The Blackwater Lightship

by Colm Toibin

  In the kitchen, her grandmother was at the Aga, still wearing her dressing-gown. ‘There’s tea on,’ she said, ‘but maybe you want to make a fresh pot.’

  Helen sat at the table. The house was cold and the smell of damp brought her back years. She covered her face with her hands. When Paul came into the kitchen, he told her that she should sleep, that they would go to Dublin in about an hour, and she would need a small amount of sleep if she was going to drive.

  ‘Is Declan asleep?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but he’s calmer, and he’s not in pain, but I don’t know how long that will last.’

  On the way to her room, she noticed that the door to Declan’s room was closed and there was no sound coming from it. She lay down on her own bed, leaving the door of her room open, covering herself with an eiderdown. She curled up, burying her face in the pillow. She dozed lightly and woke with a start and dozed again. She lay there in the grey light feeling that she never wanted to move again; she tried to concentrate on Declan’s pain and the need to get him to Dublin, and when she fell asleep she dreamed that she was driving in her sleep, and kept trying to wake, knowing that she would crash if she did not open her eyes. She held the wheel, but saw nothing that was coming and understood that if she did not wake up in the next second she would wreck the car and injure herself. She braced herself for the accident but then found it was Paul standing over her, telling her that Declan’s cramps had started again, and there was no point in waiting, that Paul was going to drive ahead, and Helen and her mother were going to follow with Declan in Declan’s car and they could take turns driving.

  Helen felt sweaty, in need of a shower and a change of clothes, but she knew that she had nothing clean left, not even clean underwear. She packed her things with her eyes half shut, wondering if she should go into the kitchen and invite her grandmother to Dublin – she could travel with Paul, and stay with Helen – but she knew that she would not ask her, that they would leave her grandmother here alone, fretting about her cats, her attitude as steely and direct as ever, but with a loneliness which had only been intensified and deepened by her visitors.

  Declan was still in bed. Helen went into his room, where Paul was sitting, and heard him whispering weakly with pain.

  ‘He’s going to try and get up soon,’ Paul said.

  ‘Do you think you’re OK for the journey, Declan?’ Helen asked.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll get up soon,’ he said.

  When she went into the kitchen Helen saw that her grandmother was wearing a bright dress with blue dots, and a navy-blue angora cardigan. She had put on a light lipstick and some make-up. It was as if she were coming to Dublin with them and wanted to look her best, but it was, in fact, Helen knew, that she did not want to appear as though she were being left behind.

  When they helped Declan out to the car, Lily insisted on sitting in the back seat with him. Paul and Helen tried to make him comfortable, with two pillows Mrs Devereux had offered them, but he could not setde, lying slumped with his eyes closed. They suggested to Lily that she move into the front seat, but she would not budge from where she was, saying that she wanted to be close to him.

  Mrs Devereux came out and stood beside the cars.

  ‘Drive carefully now, and stop if you feel sleepy,’ she said.

  ‘Keep that phone turned on,’ Lily said.

  ‘Oh God, that phone!’

  ‘Keep it turned on,’ Lily repeated.

  Declan pulled down the back window of the car.

  ‘Thanks for everything, Granny,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Mind yourself now, Declan, mind yourself.’

  His grandmother had tears in her eyes.

  It was six-thirty when they set off, Paul driving ahead. As soon as they were beyond Blackwater, Lily put the pillows on her lap, and Declan rested his head on the pillows. He was in pain still. In the rear-view mirror Helen could see Lily stroking his face.

  ‘I’ve a terrible pain,’ he said to her, half crying.

  ‘You’ll be all right now,’ Lily said. ‘Paul says they’ll have a bed for you and they’ll know what to do and we’ll all stay close to you.’

  As they drove north, through Gorey and Arklow, Helen felt oddly alert, realising that if she stopped or thought too much about sleep she would need a rest, and she knew, as Declan’s pain worsened and he tried to vomit in the back of the car, that she could not stop, she must go on until they reached the hospital.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Declan,’ her mother said. ‘You’ll be all right.’

  As they reached the twisting road between Rathnew and Ashford, Declan’s pain became intolerable.

  ‘Where exactly is it?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Here, here,’ he said.

  ‘Is it his stomach?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s still his stomach, but it won’t be long now. We’re nearly there.’

  Declan tried to vomit again, but it was all dry. As she drove, trying to concentrate all the time on the stretch of road ahead and nothing else, she realised that he had soiled himself. Carefully, hoping that she wouldn’t be noticed, she opened the driver’s window.

  What she heard then in the back of the car surprised her. It was her mother’s singing voice, which she had not heard since she was a child; thin and shaky on high notes, it started softly as though Lily were nervously checking to see if she could still sing. Then it became louder and stronger. It was a song she used to sing at night when Helen and Declan were very young, when they still slept in the same room:

  October winds lament around the Casde of Dromore

  But peace is in the lofty hall, a pháiste bheag a stór,

  Though autumn winds may droop and die, a bud of spring are you.

  And then, making her voice husky and low, she sang the chorus.

