The Little Hill of Women
I wasn’t prepared for the sheer beauty of Omey Island. The extraordinary quality of light, the shifting patterns of currents in the water and the clouds in the sky, the poles marking the causeway. The calm sea was almost imperceptibly advancing, swallowing up the ripples in the sand, inch by inch. Before parking in the small car park at the slipway, I’d gone into Sweeney’s, the pub cum village shop. When I asked about Patti, the shopkeeper told me that she had been buried three months ago. I had known I would be too late. ‘She never married,’ the woman said. ‘Too busy painting.’ She pointed at some postcards. I bought water and a sandwich and set off. The causeway would be open for another two hours. It was brightening up, the wind blowing holes in the clouds. A funeral procession was gathering to walk over to the graveyard. Here, even funerals here were subject to the tide. Crossing the causeway t...
