The Pilgrimage

I watched her struggle up the rocky mountainside, her boots slipping on the stony surface as the wind whipped her hair into her face.  She stopped and her whole body seemed to sway in the wind, as she stood grabbing at the strands of hair that had come loose from beneath the collar of her bright blue windbreaker...

    ‘Take my hand, Clara.’

    From a grassy mound above her I reached out, the wind kept blowing the hood of my red anorak in front of me and I had trouble keeping my own balance though, as a keen climber in my college days, I was more used to these conditions than she was.  We’d gone on some hikes together in the Dublin Mountains in the early days of our relationship.  I figured that maybe that was the reason she’d suggested this weekend; to bring back whatever it was that had seemed to elude us in the past few months.

  We had arrived in Westport the night before.  It was cold and windy and we had booked into the first B&B we had come across just outside the town.  We could’ve found a nicer place, I thought, but we had argued on the way there and the atmosphere between us was taut.  I didn’t wish to strain it even further by suggesting that we find another place, which could easily, I knew, result in Clara slamming out of the car and traipsing with her bag over her shoulder along a darkened country road as I crawled alongside her trying to coax and pacify her back into the car.  It wouldn’t be the first time.    

    I was right about the B&B.  There were two single beds in a dull room, which reminded me of the guestroom in my grandmother’s house all those years ago.  The walls were papered in a floral design.  The curtains and carpet were dark brown and the furniture heavy and antique.  Clara sat on one of the single beds, pulled off her boots and announced that she was going to take a shower, she felt musty after the long journey in the car.  I remembered a time when we'd showered together. 

    For some reason I thought about the first time we’d slept together.  It was in a B&B on the harbour in the coastal town of Skerries, just a mile from where I’d lived.  She’d booked herself in to be near me when I was in the middle of separating from my wife.  We’d spent stolen hours together when I was supposed to be working, and in the evening before I had dressed to return home we’d watched the lights come on in the harbour, shining in the water and making the dark shapes of the old boats look almost ghostly against the darkening sky.

    The water continued to run.  I got up and walked to the door.  I could hear her singing softly to herself beneath the rush of the water.  I pictured her body, pale and light.  She had retained the weightlessness of youth.  I moved away from the door, sat on the end of the bed and turned on the television.  A few minutes later I turned it off again.  It was quiet in the bathroom.  I stood looking at the two single beds and decided to push them together.  The bathroom door opened just as I was fixing the duvets between the beds and Clara appeared dressed in her pyjamas with her hair still wet.  I looked at her almost guiltily.

    Clara threw back the covers and climbed into the bed nearest the door. 

    ‘So what time should we set off in the morning?’ she said.

    She picked up her phone to set the alarm clock.

    ‘As early as possible, I guess.’

    I stood on the other side of the bed and undressed.  I threw my clothes over the armchair under the window and then I climbed into bed.  I moved over towards Clara.  She had her back to me, her hair was damp on the pillow and I found myself lying in the place where the two beds separated.  I put my hand on her stomach and felt her muscles tighten.

    ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

    ‘Nothing.  I’m just tired, that’s all.’

    I began to caress her, my hand moving slowly over her smooth abdomen, but she didn’t react, and finally without protest I withdrew to my own bed and slept.    

    At breakfast the woman in the B&B advised us against climbing the Reek.  She said that the forecast wasn’t good and that we ought to wait, but Clara scorned the woman’s advice. 

    ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but we’ll be fine.  We know what we’re doing.’

    We set out early, parked in the car park at the foot of the mountain.  There were few other climbers around.  I guessed that they’d heeded the forecast, and I had a foreboding sense that we shouldn’t have come.  As I stepped out of the car, I scanned the rocky mountain before us.  There were a few coloured dots moving in the distance.  I looked at Clara.  I couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed, nor could I understand her unwavering compulsion to do this. 

    About an hour into the climb, she began struggling for breath but her face was set in that way I’d seen so many times before when she was determined to do something. 

    ‘You okay?’ I said.

    ‘Fine.’

    She took my hand without glancing at my face, but as soon as she was on a level with me, she pulled it away again. 

    ‘Hey, we don’t have to go any farther if you don’t want to, you know.’

    I raised my voice above the wind.

    ‘I’m okay,’ she said.  ‘Let’s just keep going.’

    She stormed ahead, her feet slipping on the uneven surface, but she seemed to be compelled by some vigorous internal resolve to reach the summit.  I stayed a step or two behind in case she should need my assistance.  I knew that she was too proud to ask for anyone’s help, even mine.

