Beyond the Breakwater

by Catherine Foley

  On another day, my next-door neighbour told me that my street ran along good lay lines, which are ancient, straight ‘paths’ or routes in the landscape that are believed to have spiritual significance. I knew immediately that she was right. All the signs for a fair sailing in my new home were good.

  The street was in the city centre, located near a busy junction where the cars whizzed by. Some of my neighbours had lived here all their lives. Occasionally they sat on their front steps and took the sun, hidden behind the parked cars. Sometimes they stood chatting in their doorways and watched the world go by as the evening came in.

  At night I heard the couples and groups of friends going home from the pub – singing, shouting, cursing, roaring, contradicting each other – and I smiled at the stories that were unfolding underneath my window. I imagined I was living in Pigale, the red-light district of Paris, when there were fierce fights below and I sometimes wondered if I would find a body lying in a pool of blood on the footpath the next day. But the voices usually faded and they passed along up the street, making their way home. Their anger died out gradually and as it got later and quieter all I heard were the cars swishing by and, once the Luas had been built, I’d hear the driver ringing the bell as he motored towards the stop at St James’s Hospital. It used to sound like a special goodnight salute to me and to all of us in our beds listening to the night – ding, ding, he seemed to say. Ding, ding!

  I often thought of the family that grew up in my house before I lived there. When I first got the key I walked through the rooms gingerly in case I disturbed anyone – even though I knew it was empty. Still, I jumped when I saw an old walking stick and a forgotten green plastic Christmas tree lying in the corner of an old wardrobe upstairs. For a moment, it was as if I had intruded on someone else’s time and space.

  Voices echo through a house, words reverberate on a stairway, on a landing, sounds of pots and pans in a kitchen must surely leave an imprint. I wonder is there a way of recapturing those incidental noises – of children talking, of parents whispering, of visitors laughing – and replaying them. Do sounds of a family remain in the space to be discovered, to be replayed? Sometimes in the evening when I came in, I found myself saying hello to the empty hallway – half in response to a feeling that the house had been waiting in silence for me to return and half in response to the sounds that had once filled its rooms.

  I think that’s why I love Walter de la Mare’s poem, ‘The Listeners’:

  ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller

  Knocking on the moonlit door; …

  And he smote upon the door again a second time;

  ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

  But no one descended to the Traveller.

  Of course, I’d have jumped out of my skin if anyone had ‘descended to me’ in my house. Thankfully it was the same for me as it was for the traveller:

  No head from the leaf-fringed sill

  Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

  Where he stood perplexed and still.

  However, as in the poem, there was a sense in my new place that there was another level of sound, another level of presence, that there was a host of phantom listeners that dwelt in the lone house then, who were witness to me as they had been to the traveller:

  Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

  And the sound of iron on stone.

  When I first moved in I set about stripping the walls. There were several layers of wallpaper in each room – I peeled each strip away and I got a glimpse of the other eras, like the times when yellow roses were the ultimate in chic or a lilac flock motif was chosen by the woman of the house for the master bedroom. There was a pink horizontal print too, and brown and orange circles that I’m sure must have dated from the 1970s. It seemed as if a family’s history was there, waiting to be understood. There were light fittings and finishes that were evidence of forgotten styles from the 1960s and even earlier.

  I knew that the elderly man who had lived in the house before I moved in had reared his family here. I imagined him and his wife as they were when they’d moved in first as a young couple. It must have been back in the 1940s.

  After stripping another layer in the small bedroom, I discovered that they, the previous owners, had at some point decided to paper and decorate the room in a deep mauve colour. I wondered what year they’d decided to do this and at what point in their lives they’d been. They must have chosen the paper and matched it with a certain colour of paint, with light fittings and a style of carpet or linoleum for the floor. I hoped they were happy and I’m sure they were – one or two of the neighbours mentioned them to me, and I also felt they were happy because the house in its stillness possessed a pleasant calm.

  Yes, the more I thought about it, I came to believe that a family’s memories could linger in a space, that their voices only need to be tuned into in order to be heard. I wondered if I would leave my memories behind too, to settle in corners, to resonate from the bricks.

  Time slipped away, of course, and I am no longer living in that house. When it’s empty again will the silence surge softly backwards, as de la Mare puts it? Even if I’d like to leave an imprint – a sense of my time in that house, a sense perhaps that I was in tune with the vibrations – I suppose, in the end, all you will hear is the silence.

  48

  In Mick O’Dea’s Studio

  Mick O’Dea is an award-winning artist who has had many exhibitions and commissions over the years. He is a member of Aosdána and president of the Royal Hibernian Academy. In 2004 he was continuing his fascination with people, their faces and the stories they have to tell, by working towards an exhibition of forty-four portraits that would be shown in the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. They were to be a collection of people who worked and lived in and around the city centre. As a journalist I was one of the people who was asked if I’d consider sitting for my portrait.

