by Colm Toibin
‘Oh, Lord bless us and save us!’ her grandmother said.
The item on The Late Late Show which unsetded them most, however, was not about sex or religion. It was when an American woman, middle-aged, with permed hair, and glasses, wearing a red dress, appeared on the show. She could, she claimed, make contact with the dead. She did not use the word ‘dead’, but talked about people who had passed away, people on the ‘other side’. Gay Byrne asked her questions as though he believed her.
‘Did you ever hear such nonsense?’ her grandmother asked. ‘Did you ever hear worse?’
The woman stood in front of the live audience with Gay Byrne beside her. She held a microphone and pointed at individuals in the audience.
‘Yes, that woman there,’ she said. ‘I’m getting very strong messages for you. You have only one sister, is that right?’
The woman in the audience nodded.
‘And she’s been ill, hasn’t she?’
The woman nodded again.
‘The message is confused now, but are you twins or very close in age?’
‘We’re very close in age.’
‘But when you were children, you are the one who was ill, right?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Could this be your mother, dear, could this be your mother? I know that she wants to protect you and she’s worried about your sister, but things are better now, and she’s watching over you both.’
There was silence in the kitchen as Helen and her grandparents watched the television. The woman on The Late Late Show moved on to someone else.
‘I’m getting strong signals again,’ she said to a woman. ‘Did you have a little boy who was killed or died as a baby?’
‘No,’ the woman said.
‘I’m getting strong signals. Did you have a brother who died young?’
‘Yes, I did,’ the woman said.
‘And he’s still watching over you and he knows that you’re a very strong person and you’ve just moved house, have you?’
‘Yes,’ the woman said.
‘And is your mother living with you?’
‘No, she was, but she’s not now.’
‘Well, he’s worried about her, he thinks the change is for the best, but he’s worried about her. I think you might know what he means by that.’
The woman nodded.
‘Now I have to talk to somebody else. There’s something important. Is there somebody called Grace here?’
There was no response.
‘Is there somebody called Grace? Maybe even a surname?’
A hand went up. ‘Grace is my surname,’ a man said.
‘And your first name?’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack,’ the woman said, ‘I think you’re about to make a big decision. Now it’s somebody very close to you. Jack, the ties are very close between this person and you. It’s someone you think about every day, a few times a day. You know who it is, I think?’
Jack nodded.
‘She says you mustn’t go. That’s the message, it’s very clear. But there’s something else as well, there’s a relationship that’s very important for you. You’re unsure about it, but she wants to give it her blessing, and she says she still loves you and is protecting you and guarding you.’
When the break for advertisements came, Helen’s grandmother did not move from the chair. She motioned Helen to turn down the sound.
‘I wonder if you can write to that woman.’
‘Enclose a postal order, I’d say,’ her grandfather said.
‘Who would you like to get in touch with, Granny?’
‘Oh, Helen, I’d love to get in touch with my sister Statia, and I’d a brother Daniel who died of TB. I’d love to hear from them, no matter what it was, even if it was just a message. And it must be terrible hard for that American woman, having that power.’
‘She’s making all that up,’ Helen’s grandfather said.
‘No,’ her grandmother said, ‘she has the power, I’d know by her. And did you see that man’s face? It must have been his wife that was getting in touch with him. I’d give anything now to talk to Statia.’
Around that time, maybe a week or two later, Declan began to have nightmares. The first night Helen could not think what the sound was. She woke and tried to go back to sleep, but the noise persisted, and then she heard her grandmother moving in the room above and coming down the stairs. As though alert to her movements, Declan began to scream, and Helen jumped out of bed and ran into his room. He had sounded as though someone were attacking him.
They woke him, but he could not come out of the dream. He continued to scream and cry, even when they brought him into the kitchen and gave him a drink of milk and offered him a biscuit. He was frightened by something, and did not fully recognise either of them, and then slowly he began to calm down, but he said nothing, stared ahead of him, or at the light, and for a while they were unsure whether he was still living in his dream. And then he was fine again, but he would not go back to his room until the light was left on.
The nightmares changed him; during the day he became withdrawn, and often, as they went through a lesson or played cards, he became forgetful and distant and she would remind him where he was and that became a joke between them. But the dream did not stop, although some nights he would sleep soundly. On the other nights, as soon as his shouting began, both Helen and her grandmother would run to him and always – it was the same each time – it would take five or ten minutes to calm him down and bring him back to the world they lived in.
His grandmother wondered if he had worms or if he might be sickening for something, and she brought him to the doctor in Blackwater. He refused to go into the surgery unless Helen came as well. She watched the doctor examine him, check his tongue and tonsils and the whites of his eyes, listen to his breathing through a stethoscope. The doctor asked him if he was afraid of anything and he said no.
