Beyond the Breakwater

by Catherine Foley

  The song ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir’ about a bold and brave soldier in the ranks of the Shah of Iran, who challenged a Russian soldier to a fight after he’d trod on his toe, always got us going, the martial beat stoking us up no end.

  ‘A Mother’s Wish’ left the biggest lump in our throats. It was about an elderly couple at home on the farm by themselves, ‘the auld man at the plough, with no grown up son nor daughter to help them carry on’. Our voices would catch at the loneliness of it and at the end we’d droop in exhaustion in the back of the car, unable to go on in the face of such misery.

  We also loved Rolf Harris’s song about the ‘Two Little Boys’ who played on their wooden horses until they grew up and went off to war. We loved the poignancy of their story, our voices catching again as it unfolded, especially when one of the boys lay dying. The image of Jack galloping away to where Joe lay wounded was enough to have us surreptitiously wiping away a shameful tear or two. When we sang ‘Did you say, Joe, I’m all a-tremble, perhaps it’s the battle’s noise, but I think it’s that I remember when we were two little boys’, we’d ladle on the emotion and sing it a second time for good measure.

  But it was Mario Lanza and his singing which helped us give voice to a wild exuberance that bubbled up inside of us, especially in our teenage years. The dark-haired Italian-American tenor had a place in our hearts partly because he had a great look of our father but also because we knew that our Aunt Máire, who was Sr Alphonsus and the principal of a school in Rome, taught his daughters.

  Even doing housework, if his record was playing it was hard to resist the urge to waltz across the floor: the upright polisher with a mind of its own would twirl like a psychotic dance partner beside us and we’d sing like sirens.

  At home in Ring one Saturday, our parents had to leave us two older ones alone for a night. As we waved them off, an unaccustomed feeling of possibility took hold of us and a party seemed like the perfect way to celebrate our freedom. I was about sixteen years of age at the time. We invited a few friends who were on holiday nearby and we waited with a growing sense of excitement, hoping we might even lure some boys along as the friends had brothers! As payment for minding the shop for Dada we helped ourselves to bags of Tayto and bottles of Keane’s OK Orange.

  Girls, all girls, duly arrived. We noted that they came without their brothers but it didn’t matter once the record player was set to play and Mario Lanza’s rich voice was filling the room in no time. Drink, drink, drink, to lips that are red and sweet as the fruit on the tree, he sang. Drink, Drink, Drink. The beat took hold of us and we began to twirl around the room, waltzing in circles, taking partners, crashing into chairs. Our dog, Jingle, tried to join in, barking and jumping with us as we sang along to the chorus. The rising chords, lifting towards a tumultuous, repetitious crashing of Drink, Drink, Drink, let the toast start, may young hearts never part! Drink, Drink, Drink, it had us swirling in ever faster circles. It was freeing and exhilarating. We threw caution to the wind and laughed, drunk on the fun of it.

  It was then I noticed a pair of watchful eyes peering in at us through the window. There was no sound, just a grey face, gaunt and still, monitoring our every move. Hannie’s arrival sent a shiver down my back. Our elderly neighbour from across the road, who had been asked to keep an eye on us, stood motionless at the window until we all came to a stop. Each of us turned to face those piercing eyes burning into us like gimlets. She never said a word. She just waited until we were still and Mario Lanza’s voice had been silenced. Then she turned and limped away slowly towards her house.

  I watched her go, my heart beating madly. She stopped when she had reached the gate and looking back, she shook her head from side to side as if in bemusement. The party petered out after that and our friends went home.

  After everyone had gone, our hearts were still beating furiously; we sat quietly on the couch, not daring to put the turntable on again. We could still hear the voice of Mario Lanza swirling in our heads, however, banishing the blues. Miriam and I smiled at each other conspiratorially as the music swelled.

  34

  A Gentleman Caller

  We used to call him Dripsey in primary school. It was an affectionate nickname but, thinking back, I’m not sure if he liked it or not. (I was never clear about how he got his nickname but I know that it had something to do with feeding a calf when he was small.) His real name was Marcus. Imagine my surprise when he knocked at our front door in Baile na nGall one summer’s evening.