  The studio was located on the fourth floor of a house at the top of a cobbled street, at a spot where the traffic noises dropped away as soon as you turned into it to go up towards those tall tawny-coloured houses that date back to the 1730s. There’s a hush there and you can listen for echoes of children at play or carts rolling over the cobblestones from days gone by.

  I climbed flights of shallow stairs up to his studio, a high-ceilinged, bright room that looked like a set from a Sean O’Casey play. An old mantelpiece, an ancient fireplace with a blackened hearth and chimney breast, an uneven floor and a number of cracks in the glass of the windows all added to an atmosphere that was from another time. If there was a clock, it would surely have been a grandfather clock and its hands would be stuck at half past eight or one o’clock, never to move again. There was a feeling that time in this large, cold room was being distilled, or even slowed down. O’Dea had canvasses, pots of paint, easels, brushes, jars, rags, pencils, chalk, wooden pallets, pieces of wood and finished paintings sitting, perched or standing up against every shelf, surface and table.

  This was my first experience of sitting for my portrait. I was apprehensive and curious. O’Dea told me to make myself comfortable on the sturdy leather-bound chair that was positioned on a raised platform. I sat into it, chose one spot on the window to stare at and stayed still for just over three hours. I was able to stretch whenever I needed to. I could look at him or far into the distance. I chose to look out through the window.

  O’Dea painted energetically; using his brush like a sextant or a spyglass, he held it out from him and squinted as he gauged distances. The smell of oil and turpentine grew stronger as the morning wore on. What did he see, I wondered. Could he read my thoughts? What would I do if I got a cramp? I thought about time passing, about death and destiny and faith and fate as I watched the clouds move slowly across the grey sky outside. There wasn’t a hint of blue there that day. All I heard were the soft sounds of deft brush strokes scratching across the canvas.

  I continued to look out the north-facing window. It was a
cold, dull day, glassed in by an opaque sky. An odd seagull flew across the sky. A steady light filled the room. I liked sitting there and I enjoyed the whole experience. It was precious time. It gave me an opportunity to reflect and savour the day.

  There was a table on a plinth behind a screen. There were other occasional pieces of furniture in the room, such as an old chaise longue. We had our lunch sitting on this, studying the portraits that were already hanging around the room.

  I wasn’t allowed look at the painting until the end. When we broke for lunch, I stretched and climbed off the platform to look around at some of the paintings stacked up against the walls. There were paintings of other individuals. I wondered what kind of people they were. Who was the girl with the cup in her hand looking off into the distance in such a relaxed, almost indifferent way? Is she like that? How could she be so nonchalant when involved in such a creative process, I wondered. She’s another artist, O’Dea said. What about the intense young man who looked right out at me with piercing eyes? Is he like that in person? And the tall, handsome man who stands looking at me with complete calm, as if he was ready to take on any challenge. Or the elderly man who had wise, calm eyes.

  O’Dea had painted each of them sympathetically. He spoke openly about his experiences with people who had sat for their portraits in the past. In the case of one man, it seemed to threaten him, he said. It was as if he felt the way some primitive people feel when they believe a photographer is trying to rob them of their soul.

  When I first saw my own portrait I was confused. It seemed to rush at me; it seemed a mess of startling and slithering paint that was still wet and viscous. After my eyes adjusted, I continued to look at it, to take it in. I wanted to view it from every distance and angle. I felt a bit unmasked, and yet I couldn’t get enough of it. So this is the way I look, I thought. I was shocked and pleased at the same time. I was sorry I couldn’t stay looking at it for the rest of the day, a bit like Narcissus.

  Before I left, I looked back at all of the portraits ranged around the studio. Three deep on some walls, others stacked against windows and chairs, it struck me that the paintings formed a kind of chorus, mute yet deafening in the energy they emitted. It was an orchestra of feeling that had been captured in oil. The clothes and the haircuts placed us in 2004 but the expressions and the concerns were ageless. The eyes, the postures, the hands, the tilt of the heads, the mouths, the looks, the hairlines, the laugh lines – there was a great warmth in all of them. They could have been from any time, any century. What a tragedy to split them up, I thought. Each portrait was separate and yet connected to the next by our shared experience of sitting for the artist. Grouped like this, they seemed to represent a gathering of humanity – a collective that belonged together.

  I have the painting in my possession still. My face is riven with an intensity that pleases me. I am glad to know that I looked like that. It reminds me of the road that I was travelling.

  49

  Frawley’s

  Frawley’s department store on Thomas Street in the Liberties is gone now. The shop had been a presence on the street for over 100 years, but it closed its doors forever in 2007. In its final years, when I used to wander in, it had begun to wind down and had become a sleepy place of business. It was the place I loved most to go shopping.

  From the first day I wandered in there, I found it restful and easy in its unpretentious dowdiness. I loved the value to be had in its range of sheets and pillowcases. I waded past its hip-high counters in a soft glow of relaxation. It became a sort of retreat and sanctuary for me. I’d meander in there on days when I needed to escape ‘this workaday world’ and I’d relax, looking through plastic bathroom accessories and shelves of out-of-season Christmas decorations. It felt like a home-from-home.

