-in.’
‘So?’ said Jack. ‘Back home, that would make just about everyone a blow-in. Well, maybe not the Native Americans, but even they probably blew in from somewhere, I guess.’ They walked on for a while in silence.
‘D’you find your lucky arrowhead yet?’ Jessie asked.
Jack shook his head. ‘Maybe it wasn’t that lucky anyway,’ he said. He stopped suddenly. ‘Hey, listen. You want to take me up this hill of yours?’ he asked. ‘You want to take me up the Big Hill?’ It took Jessie by surprise.
‘What, now?’
‘Why not? You’ve done it before, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘I’ll tell the guys afterwards. How about it?’
‘I don’t want you to tell them,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if they believe me or not. Don’t care if no one believes me.’
‘I believe you,’ Jack said. ‘I just want to go up there, OK? I’ve got to find out what all the fuss is about, that’s all.’
‘OK,’ said Jessie, but she meant more than that. She meant: ‘Thanks, thanks for believing in me.’ She gave him a smile to tell him so, and then immediately began to worry whether she would be able to make it to the top again. She had no choice but to try. There was no way out of it.
They had to go past the end of the farm lane to get to the Big Hill. Mole was grazing the grass verge and followed them. By the time they reached the grassy clearing by Mister Barney’s shack, Panda was there too, bounding away into the bracken after rabbits, his tail whirling. Jessie was counting out her rhythm in her head: one and two, one and two, one and two. She hadn’t the breath to talk. Having Jack alongside made it easier in one way, but more difficult in another. It was easier because she knew he’d be there to help her if she tumbled, but more difficult because she knew he’d never believe her ever again if she failed to reach the top.
When they got to the stream across the path, Jack sat down on a rock for a breather, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘We’re only halfway up,’ she said, tottering on past him, ‘so we’re neither up nor down. What’s keeping you?’ Seeing him sitting there exhausted, made her feel good, very good; but she felt even better still when she reached the gulley beyond the waterfall, and could see the summit up there ahead of her. But then, without warning, she sat down with a bump and Jack was crouching beside her.
‘You OK?’
‘I need a hand up, that’s all.’ He helped her up and steadied her. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Fine.’ From now on it simply did not occur to her that she might not reach the top. She sat down only once more, more awkwardly this time, and fell sideways into the undergrowth. Jack hauled her on to her feet again and freed her from a bramble that was caught in her hair.
‘Almost there,’ he said; and they were too. They were calling out the rhythm together now: ‘One and two, one and two, one and two.’ A last scramble over rocks on hands and knees, and then they were stretched out on a great soft cushion of pink thrift at the summit, their eyes closed against the sun. After a while Jessie propped herself up on her elbows. Jack was standing on the highest rock and gazing out to sea.
‘Your mom’s right, Jess,’ he said. No one ever called her Jess, except her mother and father, but Jessie found she didn’t mind at all. In fact, she liked it. ‘They shouldn’t do it,’ he went on. ‘They shouldn’t go cutting the top off. I don’t care how much gold there is inside here. I never saw anything like this place. It’s really special, you know that? If we let them knock it down, then no one’s ever going to stand here like I am and look at this. All you get from gold is money. Money sure makes you rich, but rich doesn’t make you happy. This makes you happy.’
‘You on Mum’s side then?’
‘I guess I am. What about you?’
Jessie was looking aro
und her. Jack was right. It was special. It was beautiful. It was the perfect place. ‘I don’t think I ever really made up my mind about it until now,’ she said, ‘until right now. But yes, I am on Mum’s side, and not just because of what Marion said either. Mum’s right. She’s been right all along.’ She tried to get up, but found it difficult. He came over and helped her to her feet. ‘Anyway,’ Jessie said, ‘it doesn’t matter any more. It’s too late, it’s all decided.’
