The Merrow of Moon River

Even now I can remember the smell of the tobacco from my grandfather's pipe as I lie in the bed I used as a boy on those fishing trips on Moon river. I remember the creak of his rocking chair, the crackle of the logs on the fire and the bitter tang of the burning sap at the back of my throat. His singing too, more a sort of half whistle half hum, a soulful tune that he seemed to only half remember, summoning feelings of loss and longing, sorrow and sadness. So at odds with my other memories of the old man so full of life and laughter.

I remember the cap he used to wear on those trips. A old red hunting cap, the kind with fur lined flaps which strap over the top. I told him once it looked ridiculous and asked him why he didn't buy himself a new one. He just smiled and told me that it was a magic cap and he had found it on the river bank when he was a boy. It could look whatever way you wanted it to he assured me and he liked it just as it was. His eyes lit up the way they always did we he was messing with me and we laughed together. I treasured that old thing after he died I kept it with me wherever I went, and when I finally lost it many years later it took a little piece of me with it.

My grandfather was an formidable looking man with strong arms, kind of imposing with a broad back and firm gristled jaw. I like to think that I have grown to look like him in some measure. On those rare occasions when some family member likened me to him I felt a little glow of pride spark within me. I came to treasure those trips to Moon river and through the trials and hard times of my life, when the horrors of war overwhelmed me or when hope was all but gone, my thoughts often went to the cabin and the surrounding woods. And of course to Orla.

Most of the time we fished out near Merrow island, so close sometimes you could see the old house through the trees. We had an ancient wooden bass boat that must have been older than grandfather, but he kept it in good repair and it never let us down. It was odd that we didn't catch many fish on those trips. Those we did we threw back alive. Grandfather said that the Merrow's didn't approve of him killing the fish. He said he met Ma Merrow once when she was a girl and I could see in his eyes that she must have had a strong effect on him. He reckoned she must be a old girl by that time but that she had been real looker in her prime.

As I got older, or perhaps as my grandfather got older, I began to spend my time wandering the woods alone and taking the boat out by myself. It was a fairly natural way for me to gain my independence and soon the evenings were spent playing cards and chess with grandfather and the days were my own. I ranged far and wide and looking back I must have felt I was messing around on the river like Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. It was on one of these trips that I first saw Orla Merrow.

I had found the inlet a number of months earlier and had returned to it a number of times. It is a secluded little spot surrounded on all sides by trees and overhanging branches, almost completely invisible from the river side. I was looking for the place that morning on foot having failed to find it from the boat and was moving through the thick foliage when I heard splashing coming from ahead which I took to be a wild animal of some kind. I parted the branches with the walking stick and in the water of the inlet stood the most beautiful woman I had ever seen or have ever seen since. I stood entranced in the cover of the trees and was fearful that any movement or sound would draw her attention. I did not want the moment to end and so stood rigid and remained unseen.

She was looking for something in the waters of the shoreline and was splashing at the water in frustration. Suddenly she stopped thrashing and relaxed as if in resignation, her shoulders dropped, her chin lifted and she let a long breath escape from her mouth. Slowly she stepped out of the water and began to dress herself from the untidy pile of clothes that rested on the river bank. I left as quietly as I could and made my way back towards the boat but when I reached it I found her sitting waiting for me on the rowing bench.

She told she that she had seen me watching her, and I recall feeling a wave of shame wash over me, but she laughed and I immediately felt better. I asked her if she had found what she was looking for and she looked at me with those piercing blue eyes of hers and said sadly that she had not but that what she had found instead had made up for it. She introduced herself as Orla and asked me would I mind rowing her home in the boat. I, of course, obliged not wanting for the day to end. I was surprised when she directed me to Merrow Island and even more surprised when in return for my kindness she gifted me a kiss. Dazed, I watched her dance off into the trees towards the house.

