Read a story from the RTÉ Short Story Competition shortlist 2023 – read It All Began With The Turlough by Caoimhín Gaffney below, and listen to Caoimhín's story read by Aaron Monaghan above.
About the story: "Over the past few years, I've walked to and photographed a local turlough, sometimes surprised to return to its disappearance," Caoimhín says. "I’m interested in how we view nature as something that should provide us with our wants and needs, and how often we also view it with irritation when it defies or inconveniences us…"
The turlough appeared now in early summer instead of its autumn arrival as the 30 years previous. Blow-ins would be forgiven for thinking it was a lake that belonged here, but locals know it had taken over the depressed field that lay off the main road beside the graveyard. A house, which no one had ever seen anyone living in, sat on the other side, with yellow gorse peering over it from the hill known as Carrick, or the Rock. The turlough’s water bounced light around the hills, with the neighbours opposite complaining that it was reflecting sunlight into their sitting room and moonlight right into their bedroom and, either way, they could see too much or they couldn’t see anything at all.
If you walked past the turlough and followed the gorse’s coconut suncream scent drifting in the air, further down the road, and take the small potholed lane lined with CCTV cameras to discourage dumping, you would arrive at Kilgolagh bog. Sitting on the edge of Lough Sheelin, the bog has many small family plots, and areas of accidental nature restoration due to disinterest in said plots. As usual frogs and spiders jump out of your way, red tipped matchstick lichen and minty white bearded lichen hug close to the ground. Yet, alongside the turlough claiming its place out of the season, the bog was also growing and changing out of turn, its delicate system undergoing a metamorphosis. The dry cut ground is now busy with old crusty bog holes spilling over, swallowing the brittle heather and the white cottongrass. Each time the sun threatens to set a dry grass on fire to alight the cracked layer of turf on the surface, another bog hole belches forward, smothering the sparks in a thick slurry of rotting vegetation.
When the turlough failed to disappear by the next April, people became agitated, as with a guest who decides to extend their stay when you were ready to see the back of them. Its water, reaching the bottom of the trees, swelling up and out, slowly encroaching on the boundary hedges that separate it from the church graveyard. The turlough watched and pushed against the aggressively mowed and strimmed grass, the plastic flowers, and the crumbling green foam that holds them, on gravel-covered graves and the memory of Famine graves. Families burying relatives, families visiting neglected graves and the priest all viewed the irrationally lapping water with growing unease and suspicion. And so, the turlough became an observer of- and intruder on- grief. The church grounds became damp, with black plastic funeral shoes squelching embarrassingly as people gathered around open graves. One day, sharp screams arose when, on lowering the coffin on strings into the ground -- always an uncomfortable and rough procedur -- muddy water quickly surrounded it, swallowing the coffin in a burp.
It seemed the turlough was making moves below their very feet, so the council sent a sewage company to drain the now not-disappearing lake. They were worried that the edge of the graveyard would soon start sliding out from under the hedges, with coffins floating on the surface of the turlough or rolling down the hill and, either way, becoming a viral meme. The sewage truck came and went multiple times a day, multiple times a week, with no visible depletion of the turlough. Cavan has three hundred and sixty-five lakes and eventually the council decided this one was taking up too many resources. Anyway, since it was on paper a disappearing lake maybe it was not even counted in that official 365 and the expense could not be justified. The sewage truck deposited its last container of turlough water into a lake on the border of Fermanagh. Soon, the locals there noticed the water rising too, but presumed the truck was continuing its daily deliveries.
Meanwhile, following that 10-minute walk down the bog road, which people don’t take as often anymore, the bog holes continued to splurge over like porridge heated for too long in the microwave, re-filling the deep machine-cut ridges used to drain the bog decades ago. The stacks of uncollected cut turf, dried out over multiple summers, began to bulge like wet cardboard. If you were quiet, you would hear a constant reshuffling of animals, insects and amphibians being flushed out by the newly arriving under-bog, with hen harriers and white-tailed eagles feasting on their panic. By the time people realised the bog was rising -- due to a sort of swampy smell that sifted across the drumlins -- the turlough had spread itself out across the main road and up the hill to kiss its first gravestone. Next to be kissed were the graves of my family, who did well enough to have a headstone, but were not well-to-do enough to have a prime plot for our death. So, at the edge of the graveyard, the water lapped at their graves, their names filling up with algae and scum.
The turlough’s creep up over the main road led to long detours, and a growing stench from the bog inflicted a simmering rage amongst the locals. One man who had left his turf to dry on the bog for three years was apoplectic that the bog had stolen it back from him! Everyone knew he had been too lazy to collect it but, at the same time, they agreed with him on the principle of the thing. Together, their rage made a sort of electrical hum that resonated with the huge dragonflies and the bright blue damselflies breeding on their expanding, rising, bog. This hum started to vibrate through the water in both the turlough and the bog, and their edges met as a slopping dog’s tongue. A local person described seeing the bog roll itself up the sloping road before it climbed the ditch to fall into the turlough, but another person described seeing waves on the turlough forming without wind and heading towards the bog.
