by Doreen Finn
AUGUST
39
Everything changed. Quietened, cooled. Even the heatwave seemed to lose some of its intensity, or maybe we were just so used to its grip that we ceased to notice it. The days emptied themselves. One by one they slipped by. I barely noticed. The Olympics ended. Beth wanted to watch the closing ceremony and I sat with her in our front room, the window pushed open to let in the air. I still couldn’t tell you what we saw. Beth didn’t talk much and I didn’t say a word. Talking was difficult for me in the aftermath. There just wasn’t anything to say. All that needed to be said faded into nothing beside what had happened. I had Beth around me all the time now and all I wanted was to be away from her. Stevie too had faded, retreated behind the garden wall. Occasionally, I heard the thwack of a leather ball on the stone wall. I imagined I heard him leaving the house after dark, to night swim alone, but really I didn’t think too much about Stevie.
I hid in Gemma’s attic when she wasn’t painting. I didn’t even care about the ghosts. I touched all her things, all her art books, her canvases, her brushes. I removed the tango watercolours from the wall and laid them on the floor, changed around their order, poured water over them and made the paint even blurrier. I squeezed paint tubes and left snakes of colour all over her long worktable. I even opened her trunk, sweeping the embroidered cover to the floor, clicking the latches, lifting the heavy lid. The hinges creaked with age and lack of use. Visions of uncovering secrets, lifting shrouds on the past, finding letters, photographs, albums of pictures crowded my head, but I let the lid slip from my fingers and slam shut. Much as I wanted, needed, to learn, I couldn’t do that to my mother. Grief makes us foolish, but I wouldn’t allow it to make me mean. Gemma kept things from me for a reason. Some day she would tell me, and I had to accept that.
Something fluttered to the floor from between the pages of a book I picked up. Two photographs. A younger, shinier Gemma with a pale baby me, a man with dark hair and a striped shirt. Felipe. He too was gone, God only knew where. I opened the trunk again, dropped the photo back on the pile and let the lid fall.
I wandered the attic, my jittery fingers touching everything. I read articles about Los Desaparecidos. The ones who never came back. Old now, they were filed in an ancient spiral copybook, wedged among heavy art tomes, yellowed, peeling away from the pages that held them. Red marks, faded to a shade that was less than red and closer to brown, circled around certain paragraphs, certain names. Most of the pieces were in Spanish, but I tried to read them anyway, my inability to decipher the strange words somehow comforting me. Gemma’s secrets were surely there, under my wandering fingertips, waiting to be uncovered, held up to the light. Shouldn’t all this have been in the trunk? Mysteries slid under my curious touch, so many things to look at, understand, know. I only grazed the surface. Gemma’s stories, which were my stories too, only different. Told in a different time, from another perspective, they made up part of my fabric, but not all of it. My own imagination had been quelled, by my fear of upsetting my mother, by my apprehension of wandering too far into the dark, but now, leafing through pictures from newspapers, magazines, thumbing original photographs, seeing the photos of women and their placards, their headscarved heads held high, their mouths open, I could hear their cries, could feel their pain, for surely it was the same pain I was feeling. Loss, despair, sadness. And I joined with the women, las abuelas, as the pictures identified them, and their sorrow was mine. There’s no end to suffering, Mrs Sullivan was fond of saying, because it’s only through suffering that we will come to know God. Well, I wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but there’s something universal about grief. Gemma knew it and I knew it too. I was closer to knowing Gemma’s truth, and it would reveal itself to me when the time was right.
Standing on Gemma’s chair, I looked out the skylight, out onto the tiled roof with its chimney pots stacked against the sky, and all the other similar roofs and chimneys, and it was as though they weren’t there. I played Gemma’s records, but nothing that reminded me of anyone but my mother. Simon and Garfunkel. Carole King. Joni Mitchell. All the quiet, slow American music. No rock and roll. Nothing noisy, nothing with a beat or psychedelic guitars. Just the simple sounds of folk music, spilling like water over me as I wandered my mother’s attic room. The ghosts left me alone, must have sensed something in me that kept them at bay. There weren’t words for how I felt, so I didn’t bother trying to find any. There was just a black glacier lodged within me and nothing would move it. Light slipped into corners and out again as the sun moved across the sky. Then I thought of how Daniel would have corrected me. We’re the ones that move. Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. But it didn’t matter any more, and anyway, I preferred to think that we were still and the sun did the moving. It was easier to accept that we had no power at all and everything that happened to us was out of our hands.
