by Colm Toibin
‘You’re worse than Declan,’ he said.
They walked back along the clifftop in silence, Larry staring out to sea and stopping to look down at the coast. ‘I didn’t know there were places like this still left in Wexford,’ he said.
As they walked up the lane, they saw Lily driving towards them. She stopped at the gate of her mother’s house.
‘Is Declan inside?’ she asked.
‘Mammy, this is Larry, he’s a friend of Declan’s,’ Helen said.
‘Hello,’ she said coldly. ‘Is Declan inside?’ she asked again.
‘No, he’s on the strand,’ Helen said.
‘Who’s he with?’ her mother asked.
‘No one. He’s on his own.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘He asked us to leave him there. He said he wanted to think.’
‘Helen, that is irresponsible.’ She began to walk towards the cliff.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to get him,’ her mother said.
‘He wants to be left alone.’
Her mother continued walking away from them towards the cliff.
‘It’s mucky,’ Helen shouted at her, but her mother did not turn.
‘Look at her shoes,’ Helen said to Larry. ‘She’ll never get down the cliff’
‘A mother’s love’s a blessing,’ Larry said.
‘I presume you’re being sarcastic?’
‘It’s not just you and Declan can go on like that,’ Larry said.
‘I thought you were a nice simple chap,’ she said.
‘I think I prefer your granny to your mother,’ he said.
‘I did that for a while too,’ Helen said. ‘It’s a mistake.’
They sat in the kitchen and listened as Helen’s grandmother moved about upstairs. The cats on top of the dresser had disappeared. When her grandmother came down the stairs and into the kitchen, she had a cat under each arm.
‘These two gendemen’, she said, ‘are disturbed by all the visitors.’
‘You’ve a great view here,’ Larry said.
‘View?’ she asked. ‘You can get fed up looking at the sea. I can tell you that now. If I could turn the house around, I would.’
‘It has great character, the house,’ Larry said.
The cats jumped out of her arms and made their way to the top of the dresser, where they scowled down at Helen and Larry.
‘I’m bad on my feet,’ her grandmother said. ‘I’d love to make my bedroom downstairs, but then the bathroom’s upstairs. There’s no justice.’ She went to the window and parted the lace curtains. ‘Oh, here’s Lily now,’ she said.
Helen and Larry stood up as they heard Declan and Lily talking. As Helen opened the kitchen door, she noticed her mother’s shoes all covered in marl and muck. Declan, she saw, had been crying. They did not come into the kitchen, but turned towards the room where Declan had slept.
‘Is he all right?’ her grandmother called after them.
‘He’s fine. He’s just going to lie down.’
When Larry went and sat in front of the house, Helen’s grandmother guardedly closed the kitchen door and checked the window to make sure no one was coming.
‘Helen,’ she asked, ‘is this man Larry, is he going to stay here as well?’
‘I don’t know, Granny.’
‘Helen, are we going to put them into the same room?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I suppose we’re all modern now,’ her grandmother said, going again to the window, ‘and I’m as modern as anyone, but I would just like to know. That’s all.’
‘Granny, do you mean – are they partners?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘So where is Declan’s partner?’ her grandmother asked.
‘He doesn’t have a partner,’ Helen said.
‘Do you mean he has nobody?’
‘He has us,’ Helen said. ‘And he has his friends. That’s not nobody.’
‘He has nobody of his own,’ her grandmother said sadly. ‘Nobody of his own, and that’s why he came down here. I didn’t understand that before. Helen, we’ll have to do everything we can for him.’
Her grandmother kept her eyes fixed on a point in the distance and said nothing more. When Larry came in and saw them, he pretended he had been looking for something and he left the room as soon as he could.
Helen went to her room and lay down and tried to sleep. She stared at the ceiling, aware of her mother sitting with Declan in the next room, and surprised that the window was just a small slit in the wall, making the room a shadowy, cavernous space, full of damp smells. She had not remembered it like this.
