Ghost Moth Read online

  The sea offered its familiar slide and sway of gray-blue waves, which occasionally slapped together and spurted out pieces of white foam. Mind, sea, and sky seemed all one. Katherine felt slightly revived by the sea breeze and by the quick sup of hot tea from the flask (“Nothing quenches a thirst more than a hot drink on a hot day,” she remembered her father saying).

  Katherine heard Stephen calling her and looked back toward him. She watched as George lifted Stephen up into the air, up over his head into the wide blue. Stephen’s limbs became rigid like the spokes of an invisible wheel. George then suddenly relaxed his arms and the child, squealing with excitement, plummeted down onto his father’s chest.

  Katherine looked at George and took him in, watched him for a while; then she turned and walked into the sea.

  The water sliced into her, cold and invigorating.

  She had always been a cautious swimmer, never quite conquering the skill of being able to put her face in under the water as she swam, never quite mastering the backstroke. But now she swam like a young girl, with sprays of seawater flying from her hair as she tossed her head purposefully from side to side. Keeping a keen eye on how far she was traveling from the shore, she soon passed out beyond her daughters as they played amid the salty waves.

  A tingling rush surged through her body from the water’s cold, but the impudent sun was a hot fist on her forehead. Seagulls flew above her, one of them holding a whole slice of white bread in its beak. Treading water for a moment, Katherine watched as the seagull with the bread suddenly flapped its wings to change direction, three other seagulls in hot pursuit. Katherine’s eyes followed the birds as they flew toward the rocky outcrops east of the bay, where the spill of sun on the sea was like a big flat pearl.

  Katherine decided to swim toward it.

  Were they her daughter’s squeals or the call of the seagulls on the wind? She could not tell. She swam on until she was no longer able to hear them nor to see George or Stephen on the shore.

  Eventually, exhaustion caught up with Katherine and her breathlessness forced her to stop. She treaded water again, trying to gauge how far she was from the beach. A little too far out for comfort, she thought. Just a little. But look, she said to herself. Look at the sun on the sea. Listen to the lap of the water. The calm of this glassy blueness. A little bowl of paradise. She took it all in.

  Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to the sun, cutting herself off. The full, hot, bright sun closing her off from everything else in the world. I am only where the sun touches me, she said to herself, I exist only where the sun touches me. She listened to the sound of the sea as it moved around her. The soft sound of the sea filled her head like music. A slow, infinite rhythm calming her, transporting her.

  Then suddenly out of the deep, that great gunmetal gray head appeared beside her.

  Now the air is charged with his absence. She cannot see the seal, but she can sense him near her. Her breathing is so sharp, it hurts her chest. She turns her head quickly from side to side. Where is he?

  “Katherine! Katherine!” She hears George calling her again from the rocky outcrop. She struggles to swim toward him, making jerky movements in the sea, her breathing now taking on a frantic pace.

  She spits out more seawater and tries to find her breath. Her heart thuds in her chest cold and hard, yet a traffic of hot sparks speeds through her body. She thinks of everything under the surface of the water. Just under the surface. Just right there. Any amount of things to pull her down. Ready to rise up and take her at any moment. She tries to blot out that thought, but she can’t—the deep of the swollen sea beneath her opening up, revealing its great height, upon which she now hangs, down from which she might fall. The sea’s great salty depths. It is all she can think about.

  She calls out to George, but her fear reduces her voice to a small sound. She feels something against her leg. Is that the seal underneath her? Are they his breathy bubbles beside her?

  She emits a cold, sharp shriek. “Wheeeerrrree-is-heeee?”

  George hurriedly pulls off his shoes and socks and hastily rolls up the ends of his trousers. “Katherine!” he shouts to her. He slips off his leather belt. He wraps it around his hand, moving gingerly toward the edge of the rocks. The gelatinous sea algae is slippery underfoot. He spreads his toes to secure his step, but the rough, abrasive rocks that pierce the algae dig into the soles of his feet and unsteady him. He kneels down on the rocks and stretches out an arm to Katherine, leaning his upper body forward in order to give him more reach. With his free arm, he throws his belt toward Katherine. It is a thin, miserable length and will not reach her. He needs to move closer. She needs to move closer. But he sees that her panic is tiring her. Briefly, her face slips under the water and the top of her head becomes a smooth brown orb in the blue sea.