The sunlight danced over the rock pool and seemed to be inviting them to drink. Jack was there before she was. He cupped his hands under the spring, caught the water and drank it. Jessie tried it the same way too, but could not keep her fingers tight enough together to hold the water. So she knelt down and put her mouth to the surface of the pool, as she had the last time she was up there. She drank long and deep, her eyes closed until she’d had enough. She wiped her mouth and watched the reflected clouds moving across the pool. She was remembering the earring and how she had found it there before. And then she knew she wasn’t remembering it at all, she was looking directly at it. It was there, right in front of her eyes, lying at the bottom of the pool. It was like an echo in her mind, this feeling of having been somewhere before and then the same thing happening, in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way, like a dream, only clearer, more real. She reached down into the water, shattering the clouds, but Jack’s hand was quicker than hers.
‘Jeez, what’s this?’ he said, dangling the earring in front of her eyes.
‘What does it look like?’ a voice spoke from behind them, a voice Jessie recognised at once. ‘You’ll be needing the pair, I thought.’ They turned. She was the woman from the mirror. She was the woman from Jessie’s dream. And she was here and now and barefoot on the rock, her hair all about her face.
‘Well, have you no manners at all?’ she said. ‘You’re gawping at me like a pair of gasping salmon. Look around you. It’s just like you said, Jack. Isn’t this the most perfect place in the entire world? My mountain this, my hill. I fought for it, we all did. We spilled good red Irish blood for it, and I’ll not let them do it. I won’t. But I’ll need help.’ And then to Jack: ‘That was a fine speech you made. Did you mean it?’ Jack nodded, backing away now and taking Jessie with him.
‘Now where do you think you’re going to?’ She sprang down off the rock, lithe like a tiger, a sword hanging from her broad leather belt. She was about Jessie’s mother’s age, a little older perhaps and certainly stronger. There was a wild and weather-beaten look about her. ‘Would I hurt you? Would I? Haven’t I just given you my own earrings? Gold they are, Spanish gold. I filched them myself from the wreck of the Santa Felicia, a great Armada galleon that washed itself up on our rocks – a while ago now. And there’s a whole lot more where they came from, my life’s winnings you might say – or what’s left of them anyway.’
She drew her sword and flourished it at the sea. ‘These are my waters. You sail in my waters and you pay your dues. I took from anyone who came by, English, Spanish, Portuguese – all the same to me, all perfectly fair and square and above board. But if they didn’t pay, well then, I took what was mine. Wouldn’t you? A poor pirate’s got to earn her crust somehow. How else is she to live into her old age? Tell me that if you will.’
Jessie sat down because she had to, because her legs wanted her to. It could not be what Jessie was thinking, because what she was thinking was impossible; but then maybe she had to believe the impossible might just be possible after all. The woman now striding towards her said she was a pirate, that the Big Hill was her mountain. It could be no one else. It had to be . . . but then it couldn’t be. She had been buried in the abbey hundreds of years ago. Jessie had seen the gravestone. They had read about her at school, the Pirate Queen of Clare Island. Mrs O’Leary’s pub down by the quay was named after her.
Jessie screwed up all her courage, and then spoke. ‘You’re not . . . you’re not Grania O’Malley, are you?’
‘And who else would I be?’ she said.
6 GONE FISHING
THEY WERE ALONE AGAIN ON THE HILL. IT WAS as if time had stood still, and they had just rejoined it. For some moments they simply stood and stared at each other. Then Jack looked down at his hand. ‘It’s gone. I had it. I had the earring,’ he whispered. ‘I found it in the pool, didn’t I?’ Jessie nodded. ‘And she was here, wasn’t she? I wasn’t dreaming it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Mole wouldn’t be caught, so Jack had to give Jessie a piggyback all the way down the hill. They reached the bottom in time to help Jessie’s father drive the sheep along the road into the barn. They would be shearing the next day, he said, and it felt like rain. The fleeces had to be dry, so it was best to keep the sheep in overnight.
That evening the thunder rolled in from the sea and clattered around the island, and the rain fell hard and straight in huge drops that drummed incessantly on the tin roof of the kitchen. Inside, there was an unnatural silence over the supper table. Jessie’s mother and father weren’t speaking. She looked from one to the other willing them to talk, but neither did. It was just as Jack had said, first the shouting, then the silences.
Jack ate his peanut butter sandwiches ravenously and scarcely looked up. He seemed all wrapped up inside himself. Jessie longed to talk to him about everything that had happened up on the Big Hill, but there was never an opportunity to be alone together. He went up to bed early, and Jessie was about to follow him upstairs when her father asked her to help him check the sheep. ‘Two pairs of eyes are always better than one,’ he said.
