Free Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty Page A

Irish Heroes. Life is too short for that.
    ‘Well, Mr Porter,’ Patrick said. ‘What can I tell you? There are many figures in history,’ he said, ‘and amazingly, not all of them are Irish.’ Porter pursed his lips at that – a sarcastic teacher being universally disliked – and he kept them pursed as Patrick explained his reasons, his expression making it seem unlikely that he was taking much of this explanation on board.
    But yes: Captain Cook it was and Patrick explained why. Explained doggedly, even as he sensed the interest fading in the room. That was just too bad: Mr Porter had raised the issue, and now they would just have to see it through to a conclusion. Collective punishment.
    Captain Cook. Because he kept his mind open. Because he was a useful observer of the scene – no matter how bizarre that scene might have appeared. Because he was an explorer. Because he took people as he found them – an amazing feat in the middle of the eighteenth century, and still an amazing one in the twentieth. Patrick was aware of how just amazing it was: after all, he himself hadn’t kept his mind all that open, had he? And he himself was not so good at taking people as he found them. But he was still a pretty good observer of the scene – though he had already given up the idea of becoming an explorer.
    ‘An explorer?’
    His mother’s voice, shriller than was customary, high with disdain.
    ‘Well, we’ll see how you get on with that.’
    And true: he hadn’t done much exploration, even when the opportunities presented themselves. He was a dilettante, when it came right down to it.
    ‘Will you come with me?’ Margaret asked – later, weeks and months later, when the business was over and done with. ‘I want to see it for myself: I mean, the place.’
    He said, despairingly, ‘Why?’
    ‘I just want to,’ Margaret said, ‘but I can’t go on my own.’
    ‘I can’t.’
    She squared up to him. ‘You have to,’ she said, ‘because I can’t go on my own.’
    They went: quietly in the middle of the Christmas holidays, a raw, chill Wednesday afternoon when they could be fairly certain that there would be nobody else on the path, nobody else on the flat fields of Inch Levels or at the water’s edge. They parked the car and set out on the gravel path, crunching west towards the distant shore. To their left, water lay slicked across the landscape; the slope of the sea wall to their right was covered with grasses: dead, but still rippling and bending in the bitter wind; as they walked, the grass gave way to a low growth of leafless hazel. ‘This wasn’t growing here,’ Margaret murmured, ‘when we used to come here with the parents, was it? It seems changed.’
    Patrick slid a glance at her. ‘I’ll say it’s changed.’
    She looked away.
    ‘Did you tell Robert we were coming here?’
    She said, ‘What do you think?’
    They passed the pumping station, they reached the water’s edge. Stood, looked, scanned the grey water, and the crumbling outline of the castle which rose on the far shore. There were still bouquets being left here: three or four today, encased in plastic, several rotting, one still fresh. They weren’t the only ones, then, to walk out across the fields to this spot.
    He expected – what? A burst of tears, a flood of horrified emotion, regret, guilt? He hardly knew. He watched Margaret as she stood by the water’s edge and looked out across the lough; as she scanned the shingle at her feet; and as she looked up at the grey sky. Her expression was set.
    Then, they walked back to the car and drove home.
    And that was that. So much for exploration. Terrain, or the heart: Patrick stayed away from both, after such an experience.
    In any case, this ostensibly adventurous thread in his personality was too easily subsumed by daily life: so he told himself. By paperwork, class plans and administration; by rates bills and car tax – and now by cancer; each in its own way a highly efficient