‘It will pass,’ M. Deauville assured me.
A rumbling vibration was constant during that period, the put-put-put of a fishing trawler setting out for the night, churning the black water into white lace, except that the sound didn’t grow fainter with distance travelled but instead louder as the weeks passed. They were getting closer. A flagstone in the cellar might lift at any moment and an army of Hickey’s construction workers come charging in to storm the castle.
I rose one morning in the hour before dawn and pulled on the clothes that I had removed just a few hours earlier, for it did not seem to me that a new day had begun but that the old one was being driven mercilessly on, flogged past its limits like a broken-down workhorse, and that since it was yesterday for me still I should be dressed in yesterday’s shirt. It had been my worst night yet. I had not even managed one of my two-hour cycles.
The two setters were asleep outside Father’s door. They sprang to their feet in hackling defence when I entered the hall and one of them dared to growl, but their long frames yielded to wagging bodily when they saw that it was a friend. I got down on my hunkers and clasped one under each arm. They were so slim. The pair pressed themselves against me, thumping the walls with their tails. ‘Good boys,’ I whispered, ‘good boys, good boys,’ and their ardent hearts beat harder. It was so rare to find good boys in this world of bad boys that it seemed crucial to acknowledge and praise it.
The pair loped along after me through the dark passageways, their claws tapping upon the parquetry, their tails swinging in slow arcs, but when I reached the door to the kitchen garden and unhooked the key, they sat down and gazed up at me beseechingly. We had arrived at an impasse. They were creatures of duty. Father was their master. I was asking them to abandon their post. Our adventure had come to an end.
Out on the avenue, the put-put-put was louder.
Down at the gate lodge, Larney’s Jack Russell shot from the bushes with the velocity of a kicked ball. ‘Toddy!’ came the voice from my childhood and the dog trotted back to its owner. Larney came limping out onto the avenue, the usual anguished smile on his face. Didn’t the man sleep, or did he lie coiled on his cot through the night, his eyes open and his ears cocked, spending so much time with the nocturnal creatures that he had become one of them? That’s if Larney had been in bed. He was fully dressed.
‘Would that be the young master?’
‘Yes, Larney,’ I said, trying not to break my stride — I wasn’t able for his nonsense at that hour — but the dog planted itself in my path. I sidestepped but it relocated to block my passage, tackling me like a centre forward.
‘It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s no more than a month old. What is it?’
I looked up from the terrier. ‘Excuse me?’
Larney sidled closer, smiled harder. ‘It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s no more than a month old. What is it?’
‘Oh.’ It was one of his riddles. ‘I don’t know, Larney. What is it?’
‘The moon.’
‘I see. Very good. Larney, tell me: do you hear that noise too?’
This elicited a strangled silence from the man, during which the put-put-put seemed more pronounced than ever. Larney stared at me in shrinking and blinking alarm, so I pointed towards Claremont.
‘Down there. Do you hear it? That vibration.’ He turned his head to follow the direction of my finger, but my question had thrown him into a paroxysm of confusion. ‘It’s not a riddle, Larney. It’s a simple question. Do you hear that noise?’
His eyes darted back to mine. Uncertainty had distorted his smile, flipped it upside down, but then he brightened. ‘What goes round the castle and in the castle but never touches the castle?’
‘Larney, please listen to me for a moment. Can you hear that noise too: yes or no?’
He kept smiling. ‘The sun,’ he said.
‘Larney—’
‘What goes round the castle—’
‘Larney. This is important. That chugging noise: can you hear it too? Or am I losing my mind?’
Immediately I saw the error I had made. Larney processed idioms literally, and I had asked him whether he thought I was going insane. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I began, but there was no retracting it. Larney smiled in lockjawed panic as he backed away into the refuge of the shrubbery. ‘Forget it, Larney,’ I called after him, but it was too late. I’d already sentenced the poor soul to hours spent skipping over the same looped sequence like a scratched record, trying and failing to find the correct answer to the riddle I had posed. Is the young master losing his mind? He didn’t like to say. I clamped my hands to my ears to shut the chugging noise out. Maybe I was going insane.
Ireland’s Eye was a trim dun shape against the navy sea. The view my ancestors would have enjoyed was due to be bricked up again, by me. Hoarding had been erected along the boundary wall with various site notices attached. Danger. Concealed Exit. Hard Hat Area. Abandon Hope. The main road was plastered with fat tyre tracks of clay. I followed the trail to the heavy plant entrance.
Mounds of soil and rubble were heaped along the perimeter wall, waiting to be dispatched by the fleet of trucks that was parked up for the night. I stumbled in the direction of the chugging. Despite being flat, the going was heavy. Clods of clay adhered to the soles of my shoes like a snowball rolled in snow, building up only to break off again. Towards the harbour end of the site I discerned a hole, a vast one, as if a meteorite had struck. The chugging, which was now a clatter, was emanating from this crater.
I approached and peered over the lip. The earth crumbled away underfoot and I almost slithered in. It was a sharp drop. At the bottom of the pit was a whole civilisation. Machinery, lights, materials, tools. And men. There was a rake of them down there. Miniature men grubbing about in the dirt like the creatures exposed when you lifted a rock.
A man’s voice behind me penetrated the clamour. I turned around. Hickey in a yellow helmet, shouting.
‘I can’t hear you!’ I shouted back, but he couldn’t hear me. He gestured at me to come away from the edge.
‘Here,’ he said, throwing a hard hat on my head and an arm over my shoulder. Hickey had no personal boundaries, whereas I was nothing but personal boundaries, a prickling hotchpotch. He patted my helmet. ‘There y’are, Health and Safety. Good man. How do you like me hole?’ There was a smell of booze on his breath.
Enthusiastic responses have never been my forte. Weak smiles are more my thing. I took the helmet off and read the safety specification printed inside the crown. ‘I can’t sleep,’ I complained. ‘The noise.’
If it wasn’t in praise of his hole, Hickey didn’t want to hear it. He fished a Motorola out of his high-viz jacket and marched off barking instructions into it. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes he hadn’t slept much either, but for very different reasons. The man was in a fever of excitement, a child on Christmas morning.