The Boy in the Moon

Above, the garish white sky with patches of milky blue raced inland, casting shadows over the landscape one moment, bathing it in a flat white light within seconds. She watched a spool of light unwind from behind a low dark cloud over the middle of the bay; where the light fell on to the grey sea, it made turquoise circles on the water’s surface.

She returned to her car and drove down the narrow winding track, indicating left at the second turning downwards. The dog, a black-and-white collie or what remained from the fleas, circled the car and barked half-heartedly. She pushed him away and stood by the door with her hand on the latch, then she decided to knock.

He had a tea-towel over his shoulder and the sleeves of his striped, brushed-cotton shirt rolled up to just above the elbows. He stared at her for a moment as if trying to remember who she was, then, with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, gestured her inside. She ignored him and returned to the car to pull her suitcases out; at the door again she stood in front of him and lifted her eyebrows. He did not reach for the suitcases.

‘You’re staying,’ he said. It was not a question.

‘Is that all right?’ she asked.

He did not respond but inclined his head slightly again. She followed him in, dragging the suitcases after her. He made directly for the stairs which led off the downstairs kitchen, which was in effect the lower half of the house. At the top, he opened the door of the bedroom where she and Brian used to sleep. Nothing had changed. The same nylon flowery quilt covered the small bed, two walnut lockers on either side, an oak wardrobe, bare floorboards and the drawn orange sateen curtains casting an eerie rufescent glow around the room. It smelled of must, salt, an accumulation of dust and something sweet too, something sugary like the grainy scent of stewing blackberries. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the other.’ She jerked her head back toward the door behind her. He opened it without a comment.

It was Sam’s room. A tiny cell, eight by eight, a single bed along a narrow window that faced directly on to the sea, a highbacked chair and hooks forced into the stone walls to carry clothes hangers. A lamp without a lampshade on the chair. That was it. She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘D’you want tea?’ he asked. The way he said ‘tea’ sounded like ‘tay’.

‘Please,’ she responded. ‘That would be nice.’

He returned downstairs again. She gazed around the room. Seagulls gyrated just beyond the window panes. They called then swooped then called again in rapid staccato shrieks as they soared up on a lift of wind. She thought that they must surely make the loneliest sound in the world, but she remained untouched. The bed was hard when she sat on it. The horsehair mattress had a deep indent in the middle. She ran her finger around the circle.

Downstairs, she watched him scald the battered aluminium teapot. He allowed the hot water from the kettle to lap around three times, discarded it into the basin of dirty dishes in the sink and scooped up three tablespoons of loose black pungent tea-leaves from a tin.

‘Will you want milk?’ he asked over his shoulder.

‘Yes, please.’

‘There’s none,’ he said. ‘Today,’ he added.

‘That’s all right. Black is fine.’

They sat in silence and sipped from chipped mugs without saucers. He sifted a huge amount of sugar into his cup directly from the packet on the table. The cup looked awkward in his hand, he sat the base of it in his curled palm and forced his head low enough to meet the rim. She figured the rarely made gesture of not using the saucer for his tea was in her honour. She almost wished he had, she had never seen anything quite so clumsy-looking.

The dog scratched at the door outside. Julia moved to let him in.

‘Lev him out,’ Jeremiah said, without looking up.

The dog ran in anyway. He made for Jeremiah and performed an intricate series of circles with his tail tucked between his hind legs and his top lip moving up and down over his teeth in an ingratiating obeisance. Jeremiah lashed out with his leg and sent the whimpering creature sprawling toward the door of the back kitchen.

‘Maybe he’s hungry,’ Julia offered tentatively.

‘He’s always hungry.’

‘When do you feed him?’

Jeremiah looked surprised, if a slight lift of his eyebrows might be interpreted as such. ‘There’s no especial time,’ he said after a while.

He bent forward and sipped. Julia blew on her hot tea and studied him from under her lashes. He was a tall man, taller than Edward and leaner. His face was a mesh of deep grooves, so dark some of them that she had wondered in the past if her nail would be impregnated by dirt if she slid it along one of the deeply etched lines. His eyes were an electric blue, like Brian’s, under thick white eyebrows. The full head of hair was white also, standing on his crown in cropped thickets. The dog looked on from his chosen corner and thumped what was left of a tail against the wall behind him. Julia thought him an incredibly stupid beast to be so endlessly and pointlessly hopeful.

She lifted the teapot and filled both their cups to the brim again. Jeremiah ignored his full cup and scraped his chair back. He left the room for the outside yard with the dog rubbing against his black wellington boots with the rolleddown tops. Julia sipped the now tepid tea and stared into the ash-strewn open fireplace. It dominated one wall of the room with an oak settle to the side of it and two armchairs with lumpy cushions of indeterminate colours facing into the hearth, two dingy crocheted blankets draped over the backs of both chairs. That was the living area. She was seated in the kitchen area, with a tall dresser to her back dotted with woodworm holes, and the handmade trestle table with four rush-seated chairs in front of her. To the left a few makeshift cupboards led to a belfast sink which sat under an uncurtained sash window.

