Page 2 of The Women at Ocean's End

Was it coming from the old well? She was so close to it.

The well had been locked up years ago. You’d hardly even know it was there, thanks to the way the garden had outgrown itself over the last year. It was little more than a hole in the ground with a wooden trapdoor across it. No-one went near it usually, except if a winter storm flooded the gardens and it had to be pushed across to take the overflow. The timber cover was crude but effective in keeping out animals and children, until now, it seemed. The well wasn’t used any more. All the houses along here had been built with indoor lavatories and kitchen sinks linked up to the city’s main water systems. Her mother gave out often enough about the colour of the water some days and the fact that it turned her tea a dreadful shade of grey in summer.

Constance listened carefully, hardly daring to breathe; she tried to tune her ears unswervingly to the cries, above the drumming of her racing heart. It was definitely a kitten. He sounded pathetic. She heard him again; lower this time, a sort of keening sound.

Constance sat there for a moment, part of her afraid to break cover, but the howling felt like a knife twisting up in her guts and smothering out the fear of what she was risking. She couldn’t leave the poor thing to suffer any longer. She seemed to be alone in the garden: the boys had not yet broken through the fence. A deep breath and she pushed through the undergrowth, looking up and down the garden all the while to check that it was safe. She ploughed on all fours through a sea of overgrown vegetables and weeds that were probably waist-high in places, thistles and briars scratching against her bare arms and legs as she went.

‘It’s okay, I’m coming,’ she whispered under her breath. The well was little more than a hole in the ground. At some point, a rough frame had been placed around it, to define it by a matter of inches from the garden Mr Morrison had prized above all else. Constance wasn’t sure she’d have been so brave had it been anywhere near the house. The old cover lay loose across the low frame. Constance crawled to it, slowly and carefully to avoid fox droppings and who knew what else was buried here in the neglected long grass. In the distance there was a sharp scream. Lickey Gillespie had been stung by a wasp; she watched him through the thick foliage. Only a few yards away, but it seemed they had forgotten about her, for now at least. The boys were moving away, towards Mr Morrison’s empty house. They had spotted a slightly opened sash window which proved more interesting than torturing Constance, a mercy she was grateful for even if she didn’t count on it lasting very long.

The mewling sound again made her push on.

Pushing the cover across was easy. Lying on her belly, gingerly she leaned over the edge.Urgh. Immediately the overpowering smell of putrid water caught her breath, making her retch. Now she wished she had her hanky.

The mewling was loud and echoey here, not the gentle sound that had whispered through the grass moments earlier.Definitely a kitten. Constance told herself sternly to forget her mother’s warning that this place was filled with rats’ nests. That had only been to put her off, why would rats choose here when there were far more comfortable places to set up home? Dotty maintainedit went down all the way to hell and if you got too close, there was a chance Satan himself could reach up and pull you in.Well of course, Constance didn’t believe all that nonsense either. After all, she had made her confirmation a year ago. She knew better than anyone that the road to hell wasn’t down some smelly old hole in the ground. Reverend Mother Mary Ignatius said it was to be found most easily in the big cities, especially in the communist and atheist countries. You knew it because its road was paved with good intentions, not that Constance had any idea what that sort of road would look like.

She shivered in spite of herself. Perhaps she should wait for Dotty?

A pathetic whimper came from the darkness. There was only one thing for it. She would have to reach down as far as she could and try to grab it. The stench was getting worse the longer she was here, far better to move as fast as she could. Naturally, this was what her mother had complained about for years:the foul-smelling constancy of it just when the days are good enough to open a window.In winter time, it was like pulling a plug on an overfilling bath. Summer was a different story. If the days were fine as they had been for weeks on end now, the reek of dirty water would hang on the air and cling to clothes drying on the lines in the gardens all along the road.