She thought about the previous year when she had come down here with Hugh and Cathal and Manus. The boys had been excited and interested. Manus had a video about hens, and he had spent the journey from Dublin talking about the hens he was going to see in Cush. Cathal, in recent weeks, had become interested in the idea of young and old. His grandmother in Donegal was old; was his grandmother in Cush old? he asked. Helen explained that his grandmother was in Wexford, his great-grandmother was in Cush and, yes, she was old.
The boys had packed their bathing togs and buckets and spades, even though they were only staying one day. Helen explained about the cliff.
‘But is there sand?’ Cathal asked.
‘Yes, plenty of sand,’ she said.
‘Do they talk English in Cush?’ he asked.
‘Plenty of English,’ Hugh said.
As soon as they got out of the car and stood in front of their great-grandmother’s house, the boys looked around them suspiciously. The house seemed decrepit; one of the windows upstairs was broken. When her grandmother came to the door, Helen watched her as though through the eyes of the two boys. There was something frightening about her presence. The boys did not move as Helen and Hugh went towards the old woman. Helen was afraid that Manus might run back to the car, or worse call her grandmother a witch or some other word from his increasingly large vocabulary.
The boys did not want to come into the house. When Helen asked if Hugh could take Manus to see Furlong’s hens, Hugh seemed almost too grateful for the excuse to leave.
Helen beckoned Cathal to come inside. He stood in the kitchen, inspecting everything, his gaze critical and utterly unselfconscious.
‘Oh, he’s the image of your father, Helen,’ her grandmother said. ‘Isn’t he the image of your father!’ Cathal looked at her coldly.
When Hugh and Manus returned, it was clear that the trip to see the hens had not been a success.
‘They were all dirty,’ Manus said.
‘Oh now,’ Mrs Devereux said, ‘Mrs Furlong washes them with soap and water on Mondays, so you came the wrong day.’
‘Do you live here?’ Manus asked her.
Hugh sat beside the Aga, Helen and Manus and Mrs Devereux at the kitchen table. Cathal would not sit down.
‘Your mother now will be here any minute,’ her grandmother said to Helen.
‘Is she your mother too?’ Manus asked.
‘No, Manus,’ Helen said, ‘she’s my mother, but she’s Granny’s daughter. Isn’t that a good one?’
Manus wrinkled his face in mock disgust. He hated it when he did not understand things.
‘Did you live here?’ he asked Helen.
‘No, it’s my granny’s house,’ she told him.
‘There’s an awful stink,’ he said.
He began to examine the fly-paper, which hung from the ceiling near the light-fitting. He called Cathal over.
‘The flies are dead,’ Cathal said, ‘and they’re stuck to the paper.’
‘Lift me up,’ Manus said to Hugh.
‘You’re to be good, Manus,’ Helen said. ‘It’s Granny’s house.’
‘I want to see the dead flies,’ he said.
‘The paper is all sticky,’ Cathal said.
‘It’s all manky,’ Manus added.
The cats appeared at the window and her grandmother went out and carried them in, one under each arm. As soon as they saw the visitors, they jumped up to their perch on the dresser. Manus wanted someone to help him fetch them down so he could play with them, but Mrs Devereux explained that they didn’t like little boys.
‘What did you bring them in for?’ he asked her sharply.
The day was mild and sunny and Helen thought it might be best for everyone if Hugh took the boys down to the strand. She would go as far as the cliff with them.
She and Hugh were careful to say nothing as they walked down the lane, pretending that this was a normal outing with buckets and spades. Hugh lifted Manus in his arms as they approached the cliff, Helen held Cathal’s hand. Just as they came to the edge, the sky darkened and the boys looked down with amazement and alarm.
‘Is that the strand?’ Manus asked.
‘Yes, and you use steps to go down,’ Helen said.
‘What steps?’
She pointed them out to him.
‘And you run down the last bit,’ she said.
‘I hate it,’ Manus said.
