Back at World’s End, he busied himself with shucking the oysters. There was a way of putting your knife between the lips of the shell and levering until the tight grip suddenly loosened and you could scoop out the meat of the oyster. It did not look appetizing at all, sitting wet in the frilly shell. But he’d been told to heat some milk in a saucepan with a piece of butter (Mrs. Neil had given him a pat) and some of the wild onions that grew in his field and then to add the oysters whole, just heating them through. Doing so, he understood what Mrs. Neil had meant when she told him the stew was for her the very essence of the ocean. You needed no salt, the oysters had a briny taste, like clean seaweed. And the milk provided a mild broth once flavoured with the oyster’s own juice and the pleasant savouriness of the onions. He drank a bowl, and then another. It was like a tonic.
The tide was nearly to the shingle now and a steam was rising over the top of the water. It took Declan a few minutes to figure out why: the cool water moving over hot mud. Birds were everywhere, and on the far side of the bay he could see something black stirring by the shore. Argos, too, had got wind of whatever it was and began to bark excitedly. The black shape stopped and looked in their direction. Declan could see it was a bear. He was thrilled. He’d heard about bears, had been warned about leaving his food outside, particularly in the autumn when the creek was full of salmon, but he hadn’t seen one until now. And yet it fulfilled every idea he had of bear. That rounded back, the broad shoulders, the way it swayed its head from side to side as it tried to figure them out on their bit of shore. After a few minutes of this, it turned and lumbered into the woods. Even from their distance across the bay, they could hear it moving in the dense brush.
“I’d better wash ye so, Argos, or it’s bait ye’ll be for that bear, smelling as ye do of rotten fish. Come on, lass, and we’ll soon have ye fresh.”
He took the pup and submerged her in the quick water of the creek. It was icy to his hands, and Argos yelped and squealed. He held her with one firm hand and quickly washed her fur with the other, taking care to ruffle the shoulders, which had taken most of the contact with the fish. Then he rubbed her down with a sack and poured a little of the oyster broth into her pan. She whimpered as she approached her meal, fearful of some other indignity, but soon was lapping up the good juice. When she had finished, she sighed deeply and curled up on her sack of bracken, falling into one of her immediate and profound sleeps.
The girl was at his door again in the same skimpy dress, telling him that her mother had located a better mattress for him and would he come to help them carry it over the marsh to his cabin?
He followed her lithe shape over the boardwalk and through the woods to the Neil farm. A dog, the mother of Argos he knew at a glance, came to greet them and sniffed suspiciously at her daughter, licking her face and then pushing her to the ground so she could sniff her underparts to determine where she’d been. It had not yet been long enough for her to forget her maternity although the pups had been given away. When she walked, her teats hung low still and occasional drops of milk fell from them to the ground.
Mrs. Neil was standing by the screen door, using a small broom to brush dust off a mattress leaning against her house. It was covered with blue and white ticking, faded and worn, but Declan could see that it promised far more comfort than the lumpy mattress he currently slept upon.
“I found a couple of sheets, too, in the attic that I’d put there for winter mending and then forgot about, Mr. O’Malley. I’ve got them airing over the line now. I made a few patches, rather quickly I’m afraid, and they aren’t anything to look at, but you’re welcome to them. Two of the boys and Rose, who came for you, can help carry it back for you.” She stopped her vigorous brushing and put the broom down on a bench by the door. She called out towards the barn, and after a few moments two boys, an adoloscent and one who looked a year or two younger than Rose, came running. She introduce them as David and Tom. Declan gravely shook hands with them.
“No school, then, boys?” he asked.
One of them, David, shuffled his feet and blushed. “Our dad’s taken the boat and we’ve no way of getting over to the school.”
Their mother smiled and admitted she was happy to have them home to help her sort out the attic. “Help me fold these sheets now, Rose, and the three of you can help Mr. O’Malley get his new bed home.”
The woman and the girl held a sheet out and moved towards one another to bring the corners together. Declan had seen his own wife and daughters fold sheets that had wind-dried in the Irish morning. It was like a dance, each moving apart with an end of white cotton, then coming together to place palms against palms, a graceful smoothing of surfaces, stepping back to pull the length taut. He was moved to think that Mrs. Neil had sought out sheets for him when he had been prepared, even grateful, to sleep under coarse blankets for the rest of his days. He was taken back by the scene, somewhere, but where exactly he couldn’t say. He noticed that the bruising on Rose’s arms was fading, pale finished blossoms against the white of her skin.
He took one side of the mattress with Rose just behind him, the sheets carefully draped over her shoulders like a shawl, and the boys grasped the other side of the mattress. Over the marsh, along the trail of logs, the four of them quiet and careful as they moved up the hill where the arbutus trees hummed with their cargo of bees.
“Just so lads. We’ll put her here by the door until I can ready the room for it. I can wrestle it through the door to be sure so I’ll say thanks to ye for yer trouble. And thanks to ye, young Rose, for bringing the sheets so nicely folded. I’ll sleep like a king tonight, I’m thinking.”
He watched the children leaving his cabin, wishing he’d had a bar of chocolate to offer them, a few pennies even. They were as shy as fish, darting away through the dappled leaves. There had been children like them in his classroom; they’d come from hill farms and smelled of turf smoke, sheep. Yet he’d seen their eyes when he’d read to them of the Irish kings and knew there were dreams in them to take them through the days of sums, little food, moving sheep from one small stony field to another. He watched until the Neil childen had disappeared beyond the marsh, and then he busied himself with his bed.
Once it was arranged and organized, the old mattress put under the lean-to, Declan got out his books and puzzled over the Greek text. Some days he could make perfect sense of the words, their stern rhythms and harsh consonants. Other days he strained to remember, forgetting the tenses, the third declension. The passage he was working on concerned Nausikaa and her maidens. She had dreamed of her marriage linens and was moved to take her clothing to the river to be laundered.
And hearing the echo and its answer, the smell of clean linen, feminine arms holding cloth in Delphi, on the islands