Directly ahead, perched above the shore, the dark mass of bodies buffeted by the nor’easter stared into the dark at the boy Michel Bourdieu could not see. He stopped. Still, he longed to believe that this was nothing, that the gullible masses were mistaken. Surely they knew that every time the Blessed Virgin had appeared on earth, she had prophesied war and catastrophe, had made those visionaries gaze, helpless and terrified, into the pit of hell, witness the death of entire peoples, the end of time itself. Nothing was more threatening to mankind than visitations from Heaven, and only Michel Bourdieu seemed to be aware of this.
‘Father Erwann hasn’t made a pronouncement yet. I’ve always thought he’s too young; he doesn’t understand what’s at stake here …’ Michel Bourdieu listened half-heartedly to the man’s words: the boy was lying, that much was certain, but the crowd was growing, and excitable now; before long this might become an uprising. It was imperative that he put an end to this hoax. Impervious, rigid with a cold feeling he had never known before, he stared at the scene on the headland.
‘How do you know he’s lying?’
With a leap, Michel Bourdieu darted off down the path. In the distance, candles flickered in a small pocket of darkness just above the shore; Michel crept closer now, a menacing figure in the half-light, crouching low so that he would appear only at the last moment. Then he jumped up and charged into the crowd, causing a commotion that took those present by surprise; there was shouting and shoving, candles were knocked over, and in the sudden confusion, everyone seemed to lose their footing, overwhelmed by this unexpected turn of events. The sea of people parted to reveal the tip of the headland, the lanterns, the stone cairns, the scattered bouquets of white flowers – and the boy, there on his knees, oblivious to the backwash behind him.
Michel Bourdieu launched himself at the child, tried to lift him off the ground the way a raging current tries to move a boulder; but it was as if Isaac were fused to the rock, a granite slab, impossible to shift. Michel Bourdieu seethed as he redoubled his efforts. Suddenly discovering a latent fury, he brutally lifted the boy off the ground, dragged him back into the world, only for another axe to fall, an axe that he had not anticipated – a more powerful, more devastating force that pushed him aside so viciously he almost tumbled off the headland.
‘Don’t you dare lay a hand on him!’
It was Alan, the father no one expected; Alan here for the first time that day, the widower who now towered over Isaac, protecting this boy who was still his son even if he was stolen away by the coastline each night. The clamour of voices fell silent; hushed seconds while icy gusts mercilessly battered the dazed crowd, as though the violence were everywhere.
‘You need to leave.’
Here, on this rocky stretch of coast, Michel Bourdieu was the one being told to leave: it was he who was being spurned, just as his family had spurned him earlier. He had sensed his imminent fall that morning, the moment Sister Anne walked through his door, the moment she brought her downfall into his home: no one falls without taking another person along with them.
‘When the Heavens visit the earth, it only ever portends evil.’
Michel Bourdieu walked away without a word, without a regret, plunging through the darkness until he melted into the night.
The wind blew across the slate roof. In the bedroom, the lamp briefly flickered. Lying under the covers, Isaac stared at the photo in the dim light: a portrait of a blonde woman, his mother, sitting cross-legged on the sand, hands cupping her swollen belly; all around her, the pristine white shore, blazing in the summer sunshine.
A faint tapping at the door, a creak, and then his father appeared.
‘Did I wake you?’
Isaac shook his head. His father shuffled into the room looking slightly awkward. He never came into Isaac’s bedroom; he wanted to give the boy his privacy, but also perhaps it was because he was a coward, so this was the first time he had seen the dull, blank walls, the plain table that served as a desk, the cupboard that extended from the floor to the loft bed. It was a spartan room, like a monk’s cell, though monks at least had the Bible for company.
‘Does your arm hurt?’
‘I can’t feel a thing. It’s as though he never touched me.’
Isaac sat up, surprised to see his father there, just as he had been surprised to see him on the headland earlier that evening. For some days, they had taken to avoiding each other, unable to engage in even the most trivial conversation. Isaac would leave the house as the sun began to set and Alan did not try to stop him. He pretended not to notice, not to hear the front door closing; he felt overwhelmed by what was occurring and could see no end in sight. He knew what happened out on the headland; he could not leave his house without people commenting on it, had seen them look at him askance with a mingle of curiosity and contempt, had heard the rumours circulating all over town. That night, for the first time, he had wanted to see too. He had found the dark, silent congregation gathered on the headland that had become a shrine, seen his son prostrate beneath the sky. Curiously, he had found the scene less disturbing this time: there was a serenity about it he had not noticed before, some kind of conviction that he could not put into words. But then violence had flared out of the darkness, and everything had suddenly changed.