  George quickly abandons his belt on the rocks. He crouches down, shifting his upper torso farther into the sea, as though he were edging his body through a low tunnel. Katherine’s head appears up out of the water. George leans into the sea to grab her, but she is still too far away for him to reach her.

  George heaves himself back up and rips off his shirt. He twists it into a rope and whips it into the sea. He turns sideways and submerges his upper body as much as he can. The cold sea bites at his chest. The jagged rocks cut his skin.

  “Hold on to the shirt! Grab the shirt!” George calls to Katherine. The sea spray slaps his face. Katherine’s head slips under the water again and disappears completely this time. When her head reemerges, her eyes are rolling.

  The floating shirt and Katherine are only inches apart.

  “Grab the shirt!” shouts George, furious at himself for not being able to swim. This time, she seems to understand and her eyes fix on George. Her hand feebly reaches for the shirt. She finds it. Then the dark, wide head rises up out of the water beside her, disappears again. The shock awakens fresh panic in her and she pulls on the shirt. George is jerked forward but manages to cling to the edge of the rocks. He thrusts his free arm out and grabs hold of Katherine, pulling her toward him.

  Katherine thrashes an arm, then a leg onto the rocks as though she were blind, but clumsily falls back into the water, scraping her legs. They begin to bleed beneath the sea. She grabs hold of George again as, this time, he flings his arm robustly around her waist. Finally he heaves her out of the water and throws his arms around her.

  “I thought I’d lost you.” George hugs her. “I couldn’t see where you had gone.” He kisses the top of her head.

  Katherine tries to catch her breath.

  “You okay?” He keeps his arms around her.

  Katherine gasps for air.

  “What happened? Did something happen?” he asks her, loosening his hold on her.

  Katherine breathes deeply for a moment, then coughs violently. “I should have stayed nearer the shore,” she splutters.

  “You sure you’re okay?” George looks at Katherine.

  Katherine nods her head a little. “I went out too deep—that’s all.” She bends her torso over to catch her breath again. “I started to panic—I’m not as good a swimmer as I thought I was.”

  “What possessed you to swim so far away from us?”

  “I don’t know—I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking.” Katherine clears the last of the seawater from her throat. Her body is shaking. She feels something prickling her legs. “Oh,” she says almost casually as she looks down, “I’m bleeding.”

  “We’ll get you sorted out, love.” George lifts his sopping shirt from the rocks and, wringing the seawater from it, he gently dabs Katherine’s legs where they have been cut. Then he stands and brushes back her wet hair from her face. “That could have been nasty, Katherine.”

  “Oh, George! You’re bleeding, too.” She touches his shoulder, where clear ribbons of seawater are infused with blood.

  “It’s nothing. Only a few scrapes. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I think so. It was the seal that panicked me.�
��

  “The seal?”

  “The seal—I was terrified he would hurt me—” Then she stops and looks into George’s eyes. “Didn’t you see him?”

  “No, love, I didn’t.”

  “Right beside me.”

  “No, love—no, I didn’t.”

  “But he was just there—” Katherine looks out at the wide sea, then back to George. She cannot believe that he did not see the seal. She feels confused, stressed. But she is out of the water now. She’s safe, thank God. Urgently, she wraps her arms around George’s torso, her face turned to one side, her cheek flush with the curve of his chest. His skin icy against hers.

  “He was right there,” she says quietly.

  Something is happening to her. Something has happened to her in the water. She thinks of the seal’s eyes.

  “You’re shivering,” says George. “C’mon, let’s get you warm.”

  Katherine lifts her head. “Where’s Stephen?” she asks, with an urgency in her voice.

  “The girls have him,” replies George reassuringly. “He’s fine.”

