THE WORLD went into slow motion. Nuala was swimming towards the boat, too slowly I thought. Bullets were slashing all around her.Marie, Rory’s wife, was keening, an Irish cry for the dead, a wail that began with three low notes and then two soul-wrenching high notes. Fiona was howling; the Mick was screaming.
Nelliecoyne clutched my hand.
“Ma’s all right, Da. She’s all right.”
Ethne hauled my wife into the boat. Rory huddled on the thwarts, a man paralyzed. Ethne climbed over him and grabbed the lazily spinning wheel. She aimed the boat towards shore as the rifle bullets pinged in the water behind them.
I was numb, frozen, dead. I could not move, speak, even feel. Marie was still keening, Fiona was still barking, the Mick was still wailing. It was a nightmare. It wasn’t really happening. Soon I would wake up.
And the little girl next to me was still clutching my hand, still muttering, “Don’t worry, Da. Ma is all right. The bad man wasn’t trying to hit her.”
The boat nudged against the dock. Ethne put the motor
into reverse. The engine died. The boat started to slip away from the dock.
YOU FOCKING EEJIT! Do SOMETHING!
“What!”
GO HOLD THE BOAT!
“Right!”
GIVE THE KID TO HIS SISTER!
“Right!”
In a trance, I put the Mick on the ground.
“Take care of him, Nelliecoyne.”
“Yes, Da!”
Fiona stopped barking and thundered over to take charge of both children.
With my lead feet slogging through a bog, I stumbled onto the pier and grabbed the bow of the boat. I pulled it to the pier.
And fell into the water.
“Dermot Michael Coyne!” a familiar voice shouted, “Whatever are you doing to yourself! You’ll catch your death!”
God designed me to be a comic hero.
Nuala Anne tied the bow of the boat to the dock and pulled me out of the water. As I lay on the dock, shivering uncontrollably, she and Ethne lifted poor Rory out of the boat. I struggled to my feet. Ethne was talking to someone on her cellular phone—everyone in Ireland has one! Marie had stopped keening and was now singing a lullaby to the Mick. Nelliecoyne had her arms around Fiona’s neck. The world was slipping back to its proper form.
YOU FOCKING AMADON. MADE A RIGHT PROPER GOBSHITE OUT OF YOURSELF, DIDN’T YOU!
Then my wife clung to me, shuddering but alive.
“Och, Dermot love, I’m so sorry!”
“You didn’t push me in the water,” I said through quivering lips.
“I was terrible mean to you, and meself thinking I
would die without telling you I was sorry and I love you with all my heart!”
“I’m not processing things very well, I’m afraid.”
BECAUSE YOU’RE THE GREATEST ASSHOLE IN THE WESTERN WORLD. YOU LET THAT SHITEHAWK SHOOT AT YOUR POOR WIFE.
“Dermot Michael, don’t you need a good strong shot of the creature and meself a hot cup of tea!”
Then she seized her daughter and swept her into the air.
“I told me da that the man wasn’t trying to kill you,” the little redhead informed her mother. “But I was scared too.”
“So was I, me love, so was I. But we’re all fine now, aren’t we?”
“Yes, Ma.”
A few moments later I was in the cabin, wrapped in towels and drinking my second “small jar.”
“The focker was on the island,” Rory said for the fourth time. “He must have rowed over in a dory and hidden the boat.”
“His car was on the far shore,” Nuala added grimly. “I’ll know him when I see him. I may break his friggin’ neck.”
How would she know him when she saw him?
Better not ask.
“He wasn’t trying to hit you,” Ethne said. “Just to scare you?”
“If he was trying to hit me, wouldn’t I be dead?” She shivered, slighted. “Still, what if he had killed me by mistake, the friggin’ gobshite!”
“You’re planning on catching him?”
“Of COURSE!”
The children were back with their toys. Fiona was curled up protectively at her mistress’s feet.
Everyone was treating me gently, as though I had been the intended victim.
