THE POISONED GLEN

Rejected by the land and tossed about by the sea, Éamonn sat alone in a lifeboat. The water’s surface was eerily still, acting as a great mirror reflecting the shivering stars of a moonless night. A lamps glow about half a mile away and the slow sloshing of an oar told him that other men had made it out alive. Much further still, tiny lights in the distance told him other vessels were approaching.

Only a few yards away, the last small section of the cargo ship he had been on an hour earlier still peeked up over the water. It bubbled and groaned, rolling back slowly like a dying whale. Eventually, it slipped below the surface and disappeared for good. Éamonn lay back and stared up at the stars.

Some time later, one of those distant vessels would happen across his lifeboat and startle him awake to ask if he was happy where he was or if he wanted taking to the port. For now, he closed his eyes and slept.

*

Rain lashed hard against a stone roof. A few inches below it, Éamonn slept in the old hayloft of a small shed.

The space was just big enough to sit up in, and long enough that he could lay down without his feet dangling over the hatch at the other end. It was the very early hours of the morning, dark outside and darker still in the loft.

Dead to the world, he slept in the half-rotten hay through the sound of the door opening and closing below him, through the light which now filtered up through the gaps in the floor. Whoever had entered sniffled a little, then sneezed. Éamonn shot up and bashed his head on the roof.

Silence, for just a moment. Then the sound of a carefully placed muddy boot on a concrete floor. Éamonn gritted his teeth and tried not to move. It was more of a blow to his pride than particularly painful, but it still took all the strength he could muster not to curse or so much as risk releasing the breath he held.

He could hear the slight sound of squeaking – specifically, that of air being sucked in between one’s teeth and their bottom lip. An imitation of a dying rabbit, a call one does to attract a predator. Now, Éamonn was simply confused.

Slowly he exhaled, quietly, carefully. The glow emitting through the slats began to shift, sending strips of light and shadow falling slowly across him. One boot mounted the ladder, then another.

From the hatch, a much brighter light emerged.

‘Oh!’

A lamp swung back and forth. Éamonn squinted. His eyes weren’t adjusting.

‘Roeddwn i'n meddwl mai bele’r coed oeddech chi,’ the same voice spluttered.

Éamonn backed up and wedged himself in against the wall. Breathing heavily, cornered like a wild animal.

The head that peeked out through the floor cocked to one side. ‘Ydych chi'n iawn?’

Éamonn narrowed his eyes. The man’s features were starting to come into focus – dark curly hair sticking out under a well-worn cloth rainhat and an unkempt beard.

Dark eyes illuminated gold by the lamplight watched him, thinking.

‘Are you alright?’

These were words Éamonn recognised, just about. He opened his mouth, croaked, then tried again.

‘If you get out of the way, I’ll go,’ Éamonn rasped.

Those eyes studied him intently from just under the brim of the hat, running over Éamonn’s dour expression and crumpled clothes. Rain continued to beat against the stone roof.

Eventually, he cleared his throat and asked, ‘Why don’t you come to the house?’

*

How stupid he must have looked! Hay in his hair and his tie twisted around his neck. Éamonn tried to comb the worst of it out with his fingers.

The emergence of dim early morning light revealed to him that the shed was nestled in an overgrown section above a small and somewhat dilapidated farmyard. The main farmyard lay safely at the bottom of a small valley wherein a small stream ran between the two small but rather steep, tree-covered hills. Standing atop the hills and looking straight ahead, one may not have even noticed it was there.

The man, who later remembered to introduce himself as Bedwyr, told Éamonn that this was the first time he’d been in that shed in months – any other day and he likely would’ve gone undiscovered.

‘Stormy weather always seems to bring odd creatures about,’ Bedwyr said. ‘I thought you were a pine marten.’

Bedwyr walked slightly ahead of Éamonn across the muddy ground, toward a small farmhouse. He was a stocky man of about 5’10″, half a head taller than Éamonn. That head of his was, as Éamonn would come to find out, a woolly mess of dishevelled black hair and more dishevelled thoughts. In his mid-thirties, a distinct stripe of white ran through the middle of his hair down to the end of the unruly fringe that perpetually harassed his vision. More white hairs flecked his beard, especially abundant in his sideburns, which altogether gave him the appearance of an especially large and scruffy badger. Until Bedwyr had offered the invitation to come inside, Éamonn had supposed that he was another tramp whose spot he had poached.

Éamonn followed him up a stone staircase set into the front of the house to a door which led into a combined kitchen and living area. A battered-looking kettle hissed on the range. Nearby, a teabag sat in a mug upon the kitchen table, ready to be filled by an owner returning from his morning rounds. Bedwyr gestured for Éamonn to sit and prepared another mug for him.

