The Catch

The Catch

Like the sleek body of a seal, the coffin rose above the black sea of mourners as white shirt cuffs frothed about its rigid body. Overhead, seagulls cried mournfully, not for the loss of Jim, but for his catch.

Down a sandy path mourners flowed, led by a solitary priest who intoned the Lord’s prayer as he walked, while two altar boys, sheathed in white, waddled beside him like the newborn chicks of the seagulls above.

Agnes, Jim’s wife, made her way at the head of Jim’s coffin. She and Jim had been married for forty-two years, and had three grown-up sons, all of whom stood beside her, but unlike Agnes, their faces were soggy and wrinkled with grief.

Since being told by Phelim O’Mhurchu, the island’s resident lifeguard, that Jim’s boat had been found without him onboard, Agnes had remained dry-eyed and seemingly devoid of loss. Even with the discovery of Jim’s body, pulled from the water near the south edge of the island, Agnes had neither cried nor wailed at the loss of her husband. Whispered rumours, started by those she called neighbour and friend, followed in her wake like the hiss of the sea, washing against her as the tide had done many a time before when she’d stood with bare feet in the warming shallows of summer.

It angered Agnes greatly that she’d not shown any sadness since the loss of Jim, for she loved him dearly. Theirs was a fierce bond which kept them tightly entwined together. In the years since their marriage, she and Jim had grown into one of the pillars of their community, a feat even more surprising as Jim was considered an outsider by many, having not been born on the island.

Agnes had seen the way people looked at her that morning, and the mornings since Jim’s body had been discovered. Even her own sons, whose stares at first were sympathetic, had grown cold and rigid. Yet, in the face of such hardness, Agnes still did not weep.

At the graveside, the priest spoke through a microphone connected to a small portable speaker which sat at his feet, like an obedient terrier. His voice was lost to most however, as the wind took his words and cast them out to sea, where slight and ineffective they slipped through the nets of local fishermen.

Staring at the coffin as it was lowered into the open grave, Agnes wished this was all a cruel joke, and that Jim would come home safe to her once again, giving a short wave from the bow of his boat as he always did whenever she stood on the quayside awaiting his return.

When the prayers ended, Agnes, along with her sons, stood and shook the hands of those who’d come, listening once again to how sorry everyone was for their loss, and what a fine man Jim had been.

Knowing that Jim would only ever be referred to in the past tense cut Agnes deep, and she longed to climb to the highest point on the island, where the lighthouse stood and scream her grief until she was hoarse.

Returning home alone, for her sons and the other mourners had retreated to Brown’s pub for drink and sandwiches, Agnes stood in the quiet of her kitchen and stared out at the sea on the horizon.

Removing her suit jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair, Agnes tasted the faint salty tattoo which the sea breeze had left upon her lips at the graveside. It reminded her of the taste of Jim’s kisses.

No longer would she hear the deep baritone of his voice as he called out to her, nor would she feel the scratch of his woolen jumpers, heady with the scent of brine and seaweed, as he held her close. The bed upstairs would never again feel overly full with his presence. The thought of which almost drove Agnes to her knees.

Outside, Agnes could see that dusk was falling, and that the sea had begun to blacken. Fetching a torch from one of the drawers nearby, Agnes made her way out into the back garden. There, she walked southward, some 120 paces, until she met the stone wall her father had erected almost sixty years before.

Running her hand along the roughness of the wall, Agnes walked until she encountered a worn, smooth stone about the size of a mackerel. Shining the torch upon the stone, she saw the faintest outline of her father’s initials, P.O.E (Pascal Ó hÉalaithe). Setting the torch down, Agnes wedged her fingers in and around the stone’s edges and began to move it back and forth. Dirt and compacted debris placed there by the wind coming in off the sea made the stone difficult to maneuver, and it took Agnes a long time before she felt the subtle shift of the stone moving towards her.

Out of breath and slick with sweat, Agnes continued to persevere until the stone dropped from its resting place with a dull thud.

Panting, Agnes stuck her hand into the space left by the stone and felt a much wider cavity behind. This was her father’s old hiding place. It was here he’d hid his stash of poteen from his wife, for Agnes’s mother was a pious soul who revered the Catholic Church and everything they stood for, including their views on alcohol.

Agnes had discovered the hiding place one night, when returning from a walk on a nearby beach, something she did in the hope of curing her lifelong affliction of insomnia, and she’d encountered her father rummaging within the wall. Embarrassed, he’d confessed what he used it for and swore her to secrecy. Agnes had agreed, for she’d witnessed too many times her mother’s lambasting of her father in the name of religious fervor.

What Agnes found now was not some half-drunk bottle of poteen but instead a soft, luxurious coat. Pulling it from its hiding place, Agnes was amazed at how it still shone in the moonlight, despite its many years hidden away. Staring at it made Agnes remember the first time she’d ever held it some forty-two years before.

On another late-night stroll, Agnes had found the coat on the beach next to a shallow rock pool. Nearby, a young man was lying asleep, with hands behind his head as a soft murmur escaped his lips.

Agnes had known what the coat was from the moment she’d first seen it, for even though her mother was bound to the Bible and its archaic words, Agnes’s grandmother put more faith into the island’s folklore. Many a winter’s night Agnes had listened to her grandmother as she talked of selkies, or seal people, and how they lived in the waters surrounding the island. Once on land selkies shed their skin and took on human form. Those who found and took their skin the selkie was forced to love.

Unmarried at nearly thirty, and sick of enduring the hard bitter bite of loneliness, Agnes had snatched up the coat and run back to her father’s hiding place before stuffing it inside. Returning to the beach, Agnes had found the young man furious, and his eyes, the colour of pouring honey had burned with hatred, but despite all this he was bound to love her for what she had taken from him.

In the beginning, Jim demanded and then begged for his coat back, but every time Agnes refused him. For hours on end, he would search for the coat, and when their boys were smaller, he included them as well by making a game of it, but he never discovered Agnes’s hiding place.

“Is brea liom tu,” she’d cried, “agus is brea leatsa me.”

“Love you?” Jim had shot back, “How can love exist without free will?!”

Agnes knew Jim was bound to her for what she held, however that did not mean he spent every waking moment in her company. Early in their marriage, Jim bought a boat and spent most of his time out at sea. He soon became a lauded fisherman, selling his catch at the highest price to those on the mainland. Agnes often wondered if returning to the water would drive Jim crazy, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on him. He became calmer and over time began to show signs of affection for Agnes. He would bring her bouquets of seaweed and necklaces made of seashells, which the local women derided but Agnes treasured such gestures. The sea seemed to offer Jim a great deal of comfort.

However, it gave Agnes none. Throughout the days when Jim was away, Agnes existed within a heightened state of anxiety, waiting for a knock on her door and for someone to tell her Jim was lost at sea, for she knew even though he had settled down, the longing to return beneath the waves still ate away at her husband. On rare occasions, she still caught sight of the madness within his eyes, and in those moments, she gathered the boys about her, afraid Jim would finally return beneath the waves and bring the boys along with him for spite.

Clambering over nearby stones, Agnes made her way to the end of a breakwater. About her, the black sea boiled and hissed in the moonlight. Rubbing her face against the coat’s softness one last time, she dropped it into the churning waters below, where for a moment it floated peacefully before sinking beneath the waves.

“Oh Jim, please forgive me,” she cried out into darkness, but nought but the slapping of the waves on the rocks below answered her plea.

Caught in the current of her own guilt, the warmth of Agnes’s loss finally rolled down her aged cheeks.