  I was now a student at university in Cork – where I was studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Irish – but was at home on holidays at the time of his visit. My father was busy making a couple of new lobster pots in one corner. He looked up and greeted Dripsey in Irish. ‘Dia’s Muire duit,’ he said.

  In school, in rang a sé (sixth class), I remembered how he used to sit in front of me and another girl and how he would twirl around, full of mock outrage, when we tried to write on the back of his neck with a biro, or how he’d leap up like a scalded cat when we dug the tip of a compass into his backside. We were full of devilment sitting in the back row. We loved annoying Dripsey because he’d react and pretend to be cross. He had an infectious laugh and we loved making him squeal.

  Dripsey answered my father’s greeting and wove his way unsteadily into the room – his unsteadiness making me realise that he was most likely on his way home from the pub. As he came closer, I noticed how he had the same freckles and feathery-light red hair of his youth.

  ‘This is Marcus,’ I said introducing him to my mother who was sitting in her armchair, her legs tucked under her, knitting away. She smiled at Marcus and glanced briefly at me. I saw her curiosity and her enjoyment of my confusion at the unexpected appearance of Dripsey. I could see what both my parents were thinking: how interesting, here’s a suitor come to call on our daughter.

  It felt awkward but I invited him to sit down. He took a seat and sat up straight as best he could. He took a moment to take stock of the room and the three of us. I sat back into my seat in the fourth corner and took up the dress I had been altering. We were a hive of industry. Dripsey swallowed nervously.

  We had no television or radio on – all three of us too consumed in our work to think of such distractions. Evening time, before night fell, was always a period of great activity and creativity in our house. While it was still bright and balmy outside, my parents would beaver away in the garden or the kitchen, digging or cooking, carving or painting until the light was gone and the creative urge was spent.

  My father put his pots down for a moment to chat with Dripsey, who seemed to be struck dumb. I saw a blush of embarrassment spread across his face. Dripsey smiled but it was as if the confidence that had carried him up to our front door had suddenly deserted him and he found himself tongue-tied and alone in a room full of strangers. In his presence I heard the hum of activity in the room. It was almost deafening. I just nodded at him, not knowing what to say.

  ‘I’m sewing in a zip,’ I offered. He smiled shyly but was clearly none the wiser.

  I saw him looking at a piece of driftwood that my mother had hanging on the wall over the piano. My father always said the piece looked like a fellow leaning against a wall about to relieve himself. Our walls were full of such items – pieces of driftwood, paintings, shells, plates and photographs. Dripsey’s eyes squinted as his gaze fell on one of my mother’s shell pictures.

  ‘Dada’s making a new line of lobster pots,’ I told him. He scratched his head and the minutes ticked on. I suppose I didn’t make it much easier for him. Nor did I explain how the instinct to make things took hold of us when the rooms were filled with the luminous orange light of the dying sun, just before it falls below the skyline behind Dungarvan.

  Dripsey laughed nervously.

  ‘It’s like the ICA,’ he said. We laughed at his observation, knowing he had us down to a T and that he had hit the nail on the head when he compared us to the Irish Countrywomen’s Association
. Despite this, I was not amused by his unannounced appearance – even when he gave me a hangdog look, my expression was condescending.

  Inside, though, I did feel some pity. I saw the little boy in his merry eyes and I knew he was unmanned and that he’d come on a fool’s errand. He stayed for a minute or two more and then he made to go. It was the effort of standing up from the moving armchair that nearly overwhelmed him. I didn’t go to help him, not wanting to embarrass him further. Or was it that my heart had hardened? As he passed by me, I noticed how pale he was. And part of me wanted him to stay. He was only a young man, after all, my own gentleman caller.

  He nodded goodbye to my mother and father. He took in the room again with one last look. I smiled as I waved him off and thanked him for calling. The ring of Guinness around his mouth curled into a sort of a crumbled ellipse when he smiled. Then he walked off into the evening. And I knew for certain that he’d never call again.