  George reaches out and gently takes Katherine by the hand. She moves with him. They walk at a measured pace together back across the sand toward the children. A salty sea breeze begins to rise, whipping occasional strands of Katherine’s hair up and across her cheek as though they are urging her on.

  Out in the broad silver sea, a last flickering movement; then all is still.

  “Okay, Mummy, you’re out.”

  Wrapped in towels in the back of the car, Katherine struggles a moment to regain her concentration on the game in hand.

  “Oh, right, Elsa . . . but I haven’t guessed who you are yet.”

  “You were miles away, Mummy.” Elizabeth’s voice is very matter-of-fact.

  “I thought I had one go left.”

  “No, Mummy, you don’t.”

  “You’ve used up your ten gos already,” Maureen informs her sympathetically.

  “No, Mummy has one more go,” says Elizabeth.

  “No, she doesn’t.” Elsa makes a sharp face.

  “Mama-go-dere!”

  “Are you Ringo Starr?” Katherine asks.

  “Mummy, you can’t guess!” Elsa’s temper is rising.

  “Gregory Peck?”

  “Let her have one more go,” chips in Maureen.

  “That’s not fair. And I told you, I’m not a singer,” Elsa says firmly.

  “But you said you were singing.”

  “No, I didn’t mean singing.”

  “What did you mean?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Alan Ladd.”

  “No, Mummy.”

  “He never sang,” Elizabeth adds.

  “I didn’t mean singing, stupid.”

  “Have manners, Elsa.” Katherine’s voice sounds vacant as she straightens her back against the car seat.

  “Dada dere!”

  “Are you dead or alive?”

  “Mummy, you asked that already.” Maureen looks out of the window.

  “Did I?” Katherine shakes her head, unable to remember.

  Elizabeth gives her mother a gentle reminder. “He’s alive.”

  “Now that’s three more gos you’ve had!” Elsa’s cheeks flush a stubborn red.

  “We saw this person on television last week in a film. He was wearing a funny hat and whistling in a train station.” Maureen is losing patience with both Elsa and her mother.

  “Oh, yes—Ray Milland,” says Katherine with relief.

  “Maureen, that was too much of a clue to give to Mummy!”

  “It was taking her ages to guess.”

  “But when you said wearing a funny hat and a train station and whistling, that just gave it away.”

  “Dada dere!”

  “Well—so!” Maureen turns away from Elsa.

  “Oh, look,” says Katherine flatly, “your father’s back with the ice cream.”

  The ice cream is recompense to the children for cutting the day short, as George is eager to get Katherine warm again and back home.

  Sitting with the car window open, Katherine can hear voices traveling from the far end of the street, the way summer air seems to hold sound on a long leash. Under the canopy of the ice-cream shop, a man buys a candy floss for his daughter. Plastic buckets hanging from the shop door tap together in the breeze like dull wind chimes. The shop window still displays the front page of the Belfast Telegraph from almost a month ago, a large blurry black-and-white photograph of two astronauts with the words “Footprints on the Moon” underneath it.

  Katherine, not wanting any ice cream, eats one of the leftover jam pieces from the picnic bag instead. Stephen stands on his mother’s lap. He holds a small dripping ice-cream cone in his hand, but his eyes are intensely fixated on the motion of his mother’s tongue. He grips her arm, his mouth imitating hers, biting on nothing. Katherine scoops a small dollop of butter and jam from the bread onto her finger and pops it into his mouth.

  “Mummy, my arms and legs are itchy,” says Elsa.

  “Really, love?” Katherine’s voice is hardly audible.

  “Mummy?” Elizabeth rubs the back of her hand across her mouth as she speaks.

  “Yes?”

  “D’y remember when you were an opera singer before you got married?”

  “Well, not a proper opera singer, Elizabeth. It was just a hobby,” says Katherine, making an effort to engage in conversation.

  “That was in the olden days, wasn’t it, Mummy?” Elsa has a serious expression on her face.

  Katherine smiles gently and nods her head.

