‘The Ferry Man’ by Dean Fee

My father and I don’t have the most typical father-daughter relationship, nor do we have an untypical one, but since my mother died, he has been making more of an effort. We talk often, but only ever by phone and never for very long.

His voice down the phone is being drowned out by the wind.

Did you say you bought an island?

On an island, he shouts. I bought a house on an island.

He suggests I come see him soon, once he gets it fixed up a bit. And bring Emma, he says. I want to see my granddaughter.

It’ll give us a chance to talk about everything, he says.

The last time I saw him was at Emma’s fourth birthday. A few months ago she turned seven. He sent a card with no money in it. My mother arrived early in the day and stayed until dark. She liked to help out. This usually came in the form of suggestions, gentle persuasion towards the way she thought things should be done. When she saw Dad’s card stuck to the fridge she told me that I needed a house with a fireplace.

Cards go on the mantelpiece, Bee, she said. Not on the fridge. We’re not Yanks.

Emma and the few friends she had were sitting quietly around the low coffee table in the living room. The only thing separating us from them was a peninsula of countertop where I was sticking candles into a caterpillar cake. My mother sidled up beside me and asked if there had been any money in the card.

I gave her a what-do-you-think look and she shook her head sadly. Never had a pot to piss in, did he?

I shook my head and she hugged me from behind and kissed me on the ear. I’m sure Dad will be fine, she said.

I turned, rubbed her lower back and said, Come on. Let’s get these candles lit so we can do the happy birthday thing. I lit all seven and told her to turn off the lights.

On the phone my Dad asks if we’ll come. We will, I say. It’ll be nice to get away.

*

Emma is a smart child, but she is quiet. She rarely engages with me when I talk to her about normal things like school or her friends, but has particular things she is interested in. Her tastes have changed over the years but at the moment all she wants to do is eat fish and read about birds. Trying to encourage her in anything she takes even the slightest interest in, I bought her a big book about birds. It was mostly pictures, and though she liked it some, she gave it back to me after a day and said there wasn’t enough info. Info was her word.

The next day we went to a bookshop and she picked out three different bird books. One was a field guide, pocket-sized and useful. Another was a more general guide to birdwatching, and the third was a hardback nonfiction book by a man who went to study birds in Alaska in the 1920s. They were expensive, probably a little bit too expensive for what I made, but she was so visibly excited, I couldn’t say no.

That was almost a week ago and she hasn’t lifted her head from them yet.

*

Emma’s father is not in the picture. We’d been together six weeks when I got pregnant. He wanted an abortion; I didn’t. He held my wrists in Strandhill and told me I couldn’t just go ahead and have the child without his consent. He told me that. We were on the sand, my back was to the pier wall. I shook him off and he paced. He ran his hands through his hair and said, Bee, please. I’m not ready.

I told him to listen to me. I said, I’m going to have the baby, but you don’t have to worry. We don’t want anything from you. You don’t have to be involved in our lives.

Already I was using the plural. I felt very strongly that I knew Emma then and I wasn’t going to let Frank Ward tell me I couldn’t have her. He fought for a few more minutes but eventually gave in, although I could sense the fight was a bit for show. In order to save face, he needed someone else to take the decision out of his hands.

Don’t worry, Frank, I said. We’ll move far from here.

He stepped back from me and made a show of looking anguished while I made my way back up to the promenade, stepping back over the footprints I had left on my way down.

In the end it was Frank who left. He gathered as much money as he could and moved to Australia. Sometimes I’ll check his Instagram and see photos of him on a beach with bleached blonde hair, wearing a wooden necklace and a long tank top. He looks healthy and fit, if very different. I’d love to say I’m happy for him, but I’m not. Although it was his choice, and in a way I can respect it, I can’t imagine going through life without your only child.

*

We leave Sligo town early in the morning. I’m tired but feeling oddly vibrant. Emma alternates between sleeping and reading on the drive up the coast, sometimes pressing her head against the window, her eyes raised to the sky in search of birds. Where I’d usually put the radio on to entertain myself – my daughter is not the best company – today I leave it off. I choose instead to pay attention to the landscape falling past me: first Ben Bulben, noble and stark against the brightening sky, and then the coast, intermittent and frothy between lush swathes of trees. After the brief crossing through Leitrim, the Donegal landscape begins to show itself: low rock walls lie in vast fields beneath high and craggy hillsides that often turn to mountains.

I’m an anxious person so we arrive way too early for the ferry. At the coffee stand by the pier a woman tells me that there have been wild times on the island of late. She tells me about a group of students 600-strong who took to the island a few weeks back and ran rampant. They pissed in the islander’s gardens and walked into their houses and told them to get out. The poor folks must’ve been terrified, she says.