“Aren’t you grand at the water-skiing, Ethne?” Nuala asked. “The next time you’ll be after doing it on one ski!”
Next time, indeed.
Then, with considerable noise, a large delegation of the Galway Garda arrived on the scene—cars, vans, and swarming blue-clad officers. Peig Sayers and Declan McGinn in the lead. At the sight of all the constables, Fiona went mad with delight.
“We’ll get the focker,” Nuala Anne informed them. “Don’t I know what he looks like?”
“He was on the island?”
Chief Superintendent McGinn wondered how she could have seen him.
“He was … hiding in the bushes … and look what I found in the boat!”
She opened her hand.
A spent rifle slug.
I ALMOST FEEL SORRY FOR THE FOCKER.
“It’s a miracle he missed you.”
“He wasn’t trying to hit me. The only danger was that he’d hit me by mistake.”
Declan McGinn tried to take that in.
“How do you know he wasn’t trying to hit you?”
“Because he didn’t … . These people, whoever they are, don’t want to murder anyone. Why blow up an empty house? Don’t they want to scare us?”
“Why shoot at a world-famous singer?”
“Retired singer at that. But did they know it was me?”
Later in bed, during our afternoon nap, and after a frantic bout of love in which we both grasped desperately for life, my wife was busily kissing me. All over.
“Och, Dermot, aren’t you still practically frozen to death?”
“Woman, I am not. Didn’t you set me on fire?”
“I mean inside. It was a terrible thing that happened to you.”
“They weren’t shooting at me, Nuala Anne.”
“But I knew they weren’t trying to hit me.”
“So did I. Our daughter kept telling me.”
The kissing paused for a moment.
“Did she ever? Ah, that child is really one of the dark ones, isn’t she? Still, she’s a good little girl and she’ll be all right.”
I offered no comment.
She began to kiss me again. Frantically, as though she were afraid of losing me.
Outside the rain and the winds had returned. Gardaí swarmed around our house. Better late than never. We had invited them inside, but they declined. Fiona wanted to join them, but we kept her in the house “because of her condition, Dermot Michael.”
“I thought to myself when the first bullet went by me ear, poor Dermot! If he only knew that night at O’Neill’s pub on College Green when I decided that I wanted him, he would have run away in the fog.”
This was revisionism, pure and simple. Long ago, however, I learned not to disagree.
“I said to meself as I fell into the water, the poor dear man, he didn’t know he would end up with a bitchy wife with a nasty mouth and like as not to be depressed and too fey altogether, and meself never loving him properly.”
“Bossy too …”
“Be quiet, Dermot Michael. I’m talking.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you continue to kiss me that way, you’re likely to get assaulted again.”
“Isn’t that the general idea? … Now be quiet so I can finish what I’m saying. Wasn’t I saying to God as I swam towards the boat, if you let me live, won’t I try to be a perfect wife all the time? Won’t I keep me bitchy, bossy
mouth shut? Won’t poor, dear Dermot be happy he married me?”
“And what did God say?”
“I’m not sure, Dermot Michael. I think he laughed at me.”
When I woke up later, the sun was shining through the blinds and I was alone in our drenched and savaged bedsheets. I tried to figure out where I was and what had happened. Then I remembered the shots out on the lake. I sat up with a start … . No, my wife had survived. So, come to think of it, had I, though with little of my dignity left.
Then I remembered what had happened to our sheets and my troubled mind caught up with my complaisant body.
God had laughed at her, had he?
Well, good enough for God, but what did God expect me to do with her?
LAUGH TOO, YA FRIGGIN’ EEJIT!
“Then what?”
I struggled out of bed as the memories of our amusement flooded back. Well, I couldn’t complain to God about her as a bed partner, could I now?
YOU’D BETTER NOT!
What would it take to persuade her that I didn’t regret my choice at all? Or maybe she knew it already but thought I should.
I picked up the Fitzpatrick manuscript.
I looked up and saw a drawing of a man’s face on her easel.
The man with the rifle?
Who else?