  “Daddy keeps telling us that you were so good that you could have done opera singing for your real job,” Elizabeth says respectfully.

  “I know he does.” Katherine glances briefly over at George. George turns around to Katherine from the front seat of the car. Unusually, his large arms are bare. His wet shirt is in a canvas bag in the boot of the car, so he wears only his vest and trousers. “Well, that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?” he says to Katherine and bites on his cone.

  Katherine remains silent.

  “Well, why didn’t you, then?” Elsa chirps.

  “Sorry, love?” Katherine says quietly.

  “Why didn’t you do opera singing for your proper job?”

  “Your mother had a family to raise.” George offers Katherine a paper napkin to wipe Stephen’s face, but she refuses it with a shake of her head and uses instead the edge of her towel.

  “Tell us again about the stage,” says Elizabeth.

  Katherine knows how much the children enjoy the familiarity of the stories she tells about her amateur musical-theater days, but, cold and shocked after her encounter with the seal, she now struggles to find the energy.

  “Well . . . there were lots of different sets to show different places.... there were street sellers’ baskets and wooden wheelbarrows for the marketplace and—”

  “But the fruit in the street sellers’ baskets wasn’t real fruit, was it, Mummy?” Elsa delights in the pretense of it all.

  “That’s right, love. It was only rolled-up paper painted to look like fruit.” Katherine continues slowly. “And there were lots of fancy costumes and—”

  “But you already had a proper job anyway,” says Elizabeth, interrupting her mother as she bites on the end of her cone.

  “Oh, yes—a very exciting job as an accounting clerk in the Ulster Bank.” Katherine attempts humor. The girls smile. “That was when I was walking out with your father, but when we got married, I had to leave.”

  “‘Walking out,’” Maureen repeats, laughing to herself.

  “Nanny Anna said that that’s how people used to talk to each other in the olden days.” Elsa takes over the conversation with an authoritative tone.

  “What do you mean?” Maureen makes a disparaging face at Elsa.

  “She said people didn’t talk like we talk now; she said people sang everything in them days.”

  Maureen starts to laugh at Elsa. �
��No they didn’t.”

  “Yes they did!” Elsa glares at Maureen, then shoves her tongue down into the end of her ice-cream cone. Maureen starts singing in a mock operatic style, “Can I have another ice cream please, Mother!”

  Now Elizabeth begins to laugh.

  “Shut up!” Elsa says sharply to her sisters, embarrassed now that she may have been fooled a little by Nanny Anna.

  “Manners, Elsa,” says George.

  “That didn’t sound like opera singing to me,” Elsa snaps at Maureen.

  “How would you know what opera singing sounds like anyway?” Maureen snaps back.

  Conscious that Katherine is still tired and distant, George wants to lighten the tone. “I’ll have you all know, young ladies, that your mother was the finest singer the length of the Castlereagh Road!”

  The three girls chime together, “We know, we know!”

  Katherine fixes the towel around her shoulders. She feels removed from all the chat in the car, as though something is pulling her away from it.

  “Mummy?” Elizabeth sparks with a new thought. “Maureen saw a plop floating in the water.”

  It takes Katherine a moment. “She saw what?”

  “I did not!” Maureen is instantly annoyed that Elizabeth has mentioned this. “It was seaweed, a lump of seaweed! I thought it was something else, but when I looked at it again, it was seaweed !” Maureen says the word seaweed very emphatically. She shakes her head at Elizabeth.

  “But you said it was a plop. You said!”

  “I only thought it was one, but it wasn’t.” Then changing the subject quickly, Maureen says, “Mummy, can I have a packet of crisps?”

  Katherine doesn’t answer.

  Maureen registers her mother’s solemn mood and so rummages in one of the picnic bags to get the crisps herself.

  “Whose plop was it?” Elsa has apparently not followed the course of the conversation at all, her imagination having been so arrested by Elizabeth’s initial image.

  “It wasn’t a plop. It was nobody’s plop!” Maureen replies, exasperated.