Edwin drove Magnus to the airport. Companions again. Magnus was assailed by memories of one family holiday, and the day that made him special. He remembered men gathering around his father, to take in his mother. He watches these men dance with her on a shiny floor. Watches his father get embarrassed at the number of drinks offered. That is what happens in hotels on family holidays. Here, in Donegal, or anywhere else. To this boy’s eyes, it is curious that his mother seems more than lenient in her judging of her male admirers, and her lovers. She readily accepts baldness, flabby stomachs, even bad dress sense as part of the male condition. There is no such allowance made for women. At the same time, she is ever conscious and proud of her husband’s appearance; expects that he will always be well turned out in well-cut tailored suits, and even on the beach wears stylish trunks, his one pair of expensive sunglasses, the right amount of hair oil, whether or not she is present.
Magnus confuses his mother’s ability to accept compliments with her being patient. Being patient, he has learnt as a good Protestant boy, deserves reward. He is intrigued by her general ease, which he sees as a proper kind of laziness. These traits are attractive and reassuring to men, but evidently not for Magnus’ father; and not for him. How is that?
It has to do with being respectively husband and son, though that, in itself, is no explanation.
His father’s flirting, by comparison, is pathetic, and he is told as much by Stella. But then, she is apt to declare any exchange witnessed between Edwin and another woman as flirtatious. Magnus has noticed that she encourages his father in this, and Magnus likes to observe her challenge him. It is the only public display of intimacy between his parents. On occasion Magnus will join in – ‘You liked her, dad, because of her bloomers’ – but he knows to make no comparison with his mother’s cooing at other men.
Magnus isn’t interested in the children of his parents’ new-found friends. Instead, he vacillates over narrow-head Mary, a hotel waitress. She’s a local girl. Magnus believes that however shy, whatever their size, Donegal girls are wild and physically strong. Mary, he thinks, is particularly strong, despite her slight frame. She wears no makeup, has pale skin and clear eyes that shoot light and promise the instant before she smiles. But when she smiles, she runs away. Magnus, virgin boy that he is, can find no way to present himself that stops her from running.
He observes her coming and going in the dining hall. Absorbs her body in motion. He has also seen her sitting on the low wall at the back of the hotel, drinking mugs of coffee and smoking her sister’s cigarettes. He starts his long solitary walks on the beach with a detour that takes him by Mary’s recreation wall.
The beach he goes to is usually deserted, being unsafe for swimmers and less accessible than Marble Strand. Magnus comes out from behind the hotel, crosses the road, the peat ditch, the puny wire fence, and strikes a straight line over the scrag-end of the golf course. The route takes him into rocky bog land. He changes course and heads down the near peninsula to the World War II pillbox that is well camouflaged as a craig. The three slit windows are still nicely intact. Magnus likes to come here because the fixture once had brute purpose. Now, it might be a place for sex. Mary’s narrow head would fit nicely in the machine-gun slits if she turned it sideways. She might do it to make them both laugh, before they kissed, if ever she would come here with him.
He lingers here a while, then makes his way down onto the beach. On this special day there is a haze created by a miniature sand storm. Particles sting his face even before he gets out on the flat. The sun is shining temporarily and the white airborne sand softens the azure water and the deep greens of the distant headland. Magnus takes to the compacted sand and makes a march of it. He tries to get his thoughts in line with his thumping feet. He’s trying to conjure a vision of Mary naked when, in the distance, he sees a crumpled form near the water’s edge. A dark heap that can only be a human being. For some reason, young Magnus doesn’t break into a run, but approaches in what he thinks is a grown-up manner.
It is a middle-aged man in a heavy coat. He seems to have thrown himself up the strand. One arm is stretched fully above his head, the other looks like it is sent to retrieve the first. His face is three-quarters turned into the sand. Magnus rolls him onto his back. The mouth is open and the teeth visible. The way they are set doesn’t appear to be right, even for a dead man whose lips and earlobes have turned blue.
Magnus puts his fingertips to the side of the man’s neck to feel for a pulse: his hand knows better than he does where to go. This man is stone cold. Stone dead. He is dry. The sea hasn’t washed him up. There are footprints clearly visible. They stretch back down the beach and curve towards the cut in the dunes, beyond which there is a car park of sorts. This man has walked out onto the strand, turned along by the water, advanced a few hundred yards, and dropped dead.
The tide is coming in. Magnus looks about urgently, but there is nobody in sight. No one to call on and no place to go to get help without a substantial hike. Dragging him doesn’t seem right, so, with great difficulty, he lifts the dead man to his feet and gets in a weight-dance with him. Magnus is overwhelmed by his lack of cooperation. A frontal bear-hug means that he had arms draped up over his shoulders in the manner of a drunk signalling for help. Trapped air is expelled from the lungs. It comes out as part gurgle, part groan. Magnus falters. A shudder travels through his frame. I’m only a boy, he wants to cry out, but he does not cry out. He is not only a boy. Nor does he let go. He accidentally stands on a foot and almost falls over.
