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| Illustration by PillarToPost.org / F. Stop Fitzgerald. |
THE ISLE OF WRONG
By Thomas Shess
It was the kind of islands north and west of Belfast, where inbred secrets drifted in with the fog and stayed long after the tide went out.
Danny Halvors returned to the Better Islands in long sleeves and without a parade. The Royal Navy had discharged him with a medal, a pension, a limp, and arms scarred from wrist to shoulder after a fire in a submarine galley. He had dragged two shipmates through smoke and burning oil before anyone reached him. His gloves had saved his hands. Nothing had saved the rest.
Three years of surgery, therapy, and dreams in which the hatch would not open had made him quiet. He was thirty now. He had learned how quickly admiration became pity once people saw what courage had cost.
The Better Islands—two gray knots in a hard sea—had not changed. The Larger sited the village while the Smaller tended the farms. Anyone born there who suffered a run of bad luck called them the Bitter Isles. Ferries still ran late. Fishing boats knocked drunkenly against the piers. The plant outside the village still smelled of herring, diesel, and men losing arguments with the future.
Danny avoided the village and took a berth on a trawler working the outer grounds. After the catches, he gutted fish. At night he slept in a narrow bunk and imagined a room in Dublin where no one knew his name.
He never heard Maureen Glass had taken over her father’s place, a tidy café steps from the ferry landing and across the quay from the harbor.
Once, before the Navy, they had been close enough for the islands to expect a wedding and shy enough never to discuss one.
Then Danny had gone to sea. Letters became Christmas cards, and Christmas cards became silence.
Constable Avery Wolden knew all of that. Wolden had arrived from London two years earlier with polished boots, a vague story about wanting simpler police work, and the habit of drinking before noon.
He had courted Maureen before and after his divorce with the patience of a man who mistook persistence for charm.
She refused him gently, which he could not fathom. To him, it was an unsolved mystery why she found him lacking.
To her, it was plain as his face. He was a drunk.
When word reached him that Danny had finally returned, Wolden asked Maureen to come to the station. He poured whiskey into his tea and left the bottle on the desk between them. “You ought to know something before you see Halvors,” he said.
Maureen watched him. “What sort of something?”
“He wasn’t discharged because of the fire. That’s the story he tells.”
“And the truth being?”
Wolden lowered his voice. “Portersfield Prison in Inverness. Indecency. A woman complained. Her young daughter was in the house. Twas a miracle he was pardoned."
Maureen’s face changed, though only slightly. “You are certain?”
“I read the file myself.” The lie was detailed enough to sound official and ugly enough to discourage questions. It worked because Wolden wore a uniform, because Danny had not written, and because Maureen had spent years teaching herself that she had never mattered to him.
When Danny finally entered the café, she received him with the brittle courtesy reserved for strangers and people who had disappointed you beyond repair.
He felt the distance before she finished pouring his tea. “It’s good to see you, Maureen.”
“A long time has passed, Danny Halvors.” No welcome shone in those green eyes.
She returned to her book at the far end of the counter.
Danny left half the tea untouched and did not say goodbye.
***
A fortnight later, Danny's boss, the trawler captain and his wife stopped at the café while the boat took on fuel. The captain’s wife noticed a framed colored photo
hung behind the counter: Two redheads: Maureen and Danny at seventeen, squinting into the sun on the seawall.
“There he is,” she said. “Best man aboard, and I include my husband only because he pays me.”
The captain grunted into his mug.
“Danny?” Maureen asked.
The wife replied,“That’s him in the photograph. Is that you beside him?”
“Once he was my beau.”
“Good man," the wife said. "The lads aboard our trawler would follow him into hell. Years ago, two already did, near enough. He pulled them out of that submarine fire. The Navy gave him a medal. We are lucky to have him.”
Maureen set down the coffeepot. “Too bad he went to prison.”
The woman stared at her. “Our Danny? Danny Halvors was never in prison.”
