Book Club: Read Ghost Moth
1
August 1969
The seal appears from nowhere, an instant immutable presence in the sea – although he must have been swimming silently beneath the surface for some time without her knowing. Katherine shudders in the water; her thoughts are moving like fast cold spikes inside her head. Where has he come from? Is he lost? Has he come to feed? The seal’s heavy muzzle thrusts toward Katherine; his nostrils – two dark inlets – flare: He is taking in her smell, her fear. His stiff eyebrow hairs, beaded with sea drops, crisscross the thick shadowy skin of his dark, wide head. Battle-scarred, his snout slopes to an ugly dull point where his long wiry whiskers afford him the seductive familiarity of a family dog. But it’s his eyes – the eyes of this wild animal – that terrify Katherine the most; huge, opaque, and overbold, they hold on her like the lustrous black-egged eyes of a ruined man.
Briefly the seal’s lips roll to display his sharp conical teeth, strong enough to dismember a large bird, she thinks, strong enough to rip her flesh. Her panic rises. If she turns her head away from him to look for help, even for a second, God knows what he’ll do. He may strike. Seals startle easily, someone once told her, their behavior as unpredictable as human love. Yet if she remains where she is . . .
They tread the cold sea together, Katherine and the seal. Above them, sandpipers drop their miserable cries as they fly. Splinters of high voices peak on the blue wind. In the distance, there is the low mechanical churr of a train. Around them, the sea continues its cool lamenting slap.
A sudden thought. Is he alone? Are there more seals? Are there cows or pups to aggressively protect?
The bobbing sea confuses the distance between them. It feels as though he is moving closer to her with every swell. She is keenly aware of her quivering limbs, of her too-quick breathing, of the saltwater in her mouth: a jagged dark fear filling her up. Her mind shrinks to the size of one thought: He may kill me.
Out of this fear there is the sudden impulse to reach out and touch him. Like the only way to stop the white panic of vertigo is to jump. To finish it. To decide to finish it. Or by reaching out, by touching, she might just connect with him, soothe him, soothe herself, make it mean something. Madness, she knows. But his heavy beauty is suggesting just this.
The eyes of the seal still hold on her. The heft of his body is now remarkably still…
She doesn’t do it.
She hears her husband, George, calling out for her from the shore, his voice travelling like a lone seagull’s cry, searching for her. But she doesn’t respond. Transfixed by the seal’s gaze upon her, by this odd and uncomfortable gift of him, by the fear of the ever-opening sea, she remains.
The seal is the first to move. He shifts his head a little, as though he is beginning to lose interest in her, and he snorts abruptly, spraying her face with seawater, the spiky claws on his fore flipper breaking the surface of the water as he moves. He turns his head, creating thick dark wrinkles around his neck. But after his black eyes casually scan the horizon, they return to her. His eyes, those eyes, brimming black liquid pools, stare into her. They are asking something of her; they are waiting for her to answer him.
The sea blasts an icy wash over her body.
She hears George calling her again. This time, the sound of his voice is pitched with relief that he has spotted her in the water. His voice pulls at her. ‘Katherine! Katherine!’ he calls. Does he see the seal beside her? Does he see him? ‘Katherine! Over here!’
A new spiral of fear kicks in at the sound of her husband’s voice. What if George cannot reach her? What if he frightens the seal and provokes it? She feels her stomach lurch, as though she might get sick. Reflux burns her throat. Her chest tightens. The eyes of the seal still hold on her. The heft of his body is now remarkably still, his bulk buoyed by the obedient sea. That big grey head.
Against her common sense, she turns her body to look for George and sees him wave to her from the rocks, beckoning her to come to him. She opens her mouth, but she cannot find her voice. Instead, her mouth fills with seawater, a thick glide of salt blue into pink. She swallows some, spits out the rest.
When she turns back, the seal is gone. She hangs in a quiver of cold sea.