‘It’s lovely when you’re down there. And the sea is much warmer than Donegal.’
‘It’s all dirty,’ he said.
‘Do we have to go down?’ Cathal asked.
‘No,’ Helen said, ‘you can do what you like.’
She realised that they were used to the long sandy beaches in Donegal, and that the marl of the cliff and the short strand seemed strange to them.
‘But I think you’d like it down there,’ Helen said.
‘How long are we staying here?’ Cathal asked.
‘Just today.’
‘We’re not sleeping here, sure we’re not?’
‘No, we’re driving back later.’
The boys stood there, downcast and subdued.
‘Manus, I’ll give you a piggy-back if you come down now,’ Hugh said.
‘No, I want to sit on your shoulders.’
‘All right.’
‘And I’m not swimming if it’s cold,’ Manus said.
Cathal shook his head at Helen, signalling that he did not want to go down the cliff.
‘You can come up with me,’ she said, ‘and sit in the car and read your comic.’
‘Can I sit at the steering wheel?’ Manus asked.
‘When you come back,’ she said.
Helen and her grandmother waited for her mother to arrive while Cathal sat in the car reading his comic. When Hugh and Manus came back and her mother still had not arrived, she took the cold lunch she had brought from the car into the kitchen and they all sat around the table. Her grandmother had made soup and wanted to cook pork chops, but Helen insisted that they eat only the food she had brought. As she moved from the table to the dresser, she had a sudden memory of Declan being handed one of those willow-patterned plates with onions and carrots on it which he would not eat. She almost wished now that her grandmother would produce some items that the boys did not eat – cheese, for example, or cabbage – to see their reaction. They would have responded with contempt, they would have refused even to look at the food.
They ate lunch and drank tea afterwards, all the time listening out for Lily’s car. They talked about neighbours in Cush, Hugh cut a piece of cardboard for the broken window upstairs, Cathal read his comic and Manus tried to entice the cats from their lair. Helen made sure that there was never silence.
When she brought Cathal to the toilet, he asked if he could look around the house, and she told him he could. Downstairs, when she said to him that she and Declan had once slept in these rooms, he became interested. But when he asked her why they had slept here and not in their own house, she became vague. Cathal, however, persisted, and she told him that her father had died.
‘And was your daddy old?’ he asked.
‘No, Cathal, he was young,’ she said.
‘And why did he die then?’
‘That happens sometimes.’
‘Is your mammy old?’
‘She’s older than me, but she’s younger than Granny.’
‘And she’s not dead?’
‘No, we’re going to meet her.’
He pondered on what she had said, but he did not seem satisfied.
‘Was Declan like Manus when he was small?’
‘He was very like Manus,’ Helen said.
‘What does the image of your father mean?’
‘It means you look like him.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘When he was alive.’
‘Did they take photographs of him?’
Her mother did not arrive and the afternoon waned. Finally, they decided to leave. Hugh and Cathal and Manus went to the car.
‘I’m nicely hoped up with you all,’ Helen’s grandmother said to her. ‘That Lily is a law on to herself.’
‘Tell her we came anyway,’ Helen said.
‘I’ll clean her clock,’ her grandmother said and turned towards the dresser, as if to look for something.
Now, for the first time there was silence. Her grandmother did not turn until Helen began to speak.
‘We all have a lot to put up with, Helen,’ her grandmother said, interrupting her.
Helen said nothing.
‘What were you going to say?’ her grandmother asked.
‘I was going to thank you for the day, and say that you should come up to Dublin and see us.’
Her grandmother looked at her.
‘After all those years I suppose it’s nice to hear you saying that,’ she said. Her tone was bitter, almost angry.
Helen smiled and turned and walked out of the house. In the car, as Hugh started the engine, she rolled down the window and they all waved at her grandmother and Hugh honked the horn as they set off for Dublin.
She waited until later that night, when she had drunk most of a bottle of red wine, to tell Hugh what her grandmother had said.
