Black Lake Read online

  Then a terrible sound, the sound of a crowbar forcing the door open, a deep groan in the wood, and a whoosh of fresh air. The first face the girl sees belongs to the female guard. It contorts in disgust at the stale smell of the room. The others enter slowly. The mother is lifted from the bed by the father. The girl is amazed that he can carry her so easily in his arms, her knees hooked over his elbow, her head resting on his shoulder. The girl takes her grandmother’s hand and the guards move in silently behind, touching no one, bringing up the rear. It’s as if the whole thing had been choreographed, as if they’d learnt their roles in advance.

  Down the never-finished ballroom stairs, the wood rough and splintery; down the main staircase, carpeted now by the government in a lush green; past the stain where the tapestry of the hunt used to hang; and into the hall, the darkest room at Dulough, where the housekeeper and her husband are waiting. Mrs. Connolly opens the front door and Marianne is carried outside, into the watery winter light.

  The Spring Before

  Philip

  Dulough faced the Atlantic in the west and backed onto the Poison Glen in the east. It lived by the winds. In the dark, Philip could hear them straining at the windowpanes, trying to force their way in. It was easy to imagine the crash of glass, the furniture tipped over, his clothes whirling about the room like dancing ghosts. He would have slept with the light on if he could, but his father said that it was too expensive.

  Fifteen doors opened onto the landing: Philip’s, the bathroom, the loo, the upstairs drawing room, his father’s study, and nine other bedrooms. His parents’ was the biggest, his the smallest. Seven went unused; though there was furniture in each, the beds hadn’t been slept in for a long time. His father kept them closed to preserve the heat. When Philip did sneak in, the air was different from that of the lived-in rooms—unbreathed, damp. A final door led to the third floor, but he and his sister weren’t allowed up there.

  Dulough was a castle, even though it had been built hundreds of years after people stopped building real castles. The house’s turrets shot up into the wet sky and a faded pink rose sprawled over the front door. Philip said that the rose looked like the house’s mustache. When the blinds in the upstairs rooms were down, the house did have a sleepy, human look about it.

  To the west, a waterlogged lawn ran from the front door to the top of the cliffs, which dropped away to the sea. A tall island, not far from the shore, housed a church and the remains of Philip’s ancestors; at low tide it could be reached by foot. The lawn was bordered by rhododendrons, the only plant to thrive at Dulough, the only one that needed to be culled each year so as not to swallow up the rest. A kitchen garden had been planted behind the house and beyond that a formal garden. The creation of Philip’s mother, a relative newcomer to Donegal, it was a perfect rectangle, with tightly clipped hedges, a paved floor, and a statue dead center. To the east were the hills. They were steep and tall and dark, with ragged grass, and boulders left at precarious angles by a retreating glacier thousands of years earlier. There were waterfalls, too, which began invisibly at the top of the valley and became streams that made fissures in the earth before suddenly disappearing underground again. The red deer lived in the hills, high up in summer but coming down, close to the house, in winter. Though he always watched, Philip could go for weeks without seeing them.

  A deep lake bordered the avenue that ran for two miles from the main road, branching off first at the servants’ entrance and ending at the front door of the big house. And it was along this avenue that the moving men from Donegal Town came that morning in early April.

  “Are we taking yourself as well?”

  Philip opened his eyes. They stood, their hands already clasped under the iron bed, as if they really would take him with them. The shock of having two strange men in his room made him forget what he had been dreaming about. He hadn’t forgotten what day it was, though; they were going to move from the big house to the cottage that had been built for them down by the lake, next door to the Connollys. He sat up, but he didn’t want them watching him get out of bed. He was in his pajamas. They wore overalls streaked with dirt. The one who’d spoken to him wore a royal blue fisherman’s cap the same color as the overalls. The men were older than his father; they had deep lines in their faces. Like valleys, Philip thought. He imagined tiny glaciers settling into their skin, the ice cracking and expanding. They had been doing glaciated valleys in geography. That was what he had been dreaming about: ice and—

  “Up you get there,” the man in the cap said. “There’s a good lad.”

