The Blackwater Lightship

by Colm Toibin

  At a quarter to eleven Mrs Devereux and Helen, Lily and Paul drove into Blackwater for eleven o’clock Mass.

  ‘Walk straight back to the car now after Mass,’ Mrs Devereux said. ‘No dawdling around the paper shop, and no talking to people.’

  Helen had not been to Mass in Blackwater for well over ten years, since her last summer working at the guest-house. She had forgotten the scene at eleven o’clock Mass: the women in headscarves or mantillas or fancy hats on one side of the church, the men on the other side in suits – even the young boys in suits – and the sense of awe and unease in every face, the silence and the watchfulness, and the soft, old-fashioned edge to everything. The respect and the conformity was broken only by visitors, people from Dublin or from towns who walked up the church and sat together as a family and wore summer-holiday clothes.

  When the Mass started she was aware of Paul praying beside her, calling out the responses firmly and loudly. Her grandmother, her mother and Paul went to Communion, but she sat back and watched as each communicant walked down the church in bowed, concentrated prayer. Paul, she noticed, was dressed conservatively and could have fitted in as a local farmer’s son, a staunch pillar of the community.

  As soon as the Mass was over her grandmother nudged her. ‘Come on now, quick, before the crush.’

  People she half knew smiled at Helen in recognition as they joined the queue to leave the church. She wished she had worn a scarf or a mantilla like her mother and grandmother. She felt oddly conspicuous, as though by coming here bare-headed and not going to Communion she was trying to make a statement. As soon as they reached the porch of the church, her grandmother caught her by the wrist and began to talk to her animatedly so that no one else could get her attention. Lily had gone ahead; Paul was coming close behind.

  ‘Oh there’ll be people raging,’ Mrs Devereux said when they got into die car, ‘wondering how we slipped by them. People who wouldn’t look high up or low down at me for the rest of the year would love to detain me now that I’m with Helen and Lily. And they’ll think Paul is your husband, Helen. And they’ll say what a clean-looking man she’s married. I don’t know what they’ll say about you, Lily.’

  ‘Well, that priest would put years on you. I don’t know what his name is,’ Lily said.

  ‘Start up the car,’ Mrs Devereux said to Paul, ‘and just drive it out. Someone will just have to give way.’

  ‘When you get your own car, Granny, you’ll learn all about giving way,’ Helen said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll need a lot of practice first,’ Mrs Devereux said.

  When they arrived home, Declan and Larry had everything packed for them to go to the strand. Mrs Devereux, however, refused, said she hadn’t been down there for years and if she went down now, she would never get back up. ‘And furthermore,’ she said, ‘you’d never know who you’d meet down there, and you could get a pain listening to people.’

  Declan appeared frail and white in a pair of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. Lily carried a basket with a flask of tea, sandwiches and biscuits. As they turned in the lane, they heard Mrs Devereux whispering the cats’ names, trying to entice them back into the house, but they did not appear.

  In the previous few days, a number of boulders of mud and marl, studded with stones, had fallen on to the strand from the cliff; soon, they would disintegrate as the tide came in and washed over them. After a few days there would just be stones, until they too, or some of them, in the winter and spring, would be swept out, or buried in the sand.

  Lily stood behind one of the boulders and changed into an old-fashioned swimsuit she must have found somewhere in the house. There were a few families further down the strand, but no one near them. Helen spread out a rug and Declan lay down on it, but sat up again to watch as his mother marched down the short strand, blessed herself as soon as she touched the water and swam out without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘She’s a brave woman, your mother,’ Larry said.

  ‘She met her match with Paul,’ Declan said. ‘Paul would put the fear of God into anyone’s mother.’

  ‘Leave me alone, everybody. That Declan fucker, saving your presence, Helen, has me awake all night.’ He smiled at Declan.

  ‘We’d tickle Paul, only Helen’s here,’ Declan said. ‘You see a whole new Paul when you tickle him.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to see Paul being tickled,’ Helen said. ‘But maybe we should wait until my mother comes back.’