While he dropped a pan on the range, Bedwyr explained he had been looking for a labourer to lend him a hand – his father had died when he was young, and his mother passed just after the start of the War. He was the youngest of three; his brother Rhodri was fighting in some part of the world which Bedwyr couldn’t recall, and his sister Sophie travelled around with the Women’s Land Army. This left the responsibilities of the farm solely to Bedwyr, and if the War Ag was to be believed, he wasn’t quite able to hack it alone.

‘He keeps wanting us to sow grains,’ Bedwyr scoffed. ‘I’d like to see him trying to do a bit of tillage on these fuckin’ hills.’

Éamonn planned only to stay long enough to warm up and possibly have something to eat, then take off and hope to aim for England. It was concerning how fast he went from having no home and no future and hay in his hair to employed and granted a place to live. Bedwyr admitted wouldn’t be able to pay Éamonn much, but he would be looked after at least – warm and well fed with no rent, just his labour.

In the time it took for a couple eggs and rashers to fry, Éamonn had learned more about this man than he had about some of the people he’d worked with for years on trawlers and cargo haulers. He had only said a few words in return.

Bedwyr scraped half the food onto a plate in front of Éamonn and then sat across from him, electing to eat directly out of the pan rather than fetch a plate for himself.

Éamonn ate slowly. He could feel Bedwyr’s gaze searching him, wanting to ask questions, but fearing it too impolite to start prodding – waiting for Éamonn to talk first.

He looked down at the healthy portion of bacon on his plate – more than he’d seen in a long while. He inhaled. ‘Rations mustn’t be too bad here, so.’

Bedwyr barely stifled a laugh through a mouthful of food. He tapped the side of his nose twice, finished chewing, and grinned. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

Éamonn wasn’t entirely sure why he took up on the offer in the end. He told himself that if it became unbearable, he could always simply pack up what little he had and leave – carry on going the way he had been before.

*

A small extension built onto the side of the main house became Éamonn’s quarters. It was split into two levels: a concrete ground floor with a small wood stove and a jug and basin, and above it a timber loft just big enough to hold a bed, accessed by ladder. The only window was set into the stone alongside the bed, tendrils of ivy beginning to penetrate its frame. It had no direct access to the main house, only a crooked door which led out into the yard. The ground floor of the main house, as Éamonn learned, had two bedrooms – one which Bedwyr had once shared with his brother and another which was his mother’s, preserved as it had been before she died. Éamonn was happy to have his own dingy little space than impose on the ghost of an old woman. He usually shared much smaller spaces with many more men than this. If anything, this was a lot more freedom than he’d felt in a long time.

The isolation that came with it did not bother him so much. Éamonn was used to being surrounded on all sides by mountains, but these ones were unfamiliar to him. The mountains he knew were harsh, craggy, bare – this landscape seemed so full of life in comparison, huge swathes of rolling mountains too soft and round, too brightly coloured in the greens and yellows of grass and gorse.

Spring took its grip deep into the soil quickly that year. It was the end of February when Éamonn wound up on the farm, and it wasn’t long after that crocuses and daffodils were lining the ditches. The first mornings were dark, owing to the unending, year-round-summer time-zones established for the duration of the war – in turn, the evenings were long and quickly became even longer. Soon, the days seemed to stretch out into a state of peaceful endlessness.

Éamonn’s habits when it came to sleep proved unorthodox for a life on the land. Farmers bodies seemed naturally synced to the changing of the seasons and the rise and fall of the sun. Éamonn rarely even knew what day it was – having spent most of his time on the sea over the last 15-odd years had completely shot his nervous system and left him out of sync with the natural order of things. This meant that he was often awake for much of the night and could not keep himself awake throughout the entirety of the day. Even if he made it to suppertime without dozing off at some point, he might then get into bed and stare at the ceiling for an hour, eventually fall asleep, then find himself awake again an hour later, often drenched in sweat.

On the nights where he gave up on sleep he would put on a coat and roam outside, taking in the night air and the sounds of nocturnal creatures. This put him at odds with most of the people around him – Bedwyr, even more so than the average farmer, was very much an early riser. He was often up even before dawn, venturing out to watch the sun rise from atop the hills with a cup of tea in hand. When Bedwyr first became aware of what Éamonn explained to him was his ‘wandering hours’, his morning cup of tea was soon traded for a flask – one which he shared with Éamonn as the latter was finally heading to bed.

