Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty Read Free Book Online

relief she was aware of other sensations. Envy, yes, and a still potent fury at her brother’s position, his privilege based on nothing. But something else, too.
    ‘We were just trying to touch the bottom,’ said Patrick; and she watched as their father turned and looked from one to the other.
    Love, of course.
    And – the ache that came with it, born out there in the water of a fear that something might happen to this little boy, with his red towel, with his skinny arms and legs and his white, thin face. Patrick was rubbing his eyes, blindly; then his hands dropped and he looked at her – and she saw this same realisation written in his eyes. Margaret would remember this expression – oh, for the rest of her life. Would do anything for this little boy. For this brother that, not five minutes before, she would gladly have drowned, had she been able to get away with it.
    She glanced up the beach, to where her mammy and Cassie sat on towels. Mammy hadn’t moved: she looked like a… like that statue, Margaret thought, carved in their church from white stone. Margaret saw her and looked away: no need to have anything or anyone interfere with her newfound knowledge, standing dripping here on the warm white sand, on a sunny afternoon.
    *
    Martin waded into the water. His son had vanished beneath the waves, but there was no need to worry about Patrick: he’d be fine. But Margaret had vanished too, and she couldn’t swim – could she? I don’t even know, he thought, and with sudden fear he waded further in, peering into the cold, green water. Where was she?
    There she was. There was her shadowy form: her long hair waving above her head in dark tendrils, the sunlight falling in bars across her form. There she was, and he grabbed and lunged and pulled her up, gasping, to the surface, onto the beach.
    ‘What were you doing? What the hell did you think you were doing?’
    She coughed up seawater. ‘I was looking for treasure.’
    Your fault, she was implying, without saying a word: all your fault. You mentioned the Spanish treasure in the first place. Didn’t you?
    Martin did. He accepted his guilt. He would not thrash her, later.
    *
    Cassie watched. The sand was warm. ‘Take your sandals off, Cassie,’ said Sarah, ‘why don’t you?’ – and she did: she did take her sandals off and now the sand is soft and warm under her bare feet. Lovely and warm, and she reached her hands too into the warm, into the beautiful fine sand. It is never as hot as this: my bones are heating; they are heating up to stay warm when the winter comes. To keep me warm. And there’s poor Margaret beside herself. Poor Margaret and poor Patrick. And poor Sarah, wrapped up in herself. Always, always, always wrapped up in herself on a beach. She needs to leave the past in the past, Cassie thought – but this is a thing Sarah has never been able to do. Cassie watched the water, the hauling and shouting, she watched dreamily, now. She closed her eyes. She doesn’t have to look too closely. Nobody was about to die. Not this time. Lovely, Cassie thought, and closed her eyes.
    *
    Twenty-five years ago now, and more, that day: Margaret and me, our relationship sealed by murderous rage.
    Sealed, Patrick thought, with a yank.
    Twenty-five years ago, that talk about Spanish sailors, coming ashore, with the wind roaring and the waves roaring and lamplight and torchlight waiting for them on the beach. Coming ashore to a new world – for them, at any rate. To discover the future, to explore how it would shape up for them.
    That was the thing: his father giving him a certain way of looking at the world, at history, at other people’s lives. Those Spanish sailors on the Armada ship: what did they think as they came ashore, or as they drowned in cold Irish seas? Nothing about them in the books, which deal with Spanish kings and English queens and Irish chieftains, jockeying for position. Nothing about the others: about the actual people on the ships. For