“Not many men with that name on these islands” Maureen offered.
“His prison was eighteen months in a naval hospital and another year learning to use his arms again. You have the wrong man.”
Maureen looked through the window toward the police station across the square. “Please ask him to come see me,” she said. “I need to know the truth.”
The captain’s wife delivered the message when she returned to the trawler.
Danny interrupted her, “She was cold enough to freeze the tea in my cup,”
“She heard you had done time in Inverness."
Danny straightened. “Nae. That's not true. I've never spent a day in jail."
“Then clear it up. She asked to see you.”
That evening Danny crossed the quay toward the café, hope showing despite his care to hide it. Through the window he saw Wolden seated at the counter, he had just told her a jailhouse joke and then for his reward the constable placed a hand over hers.
Danny turned his head. He did not see Maureen pull her hand away. He did not hear her say she had learned Inverness Prison had no record of Danny being there.
Danny only saw the hand, the smile that she had forced on her face and mistook all he saw as proof that his years away had settled themselves without him.
Danny turned back toward the harbor as fog swallowed the last of the light.
Inside, Maureen faced Wolden. “Bring me the file on Danny. I want to see it."
“How'd you learn of such files. Prisons won't release them without a court order and besides Police records aren’t café reading.”
“I've a cousin, a guard inside Inverness never heard of a Danny Halvors and that honest man has worked there for decades."
“You’re making too much of this.”
That was when she knew.
***
The trawler sailed before dawn, and rough weather kept the boats out for twelve days. When a cracked fuel line finally forced them home, Danny went ashore to the Co-op for provisions. He stopped at Todd Morrow's public house across from the Constabulary. The landlord set down the glass but kept his hand over it. “This house doesn’t serve rapists.”
"Todd, how long have you known me? Could I do such a thing?" Danny shook his head.
Wolden sat at the end of the bar, smiling into his whiskey.
Danny looked from one man to the other. “Who told you that?”
“Official records,” Wolden spoke up, “You can’t hide from records.”
Danny had survived fire, but he had no wish to survive an island determined to believe the worst of him. The next morning, he had decided to accept an offer he had twice refused from an old shipmate opening a small restaurant near Connolly Station in Dublin.
Danny had cooked aboard submarines before the fire. In a kitchen, his hands still knew what to do. He reached the ferry landing before mid-morning with his duffel beside him. The next boat would take him to Belfast; from there he would catch the train south.
A child’s scream cut through the gulls.
A seven-year-old had fallen between the pier and a fishing boat. His ankle was caught in a mooring line, and each swell dragged him beneath the black water.
Men shouted instructions from the wharf. A woman ran toward the police station calling for Wolden. An older woman dialed her phone.
Danny was already pulling off his coat.
The cold North sea struck like iron. He went under once, found the boy’s leg, and freed the rope before both lost their breath.
Danny surfaced with the child against his chest just as a thick rope flew at them.
Hands reached down. Someone took the boy. Others hauled Danny onto the pier, his sleeves pushed to his shoulders, the ruined skin of his arms exposed to the whole village.
For a moment no one spoke.
Then the boy began to cough. A cheer went up. The growing crowd carried both into Glass Café.
Maureen wrapped the child in tablecloths and knelt beside Danny as he shivered on the floor. “I know Wolden lied,” she said.
Danny looked at her.
“But you believed him.”
She did not defend herself. “Yes.”
The single word hurt more than an excuse would have.
Wolden arrived--his breath reeked of whiskey-- his coat unbuttoned and his hair damp and badly combed.
The boy’s mother demanded to know where he had been. "Sleeping it off again, in Todd Morrrow's back room," she added.
“Fie, woman! I was on police business,” he insisted.
“I rang the station six times.”
“The telephone must have been out.”
“It rang,” she said. “No one answered.”
"I was out on a call," he said pounding the bar with his fist.
Todd Morrow spoke up. He had come over to witness the hubbub. "Aye, he was sleeping it off in my back room."
