by Doreen Finn
‘Are you going to open it?’
I turned. My mother had her hands on her hips, painting shirt flapping open. Gemma gestured towards the trunk. Her bangles jangled.
I faltered. Part of me wanted to open the creaky clasps, delve deeply, bring light to all those dark spaces. Another part of me didn’t mind if it never happened. Pandora regretted opening the jar. Only hope was left. But hope wasn’t always a bad thing. It left us with something to strive for. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You can, if you like.’
The leather lid was scuffed when I slid the quilt off, betraying the trunk’s age. The fading patchwork fell soundlessly to the floor, leaving the trunk exposed. The ornate key in each brass clasp turned easily, as they had the last time. They opened with a click when I pushed the brass buttons. The lid creaked, the only sound in the hushed attic. I half expected a flotilla of ghosts to sail past me, berating me for spying on my mother’s secrets.
‘Go on,’ my mother said. ‘It’s time I told you.’
‘Told me what?’ I asked, even though, really, I knew. ‘If you want, we can do it another day.’
Her voice was soft, but I knew when my mother had set her mind to something and this was one of those times. ‘No, Megan. We can do it now.’
44
The photographs of him weren’t in albums. Gemma had kept them in envelopes, each one printed neatly with her calligraphy pen. Dates, places, names. There were letters too, wrapped in bundles with blue ribbon. Sarah’s warnings echoed in my ears: never read another person’s diary or their letters. Under the photos and the piles of correspondence were drawings. Some pen and ink sketches, some watercolours. I noted several charcoal drawings of my mother. Three unmounted canvases bore heavy oil paint in vivid colours. Two or three spiral sketchpads with creases on their covers. Newspapers, yellowed and fragile with time. Posters, creased down the middle. Tapes of songs, their Spanish titles scripted in an unfamiliar hand. There was so much more than I had skimmed the first time I dared to open the trunk.
‘Felipe’s things.’
It wasn’t until I spoke that I realised how dry my throat was. My words came out raspy, stilted.
‘Everything here is.’
The wooden boards were hard beneath my knees, but I didn’t mind. I trailed my fingers through the trunk as through water in a tank, touching only the barest surface of things. Where to begin when given access to what one has always wondered about?
Gemma made that decision for me. She pulled a large sheet of paper out from where it was wedged under a paperweight. Another drawing, this one in pen-and-ink: Gemma leaning back in a chair, a rocker, smiling at the artist.
‘Did he draw this?’
She sighed. ‘He did.’
I gestured towards the piles of drawings and paintings. ‘And these?’
‘Most of them. Some are mine, but most are his.’
Gemma dropped the sheets on the floor beside her and reached back into the trunk. More pictures, more of Gemma, but some too of other things. Flowers, mountain ranges. Jungle. Alpacas and llamas, their eyes lidded and staring. There were photographs too, big black and whites, bold in their statement. Men underground, headlamps attached to their hard hats, sacks stacked around them. Children running from soldiers. Women holding babies, their faces in a twist of sadness. People hunched over the salt flats, scooping white salt into metal buckets. Los saleros . A man in a black beret, flanked by other men. I knew him, from the poster on Gemma’s wall. Che Guevara.
‘What are they doing?’ I asked my mother, pointing to a photo of the miners.
‘They’re striking. These signs are in Spanish.’
‘What do they want?’
‘An end to corruption. The right to join a union. That sort of thing.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Bolivia.’
The picture of the Andes. The painting of the cholita . The Che poster. My mother’s fascination with South American politics. The Borges quote.
And the question that was most important of all to me, the one I was almost afraid to ask, but which slipped out so easily that afterwards I wondered why I hadn’t asked before. ‘Where is he? Is he in Bolivia?’
Gemma lifted another picture, and another. I thought she hadn’t heard me, but eventually she looked up. ‘Felipe wasn’t your father, Megan.’
‘What do you mean?’