We met many times in the years that followed and when I left Moon river Orla was never far from my thoughts and I spent my time longing to return to her. She told me of the land of her ancestors in Ireland and it seemed a magical place when she spoke of it. She spun stories full of heroes with silver hands, fairies and all sorts of mythical creatures. She refused to talk about her past but I asked around town and to anyone nearby who would talk to me and I pieced together the history of the Merrow family.


Four generations of Merrow women had lived on the shores of Moon River. I was told the first came over from Ireland during the times of hardship there and fell in love with a local hunter by the name of Patrick Merrow. She married her love and together they built a home on an island out in the river far from prying eyes for the Merrows were a secretive lot even then. Stories about the family were hard to find but I did hear that Patrick took up arms during the civil war and is said to have died in some battle up north. I checked the public records and while I found any number of dead Patricks' I  found no record of a Merrow from the area who had been killed. Little or nothing was heard of the family in the years that followed the war. There were rumours that the Merrow's had had a daughter who left the area to go to college and only returned to the river when her mother passed on. The daughter had brought back a child of her own who I can only assume was Orla's mother.


Ma Merrow, as I knew of her, occasionally came into town for supplies and while she never stayed long left behind deep resentment in the women folk of the town. During my inquiries I discovered that not all those I talked to approved of the Merrows and in particular Aunt Irene who ran the general store spoke with great venom when I asked what she knew about Orla's people. She warned me to stay away from the girl and the whole damned family and called them thieves and shrews. She claimed that the Merrows would always be Merrows and that they would take what they liked from me but they would never take my name. I never went into the general store after that so fierce was my loyalty to Orla.


The day of the accident grandfather and I had taken the truck into town to get supplies rather than heading up river in the boat the way we normally did. The river was running high because of heavy rain over the week previous and the heavy current had weakened the supports on the old bridge on the road into town. I was sitting in the front seat with my grandfathers cap on my head joking away with the old man. He was in high spirits that day and we planned to take the boat out as soon as the river subsided. He boasted of the fish we would catch and how well we would eat that evening. I cannot remember the last words we spoke to one another but I do remember him being happy.

I know little of the crash even to this day, but I am told that the bridge gave way as the weight of the truck pressed down on the damaged supports and the whole structure collapsed into the river. I must have been washed out of the cab by the force of the crash and was swept out into the main river by the strong current. I was found almost two miles downriver but my grandfathers body was never found. I had lost a shoe and my coat in the journey down river but my grandfathers cap was clutched in my hand when they found me drenched and unconscious on the riverbank. They say I would not let go of it and had to be pried from my grasp. I guess I didn't want to let go of him and that old cap was all I had left of my grandfather.

I couldnt return to the cabin for a number of years after he died, and the hollow feeling I had inside was for Orla as well as my Grandfather. My parents refused to take me to the old place and forbade me from going on my own. I tried to run away a couple of times but my father was always able to track me down and drag me back home. I became fixated with the Ireland of Orla's stories and when the war in Europe broke out I felt that something important to me was threatened. When the day of my seventeenth birthday came I joined the queues of eager young men hoping to join the army and fight for their country, though the country I wanted to fight for was not my own, nor one that even existed.

I knew I had to talk to Orla before I left, and so I took my father's car and made my way to Moon river. The old cabin had lay empty in my absence and I spent some time tidying and repairing the place. I realise now that I was merely delaying the conversation with Orla and her response, but at the time I had convinced myself that she would be so proud of me. She found me while I was at the cabin and demanded why I had not come to her before. We had such an argument that I still shake with the memory her fury today. I was not prepared for it and when she stormed out I feared to follow her, and when I did I could not find her. 

The battalion to which I was attached was activated in the north of Ireland. We were to be an elite unit in the mould of the British commandos and while we soon moved to Scotland for training we were first brought together in a small coastal town called Carrickfergus. It was there I first saw a castle and though I was to see many more impressive castles later when I travelled through Scotland, France and Austria, that little square keep overlooking the harbour always brings back feelings of wonder for me when I think of it.