*
That morning, George had casually announced that he had taken a day’s leave due to him from his job at the Water Commissioner’s Office. Katherine, surprised by George’s uncharacteristic spontaneity, had nonetheless decided it opportune to pack a picnic and take their girls – Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa – and baby Stephen out for the day to Groomsport beach. After all, the girls are already on their summer holidays and the weather is holding up so beautifully, she had thought.
By early afternoon, the Bedford family were well on the road from their home in east Belfast, their bottle green Morris Traveller winding its way through the fourteen miles of unremarkable countryside away from the city toward Groomsport town. Apart from Bangor and the small village of Ballyholme, there was only the occasional farmhouse to be seen, some scattered clusters of whitewashed buildings here and there, and one or two forsaken churches whose crumbling stone walls had long since exposed their sacred interiors to a disinterested sky.
Katherine let her head rest back on the warm leather of the car seat, her body heavy, as though the hot August sun were inside the car with her. She looked out of the window and saw the world passing her by. She watched as the mottled hedges of hawthorn and gorse, the trees, and telegraph poles moved briskly into and then out of her view. Glancing beyond the low hills to the east, she caught a glimpse of sea. The blue sky offered a singular white cloud, as though it knew how to be summer.
Stephen was fast asleep on her lap, his plump, hot body rounded like a basking pigeon. Elizabeth and Elsa were jostling with each other beside her in the back of the car, whacking each other with a flat palm when they spotted a blue car on the road and sticking out their tongues at each other when they saw a brown car. Katherine’s eldest daughter, Maureen, sitting in the front, was talking to her father as he drove, finding points of interest along the way. To Katherine, Maureen sounded older than her fourteen years, so amiable and agreeable was her tone, so ladylike and pleasantly curious. As her father drove, he occasionally lifted a hand off the steering wheel to point to a particular building or a stretch of land, and Maureen nodded her head and smiled politely and said that they had learned that at school, and her father said really, had they? Only when Elsa or Elizabeth stretched through the gap between the car seats to punch Maureen had she lost her composure to bark at her younger sisters and roll her eyes at them.
Katherine pressed her body against the car seat with some difficulty to adjust her position. Her skirt had crumpled up underneath her thighs and her nylons felt damp. She arched her lower back to ease Stephen’s weight forward a little, being careful not to wake him, then, raising herself slightly, pulled her skirt back down to her knees.
‘Everybody all right?’ Her voice squeaked, as though she had forgotten how to use it. George responded with a ‘Fine, thanks,’ while Maureen did another little bobbing motion with her head. Elizabeth remained firmly scouring the road for blue cars, but Elsa turned to look at her mother.
‘Are we nearly at Groomsport, Mummy?’ Elsa smiled.
Katherine looked at her nine-year-old daughter, Elsa. Elsa was the only one of her children who looked like her. Maureen, Elizabeth, and Stephen all carried their father’s swarthier complexion and his hair’s blue-black sheen. To Katherine, in the squat, shadowy light of the car’s interior, Elsa looked translucent, a child starved of sunlight, her creamy skin melting into the gold of her hair, and all of her features – eyes, nose, and mouth – as gently placed as butter into warm milk.
‘George!’ Katherine called to her husband in the front of the car, ‘We’re nearly there, aren’t we?’
Fast, fat slices of sun fell across Katherine’s face, making her feel nauseous.
‘Yes, love, another few minutes,’ George addressed the clear rectangular slice of his wife in the rearview mirror, then shifted his gaze back to the road.
Katherine and Elsa gave each other a wide smile, as though they had secretly known the answer all along, and then Elsa turned quickly to stick her tongue out at Elizabeth.
‘No, that wasn’t a brown car.’ Elizabeth shook her head.
‘It was so!’ Elsa replied.
‘It was dark grey, or maybe purple, but it wasn’t brown.’
‘Mummy, wasn’t that car brown?’ Elsa looked to her mother, but Katherine was careful not to take sides.
‘I didn’t see what colour it was, pet.’
‘It was brown,’ Elsa insisted.
‘It-wasn’t-brown,’ Elizabeth pronounced her words very precisely to indicate to Elsa that she was putting an end to the argument. Then with a regal glide, she turned to look out of the window again. Elsa stuck her tongue out at the back of Elizabeth’s head.
