The Empty Family (v5)

by Colm Toibin

  ‘Are you coming?’ he asked.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Cafolla’s. We’re all going.’

  ‘Are you going to miss the second half?’

  ‘I’m starving.’

  He was, I could tell, utterly impervious to how I felt and that came as a shock. I thought he surely must have realized from my response to the music as I sat beside him that the idea of going to Cafolla’s to eat chips and hamburgers instead of going back into the opera would be pure dull madness. I saw that that did not occur to him. I saw that the music had meant nothing to him. I saw that he did not notice how much it had meant to me.

  ‘No, I’m going back in.’

  By that time Gráinne was standing beside us. She had a packet of cigarettes in her hand. She was chewing gum.

  ‘Listen to goody-two-shoes,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t be noticed,’ Donnacha said.

  ‘I’m going back in,’ I repeated.

  When his eyes caught mine I knew that he sensed there was something wrong.

  ‘I’ll be waiting outside when it’s over,’ he said.

  ‘Let us know if there’s any more screeching,’ Gráinne added. ‘God, that woman did more screeching! My nerves are in bits from her.’

  Gráinne did a loud, jarring imitation of a soprano hitting a high note until a few people turned around to glare at her.

  ‘We’re off,’ she said. ‘See you.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting outside when it’s over,’ Donnacha said again. I did not reply but turned and walked back into the opera house.

  Afterwards he was lurking in the shadows and slowly we walked back to the school together.

  ‘How was the second half?’ he asked.

  ‘It was great. How were the chips?’

  ‘They were great.’

  I enjoyed the idea of us walking together through the empty streets of the town. Neither of us spoke much; we had different things to think about. Donnacha could not have known or even suspected that ten years ahead, when he was working as an accountant in one of the midland towns, Gráinne Roche would be the star journalist on one of the regional papers, covering sport and local court cases, and they would meet again and within a year they would marry. I could not have suspected that the music that had lifted me out of myself that night, that had seemed like a great new beginning, would within a decade seem sweet and silly to me, not Germanic or hard enough. The future is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

  Once we got in the back gate to the school that night and were in the dark we held hands as we walked across the playing fields. It was cold. We made our way silently to the room beside the rehearsal room and started to make love. It was only when Donnacha began to ejaculate that I noticed the line of light under the door and knew that if there was anyone in the next room they would hear him now. His orgasm took time, the slow moan he made grew louder and, while he did everything to control it, it was accompanied by a set of gasps. As I felt his hot jets of sperm hitting the skin of my belly I heard footsteps and then a voice in the other room, something like ‘What the hell?’ In that second Donnacha, who had not finished coming, unlocked the door leading to the corridor and ran out. I moved quickly to the door between our room and the rehearsal room. I put my foot against the door, preventing whoever was there from entering. It became a battle between the force of my foot and my shoulder and his force. I knew I had one second before he began to push harder, one second to let the door free and dart across the small room and out the same door through which Donnacha had departed. The voice I heard as I ran was the voice of the music teacher. I raced down a dark corridor and then along another, illuminated corridor, and then through the narrow doorway that led to the dormitory. I knew that the music teacher could easily have seen me from behind in the second of these corridors if he was following closely enough. The trick now was to take my shoes off and get straight into bed, cover myself with blankets and pretend to be asleep.

  It was not long before I heard footsteps in the dormitory. All he had to do was use his sense of smell and he would smell semen or stand silently watching me until I turned to check that he was gone. I was careful to lie still, to do a perfect imitation of someone sleeping for at least half an hour, before quietly undressing, tasting what sperm was still caked on my skin and then getting into my pyjamas and going to sleep.

  In the morning I felt drained and guilty – the sounds Donnacha made would have been unmistakable – but I knew there was nothing the music teacher could do. After breakfast when I looked over I saw that Donnacha must have slipped out of the refectory. It was a few days before he began to speak to me again, and when he did he was guarded and I knew he did not want to talk about how close we had come to being discovered.

  I took my time drying my hands in the toilets of the Clarence before returning to the table. When I got there I found that Seamus Fox was sitting in my chair having an animated discussion with Gráinne Roche. I knew Seamus because we had served together a number of years earlier on a jury at a film festival in Galway. I found him friendly and funny, which was surprising since the columns he wrote were notable for their sourness and a level of support for rural and traditional values that at times made Gráinne Roche seem radical and cosmopolitan. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Get up,’ I said.

  He turned and grinned.

  ‘I now declare this meeting of the Catholic cranks of Ireland suspended,’ I said. ‘Go back to your own table.’

  ‘What are you doing together?’ he asked. ‘How do you know each other?’

  ‘We are the only two people who have read your book Reading the Bible with Bono, and we often meet to discuss it,’ I replied.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Wexford. I get it. The Wexford mafia.’

  ‘Our aim,’ Donnacha said, ‘is to rule all Ireland.’

  ‘Wash your hair,’ I said to Seamus Fox. ‘It’s too long and too greasy.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Here now,’ Donnacha interrupted.