  Philip pushed the covers back as the men stared down at his striped pajamas. The man with the deeper wrinkles, the one who hadn’t said anything, stood aside for Philip to reach his feet to the floor and put on his slippers. By the time he stood up, they had the bed lifted in the air. Philip made for the door, tying his dressing gown tightly around him as he went. At the threshold, he stopped and turned back to the men, wondering what he should say to them. “Thank you” was what came out, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t the right thing.

  In the bathroom, Philip looked out the window above the basin. He could see all the way down the valley. It was cold. When he’d finished brushing his teeth, he said, “Ha”—hard, into the air. His breath came out in a puff, misting the windowpane. Sometimes, in the middle of winter, he and Kate would go for days without having a bath, the thought of stepping from warm water into cold air too much for them. He tried again to remember the dream he’d been having before the men came and took his bed. It was about Dulough and the ice age, but he couldn’t remember the details. He looked around the bathroom. Would they come in here? There was nothing for them to take. Everything was bolted to the floor. But he slid the lock over just in case, wondering whether his mother had told the men that they could come into his room while he was still asleep.

  The loo flushed next door. It was Kate.

  “Did they take your bed?” he asked, letting her in. “They took mine. They woke me up.”

  “I didn’t know they’d come already.” Kate sat down on the edge of the bath. “Are you nearly finished?”

  Philip looked closely at her. “You’ve got stuff in your eyes. Here.”

  He handed her the cloth and she passed it over her face, drops of water catching in her hair. Then he dipped it back in the basin and rubbed it over his own, taking care to delve into the corners of his eyes. It felt nice for one part of his body to be completely warm. Kate gave him a towel.

  “Will you get my clothes from my room? They might still be there.”

  “But I’m not dressed, either.”

  “Will you just check they’re gone then? Please.”

  He was eight and she was twelve. Sometimes, if he got the tone of his voice right, she would play big sister.

  When Kate had given him the all clear, he went back to his room. His bed was gone and there were four rusty indentations on the carpet where the casters had dug in. He put his toe into one of them and twisted it around. His bedside table was gone too, as was the chair where he put his clothes. Only his wardrobe remained: There it stood, towering over the room now that everything else had disappeared. He opened it. Trousers, a shirt, and a jumper lay folded on the bottom shelf. The rest of his things had already been boxed up and taken down to the new cottage at the edge of the lake. He put on his clothes quickly. They were damp. It was always damp in Donegal, even in the middle of summer. Most mornings he draped his clothes over the electric heater in the corner of his room, but there was no time for that today, and besides, the heater was gone. His room looked too big without the furniture to fill it up. The carpet, which was the color of the grass on the tennis court, now looked as big and wide as the tennis court itself.

  His room looked out over the back of the house, where hens scratched about in their run and sometimes laid eggs for his breakfast. Further out, at the beginning of the valley, was the barn. It was made of corrugated iron that had long ago begun to rust; sunlight and ra
in trickled freely through the holes in the walls and roof. It was where Francis kept the winter fodder for the deer and the fertilizer for the gardens. In behind the hay, an ancient Overland car decomposed. When they were younger, Kate and Philip used to sit up in the front seat, taking turns driving to Dublin—or, when their mother taught them about the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople. When a wheel gave way and the car lurched dangerously to one side, Francis told their parents not to let them play there.

  The cushions that used to line the wide sill had been taken by the men and so Philip jumped up and stood in the recess. He had a better view of the valley than ever and he wondered why it had never occurred to him to try this before. Now he could see the mountains in the distance. The one with a summit like a boiled egg with the top lopped off was Mount Errigal, the highest mountain in Donegal, behind it was Muckish, or Dooish, he wasn’t sure. He liked those names and wondered if they had been picked by children. If they had, what sort of adults had allowed such a privilege?