As they approached the town, the car passed a long iron railing fronting a factory. Fast, fat slices of sun fell across Katherine’s face, making her feel nauseous. She breathed deeply and squinted in the glare of the sunlight. ‘Oh look,’ she said quietly, turning her head away from the sun, ‘there’s a brown car!’
But no one paid any attention to her remark. Maureen and George were still chatting in the front of the car and Elsa and Elizabeth were now both engrossed in reading Nurse Nancy and the Forgotten Parcel from a Twinkle comic.
As though, all along, he had simply been pretending to be asleep, Stephen stirred, already pointing at something. His eyes were barely open, but he had caught sight of trees and rooftop and people, all of them worthy of his regard. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then, pointing into the air again, he said to his mother ‘Mama, mooon.’
‘Where’s the moon, darling? There’s no moon!’
‘Mooon dere,’ he said emphatically, and, standing shakily on his mother’s lap, pointed out of the car window.
‘Does Stephen think that the moon is out, Mummy?’ Elsa smiled, amused at her little brother.
‘It’s been all the talk of the moon landing in the house over the past few weeks.’ Katherine kissed him. ‘Can you see the man on the moon, my pet?’ she teased Stephen affectionately. ‘Is he still there?’ Stephen clapped his hands gleefully against Katherine’s forehead. Katherine hugged her darling boy and, rubbing her lips against his cheek, she spoke into his skin. ‘And are you going to be an astronaut when you grow up and fly in a rocket to the moon?’
Stephen squealed with delight.
‘No, he’ll get a proper job like his father!’ George remarked quickly, lifting his head to smile at Katherine in the rearview mirror.
Katherine laughed and turned back to Stephen, settling him once more on her lap.
‘And will you take me to the moon with you when you go?’ she whispered.
‘Mooon dere!’ Stephen said with a deeply earnest expression on his face. He pointed to the air again.
Elsa bent her body over toward Stephen and, moving her face close to his, said in a high, baby voice, ‘There’s no moon in the daytime, silly billy.’ She shook her head at Stephen. ‘No moon in the daytime.’
The way she pulled a face at Stephen made him laugh; his eyes became wide with delight and his laughter rippled like a warbling bird inside the car. He loved Elsa. He loved her. He wanted her to pull that face again. Elsa pulled that face. He threw his head back this time as he laughed, and Elsa laughed, too.
Maureen turned her head around from the front seat of the car to see what was going on. She couldn’t help but smile.
George parked the car under a large ancient sycamore in a small concrete enclave just off the main Groomsport Road. The shade was welcome relief to Katherine.
She swung her legs out of the car and lowered Stephen onto the tarmac of the car park, where he immediately staggered into a little circular jig of excited anticipation. The three girls barrelled out of the car behind them and grabbed the bags and towels from the boot.
Groomsport – a small town of tidy streets, neat gardens, and well-scrubbed telegraph poles – was full of Union Jacks that day, for it was still the Protestant marching season in Northern Ireland. The flags hung languidly outside the shops and houses, however, as the breeze was too light to lift them. On the corner of the concrete enclave were a cluster of modest souvenir shops, the doorways of which were decorated with buckets and spades and plastic windmills tied with coloured string.
From where they stood at the top of the sandbanks, the sea stretched before them like a cloth of blue jewels.
George, Katherine, and the four children followed the dusty brown path from the car park down to the beach. Banked high on either side of the path were mounds of dry marram grass, which brushed gently against their shoulders and arms as they walked.
Other digressions wound off the main path, like snail trails in a morning garden, created by eager day-trippers in their search for a private spot. A young man with untidy fairish hair moved briskly toward them along one of these smaller paths, looking down at his watch as though he were timing himself on his journey. He gently bumped against Katherine as he passed.
‘Someone’s in a hurry,’ muttered George behind Katherine. But Katherine just smiled – it was too nice a day to complain about anything or anyone – and turned to watch the young man until he reached the car park and was gone.