  Paul, who had already changed into his bathing togs, stood up and charged down the strand and into the sea. But he stopped as soon as he was up to his thighs in the cold water and jumped to avoid each wave. Eventually, to cheers from Larry and Declan, he swam out. Helen joined him, and as soon as she was down in the water, and almost warm as long as she kept moving, she noticed Declan, still in his shorts, paddling on the shore with Larry beside him. She knew that Declan could not swim because of the line which the doctors had put in his chest.

  Later, when the sun left the strand in shadow, Larry, Paul and Declan went back to the house, leaving Helen and her mother alone. It was still warm and the sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the distance over the horizon. They lay on the rug first without speaking once they had changed from their swimsuits into their day clothes. After a while, when Helen was almost dozing, Lily began to speak.

  ‘I don’t think Declan is going to last much longer. It’s funny how we’ve all absorbed the shock, and we’re used to it now. It’s a part of life. Sometimes, he looks like your father; there’s something he does with his face, some way he turns.’

  ‘Was my father thin before he died?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Not noticeably, no. Not like Declan is. But he was like Declan in that he was sitting up in bed and laughing, well, not laughing so much, but talking. And, of course, he didn’t know he was so sick.’

  ‘But you knew?’

  ‘No, the thing was I didn’t know either. They all thought they had told me, but they hadn’t, none of them, and when after the operation the surgeon asked to see me, I went to his office, but he was never in, I never could find him. So I left it. And your father was different in hospital. He was like all the men around here, he didn’t talk much, he left all the talking to others, but he loved company and he listened and he was never without company. So he found the hospital lonely, but it was a new world for him, and he’d notice everything and remember everybody, and when I’d come in he’d talk about everything that had happened during the night. And, of course, I was staying with my cousin Pat Bolger, and there were all sorts of comings and goings in the house, so I’d have my own news, and we’d read the paper and we’d talk. There was a man opposite said he never saw two people talking as much. And we planned everything out, what we were going to do.

  ‘We were going to have another child if we could,’ her mother went on, ‘maybe even two more, like a second family, to thank God for him getting better. We talked about having another boy and another girl, or maybe the opposite way around. We planned everything in detail, and I learned a lot about him even though I’d been married to him for years. We had our own little world there. He was in a corner bed by a window, and nurses came and went, and doctors came and went, and I never asked them a question. Maybe I knew he was sick, and avoided it, but really I didn’t know, and one day I was walking up and down the corridor waiting for the nurses to finish with him when one of the nuns came up to me and asked me if I would come down to the chapel and pray with her. She lit candles and we knelt down.

  ‘ “We’ll ask Our Lady”, she said, “that he has a happy and a peaceful death.” Well, I prayed with her, and she held my hand, but I thought she had mixed me up with somebody else. She was a slow, placid old woman, and I’d noticed her from as soon as we arrived, and she’d noticed me, and I knew she wasn’t making a mistake, but still I asked her. She brought me down to meet the consultant, who was very arrogant and brusque and had no time for me. Then I had to go back to y
our father, and pretend nothing had happened. They had given him an injection, and he weakened after that and was dead within two days, and after he died, if that nun hadn’t been there I don’t know what I would have done.

  ‘I couldn’t part from him. You know, I wanted them to draw the curtains and leave me on my own with him, but they kept coming in to say I would have to go. I knew I’d never see him again. And the nun brought me back down to the chapel and I prayed for him, but the praying made no difference, I did not know that there could be blackness like I felt that day.’

  ‘Did you let Granny know he was very sick a good length before that?’

  ‘Well, she knew he was sick.’

  ‘I mean that he was dying.’

  ‘Sure I didn’t know myself. I suppose I would have let her know the day I knew, or the day after. I left it all to Pat Bolger. But your father was dead within a day or two. He was so young, he was ready for another life, he was looking forward to coming home. He was the light of my life and he loved you and Declan so much. He didn’t want to let you out of his sight. And now he was cold, like he was nothing.