  He jumped down from the sill and landed with a thud on the carpet. What would he do today? What was he supposed to do today? Surely there would be no lessons with his mother this morning, and he couldn’t imagine what would happen in the afternoon. Usually, after he and Kate had lunch with Mrs. Connolly in the kitchen, they would go for a walk—if it was fine. Lately they’d been taking geography walks with their father, who would point out the features of the valley. Philip loved these afternoons. He saw much less of his father than his mother, despite the fact that his father’s study wasn’t far at all from the door to the upstairs drawing room where he and Kate did their morning lessons. When it rained, they would read books by the fire, curled up next to their mother. Kate was always the first to become restless, to walk to the window, to watch the water streaming down it, to suggest that they lived in the most boring place on earth. Their mother, Marianne, used to say, “Only boring people are bored,” but lately she had given up and taken to ignoring Kate as best she could. Philip was glad of this. He didn’t like feeling that it might have been better had they been born somewhere else—that there was a world sliding by without them.

  It looked misty outside, but today there would be nowhere to read. Slumping onto the floor, his head banged against the bottom of the windowsill and then he banged it again, on purpose, for no good reason at all.

  He sat there until his backside began to ache and he thought he’d better get up. He told himself that when he wanted to come back and look at Muckish and Dooish, he could. It was still his room. Dulough was still their house. Their father had told them so in his study after Christmas. He’d come to an arrangement with the government: Tourists would visit Dulough and the money they paid would fix the things that needed fixing, like the roof and the chimneys. It was very expensive to keep such a big house going and they didn’t have the money to do it on their own anymore. Philip thought that Francis could have fixed things, but he didn’t say it. The decision had been made.

  On the landing it was surprisingly quiet. Philip had expected to see men everywhere, but aside from his feet creaking the same old floorboards that had creaked all his life, there was no sound. He wandered into the upstairs drawing room just in case he and Kate had been left some schoolwork to do. His mother would often leave them elaborate notes, assigning chapters to read, suggesting how long it might take them to do a certain lesson, how she would be back at a certain time (sharp!). But of course the drawing room was empty now, too. The long mahogany table where they did their work had left indentations in the carpet like the ones in his bedroom. The sofa with the sagging rose-patterned covers was gone, as was the sideboard that held all the board games and the old Meccano set. In the bay window, the wicker chair where his mother sat in the evenings had vanished too. The only thing left was the huge gilt-edged mirror, still hanging precariously above the fireplace. Philip looked up and saw himself reflected back, a scrawny boy in a green woolen jumper and blue corduroy trousers. He wondered if the mirror was being left behind for the tourists. With a bit of luck, he thought, it might squash one of them.

  Above the main stairs, there was a long stain on the wall where the tapestry of the hunt had been. The hall was as dark as always, the only light coming in through the stained glass window at one end. Even on bright days, it was a gloomy, slightly frightening place, and on days like this, when the grayness seemed to have come down from the sky and settled on everything, he didn’t like to be there at all. Ordinarily he took the servants’ staircase, which began outside his bedroom door and went directly down into the kitchen. As the house didn’t have servants anymore (except for Mrs. Connolly, who wasn’t really a servant), he had never met anyone on the back stairs and considered them his territory.

  Dulough’s front door was big and heavy. It would have taken two Philips standing side by side with their arms stretched out to span its width. He stood on the ends of his toes, reached the latch, and put all his weight into pulling it towards him. Day filled the hall. The gravel swept in a semicircle around the front door; it was filled with chairs, tables, sideboards, beds (he could see his own), cupboards, bedside tables, armchairs, sofas, the wicker chair from the upstairs drawing room, and a rolled-up carpet. It was as if the house had taken a great breath and spat out its insides.

  Each piece of furniture had a label that said either “Cottage” or “Dublin” in his mother’s writing. He checked the labels on his things carefully; he was relieved to see that they all said “Cottage” on them.

