On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland by Joseph Éamon Cummins Page A

the sun slipped down, colouring their world with its warm light. Then soon the air took on a chill, sending them back to the comfort of the Beehive. There, Lenny’s interest caused him to tell of milestones from his fourteen years growing up in Dublin and what America had given to and taken from the MacNeills. He hoped she would reciprocate.
    He told of Kate, his eldest sister, Dr Kate MacAnna now, her bravery and perseverance, who had built her own dreams. He spoke little of sisters Pat and Violet, or of his mother, now living contentedly in Florida. And as to why at twenty-eight he had not been seduced into marriage and a mortgage, he responded only with a shrug.
    Then his probing of Lenny’s past met with the same resistance of earlier. That story, she insisted, were it ever to be told, was for some other day, not worth the price of present time. It was an entirely forgettable past anyway, she said: dead people, old fantasies, immature hopes, nothing of value, a past of no consequence to this moment, drinking merlot by a fire. Yes, she said, his philosophy was sound; that was clear now, the holy present, the only existence, no looking back necessary.
    Even more passionately now his mind jumped between fascination with Lenny Quin and thoughts of what this turn in his life portended. Her warmth, her intelligence, her rebel individuality, all gave healing to his long-aching psyche, much as her sensuality tormented his deprived senses. Her mind was not unlike his own, he thought. Yet neither the wealth that refined her nor the poverty that characterised him affected their potential together, a life, perhaps, that lay beyond either of them separately. Hers too was a survivor’s mind, rich in the cleverness that comes of failing; he could sense that in her.
    What price had she paid? He knew too little to even imagine. What he saw clearly, though, was that in Lenny Quin there lived a particular dimension, a bloom almost touchable, the mystique of those who are unconquerable, who survive because there is no better option. Was he closer now to knowing this woman who had appeared in the nowhere he inhabited? He thought so, and the feeling carried fear. Could he trust in this world, her world? Survive where fast hands and guts counted for little? Would all this unmask him? The dream could end tomorrow, in a week, all hope vanish. But even as he struggled with his thoughts, his fascination with this woman carried him off on great adventures, into a new land.
    With these thoughts came a feeling of wholeness, unlike anything he had known, a realm of wonders unseeable in their singled parts for they existed only as inseparables, like a hillside of flowers dancing. He had screamed so long for life; now he wondered if the inciter of his emptiness had finally been subdued.
    ‘You’re miles away,’ she said. ‘What are you thinking?’
    Only his glance acknowledged her.
    She pressed a double kiss to his cheek. ‘We’re the last ones here,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘What now?’
    He foraged for a response. Then she smiled a smile he’d never met, a smile that required no prior acquaintance.
    ‘Ready?’ she asked.
    ‘Think so,’ he said, and tried to manage the friction in his brain.

5
    1964
    Aranroe Farmlands
    In the grey of dusk it was an immature wail that stilled him. His senses shot to the house. Then a second cry. The garden fork dropped. He bounded over the potato greens, through the half-open door, took the stairs in leaps. The bedroom door fell away before his soil-encrusted hands. In the bed her tiny face hid behind clutched blankets.
    ‘Leonora, Princess, what is it? Another bad dream, was it?’ His arms wrapped around her. ‘It’s alright, it’s alright. Only a dream, Princess, that’s all. Uncle Leo is here now, everything’s going to be grand.’ Back and forth he rocked her, to no avail. ‘That big monster you told me was chasing you, he’s not real, there’s no real monsters, only in stories.