Chapter 5: Consolidation

James rowed us out to a boat riding at a mooring fifty metres from the beach. He used a torch to inspect the little vessel leaving me standing on deck.

“Butane is heavier than air and a leak accumulates in the bilges, so I always check before I switch anything on,” he explained.

He started the engine before he went to the bow and untied us from a buoy and then he eased us out towards the island of Pabay just visible in the starlight about a mile away. We were standing in a little cabin raised above the foredeck; down a short flight of steps was a coaming covering the engine and, below that, a well where the lobster pots are stored, although they were no more than an irregular shape in the indifferent light.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I thought I was going to have to wear you down.”

“It has to be tonight,” James replied. It was several minutes before he said more. “It was what you said about her struggling against his influence that decided me to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“Emer’s mother died when she was about ten and she’s been exposed to his evil for thirty years. You know yourself just how persuasive he can be and it’s remarkable that a young girl could keep so much of her own personality.”

“You can be pretty persuasive yourself, brother.”

We grinned at each other in the illumination from the lights on the instruments in front of us. I explained about Emer resisting all the men her father sent to wed her and how she chose me instead. As I spoke, I began to understand that I had been in awe of this formidable woman who had forced her way into my life. It was no excuse, of course, but I think it was that awe that prevented me seeing how much she needed me.

I gave James a brief history of our life together and I concluded with the horror story of the pills intended to delay Aine reaching womanhood. He was appalled.

“Let me get this right: her own mother gave her medicine that would do her harm. How can you forgive her for doing that?”

“Aine asked me to forgive. She knew what her mother had been doing to her, but she could see the anguish Emer was suffering. Her father turned the full force of his personality on her to convince her that no harm would come to her daughter. As time went on a doubt began to grow in her mind, but she had his solemn promise that the pills were harmless.”

I know now that her decision to return to Pabay was the result of this doubt; she wanted to get close to her father to judge his sincerity. Her misgivings wouldn’t go away and so she told Aine to alert me to what was going on. What her state of mind is now, I can only imagine. She will assume that I would send a pill for analysis so it will be some days before we can know for certain the nature of the chemicals.

With the bank holiday intervening, it might have taken another week for the results to have come through but my discovery of the recipe in her desk meant that I had the answer in minutes. Emer will be hoping the medicine is harmless, but I’m worried about what she will do when she finds that she has caused long-term harm to our daughter.

“I think Emer will be suicidal when she gets the news,” I told James. “She truly loves Aine, and it will destroy her to have caused her harm. She’s probably too young to have reasoned it all out, but Aine somehow knows the danger and wants me to rescue her Mum. I’ve sat on my hands for too long and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your help in doing what I should have been doing for years.”

“Aye well, I recognise the urge to blame everything on yourself – I do it all the time. I suppose it’s better than always looking for someone else to blame.”

We had been sailing quietly for about twenty minutes making a wide sweep around the western side of Pabay; now we had turned towards the island, and I could make out a jetty and some sheds now my eyes were adjusted to the starlight.

“We’ll find out in a minute if Hector’s right,” James said as we swung round parallel to the jetty.

“Who are you and what do you want,” my wife asked, suddenly shining a powerful torch on us. James and I replied simultaneously.

“We’ve come to take you home Emer,” I said while James wanted to know if she was carrying a gun!

“I took the shells out and I can’t come home.”

There was a tremor in her voice now that hadn’t been there when she made her initial challenge. I had an insight that it was fear of the reception she would get from her daughter and me rather than any apprehension about leaving her father that had caused her to reply as she did.

“I don’t know what your plans are, but you are coming with us now so you can explain in person, face-to-face with Aine, why you won’t come back to our family.”

“I think I might have been harming her,” she replied in a voice now shaking with emotion.

“We know that, but we still want you back – both of us.”

James had tied up our boat and stepped ashore. Now he took the torch and a double-barrelled shotgun from my wife’s hands and laid them on the jetty. The torch was still alight, and they were caught in the beam as he took her elbow and urged her, unresisting, onto the deck and into the deckhouse. He had left the engine idling, so he quickly backed out of range of anyone coming onto the jetty.