She whispers low of a tragedy but says no more on account of little pigs with big ears. She nods towards Emma who is sitting at a bench nearby fully engrossed in her Alaskan bird book.

Oh, I wouldn’t worry about her, I say. She’s not listening to a word we’re saying.

You’d think that, says the woman, but children listen to everything.

I regard Emma for a moment and wonder if that is true. Her eyes are darting back and forth across the page and with a finger she is pushing her bottom lip to her teeth to be chewed. The woman wishes me a good trip and I take a seat beside Emma to drink my coffee.

We’ve almost an hour before the ferry, I say, to which Emma slightly nods, lip still being chewed.

Is there anything you want to do until then?

She shakes her head without looking up.

Suit yourself, I say, and to myself I say, It’s so beautiful here.

After a while I see the ferry. Glittering among easy waves, it comes and docks with moans and squeals that sound like the cries of whales. Emma lifts her head from her book for the first time and watches the whole docking process. I have left our boarding card hanging from my car’s rear-view mirror and the keys in the ignition, so the men can drive it on. I couldn’t bear trying to do it myself with all those people watching. A few cars are driven off the ferry. One is pushed off by a few young men. They are all laughing and chatting and are clearly hungover from their big night out on the island.

*

From ages seven to ten, my parents and I lived in a big, beige camper van and travelled around Ireland with our three dogs, Jack, Buzz and Fluffy. Mum used to call it the cramper van but in most of my recollections of that time, she is smiling. I see her crouched in a flowing blue dress, petting the dogs as they bounce around or wag themselves into her, licking her neck as she holds her face up to the sun. I see Dad unloading our gear onto a patch of grass. There is a beach smell in the air.

I smell the same air now: fish and salt. Emma and I are sitting on plastic chairs on the viewing deck of the ferry. An Irish flag flaps in the wind and Emma points to the numerous small islands we pass.

Look at the dog, she says.

There is a dog running back and forth along a bluff. He is barking at the ferry like he must do every day, every hour, on the hour.

Do people live on that wee island, says Emma.

I think so, I say. Look, there’s a little house.

The roof of a cottage pokes out from the rolls of grassy land and a plume of fire smoke angles away up into the sky.

A man dressed in waterproof orange overalls comes out from the ferry’s engine room. With his two fists around the railings, he leans a little out towards the wind, seeming to relish it on his face.

Good for the soul, he says to the sea.

Don’t you think, he says, turning to me with a ready smile.

I’m caught unawares but agree that, yes, it’s a beautiful day.

He takes a seat across from us. What has you out to the island, he says.

I tell him we’re here to see my father. He’s doing up an old house out here. He told me who it used to belong to, but I forget now.

Not to worry, he says. I probably wouldn’t know it anyway. I’m just filling in for someone.

Ahhh, I say.

I just help drive the cars on and off.

I nod.

There are a few good pubs on the island.

Emma scooches closer and links her arm in mine. She is still watching the water but her energy has changed.

I’ll probably go for a few tonight in Early’s. That’s it there.

On ahead the island is coming closer and the ferry is angling its way towards the slipway. I follow the man’s finger to a collection of buildings in the distance.

The one there on the hill, he says. Maybe I’ll see you there tonight?

I am taken aback. I tell him I’m not sure. I’ll probably just be spending time with my dad.

He tells me to think about it, repeats the name of the pub, Early’s, and makes his way down the steps to where the cars are parked. The ferry is making more whale cries as it lowers its ramp to the concrete. I watch the man get into my car and drive it onto the island, and standing a few feet further up, I see Dad. He has grown a big beard and seems to be searching for us. I point to him and tell Emma: There’s your granddad, give him a wave. We both wave but he can’t see us yet.

*

In her later years, you’d never have guessed my mother had been a hippy. But if you think about it, it’s obvious: she and my dad did name me Bee, and it is not short for anything. They named me this because I was a summer child and during my birth – a natural birth in a friend’s bathtub – a bee had flown in the window and landed on my head. My parents, being who they were, believed it was some sort of message or a sign, and failed to recognize, until the bump became pronounced, that the bee had stung me. Dad pulled its stinger out of my head with a pair of tweezers while the bee itself died in the bathwater. The umbilical cord was cut and I was wiped clean and given to my mother who treated my sting with a tissue soaked in vinegar. Dad still has the stinger, wrapped in oilcloth inside a ziplock bag, and any time this anecdote is told in company, he will reach for my forehead and, without truly touching it, claim that something happened between me and the bee, that some transference went on there, something beyond our knowledge.