My mother looked at me, her face so close to mine that I could see the minuscule flecks of amber in her irises. Our identical eyes. Then she shook her head. ‘Megan.’
Felipe wasn’t my father. Felipe had been her friend. A beloved friend, her greatest friend, but the kind of man who didn’t like women, at least not in a romantic sense. Felipe and Gemma met in an art history class and became friends. Everything about him was true, right up to his return home and his disappearance. Gemma never saw him again, but she wanted to find out something about him and she was going to do it. ‘Because if I don’t, Megan, no one will. There’s no one left who will look for him.’
This I could come back to later, unpack in the quiet of my room, think it through.
What she told me next was more difficult.
It came out in a rush. A tumble of words, falling over each other in a desperate scramble to be heard. My mother unburdening herself after almost ten years of secrecy.
My mother’s story and, subsequently, my own story, untangled itself around me in the heat of that late August morning, while the sun made patterns on the floor and seeped into the cracks and fissures between the wooden boards. Listening to her was like listening to a tale about someone else, other people, other families. Spaces opened up between my mother’s words, then were filled in with what she had to tell me. It was difficult to listen to her. I was too hot, and the mention of Daniel planted him into my head again, distracting me.
It was complicated.
But in the end it was very simple.
Daniel’s father was my father.
This is what my mother told me. It hadn’t been planned. Nothing like that ever is, Gemma said, as she leaned her back against the attic wall. Like a baby, or a very young child, I crawled into the gap between her legs, leaning against her. She stroked my hair as she spoke and her voice sounded far away, as though she were speaking to me from another room, her words tinny and distant.
It was like listening to a tale from a book, something filled with dark adrenaline. Questions tumbled through my brain as we sat there on the attic floor, with sunlight spilling down the walls and across the floorboards to where we sat, the steamer trunk open beside us, the ghosts merely a hush in the stillness of the late morning warmth.
‘It was the most ridiculous occurrence,’ Gemma said. ‘Unplanned, stupid, wrong.’
‘Why wrong?’ I asked.
‘Because it was,’ she replied. ‘My neighbour. Married. Two decades older than me. Ridiculous. And yet,’ she said, turning my face to her, her fingers soft under my chin, ‘look at what I got out of it.’
Gemma met Mr Sullivan walking home one night. He had been working late; she’d been at a party. Somehow, they ended up sharing a bottle of wine in the garden flat and one thing had led to another. My mother used that phrase. One thing led to another. As though the simple act of meeting on the street after hours needed no further explanation, as though running into your neighbour was a good enough reason to end up with a child.
I wasn’t judging my mother. I wasn’t yet old or cynical enough to do that. Later, I would develop the necessary skills to throw her actions back in her face, but even when I did, years hence, Gemma was invariably calm in the face of my fury. If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have had you. It’s that simple, she would say. One slip and I got you, and nothing you say, nothing you do will ever change my mind about that.
Sarah didn’t know, Gemma said. Sarah was allowed to believe the Felipe fable; indeed, it was Sarah who had first assumed that Felipe was behind it. Gemma didn’t correct her mother, because it was one thing
having a baby by an activist artist who was murdered for his political beliefs, even in the Ireland of the 1970s. But a brief interlude in the garden flat with a married neighbour, well, that was cause for total condemnation. I wouldn’t have been allowed to keep you, Gemma said, tears springing in the corners of her eyes. I almost didn’t as it was, but if the truth had come out there’d have been no way I would ever have been able to hold onto you. My baby girl, she said, her hands soft on my cheeks. My most beloved, precious, baby girl.
And even though there was so much more to say, so much more to ask her, I let my mother hold me, and I didn’t mind that she cried over me and whispered. She said: I love you so much. She said: I’m sorry for this mess. She said: Everything will be fine.
Daniel was my brother. This was the most obvious realisation from my mother’s admission. My grief, huge and unmoving, was somehow further magnified at this, the catastrophic loss of him reawakened all over again.
