The Loney

Decades after a childhood Easter pilgrimage to the isolated Lancashire coast known as the Loney, an adult man learns that a landslide at Coldbarrow has uncovered a baby's body in the remains of a house. The discovery threatens to expose an event he has concealed for roughly thirty years. He is particularly concerned for his older brother Hanny, now the prominent pastor Andrew Smith, whose wife Caroline and two sons know little of his childhood ordeal. The narrator considers contacting Hanny but is uncertain how much his brother remembers. He instead begins writing the account that frames the novel. His narrative alternates between events during the brothers' youth, fragments of earlier pilgrimages and religious instruction, and his present-day effort to determine what investigators will learn.

The brothers grew up in a devout Catholic family dominated by their mother Esther, whom the narrator calls Mummer. Their father, Farther, generally avoids challenging her. Hanny, sixteen during the principal pilgrimage, cannot speak, but his younger brother understands the objects, drawings and gestures he uses to communicate. Mummer believes Hanny's inability to speak is a religious test and expects prayer and water from Saint Anne's shrine at the Loney to cure him. The parish has made repeated Easter visits to a large house called Moorings. On an earlier trip in 1973 their elderly priest, Father Wilfred Belderboss, returned alone from a walk to the shore profoundly distressed. Afterward he withdrew from parish life, abandoned the pilgrimages and, early in 1976, died following a fall at Saint Jude's church. His successor, the approachable Father Bernard McGill, doubts that coercion or strict ritual will help Hanny.

Mummer organizes a return to Moorings during Holy Week of 1976, over an alternative destination proposed by Miss Joan Bunce and her fiancé David Hobbs. The pilgrimage also includes the elderly Reg and Mary Belderboss, Father Wilfred's brother and sister-in-law. On the journey their minibus breaks down near the coast. Hanny and the narrator notice dead animals displayed on a fence and a luxurious Daimler carrying a sleeping teenage girl. Two locals, Parkinson and Collier, help repair the vehicle. The pilgrims then arrive at Moorings, a decaying old house in the marshes, where the caretaker Clement Parry lives nearby with his elderly mother, who appears blind. Across the treacherous tidal sands stands Coldbarrow, with a house called Thessaly and a bell tower accessible only at low tide. Local tales associate the area with witches, but the narrator's observations do not establish those stories as true.

At Moorings, Hanny and the narrator reopen a concealed space beneath a floorboard that once held the boys' forbidden possessions. They find an old M1 Garand rifle among the objects. Hanny later points it at his brother and pulls the trigger; it is unloaded. The narrator hides it again. Father Bernard joins the boys for cards, describes his difficult past and asks whether they know the whereabouts of Father Wilfred's missing diary. The narrator denies knowing anything about it. Bernard also speaks with the pilgrims about confession and grief. Listening secretly, the narrator hears Mrs Belderboss confess that she has given Reg a sleeping pill without his knowledge because his unexplained nighttime wandering frightens her. Reg believes the death of his brother and the unresolved circumstances surrounding it have changed his life.

The pilgrims' insistence on Hanny's fasting soon becomes dangerous. When Mummer catches him eating, she forces him to vomit. Father Bernard asks whether being unable to speak actually makes Hanny unhappy and warns the narrator against believing that a cure is guaranteed. The priest also acknowledges that he invented a reassuring explanation for strange cries heard outside at night. Meanwhile, the narrator and Hanny return to a wartime pillbox on the beach for their childhood military games. They see the Daimler again. Its occupants include a man called Leonard, a woman called Laura and a heavily pregnant girl later identified as Else. The girl is brought onto the beach in a wheelchair. Hanny loses his watch, which Leonard picks up. The brothers watch a gull that seemed unable to fly take to the air after Else feeds it, an unexplained event that can be understood in more than one way.

On Good Friday the brothers cross the exposed causeway to Thessaly to retrieve Hanny's watch. Else invites Hanny to touch her unborn child, kisses him and gives him some old books. Leonard returns the watch, removes traces of Else's lipstick from Hanny's mouth and warns the boys about the speed and danger of the tide. Else alludes to an earlier pregnancy, but the brothers learn little about her situation. Hanny becomes intensely attached to her and draws pictures of himself, Else and a child. The narrator fears that Hanny believes he will somehow receive her baby. These impressions are the narrator's interpretation of drawings and gestures rather than a statement of what Else has promised.