    We climbed steadily for the next hour and when I gauged that we were about halfway to the summit, I suggested that we take a break.  Clara seemed to have tapped into some hidden reservoir of energy since her initial difficulties, but at my suggestion she sat down on a heavy boulder and took a long drink from the flask.  For a while we sat in silence staring down on the blues and greens of Clew Bay that was spread out beneath us.  We could have been the only two people on the planet as we sat on that bleak mountainside, and yet as I looked at Clara sitting on her rock a few feet away I felt there existed between us an unfathomable divide.

    ‘What was it that made you want to do this?’

    My voice rose above the wind, shattering the silence.

    Clara looked off into the distance and shrugged.

    ‘I’d read about it.  How people climbed this hill to atone for their sins.’

    ‘And what sins have you committed, Clara?’

    I laughed as I said it, but Clara didn’t respond.  She stood up and paced a few steps amongst the rocks as she stared down at the bay far, far below.

    ‘I wanted things to get back to normal with us, you know?  But I don’t think we ever can.  It’s me.  I’ve ruined everything.  I don’t know what it is, I destroy everything that’s good.’

    I felt my heart beat faster as her voice rose and drifted on the wind.  I wondered if her words were heard on the bay below, if they were carried to distant places where people spoke in foreign tongues.

    ‘Come on.  Everyone goes through rough patches, Clara.  It’s normal.  We’ve just got to stick together.’

    ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

    She was right.  I didn’t.  I didn’t know what had happened to change everything between us, but I knew, just as she did, that things hadn’t been the same.  As I listened to her words I knew that it wasn’t the weather that had caused my earlier sense of foreboding.  It was this moment that I had known was coming, but which I’d been strenuously trying to avoid.

    ‘Then tell me,’ I said.  ‘Tell me what’s changed.’

    Clara sat down again, but this time she sat opposite me.  She looked at the rocks at her feet and she began to speak.

    ‘There was someone else.  It was a few months ago and it only happened once, but I can’t get it out of my head.  I’m sorry.’ 

    ‘What?  How could you?  I mean – you - you went crazy every time I mentioned a female friend…Clara…’

    I stood up.  I began to pace up and down the mountainside.  I couldn’t take it in.

    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

    I stopped in front of her.

    ‘What?’

    ‘I said I’m sorry.  I don’t know what else to say.  Why don’t we just continue on, it’s getting late.’

    ‘You want to continue?  You just tell me this out of the blue and expect me to accept it…what’s wrong with you? 

    Suddenly I needed to know the details.

    ‘When did this happen?  Where?’ I asked.

    ‘You remember that party, the one you wouldn’t go to.  I was meeting some friends from college.’

    ‘So you’re blaming me now?  Just because I didn’t want to go to one of your stupid parties, you’re trying to say it’s my fault. Jesus, I thought I could trust you Clara.’

    ‘You never want to go anywhere,’ she said.  ‘Not with me.’

    ‘That’s not true.  You know I’ve nothing to say to these people.  You never had a problem with it before.’

    Clara stood up.  I could see that her expression had changed.  She looked defensive, angry even.

    ‘Oh, don’t pretend that you’re so innocent,’ she said.  ‘What about that French teacher in your last job?  We all know you had a thing for her, don’t we?  Only she didn’t want anything to do with you, Greg.’ 

    Clara was already moving away from me.  I followed her and attempted to put a hand on her arm.  For a moment I thought she looked frightened.  Maybe she figured I’d gone crazy.  There was no one around, no one there to witness what I might do to her, but I felt this terrible emptiness inside, and revulsion that she could be scared of me.

    ‘The only thing that happened with Claudette was in your sordid little imagination.’

    The lie hung between us as we stood on that windy mountainside.  My hand was still on her arm and neither of us had moved. 

    ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

    ‘Just a guy I knew at college.’

    I let go of her arm.  We stood like that for some time, neither of us knowing what to do next.  I was surprised when Clara raised a hand to wipe the tears that I hadn’t noticed she’d been crying.

    ‘You know what the worst thing is,’ she said.  ‘If he’d wanted me, I wouldn’t be here now.  But he didn’t.  And I tried to forget.  I tried to be with you, like we used to be, but nothing seems to work.’ 

    A group of walkers passed by, making their way back from the summit.  They nodded and continued on, faces flushed with success.  Their voices died away as their forms grew smaller in the distance.  I thought of that night with Claudette, and I tried to reconcile it in my head with Clara’s betrayal, but I couldn’t.  Her guilt was something loathsome, it made her weak.  She was looking out across the bay now – her face streaked where the tears had made her make-up run, and I knew that already she had left this place.  I turned and began in the direction that the hikers had gone; their forms now miniscule near the foot of the mountain.  Stones skittered beneath my boots, descending more rapidly than the oncoming mist.