I made many close friends during my training and through the years of fighting in Africa and Italy, though one by one they were taken from me. They called me Whistler and I guess it was because of the music that was a constant companion during the early years of my severance from Orla, my way of remembering her and my grandfather, but I lost that too in the desert. I earned victories and medals in Africa but lost my innocence, and thoughts of rivers and cabins and music and hope died within me. The fighting in Italy cost me the rest of friends and left me alone and fearful to make more relationships. After my unit was destroyed in the fighting around Dieppe they wanted to send me home, but I was stubborn and wanted to see the war through to the bitter end. I was assigned to another unit in England and I helped prepare for the invasion of France.


The bullets streaked past me through the water leaving long, white trails in the sunlight. I could still hear the shouts of the officers and the cries of the wounded but strangely muffled under the water and it was as if I had suddenly been transported miles away from the death and destruction above. A wave struck me then and fierce pressure of it drove me onto the shore and my head against something hard and unyielding. It could have been a rock or the hull of the landing craft but whatever it was tore the helmet from my head and left me dazed for a few moments. There were other men in the water now too and they were struggling to reach the surface to breathe. I felt the boot of one solder strike me in the shoulder and push me back down to the ocean floor. It was then that with the certainty that I was going to die that I heard again that song.

It was the same song I heard my Grandfather sing in the cabin on Moon River, the same song I heard almost constantly after the road accident that took him from me. I had lost it in the deserts of Tunsia and never found it again until that moment, and it was much stronger then than it had ever been. There was an urgency to the song that had not been present before and now it was almost a call more than a song. I felt as if a choir of angels were coming for me and I my thoughts went to Orla rising from the river with her wet golden hair tight against her head and down her neck, a tiny drop of river water still clinging to her ear and her deep blue eyes looking directly at me.

Suddenly the pressure on my shoulder eased and there was a cloud of red above me. The ranger above me was transfixed by a lance of white light and tendrils of blood had started to snake out from a wound he had received in his chest. I remembered my training and forced what I took for my helmet back onto my head and suddenly everything became clear and vital and my platoon tell me I was as a demon driving the unit out of the water and up the beach. I am told that I went into the water five times and dragged men out under fire. They also like to remind me of the cap I wore in place of my helmet.


After the landing at Normandy the music was again my constant companion and I wore the cap under my helmet the whole time. It was that cap that got me through the last days of the war and brought me back home to Moon River. I began to hope again and allowed myself to consider what I had left behind, but now that I had witnessed loss on a scale beyond my imagination I began to understand the look I had caught in Orla's eyes all those years ago in the inlet on Moon River. I knew that I had to return to her.


I found her on the jetty at the end of the wild garden at the rear of the house. She was lounging on the deck with her back to the boards and her left arm hanging into the water. When she turned to face me as I approached I could see the girl I loved but she was much changed in the years I had spent in Europe. The time apart had ravaged her and left her aged far beyond the normal toll of years. She looked at me at first without recognition but suddenly tears came to her eyes and youth streamed back to her face. I took her in my arms and felt real joy for the first time since I had left her. Patrick, she asked or perhaps not, you have come back for me.Yes I told her, what else could I have done.


I told her that I bought her something but I dont think that she heard me through all the tears. She gave a gasp when I presented her with my grandfathers cap, though I knew by then that it had never belonged to anyone other than Orla. It is what she had searched for all those years and when I placed it in her hands it changed, falling away until it was like a net with tiny embedded pearls. I helped her set it upon her head and heard her laugh, tears of joy streaming down her face. I saw her lips form the words I wanted to hear but I heard nothing until the splash of the water as she rolled back into the river and was gone.


I know she is never coming back to me, but because she never truly belonged to me I cannot say that I have lost anything at all. Those years we had together we would always have, and I know that I am better off by far for knowing Orla, the Merrow of Moon River.