The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant Read Free Book Online

never voluntarily spent a single night away from Fred since our wedding. My feet hung over the edge of the narrowbed and I curled up and dug myself deeper into the quilts, listening to the winds buffeting the walls of the house. When I put out the light I knew that I would dream of a white figure walking the cliffs above the ocean. I fell asleep almost immediately.
    *  *  *
    In the morning Nora placed a plate of sausages, blood pudding, bacon, a fried egg, and a slice of tomato on the breakfast table. Another plate held a stack of toasted white bread, a French press of coffee, a bowl of heavy cream.
    Anything else, dear?
    I was alone at the table, facing the window that looked out over the backyard of the house and up the rising hill of Glenn Meanach, south to the cliffs and the ocean somewhere beyond. I picked at the fried meat on my plate with a fork. The egg was crispy and tough around the edges, just the way I liked it. I worked my way through the stack of bread and jam packets, a map of the island spread beside my plate.
    The farm across the road out front, that’s a goat farm?
    Part of it, yes, Nora said. Highgate’s farm stretches back this way.
    I thought I saw a man, I said, walking in the fields with the goats, late last night.
    Nora cocked her head.
    Well, Highgate has some odd ways of doin’ things, him and his woofers.
    Woofers?
    Volunteers, Nora said. World organic farming something. Young kids, come from all over to work on the farm. You’ll see them around.
    *  *  *
    A clear morning, the air bright and the wind salty. Across the road a pack of goats gnawed gamely on tufts of grass. An old white house, Highgate’s place, was just visible in the distance, surrounded by a couple of rough outbuildings and old stone barns. Looking downthe road I saw a small flapping form at the bottom of the hill, young Finn Cotter on his bike wearing shorts and an oversize mackintosh, climbing. The hill was at least a quarter mile at a forty-five-degree grade; you could have built a set of stairs beside the road that would have been more serviceable. I waved as we passed but Finn kept his head down, puffing softly, his thin white calves cranking away, moving slower than a walking pace.
    I went down to the Ineer, walked to the end of the quay, where a small island called Illaunfaha, or the Giants Island, extended like a stunted thumb into the bay, connected by a concrete causeway. A man walking a small dog, the same man I had seen the day before, circled the harbor edge, heading up to the Waist and the construction site. Under the roaring wind there was the faint thrub of diesel. A few sailboats bobbed in the bay, their stays clinking lightly. Otherwise the Ineer was empty.
    The inner mouth of the Ineer is about a quarter mile across, and the water there changes color almost immediately, from jade green to deep blue, then the darker green-black of open Atlantic, all within the space of a few hundred feet. The inner bay itself is thirty to forty feet deep in most places, right up to the walls of rock on either side, like a deep soup bowl with a portion broken off one side. The water in the bay was sparkling emerald green, long brown strands of channeled wrack and other seaweeds swaying with the swells, the shoreline mottled with purple sea cabbage and slick mosses. The visibility was at least twenty feet in the harbor itself. I strapped my GPS to my wrist, powered it up and checked the signal, stripped down to my standard heavy TYR suit and went down the quay steps. I crouched at the bottom and let the waves carry the water over my legs. It felt nice, and I thrust my arm in up to my shoulder to check the reading on the GPS and got sixty-four, which meant no wet suit. I took a long drink of water, put on my cap, slipped on some latex gloves and lubed up my underarms, crotch, and neck with Ultraglide. I stashed my gear bag behind the wall and spat into my goggles as I walked down the steps. I