When we were underway, he opened a hatch that led to a minute cabin under the wheelhouse; it had a table, a bench and a gas stove on a sort of cradle called gimbals that keeps it level in rough seas. Emer sat on the bench, wrapped in the blanket and I sat beside her with her hand lying listless in mine. She shuddered so I put my arm round her shoulders, and she turned towards me and snuggled in.

I don’t know how long we sat there holding each other in silence but eventually James came clattering down, lit the stove and put a kettle on to boil.

“We’ll hardly have time for tea, but I’ll make some anyway.”

He left two steaming mugs on the table in front of us and took his own back to the cabin.

“I was ready to hate you, Emer but Aine showed me that it was us that had let you down, making you deal with your father without help. She reminded me that I love you as much as she does, whatever you’ve done. It’s mainly my fault but I promise to be a better husband in future. With you in our family, we can do anything.”

Emer said nothing but she held me tighter. She reached for her mug of tea, but it slid away from her hand as we swung round sharply. The engine was idling again and, a moment later, it was switched off and James stuck his head into the cabin to announce that the cruise was over for the evening. He made me get into the dinghy first and handed Emer down to me as if she was a piece of delicate porcelain.

Shona was at the jetty, and she helped my wife to the house, an arm round her waist. The settee had been pulled out and was now a double bed with the covers turned back. James and I were shooed into the kitchen to remove our sea boots while Shona helped Emer under the covers. When we were allowed back in, she was shaking her head over offers of food and drink, with a little smile on her lips. Our hosts went upstairs, and I stripped to my underwear and got into bed beside my wife who hadn’t uttered a word since she stepped into the boat.

I moved close and she put both arms round my neck while I put one under her waist leaving the other on her hip. Until she pulled it up so she could put her leg over my thigh, I didn’t realise Emer was wearing a nightdress – Shona must have provided it. Our faces were about an inch apart and I could feel her breath on my cheek; it was after one o’clock and there was enough dawn light to let me see her clearly.

She still hadn’t spoken since we left Pabay and, when she drew a deep breath obviously getting ready to talk, I felt some trepidation. The entire future of our marriage would probably be settled in the next half hour or so and I will be hard pressed to find convincing arguments for keeping us together. When she whispered, ‘Who are they’ and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, I got a fit of the giggles.

I was expecting to have all my faults laid bare and instead I got a question about our hosts. There was a heartbeat when my wife looked startled but then she began to giggle in her turn. It ended in a sob before she tightened her arms round my neck and brought our mouths together in a fierce kiss. It was as if our bodies realised that words were not going to be enough to mend our relationship and that only a vigorous physical exchange would serve.

Emer, through her mouth, was demanding my commitment; we weren’t simply exchanging breaths and tongues but our very essence. Almost without knowing it I had my prick in her completing the conjunction of our bodies. I had never been so hard or so abandoned in my love making. I got a line from the old marriage service in my head, and it became a mantra:

‘With my body I thee worship.’

I withdrew almost completely at ‘with my body’ leaving only the tip ensheathed but then I pushed forward with increasing urgency until at ‘worship’ I was driving myself home with all the strength of my loins. Emer was matching me stroke for stroke and our mouths were still bruisingly engaged.

When my sperm entered her egg to produce our daughter it was a cataclysmic moment. Now it felt as if my soul was penetrating hers and being penetrated in its turn so that we became a shared entity. For the first time in our marriage, we reached our release at exactly the same time. We were both sweating and panting from our exertions but there was a sense of contentment that overcame us.

We fell asleep just as we were, still coupled, with her hands round my neck and mine round her waist. At some point the nightdress and our underclothes had been discarded so we slept skin to skin.

I was awakened in the morning by a quiet female voice swearing. Shona must have crept through to the kitchen without disturbing us; I suppose she made the noise that wakened me and was cursing herself for her carelessness. Emer had eased away a little during the night and was partly on her back, but we were still touching everywhere from knee to shoulder. I watched her sleeping, well aware that we had to find words to complete the rehabilitation begun by our bodies.