Because if we did have a say in how things were, then I had played my part in Daniel’s death. Daniel’s death. It was impossible to say it, even more impossible to accept it. But I had asked him to come with us, each time we went. Night swimming. Night swimming, as though anyone swims at night. As though we should have been doing anything but sleeping. The night wasn’t for children. Night-time was for grown-ups, for adults. It was their time to do what they needed to do, away from the eyes and ears of snooping children. It was a time for martinis and white wine, for candles in jars, records on the turntable, whispered conversations. We had no place in the night, yet we had taken one anyway, carved out a special niche just for ourselves. And look what had happened.
There were no remonstrations from Gemma, or from Sarah. They said not a word, because I had taken all the words for myself. All those recriminations, all the what-ifs, the if-you’d-only-listen-and-do-what-you’re-tolds. I had taken them all and stuffed them deep inside me. I probed them, like a sore tooth, like an exposed nerve. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stay away. They tasted bitter, like blood, or lead, and they jangled in my ears, but I had to look at it all, see it in the platinum summer light.
Sarah and Gemma left me alone to do what I needed to do, and they waited for me, with hugs and kisses, with hot chocolate and soft blankets, warm laps, and tissues to dry my cheeks.
I thought about it, over and over, like a home movie stuck on replay. The flaked paint. The silent slip of Daniel’s foot. The look on his face in the millisecond before he fell. The fear that leaped out at me and my own frozenness. I imagined reversing it. How I’d have held onto his hand so that he couldn’t fall, how I’d have refused to walk on the lock, insisted on staying on the canal bank. Or, even better, how I’d have said no to night swimming in the first place.
Swimming teaches you endurance, Beth had said the day we swam in the river. Green light had shone through the overhanging trees, the shadows on the water’s surface wet and dappled. Two kingfishers had zipped past, little more than a dazzle of perfect blue. A dragonfly had landed on the water between Daniel and me, and we had stood, as still as statues, watching circles widening on the surface around its tiny form. Chris had held our hands, even though we could all swim. He hadn’t wanted to let go in case the river carried us away. Endurance. I’d have swapped endurance any day to have my friend back.
I’m sorry, Daniel, I said to him in my mind. I’m sorry. I should have saved you. I should have grabbed you as you fell, pulled you to safety. Given us both a fright that we would talk about for years afterwards. Remember the time you almost drowned? Remember you slipped and I caught you? What would we have done without you? And my friend and I, the friend of my childhood and I, would laugh in horror at what had nearly happened. We would have learned our lesson and stayed away from the night.
40
‘I wonder how she’ll cope?’ This was Gemma’s observance, a day or two after Daniel’s funeral, she being Mrs Sullivan.
Daniel’s mother had strength I hadn’t understood, hadn’t appreciated. She said she didn’t need to worry about Daniel
, now that he was with God. God would keep him safe until she joined him again. Daniel was waiting for his mother, she could feel it, and it kept her strong.
Mrs Sullivan organised the funeral with a swiftness that surprised Sarah and Gemma. She spoke at length with the parish priest, who called to see her the afternoon after the fall and sat with her for the rest of the day. Mrs Sullivan knew exactly what hymns, readings and prayers she wanted for the funeral Mass. As though she’d been planning it for ever. She asked me to read a prayer for the safe repose of Daniel’s soul. She’d even written it herself. I didn’t want to, but Gemma encouraged me to. It’s what Daniel would want, she said. You were his best friend. He’d do it for you.