*

Dad’s house is not much more than an old tumbledown. Up an old road not far from the pier, but far enough from most of the other houses, it sits squat against a minor hillside. Its one floor is barely protected from the world by a sagging roof missing half its slates.

That’s the next job, says Dad as we park the car alongside.

At the ferry he gave me a hug and a kiss and then bent down, hands on knees to say hello to Emma, who was not as shy as I thought she would be. She held out a stiff hand and he shook it with mirth rising to his eyes.

A very formal girl you have here, Bee, he said.

Emma went back into her book as soon as we got into the car, and she is still there now as we unload our belongings. Dad insists on taking them from me, so I watch him lumber to the front door where instead of pausing to get his keys, he nudges it with a toe and it swings open.

Do you not lock the door?

No need, he says. The people around here are very friendly.

Yeah, but then there’s people off the ferry. It’s not like the island is inaccessible.

Don’t worry so much, Bee.

Slightly annoyed, I tell him he needs to lock it at night. What with Emma, and all that’s happened before.

I can tell he wants to refuse still, but he recognizes an argument now is not a good idea and so he nods in assent.

The inside of the house is not much better than the roof. We step straight into a living room-slash-kitchen whose floors are bare concrete and there is a powerful smell of mould.

She’s a very old house, he says with pride, and joins me in my surveying it. He is smiling; my nose is wrinkled.

Where do we sleep? I ask.

Just through here, he says. But watch your step crossing the threshold. I haven’t had a chance to fix the floor and the joists are bare. Just keep to this wee plank-bridge I’ve made.

There is one tall, single bed in the middle of the room. It has a bedside locker on either side. Dad tells me it is small, and he knows that, but it shouldn’t be too bad for the two of us, meaning Emma and I.

And where will you sleep?

Oh the couch is fine for me, he says. Would you like a cup of tea?

I catch his scent as he turns and steps back across the makeshift bridge. It’s a mingling of sweat and the Hamlet cigars he used to smoke, and it takes me back to sitting up front with him in the cramper van while Mum slept in the back.

We’d always have a plan on where to go next, but never a plan for after that. My parents preferred to see where the road would take us and most of the places we visited were suggestions received from strangers in whatever town we had stopped in for pints. Mum would tell Dad he was too tipsy to drive and that we should spend the night here, but he would always insist he was fine. He’d say, I’m fine as long as I have my co-pilot up here with me. And so, while Mum slept, Dad and I would laugh at her snores and drive into the night. The headlights of the van illuminated the roads so it seemed we were not moving forward at all but driving endlessly on some massive treadmill.

I was always in charge of which way to go. When we got to a crossroads or a junction he would lean over the steering wheel as if surveying a vast frontier and say, Well, which way, Chief? Left or right?

Sometimes there was a signpost to help me. Lit up ghostly, it would signal the way to Lahinch or Newry or Rosslare or whatever place we were looking to get to. Other times there was nothing to guide, only a dark ditch or the starless sky. I never got out of choosing though. He always made me pick a way and he’d invariably follow it, no matter if he knew it would lead us astray. Sometimes we’d get so far off the track we’d lose all signs of life. Any houses we’d find, abandoned; fields empty of sheep or cows. Dad would insist we’d find our way but soon his enthusiasm would waver, his head would nod, and I’d have to wake Mum up so she could send him to bed. When she’d done so, she’d sit down in the driver’s seat with a yawn, spread a map out over the dashboard and trace her way back to the right road.

Are you still smoking the Hamlets, Dad?

He turns from filling the kettle and pats the shirt pocket where he keeps them. Not as much as I used to, but I never really stopped. Don’t expect I will either, he says. Stopping the drink was hard enough.

In the front door stands Emma. She has her bag of books slung over her shoulder and is looking around the room.

I tell her she can put her stuff in the bedroom, but I warn her more than once to watch for the hole in the floor.

*

Over a dinner of pan-fried fish that Dad says he caught himself, Emma asks if there are golden eagles on the island.

I’m not sure sweetheart, says Dad. I know there are buzzards, but I’m not sure about eagles.

Emma’s chair is so low her chin is almost resting on the table as she forks fish into her mouth and turns the pages of her field guide. She says, Golden eagles were reintroduced to Donegal a few years ago. You think they might’ve flown over here?

That’s possible, says Dad. Maybe we can go for a hike tomorrow and look for them.

Emma nods sagely and goes back to eating and Dad smiles at me.

How’s the mackerel?

It’s good, I say, squeezing a wedge of lemon over it.

I’m sorry I didn’t have any wine to go with it. Since I’m off it, I didn’t think. I didn’t either, I say. I should’ve picked some up on the way. I would’ve quite liked a drink.