  It harked back to another time. It felt like a church in some ways but it was also non-judgemental. There was no sense that God and the saints and the souls might be watching. I didn’t have to imagine them frowning or shaking a finger at me in disapproval. Frawley’s made no demands. I’d spend an hour happily rummaging through shelves of cotton quilt covers, voluminous and minuscule towels, and extravagantly coloured shower curtains. Whether I spent money or not seemed to be a matter of indifference to the staff. The motley collection of shoppers who rambled in did not excite the assistants too greatly and that is a balm to any browser. The assistants usually chatted amongst themselves, engrossed in their conversations, laughing, but ready to be helpful if necessary. They allowed us shoppers to take our time and go to a till at our leisure. They’d serve in a most languorous and elegant fashion. It made me feel happy and blessed.

  I bought extra large pale blue and pink bloomers from the hosiery department for my petite mother at home to make her laugh and to keep her warm. She heard the ad for Frawley’s for All of Yous on the radio one day and recognised it as the place I raved about. I told her how I roamed the aisles of the shop in search of bargains and she used to imagine me there.

  They stocked highly useful items, such as the full range of hoover bags, all manner of fuses, cheap but essential moisturising creams and lotions, as well as shampoo and hair conditioner for hair of every hue and texture. I bought a green dressing gown there once. I bought a pair of jeans for twenty euros – the kind that artists wear when they work in oils on large canvasses – and these were admired by one and all. I bought sheets to beat the band, duvet covers to fit a landlady’s double bed and a brass coal scuttle with its own matching shovel that still shines brilliantly by the fire on a winter’s night. There was a jumble of jazz and soul CDs on offer upstairs, plus old-fashioned and up-to-the-minute DVDs. I used to dangle my fingers over the titles, feeling decadent at the wanton waste of my time on such frivolities and carrying on regardless.

  I got trousers for my father, which had a tailor’s special pleat in the waistband at the back in order to allow the fold to expand when seated, as the draper’s assistant pointed out to me. I was gently assisted and directed in all my choices. I bought bulbs, old-fashioned oilcloths for my kitchen table and sieves, colanders and chopping boards for next to nothing.

  Maybe I was drawn in there because the floors of worn linoleum reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen long ago. They had that lovely solid, yet softly sinking feeling underfoot. It was so familiar to walk on. Or was it that my fellow customers were busy looking for bargains and trying to make ends meet, not wanting to strike a pose or strut a certain noughties’ style? This was a zone of wearisome commerce. It was like stepping into a lukewarm bath.

  I often hesitated at the door, when that feeling of familiarity was too cloying to be endured. Would I go in or not? Some days I would not go in at all, gagging on the shop’s requirement to submit to its weary, old-fashioned vibe. Most days, however, it was just what I needed. The ambience, the tone and tenor of the shop lapped about me and enveloped me in its calm, gravy-like easiness.

  As a new house owner, I picked up many a useful knick-knack. To me, the shop was a jewel in the Liberties. It was my Mecca on days when life was sharply etched in shrieks and frenzy. Frawley’s, familiar and undemanding, called out to me, a stopping-off place where I could take a breath and think, wonder about my life and where I was headed, wonder if God in the church across the street was missing me, watching me or even aware of me.

  I loved earwigging in Frawley’s, feeling like a modern-day Proust. The staff often carried on complicated conversations, such as about the rights and wrongs of a relationship. As they batted back and forth – while serving a customer and packing a bag – the balance of power between the two assistants could tip dangerously from benign and friendly to suspicious and intolerant. I still recall the face of a determined young cashier with nervous eyes and pouting mouth, authoritatively staring down her young underling. In comparison, the underling’s pliant nature with bristling skin reminded me of the pointillism I had once seen in an exhibition on impressionism in the Tate.

  The shop is gone now and I wander the streets lo
oking for a new sanctum. I sometimes go through the doors of the darkened church across the road from where Frawley’s used to be and settle there for a moment to think. It’s not the same; I never come away with a bargain.

  I will always be grateful and nostalgic for Frawley’s. It was a faithful friend of sorts, giving me my first foothold in the Liberties when I moved there. One could never forget a friend like that, and more so if they are no longer with us.

  50

  Crogal

  I own a painting of a black bird, a fierce, prehistoric kind of creature who stands tall in the centre of the canvas. He has the stony, watchful eye of a carrion crow that has been interrupted in the act of devouring something vital. It’s a big painting and he takes up the whole of the canvas. It’s a view of him from the side. He’s got the ungainly body of a big, lumbering bird of prey.

  Hanging on the wall over my fireplace in the Liberties, his blackness compliments the sooty grate of the fireplace underneath. There’s a link there that I don’t quite understand but the mirrored blackness is mesmerising.

  I’m not sure if my bird is a crow or an eagle. It’s hard to say, but I’m nearly sure he’s male because he has a look about him that hints at defiance and maleness. There’s a striking immutability about him. The one pin-eye that is trained on me, guarded and wary, has me in his field of vision.