The only real thorn in Éamonn’s side at this time was Bedwyr. He was amiable to a fault and carried himself with a certain optimistic confidence that made Éamonn uneasy. Éamonn’s own sense of self-discretion paired with a face which rarely expressed much emotion only served to fuel the fire of Bedwyr’s seemingly unending fascination with him. It wasn’t necessarily that Éamonn was purposefully elusive – he just didn’t volunteer information about himself, the childhood rule of ‘don’t speak unless you’re spoken to’ having followed him long into his adulthood. On top of that, most people simply didn’t ask. Bedwyr, however, did ask. He asked an awful lot. Most often Éamonn managed to allude him with one-word answers and ambiguity. It took quite some time for Bedwyr to learn much more about him than what way he liked his eggs done.

One Friday afternoon, Bedwyr returned from a visit to one of the neighbours with a castrating iron he had borrowed for the male lambs and an old newspaper he pilfered on the way out. He read it in a tatty green armchair by an ivy-framed window while Éamonn traced the dust on the kitchen table with his index finger nearby.

‘There’s a bloke in here with the same name as you,’ Bedwyr said. ‘Must be common.’

‘Not particularly,’ Éamonn said. He looked over at the paper in Bedwyr’s hands. Three pages in, the words THREE DEAD IN IRISH SEA U-BOAT ATTACK headered the top corner. He inhaled an especially large speck of dust and coughed.

Bedwyr turned to look at him. ‘Where was it you said you were from?’

Éamonn hadn’t said. He cleared his throat. ‘What’s it say there?’

‘Gweedore.’

‘Near enough.’

He left the table and squatted next to the armchair. Bedwyr angled the paper towards him slightly.

The cargo ship UISNEACH was sunk fifteen miles from the port of Holyhead by a German U-boat in the early hours of Monday morning, while transporting goods between Liverpool and Dublin, resulting in the deaths of three men ...

The article went on to analyse the ‘cowardly’ attack on a civilian ship registered to a neutral country. Éamonn wasn’t interested. He skipped to the end.

The deceased have been named as Christy Fitzgerald of Belfast and Brendan Byrne of Dunleary. The body of Eamon Beggan of Gweedore, who had previously served in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, has not been recovered.

He stared at the words for some time. Bedwyr watched the side of his face.

‘A relation of yours?’

Éamonn’s jaw clenched. It would be remarkably easy to lie.

He shook his head. ‘No, that’s me.’

Bedwyr’s brow raised, then furrowed. ‘What?’

This is what you get when you invite strange men into your house, Éamonn thought. He chewed the inside of his cheek, thinking carefully.

Bedwyr frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me any of this.’

‘It wasn’t important,’ Éamonn mumbled. He ambled back toward the table and reached up for a battered little tin box that was stored on top of the range’s dry box. Bedwyr twisted in the chair to watch him.

‘Oi!’ Bedwyr marched over and took the tin from Éamonn’s hands just as he was about to take a cigarette from inside. ‘You’re not getting any of my fags ‘til you start talking to me.’

Éamonn scowled up at him.

‘Are you a spy?’ Bedwyr asked.

‘What?’ Éamonn hissed, indignant. ‘Don’t be a prick.’

‘I don’t know!’ Bedwyr threw his hands up. ‘I don’t know a thing about you. You could be anyone.’

‘Why would a spy be cleaning shit out of your sheds? Use your head for a second.’

Bedwyr took a step back and scrunched his face in thought. ‘They said the IRA were working with the Germans.’

Éamonn scoffed. ‘And why would an IRA man have been in the Royal Navy? And the German’s are the one who sank my fucking boat, for Christ’s sake.’

‘For intelligence? They made a mistake? I don’t know.’ Bedwyr sighed tiredly and took a few steps backward, letting himself fall back against the back of the armchair, half-sitting on its headrest.

He looked back up at Éamonn. ‘Why were you in the Navy? I thought you were from the Republic bit.’

‘I needed money.’

‘Then why’d you leave?’

Éamonn’s shoulders hunched as he rested his hands on the table behind him, the lapels of his tweed jacket brushing against his jaw. He stared at the tin box still held under Bedwyr’s arm.

‘Got kicked out.’

‘Why?’

‘Give me one of those.’ Éamonn nodded at the box.

Bedwyr seemed to have forgotten he was holding it. He considered it for a moment, then leaned forward to pass it across to Éamonn.

‘You get one,’ Bedwyr held up a finger. ‘You know what a nightmare it is to get a hold of ‘em.’

Éamonn didn’t respond, just took a cigarette from the box and a matchbook from his inside pocket. He exhaled deeply, smoke streaming out through his nostrils. Bedwyr watched him carefully close the tin and place it back on top of the dry box.

‘You left the Navy and got on that ship instead,’ Bedwyr said, more to himself than anything – an attempt at wrapping his head around what he’d learned.

‘They were sending me home,’ Éamonn grunted through the cigarette. ‘And it sank an hour in. Some dose of luck.’

‘... So you faked your own death.’

‘Not on purpose. Not really.’

‘Not really?