Maureen stood. “Why did you tell me Danny Halvors had been in Inverness Prison?”
Wolden looked at Danny on the floor, then at the faces gathered around him. “I warned you about a man with a questionable history.”
“You said you had read his file.”
“I said there was information.”
“You named the prison,” Maureen said. “You named the offense. You said a woman and her daughter were involved.”
Wolden’s face tightened. “Mind yourself, Miss Glass”
Many in the room had heard the threat in his voice before. It silenced the room for a moment. Then the captain’s wife shouted from the doorway. “Show us the file.”
“Police records are none of your concern.”
“They will concern the mainland sergeant,” she said. “I telephoned him before coming here.”
Wolden glanced toward the window. The ferry from the mainland had not yet appeared, but everyone in the café understood that it would.
Todd Morrow moved up to Wolden. "You told me Danny had been convicted.”
“I repeated what I heard.”
“You told me it came from official records.”
Other voices followed. A fisherman said Wolden had threatened to revoke his license after an argument. A widow said he had entered her cottage without permission.
The boy’s mother said he had ignored three earlier complaints about the loose mooring line.
Wolden raised his hands. “You people were happy enough with me yesterday. Now you're barking at me like wild dogs."
"Avery, I wouldn't ask for a vote on that right now," Morrow said.
No one answered. But the barman's words struck hard. Wolden reached for his cap. “I’ll answer questions when someone with authority asks them.”
***
The mainland sergeant arrived on the afternoon ferry accompanied by another constable. He questioned a roomful: Maureen, Todd Morrow, the boy’s mother, and anyone else willing to remain.
By dusk, Wolden had been relieved of duty pending an inquiry into false statements, intimidation, neglect of duty, and several earlier complaints the islanders had once been too frightened to make.
Danny declined to press charges.
“That may not matter,” the sergeant said. “This stopped being only your grievance the moment he used his badge to spread the lie.”
Mid-evening Danny collected his duffel and boarded the last ferry. Maureen followed him to its gate. “Stay one more night,” she said.
“For what?”
“So I can explain.”
“You believed I could do that to a woman and a child. All of you did.”
Her eyes filled, but she held his gaze. “I was angry that you vanished without a word. Believing the worst was easier than admitting I still cared.”
The ferry deckhand lifted the chain across the gangway. Danny picked up his duffel. “That may be the truth, Maureen. It isn’t the same as an apology.”
He boarded without looking back.
***
Three months later, on a wet Thursday in Dublin, Danny stood at the stove in a narrow restaurant near Connolly Station, reducing onions for the lunch service. The scars along his arms had become ordinary to the kitchen staff. No one stared anymore unless he burned the sauce.
A waiter came through the swing door. “Woman at table six asking for you.”
“Tell her the chef is busy.”
“She’s come from one of those northern islands and looks capable of waiting until the sea goes dry.”
Danny grinned, "I know such women," wiped his hands and stepped into the dining room.
Maureen sat alone beside the window. She had no luggage beyond a small overnight case. On the table lay the faded Kodak image from behind the café counter and an envelope containing a copy of her statement to the mainland police.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“Your captain’s wife. Loyal, but not discreet.”
He remained standing.
“I sold the café,” Maureen said. “Not because I expect anything from you. I was tired of serving people who knew Wolden lied and said nothing.”
Danny looked through the rain-streaked window. “Where will you go?”
“I thought I might begin with breakfast.”
A corner of his mouth moved.
“I was wrong about you,” she said. “Worse, I wanted to believe the lie because it excused me from being hurt. I cannot ask you to forget that. I came to tell you to your face that I am sorry.”
Danny sat across from her. He let the silence remain between them for a while. “Breakfast is over,” he said.
“Lunch, then.” She didn't say please. Her hands touched his arms.
He looked at the old photograph, then at the woman who had carried it across the sea. “Lunch I can manage.”
***
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