Michael Agnew’s sculpture

Michael Agnew’s sculpture is a shroud-like monument to Michael that turns his absence into a physical encounter. At its center is a hollow cast whose linen folds can be seen but not touched as fabric: hard resin replaces yielding cloth, and the body the form implies is missing. The sculpture becomes the setting for Cushla Lavery’s unexpected reunion with Davy McGeown, joining the memory of Michael’s death to a new possibility of connection. As an imaginary sculpture that opens and closes the novel, it also gives the book a material frame for its recurring passage between loss and return.

Form and Material

The figure is described as shrouded, with old linen visible through resin. Its weave is tight and precise; the folds appear full, almost as though the cloth has been starched. Yet the apparent textile is not textile to the touch. Cushla reaches toward it expecting it to give, then finds the cast hard and cold. The contrast between the visible linen and the solid resin makes the object’s construction impossible to overlook: it resembles a covering, but cannot function as one.

The cast is hollow, as if a body has rolled out of it. The image does not supply a body or restore the dead; instead, the empty form gives absence a durable outline. Cushla’s attention narrows from the figure as a whole to its shoulder and right arm. For a moment she expects to feel a bump at the collarbone, but it is not there; she then runs her fingers down the arm and covers the hand with hers. That precise, unsuccessful search makes the monument more than a general memorial. The remembered body is approached through touch, while the hard surface confirms that the person cannot be reached there.

Reunion and Recognition

At the monument, Davy points to the figure and identifies it as the man Tommy McGeown killed. Cushla already knows who Michael was. Their brief exchange establishes that they share knowledge of the death, but the sculpture makes that knowledge visible between them: Davy indicates the figure, and the two stand together beside a public memorial to the man whose death binds their histories.

Their meeting is not presented as the fulfilment of a plan. Cushla recognizes that chance has brought them beside Penny’s monument at this particular moment, just as a terrible accident once brought Tommy into Michael’s kitchen on a wet morning. The parallel links the reunion to the fatal encounter without treating either as destined. The sculpture holds those two accidents in the same frame: one led to Michael’s death, while the other makes it possible for Cushla and Davy to meet again. The monument cannot explain or undo what happened, but it gives their recognition a place and a visible point of reference.

Memory, Time, and Return

Before finding Davy, Cushla has searched persistently for him. She looks on the street and in classrooms, asks Gerry Devlin to check each new telephone-directory edition for the family name, and repeatedly watches the recording of Tommy’s funeral for a glimpse of Davy among the mourners. She cannot find him in the press of police and news crews as shots are fired over the coffin. Against that long, unsuccessful search, the chance encounter beside the sculpture carries the weight of an arrival, although the novel resists turning it into a predetermined reunion.

Time is registered in their names and forms of address. Davy asks whether she is still Miss Lavery; Cushla tells him she has long been Mrs McTiernan and asks him to call her Cushla. The exchange recognizes the years that have passed without making their earlier relationship disappear. Davy proposes looking at John Lavery’s work, and Cushla welcomes the suggestion, addressing him by his full name. The conversation moves away from the memorial without erasing it: the sculpture has enabled them to acknowledge the past, while their proposed next activity points toward time spent together in the present.

Framing Role

The novel’s author states that the book opens and closes with an imaginary sculpture inspired by the work of Sligo-based artist Bettina Seitz. The closing encounter therefore returns the reader to an image established as part of the book’s frame. The monument is not merely an object encountered in the plot; it also shapes how the story’s ending is read. Its hollow form gives loss a recognizable outline, but does not fill that outline with certainty or restore what has vanished.

The final movement balances the old linen’s apparent softness against the cast’s hardness, and the remembered body against the empty space within the figure. Cushla’s hand can cover the sculpture’s hand, but the gesture does not make the memorial a living body. What it can do is place her beside Davy, whose presence had eluded her through years of searching. The sculpture thus gathers the novel’s concerns with memory, chance, and the persistence of human connection without resolving the violence that made the monument necessary.