‘Well, I – I didn’t plan to. I didn’t suppose it’d work.’

Bedwyr made a sharp noise of exasperation. ‘What do you mean? Why would you want to do that in the first place?’

Éamonn looked at the floor and shrugged. ‘Didn’t want to go home. I needed the excuse not to.’

‘Why?’

‘They made it very clear they don’t want me back.’

‘Your family thinks you’re dead.’

Éamonn snorted. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind that too much.’

‘You need to tell someone.’

‘I don’t.’ Éamonn looked back to Bedwyr and saw that the other man was staring him down.

‘I can’t,’ Éamonn adjusted. ‘I don’t have a permit to be here. I’m not risking getting sent back.’

Bedwyr blinked. ‘You’re illegal.’

‘Not if I’m dead.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Bedwyr suddenly deflated. He put his face in his hands, roughly rubbing his eyes.

At least he wasn’t actually a spy, Éamonn thought. Best not to say that out loud, though.

He watched Bedwyr for a while. This had just been annoying at first. Now, he felt guilty.

‘I can go somewhere else. You’re under no obligation to let me stay here,’ Éamonn finally said. ‘Tell me to go and I will.’

Bedwyr’s hands ran slowly down his face, fingers stopping just below his eyes, faintly stretching the skin there. He stared down towards the floor, not focusing on anything in particular. For a long time, no one said anything.

‘No. I don’t want you to do that.’ Bedwyr’s words were muffled by his hands, still holding his cheeks. ‘I don’t know.’

Slowly, Éamonn sank back into his seat at the table. An odd feeling of hot shame came over him. Unsure of what he could say, he scratched at the chair’s worn, pale-green paint.

‘I want you to stay,’ Bedwyr said. ‘But you have to tell someone you’re alive.’

*

In the suitcase that still remained unpacked by Éamonn’s bed was a letter from his sister, Deirdre. She had sent it to him shortly before he left for the Navy and he never replied – he hadn’t seen her in a decade, his people had disowned him, and he was likely going to die at sea. He hadn’t seen much point in reconnecting.

He had only glossed over it last time he read it. The address she gave him to contact her was in Liverpool. Éamonn inhaled a laugh at the idea that he had likely been only a few miles from her at some point.

He cut out the article about his sinking from the paper and underlined where his name was printed as Eamon. Along with it, he attached a postcard adorned with a gaudy painting of a woman in traditional Welsh clothing, and words splashed on the mountains surrounding her which read ‘WHICHEVER PATH YOU TREAD YOU’LL FIND PEACE AND BEAUTY IN WALES.’

On the postcard’s back, he wrote a short message of his own.

Haha!!

Don’t tell Mother.

He gave it to Bedwyr to post. This satisfied him – Bedwyr had decided that it was unlikely for any authority in this remote part of the country to uncover the intricacies of Éamonn’s situation, especially given that no one outside of the locals had yet discovered that Bedwyr had a lot more bacon at his disposal than his rations allowed. He simply told Éamonn to make himself scarce if the War Ag should make an appearance.

The year continued its aimless march forward from late spring into summer. The effect Éamonn’s labour had on the farm was now fully tangible – the yard swept, sheds clean and organised, the garden a healthy selection of vegetables. Less lambs were lost than previous years, owing in part to Éamonn’s ‘wandering hours’ discouraging predators. While manual labour came naturally to him, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the minds of animals. Animal husbandry remained Bedwyr’s job, as he seemed to have a way of taming all the creatures which he encountered, wild or otherwise.

During this time, Bedwyr made it his mission to learn more about Éamonn. The snug of the local pub became their confessional booth – here, both men bribed each other with drinks in return for stories about each other.

Bedwyr had lost his father at 16, Éamonn his at 8. Both had witnessed these deaths from their own homes – Bedwyr’s father was killed by the advancement of agricultural technology in the form of an overturned tractor, Éamonn’s shot dead by a member of the Auxiliaries.

‘I was told it was a case of mistaken identity,’ Éamonn said. ‘But there was a lot of people at that funeral I didn’t recognise.’

Bedwyr professed that he had always wanted to travel, but felt rooted to the ground here. The farm was solely his responsibility and had been in the family for centuries – he wouldn’t want to see it go to strange hands. When Éamonn asked if he would not get a wife and raise a child, Bedwyr laughed and replied, ‘It just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d do.’

As the days got warmer and ever-longer, Éamonn’s midday naps became more common. Like a cat caught in a beam of sun, those still afternoons of warmth and blue skies would send him to sleep wherever he happened to be. Bedwyr would come across him asleep anywhere it was physically possible to sleep: in sheds and meadows or splayed out on grassy riverbanks, sometimes accompanied by hens or wayward piglets.