Other discoveries complicate the stay at Moorings. Farther finds a concealed room behind a tapestry, containing a small bed and toys. He suspects it was once used to isolate sick children. Mr Belderboss recalls that Wilfred seemed to lose his religious certainty after his last trip to the Loney, but Mummer discourages discussion of his decline. In memories of altar-boy training, the narrator describes Wilfred's abusive treatment of Henry McCullough, whom the priest punishes for lateness and presumed sexual misbehavior with a ruler and stinging nettles. Another altar boy, Paul Peavey, taunts Henry and helps direct Wilfred's suspicions at him. Wilfred's missing black diary, once hidden in the belfry, becomes an important link between his secret suffering, his treatment of the boys and his unexplained death.

The narrator and Hanny's visits to Coldbarrow expose a different set of threats. Hanny removes an envelope from Leonard's possessions containing a large amount of cash and a list of names, including Hale, Parry, Parkinson and Collier. The narrator insists it must be returned. While out walking, Miss Bunce and David discover a grotesque hanging figure in the woods: a representation of Christ incorporating a sheep's skull, barbed wire and a pig's heart pierced with nails. Father Bernard and Farther examine it and, fearing that the pilgrims will panic, later conceal its most disturbing details. Clement warns Bernard that Parkinson creates obligations through apparently generous favors. He becomes alarmed to learn that Bernard may have informally invited the men to Moorings.

Mrs Parry's condition appears to change: although she previously seemed blind, she visits Moorings and appears able to see. Clement later says she had an operation, but the pilgrims' speculation that a forced sale of his farm financed the surgery is never established. On the brothers' return to Thessaly to give back the envelope, Leonard's arms are stained with dried blood, a baby can be heard crying in the house and Else appears only briefly at a window. Leonard pays the narrator and presses him to forget the names he saw. The narrator's own interest in keeping Hanny safe increasingly conflicts with the demands of Leonard and Parkinson.

On Easter Sunday, the local church is found vandalized and its carved figure of Christ smashed, forcing the pilgrims to celebrate Mass outdoors. At Moorings an earthenware vessel taken from the hidden room breaks open, releasing foul-smelling liquid and materials including bones, nails, hair, a leather heart and a missing figure from a nativity set. Clement claims the vessel was a protection against witches and says that Parkinson and Collier had reopened Coldbarrow's bell tower and threatened to send him back to prison if he interfered. Father Bernard doubts Clement's explanation, while Mummer argues that they should avoid entanglement with the locals. The pilgrims also witness unusual natural events, including unseasonably ripe fruit and the birth of a lamb, which some interpret as divine signs. The lamb is later killed by Collier's dog.

The visitors who arrive singing at Moorings are the Pace Eggers, a troupe performing a traditional Easter play that includes Saint George, a supposedly resurrected knight and a character called Devil Doubt. Parkinson leads the men, Collier participates, and an older man called Hale appears unexpectedly healthy compared with an earlier encounter. Parkinson claims that people he has helped have recovered from serious illnesses. He offers to make Hanny speak if the brothers visit Thessaly, but also refers to Leonard's payment for silence and hints that Moorings might burn. The combined appeal to healing and threat of violence makes clear that the boys are being coerced. During the performance Hanny disappears briefly from the narrator's side, adding to his fear that the locals have singled out his brother.

The group's visit to Saint Anne's shrine ends in failure. Hanny, already frightened by Mummer's punishment for breaking his fast, refuses to drink water from the neglected well and tries to flee. Bernard proposes postponing the attempt and returning with Hanny more gently, but Mummer refuses. She holds Hanny down and forces water into his mouth until he coughs, chokes and spits it out. The others object to the pain she causes, and the party leaves without Hanny speaking. That night, after Miss Bunce and David have left Moorings, Mummer secretly mixes the water she saved into Hanny's tea and leads another prayer. Farther argues that Hanny should be accepted as he is. He reports finding scratched-out children's names and letters from Moorings' former owner Gregson to a governess, from which he infers that the house had served as a hospice for sick children repeatedly taken to the shrine despite the absence of recovery.

In the same argument, Farther questions the group's unwillingness to address what happened to Wilfred. He says they should tell the police if there is any real suspicion that Wilfred took his own life. Mummer and the Belderbosses object because the suspicion is unproved and would damage Wilfred's reputation and the parish's faith. The novel never establishes suicide as the cause of death. Later, in the adult narrator's visits to Doctor Baxter, the narrator claims to be learning that his obsessive surveillance of Hanny's house is unnecessary. In private he admits that he is giving Baxter the answers he expects, hoping to be judged improved. This divided account of his own behavior raises questions about the reliability of his retrospective testimony.

Before the pilgrims can leave Moorings, Hanny slips away toward Coldbarrow with the rifle and a clip of ammunition that the narrator secretly found in an outbuilding. The narrator pursues him through the marshes on Father Bernard's repaired tandem bicycle. As he attempts to follow Hanny across the sandflats, the tide sweeps him into deep water and he nearly drowns. Hanny pulls him to safety using the rifle's strap. The narrator reacts by angrily blaming his brother and throwing Hanny's treasured gorilla mask into the sea. They struggle over the weapon and continue through the fog toward Thessaly, where Parkinson and Collier capture them. Parkinson takes the loaded rifle and refuses to let the boys return to the mainland.

