Aisling Ltd
the debut novel by Seán Harnett
Extract
from Chapter One, 'Executive Summary'
Larry was always telling me that my writing needed to be more concise, that I shouldn’t go on so much, that I ought to learn to bullet point information. We’re living in a time of accumulating information, he’d say, nobody has time to sift through everything — so that’s why I’m just going to tell you straight out what happened, without messing you around. A gang of us from work went fishing for shark, and I killed him, I killed Larry.
How’s that for getting to the point?
***
It is the morning of the last Sunday in July, 2000. I am leaning over the side of the Maeldun, an old trawler turned charterfishing boat out of Castletownbere, watching the sea slice itself open on the bow of the boat. The bisected waves sloop under the hull, and I count them as they lift and drop and lift and drop us again, one two three, four five six. I count to ward off the nausea I am feeling, but it isn’t doing anything for me. I had also, as we’d cleared the harbour, inserted a swab of cotton into my left ear canal and fixed my attention on the horizon that opened out before us, south-south-west between the headlands of Bantry Bay. I gather that this will preserve my body’s equilibrium, but it isn’t working either: each up and down and up and down again and up and down and up and down again motion of the boat is matched by a contraction and loosening of the muscles of my stomach, as if an invisible hand is squeezing it steadily.
I lose my count and begin again, one two three, better than doing nothing, four five six, trying to match my breathing with the rhythm of the rollers, in and out and in again, trying to keep my body distracted from the queasiness, seven eight nine.
The excursion is Larry’s idea. It’s not the first time I’ve been on a trip like this with him. Since joining Aisling Ltd I’ve had to endure a lot of different kinds of Boy’s Own shite: hill-walking, orienteering, mountain-biking, kayaking, those corporate teambuilding exercises in which you have to build a raft from a few planks, a length of rope and some leaky barrels — all that kind of stuff. Today’s excursion is thankfully more of a perk than a team-building exercise. The gossip in the guest-house last night was that Larry had read in one of his CEO magazines that shark-fishing was the new executive activity and that’s why, to celebrate the signing of the Ninth Wave deal, he had brought the Project Team away to the Beara for the weekend, with the optional extra of a day’s fishing on the Sunday.
I look to where he stands not far from me, leaning casually against the gunwale. He is wearing a Breton fisherman’s hat and brand new oilers, which reach to his midriff and are held up at the waist by two braces that loop from behind each shoulder to form parallel lines down the front of his spotless white Aran sweater. He seems too much the part—Larry the Fisherman, with a big fat fucking capital-F—but then he always manages to arrogate the Proper Noun for whatever activity he engages in — Larry the Hill-Walker, Larry the Rock-Climber, Larry the Canoeist — as if a pioneer in everything he does.
Continue reading the first chapter of Aisling Ltd (PDF File, 104 KB)
Page created on 23 November 2005
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