‘We won’t go near them for a good while so,’ he said.
Now she was back under the same roof with them. She stood up from the bed and studied herself in the old mirror. She could see how tired her eyes looked. She sighed and opened the door and went back out to join her mother and her brother and his friend in their grandmother’s house.
Later, as she sat in the kitchen, they heard another car in the lane. Mrs Devereux looked out through the curtains. ‘Oh, here’s another of them now,’ she said.
‘Who, Granny?’ Helen asked.
‘Look yourself,’ she said.
Helen saw that it was Paul. He was carrying a suitcase. They watched him talking to Larry.
‘Someone else deal with him,’ her grandmother said.
Helen went to the door and brought Paul, followed by Larry, into the kitchen. She introduced him to her grandmother, who smiled at him warmly.
‘It took me a bit longer than I thought,’ he said. ‘It’s very hard to find this place. I had to ask at nearly every house.’
‘Oh God Almighty, I’ll have them all on top of me now,’ her grandmother said. ‘I’ll have them in droves.’
‘What do you mean, Granny?’ Helen asked.
‘The neighbours’, she said, ‘will smell the news.’
‘How is he?’ Paul asked.
‘He’s lying down,’ Helen said.
‘And he hasn’t eaten since he came,’ her grandmother said.
‘No, his appetite can come and go,’ Paul said. ‘I brought him some clean clothes and there are drugs he needs and Complan.’
‘Did you bring the Xanax?’ Larry asked.
‘I brought a packet of it. I used the old prescription.’
‘What’s Xanax?’ Helen asked.
‘It cheers him up a bit,’ Larry said.
‘Cheers him up,’ her grandmother repeated. ‘Maybe we should all have it.’
Helen’s mother came into the room and examined them all disapprovingly.
‘He wants a glass of milk and he sh
ouldn’t be left alone like that again, and he wants to know if his friends can stay in the spare room upstairs.’
‘This new fellow’ll have to bring his car in from the lane first, or it’ll roll over the cliff,’ her grandmother said.
‘Paul,’ Helen said. ‘His name is Paul.’
‘We’ll have to get sheets and blankets for them,’ her grandmother said. ‘Are there any more coming?’
‘A line of cars from Dublin,’ Helen said.
‘We should put a sign up saying we’re open for business,’ her grandmother said.
In the late afternoon when Larry and Paul were in the bedroom with Declan, and Helen was in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother, voices could be heard, and then a knock came at the kitchen door.
‘Come in,’ Helen’s grandmother said.
Two middle-aged women, Madge and Essie Kehoe, clearly sisters by their looks and the way they dressed, entered the room and managed to take in everything even before they spoke.
‘Dora, we were just passing and we saw all the cars and we were wondering were you all right.’
Helen watched her grandmother moving towards the kitchen door and closing it behind her two visitors. ‘I’m as right as rain,’ she said.
‘You have plenty of visitors, Dora?’ Madge asked.
‘Just down for the day, Helen and her friends.’
‘Her husband isn’t down?’
‘No, no, he’s in Donegal.’
‘And the boys?’
‘In Donegal too.’
‘Donegal,’ Madge repeated.
Helen left the room and told her brother and his friends not to make a sound. She went upstairs and flushed the toilet noisily.
‘We read all about you on the paper nearly every week, Lily,’ Essie was saying as Helen came back into the room.
‘Oh, Lily’s a big shot now,’ Madge said to nobody in particular. ‘She’s in the IDA.’
‘Is the red car your car?’ Essie asked Helen.
‘That’s right,’ Helen said.
‘But that’s the car that stopped and asked us directions,’ Madge said.
‘No, the white car is Helen’s,’ Lily said firmly.
‘And not the red car?’
‘No.’
‘Whose is the red car then?’
‘They’re friends of mine, they teach in my school, and they’re staying in Curracloe. They’ve gone for a walk,’ Helen said.