  35

  The Helvick Summer

  My father and I made for an ungainly pair walking down to the pier in our oilskins in the mornings that summer, staggering under the weight of all the gear that we carried. We had to manage the oars, the spurs, the fish box, a bucket of bait, a life-jacket, the petrol tank, two knives, rope and a few other odds and ends. Sometimes my mother would run us down in the car, but mostly we walked down by ourselves.

  Fishing with your father sounds like a good idea. It was, but mostly we lost out on the fun and fished in silence. I’d wait stony-faced while he started the engine.

  ‘Tarraing an téad sin isteach,’ he’d say – pull that rope in – making his way down to show me how it was done. I hated being shown what to do. I’d sit in the bow, sometimes toying with the notion of slipping over the gunnel into the waves.

  My father was always a thoughtful man with a great sense of fun. He could tell a story and you’d be smiling in no time if you were in his company. He was good with people, but with me – that summer, at least – he was at a loss.

  I was a twenty-year-old college student who’d come home to fish for lobsters. Many of my friends were travelling to Germany or Denmark that summer to find work in hotels, or building sites or in bars, but I thought I’d stay home and earn money fishing with my father. The idea had appealed to me, at first. But the lobsters were scarce and the weather wasn’t great and I began to resent both the work and being at home. All summer we fished and if I opened my mouth at all it was usually to argue with my father.

  Once loaded and in the boat, he’d begin to pull in the anchor and start pumping juice into the engine. I had my own jobs, but he was always nervous of me in the boat. He sat and steered from the stern, worried in case we’d run aground or capsize in a freak wave.

  The engine did cut out on us one day. We’d just dropped a line of sixteen pots. He pulled the starter again and again as we bobbed up and down in the swell but the engine died with each tug.

  ‘We’ll have to row back,’ he said, worried about getting too close to the rocks. ‘Will you be able?’

  ‘Of course, come on,’ I said pulling an oar out, almost losing it in the waves with the effort. We exhausted ourselves rowing until we finally rounded the pier into Helvick. It was only when we’d rested that my father realised that the petrol tank was empty and only in need of a refill from the spare gallon that he always carried on board!

  The weather was bad all that summer in keeping with my mood, which was mostly dark and sullen. But still we had a handful of beautiful days when we’d haul in the lobster pots out near the cliffs with the sun glinting off the green water. It was a bonus if there was a lobster in the pot when we pulled it out of the sea. We’d both smile then, relishing the excitement as water cascaded from the mesh.

  ‘That’s a fine one, just the right size,’ he’d say. ‘The bit of sun makes all the difference. If we had another few days like this we’d make a good few bob, what do you think, Katie? Will we come out this evening for a few mackerel? We might fill the box.’ I’d give him a nod and he’d continue, ‘Do you know, if a fellow had a bigger boat he could make a fortune.’

  The idea of spending my holidays getting a tan, pulling pots like a Greek fisherman and lolling around the pier with the locals had initially appealed to me. But my hands were soon cut and rough. My feet slithered about in an old pair of loose runners, squishing away as I moved about the boat. My hair, which was closely cropped, became matted and sticky from the spray. I stopped washing it altogether.

  Shuffling down in the cold grey to a deserted pier at half seven in the morning to catch the tide is no fun. As the days passed my scowl deepened. I wore a faded sweatshirt and a pair of dirty jeans cut off at the knees. I was deeply unhappy, convinced that I was a shapeless, insignificant lump without any redeeming features. As we pulled up to the pier one day, two fishermen came over to lend a hand as we docked alongside their trawler.

  ‘Throw that line up here like a good young man,’ one of them shouted down to me. It was all the confirmation I needed. I’d been called a young man and no one had even batted an eyelid! A few days later, as I walked out of the ladies’ toilets on the pier, a woman stared at me, doing a double take as she looked from me to the Mná sign on the doorway overhead.

  We spent our nights in the kitchen while the midges outside pitted themselves against the lighted window. Dada washed his supper down with a drink of Guinness. He and Mama chatted while I gorged myself on crab claws, bread and cheese. I felt myself expand, my stomach swelling and my bottom spreading into my thighs.