Éamonn felt himself becoming complacent. Usually when this feeling began to creep up, he would pack up from wherever he was and quietly leave. It would be self-sabotage to leave now – he was happy here, more contented than he had been anywhere in his life. He pushed the feeling down and squashed it.

*

It was a hot August evening, the smell of hay and alcohol permeating the air. The War in Europe had ended and would shortly end for the rest of the world. The pub was heaving – Éamonn sat in the corner by the unlit fire with the owner’s tabby cat, Tegi, who splayed out on the low table in front of him.

Bedwyr had disappeared off to the bar to get another round in and, as usual for him, been accosted along the way by every manner of friend and neighbour and acquaintance. It would likely be some time before he made it back. Éamonn watched the swirls of Tegi’s fur twist and contort with each breath she took and decided he must be quite drunk.

Through a gap in the mass of people he could see Bedwyr chatting to a woman – Edith, he thought her name was – as both waited for their drinks. Out of view, someone raised some kind of toast that Éamonn couldn’t make out, as if the sounds were travelling through water. This rabble-rousing three cheers rang out across the room, to victory, to Churchill, to Britain. By the second of three, Edith had abruptly grabbed Bedwyr by the collar and pulled him down into a muddled, prolonged kiss.

Someone stepped across Éamonn’s line of sight. He looked down instead at the silty dregs that sat at the bottom of his glass. A wave of queasiness washed over him.

Perhaps he’d had too much to drink. The sounds of joviality around him became grating, obnoxious. He slipped out of his chair and onto his knees, where he was on eye level with Tegi.

‘Right, that’s me off, I think. G’night, Tegs.’

Tegi blinked slowly, stretched, and went back to sleep. Éamonn stood, disappeared behind a group of still-cheering people blocking the door, and stepped out into the stiflingly warm night air.

*

At some point of the morning – the sun was up, that much he could tell – there was banging on the door.

Groggily, Éamonn rose from where he’d been lying atop the covers and began climbing down the ladder. Just as his foot touched the ground, the door swung open; the loose iron clasp where a padlock might’ve been at some point in time clicking against the stone wall.

Bedwyr stood in the doorway. The golden morning light cutting a path through the dark space around him made him appear in silhouette. Éamonn squinted as his vision adjusted.

‘The fuck did you run off to last night?’ Bedwyr asked.

Éamonn winced. His head pounded. ‘Home,’ he said, then adjusted, ‘Here, to bed.’

Bedwyr huffed through his nostrils. ‘I thought something had happened.’

‘I just left.’

‘There’s something queer about you,’ Bedwyr said. ‘You’ve not been right lately.’

Through the anger, Éamonn could feel an ounce of concern in Bedwyr’s words. The ground seemed to shift underneath him – he took a step backward and knocked against the ladder. He put his hand to it, feeling for a rung to hold on to.

Éamonn stared up at Bedwyr, trying to catch his breath. Bedwyr towered over him, staring back down. He stepped closer, Éamonn fully wedged against the ladder now.

‘When’ve I ever been right?’ Éamonn said.

Bedwyr stepped back, glowering. He took a letter out from his pocket.

‘This came for you.’ He handed the letter to Éamonn and turned away.

Éamonn slowly slid off the ladder. He watched Bedwyr march out and across the wet yard, the sun reflecting off the stepping stones and dazzling Éamonn’s vision with red and blue spots.

His mouth was dry. The water jug which usually sat under the basin was empty and had been lobbed onto the rug at some point during the night.

All he needed was an excuse. He turned the letter over in his hand and picked it open.

Éamonn,

Mother’s not well. She mightn’t be around for a whole lot longer. I’ve come home to look after her. You should do the same.

Hope to see you soon,

Deirdre

*

Éamonn left the letter on his bed and left. He was in Dunlewey by the following afternoon.

The view of the old house set alone in the great emptiness of the Poisoned Glen ignited no feelings in him of sentimentality. He struggled to feel anything at all.

Deirdre came out to meet him, having seen him approach across the valley from Dunlewey.

‘Hello, Éamonn,’ Deirdre said. ‘You haven’t changed.’

‘You look older,’ Éamonn responded. ‘You look well, I mean. Better than I remember.’

She smirked at him. ‘Older, yes. How’s life been treating you?’

Éamonn shrugged. For some reason, despite the years between their last contact, he found it hard not to smile back at her. It made his face ache. A wave of lethargy suddenly washed over him.

Deirdre hummed in some form of agreement with his non-response. ‘Come in and sit down,’ she said, ‘Mother’s dozing in the sitting room right now.’

He followed her through the back door and into the kitchen. It appeared the same as always – sparsely decorated, flaxen walls faded by time and the layer of turf dust which stuck to them. The Sacred Heart painting hung high on the wall, watching over the dining table. A spider’s web stretched between the red glass of its oil lamp and the hand of Christ.