One morning, an old man emerged from the house beside the turlough (well, now on the turlough), and pushed an empty turtle-shaped sandpit from his front door. Climbing in with his fishing rod, he began to row with a frying pan, ignoring the upwind calls for his attention from the people gathered at the church. The church had never been so busy, except during the funeral of a local landlord when people arrived in the hope that the inheriting family would not evict them. The priest’s campaign for stopping the right-of-way across the parish fields had been belatedly successful, in a sort of way, as people now rowed to the church across drowned fields. The cause for this sudden religious zealousness was that last night, Lough Kinale -- known for its dangerous marshy reed beds -- had slid across several hectares of fields to meet the turlough and the bog. They bumped against each other slowly, making a sound that was somehow dirty. Emboldened, the small lakes of Lough Derragh and Bracklagh Lough both moved to join them, their sharp cold water licking the soft, muddy flesh of the wetland. With the loughs now connected with farthest edge of the bog, they would all rejoin their ancient mother Lough Sheelin, after more than 250 million years apart.
Discovering this, people's anger and distress sent the hum up several octaves. The insects, who had expanded their breeding ground across the integrated turlough, bog and lake waters, added to the vibration in their new expanded numbers. Soon the hum was causing little ripples to form across the bog and lake waters; even the holy water basin was vibrating. Nobody had counted, but there were now significantly less than 365 lakes as they had continued to yoke together and elope as people panicked and took up swimming. With the area no longer recognisable, both people and government could not see it returning to normal.
Superstition returned to levels most suited to children, with swans being regarded with deep suspicion due to increasingly ominous retellings of The Children of Lir.
Cut off from the rest of the country, people were unaware that elsewhere rivers were moving faster to meet their sea, caves were filling, springs were releasing, and canals were breaching their confines. Blue and green water, brown bogs and white rivers, bulged and spread until they were all conjoined. Everywhere, water was meeting other water, with the country being so submerged it might as well have sunk under the waves and spray. Locally, they knew everything they had and could see was waterlogged, from their socks to their carpets, and that the sun would have to shine even brighter before it all would be dry again. Following the full moon, the bog released all that it was holding for 7000 years, with offerings and remains floating to the surface and circulating in the currents formed by the new bodies of water. The remains of more settlements at Lough Kinale emerged to the surface after 6000 years, and the graveyard eventually let its dead go from their marked graves to join the unnamed Famine masses in a tangle of bones. The dead amplified the bog’s rotting smell, the bones’ rattling adding a percussion to the loud, incessant hum.
With the crops soaked, the roads long since visible and the former fish population depleted through poor fishing practices and chemical runoffs, people found themselves hungry while being surrounded by the ghosts of the last Great Hunger. A woman with good intentions tried to make a human bone broth, since there were so many bones going around and all, but it was unfortunately tasteless and dusty. Having no vinegar to draw the minerals out of the bones, she had used Holy Water, hoping to compel nutrients from whence they came. It was a way to honour the dead, she said, isn’t that why they have come. The priest, on hearing this, went redder than when he had heard the lakes making themselves a place in each other. He preached about the nutritional value of frogs, insects and the many birds gathered in the treetops. But no-one could hear him above the hum of the insects, the slapping of the waves against bones and the angry blood in their own ears. The church’s large doors and high ceilings lent itself to becoming a makeshift boatyard, and then a permanent boatyard, with the extravagant bog oak alter pieces planed down for practical use.
As our remembered and forgotten ancestors roamed the area once again through the currents of the waters, the Carrick Rock hill behind the boatyard, being made of limestone 330 million years ago, tried to absorb the excess water. While it groaned under the pressure, a light was attached to the cross that stood on top of the hill, functioning now as a lighthouse for the many people traversing the waters in their small boats and bathtubs. The once insignificant turlough, now part of the great lakes, continued to rise, aiming to absorb the rock into itself in return.
About the author: Caoimhín Gaffney is an artist, filmmaker and writer. Born in Dublin and living in Cavan, their work has been shown at exhibitions and screenings across Ireland and in the UK, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. In 2022 they completed their PhD about queer artist filmmaking practice at Ulster University. Their work is featured in the art collections of the Arts Council, IMMA and the Crawford Art Gallery.
It All Began With The Turlough by Caoimhín Gaffney was read on air by Aaron Monaghan at 11.20pm on Friday 20th October, as part of Late Date on RTÉ Radio 1.
Read more stories from the shortlist on rte.ie/culture, hear updates on Arena on RTÉ Radio 1, and tune in to Arena's RTÉ Short Story Competition special which will go out live on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7pm on Friday 27 October 2023 from Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, with all 10 shortlisted writers in attendance.
Judges Claire Kilroy, Ferdia MacAnna and Kathleen MacMahon will discuss the art of the short story and the stories from this year's shortlist with host Seán Rocks, there'll be live music and performances from leading actors, and we'll find out who's won the top prizes.
Why not join us in person? Audience tickets are now on sale via the Pavilion Theatre.
And for more about the RTÉ Short Story Competition in honour of Francis MacManus, go here
