The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven (3 page)

“I'll let you be the judge of that.”

Aaron waited, then nodded. “All right then. If you say so.”

“I did say so. Just now.”

“I heard.”

The descending mist had shrouded them completely, isolating them entirely from the world around. Aaron reached over and took his wife's hand. “I'll help you down.” Lolly let her hand be held and, experienced from a life of climbing up rock walls and down as she was, allowed her husband to lead her safely into the meadow below.

“There'll be no grave,” Aaron said. “I'll tell you that. Or the sea will tell you itself.”

“We'll know when we get there. Come.” Lolly led the way.

There was no grave. All the earth intended to be paste and cover to Declan Tovey's bones had been sent on with him, an unneeded recompense for his consignment to a watery end. Lolly and Aaron stared into the fog hovering a few feet past the edge of the cliff, swirling slowly in the updraft from the water below.

“I'm sorry,” Aaron said. “You probably wanted to see the grave, and it isn't here any more. I dug it myself, deeper than it had been before, so Declan wouldn't get himself dug up again.”

Lolly said nothing. Neither moved. The mist was cooling against their faces. The sea could be heard, its rampage somewhat stilled, but nothing was visible to either of them. The house could still be standing, the garden shed as well, but both would belong, as they so often had, to the rising mists, with no one to know whether they were there or not. They had always belonged to the mists. It was their age-old habit to dissolve into mystery, and this moment was a simple repetition, existence itself becoming doubtful and all proofs and certainties suspended.

Lolly broke the silence. “I saw him yesterday in Caherciveen when I was buying the bream we had for supper.”

“Who?”

“Declan.”

After he'd held off for a moment, Aaron said, “Lolly, you did not see Declan Tovey in Caherciveen.”

“All right then. I didn't. And I didn't go to Caherciveen, and we didn't have bream. And we're not in Ireland. We're in Mozambique.”

“You saw someone who looked like Declan Tovey.”

“No one looks like Declan Tovey.”

“People always look like other people. The gene pool of the world isn't as varied as most people think.”

“Genes don't give you a scar over your left eye.”

“Lolly, Declan Tovey's skeleton was found not ten feet from where we're standing.”

“Maybe so. But he still made it to Caherciveen yesterday.”

“Fully fleshed. Fully clothed.”

“Yes. Fully fleshed. Fully clothed.”

Aaron took his handkerchief from his back pocket and, without unfolding it, wiped it across his forehead. He looked to see if there was any mud, or better still, some hint of what he should say next. He put the handkerchief back into his pocket. “This is what happens when you write a book with ghosts in it.”

“Declan was not in my book.”

“No. But there were what you said were
real
ghosts. Not psychically induced apparitions or antic idiots playing games, but real live ghosts.”

“Then yesterday Declan was a ghost.”

“If it was Declan yesterday, it was not a ghost. There are no such things as ghosts. The fact is Declan is dead. His remains, such as they were, are out there somewhere in the sea.”

“Be that as it may, I saw him yesterday. It had to be him.”

“Lolly, there are no ghosts except in books.”

“And why have you decided not to believe me no matter what I say?”

“I want to be helpful.”

“You think I've gone off with my head, don't you?”

“I think you wrote a book about ghosts and the involvement was so intense that you're now living through parts of it yourself.”

“If I thought that was true—that I'd live my novel—I would have written a book about a woman married to a man who'd believe her when she said something was true and real.”

“I told you. I'm trying to help.”

“Then just believe me.”

“Lolly, you and Kitty washed his bones yourselves!”

“I know that. I also know he's come back.”

“He can't come back.”

“Who said so?”

“Well, for one, Shakespeare said it. Hamlet said it. ‘The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns.' ”

“Sure. ‘No traveler returns.' Then what was Hamlet's father doing, turning up on the ramparts and later in his mother's bedroom, and him dead as a doornail? Answer me that.”

“Now is not the time for Shakespearean exegesis.”

“Of course not. Not after I ask you something you can't answer.”