At Thessaly, Leonard and Clement are packing the Daimler while a newborn cries from behind the cellar door. Leonard says that Else is not his daughter, that Laura has taken her away and that both women have been paid. He argues that the boys should simply be released but submits to Parkinson's decision to keep them as insurance. Parkinson points to Collier's recovered hand, his own claim of recovery from cancer and Leonard's vanished limp as evidence of the healing he can provide. When the narrator refuses to allow treatment, Parkinson deliberately shoots Hanny in the thigh, severely injuring him and leaving the narrator no apparent alternative. Parkinson threatens to frame Clement for arson and send him back to prison unless he cooperates. Clement and the narrator carry the bleeding Hanny toward the cellar.

The narrator initially descends with Hanny into a damp room equipped with a bloodied mattress, surgical instruments and the crying infant apparently born to Else. Leonard orders the narrator out, and Clement keeps him upstairs during the event that follows. On returning to the cellar, the narrator finds Hanny awake and walking without a limp, although his leg had been gravely wounded. The baby now lies motionless beside him and has abnormalities that make the narrator unsure whether it is human. He did not witness what occurred while he waited outside and cannot account for the apparent restoration of Hanny's leg. Nor does the narrative establish a direct medical or supernatural mechanism linking his recovery to the baby's condition.

The men then draw palm leaves to assign responsibility for disposing of the infant. Leonard insists that he had excluded himself from this task. Parkinson arranges a draw that selects Hanny; Clement alleges that the result is rigged. Parkinson hands Hanny the rifle, apparently intending him to carry out the disposal, but Clement takes it away and sends both brothers upstairs. Leonard warns that the boys can still be implicated in what happened and insists that everyone must keep silent. Clement remains behind praying for forgiveness. The narrator does not witness the infant being shot, and the identity of whoever eventually fires the fatal shot is not established.

After the brothers escape Coldbarrow, Hanny appears physically restored but withdrawn and changed. The narrator tells the others that Hanny merely fell and damaged his clothes. The family returns to London. Approximately two months later, on June 1, Hanny unexpectedly begins to speak. Mummer, Farther and the congregation of Saint Jude's celebrate his speech as an answer to prayer, particularly the water from Saint Anne's shrine. Father Bernard doubts their explanation and privately questions the narrator about what really happened at Thessaly, but the narrator keeps the secret. Bernard says he plans to return to Belfast, knowing he has not fulfilled the parish's desire for a priest like Wilfred. When the narrator shows him Wilfred's diary, Bernard advises him to destroy it rather than expose a dead man's private crisis or unsettle his grieving brother Reg.

The narrator nevertheless keeps the diary. In its account of Wilfred's final earlier visit to the Loney, the priest went alone to the shore expecting to encounter God in nature. Instead, he discovered the drowned body of an alcoholic vagrant, already being consumed by gulls. He tried to recover the corpse before the tide pulled it into a deep channel and nearly dragged him underwater, but the body vanished. Shocked by the power and indifference of the sea, Wilfred wrote that he had come to believe God was absent not only from the Loney but from the world. This diary provides a reason for his change in belief, not proof that he deliberately caused his later death. Police had judged his fatal fall down the belfry stairs accidental; a damaged handrail, failing light, an old sword and the unexplained tolling of a bell leave uncertainties without demonstrating suicide or murder.

In the present, when the baby's body is uncovered and investigators open a murder inquiry, Hanny visits the narrator at his basement museum workplace during a snowstorm. He reports fragmentary memories of a beach, a girl, fear, confinement and the recoil of a gun. He fears that he may have fired the shot that killed the child, although he cannot recall doing so and his lasting guilt has no clear source. The narrator reassures him, suggests the memory is confused with their childhood games, and insists that the good Hanny has done through his ministry matters more. Hanny thanks his brother for watching over him and invites him back into his family life.

As they take the Underground home, however, the narrator applies Father Bernard's idea that there are competing versions of truth. He decides to tell investigators that the brothers were running across the sands far from Thessaly when they heard a distant gunshot. This proposed story is knowingly false: he has already recounted Hanny's presence in the cellar, the coerced draw and Clement's intervention. The final pages therefore leave several questions open, including who shot the infant, what truly happened while the narrator waited upstairs, how Hanny recovered and how much of the narrator's protective account can be trusted. His last decision is not to resolve those questions but to control the testimony that might endanger his brother.