That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was— Silence. The sound of the cat’s mewling had ceased. Oh God, had she killed it, made some part of the wooden cover splinter down and cut the creature in half? Constance scrunched her eyes up, afraid to peer over the edge, but she had to, she just had to get her courage up, move closer and peer down into its darkest depths.

She gripped the side of the well tightly, felt the dry slab burn against her skin. The outer rim was little more than a few rough bricks dug into the earth to save the whole garden from falling in. She had to force herself to look over the side, fully expecting to see nothing but black and the reflective circles of two pathetic dead eyes staring back at her from the bottom of the well.

‘Meow.’ It was faint, but by some miracle, the kitten was clinging onto a narrow ledge at the side. It was a little way down, but not so far Constance felt she couldn’t reach it if she stretched.

‘Shh, here puss, puss,’ she soothed as she pulled the sleeve of her dress up further, leaned over the side and reached down as far as she could to grab the kitten. She hoped he wouldn’t scratch her, but she braced herself in case, because regardless of how feral the creature was, she had to grab him and pull the poor sod to safety, it would only take a second, not enough time for him to do any real damage. Except, she couldn’t reach him, not like this. His soft ears were just beyond her fingertips.

‘Right,’ she murmured, looking around her. She inched closer, so close her belly was now balancing on the side of the well, her body almost at a right angle, so the blood rushed to her head, making her dizzy and sick all at once.Bloody hell. It still wasn’t enough. She rattled off a quick Hail Mary – an insurance of sorts – then she steadied up, before stretching as far as she could. She reached her hands down, down, ignoring the pull on her shoulders; still she couldn’t feel the animal near her grasp. She leaned further over, her head spinning as if she’djust stepped off a carousel; she was bent way across the edge of the rough wooden frame so its jagged splinters grazed beneath her belly button. Taking a deep breath, as if about to dive into the water, she reached as far as she could, feeling her muscles tighten all along her spine and down the sides of her body. One more stretch. Fur. She could feel it, soft, wet, downy beneath her hands. She grabbed the cat by his neck, yanked him up in a flash and swung him across behind her back, so he could land on the safe ground. Maybe not the gentlest rescue, but he was alive.

It was as she was swinging her arm back again to place her hand on the rim of the well that a crow screeched over her. It was so low, she felt the breeze of its flight almost lift her dress from her skin. The jolt caused Constance’s whole body to jerk and before she knew what was happening she had lost her footing. For what felt like an eternity, she swayed back and forth, her head tipping further into the well, her hands before her face, she couldn’t right herself around to grab the sides of the well to keep her balance. She tried to bellyflop her body backwards on the grass. On the second attempt, she thought she felt the earth beneath her as if she might have shifted her weight so she was safe, but then something silky and writhing brushed up against her – the cat, startling her – and she lost her purchase on the ground.

Falling into the well seemed to happen in slow motion.

Constance reached out, trying to catch onto something, perhaps another ledge just as the cat had. There was none. Something rubbed against her back: a rope against one wall. She grabbed it, wrapping her body around it. Her hands, covered with sweat, betrayed her by slipping too easily against the braids and losing purchase so holding in one place was impossible. The tighter she held on, the more the rope cut sharply into her skin, peeling it coarsely, which might have made her let go, but for the drop beneath. She slid down it, desperately fighting against fateand gravity; gripping hungrily to descend as slowly as she could, clinging to the narrowing shaft of daylight as if it could save her from what was clearly unavoidable. She wanted to scream – tried hard to call out for help – but her voice caught somewhere in her throat, her breath halted in her lungs, she was beyond making a sound, too petrified to do much more than hang on.

Inch by inch she slid down into the blackness, too engrossed in the task of holding on to think about what waited at the end. She must have fallen from the rope, but even years afterwards she wouldn’t remember what had happened next.