But Daniel had been a better person than I. More patient, kinder. He didn’t bail on me at the first appearance of an American, or spend time wondering what else he could be doing when he was with me. I wasn’t deserving of him and I didn’t deserve to read a prayer for the repose of his soul. I said this to Gemma. We were sitting on the big armchair in the attic. Heat and sadness had sapped our energy, and I sat on the arm of the chair with my bare feet on my mother’s lap.
Gemma disagreed. ‘Daniel loved you. He probably didn’t even notice that you were spending a lot of time with Beth, and he wasn’t the jealous type, so it wouldn’t have occurred to him to be angry.’ She rubbed her knuckles on my cheek. ‘He was your friend.’
‘But I didn’t want to play with him all the time. And now I can’t play with him ever again.’
I swiped at tears, angry with the anger within me, overwhelmed by the pointlessness of being sad because nothing, no amount of tears or crying, would bring Daniel back. Grief is a waste of time, I was quickly learning. There’s no point to it, except to make ourselves feel something, anything, in the aftermath of tragedy.
‘Wait here a minute,’ Gemma said, lowering my feet as she got out of the chair. She came back after selecting a book from her pile of art books. Leafing through its glossy pages, she quickly found what she was looking for. ‘Look, here, have a look at this.’ She placed the book on my lap and sat down again.
What exactly she wanted me to look at I couldn’t see. The picture lay across two pages of the heavy art book, a mass of knife strokes and thumbprints, colour exploded all over the canvas.
‘What do you think?’ Gemma’s hand on my arm.
Nothing in the picture made much sense. Colours swirled. Blue for sadness. Black for death. Red for blood. Gemma had schooled me early in the basics of art appreciation. ‘I don’t know what it is.’
‘Look closely. Here, look at this.’ My mother’s finger traced a broken line, a white mass. A horse. A house. Fire, or was it the setting sun?
The picture absorbed my attention. We hadn’t done this in quite a while, my mother and I; not since before the Americans arrived. We hadn’t sat with a book of paintings and looked at them, figuring out what the artist was saying. Because the artist was always saying something, Gemma said. Always. No one painted just for the sake of it. Art had to mean something.
‘Is it Picasso?’
Gemma shook her head. ‘It’s Yeats. This is called Grief. I thought it might help you understand how you feel.’
I looked at her. Topaz light slanted into the room from the skylights. The fan whirred in slow revolutions, barely disturbing the heavy stillness of the heat, which tipped itself into every corner. The attic door was open and from downstairs I could hear Sarah’s sewing machine. The world carried on as it always had. No regard for Daniel. No recognition of his absence.
My fingers ran over the outline of the white horse, the riot of sunshine or fire, the pleading people. What was their loss? Who was their Daniel?
And even though Yeats’ grief did little to relieve mine, for the time that I sat with my mother, her book heavy on my lap, her arms circling my shoulders, I was able to put my sadness aside for a moment. Not forget it, not remove Daniel from my thoughts, but allow my mind to move beyond the groove of grief I had been stuck in since that night.
For a couple of weeks after the fall, my mother and I sat thus each day. The time was not appointed, the clock unwatched. Sometimes it was a painting, others a verse of poetry. A few times it was a record, circling out of sight. It was hard to know what to do in the face of death, harder still in the aftermath. One evening the previous winter, Sarah and I had listened to a radio report about funerals in China. The people had to cry, wail, roar. They shouted out during the ceremony, banged drums and cymbals. We had turned down the volume on the radio, so great was the wave of riotous grief coming at us. I understood it now, though; the bloodletting of sorrow, the venting of heartbreak. We sat around in dazed silence, afraid of talking in case we might say something that could cause further sadness. Hours with my mother in the shelter of her attic, her books on our laps as we traced the history of grief through others’ interpretations. Did it help? Perhaps. People had grieved for their dead since time began and would continue to do so until the end of days. We were just following the pattern.
And I saw how it could be. Minutes like these, where Daniel would retreat, allowing other things to flood the expanse in my head. And maybe with time, possibly, Daniel would still be there in the night sky of my mind, but like stars, occupying some space, instead of being the whole darkness.
