Mary Costello lives in Galway. Her short story collection, The China Factory (2012), was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. Her first novel, Academy Street (2014), won the Irish Novel of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards and was named overall Irish Book of the Year. The River Capture, her second novel, was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Dalkey Book Awards and the Kerry Group Awards.
Also by Mary Costello
Academy Street
The China Factory
The paperback published in 2020 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Mary Costello, 2019
The right of Mary Costello to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Excerpt from ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, Words & Music by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr © Copyright 1987 Universal International Music Publishing B.V. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission by Hal Leonard Europe Limited. Excerpt from ‘Mythistorema’ in Complete Poems by Giorgos Seferis, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (2018). Reproduced with permission of Carcanet Press Limited. Excerpt from With Borges by Alberto Manguel (Westbourne Publishers Limited). Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear. Excerpt from The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee (2016). Republished with permission of Princeton University Press; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Centre, Inc. Excerpt from The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson © 1951. Reproduced with permission. Excerpt from ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ from New Collected Poems by Derek Mahon. Reproduced by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland.
This is a work of fiction. It is not based on real events, people or places. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.
The River Capture received financial assistance from the Arts Council of Ireland
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 804 3
eISBN 978 1 78211 644 8
For
Martin
‘In theory, there is a gravitational attraction between every drop of sea water and even the outermost star of the universe.’
Rachel Carson
Contents
BAREFOOT, LUKE O’BRIEN descends the stairs of Ardboe House and stands at the window on the return landing. All Waterford around him: fertile fields, ancient oak forests, a great river plain, a castle three miles away with other ancestral houses spread out like satellites around it, and, less than a quarter of a mile away as the crow flies, the bend in the Sullane river and on its far bank the town of Clonduff.
A fine morning. Lynch’s cattle are spread out in Luke’s fields, calm after last night’s racket. A single cloud approaches the sun. At intervals between the oak and beech trees on the riverbank, water birds skim the surface and the river glints in the sunlight. Before descending the remaining stairs Luke inhales the cool air of the house and waits for the cloud to pass.
He crosses the hall, deep red carpet underfoot, and opens the front door. The cat darts past and runs ahead of him, tail in the air, down the back hall into the kitchen. Kitten belly on her again, he thinks. You old slut, Lily. He rubs her ears. She meows loudly, snaking between his legs as he opens a tin of cat food. Need to get you spayed, missy, he says.
In the downstairs bathroom he empties his bladder. Mingo. He wishes he had learned Latin. He’d like to be able to conjugate verbs, recognise instantly the Latin root of a word. He stands before the mirror. Something like the rumble of thunder woke him at 2 a.m. When he looked out, Lynch’s cattle were mounting each other under the full moon. Uncastrated bulls, weighing nearly a ton each, Lynch’s latest enterprise. They thrive far better, he told Luke, and have a higher kill-out percentage at the factory. Last night they were demented. One by one they pawed the ground, lowered their heads and thundered down towards the river.
He examines his teeth, checks his crown. He’ll be bald before he’s forty, like Dadda. Nothing between me and Heaven, Dadda used to say. Hirsute arms and legs, a bit of grey in his temples. He lathers on shaving foam and begins to shave. The short strokes of the Bic razor rasp against his skin. He once slept with a girl from Rathgar who had white pubic hair, and she only twenty-five. Fernfoils of maidenhair. Was that Stephen or Bloom? More like Bloom, he thinks. Josie went bald down there, but he thinks that was from the chemo. In her final months he used to take her to the toilet, bathe her. His strange, simple-minded aunt. She had more baths and showers in the last six months of her life than she had in the sixty-six years that went before.
The kitchen sink is piled with dirty dishes, pots and pans, cutlery. He begins to sort them, scraping grease and mould from the saucepans into the bin. Then, frustrated,