In the first week of December the temperature was hovering around forty-five in the Ineer, and I had taken to wearing my 3/2 mm full-body wet suit, and even then I could only do about an hour before I lost sensation in my face. I was doing laps across the mouth of the bay, and after about a mile my eyes began to swell, filling my goggles, my fingers and toes sending faint prickling warnings like distant satellites. I told O’Boyle that I was going to reattempt the Fastnet swim in the spring, as soon as the gale season died down enough, and I wanted to get as much time in as possible before the Christmas holiday.
On my last day I staggered up the steps, slipped into the notch behind the Illaunfaha or Giant’s Causeway, and stripped off my gear and laid it on the rocks to dry. The sun was out, so I spread myself on the rocks as well, my skin flushed beet red, letting my swimsuit dry on my body.
I was thinking about Virginia, the trip home, when I heard a scuffling of rock and realized someone was climbing over the causeway to my hidden spot. Occasionally a tourist or bird-watcher came across me while I was entering or leaving the water, and I often got bemused looks or even staring uncomprehension. We usually exchanged polite greetings and then continued on our way. A shadow raised itself above me, a man, and I tried to smile warmly, my face still mostly numb.
Hello, Elly, he said.
I sat up, trying to focus on his face. He had a bag slung around one shoulder, one hand on the rock, a knee bent.
It’s me, he said. Sebastian.
Oh, Christ!
I sat up, bringing my knees to my chest, and wrapped my arms around my shins.
Sorry, he said. I didn’t mean to . . . sorry.
But he didn’t move, still standing there on the rock, looking down at me. I suddenly felt twelve again, an awkward crane stooping on the pool deck, my nipples burning in my suit.
It’s okay, I said, grabbing a towel and my sweatshirt, I’m just drying off. While the sun is out.
Yes, he said, hell of a day.
Sebastian rearranged his position on the rock. I put on my sweatshirt and tied the towel around my waist.
I saw you swimming, he said, from over on Ballyieragh.
He patted his bag.
Have a pretty good lens so I could tell it was you. Though I don’t know who else it would be. At first I figured you for a seal. I was going over to the Five Bells for some lunch and I saw you come out, so I figured I’d walk over.
Oh yeah?
I slipped my jeans on and fumbled with my shoes. I stood and tied my hair back while facing the water. The ocean was brisk and white-capped, the breeze westerly, insistent.
So, he said after a few endless moments, I guess I was checking to see if you needed a bite. A bit of lunch, anyway. Care to?
He stammered slightly. I watched him, his eyes round and alive.
I could eat a horse, I said. Starving.
Me too, he said. Right, off we go then?
* * *
Ariel brought us each a crowded plate containing a pair of whole roasted potatoes, a baseball-size clump of sautéed leeks with bacon, and a mound of spicy coleslaw. Two pints of Murphy’s. My wet suit was hanging over a few chairs, steaming by the peat fire. I went after the potatoes with my hands, breaking them open, and plying them with butter and sour cream. While they cooled I picked at the coleslaw, trying to resist gorging myself.
Just the thing, Sebastian said, after a long swim in the cold chop?
I could tell by his collar that he had been sweating that morning, and there were brambles and gorse thorns scattered across his sleeves. He couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, yet he carried himself with the calm assurance of a much older man.
I was dragging myself, he said, across the Ballyieragh most of the morning.
See anything good?
Not yet, he said, a few petrels, Manx shearwater, some other things I couldn’t get a fix on. But I’m headed to the Bill this afternoon, and that is nearly always a guarantee to catch something coming west across the ocean.
We talked about life in Baltimore, the Nightjar, and about winning the contest. Sebastian seemed to regard this bit of my history with a bemused tolerance, as if he didn’t really believe me. I started asking him about his background and how he came to be here, and he told me that he had been coming regularly to the Cape for about six years. He managed to get here several times a year, for a few weeks each time. He was evasive on the question about work, saying something about how he read biology at Cambridge, and apparently for a time specialized in single-celled organisms and invertebrate species. He talked about teaching at Cambridge, going through the rudimentary elements of cell division and reproduction with glassy-eyed undergraduates, but it was all years ago.
What about now? I said. What are you doing now?
Not much of anything, he said with a sheepish grin.
Unemployed?
Something like that.
I found myself watching his hands, playing with his notebook and pen, flipping through the pages, tucking it away in his bag only to take it out again a moment later. He had long, slender fingers, smooth and umblemished, the hands of a young boy, and he kept giving me an inquisitive glance, as if he was checking to see if I desired his notice. He had a generous cone of attention, like a wand of light, and it never faltered. Being in it was like being carefully studied, though not in a way I was used to.
Isn’t it a bit late in the bird season? I say.
He was cutting his potatoes in chunks, using that curious overhand fork maneuver you see so many Europeans employ. He swatted at his throat for a moment and looked away. Was he nervous?
Yes, he said. That’s true.