  Kate found him, sitting there on the rose-patterned couch, as she wove about the chaotic outdoor room. She was carrying an armful of plastic sheeting, which Philip recognized as the covering for the turf in the barn.

  “We have to save all this before it’s ruined. Mum said.”

  “Where is she?”

  Kate was too busy pulling plastic over the dining room table to answer. He dragged a piece over to his bed. The sheets were still on it, just as he’d left them when the men took it away. He pulled them up.

  “Come and help me with this, will you?” Kate shouted from the other side of the gravel, as she tried to cover the top of the very tall bookcases from the drawing room.

  Philip made his way over to her.

  “Why is all this stuff outside in the rain anyway?”

  “Mum thinks the movers are useless,” Kate answered, matter-of-factly. “They’re over there, having lunch.”

  Philip looked down the avenue and saw a white van parked there. A thermos rested on the dashboard. They were not the men who’d come into his room.

  “It’s too early.” He looked at his watch.

  “They got here at seven, so it’s their lunchtime now. They moved all the furniture when we were asleep.”

  Philip didn’t like the idea that they had been dismantling the house as he slept upstairs. He thought that he shouldn’t have been able to sleep through that, that he should have somehow known what was going on.

  “What are we going to do today?” he asked Kate. “What are we supposed to be doing—I mean, if we haven’t got schoolwork and stuff?”

  “I think we’re supposed to be helping.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, ask someone.” She gestured to the bookcase.

  He thought for a moment and said, “I’ll help you, but then I’m going to look for the others.”

  When they had finished, the driveway looked like one of those slums in India that they’d seen in books, a plastic city with a life throbbing away underneath.

  He rubbed the mist off his face with his sleeve and rounded the corner of the big house, passing between the pillars with the deer antlers on top. The avenue was rutted with puddles—he avoided them carefully because he wasn’t wearing his boots. His father had told them that minibuses would carry the visitors from the main road up to the house. He tried to imagine what it would be like when Dulough was full of people, when there’d be lots of little buses on the avenue. He followed the curve of the lake for half a mil
e or so before the cottages came into view. The Connollys’ was small and whitewashed, with a geranium-red half door and well-looked-after roses in the garden. Their own had appeared after Christmas—it magically grew out of the ground in the middle of the night, like a toadstool.

  The only good part of this was that he’d be nearer to the Connollys—and the lake. Francis had taught him how to fish. Some days Philip would be summoned to their kitchen, with its frilly lace curtains and Virgin Marys lined up on the windowsill, for a decent meal. They were Francis’s words. You had to have a decent meal before going fishing; with a decent bit of food in you, you could stay still out there for hours. He had heard his mother say that Francis reminded her of Yeats’s fisherman. Philip found a book in the drawing room, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. He’d leafed through it until he came across the right poem. He agreed that a man with a “sun-freckled face” who went fishing at dawn was a good description of Francis, but he wasn’t sure what the rest of the poem meant.

  Because the new cottage floated on a sea of deep, sticky mud, a long, thin plank connected the avenue with the front door. It wobbled as Philip stepped onto it. He knew that if he fell in without his boots on, he’d certainly be in trouble. So as to make sure he didn’t, he imagined that he was not surrounded with mud but with lava from a volcano. Mount Errigal had erupted after thousands of years, spewing its hot, liquid contents down the hillside. At any moment the new cottage and the Connollys’ could melt. His survival depended on balancing on this fireproof bridge until he was rescued. He took a final leap and landed on the front porch.

  Inside, his new home looked more like the outline of a house than a real one. There was no carpet on the floors and the doors had still to be hung. None of the furniture from the big house had arrived yet. He had come because he thought he might find his mother, but he knew the house was empty the moment he came in. Where was she? Usually, when she had to leave them, she’d say where she was going, which could only have been one of a few places—to the garden or to see Mrs. Connolly or to talk to their father in his study. But now it was as if she had vanished. He wanted to tell her about the men taking his bed before he was ready.