Page 9 of Whale Harbor

“In Irish you don’t entirely become that emotion like might happen to a native English speaker. Think about ‘I am sad’ versus ‘sadness is upon me.’ There’s a degree of removal in it. The emotion doesn’t own you when speaking Irish. In Irish the anger, the sorrow, even the happiness, I’m sorry to say, are all temporary and will pass as all things pass. No feeling is permanent.”

Mac thought about that as they walked, how the way you speak might impact the way a person thought.

“Does no one speak Irish in Dublin?”

“There are pockets and there are some trying to get a movement going, but no, not really. The children learn it in school but like most things they forget as soon as they leave. And even the ones who get top marks—it’s not imprinted on them like it is on you. It’s not their native tongue.”

“Which is why you’re studying us?”

Vincent laughed. “Exactly right.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“Did you know that fifty years ago the population of the Cuan and the islands was double what it is now?”

“My father talks about that. It bothers him.”

“Does it? Your father is called Cathal, isn’t he?”

Mac nodded. But he didn’t want to discuss Cathal and felt caution settle in his belly.

“Your father, does he have a still?”

“He does,” Mac said coolly. It was a step too far, which meant Vincent didn’t truly know what he was asking. It was risky, admitting to having a still, but he felt certain Vincent wasn’t going to call up the excise man and report them. And he wasn’t stupid, even if university people often seemed to be missing a degree of common sense. A lot of people got a few pounds from Cathal Joyce along the way and those people would be angry if their chance for a bit of extra money got taken away. Plus, if the professor was taking his meals in the pub and listening to the gossip, then it was very likely he already knew.

Vincent didn’t push about the still, perhaps because what he wanted most was a glimpse inside their cottage. Mac couldn’t understand what it was he was hoping to see, exactly. Just how it was arranged, Vincent said. He wanted to see the area for preparing food, for eating, for sleeping. But as well as they got on, Mac postponed. He used his mother as an excuse, tired from caring for a newborn.

It was Rian who eventually extended the invitation. He’d skipped school once again to follow them along the turf-cutters’ road, the vast bog scarred with long, narrow slices. It was difficult, wet land to negotiate if you didn’t know your way. They didn’t know Rian was following them until he shouted at them to look, and turning, they saw a dozen ponies silhouetted on a nearby hill. Tradition was to let the ponies run wild until the end of their second year.

“Have you met our ponies?” Rian asked, coming closer. “Elvis and Presley.” He grinned up at Vincent to make sure those names rang a bell.

“You should be in school,” Mac said.

“I haven’t met any ponies, no,” Vincent said, laughing.

“And there’s the draft horse Mac’s bringing on. Thistle. Did you tell him, Mac? Mac is a wonder with horses.”

“My father will sell her,” Mac said, looking down at the road.

“You’ll come, will you?” Rian asked. “Right now?” They were stymied anyway by a group of heifers lying across the road. The ditches on both sides of the lane were filled with reeds and water—nothing a scholar would want to trudge through. So they turned around, made their way up the boreen, and before Mac could signal him to stop, to think for a second, Rian invited Vincent inside to meet their new brother and their mother too. Vincent had already met the rest of the Joyce brothers going and coming on the roads but he hadn’t met Mac’s parents.

“You think that would be all right?” Vincent asked Mac.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Mac said.

But when Vincent’s back was turned, Mac shoved Rian toward the cottage. Rian understood perfectly and raced around to the kitchen door to warn her.

A moment later, when Mac knocked and gently opened the front door, his mother was stirring the fire. Her stained apron was nowhere in sight.

“This is my mother,” Mac said. She nodded at them and blushed.

“Mrs. Joyce,” Vincent said. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve only school Irish. That’s why I rely on your son! I’m Vincent Browne.”

“Hello,” she said.

“Thank you for letting me see your home. I have great admiration for the way you do things here.”

Mac knew his mother did not understand all that the professor said, but she understood enough. He tried to see his home through Vincent’s eyes, a man who’d been asked to speak at universities and had traveled by airplane and stayed in countless hotels. They had a slate roof, at least. That was an improvement not every house had. But the rough furniture, the threadbare tablecloth—here was a man used to modern toilets, electricity. There was a bowl of eggs on the table, and next to it a pile of dried seaweed. There was a bucket of fresh milk in the corner, the handle of the ladle sticking out. Once the day warmed up, the milk would get thick, almost like pudding, and could be eaten with a spoon. But at least at that moment the cottage was mostly empty of Joyces.