Chapter 124: The Truth I Almost Lost

The whole pier was quiet and the ferry was at the wall with her gangway down and Eileen was standing at the top of it with her white hair pinned up and Korkut beside her.

"There is a thing about a woman from Dublin," she said, "that I have been saying for thirty six years. She does not know when to stop. She comes into a village and she reads a book out loud and she pulls a safe out of a well and she stands on a pier in Dun Laoghaire and she reads a letter to a hundred passengers." She came down the gangway. "And there is a thing about a hundred passengers. They are not wolves. They are not a court. They are not a co-op. They are a hundred people who have paid for a ticket and who are going to be in the north by the evening and who are not going to remember a word of what a woman with gold hair said to them on a pier."

The whole pier was watching. The man at the gangway had his clipboard down and there were two guards at the top of the road.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it in front of the whole of this pier and then I am going to ask the guards at the top of that road to come down. The letter I have just read is a letter that was written by you in April and sent to the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa and it says a woman is to be hunted on a headland at the full moon. It is signed with your name and it has the mark of the Council on it. And there is a thing about a letter that says a woman is to be hunted. It is not a letter about a wolf. It is a letter about a crime."

Eileen did not move.

"The guards at the top of that road are not going to come down," she said. "There is a thing about the guards in Dun Laoghaire that I have known since 1961. They are men and they have been told a thing by a woman with a good coat and a paper. And there is a thing about a paper that a woman with a good coat puts in front of a guard. It is a paper that says the woman with gold hair is a woman who has been in a house in Galway and who has been making a nuisance of herself and who has been saying the word werewolf on a pier."

The whole pier was silent.

And then Padraig came up the gangway from behind her with his notebook in his hand and his coat open.

"There is a thing about the guards in Dun Laoghaire," he said. "I have been on the telephone to them since two o'clock and there is a guard at the top of that road who is a sergeant and who has been a guard for twenty five years and who has a file on his desk with the name of a woman in a house on a road in it. And there is a thing about that file. It was opened in 1979 by a guard in Galway who was told to close it and who did not close it and who put it in a drawer and who has been carrying it for eighteen years." He put his hand on the rail. "The sergeant at the top of that road is not here for the woman with gold hair. He is here for the woman in the good coat."

Eileen turned round.

And then Korkut put his hand on her arm and said a thing I did not hear and she pulled her arm away and went up the gangway at a run.

She got as far as the top of it and the whole of the pier went up and the guards came down the road and Padraig went after her and Declan went after Padraig and the whole of it was a hundred passengers and a gangway and a woman in a good coat who was not going to be caught on a ferry in Dun Laoghaire.

She was caught at the top of the gangway by a man in a cap who had been standing at the rail with a bag and who had not said a word. He took her by the arm and put her against the rail and he was not a guard and he was not a wolf of the Court. He was the fireman from the quay in Galway.

"There is a thing about this afternoon," he said, "that I have been waiting for since Monday. I am a fireman off the watch in Galway and I have been on leave since Monday and I have been on this pier since two o'clock with a bag and a cap and no one has looked at me twice." He put his hand in his coat and took out a paper. "This is a warrant for the arrest of a woman called Eileen on a charge of conspiracy to murder and it was signed in Galway this morning by a judge who is a wolf and who is not on the Council. And there is a thing about a warrant that is signed by a judge in Galway. It does not need a guard in Dun Laoghaire and it does not need a court and it does not need a hundred passengers."

The whole pier was silent.

Eileen stood at the top of the gangway with her white hair coming down out of its pins and her good dark coat and her face was the face of a woman who has been in a house on a road for thirty six years.

"There is a thing about me," she said, "that the whole of this pier is going to hear and then I am going to go with the man in the cap. I am not a wolf. I have never been a wolf. I was born in this village in 1942 and I was sent to Galway in 1959 and I have been a woman in a house on a road since 1961 and I have been running a village from that house for thirty six years." She looked at me. "And there is a thing about a woman who is not a wolf and who has been running a pack. She does not do it with teeth. She does it with a pen and a paper and a woman in a chair who does what she is told."

