Delicious, delightful, was the pool where they swam. Thea lay, floating, happy. Three thousand miles from an Irish January, from open fires and black evenings, she felt not the slightest twinge of homesickness. This was fine, perfect; sun and swimming, and no demands pulling her hither and thither. And this country! Sachiv, during those late-night calls, had spoken a lot of boy-friendly Muscat, where he and his pals had gone fishing in the port in homemade boats, of eating watermelon in its dusty lanes, and of the great mountainous peaks—of rock and sand—that made Oman the country he most loved. He had not overstated its beauty.
She paddled a little to keep afloat, her ears plugged with water. The river was nudging her, as if she were a piece of driftwood caught up in twigs that needed release. It was a relief to go with it, and a relief to have come—for which she was grateful to both Kim and Sachiv since it was they, directly and indirectly, who had got her onto that plane to Muscat. She rolled into swimming. It wasn’t too late, it transpired, for her inner grasshopper to find that leather-bound journal.
They made camp by a watercourse somewhere in Wadi Bani Awf when the black night was sinking to earth. While Gabriel lit a fire, Thea stepped away to pee behind a rock, her head clamoring with unwelcome jinn lore, such as their propensity for living in deserted places and their ability to turn into stones, and wolves. In some places, people were afraid to step on jinn—invisible beneath their feet—because they would then be tormented by them. Like chewing gum from the pavement, Thea thought, sticking to your heel. She began to believe. She could feel them watching and suddenly wished herself in Ireland—on a tributary of the Lee, in harmless countryside, where the only sound besides the river would be the moo and munch of cattle behind a hedgerow. . . . But even there the unseen were feared and avoided; she knew of buildings, remote and abandoned, where no one ever set foot because they were reputed to house the walking dead.
Over tea and cookies, they talked of Glandore and Skibbereen, Allihies and Inchydoney. Gabriel asked if the old hotel was still on the headland between the beaches.
“God, no. That was knocked down and replaced by a great big spa hotel. You’d hate it, probably.”
“Probably.”
“Won’t you ever go back?”
He held his plastic mug to his mouth. “Unlikely,” he said, and drank.
“Isn’t exile a stiff price to pay for a youthful mistake?”
He threw out his chin in a dismissive way, his elbow resting on the rock behind him. “If this is exile, exile is no hard place to be.”
“Why did you do it?”
Gabriel flashed his eyes at her, then cleared his throat. He often did so before speaking, as if giving himself a chance to pull back. “No reason. No reason at all.”
She waited.
“As best man, I had certain responsibilities.”
“Like getting the groom manky drunk?”
A low nod. “A particular challenge in Max’s case. Such a sober type. But there were expectations, conventions to be upheld.”
Thea sat still, conscious of an unseen audience around them, oval faces outlined in white, like chalk figures on a blackboard, with O-shaped mouths, lines of them, hanging on the next scene. “So get him drunk you did.”
“Spectacularly.”
The river seemed to slow down, to hush its gurgle.
“Where did you happen upon a grand piano?”
“The School of Music. After the pub, we wandered down that way, about seven of us, drunk as newts, and suddenly Max insisted on going in. ‘I have a class,’ he kept saying—we were both teaching there at the time—so we all bundled up the steps. The night porter, Frank, let us in. He was fond of Max, so he indulged us, said we looked like we needed coffee and went off to make it. ‘I must play,’ Max was saying, ‘must play,’ and we followed him into the hall. The grand was center-stage. Max sat, hanging over the keys, whining about how much he loved his piano, couldn’t bear to live without it, wanted to marry it, sleep with it. We said—I said—sleeping with it might be difficult, but sleeping in it could be arranged. . . . He was sniggering when we got hold of him, but then he slumped—I had him by the armpits—passed out, so we heaved him in, like a sack. Strings snapped and cracked, but even that didn’t . . . alert us. We put down the lid and took off.”
“Good God. You left the building.”
“We left the building.”
Even the ghouls were quiet. The invisible audience of open-mouthed specters held their pose.
“Frank saw me leave. He recounted afterwards that I had looked around, like I’d left something behind, and I remember that feeling—was it my wallet? My jacket? My brother, as it transpired.”
Thea couldn’t speak. For a moment neither could he. Then he said, ‘When Max came round, he couldn’t lift his head. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t see.’
Pulling her fleece around her, Thea edged closer to Gabriel, for warmth, or something.
His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “He was so cold when Frank found him. It was January, just before that historic freeze hit Ireland, and lying there, with drink taken, he was cold as a corpse, Frank said.”
“How long? I mean, when did Frank . . .”
“Hours later. Almost morning. He thought he heard a sort of a cry, somewhere in the building.” Gabriel swallowed. “He checked out the upper floors, then heard it again and realized it was coming from the hall, which was odd, because the hall was soundproofed. He went in. Nothing unusual. . . . Said he didn’t know what made him get up onto the stage to check the piano or what made him lift the lid. God, he said later, made him open it. There was no other reason to.”
“Poor Frank.”
“Max was unconscious. Not sleeping. Unconscious, and