Deirdre explained that Mother was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. For the most part she could still look after herself, but needed someone to keep an eye on her so that she didn’t wander off or start a fire. While Deirdre was no longer working in Liverpool, she had found temporary work across the border and would only be able to come home each weekend to lend a hand and bring groceries. She asked Éamonn if he needed to be back in Wales any time soon, to which he simply responded, ‘No.’

Truthfully, he hadn’t really been listening. It dawned on him that he’d never heard Deirdre speak English before, and she the same with him. A product of them both having been in Britain for so long, he supposed. He thought of how Bedwyr rarely spoke Welsh, despite it being his first language. It was the same for most from that area – when evacuees came from the cities to stay, it was necessary to speak English for them. Even though they had all gone back home long before Éamonn arrived, the habit stuck.

It was a certain shock to the system, then, when Mother later woke up and spoke in the language Éamonn had not heard for a long time. Before Deirdre left later that evening for work, she warned him that she tried to explain to Mother that he was, in fact, not dead. This was not information that would adhere to her failing mind. His presence in the house did not convince her otherwise.

In the dark sitting room, Mother moaned from her flowery armchair. ‘I’m dying, oh, I’m dying... You’ve all abandoned me, everyone leaves...’

Éamonn stayed quiet.

‘First your stupid bastard of a father gets himself killed and leaves me with the two of you, then Deirdre runs off...’ Mother pointed at Éamonn. ‘And you were more of a ghost when you were here than you are now.’

‘And now I’m dying,’ she continued, ‘And my dead son has come to take me away from this awful place.’

‘I am alive,’ Éamonn said, quietly.

‘Well God help me.’ She let out a bitter laugh and mercifully said no more.

From the hall that night, Éamonn saw his mother through a gap in the door. Lit by candlelight, she kneeled at the foot of her bed. He paused, listening to her pray.

‘Spare my boy... I know he was misled in life, but please, spare him...’

Quietly, he turned away and stepped into his bedroom. He found it preserved as it had been from his childhood, moonlight shining in through the curtainless window. He pulled the covers over his head and, for the first time since his father died, he wept.

*

Mother was dead before spring.

The months leading up to her death were as miserable and tedious as Éamonn had expected. As her mind degraded more and more, she shifted between seeing Éamonn as a spectre and believing that he was his father. He spent most of his time simply waiting for the days to end – he could not find work while caring for Mother, and he was happy to avoid the sightlines of those who had ostracized him for taking the King’s shilling. Éamonn passed the time as he could: keep himself fed enough just to stay alive, make another cup of tea, wait for the evening to tick by until it became an acceptable time to go to bed.

He was trapped, he told himself. It was easier to simply not do anything except wait for this period of his life to be over.

Despite it all, he was still stunned when he entered the sitting room one noon to find her dead in that flowery armchair; a cup of coffee still warm, unspilled, clutched in her hands.

It quickly occurred to Éamonn that he wasn’t sure what to do. Slowly, he took the cup from her hands, placed it on the side table, and left. He headed for the other side of Dunlewey Lough.

Before Éamonn could say anything, the elderly priest who answered the door of the parochial house smiled – the kind of scrunched smile you do towards an animal that needs putting down – and said ‘Ah, an bhfuil am Maureen tagtha?’ Has Maureen’s time come?

Éamonn couldn’t remember this priest’s name, though he was sure he served as an altar boy for him once. ‘Ah – tá.’

He supposed the priest would be able to guide him in the right direction for this situation. Most importantly, he knew the parochial house had a telephone. He excused himself to call the number Deirdre had left for him.

Deirdre made it to the house by late evening. Both her and Éamonn agreed that Mother’s death would not be advertised. The neighbours would think it odd that they had no public wake, but they had always been seen as a strange outfit. There was no point in trying to stick to convention now. As Deirdre affirmed, ‘We’ll get her in the ground as soon as possible so we can both get out of this place.’

Éamonn spent most of that night stood outside. There was no point in lying awake. The night was cool and still, one of those windless nights where every sound carries for miles: every fox’s bark and sheep’s bleat, every footstep Éamonn took on the rough ground echoing across the valley.

Moonlight cast the great expanse of the Poisoned Glen in dull silver. The mountains formed an all-surrounding wall: the curling wave of Crockfadda loomed just to the south of the house, and further north, the sharp, rocky peak of Errigal towered over all.

*

Mother’s coffin was laid out on a table in her bedroom, alongside a low window where a vase sat on the inner sill. She had requested to be waked here, to be spend her final night in her own room. The undertaker had helped Éamonn take the coffin upstairs yesterday afternoon, while the priest stood nearby reciting prayers in Latin that Éamonn didn’t understand.