The whole pier was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it before the man in the cap takes you down that gangway. The woman in the chair did what she was told for thirty six years and she has written a confession and it is forty pages long and it is in a court in Galway. And there is a thing about a confession that is forty pages long and that has every name in it. It is the thing that is going to put you in a room for the rest of your life."

Eileen looked at me.

"There is a thing about a confession," she said. "It is a paper. And there is a thing about a paper that a woman in a chair writes with a wolf on the door. It is a paper that says what she wants it to say." She put her hand on the rail. "And there is a thing about the fourteenth of July that no wolf in Galway has thought of. The whole of the co-op is going to be in that room and the whole of the file is going to be read out loud and the whole of the confession is going to be read out loud and the seat is going to be set aside and the heir is going to be declared. And there is not a thing in the whole of it that is going to be said by a wolf who was in that village in 1961 and who is still alive to say it."

The whole pier was silent.

"Except me," Arthur said.

He came up the gangway with his boots in his hand and his walnut face and his white hair and he was ninety one years old and he had been banished from Dún Aonghasa in 1959 and he had been in the house on the hill in Killybegs in 1961 with a can of paraffin in his hand.

"There is a thing about a can of paraffin," he said, "that I have been carrying for thirty eight years and that I am going to put down on the fourteenth of July in a room in Galway in front of nine wolves and the whole of the co-op. I carried it and I did not ask what was in it and I have been a wolf who did not ask for thirty eight years." He looked at Eileen. "And there is a thing about the woman who told me to carry it. She is standing at the top of this gangway in a good coat and she is not a wolf and she has been telling wolves what to do since 1961. And there is a thing about a woman who is not a wolf and who tells a wolf to carry a can. She is a woman who is going to be in a room on the fourteenth and she is going to hear a wolf of ninety one years old say the whole of it out loud."

Eileen looked at him.

"Arthur," she said.

"I am not going to say a word to you," Arthur said. "I am going to say it to the court."

The fireman took her down the gangway and the whole of the pier was quiet and the guards came down the road and the hundred passengers stood with their bags and did not move.

And then Declan was beside me with his hand on my arm and his face grey.

"The bond," he said. "Niamh. The bond has gone quiet."

I put my hand on my chest.

It was there. It was there and it was thin and it was cold and it was like a rope that had been cut and tied again and the knot was not holding.

"What have you done?" I said.

"There is a thing about the whole of it that I have been carrying since Galway," Declan said. "The bond is a thing that goes two ways and it is a thing that is made of the truth. And there is a thing about a truth that has been kept in a drawer for four months. It does not break the bond. It wears it." He put his hand on my chest. "I have been telling myself since the church that the whole of it was over and that the whole of it had been said. And it has not been said. There is a thing I have not told you and that I have been carrying since the hotel and that I am going to say now on this pier in front of a hundred passengers and the whole of the nine. I wrote to your sister in April. Not the letters in the drawer. One letter. I wrote it and I posted it and it went to Athlone and it said, stay where you are, I am coming for you. And then I did not go."

The pier was quiet.

"And there is a thing about that," he said. "It is not the eleven letters. It is the one letter that I posted and that I did not follow."

I stood on the pier with my hand on my chest and the bond thin and cold and the whole of it in front of me.

"There is a thing about the bond," I said, "that I have been getting wrong since the first night and that I am not going to get wrong again. It is not a thing that is made of the truth. It is a thing that is made of the choosing. And there is a thing about a wolf who has been chosen and who has not been chosen enough. He does not break the bond. He makes it thin." I put my hand over his hand on my chest. "So there is a thing you have to do and it is not a thing you can do in a day. You have to choose me every day and you have to tell me the whole of it every day and there is not going to be a drawer and there is not going to be a letter that is posted and not followed. And there is a thing about the fourteenth that I have to say before we get off this pier. It is four days away and the whole of the co-op is going to be in that room and the whole of the file is going to be read out loud. And there is a thing in that file that is going to be read out loud and that is going to be the worst thing in the whole of it. It is the letter you posted and did not follow. And I am not going to take it out of the file."

Declan looked at me.

"I know," he said. "I put it there."