I heard the backdoor open and a whispered conversation; then there was the sound of a kettle approaching the boil. The curtains were thick but the light outside was strong so I could see everything in the room. Then the peace was shattered. Ruaridh rushed in, tripped over the end of the bed and banged into a table as he tried to right himself; Morag and Aine were a pace behind him giggling at him hopping about with a stubbed toe.

Shona had appeared at the kitchen door holding a hand to her lips for silence and Emer woke up looking understandably confused. Perhaps the bed was in a shadow but there was a momentary pause before Aine shrieked ‘My Mummy!’ at the top of her voice and launched herself at the bed. I had time to move far enough to allow her to land on the mattress between us. Emer, still only half-awake found herself being pummelled and kissed. Aine finally turned and looked at Ruaridh and his sister:

“I knew my Daddy could do it. He’s brought my Mummy back.”

I was about to correct her, giving credit where it was due when she precipitated a fresh crisis by trying to join her mum and I under the covers. James had joined his wife at the kitchen door and their children were standing at the foot of the bed, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The problem was that Emer, and I didn’t have a stitch of clothing between us. We’re fairly relaxed about going about in underwear at home but full frontal was not on the agenda – especially in front of my brother’s family!

It was Shona who spotted the problem. She picked up the discarded nightdress and my lost underpants, ushered her husband and kids into the kitchen and ordered Aine to join them. I gave her a shove in the right direction, and she climbed off the bed a very unhappy child and demanding to know ‘why?’ Shona bent and whispered in her ear at which point Aine blushed a fiery red and scooted into the kitchen at a run.

Decency restored; we joined the family outside for breakfast at a picnic table.

“Its only cereal,” Shona explained, “But Becky will have a cordon bleu lunch prepared for us. She’ll get upset if you don’t eat every scrap – you’ve been warned.”

Ruaridh and his sister had gone off to the beach, but Aine hung back clearly wanting to make an urgent request.

“Can we stay here until school starts, Dad?”

“I’d love to honey but it’s not really safe until I finally tame your grandfather.”

James gave a great snort of mocking laughter.

“You think you’re man enough to bring him down, brother? A lot of people have tried and failed.”

Aine had been turning away to join the other children but now she turned towards him, her face red with anger:

“My Dad promised to do it and in all my life he’s never broken a promise!”

“It’s absolutely true,” Emer continued. “Jack keeps detached far too often but when he makes up his mind there’s no stopping him.”

“I’ve only known him for a day, but I can believe that he’s the man,” Shona added.

James held up his hands in surrender.

“Whatever he does I’ll be right at his shoulder, I promise you that, niece Aine.”

“We already have Danu on our side, don’t we Daddy?”

She skipped off to join her cousins, happy in her faith in me. I hope I can justify her trust.

“Who’s Danu?” Shona wanted to know.

“I’ll do a deal with you,” Emer laughed. “I’ll tell you who Danu is if you’ll tell me who you are.”

We hadn’t had time to explain things: all my wife knew was that her husband came to rescue her with a strange man calling him ‘brother’ and her daughter ‘niece’. I told her about meeting the old man mending his net and being directed to this house.

“After the divorce, my father married again and had another family. James is the eldest and we’ll be seeing his younger sister Becky in a couple of hours – my half-sister, of course.”

Shona was hugging Emer by this time and James was growling out in an embarrassed tone that he was pleased to meet her. I put an arm round his shoulders, appreciating what it must have cost him to welcome a woman who he had considered wholly evil yesterday.

“You may know our other sister, Ruth. She joined the Scions some years ago.”

James began to tighten up, but I gave his shoulders a squeeze and he relaxed a little although he was clearly tense waiting to hear Emer’s response.

“The name doesn’t mean anything to me but that’s not surprising. She’d have been given a new name when she joined. You don’t know what he called her, I suppose?”

“It was something like Aileen, but she’ll always be Ruth to her family.”

Emer thought for a few moments, shaking her head to indicate that nothing was coming to mind and then she asked for the date of Ruth joining the cult. I was watching her face when James told her, so I witnessed the colour draining from it leaving her looking very strained. Shona must have felt the change since she was still holding my wife’s hand.