Beyond the sink stood a few shelves, a curiously ornate leather armchair and a grandfather clock with a sallow face which appeared to be in good condition. Just behind the clock a door led to the back kitchen which contained a grimy stove; a gleaming white fridge, which Julia had purchased herself some years past; a tiny angular cubicle with a shower and toilet, which she had insisted on installing at the same time as the fridge, not feeling well disposed toward using the outside toilet; and a mat with a blanket along one wall which was Jeremiah’s bed. He had not slept in the third upstairs bedroom since the death of his wife.

Her feet scraped back and forth over the stone floor rolling bits of grit beneath the soles of her shoes. She held the cup suspended in mid-air while her unblinking eyes slowly roved around her surroundings.

The door opened behind her letting in a swirl of unseasonally cold May air. Jeremiah approached the hearth with lumps of turf pressed against his chest. He allowed his hands to drop and the rich brown peat fell to the floor. His head inclined toward the fire and then he left again. Julia reached down to pick up a block. It was rectangular in shape, the outside bone dry and wispy, reminding her of loose tobacco. When she broke the block in two, the inside was dark and shiny smooth like treacly fudge and smelled of wet bog. She crumbled the dry outside texture with her fingers, allowing the matted strands to drop to the floor. Then she decided to finish her cold tea before she set about making the fire.

Hours passed. The sky was darkening outside. Julia sat by the table cradling the untouched tea in the cup of her hands. She stared blankly at the lumps of turf on the floor. A mouse, like a tiny dark missile, shot across the room and disappeared under the door to the back kitchen. Her eyes darted after it for a second then returned once more to the turf. Around her, the furniture dissolved into an inky formless mass. An occasional gust of wind rattled the window panes, the grandfather clock ticked into the otherwise silent room.

Thus far, her reception was wholly reminiscent of the first time she had ever set foot in this house. Jeremiah had not attended their small wedding in London and, on their first visit as a couple, had greeted his newly-wed son with some barked order or other. In his haste to comply, Brian had entirely forgotten to introduce Julia, who was left staring around the kitchen with a steadily sinking heart. She had extended her hand but Jeremiah had turned away, with just a nod of his head acknowledging her presence. She had thought then that he was singularly the rudest, most ignorant man she had ever met. She had wished that Brian might at least have had the decency to forewarn her, even a little. As the nightmarish week continued, she came to realize that Brian saw nothing wrong with his father’s behaviour. He just wasn’t ‘much of a talker’, Brian’s phrase to counter her furious nightly whispers.

Julia had wondered if she was especially unwelcome because she was not Irish, not Catholic. But in truth, she came to figure that it didn’t much matter one way or the other. Once they crossed his threshold, Jeremiah gave people things to do, as if, in a way, they could have no other reason for being there in the first place. He had even tried it with Julia – handing her a mop and bucket one day, his eyes grazing the floor meaningfully. ‘Not one hello, or welcome, or how are you,’ she had hissed to Brian later in bed, ‘but a bloody bucket thrust into my hand.’ Brian had laughed. That meant she was accepted, he had tried to explain. Shared work – a communion of sorts. Julia had remained sceptical, but she did wash the floor, for Brian’s sake.

Over the years, she had built up a barrier of indifference to Jeremiah. Resigned to visits when she had forced herself to tick off the days, and sometimes minutes too, until they could return to civilization again. Resentment growing again once Sam was also of an age to follow Jeremiah’s terse commands with an eagerness she had never encountered at home.

And now the strangest thing. Here she was, hoping to stay for an indeterminate time with this least comforting of men. Yet, the last few months had brought about a hasty resketching of Jeremiah in her mind. She had come to wonder if his own griefs throughout the years had made him so diamond hard. There was something in that she could identify with, something familiar amid all the estrangement of recent days. Perhaps it was a longing for his silence which had drawn her here so inexorably. At a time when everyone was trying to find some words of consolation, she had known instinctively that he would offer none. Perhaps, in his own taciturn way, he understood.

When Jeremiah returned he was carrying a small tin pail. He switched on the single, shadeless light overhead. Its wattage was low, serving only to illuminate the immediate area in a shadowy, orange light. He quickly set about the fire, soaking balls of paper in petrol first and heaping the turf on to the flames. As the warmth hit her face, Julia shivered and realized that she was quite frozen.

Jeremiah moved about behind her. She heard him wash his hands. Then he washed the dirty dishes within the sink. After a while she detected the acrid smell of lard melting on the stove in the back kitchen followed by the unmistakable odour of frying fish. The dank, dark kitchen seemed to come alive with the scent. She transferred her attention from the turf to the perfumed air around her. She had had no idea that fish could smell like that. By the time Jeremiah emerged carrying two plates, Julia’s mouth was full of saliva. She had not eaten for nearly two days. The time it took to load up her car and travel here.

He cut slabs from a crusty batch of bread, lathered them with butter and laid them directly on the table. There was a herring and one potato cake for each of them on the plates. He put two forks beside the plates, sat down and began to eat. Without looking at her he nodded toward the tin pail by the sink. ‘Goat’s. She gave a bit if you want it.’

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