Decided to take one last shot at it, I said. Just in case?
Sebastian fixed me with his eyes, blue like the Ineer in early fall, a hint of steel, gray, cold, but full of depth. He smiled.
Yes, that’s right. Thought I’d get one more look. Just in case.
* * *
I left my gear at the the Five Bells and after lunch we trundled along the western edge of the Ineer, up to the East Bog, across the bleak windswept highlands of Ballyieragh.
The Bill of Clear, Sebastian said, is the best spot in the world for migrating birds.
Once we reached the plateau of Ballyieragh the wind howled from the west, flattening our jackets against our bodies. We leaned into it, trudging along, occasionally exchanging smiles as it was too loud to say anything. At the West Bog we took the small raised footpath that led through the spongy ground, ahead the line of cliffs and the North Atlantic beyond, a dim pounding beneath the roar of wind. The Fastnet Lighthouse came into view, a hazy smudge, the beckoning finger. Sea spray came in occasional gusts, vaulting over the cliffs and tumbling over us.
The western point of Cape Clear is like a deeply serrated knife edge, with peaks of basaltic rock jutting into the ocean, coming to a sharp point where the most resilient veins of rock resisted the everlasting beating of the sea. As we came to the cliff edge the difference in the water from the Ineer or Roaringwater Bay was shocking; this was the North Atlantic in full winter mode, and looking out to the lighthouse I was amazed that just a short time ago I had swum out there and nearly made it back.
Sebastian tapped my arm and pointed to the north. A long, flat ship of black iron with a squared prow was chugging into Roaringwater Bay towing the shattered remains of a large wooden sailing yacht. The sailboat was demasted and had a gaping hole punched in the hull near the stern, just at the waterline, and it was clearly taking on water. It bobbed like a fishing cork as it was dragged landward. The black ship had a pair of heavy cranes and other lifting tackle on the forward deck, a small pilothouse midship with a single battered smokestack belching raw exhaust. A few men shuffled through a pile of materials, what looked like sails, duffel bags, boxes.
Salvage ship, Sebastian said. That sailboat must have come up on some rocks. The locals scavenge everything the sea gives up.
A single figure stood on the bow of the wrecked sailboat with a hand on the towing lines. Even at this distance we could tell he was an enormous man, bareheaded and wearing brown coveralls. He turned his head toward the island and seemed to immediately find us on the cliff top, as if he already knew we were there. Sebastian raised a hand, but his greeting was not returned.
Sebastian paused on the trail and pointed to a little brown smudge like a patch of lichen on a flat rock embedded in the hill. It was a small bird, huddled in the lee of the rock.
Nightjar, Sebastian shouted in my ear. You can tell it’s a male because of the white spots on the wings. Nocturnal, so they huddle up most of the day. They won’t move until you step on them. The old Irish call them goatsuckers. Used to believe they sucked milk from goats.
The wind was changing directions quickly and buffeting us from all sides. We walked leaning into the hill, one hand clutching the ground, Sebastian’s binocular case dragging through the grass, until we came to where the land formed a dramatic tight V with the actual point only a few feet wide. Below us the ground sloped away another hundred feet till the cliffs, a sheer drop of another two hundred feet to the sea. We sat on a jutting rock and Sebastian took out his binoculars to scan the horizon.
There, he said, pointing, and he handed me the binoculars.
I tried to keep them pointed in the same direction. All I could see was exposed and magnified sky, a rich shade of blue.
Like a bobbing comma, Sebastian said, coming straight at us. A large seagoing bird, I think, perhaps a black-browed albatross. A large, dark thing.
I can’t see it, I said, and handed him the binoculars.
Just wait a bit. It’s coming right at us. It’s only going to get bigger.
The wind tore through our clothes, the rocks below boiling with white surf. On the narrow rock our shoulders and thighs were touching, and I was acutely conscious of that warmth.
Watch, keep looking. There!
He pointed into the blue at a bobbing wisp, a line of black flexing, high above the water, a thousand feet or more.
Awfully high, Sebastian said, frowning. For an albatross this close to land. Might be something else.
He raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused.
Odd, he said after a moment. Take a look at this.
I took the binoculars and the bird popped into view, a large, wide-winged black thing, heavy flexing shoulders, long ponderous strokes. A thick bill like a wedge, the color of a lemon.
A raven, Sebastian said. Never seen that before. No telling where that chap is coming from. Something must have compelled him to come this far across the ocean.
It was getting late and I had to catch the ferry. I stood up and needed to put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself in the wind. He looked a bit surprised, but pleased. He stood up and took my hand, and we laughed a little as we swayed and lurched.
Shall we go then?
I’ll go, I said, you can stay.
You sure? I’d say be careful on the walk back, but I guess if you fell in the water it wouldn’t matter much, would it?
Not really, I said. You’ll be around?
Sure, Elly. I’ll be here. Right at this spot.
I left Sebastian there, scanning the horizon.