  The lobsters were scarce. We caught fewer and fewer each week. When we did, I had to put rubber bands around their pinchers to stop them from fighting. You’d hear them clacking away as we lowered the box into the water where we kept them alive until the dealer came to buy them once a week.

  It was bright and crystal clear out beyond the headland the day I stabbed the conger eel. We were heaving the pots up from the seabed and were nearing the last one.

  I shivered involuntarily when I saw him trapped in one of the pots. His long body, as thick as a man’s arm, moved about, slithering slowly inside. His jaws opened wide as he twisted himself about and tried to bite down on the plastic-covered wire mesh. I tried to manoeuvre him out through the neck of the trap, turning it upside down. Finally he fell out heavily onto the boards. He tried to squirm away and he had almost made it under the board to the belly of the bilge underneath but I hunched down and stuck the knife into his head. He eyeballed me with two black, steady eyes. I hoisted him up onto the thwart and held the blade steady as he tried to twist away. His strength travelled up my arm like a current. I gritted my teeth at the crunching sounds his bones made against the blade and I felt like a murderer. Still, I held the knife steady and I savoured the kill.

  I should have kept him for bait. I should have cut him up and thrown the pieces in the bucket but I wasn’t thinking of practicalities like that. I only wanted to get rid of him and so, with a great effort, I lifted him up on the hilt of the knife and heaved him over the side. He slipped over the gunnel and into the water. I saw him sink slowly underneath us. It was as if my own blackness and confusion slipped away down with him. As he disappeared, my poor summer mood lifted and I slowly began to feel exultant. The spray soaked us as we travelled home on the tide that day. I smiled and looked ahead, bracing myself for another soaking. We looked in towards shore and I saw the cars driving along the road into Dungarvan. They were only landlubbers, not hunters of the deep like us.

  I asked my father if he wanted to go out fishing for mackerel that evening. We headed off after tea. We shouted to the others who were dropping lines close by: ‘Are ye catching many?’ ‘Is the buyer coming tonight?’ ‘Nach bhfuil se go deas anois?’ Isn’t it nice now?

  Mackerel were breaking the surface in silvery flashes all around. Seagulls were screeching and swooping as I pulled in six mackerel at a time on my line. They danced sharp jigs on the boards before they lay still. The sun’s orange light steeped the whole p
lace in fire before it began to sink behind the Knockmealdown Mountains.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely now?’ my father said.

  ‘It is,’ I agreed and I asked him then if he’d seen the eel I’d killed earlier in the day.

  ‘No. Did you keep him for bait?’ he wondered.

  ‘I did not,’ I told him, disappointed that I hadn’t thought of it myself.

  ‘Was he big?’

  ‘He was a monster, I could hardly lift him up on the knife … you wouldn’t have kept him yourself for bait.’

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do with you at all,’ he said laughing and I had to smile as the two of us pulled in our lines and headed back.

  It was near the end of the summer and I was soon heading back to university in Cork. My father was sad to finish. Pulling pots absorbed him completely.

  That was years ago. Years later over a drink we’d recall the summer we had spent fishing for lobsters and we’d smile at the memory of it all. It’s only now I know that it was a summer we would never have again.

  36

  Tribal Dance

  Passers-by in Cork city grew used to hearing our screams and raised voices, our loud music and banging doors. We lived in a house on Hartland’s Avenue, which was not far from the UCC campus. No neighbours panicked when black smoke issued from our windows after we’d set the chimney on fire. They knew we were students.

  Steam used to hit the cold surfaces and run in rivulets of condensation down the walls and windowpanes, giving our little rented house the feel of a hammam.

  Those days of lectures, library assignations and lounging over coffees in the restaurant were also full of squabbles, flounces, bitter feuds and burnt toast. In our house, we lived on tea and All-Bran, and we spent our time counting calories, dieting and weighing ourselves. There was usually an air of upheaval in that rented bungalow, which I shared with four other girls. We were all like aliens from outer space who’d landed in Cork. I was from a Gaeltacht; the others came from such far-flung planets as Tralee in County Kerry, Kanturk in County Cork, Birr in County Offaly and Waterford city.