  ‘If the bishops heard that,’ I said.

  ‘You can take them out of Wexford,’ he said, ‘but you can’t take Wexford out of them.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ I asked.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Is the Church still against fornication? Or has that gone the way of Limbo and the burning of heretics?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘What is the current thinking on wankers?’ I asked.

  Seamus Fox stood up and grinned and then sullenly turned and walked back to his table.

  ‘How to make friends and influence people,’ Donnacha said.

  ‘Hey, it worked,’ I said. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘You’re worse than ever,’ Gráinne said. She then caught the eye of one of the waiters and did mock handwriting in the air as a way of calling for the bill.

  ‘Are you paying?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m paying,’ she replied.

  ‘Are you going to send me the book?’

  ‘When it’s published.’

  ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘Read it.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘There are things about you in the book. I used your name. I thought it was polite to tell you.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘About the prayer meetings we had.’

  ‘I don’t remember much about them,’ I said. ‘And I don’t care much about them either.’

  ‘What do you care about?’

  ‘Don’t try that stuff on me. Save your sincerity for Seamus over there. He needs it more than I do.’

  ‘I just want you to say something that you really mean, that’s all.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  The bill came and she paid by credit card.

  ‘It was nice to meet the two of you,’ I said, pushing my chair back and standing up.

  ‘Do you remember the poem you wrote,’ G
ráinne asked, ‘called “There’s Blood Flowing Out from the Rose-Bowl”? I still have the copy you gave me in your handwriting. I’ve quoted from it in the book. The publishers will be writing to you asking for permission.’

  ‘Blood flowing out from what?’ I said.

  ‘The rose-bowl,’ Donnacha said. ‘I thought it was a bit strange myself.’ He laughed.

  ‘Tell the publishers no,’ I said.

  ‘I told them you’d be fine with it, that you’re actually a big softie,’ Gráinne said. ‘So when they write to you, just reply and say yes. There’s no reason to be ashamed.’

  ‘No reason to be what?’

  ‘Ashamed. It’s a good poem for a sixteen-year-old.’

  I sighed and stood up. The three of us walked out of the restaurant together. As we passed Seamus Fox’s table, Gráinne and Donnacha waved goodbye to him. I ignored him.

  ‘Can we give you a lift? We’re parked over on Lord Edward Street.’

  ‘No. I’ll walk.’

  We stood and looked at each other. Donnacha grinned.

  ‘Good to see you anyway. Thanks for the dinner,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a nice guy,’ Gráinne replied.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ Donnacha said and grinned more. I looked at him for a second but he did not give me even the smallest hint of recognition.

  They turned and walked towards Parliament Street as I walked towards Temple Bar.

  When I came to Dublin first you could walk home alone on nights like this, alert mainly to the dampness and the shabby poverty of the city. You would pass lone drinkers who had been ejected from public houses at closing time. There would be almost no traffic. It was too sad to be dangerous; no one had the energy to commit crimes. The route I took now varied only slightly from the old route. Meeting House Square and Curved Street were new, but the streets that led to Dame Street had always been there. But Dublin, no matter what remained, was new with gay men in twos or threes or hungry ones alone on their way to the Front Lounge or GUBU or some new joint that I have yet to hear about. If I know them, we nod or smile.

  I have always liked corners and side-streets and thus I made my way quickly across Dame Street and turned left at the sign saying ‘Why go Bald’, walking by the side of the Stag’s Head and then into Trinity Street and Andrew’s Street and Wicklow Street, hitting Grafton Street at McDonald’s. I love these turnings, and now, in these years of change and prosperity, I love the untidy crowds in the streets, the idea of a night not finished, the Garda car edging its way along the pedestrianized street with young Gardaí looking out at us suspiciously as though they were thinking of having furtive sex with us. I love seeing drunk people on their way elsewhere.

  It is the last stretch I cannot bear, when I come to the top of Kildare Street and have no choice but to walk in a straight line along Merrion Row and Baggot Street towards Pembroke Road. This is the grim city with a few damp bars and creepy nightclubs and places to buy chips and hamburgers and kebabs. The street lights are dim and there is a sense in behind the house façades of murderous old spaces with half-rotting floorboards, with crumbling brick and rattling windows and creaking stairways and alarm systems in urgent need of repair. Front rooms tarted up or shiny signs outside for solicitors and auctioneers and public relations firms make me shiver even more as I pass them on my way to my nest of attic rooms, my wireless broadband, my stack of CDs, my new printer, the closets half full of clothes that soon won’t fit me, the wall of books, the lamps that all turn on from a single switch. Each time I take this route I marvel at my foolishness for not finding another way home.