He had picked out the coffin himself – wicker was cheap, simple, traditional. Like a lobster pot in the shallows, the early morning light shone through the small gaps in the weaving in dots of light across Mother, across Éamonn, all across the otherwise small, dark room.

Now, Éamonn sat on a stool parallel to Mother, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees; like two rowers side by side, heading in the same direction but in opposite stages of propulsion.

Éamonn looked at Mother from the corner of his eye. The done thing was to say a few words to the deceased, have a few drinks, be in the company of family. There was nothing he particularly wanted to say, he hadn’t drank in months, and he had spent most of the night alone. The hearse would be here in the next hour or so to take her to the funeral Mass and then to her grave.

The sound of an engine cut through the silence. Éamonn glanced up, peering across Mother’s folded hands to the window. A shabby-looking Austin 7 lumbered down the dirt path and stopped a short distance from the house. Éamonn adjusted, craning to one side – the wilting flowers in the window were obscuring his view.

The passenger side opened and closed. Éamonn saw a mess of black curly hair, a distinctive stripe of white running through it. His stomach dropped.

Bedwyr stood in the yard, squinting in the sun.

Éamonn stood and ran.

Éamonn burst through the front door. Bedwyr’s back was turned to him, watching the departing car. He turned at the sound of the quickly approaching footsteps.

‘Éam–’

The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him. After taking a moment to regain his balance and to discern what had happened, Bedwyr returned Éamonn’s embrace.

Bedwyr patted him firmly on the back. ‘You alright?’

Éamonn’s grip loosened, slowly, until he released Bedwyr and took a step backwards. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He nodded faintly instead.

Bedwyr looked him up and down. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t leave the farm...’

‘Didn’t think you’d want to see me.’ Éamonn’s voice was hoarse. He coughed and looked back to the house.

‘Could say the same to you,’ Bedwyr said. ‘You left without saying anything.’

Éamonn didn’t respond. Bedwyr studied the side of his face intently. ‘How’s your mother?’

‘Dead,’ Éamonn replied.

Bedwyr blinked. ‘How long?’

‘Yesterday,’ Éamonn said. ‘Funeral’s today. You’ve timed it well. Or terribly.’

‘Oh, fuckin’ hell.’ Bedwyr paused. ‘Jesus, I’m sorry.’

Éamonn shifted on his feet. He nodded toward the house, toward the door that still hung open.

Wordlessly, Bedwyr followed him through to the kitchen. Continental buildups of loose limescale sloshed and clinked against the sides of the kettle as Éamonn lifted it to pour into two heavily stained mugs of tea.

‘I’m really sorry about your mother.’

‘So you said. It’s fine.’ Éamonn pulled out a chair and sat beside him. ‘She was on her way out for a long time. I’m a grown man.’

Bedwyr gazed into the tea clasped in his hands. ‘It doesn’t matter how old you are,’ he said softly. ‘That’s still your mam.’

He cleared his throat. ‘I found the letter on your bed and knew you’d gone home. I wanted to contact you sooner, but I didn’t know your address. I suppose I could’ve tried, but... Well, I was scared to.’ An awkward laugh. ‘Somehow, coming here in person was easier than writing. I suppose you wouldn’t be able to ignore me this way.’

‘I wouldn’t have ignored you,’ Éamonn said. He wasn’t sure if he believed his words.

Bedwyr explained that Sophie had come home a few weeks ago and was now looking after the farm, which gave him the opportunity to leave.

‘I remember you saying it was near Gweedore,’ he said. ‘I made it as far as there and started asking people if they knew you. The bloke who gave me a lift said he was a cousin of yours.’

‘Probably was,’ Éamonn mumbled. ‘Mother never spoke to any of the relations after my father died. I wouldn’t know them.’

From the sitting room, the clock began to chime. Subconsciously, Éamonn tapped his foot in time with it, nine times in total.

‘You don’t have to come to the funeral,’ Éamonn said.

‘I will,’ Bedwyr replied.

Éamonn glanced up at him, then nodded. ‘Alright.’

*

Deirdre soon arrived, having gone to town early that morning for bread and milk, or perhaps just to get out of the house. Evidently surprised by the stranger there, Éamonn introduced Bedwyr to her as ‘my old employer.’ Bedwyr apologised for intruding.

‘Not at all,’ Deirdre tutted affably. ‘It’s very good of you to come all this way. Thank you.’

Neither Bedwyr or Éamonn troubled themselves to inform her that Bedwyr’s arrival for this occasion was an accident. The hearse arrived shortly after that to take Mother to the churchyard, just over a mile away on the other end of Dunlewey Lough. Few others showed up for the funeral Mass. It was short and uneventful, but for Bedwyr slipping out during Communion to wait outside.