Forty foot or was it yards? That was the first thought she had when she woke. She’d heard the grown-ups discuss the well a year earlier, but she couldn’t for the life of her guess at just how far down she was. It was dark, but still, she could see the sky, just a glimpse far above her in the narrow well mouth. It was as much as she could make out and she lay for a long time staring at the clouds and sobbing miserably. She tried to think of a way out, but her head hurt, her body felt as if it had been broken into a thousand pieces and she was too scared to move much in case of what might be lurking in the shadowy walls above her.

Later, she remembered Dotty’s father – Mr Wren. He must have been near his garage, but he wouldn’t have heard her scream, not from two gardens up.

She tried calling for help, when she woke up later. By then, she had no idea if it was morning or afternoon or even how long she’d been there. It was no use. She stood up, reached round, searching the air above her head for the rope she’d clung to earlier, maybe she could climb back up again? It was no good. It was not there, it must have ended somewhere above her reach. There was only one thing for it. They would have to find her, maybe just like she’d found that kitten, maybe someone near the fence at the right time would hear her call. And so she began to call out, her voice quickly ascending to a frightened screamwhich only fed her terror. In the end, her voice grew hoarse and her sobs overtook her calls for help. She was lost down here in the darkness and soon even the slim shaft of light that penetrated from so far over her head began to fade.

Later, much later, she thought she heard them calling her.Constance. Constance. Constance.Her mother’s voice had a strange musicality to it, as if keening her daughter’s name. But Constance was too tired for any of it to register beyond a mere whisper.I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

By the time night came in, she had fallen asleep as much from giving up as exhaustion or fear.

1

Pin Hill Island

Constance Macken

Pin Hill Island had always been a haven, not just for sea birds and undisrupted native species of everything from Irish hare to native Irish goat, but also for people. Visitors to the island often remarked on the prettiness of the place. In summer, the locals pushed the boat out with hanging baskets, a strident tidy village committee and a touching-up of the pastel-coloured houses that were a tourist’s first impression as they disembarked the ferry. The overall effect was welcoming and comforting. Nothing bad could possibly happen here, could it? Maggie Macken, Constance’s mother, must have recognised it the first moment she’d stepped on the, then, busy dock. Oh, that was a long time ago now – Constance and Dotty had been girls, glad to leave their old lives behind. Pin Hill Island couldn’t have been more different from Galway and the narrow terraced streets they’d known. The island seemed vast by comparison, but it was only ten miles by eight miles. Sometimes Constance found it hard to believe it had been her home for almost seventy years.

Ocean’s End, the art deco folly house her mother had purchased all those years ago, stood on the westernmost tip, between the only two villages on the island – well, you could hardly call Muffeen Beag a village, but no-one would ever saythat to anyone who lived there. Muffeen M?r, on the other hand, boasted the vital conveniences any modern village needed. Snuggled beneath Pin Hill and at the top of a narrow slipway the locals grandly calledthe pier. There was a post office, a church (albeit without a resident priest these days), a supermarket, two pubs, a hotel, the cemetery, a ramshackle community hall, and a small school, which was fought hard for when Constance was just a girl. Later, she’d taught there for many years. Two of those years were more precious than the rest when her darling husband had taken up the principal’s job. Oisin had fallen in love with the island soon after he fell in love with Constance. Sometimes, she found herself smiling wistfully when she caught a flicker of those hopes and dreams. A lifetime ago, now.

Ocean’s End was as different from the terraced house they’d lived in in Galway as it was possible to be. A striking, two-storey white edifice, peering over a rocky cliff to the ocean below, it wasn’t a huge house, not by today’s standards to be sure. Over the last few years, there had been some monstrosities erected on the south side of the island, holiday homes for people who didn’t really know the island at all. Still, Ocean’s End felt far too big for one person, even if she did live here all year round. For a start, there were five bedrooms too many and a generous library Constance hardly ever poked her nose into these days. The windows, in their thin pencil-like frames, now seemed insubstantial, the flat roof a nod to a very different era and the once white paint had turned to a flaking red-grey, thanks to the constant onslaught of the sea below.

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