‘And so what are your dreams about?’
Declan looked at the doctor and thought for a while.
‘If I think about it too much, it’ll come back,’ he said.
‘But just tell me what it is.’
‘I’m small, I’m tiny, like the smallest things, and everything is huge and I’m floating.’
‘You mean everything else is huge.’
‘Yes.’
‘And is that frightening?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he won’t eat,’ his grandmother interrupted. ‘I can’t get him to eat.’
‘Oh, he’s well nourished,’ the doctor said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that.’
Declan was still staring ahead, thinking. ‘I kind of forget the dream after I’ve had it,’ he said.
The doctor said that Declan should move his bed into the room with Helen and maybe he’d feel safer then. ‘A lot of boys have nightmares for a while like that and they just go away.’ He pinched Declan’s cheek.
Helen watched the post. The postman came at eleven. He delivered the newspaper as well, and if there was no post he dropped the newspaper in the door, but if there was post he knocked on the door and handed the letters to her grandmother. Her mother’s letters were short and vague; she used the same words each time. Helen wondered if her father were really having tests, why the tests could not be over, why they did not produce results.
One day – she could not remember what month it was – a letter came from her mother which her grandmother did not show her and which later, when Helen asked about it, her grandmother told her did not arrive. Helen was sure it had been delivered and searched with her eyes over the mantelpiece where the letters were kept, but it was not there. Her grandmother knew how to hide things. And the next day she heard her grandmother whispering to Mrs Furlong, and she felt she understood the reason for the whispering: there was something in the letter which she could not be told.
In all the months in Cush – by this time, she was sure, they had been there for three or four months – Helen and Dec
lan had never discussed how long they would be there or what was happening to them, but as soon as Declan brought up the subject they could not stop discussing it.
‘Hellie,’ he began one day over lessons in the parlour. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘She’ll hear you.’
‘I don’t think they’re in Dublin at all. I think they’re in England or America.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Why has she never come down here?’
‘Because she’s visiting him in hospital.’
‘Why has she not come even once?’
‘Because we’re all right here.’
‘We’re not all right.’
Helen told him nothing about the letter. She tried to talk him out of his new idea, but it became an obsession.
‘I saw a programme about it on the television,’ he said. ‘The father and mother left their children behind.’
‘Behind where?’
‘In an orphanage.’
‘This is not an orphanage.’
‘What will happen when she needs the rooms for summer visitors?’
‘They’ll be back by then.’
‘They’re in England.’
‘Declan, they’re not.’
‘How do you know?’
It was around the same period she heard the word ‘cancer’ for the first time. Her grandmother was talking to Mrs Furlong in the hallway and did not know that Helen was listening on the other side of the door.
‘When they opened him up, they found that he was riddled with cancer,’ she said.
Helen knew that if she asked a question she would get no answer. One day, when her grandmother had gone into Blackwater, she searched for missing letters, but she could not find any.
By now, Declan was consumed by the possibility of escaping.
‘You could get a job in Dublin,’ he said. ‘We’d be much better off.’
‘Where?’
‘In Dunnes Stores, that’s where you can work if you leave school.’
‘I’m not even twelve.’
‘How would they know?’
In the days that followed she looked at herself carefully when she was in the bathroom. She remembered the opening of the novel Desirée, where the heroine had placed handkerchiefs inside her blouse to look like breasts. Helen was tall for her age, and she wondered, if she claimed to be fourteen, would she be believed?
Something changed in the house as the days grew longer. Their grandmother’s softening attitude towards them, the length of Mrs Furlong’s visits, a long visit from Father Griffin, the curate in Blackwater, all convinced Helen that it was her father who was riddled with cancer, and this must mean that he was dying, or maybe needed another operation which would take longer. Although she and Declan talked about escaping and going to Dublin and Helen finding a job and a flat and Declan going to school, Helen always treated it like a game, a fantasy. Declan, however, took it seriously. He worked out plans.
‘Declan, you’ve hardly even been in Dublin,’ she said.
‘I was loads of times. I know Henry Street and Moore Street.’
‘But only for a day,’ she said.
One evening, he came to her in her bedroom with an old brown leather wallet which was full of twenty-pound notes.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘He keeps it in the kitchen press in a hole,’ Declan said.
‘Leave it back.’
‘We can use it when we escape. Now you know where it is.’
‘Leave it back.’
Their father died in Dublin on 11 June. This seemed strange to her and even now, twenty years later, as she lay in bed in this house, wide awake, her grandmother upstairs asleep and Declan in hospital in Dublin, she had no memory of that early summer in Cush, of May passing into June. Some things, however, were still sharp in her memory: the changed atmosphere in the house, at least two other letters arriving and not being mentioned, the smell of damp and paraffin. Years afterwards, she realised that her childhood ended in those few weeks, even though she did not have her first period until six months later.