The room goes quiet and the wind rattles a little at the window. Emma says, Granda? And Dad says, Yes sweetheart?

What’s a tragedy? The woman said the island has a tragedy.

Dad and I exchange looks and I explain what the coffee stand woman had said.

Oh that’s nothing, love, he says. Just something bad that happened. Not for talking about over dinner. When Emma’s attention wanes, he whispers to me about a young man who got in a spot of trouble. An argument over a girl. Young love, he says with a saccharine smile.

When we finish eating Dad offers to watch Emma if I want to go to the pub for one. There’s one five minutes’ walk away, he says.

Is that Early’s?

He tells me that it’s Nealy’s, but that Early’s is another ten or fifteen minutes past that. On up beside where the ferry docks.

Aye, I think I saw it on the way in.

*

By the time I reach Early’s I am sweating. The doorway is dark, but I can hear voices and music inside. At the bar I order a glass of beer and take a seat at a small round table in the corner so I can look around me. It is the first time I’ve been on my own, besides going to work, in years and years, and all I can think about is Emma. I am worried she will get up in the night and fall through the hole in the floor. What if she needs to find the toilet, or what if she’s just frightened and wants me, and Dad isn’t able to console her or doesn’t hear her cry. I’m worried about the unlocked front door, about some man from the ferry walking straight in and –
I physically shake the thoughts out of my head and take a sip of my beer.

I try to calm down. I scan the room for something familiar but get nothing. Through the double doors into the dance hall I can see a small crowd seated around a one-man band playing Neil Diamond songs. People are clapping along, some are singing. Here in the front room the crowd is small. A few people are lined up at the bar to order and another few are seated around the walls. I scan their faces for the man from the ferry. Not seeing him unsettles me. He said he’d be here.

I picture him on the road out to Dad’s house. I see him dark and smiling. I see him knowing the door is unlocked and that I am here. He has tricked me.

I get up from my table and walk to the double doors and peer in. He is not in here either. I accidentally catch eyes with another man, who, emboldened by the eye contact, makes his way over to me. Before he can get close, I go back to my table, grab my stuff and leave.

*

Of course, the ferry man is not in the house when I get there, but Emma is out of bed. She and Dad are side by side in the wingback rocking chair by the fire. They have the big bird book open across their laps and Emma is pointing here and there on the page and speaking rapidly. She doesn’t even notice me come in the door. Dad motions for me to pull up a chair. The fire is giving off a great heat and the light from it has thrown the room in new splendour. The world feels old and inviting.

I pull up a chair alongside them and lean in to see the book as Emma tells us the difference between a crow and a raven: the bigger beaks on the ravens and how their tails don’t fan, they come to a point. Her free hand is idly playing with the button on Dad’s cardigan and he smiles at me noticing it.

She wouldn’t stay in bed, he whispers. She’s exactly the same as you were.

Only she’s not staying awake to help you navigate a way home in the middle of the night.

You remember that? he says with a tinge of embarrassment.

I tell him I do. I remember everything.

Emma pulls at him to pay attention. She’s showing him what the eagles look like. So we know what to look for tomorrow, Granda, she says.

Okay, pet, he says. I see it.

Emma becomes absorbed in her book again. She starts reading from a section about peregrine falcons, her little voice lacking any accent, enunciating each word clearly.

Dad whispers, Are you doing okay, Bee?

There’s a short stool by the fire, clearly taken from a pub, and I move to sit on it. I lean my head back against the brickwork and I tell him I’m doing fine.

I was worried about you.

I was worried too, but I’m okay now.

We can talk about things whenever you like. About your mother. Tomorrow, I say.

I close my eyes, focussing on Emma’s words, on the heat from the fire.

Dad’s presence looms large and he’s so real and there that I really start to miss my mother. I wish she were here with us, all of us together with Emma. I picture her now, back straight behind the wheel of the cramper van, the world whizzing by her window. Maybe she has music on. Maybe she’s singing. Maybe she’s adopted an old sheepdog who sits on the seat beside her, its nose sniffing the air for the scent of something new. Maybe.

I am drifting off when I feel something touch my forehead. It’s Dad. I keep my eyes closed and let him touch the place where the bee stung me. I wonder whether he’s thinking about her, whether he’s going back over his life, wishing for things to be different. Or maybe he’s just happy with this moment and all the ones that came before.

From issue #16: autumn/winter 2023

About the Author
Dean Fee is a writer and editor based in Donegal. His work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, The Tangerine, and more. He is the editor of The Pig’s Back and is currently working on a novel.