A gust of wind pummelled the window and the lamp bulb flickered again. Alan recognized the picture frame his son was holding, the photograph he had packed into a cardboard box all those years ago, on the day he had consigned his memories to a dusty storage unit.
‘I didn’t know you had rescued that photo …’
He stepped closer and looked at the photograph he had taken on an August afternoon, on the sandy shore outside their home. His wife had spent much of her pregnancy on the beach; she wanted their son to hear all the sounds that awaited him, the teeming life outside the womb that he would soon come to know. After Isaac was born, she had taught him how to take his first steps on the pristine sand, taught him not to be afraid of the seaweed that clung to his ankles, taught him to spot little crabs so that he did not get nipped; she had taught him to gaze into the distance, to read the world, the ebb and flow of the tide, the changing of the seasons, the cycles of the moon, the rolling sea and the creeping mists, the perfection he should salute and strive to imitate.
‘Tonight … she said to me …’
Sitting on his bed, Isaac paused; he seemed deep in thought, as though silently rehearsing the words he was about to say. Meanwhile the wind howled around the house, seeming to die away only to spring back to life, striking the windowpanes so hard it seemed like they might shatter; a fearsome and majestic presence that drowned out all other sound in this cavernous night.
‘She said: “To believe is to receive.”’
His son smiled serenely, as though finally relieved of his worries, as though he had at long last found what he had been searching for: the end of their grief.
This time Alan did not question him. The truth seemed unimportant: he did not care whether Isaac was being honest, whether he had heard another voice or whether it was his own, whether what he saw was the Blessed Virgin, some other woman or simply a manifestation of his lonely dreams. The ends justified the means.
A little awkwardly, he laid a hand on his son’s shoulder – he had grown unused to such gestures of affection – and then he left Isaac’s room, hiding a tremulous smile.
Children laughing. Outside, right next to their house, and their laughter woke Julia. Her body drew her back towards sleep. The storm had raged all night, growling and threatening to blow away the roof, to smash down all the doors, while Julia had cowered and held her breath, terrified by the unseen force that seemed to be watching her from outside the window.
There came another burst of laughter, children teasing and calling to each other a stone’s throw from her home. She opened her eyes to find a room that was not hers. The walls were lined with flowery wallpaper; the windows were covered by linen curtains. Her mother lay next to her breathing shallowly, one shoulder peeking out from under the duvet. They had fallen asleep here yesterday after they had left her father standing at the foot of the stairs. Julia slipped out of bed and quietly opened the curtains: a ball bounced; children emerged from the dunes, chasing the foam ball down the slope; the sky was clear and cloudless. Julia tiptoed around the bed and sneaked out of the room without waking her mother.
Outside, the voices grew more distant. Morning wore on and a shaft of sunlight reached through the window, extending from floor to bed, then to the duvet, until it touched the cheek of the sleeping mother, the gentle warmth on her face finally waking her. Seeing that her daughter was gone, the curtains were half open and the door was ajar, she pulled on her dressing gown, padded down the hallway and glanced into the kitchen. She went upstairs to check Julia’s bedroom and the bathroom, then came back down to the living room and found her husband lying on his side, his arms folded around him, his knees drawn up, wedged between the armrests of the sofa that was too short for his frame.
‘Michel …?’
Michel Bourdieu woke with a start and almost tumbled on to the floor; exhausted and wild-eyed, he noticed his wife standing in the doorway.
‘I can’t find Julia.’
Outside, the skies were as blue and clear as a spring morning. Husband and wife went out through the gate and headed down the dirt road, taking turns calling their daughter’s name. Before long, they heard high-pitched squeals: down on the shore, a group of children were tossing around bits of bladderwrack. All across the beach, huge piles of red and brown seaweed washed up by the storm mottled the once pristine sand. They spotted Julia running around with the other children, blossoming, thriving in this space a city child could not even begin to imagine; she jumped into the slimy heaps with both feet, ducking and weaving in an impromptu game of dodgeball between the mounds of kelp.
The ball flew past; Julia caught it and prepared to throw it at the opposing team.
‘Julia!’
Julia was so startled to hear her name that she dropped the ball, which rolled towards the waterline; looking up she saw her mother – a physical barrier between frivolous fun and grim reality. She gripped the girl’s shoulders.
‘You know you’re not supposed to run around!’
Her mother listened for the wheezing that usually preceded an asthma attack; she noticed her daughter’s excited face, flushed with unfamiliar colour. Around them, the other children had stopped playing, unsettled by this serious turn of events, as though the grown-up world could not intrude on childhood without shattering it.
‘Listen, Maman.’