The sheep filled the barn from wall to wall. Every one of them was lying down, except for one in the corner. ‘I thought as much. She’s lambing. She shouldn’t be, but she is. That old ram must have got out again,’ he said. ‘She’s only young. I think she’ll need a hand. Do you want to do it?’ Jessie had never told her father that she didn’t like doing it. It was all the slime and the blood; and worst of all, the possibility that the lamb might be dead. She pretended. She had always pretended, and she pretended again now. Her father knelt down, holding the sheep on her side. Jessie found the feet inside and felt for the head. The lamb was alive. She tugged and her hands slipped. The little black feet were sucked back inside. She tried again. The lamb came out at the third pull and lay there, steaming and exhausted, on the ground. They sat watching the ewe for a while as she licked over her lamb, her eyes wary.
‘Something the matter with Jack, is there?’ her father asked suddenly.
‘Not as far as I know. He can’t find his lucky arrowhead, that’s all.’
She had never before found it difficult to talk to her father, but then she’d never before wanted to ask him about such a thing. She wanted to ask him outright: ‘Are you and Mum going to split up?’ Then it occurred to her that maybe just by asking, just to speak of it, might make it more likely to happen.
‘Come on, Jess,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’
Luckily, there was something else troubling her, something she was longing to talk about to someone.
‘I think I’ve seen a ghost, Dad.’
He looked down at her and laughed. ‘Have you been at my whisky, Jess?’
‘Course not.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve seen her in my mirror, Dad, and I heard her up on the Big Hill. Then today, this afternoon, I saw her. I really saw her. Honest, up at the top of the Big Hill.’
‘At the top of the Big Hill, you say,’ said her father, getting to his feet and brushing himself down. ‘Now there’s a thing.’ He smiled down at her and helped her. ‘D’you know, Jess, you go on like this and you’ll make a writer one day. All the best writers don’t know where the truth begins or where it ends. They’re not liars at all, they’re just dreamers. Nothing wrong with dreaming.’ He pulled some straw out of her hair and let it fall to the ground. ‘And by the by, don’t you worry about your mother and me. It’s the Big Hill. It’s
only the Big Hill that’s between us. Once the mining’s begun and there’s nothing more to be done about it, then we’ll be fine, you’ll see.’ Jessie felt a surge of relief coursing through her and warming her like sunshine. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t believed her ghost story. It didn’t matter at all.
‘Your hands are disgusting,’ he said, and she wriggled her fingers in his face and giggled.
The weekend was spent shearing the sheep, all four of them together in the barn: her father pouring sweat as he bent over the sheep, her mother and Jack rolling the fleeces into bundles and sweeping up, while Jessie opened and shut the gate and drove the sheep into the shearing pen. Jack took to the shepherding as if he had been doing it all his life. Through it all, Jessie’s mother and father scarcely spoke. Liam called in on Sunday morning after Mass. Marion Murphy had found a baseball bat, he said. Her father had brought it back from Miami on one of his trips. She’d lend it if she could play too. ‘You could teach us,’ said Liam. ‘I’ve got a tennis ball. Five o’clock at the field. Will you come?’
Jessie went with him that evening, not because she had the slightest interest in baseball, but because at last she’d have a chance to talk to Jack about Grania O’Malley. All they had been able to do since they had met her was to exchange conspiratorial glances. They sauntered along the farm lane, side-stepping the puddles, Mole following along behind. Jack did all the talking.
‘Jess, I’ve been thinking. About her, I mean, about what happened up there. Here’s what I remember, or what I think I remember. We got to the top, right? We found the earring in the pool. I had it in my hand. Then out of nowhere comes this weird lady, kind of like a gypsy. She said she was a pirate, right? And she had a sword. She kept telling us all about the gold she’d taken off some ship, a Spanish ship, wasn’t it? And her hair was black and curling down to her shoulders. I mean, I can see her like she was here right now. I didn’t make this up, did I? You saw her too, right?’ Jessie tried to answer, but Jack wouldn’t let her.