From where they stood at the top of the sandbanks, the sea stretched before them like a cloth of blue jewels. Below them, a dirty spray of stones and shells echoed the gentle curve of the beach. Bunches of dank seaweed were caught between the rocks that jutted out into the sea from the flat yellow sand. The blue sky was dotted with a trail of pearly clouds that moved across it like floats in a slow parade.
Katherine had packed a flask of tea, some ham sandwiches for herself and George, and raspberry jam pieces for the children. There were also some chocolate biscuits, a small bunch of bananas, and four packets of Perri crisps. There was a bottle of diluted orange squash and some plastic cups.
George carried a bundle of blankets and towels to a spot on the beach sheltered by a modest sand dune. There were already several families farther down on the western side of the shore. A young girl in a red polka-dot swimsuit could be heard screaming‘Tom! Tom!’ as she ran after a boy who was flying a blue kite. Katherine stopped to look at the two children for a moment, taking in the full sweep of the bay.
‘We’ll sit here, shall we? We’ll get a lovely view of the bay if we sit here.’
George responded by spreading the blankets out. Katherine sat down with Stephen, who began to squirm, unsettled by the feel of the sinking soft, dry sand giving way beneath his feet.
‘Get changed and go for a swim,’ she said to the girls; ‘then you can eat.’
Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa looked at the other children on the beach, who were skipping excitedly at the edge of the waves, but seemed reluctant to make a move themselves.
‘Go on!’ Katherine urged them.
Maureen was the first to organise herself and change into her swimsuit beneath one of the towels, slipping off her slacks and blouse, making sure no one could catch a glimpse of her underwear. Elizabeth and Elsa stood watching Maureen, as though they might glean some secret meaning or girlish code by the manner in which she undressed beneath the towel.
When Maureen was ready, Elizabeth and Elsa swiftly moved to catch up with her, until all three of them were in their black swimsuits and gingerly making their way toward the sea. Katherine watched her daughters move like three wading birds pecking at the sand with their spindly legs. A moment later, she turned to her husband.
‘George, would you like some tea?’
‘Yes, love.’
‘Can you take Stephen for me?’
Katherine began to unpack the picnic bag, laying the sandwiches and cups on the blanket.
She poured them both a small cup of black tea, pushing George’s cup into the sand beside him and then taking a quick sup from her own. They both sat silently for a moment. A light breeze shifted a thin whisper of sand around them.
Suddenly, throwing the remains of the tea from her cup into a nearby clump of beard grass, Katherine got up and, lifting her skirt, began to take off her nylons. George released Stephen gently from his hold to see if the child would stand unsupported on the soft sand. He turned and frowned a little at Katherine.
The sea offered its familiar slide and sway of grey-blue waves, which occasionally slapped together and spurted out pieces of white foam.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going in for a swim.’
‘You may want to use one of the blankets to cover yourself,’ George said, turning to see if anyone was watching his wife undress.
‘There’s nobody looking.’
‘Just for your own comfort . . .’ George’s voice trailed off as he reached out to catch the teetering Stephen, ‘I’ve got you, buster,’ he said, then turned to Katherine again. ‘Katherine, I think you should—’
But Katherine ignored George. She pulled her white swimsuit quickly up over her body, fixing the straps over her shoulders, and left her clothes on the blanket as though they were the flimsy traces of a delicate skin.
Just a few steps short of the sea, Katherine stopped to look around her. The headland to the east of Groomsport bay narrowed into a slender spindle of rock, which curved in toward the shore like an arm enfolding the belly of sand. Rocky outcrops jutted here and there at its tip, reachable only when the tide was out. To the west, children could be seen searching for stickleback fish or velvet fiddler crabs in the salty pools near the small pier. The children’s backs were bent, their flanks to the sun, their little plastic buckets swinging in the thin breeze.
The sea offered its familiar slide and sway of grey-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 travelling 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 grey 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.
The shock awakens fresh panic in her and she pulls on the shirt.
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.
Something has happened to her in the water. She thinks of the seal’s eyes.
‘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 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.
Taken from Ghost Moth written by Michèle Forbes