  When she had finished the chorus for the first time, she stopped. ‘Help me, Helen,’ she said, and began the next verse. Helen knew the words, she had sung the song in a choir in school. She joined in with her mother and together they finished the song.

  As they joined the Monday-morning traffic into the city from Bray, they sang any song they could think of-Brahms’ Lullaby, ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’, ‘The Croppy Boy’ – as Declan lay still. Helen dreaded the traffic lights as they approached Stillorgan; if she stopped for too long, she was afraid that she would fall asleep, or not be able to go on.

  ‘Think of something else, Helen,’ her mother said.

  ‘I wish I knew the words of more songs,’ she said. ‘You think of something and I’ll join in.’

  When they arrived at the hospital, Helen could not remember how to reach the building where Declan had been when she visited him first. St James’s was a sprawling complex; she turned at a roundabout towards a set of buildings, but these all turned out to be modem, unlike the wing where Declan had been. She wanted to ask Declan to sit up and help her, but from the silence in the back of the car she knew that he was asleep. She found a modem car park and waited for the barrier to lift. She drove in and found a space. ‘I’ll find out where we should go,’ she whispered to her mother. Declan’s head lay peacefully on the pillow. Her mother could not move. She closed the car door carefully and made her way to the main reception area of the hospital.

  She realised when she began to talk to the receptionist that she had no idea what to say. There was, the receptionist told her, no AIDS ward in the hospital, although there was a clinic, but that didn’t open on Mondays. The consultant Dr Louise Farrell had beds all over the hospital. If her brother was very sick, the receptionist said, he should go to Casualty. Helen tried to describe the building she had been in before, but the receptionist was now suspicious of her, and was ready to be unhelpful. Helen, in her tiredness, felt a sudden burst of temper, and made herself turn away.

  She walked out of the reception area and decided to turn right. There were signs for everything, but she recognised nothing. She knew that in the hallway of the old building Paul would be waiting for her, and he w
ould be impatient at her inability to find it. She hoped her mother would have the sense to stay in the car.

  In another building she found a porter sitting by a desk. He was reading the paper, and although he had seen her approaching him, he looked down as she came near. She turned away and left. She tried to think back: how did she come into the hospital grounds that day with Paul? She believed she was moving in the right direction, but she could not be sure. It struck her that she should have asked the receptionist to put her through directly on the internal telephone system to Louise or one of her staff; as soon as she could find another porter she would ask to speak to Louise, she thought. As she entered another building and realised it was a kitchen complex she was so frustrated she was close to tears.

  By the time she found Paul in the lobby of the building where Declan had been before, she could barely speak. He made her walk with him to a hallway where he had a wheelchair ready. ‘Has something else happened?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, just the car is miles away.’

  ‘We’ll get a porter to wheel him over,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t be that far. Is it the pay car park?’

  She nodded.

  ‘That’s OK. We can handle that.’

  Declan woke as soon as they came back to the car. He said nothing, appearing stunned by his new surroundings. He got out of the back seat without any difficulty and sat into the wheelchair. The porter put a blanket around him, and Paul carried his bag as they wheeled him through the hospital grounds. Lily and Helen walked behind.

  When they reached the ward, Paul handed the bag to the porter.

  ‘They won’t need us now,’ Paul said. ‘He’ll be given tests and he might even be sedated. There’s no point in us waiting around here.’

  Helen now realised that she had her mother on her hands, with only one car between them. ‘I need to make a phone call,’ she said.

  Paul directed her to a callbox in the lobby, while her mother went to the toilet. She dialled the number and Hugh picked up the phone. She told him where they were and what had happened.

  ‘You sound terrible,’ he said.

  ‘We had a bad night.’

  ‘Do you want me to come down?’ he asked.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Helen, you can’t be on your own like this. You’ve got to let me help you.’

  ‘What about the boys?’

  ‘They’re fine, they’re happy. Let me come down.’

  ‘No, we can’t both leave them.’

  ‘Helen, why won’t you let me help you? It would take me four and a half hours to drive down, that’s all.’

  ‘Hugh, I had the worst thoughts during the night.’

  ‘Why don’t I drive down now,’ Hugh asked, ‘see you, spend the night in Dublin, and take you back up tomorrow? You can sec the boys, and then you take the car back so you won’t even be a night away?’

  Once more, she did not reply.

  ‘Helen,’ he said.

  ‘Hugh, can you come down now?’

  ‘I’ll leave in a few minutes and I should be there by two or three. Will I come to the hospital or the house?’ He sounded relieved and eager.

  ‘The house.’

  Helen stood in the lobby with Paul, waiting for her mother.

  ‘I’m going to go home and sleep,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back in the afternoon. Tell your mother I’ll see her then.’

  ‘We’re very grateful to you,’ Helen said. Paul embraced her before he left.

  Her mother walked slowly towards her, as though she had injured herself.

  ‘We should go back to my house and have a rest,’ Helen said.

  ‘I’ve no clean clothes.’

  ‘I have clean clothes at home,’ Helen said. ‘Or we can go to the shopping centre. Hugh is coming down from Donegal.’