  Across the city I imagined Gráinne and Donnacha driving to their home in Terenure; I imagined her going over the evening, indignant about some of the things said, satisfied at others. And Donnacha in the driver’s seat nodding mildly, making the odd amused remark, or turning serious when a matter of fact was in dispute. I imagined the drive of their house where the car could be parked, the single tree, the flower beds, the mowed lawn, the PVC French windows leading from the dining room to the long back garden. Their sons up watching television. I imagined her in the kitchen, where they kept the computer, making tea and Donnacha sitting with the boys not saying much. I thought of the two of them going up to bed, wishing the boys goodnight, a biography of someone or other on the table at Donnacha’s side of the bed, some new books about Ireland and its ways on the table on the other side where Gráinne slept. I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that. No matter how grim the city I walked through was, how cavernous my attic rooms, how long and solitary the night to come, I would not exchange any of it for the easy rituals of mutuality and closeness that Gráinne and Donnacha were performing now. I checked my pocket to make sure I had my keys with me and almost smiled to myself at the bare thought that I had not forgotten them.

  The New Spain

  When the bus left the passengers from the airport at Plaza España, Carme Giralt wondered what she should do. It was almost midnight. The heaviness, the murkiness in the air, the fetid smell from the drains and the absence of any wind, made her understand that, whether she liked it or not, she was home. She had spent two frenzied days in London throwing out clothes and papers and giving away furniture and books, and then making the basement in Islington tidy so she could get her deposit back. She had put no thought into this part, what she would do on her immediate arrival in Barcelona with her family nearby, her parents maybe getting ready for bed in the old apartment, her sister somewhere in the city with a husband and two children whom Carme had never seen, and her grandmother newly buried in the cemetery in Montjuïc not far from where Carme now stood.

  It was eight years since she had left the city, since her father had silently taken her to the airport; his rage against her then was palpable and elemental as he stood watching to make sure that she made her way through the departure gates. To spite him, she remembered, she had waved and flashed a smile. She had imagined that she might never see him again but, she thought, as she prepared to cross the desolate street, she had been wrong. She would be seeing him soon.

  First she decided that she would find a small hotel or a pensión and stay the night there. In the morning, when the air was fresh in the city, and she had slept, she would consider how long she might wait before she called to tell them that she had come back.

  Somewhere in the police station in Via Laietana there was a file on her. Or maybe, she thought, with the arrival of democracy they had removed the files and even destroyed some of them. But not that much had changed. They had legalized the Communist Party – Carrillo was back in Madrid and so were La Pasionaria and Rafael Alberti – but there still must be, she thought, a need to know who the communists had been. She imagined an underground space, a bare bulb and a long row of tightly packed folders. One of these would have photographs of her and an account of her interrogation. They might even have noted her deep revulsion for the southern accents of the two policemen who asked the questions, a revulsion she made no secret of during those two days. And they might have snaps of her, she thought, in the year or two after her arrival in London, demonstrating outside the Spanish embassy for the end of the dictatorship and the return of democracy, or someone might have written an account for them of the party she organized in London to celebrate on the night after Carrero Blanco was blown up.

  Now the old regime had died and she had been away. She had not been here to toast the death of the dictator. When her grandmother had called to mark his death, she had announced jubilantly that the bottle of cava they had been saving all the years had just been opened. As Carme moved slowly along the Gran Via, her suitcase becoming a burden, she still did not regret that she had missed that night, or that she had missed voting in the referendum for a new constitution or in the first election; she had heard enough
from her sister, who had come to London alone just a year earlier, and from her grandmother once or twice on the phone, about old friends and former comrades who had joined the Socialists, or others who were now talking about Euro-Communism and jockeying for position. All of them had avoided the demonstrations unless they saw a need to be photographed. They were, she knew, filled with the sly knowledge that they would soon be taking power in Barcelona and Madrid, serving under a king who had happily served under the dictator.

  The lobby of the hotel she found was opulent and bright but the room was grim, the furniture dark and too big, the curtains depressing, heavy with dust. There was something dingy about everything including the bedclothes and the bedside lamp, which gave off a light too faint to read by. She would stay here just tonight, she thought, and then she would move. She had never stayed in a hotel in the city before. In the silence as the night wore on, a silence broken intermittently by gurgling pipes and noises in the corridor, she did not know if the gloom that came over her arose from the dismal atmosphere or from the fact that she felt no desire to make contact with anyone, no one she had left behind in London, and no one here among her family or former friends.

  In the morning, once she had showered and put on fresh clothes, she felt more courageous, more prepared to deal with them, but when she phoned her sister’s apartment there was no answer. On an impulse then she phoned her parents, holding the receiver out as though it were in danger of exploding, but there was no reply there either. It was strange, she thought, how easily the two phones ringing without response came to seem like large defeats, made her feel powerless, depressed and unable to decide whether she should check out of the hotel now and leave her bags at reception or go for a walk, buy a newspaper, have breakfast somewhere, and return later and phone them again.

  She walked towards Rambla de Catalunya, allowing herself at first to feel that this was aimless, that she was merely straying, but then becoming determined that she would actually go towards her parents’ apartment, and stand outside it and look at it, or have a coffee in one of the granjas nearby.