  ‘And I made a promise that day in the chapel, after they’d taken his body out of the ward, that I’d do my best with you and Declan, that I’d try to be as good as the two of us would have been. I made a promise to do my best, but I don’t suppose, looking at it now, that I did very well.’

  Her mother’s hands were trembling as she looked out to sea. Her last remark was made so flatly, the tone so factual and melancholy, that Helen did not feel she should say anything in reply. They sat in silence listening to the waves sweeping in towards the shore. Eventually, Helen spoke.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said, ‘that I have a son who reminds me of my father sometimes, just like you said about Declan, when he turns his head.’

  ‘Which son is that?’ her mother asked.

  ‘He’s Cathal, the older one, he’s quiet, he’s like the men down here, he loves not having to talk. And then the other is the opposite.’

  ‘Declan was the opposite to you when you were small. Your father loved having the two of you in the bed on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning. I never wanted it, but if there was a sound out of you he’d bring you into our bed, and if you came, Declan was sure to follow. And you’d be quiet, you’d suck your thumb, but Declan would crawl all over us, he’d pull his daddy’s ears, or he’d want to tickle his feet, and you’d hate all the noise, and Declan would get worse until we got up.’

  ‘I always wanted to be an only child, especially when I was around that age,’ Helen said.

  ‘All I ever wanted was a sister,’ her mother said. ‘Your granny tried to adopt. She was all ready and then a woman in a tweed suit – I don’t know who she was, some sort of inspector – came down and asked her where the adopted child would live when our house fell into the sea, and was there an insurance policy? And, of course, there wasn’t. And my mother was raging. “You couldn’t bring a child up here,” the woman said to her. And we were turned down for adoption. She was in a terrible state, your granny; that was the winter she didn’t speak to us at all, me or your grandfather.’

  ‘A sister would have changed everything, wouldn’t it?’ Helen asked.

  ‘It would, yes, it would,’ her mother said thoughtfully, regretfully. She said nothing for a while, and then began to shake her head and frown.

  ‘What is it?’ Helen asked.

  ‘There’s something I will never forget about the funeral,’ her mother said. ‘It’s hard to talk about it. Coming home like that from Dublin and your father so young, and everybody looking and watching, there was a sort of shame about it. It sounds mad, doesn’t it? I know it does, but that’s what it felt like, so exposed, or maybe that isn’t the word. But it felt like shame, those days after he died when we came home.’

  ‘But you didn’t look like that,’ Helen said.

  ‘I don’t know how I looked. I spent those days trying to put back time. And maybe trying to stop time too, because I knew when it was all over and the people went away I would be alone, I’d be sleeping alone, I’d be alone at night, and the job of dealing with you and Declan I’d have to do alone. And I couldn’t manage, you know I couldn’t manage. I don’t know why I’m thinking of all this now. I suppose it’s because of Declan.’

  The strand grew colder as the afternoon wore on. Helen and her mother folded the rug, and took their swimsuits and towels from where they had half dried on the boulder, and they walked until they came to the gap at Mike Redmond’s house, where they scrambled up the cliff.

  As they made their way back to the house along the lanes, Helen stopped for a moment.

  ‘There’s something I’ve never realised before, that’s just struck me now,’ she said. ‘I’ve always believed that you took him away and you never brought him back. I know it’s irrational, but that’s what it was, that’s what I felt. I thought that you had locked him away somewhere, that you knew where he was, that it was all your fault. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed all this.’

  Lily shivered as she stood there.

  ‘I locked no one away, I’m afraid, Helen,’ she said wearily. ‘He died in my arms. I watched him go. I know I came home to you all without him. There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘I know, Mammy, I know,’ Helen said, and linked arms with her mother and they continued walking.

  At the top of the lane they saw Madge and Essie Kehoe approaching.

  ‘Say nothing now,’ Lily said.

  ‘Well,’ Madge Kehoe said as she came close, ‘we’ve just been down to Dora’s house and we were wondering where you were.’

  ‘Dora will kill someone,’ Essie interrupted. ‘You’ll have to stop her. She nearly drove into the ditch.’