She knew something had happened on that morning: early, it must have been around eight o’clock, a man arrived, she saw him passing by the window; he spoke to her grandparents and then he left. And then, not long afterwards, Father Griffin from Blackwater arrived. She decided to stay in bed until he had gone, and told herself it was still possible that something else, or nothing much, had happened. She lay there and waited. Declan was fast asleep in the other bed.
After a while she heard her grandmother tiptoeing across the parlour. She opened the door to the bedroom quietly and told Helen in a whisper to dress as quickly as she could.
When Helen came out of the bedroom her grandmother was standing by the window.
‘Helen, we’ve bad news now; your father died last night at eleven o’clock. He died very peacefully. We’ll all have to look after your mother now. You and Declan are going to go into Enniscorthy with Father Griffin.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ve got clean clothes out for you. Mrs Byrne of the Square is going to look after you and Declan.’
Helen felt a sudden surge of happiness that they were leaving here and would never have to come back, but she quickly felt guilty for thinking about herself like this when her father had just died. She tried not to think at all. She went into the kitchen, where Father Griffin was drinking tea.
‘We’ll all kneel down and say a prayer for his soul,’ her grandmother said.
Father Griffin led a decade of the Rosary. He said the words of the prayers slowly and deliberately and when he came to the Hail Holy Queen he recited the prayer as though the words were new to him: ‘To Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.’ Softly, quiedy, Helen began to cry, and her grandmother came over and knelt beside her until the prayers ended.
They sat and drank more tea in silence; her grandmother made toast and aired clothes.
‘Why isn’t Declan up?’ Helen asked.
‘Oh, I let him sleep, Helen. It’ll be time enough for him when we’re packed to go.’
‘Have you not told him?’
‘We’ll let him sleep.’
‘He’ll be awake.’
As Helen was packing their schoolbooks in the parlour, Declan called her. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m packing. We’re going to Enniscorthy.’
When he looked at her from the bed, she thought that he knew, but she was not sure.
‘How are we getting there?’
‘Father Griffin.’
He looked at her again and nodded. He got out of the bed and stood on the floor in his pyjamas.
‘I want to pack my own schoolbag,’ he said.
Somewhere on the road between The Ballagh and Enniscorthy, with Father Griffin driving and Helen in the front seat, she realised that Declan didn’t know their father was dead.
‘Are Daddy and Mammy already back from Dublin?’ he asked.
Even now, twenty years later, as she lay between the sticky nylon sheets with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling as the lighthouse flashed on and off, Helen could still feel the terror in the car as neither she nor Father Griffin answered the question. She expected Declan to ask again, but he sat back and said nothing and they drove on towards the town.
Helen desperately did not want to go to Mrs Byrne’s house in the Square. Declan was friendly with the two boys, it would be easy for him, but she had no friends there and knew that Mrs Byrne would treat her like a child. Mrs Byrne was like all the shopkeepers’ wives in the town: they were always watching everything, always on the lookout, even their smiles were sharp, and she did not want to be under the control of Mrs Byrne or any other Mrs in the town.
They drove past Donoghue’s Garage in silence and crossed the bridge and drove up Casde Hill. Helen was determined not to go into Mrs Byrne’s house.
; When Father Griffin double-parked in the Square and left them alone in the car, Declan asked her nothing and she told him nothing. Mrs Byrne came out, all smiles. She opened the driver’s door and put her head into the back of the car.
‘Now, Declan,’ she said, ‘when Thomas and Francis come home for their dinner, maybe they’ll both take the afternoon off so you can play upstairs.’
Helen got out of the car and stood beside Mrs Byrne. ‘My granny says I’m to go up home and have the place tidy for Mammy.’
‘Helen, I’m sure some of the neighbours will do that.’
‘Granny said I was to go and Father Griffin was to drive me up and Declan was to stay with you.’
Father Griffin stood there listening carefully. Helen knew that she had sounded too sure of herself for him to disagree. He was a mild man, uncomfortable now and anxious to get away since his car was blocking the traffic.
‘So,’ Helen said, ‘if you could take Declan’s things and then we’ll see you later.’ She was trying to sound brisk, like somebody from the television.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Father Griffin said, ‘and I’ll park.’
Declan took his bag from the boot and they stood outside Byrne’s shop waiting for Father Griffin.
‘Isn’t your grandmother very good?’ Mrs Byrne said to Helen.
‘She’s marvellous,’ Helen said.
Mrs Byrne looked up and down the street. ‘Your poor mammy now will be glad to see you,’ she said.