41
A thunderous rain fell with jarring suddenness. It was a shock, at first. I hardly recognised the rain as it slammed against the windowpanes and slid like mercury under the opened sashes, soaking the floors. From the kitchen, I watched as it flattened the flowers, knocked unripe apples off the tree, soaked the khaki grass. Sarah’s terracotta pots filled and overflowed. Spiders were driven from their hiding places in the crevices of walls. It lashed for three days, the skies grey and full of menace, the heat sucked from the air. The deckchairs, abandoned on the lawn, flapped their sodden canvas like defeated flags. The patio furniture sat in a puddle of water on the flooded paving. The bougainvillea was plastered to the handrail, half its blossoms washed away.
We went hunting for warmer clothes, for sweaters and cardigans that had been packed away. I pulled on the unfamiliar garments, unused to having my arms covered, my legs encased. The rain, biblical as it was, distracted me.
The rain eased into a fine mist after a few days, and this hung over the darkened sky. It sparkled when the sun tried in vain to break through. On the radio they said this wet spell was only a break and to enjoy it while we could. The heatwave was coming back.
Mrs Sullivan persisted with her absolute belief that Daniel was at peace. ‘He’s in a better place,’ she said to me about a week after Daniel’s funeral. I sat in their kitchen, my denimed legs hanging from the stool I was perched on. A plate of biscuits occupied the space between us, but I didn’t touch them. Digestives. Daniel’s favourites.
Candles dotted the house, in varying stages of life. By each was a prayer, or a photograph, something connected to Daniel. Mrs Sullivan had increased her daily allotment of prayer, it seemed. The Lord is always listening, she told me. Always, and we must be prepared.
I envied her. It seemed to me that she had found some peace in Daniel’s death, some way of accepting the unacceptable. I smiled at her when she spoke of him. It would have been cruel not to. Daniel’s sisters had shrunk into the shadows of their house. Stevie stayed out all the time, with his friends, with Beth, or maybe just on his own. Their mother depended on me now for company and I was happy to oblige. I wondered aloud if Mr Sullivan would be found now. Mrs Sullivan shook her head. ‘He doesn’t want to be.’
My mother went back to her painting, filled her evenings with classes. She took on extra work as a guide in the National Gallery and even began to talk of returning to college in the autumn, to finish her studies. Gemma had done her foundation year and was already in second year when I was born. At the end of second year, students could apply for a diploma in sculpture, fine art or design. Gemma had planned on studyi
ng fine art, and one of her professors had advised her to come back after I was born. She hadn’t, but now, in the aftermath of everything that had happened that summer, Gemma was thinking of returning. She met with the professor, Dr Doyle, who was willing to accommodate her circumstances, she told Sarah and me later, and give her credit for work already done.
‘Maybe I’ll teach art eventually,’ she said. ‘Properly, in a school or a college.’
‘Then you must go back,’ Sarah said.
‘How will we manage?’ Gemma asked, biting her lip.
‘We’ll manage,’ Sarah said. ‘We always do.’
And Chris? Gemma didn’t seem to slip out as much any more, and my own curiosity about the affair had lessened. Maybe it was Judith’s visit that day, maybe it was Gemma realising that Chris was never going to be fully hers. She didn’t discuss it with me, of course, and I’m not sure even now if she knows how much I was aware of. Chris came and went, sauntering to the bus stop some mornings, walking into Trinity others. But I kept watch anyway. From a distance. Just in case.
The weather forecaster was right. The heatwave did return. In some ways, it was as though no rain had fallen, and we were back to watching the amount of water we used and being careful outdoors. But it was different too. The madness, the changes, the insanity – all that had been swept away in the rain. Mrs Doherty next door no longer lay around reading, eating sandwiches with her husband on blankets in the garden. The doctor across the road put his shoes back on, except at the weekends, when the surgery was closed and he was free to wear sandals again.
The women still gossiped. The heatwave had changed none of that. No doubt they blamed Gemma for Daniel’s death. If she’d never had me, he wouldn’t have gone to the canal. Or something like that. We closed our ears to gossip in our family. It was what we did.