“All right then. Sometimes even Shakespeare was inconsistent. Henslowe was probably screaming for the script. They needed a new play—and fast. All writers are sometimes inconsistent.”

“But I'm not writing this. I'm living it.”

“I give up.”

“Sure, you give up. You know I'm right and you're wrong. And I don't mean about Shakespeare. I mean about Declan.”

“All right, all right. I'm wrong and you're—” He stopped.

Lolly waited for him to continue. He didn't. Instead he stared over Lolly's shoulder, into the distance, into the fog. His stare held.

“What?” Lolly asked.

Again Aaron pulled out his handkerchief, this time crumpling it in his fist. “Nothing.”

“Oh?” Lolly looked over her shoulder. There, a dark form was making its way toward the edge of the cliff. Lolly sucked in a quick breath, held it, then let it go. In a hoarse voice she whispered, “Declan?” Then she called out the name. “Declan?” Aaron grabbed her by the arm. She called out more forcefully, “Declan?” She started to move away.

“Don't go,” Aaron said. “Don't move.”

“It's Declan. I know it is.”

“You can't. The cliff is right there.”

“I have to see him.”

“You can't see him.”

“But I just did. And so did you.”

“It wasn't Declan. And I told you. The cliff—”

“I can prove it to you it's—”

“You can't. All we saw was someone in the fog. It could have been anyone. Anything.”

“It was Declan.”

“Lolly, he's dead.”

“What difference does that make?”

Aaron didn't even try to answer. When Lolly spoke again, her voice was more subdued. “Can we just stand here? Just for a bit? Be with each other? And no one else, just the two of us? Here, where the house was. And now it's gone.”

“And the grave.”

“Yes. And the grave. That's gone, too.”

Silently they stood. With his handkerchief Aaron brushed the gathering moisture from Lolly's brow. “Thanks,” she said.

“Yeah.” He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket, then, after a respectful pause, turned and started back the way they'd come. Lolly followed. As they crossed the meadow Aaron said quietly, “You love him, don't you? The way you called his name.”

“I love you.”

“I know. Still, you love him.”

“He's dead.”

Aaron's response was ready. “What difference does that make?”

2

S
tanding on the rampart of Castle Kissane, Kitty McCloud didn't know if she was more amused than relieved or more relieved than amused. Perhaps both in equal measure. More often than not she would repair to this place of refuge—with its great sweep of County Kerry, its low mountains and the turbulent sea ranged out before her—to effect some mediation between herself and whichever intransigent novel she might be writing at the moment. Her present unburdened state, however, was in response to an e-mail from her agent in Dublin, one Fiona O'Toole. Kitty had mentioned to Ms. O'Toole her intention of taking on the only canonical writer—Jane Austen—who so far had been spared her authorial “correction.” Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, even Dickens, among others, had not been so fortunate. Kitty, applying her considerable talents, would rectify the maddening errors made by any number of her admired predecessors, her work free of the ignominy the others so rightly deserved.

Gathering her forces about her, she had recently decided not so much to “correct” Ms. Austen as to challenge her outright. Kitty was determined to give her attention to
Pride and Prejudice
(no less) for the simple reason that Jane had too long been allowed to declare her novels—and their characters—fulfilled by providing marriages that were presumed to be happy. Kitty would now ask the unasked. What if Darcy, having married Elizabeth, were to abandon her for another woman? What would become of Ms. Bennett, a character Kitty herself often found insufferably perfect even with all the highly nuanced imperfections given her by her creator.

But now, via e-mail, this temptation to hubris on Kitty's part was exposed as the folly it would have become. The project was canceled, off, over, ended. And just in time. Had Kitty not so diligently ignored the efforts of her contemporaries, she would have been fully aware of the Jane Austen Industrial Complex. As Ms. O'Toole informed her, countless were the scribblings taking advantage of Jane's popularity. More than many were the authors who had exploited that good woman's achievements by trying to insinuate themselves into her company. Her ignorance exposed, Kitty was released from the infamy that would have blighted her renown had she honed her axe and given Jane and even Mrs. Darcy their forty whacks.