  ‘Hugh? Oh Helen, I don’t think this is the right time to meet him.’

  ‘You’ve no choice now,’ Helen said and linked her mother through the hospital grounds.

  When Helen got into the car, she felt an overwhelming tiredness. As she reversed out of the parking space, she had to force herself to turn and look behind. She wondered where Declan was now, if he was lying in bed, or being tested for something by doctors. She and her mother should have left a note for him before they walked out of the hospital, she thought, to say that they would be back later to see him. She put the car into gear and drove it slowly to the barrier. ‘You need fifty pence. Do you have a fifty-pence piece?’ she asked her mother.

  Her mother searched through her bag and found a purse with loose change. She handed Helen a fifty-pence piece and Helen opened the window and put it in the slot. The barrier lifted.

  ‘We should have gone to the other car park,’ Helen said. ‘You don’t have to pay there.’

  It was a mild, hazy morning, with a promise of sunshine. Helen realised that she would have to phone the school and speak to her secretary and cancel the interviews for Wednesday. All she wanted now was sleep, even an hour or two of sleep before Hugh arrived.

  ‘It’s funny,’ her mother said, ‘how time flies. Here you are driving me through Dublin, and I remember when you were a little girl and we were taking you to Dublin, you and Declan on the train all in your good clothes.’

  Helen drove along Thomas Street and Patrick Street and turned into Clanbrassil Street.

  ‘We used to think the train was going to fall into the sea, it went so close to the edge,’ Helen said.

  ‘They were the happiest times,’ her mother said. ‘Declan and you were so different, but on these trips you were the same. Neither of you would be able to sleep the night before, and you’d both be up in the morning long before us, and you’d both be exhausted on the way home.’

  ‘The strangest thing for me’, Helen said, ‘was how Daddy used to cross the street in Dublin. At home we were trained to look left, look right and look left again. And if we caught sight of a car coming or heard one in the distance, we were told to wait. But in Dublin, he’d walk out, he’d work out the distance and begin crossing when cars were coming, and then he’d dodge them. Declan and myself couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I remember that there was one thing you loved and one thing Declan loved. Do you remember what they were?’ her mother asked.

  Helen drove towards Templeogue. ‘No, I can’t,’ she said, ‘unless it was Moore Street, or the zoo.’

  ‘No. You both loved Moore Street and you both loved the zoo. It was something else. Declan loved the self-service restaurant in Woolworth’s in Henry Street. His eyes lit up when he got in there. You know, he hated ordinary restaurants, the few times we took him; he had no patience, he couldn’t understand why it took so long for the food to come. And now in Woolworth’s he could get a tray and pick whatever he liked and have it immediately. You were different, you liked restaurants, and had plenty of patience, you liked the ordering and the waiting and the looking around. So Woolworth’s was Declan’s special treat, and then after it, or before it, you got yours.’

  The car was stopped at traffic lights near Templeogue now.

  ‘The escalators,’ her mother went on: ‘you loved the escalators in Clery’s and Arnott’s. Declan was afraid of them. He couldn’t be persuaded to get on to one. But you could have gone up and down them all day. Do you remember?’

  ‘I do, yes, but I think I liked the self-service as well,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes, but not as much as Declan,’ her mother said. ‘I have photographs of the two of you at the zoo and in the airport. I must give you some of them so you can show them to your boys. You both look so happy in them. I’ll wait for a while now, because seeing Declan in them would make us all too sad.’

  Her mother stopped for a moment and sighed. ‘I’d love if some of the happiness could be there in his spirit when he goes, as well as all the suffering.’

  They were almost home now. Helen knew that as much as she wanted sleep, she needed silence: no more raw memories, no more of the soft-voiced tenderness that
her mother was using in the car. She was dreading her mother coming into her house.

  ‘I hope we were some comfort to Declan, Helen,’ her mother said when she had reached the house and stopped the car. ‘Do you think we were?’

  ‘Maybe he’s easier in his mind,’ Helen said. ‘I hope he is. I don’t know.’

  Her mother looked at her searchingly, clearly in need of further reassurance. Helen tried to think of something to say which would cause her mother to relax and cease to be such an uneasy presence.

  ‘We’re here, we’re here now,’ Helen said. ‘We’d better go in.’

  Her mother did not move, but looked at her again, as though pleading for an answer.

  ‘I think we did our best,’ Helen said and got out of the car. She waited for her mother at the gate. She linked her slowly along the path to the front door.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ her mother said wearily, ‘and what more could we have done?’

  The house seemed cold and strange and, as she walked down the hallway, Helen felt she had entered an unfamiliar place. She would have done anything not to have to make tea for her mother. She forced herself to think that this was her house, where she lived, and it could not be taken away from her now. But she could not step out from her mother’s dark shadow. When she turned in the kitchen to face her, she was shocked to find how helpless and broken her mother seemed. In those first moments, as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen, she had imagined someone forceful and pushy coming behind her, determined to stop her having her life. Instead, her mother looked bewildered and shocked.