“The Trout”
by
Sean
O’Faolain
One of the first places Julia
always ran to when they arrived in G--- was The Dark Walk. It is a laurel walk,
very old, almost gone wild, a lofty midnight tunnel of smooth, sinewy branches.
Underfoot the tough brown leaves
are never dry enough to crackle: there is always a suggestion of damp and cool
trickle.
She raced right into it. For the
first few yards she always had the memory of the sun behind her, then she felt
the dusk closing swiftly down on her so that she screamed with pleasure and
raced on to reach the light at the far end; and it was always just a little too
long in coming so that she emerged gasping, clasping her hands, laughing,
drinking in the sun. When she was filled with the heat and glare she would turn
and consider the ordeal again.
This year she had the extra joy
of showing it to her small brother, and of terrifying him as well as herself.
And for him the fear lasted longer because his legs were so short and she had
gone out at the far end while he was still screaming and racing.
When they had done this many
times they came back to the house to tell everybody that
they had done it. He boasted. She
mocked. They squabbled.
`Cry babby!'
`You were afraid yourself, so
there!'
`I won't take you any more.'
`You're a big pig.'
`I hate you.'
Tears were threatening so
somebody said, `Did you see the well?' She opened her eyes at that and held up
her long lovely neck suspiciously and decided to be incredulous. She was twelve
and at that age little girls are beginning to suspect most stories: they have
already found out too many, from Santa Claus to the Stork. How could there be a
well! In The Dark Walk! That she had visited year after year? Haughtily she
said, `Nonsense.'
But she went back, pretending to
be going somewhere else, and she found a hole scooped in the rock at the side
of the walk, choked with damp leaves, so shrouded by ferns that she only uncovered
it after much searching. At the back of this little cavern there was about a
quart of water. In the water she suddenly perceived a panting trout. She rushed
for Stephen and dragged him to see, and they were both so excited that they
were no longer afraid of the darkness as they hunched down and peered in at the
fish panting in his tiny prison, his silver stomach going up and down like an
engine.
Nobody knew how the trout got
there. Even Old Martin in the kitchen-garden laughed and refused to believe
that it was there, or pretended not to believe, until she forced him to come
down and see. Kneeling and pushing back his tattered old cap he peered in.
`Be cripes, you're right. How the
divil in hell did that fella get there?'
She stared at him suspiciously.
`You knew?' she accused; but he
said, `The divil a know;' and reached down to lift it out.
Convinced she hauled him back. If
she had found it then it was her trout.
Her mother suggested that a bird
had carried the spawn. Her father thought that in the
winter a small streamlet might
have carried it down there as a baby, and it had been safe until the summer
came and the water began to dry up. She said, `I see,' and went back to look
again and consider the matter in private. Her brother remained behind, wanting
to hear the whole story of the trout, not really interested in the actual trout
but much interested in the story which his mummy began to make up for him on
the lines of, `So one day Daddy Trout and Mammy Trout . . . .' Whenhe retailed
it to her she said, `Pooh.'
It troubled her that the trout
was always in the same position; he had no room to turn; all thetime the silver
belly went up and down; otherwise he was motionless. She wondered what he ate and
in between visits to Joey Pony, and the boat and a bathe to get cool, she
thought of his hunger.
She brought him down bits of
dough; once she brought a worm. He ignored the food. He just went on panting.
Hunched over him she thought how, all the winter, while she was at school he
had been in there. All winter, in The Dark Walk, all day, all night, floating
around alone. She drew the leaf of her hat down around her ears and chin and
stared. She was still thinking of it as she lay in bed.
It was late June, the longest
days of the year. The sun had sat still for a week, burning up
the world. Although it was after
ten o'clock it was still bright and still hot. She lay on her back under a
single sheet, with her long legs spread, trying to keep cool. She could see the
D of the moon through the fir-tree -- they slept on the ground floor. Before
they went to bed her mummy had told Stephen the story of the trout again, and
she, in her bed, had resolutely presented her back to them and read her book.
But she had kept one ear cocked.
`And so, in the end, this naughty
fish who would not stay at home got bigger and bigger,
and the water got smaller and
smaller. . . .'
Passionately she had whirled and
cried, `Mummy, don't make it a horrible old moral story!'
Her mummy had brought in a Fairy
Godmother, then, who sent lots of rain, and filled the well, and a stream
poured out and the trout floated away down to the river below. Staring at the
moon she knew that there are no such things as Fairy Godmothers and that the
trout, down in The Dark Walk, was panting like an engine. She heard somebody
unwind a fishing-reel. Would the beasts fish him out!
She sat up. Stephen was a hot
lump of sleep, lazy thing. The Dark Walk would be full of
little scraps of moon. She leaped
up and looked out the window, and somehow it was not so lightsome now that she
saw the dim mountains far away and the black firs against the breathing land
and heard a dog say, bark-bark. Quietly she lifted the ewer of water, and
climbed out the window and scuttled along the cool but cruel gravel down to the
maw of the tunnel. Her pyjamas were very short so that when she splashed water
it wet her ankles. She peered into the tunnel.
Something alive rustled inside
there. She raced in, and up and down she raced, and flurried, and cried aloud,
`Oh, Gosh, I can't find it,' and then at last she did. Kneeling down in the
damp she put her hand into the slimy hole. When the body lashed they were both
mad with fright. But she gripped him and shoved him into the ewer and raced,
with her teeth ground, out to the other end of the tunnel and down the steep
paths to the river's edge.
All the time she could feel him
lashing his tail against the side of the ewer. She was afraid he would jump
right out. The gravel cut into her soles until she came to the cool ooze of the
river's bank where the moon-mice on the water crept into her feet. She poured
out watching until he plopped. For a second he was visible in the water. She
hoped he was not dizzy. Then all she saw was the glimmer of the moon in the
silent-flowing river, the dark firs, the dim mountains, and the radiant pointed
face laughing down at her out of the empty sky.
She scuttled up the hill, in the
window, plonked down the ewer and flew through the air like a bird into bed.
The dog said bark-bark. She heard the fishing-reel whirring. She hugged herself
and giggled.
Like a river of joy her holiday
spread before her.
In the morning Stephen rushed to her,
shouting that `he' was gone, and asking `where' and `how'. Lifting her nose in
the air she said superciliously, `Fairy Godmother, I suppose?' and strolled
away patting the palms of her hands.