Chapter 97: The Son Who Confessed

The whole co-op was on the headland with the wind coming off the sea and Mairéad's voice still hanging in the air.

Cormac stood in the middle of the slip with his grey eyes on the whole of them and his hands at his sides.

“You have said the thing about my father,” he said. “And it is true. He has been on the telephone to a man in Galway since April and he has been writing letters and he has been frightened and he has done what he was told. And I am not going to stand on this slip and tell the whole co-op that my father is a wolf who has not done a wrong thing. He has done a great many wrong things and he is going to answer for them.” He turned round to face Mairéad. “But there is a thing about my father that the co-op has not heard and that I am going to say now. My father did not go to Galway because he wanted the shore. He went to Galway because she sent him. Because the Alpha came to the harbor office in April and she said, Declan, there is a man in Galway who is going to put this village under trusteeship and you are going to be the wolf who keeps him quiet. And she said it in the pack voice and my father went to the telephone and he made the call.”

The whole headland stirred.

“That is a lie,” Mairéad said.

“It is not a lie and there is a thing that will prove it.” Cormac put his hand in his coat and took out a folded paper. “This is a page out of the co-op's book. The book that the cooper keeps. And it is the page for April and it has a payment on it to a company in Galway and the payment is signed by the Alpha and countersigned by the Beta. And the sum is one thousand pounds and the date is the nineteenth of April and the name of the company is Kern and Company.” He held it up. “My father did not pay a man in Galway. My father signed a paper that she put in front of him and the money came out of the co-op's account and went to a man in Galway and my father has been sick about it since.”

The whole co-op was silent.

“Arthur,” Cormac said. “You are the cooper and this is your book. Is that page in it?”

Arthur came out of the crowd with his stick in his hand and his old face grey. He took the page and turned it to the light.

“It is in my book,” he said. “It is in my hand and it is in my book and I wrote it in April because the Alpha came to my workshop with the Beta and she put the paper in front of me and she said, write it. And I wrote it and the Beta signed it and he did not look at me and I did not look at him.” He looked at Declan. “I have been the cooper of this co-op for sixty years and I have written a great many things that I was told to write and I have never once said out loud that a wolf was being made to sign a paper against his will. And there is a thing about April that I am going to say now. The Beta came to my workshop the next day and he stood in the door and he said, Arthur, I am sorry, and I said, for what, and he said, for the paper. And I said, it is not your paper, and he said, it has my name on it.”

Declan stood on the slip with his hands at his sides.

“It has my name on it,” he said. “And there is a thing about that which is worse than a paper. I signed it because she told me to and because I have been a wolf who does what he is told since my father went out in a boat in 1975 and because a man who does what he is told does not have to decide what he thinks.”

Mairéad came down the slip.

“There is a thing about this co-op that I have been trying to say since the first night,” she said. “And it is this. A pack is a thing that is kept by a wolf who is willing to do the things that no one else will do. I have kept this village fed for fourteen years and I have kept the hunters off this coast and I have kept the Council out of this hall and I have done it by doing the things that no one else would do. And there is not a wolf on this headland who has not benefited from it.” She looked at the whole co-op. “You have had your boats and your catch and your children in the school and your full moons and your quiet nights. And there is not one of you who has ever asked me where the money came from or who the man in Galway was or what happened to the woman in the boathouse. You did not want to know. And now a woman from Dublin has come into this village and read a book out loud and the whole of you have decided that you want to know.”

The whole headland was silent.

“And there is a thing about the wanting to know that I am going to say,” Mairéad said. “A co-op that knows the whole of it is a co-op that is going to have to do something about it. And the doing something about it is not a vote in a hall and a new Alpha. It is a trial in Galway and a file with every name in it and a man from the Council in that chair for twenty years. And there is not a wolf on this headland who is going to like the thing that comes after me.”

Tom came out of the crowd. He came down the slip with his red face and his grey moustache and his hands at his sides.

“I have been a wolf in this village all my life,” he said. “And I have done what I was told and I have taken the money and I have not asked where it came from. And there is a thing I have to say and it is not a good thing and I am going to say it in front of the whole co-op. My father pushed a woman off a cliff in 1981 and I have known it since I was seventeen and I have never said it. And the Alpha knew it and she kept me in this village with a boat and a mooring and a word in my ear and I have been her hand for fourteen years.” He looked at Mairéad. “And there is a thing about the woman from Dublin that I have been trying not to see since the first night. She has been in this village for a week and she has not taken a thing and she has not asked for a thing and she has been telling the truth in a place where the truth has not been told since 1961. And I am not going to be a wolf who stands on a headland with a lamp in his hand and does not put it down.”

He put his lamp down on the slip and walked across to my side and stood beside me.

The whole headland was silent.

And then Hannah came down with the baby on her hip and put her lamp down and stood beside her husband.

And then Arthur came with his stick and put his lamp down.

And then Nora and Eileen from the post office and Leo who did not sleep and the man with the red face who had been at the slip and the woman I had never spoken to and the man who had been at the wake. The lamps went down one by one on the slip and the wolves came across and stood on my side and the whole of it took ten minutes and nobody said a word.

When it was done there were thirty of them on my side and eleven on Mairéad's and the rest were standing in the middle with their lamps in their hands and their faces turned away.

Mairéad looked at the whole of it.

“Then the hunt is at nine,” she said. “And there is a thing about the hunt that I am going to say before the whole co-op and then I am going to go down to the hall and sit in my chair. A wolf who is hunted and who is taken is put out of the territory. And a wolf who is hunted and who is not taken is a rogue for the rest of her life. And there is a third thing that the charter says and that no one on this headland has said out loud. A wolf who is hunted and who is taken by the Alpha is a wolf who has been answered. And the Alpha who answers a rogue on the headland is the Alpha who keeps the seat.”

She turned round and went up the track with her eleven wolves behind her.

And then, from the cove below us, there was a sound. It was a telephone ringing. It was a telephone in the boathouse on the north side that had not rung since the fire, and it rang and rang and nobody moved, and then Eileen said, “That is the telephone in the coastguard cottage. It has not rung in thirty six years.”

I went down the slip at a run.