Mother’s coffin was light and easily carried to the grave, where she was buried beside Éamonn’s father. Éamonn, Deirdre and Bedwyr stayed there for some time after the small congregation had dispersed. Mother’s grave, as all the others in the churchyard, was fixed eternally gazing up to the stony peak of Errigal.

‘I can’t bear to stay in this place any longer,’ Deirdre whispered. She stared down at that fresh mound of soil set along the old gravel, at the small headstone with the worn name of their father. ‘I have to leave.’

She turned to Éamonn. ‘I don’t know what you plan to do now, but... You should find yourself a nice girl and settle down somewhere – somewhere away from here.’ She handed him an address and a phone number, and then, after a moment, she hugged him tightly.

‘Please look after yourself, Éamonn. Don’t go missing.’

‘I’ll try.’

She let him go. ‘Slán go fóill.’ Goodbye, for now.

‘Slán,’ Éamonn replied.

Éamonn and Bedwyr remained in the empty churchyard long after Deirdre had left. The sun had gone in by now, and they rested against the black stone wall of the church to leech off its residual warmth. Éamonn gazed across the unending bleak landscape: a vast bowl of stony, bare land enclosed by mountains of browns and muddy greens, the church a dark, anomalous monolith in the midst of it all.

‘I knew you hadn’t been right for a while,’ Bedwyr whispered. ‘I should’ve said something... I was afraid you’d say you wanted to leave. I thought you were starting to get homesick.’

‘Not for this place,’ Éamonn said.

‘Where, then?’

Éamonn shrugged.

Bedwyr watched him. ‘Is that house yours now?’

‘I suppose.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Don’t know. Stop asking me things. I don’t know.’

With his eyes closed, Éamonn let his head thunk against the cold church wall, facing up towards the grey sky. He exhaled deeply.

‘I’d love to set this whole cursed place on fire.’

Bedwyr stared at the side of his face. ‘You think about that one for a while longer.’

Éamonn kept his eyes closed.

‘I thought you’d come back with me. Sophie’s there right now, but she wants to get back to the Land Girls.’ Bedwyr paused. ‘Rhodri’s not coming home.’

When Éamonn did not respond, he continued. ‘I know you’re not happy here. ...You’re skinnier than when I found you. You look like you’re rotting.’

‘Stop,’ Éamonn said. His face was scrunched tight. ‘I just want to be left alone.’

‘I don’t think you do.’

Éamonn suddenly pushed himself off the wall and spun around to face Bedwyr. ‘I said stop. You don’t know a fucking thing about me.’

‘I do.’ Bedwyr frowned. ‘Why are you doing this? You were happy before. I know you were.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

Bedwyr sighed harshly and stared out across the lake, half-lidded, exhausted. Its icy water appeared black under the overcast sky.

‘You’re digging your own grave,’ he told him.

*

Bedwyr was gone. He had stayed a few nights after the funeral, trying to convince an increasingly distant Éamonn to come back to Wales with him, unable to traverse the growing expanse of water between them. Éamonn knew Bedwyr was planning on going back home at some point, but he didn’t know when. Eventually, he simply found the house empty. He couldn’t blame Bedwyr for leaving without saying anything. He’d done the same.

For a while, he sat in his armchair and stared into the fire. Mother’s armchair had remained untouched since she died in it: in the warmest spot nearest to the fireplace, faced towards the window where she could watch for visitors.

Éamonn kept watching the fire.

This was his house now and his house alone. When he was much younger, he often dreamt of ways he could somehow improve the land around and sow grains. Threshing machines had fascinated him as a boy, and he had always harboured the vision of watching one work a harvest which he had grown himself.

But the ground here was too rocky and acidic to grow anything, and even sheep would not eat the rough heathers. There was nothing here for him. There was nothing anywhere for him.

With a bottle of ale in one hand, Éamonn stood slowly and leaned over the fireplace. The light enveloped his dark expression in tender amber.

At dusk, he left the house and headed across the harsh land towards the mountains. It was an unusually warm March evening, the clear sky immersed in shades of deep purple. Some distance up the sloping wall, he turned and sat in the dry heather, gazing back down on the Poisoned Glen.

The house had begun to emit an unearthly glow. It seemed alive: its windows lit in bright orange as wild eyes caught in lamplight. The sound of glass shattering echoed across the valley.

Éamonn opened another bottle of ale with a stone and lay back into the mountainside, watching the flames begin flick out through the windows. They soon reached the roof, where the old, rotting thatch became quickly engulfed.

The fire’s light danced all across the valley now, like northern lights confined to the ground.

The purple dusk turned to moonless night. Éamonn remained rooted to the heather. The house burned on.

˖ ﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏ ˖