‘Sorry,’ he says quickly. ‘Sorry.’ He treats the body with a positive roughness, thinking this man might still be in the world, and could come alive again if provoked. Furthermore, Magnus is fearful he might topple under the weight and have his ribs broken. He might get a dead man’s knee in the groin and be destroyed.
There is a sweet-and-sour smell to the flesh. Pickles and talcum powder. There is the smell of spent tobacco. How long has he been lying there? Magnus cannot credit his own actions, but he seems to know what he is doing. He waltzes the body up onto the loose, dry sand and falls down with it. Fortunately, both land on their sides.
He lies with it for a moment, looking into the glassy eyes. This is a terrible intimacy. Some kind of test for his life ahead. Evidently, he has a strong nerve and can do such things.
He sits up slowly, draws his knees up to his chest, gazes at the tracks they have made from the water’s edge, sees they have lost a shoe on the way. He looks again at the dead man’s face. An introduction is pointless. He doesn’t want to root through pockets. ‘Sorry for this trouble,’ Magnus says, tentatively putting a hand on the stranger’s chest. When he does so, something comes over him. He feels honoured. ‘I’ll think what to do now,’ he says.
He does not want to leave the corpse. He just sits with it, trying to think. He makes no conversation with the body. Sooner or later, somebody will come. He retrieves the shoe, puts it back on, ties the laces, sits again with arms around his knees, and waits.
There is no disaffection here. This father-son-brother-man hasn’t died on Magnus. He has died on somebody else. For now, Magnus alone occupies the space beyond the moment of this man’s demise, and he is in charge.
Eventually, people come. An elderly French couple with their two grown-up children. Given the configuration, it is not surprising that initially, there is confusion. The family doesn’t grasp that boy and man are strangers.
Magnus hears himself let out a strange little laugh.
The elderly Frenchman is a doctor, which seems to Magnus right and proper, but this makes him laugh again. ‘Sorry,’ he says.
These people are very kind. They take care of Magnus first.
Afterwards, Magnus’ parents tell him that he had stayed with the body because he was in a state of shock. His mother pets his hair: three firm strokes. His father is tearful when he pats his son on the shoulder. He nods repeatedly. He gives him extra pocket money.
But there is something more. Something significant. Edwin tells Magnus that this makes him a special boy, and not in a ghostly or spooky way. A boy marked out for engaging skilfully and empathetically with the living. Magnus wonders vaguely where his father gets his insight.
That same day in the hotel, Mary comes to see Magnus, says she has heard what has happened, says it is a fantastic thing he has done, staying with the body. She wants to know what it felt like. Like nothing, he tells her, and her eyes widen. She leads him to her staff quarters, kisses his red cheeks and easily puts an end to his virginity.
He waits there on her bed, too, until she sneaks him out. Still fiery and flushed, she borrows his steel comb and combs out her auburn hair as they descend the back stairs. She is ten minutes late for the dinner roster.
The following day Magnus and Mary go to the beach. He cannot precisely locate where he had sat with the body, but feels he should point to one specific spot. The dead man’s car is still beyond the dunes. It is there by itself. A Morris Oxford with red leather seats. The driver’s door is unlocked. The couple sit in, but leave the doors open.
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ Mary says. Magnus doesn’t think so, but she is shooting and smiling and he doesn’t want her to run off, so he nods and changes up and down the gears. Sand comes in and blows around their ankles.
Mary asks if he thinks things will never again be the same in his life now that he has found a dead body – now that he has done what he has done with her, he thinks she really means.
‘Yes, never,’ he replies simply.
Mary is more than satisfied with this answer. She takes his hand and squeezes it.
‘I can drive this,’ he says, with a nod of his head towards the dashboard.
‘So could I,’ she replies.
He likes her saying that, and her saying it in a way that isn’t boastful. He is going to reach across and kiss her, but just then a tow-truck with an A-frame winch on the back turns into the space. Mary knows the driver, who looks as though he has driven all the way from America. This man knows all about the dead man, and tells them – a widower from the neighbouring townland. Mary knows the family.
The keys to the Oxford are missing. When the mechanic has hitched the car to his truck and is ready to leave for the Garda station, he comes to Mary, takes her narrow head in his hands and kisses her. He then backs away with a fantastic grin.
Mary lets out a little joyful laugh and begins to run. Magnus runs after her. She is late again for her shift. That afternoon Magnus’ formal statement is written down in the Garda station. He can see the Oxford in the yard through the sergeant’s window.
The holiday is nearly over. He spends his last night in the quiet lounge, where old men smoke and read newspapers. He stays there by himself until it is time to go to bed.
Mary comes out of the hotel to wave him off. Magnus’ parents revel in their son’s embarrassment.
His steal comb is gone forever and Magnus is forever the boy who found the body on the beach.