  ‘Oh, but she used to be a great driver,’ Lily said. ‘She’ll learn again in no time.’

  Helen knew that what her mother had just said was untrue; she felt that the Kehoes also knew that.

  ‘Did you hear about Kitty Walsh from The Ballagh and her poor mother hardly cold?’ Madge asked. She spoke quickly, breathlessly.

  ‘There should be a law, you know,’ Essie said. They were both excited at what they had just witnessed.

  ‘There is a law,’ Madge said, ‘but it’s the guards, they won’t stop her.’

  ‘Sure she’s too blind to see them. She wouldn’t stop for them,’ Essie said. ‘And now Dora is driving.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be a while now before she hits the road,’ Lily said. Helen noticed that her mother was sounding aloof, almost posh.

  The Kehoe sisters’ eyes darted from Helen to her mother. ‘And is your husband still in Donegal?’ Essie asked.

  Helen nodded.

  ‘And isn’t Declan looking very thin?’ Madge said. ‘He’ll never get a wife if he doesn’t fatten up a bit.’

  ‘Oh I’d say there are girls only waiting for him to make up his mind,’ Essie said and smiled sourly.

  Neither Lily nor Helen spoke; the sisters slowly seemed to realise that they had said too much too quickly. For a second or two they said nothing more until it was clear that Lily and Helen were going to move away. Eventually, Madge broke the silence.

  ‘God knows who we’ll have driving next. Old Art Murphy, or Kate Pender.’

  ‘I’d say it’ll be a while now before they get their provisional licences,’ Lily said, laughing.

  ‘And the judge is a queer dangerous driver,’ Madge said.

  ‘We’ll all have to watch out so,’ Helen said, and made as though to move.

  ‘And who is the other fellow in the car teaching Dora?’ Essie asked.

  ‘He’s a friend of Declan’s,’ Helen said.

  ‘Is that so now?’ Essie asked. ‘And is he teaching in your school?’

  Helen did not answer.

  ‘God, you’ve a right crowd,’ Essie continued.

  The Kehoe sisters searched their faces to see if there might be some more information for them to gather.

&nb
sp; ‘We’d better be going,’ Lily said.

  ‘Call in before you go back,’ Madge said.

  ‘We’ll have the kettle on for you,’ Essie added.

  ‘They’re mad, they were always mad,’ Lily said as soon as the Kehoes were out of earshot. ‘You should be down on your knees thanking God, Helen, that you didn’t have to go to school with people like that. I pinched that Essie so hard one day that her oul’ father came down home to complain about me. God, when I was growing up here I couldn’t wait to get away! Even seeing the two of them puts years on me.’

  The driving lesson had just ended when Lily and Helen arrived at the house. Mrs Devereux and Larry were standing beside the car; Declan and Paul were sitting on chairs outside the front door. Declan’s face, Helen noticed, was almost green; she had not seen him looking so sick and so strained before. But he was smiling now and laughing. She realised as she watched him that he was making an effort to keep going.

  ‘Show them now,’ Larry said to Mrs Devereux.

  ‘We met the Kehoes,’ Lily told them.

  ‘They were full of admiration for you,’ Helen said to her grandmother.

  ‘Show them,’ Larry repeated.

  Mrs Devereux got into Larry’s car, closing the driver’s door and seeming to concentrate hard. She started the car and let the engine rev for a minute. She acted as though no one were watching her as she put the car into gear and let off the handbrake and then slowly and smoothly edged forward towards the gate. As she prepared to turn into the lane, the car began to shudder and the engine cut out. She started it again, the engine revving and revving until thick, black smoke poured out of the exhaust. She turned the corner and made her way up the lane. All of them went out to the gate to watch her. She stopped the car with a jolt and applied the handbrake and waited until Larry reached her. She moved over into the passenger’s seat and let Larry reverse the car and drive it back down. When the car stopped in front of the house, Mrs Devereux got out and dusted herself down. Larry, Paul, Declan and Helen applauded. Lily stood still, stony-faced.