Still, she shouldn't waste time being amused and relieved. She was, after all, a writer, a calling that required for its sustenance despair, desperation, and even fears of inadequacy, this latter being an infrequent affliction visited upon Ms. Kitty McCloud. What she needed now, and quickly, was an inspiration comparable to the one that had inspired her most recent triumph: a correction of
The Mill on the Floss
.

In concert with muses of the highest distinction, Kitty had rescued Maggie Tulliver from the absurd fate devised by Ms. George Eliot. Kitty's gorge had risen to floodtide at her first reading of the novel, when she was an easily displeased teenager. As God was her witness, she would never allow Maggie—the singular child who had run off to join the Gypsies, certain they would make her their queen—to wind up in a dazed state in the company of an unworthy man, then return to her brother, a prissy prick if ever there was one, just in time to drown with him in the storm-roiled waters of the eponymous Floss.

No. She had vowed even then to make Maggie happy. And make her happy she did—in her own inimitable way. At a propitious moment, Maggie again meets the Gypsy boy who, those long years ago, had led her around the camp on his horse. He rescues her now from the rapidly rising Floss, apparently still bestride the remembered animal. Their love is sealed. As a boy, he had been, unbeknownst to Maggie, the Prince of the Gypsies. Now come to full manhood, he is King. Maggie Tulliver, Floss or no Floss, prick of a brother or no prick of a brother, becomes, as God and Kitty McCloud had ordained from the beginning of time, the Queen of the Gypsies. (In actuality, Kitty believed deep down that, with her writing, she was doing God's work—an unshakable belief common to her kind.)

Just as she was about to move away and descend the winding stair leading to where her computer impatiently awaited, Kitty found herself fixated on the slow progress of a lone man who had turned onto her castle road. He was dressed mostly in black, both pants and coat, with what seemed like a white shirt open at the neck, the poor fellow looking for all the world like a defeated warrior come back from a lost and distant war. He wore no cap or hat. She took note of the thick black hair falling across his forehead and the dark brows that failed to distract from even darker eyes, eyes that in better times would look out on the world with a challenging dare. Clutched at his side was a leather sack, heavy with what might possibly (but impossibly)be the implements necessary for a thatcher's trade.

This could only be (except it could not possibly be) Declan Tovey. Or (least likely of all) the ghost of Declan Tovey. Rebellious wrath arose in Kitty's breast. Her moment of relief was over. Hadn't she ghosts enough? Was her castle condemned to be a way station for every wandering shade who, for whatever reason, had failed to complete the journey from this world to the next? Considering the number of spooks said to be prowling the Kerry countryside, her castle, at this rate, would become a veritable repository for any and every phantom confused by an unjust demise.

As if to justify her complaint, she saw, off to the east, the slow progress through her apple orchard of the familiar ghosts of Taddy and Brid, the resident shades of Castle Kissane, both of them young and fair beyond measure. Taddy and Brid she accepted. They had been hanged in the great hall of her castle more than two centuries before. They had a right to possession. But what claim could be made by Declan Tovey?

Seeming to be fully fleshed, he was making his way down her road. But hadn't she herself—and Kieran and her best friend all her life, Lolly, and her nephew Aaron—already had considerable involvement with this man's skeleton? Neither hide nor hair had graced his bones. He had been identified not only by his clothes but also by the sack of thatcher's tools laid respectfully at his side in the unearthed grave dug in her garden. He was dead as dead can be. Had she and Lolly not prepared the skeleton for decent burial? Had they not washed with their own hands, using Kitty's most expensive and sweet-scented soap, each bone—the scapula, the patella, the thoracic vertebrae, the clavicle—one by one, then put them inside the fresh, clean clothing commandeered from her nephew? Had she not participated fully in the celebratory wake, with the man stretched out in a cushioned coffin fashioned from boards wrested from her own bookshelves? Had she not witnessed the slow slide of her ancestral home, garden and all, into the waves of the Western Sea, with the coffined bones securely inside?