Too much else lay in my path – to be picked over, sorted through, put into perspective. I needed time, and at nine, I had so much of it. The future lay open, a book with blank pages. There would be more time to ask Gemma, other occasions such as now, when we would sit together, my mother and I, and we would talk. There would be time too, when I was older, to find traces of the father I didn’t know. When I was older, and Gemma was finished her studies. During a future summer, not quite as long or as dramatic as the one we were helping to draw to a close, we would venture, my mother and I, into the unknown, and we would go and find him.
But that was a long way off.
‘Why did you wait so long to tell me about him?’
Gemma shrugged, displaying the palms of her hands. Paint had collected in the lines along her skin. Her nails were short. Artist’s hands. ‘I wanted to find the right time. And maybe I thought that if you never wanted to know, then maybe I wouldn’t have to tell you.’ She thumbed the remaining tears on her face. ‘But after what happened to Daniel, I figured there was no way out; you needed to be told the truth.’
Sarah called our names, but still we lingered. My story, my ghosts, bowled through my mother’s attic and I was aware of a change within myself, a slotting together of pieces of the puzzle I hadn’t up to that point even realised were missing.
I drew in a lungful of the attic’s hot air. My head rested on my mother’s shoulder. This. This was all that mattered.
Epilogue
Summer ended quite abruptly, as it turned out. Judith and Beth left at the end of August, taking their boxes and suitcases with them. Sarah and I had dinner with them both the evening before they left. Judith made carne adovada, with big chunks of pork cooked in chilli sauce. Her last meal to be cooked in Dublin on the small stove. Judith said the dish was better served with black beans, but she cooked rice because it was easier to buy. I asked Gemma was she coming with us, but she shook her head. Too much to do, she said. Plus I have my class in the gallery.
To be honest, Judith hadn’t invited her.
Sarah and I waved Beth and Judith off the next day. Brad came to collect them in his car. He tossed their suitcases and boxes into the boot as though they were toys. He didn’t mention Chris, and neither did Judith. We waved till our arms hurt and the car had disappeared down the road.
‘Well!’ Sarah said, her arm around my shoulder. ‘That’s that.’
Quickly, it seemed as though the summer had never happened, except that Daniel’s absence still left a wide gash in my days. A long time would pass before I accepted that he wouldn’t be back. It was difficult, but childhood brings with it its own resilience. Traces of Daniel lingered: a ladybird struggling over grass; a moth banging its way around inside a lampshade; the copper sheen of a chestnut, just out of its spiny case. He was everywhere that autumn. All I had to do was look. Mostly, it made me happy that he was in so many places, but oftentimes it filled me with a sadness that seemed to seep from my very skin. Do you know this grief ? It sits like a glacier, mostly hidden. Then drop by melting drop, it begins its slow emergence. Swimming teaches you endurance. I had no choice but to endure, and I waited for the sadness to exhaust itself. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And I thought of Gemma’s ghosts, of my father. If ghosts stick around for long enough, they’ll travel with you eventually.
Sarah had wondered aloud to Gemma if Daniel’s death would bring his father home, but Gemma dismissed such a notion out of hand. ‘Why would they want him? He’d only leave again, anyway, and they’re better off without him.’ She looked at me as she said that. I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her, but I let it go.
With autumn came cooler days, shorter evenings. Sometimes, sitting indoors while wind and rain raged outside, it was almost as though the heatwave had never happened. Our summer clothes had been bundled up and packed away in boxes on the new shelves in the attic. Old patterns had been resumed, old habits refusing to go away. The pool was left to its own devices. Maybe the water evaporated, maybe it stagnated. I never swam there again. The house remained empty for the rest of my childhood, each year falling further into disrepair.
Sarah and I settled into a routine. I went to school, making the journey alone for the first time, though I liked to think that Daniel’s ghost kept me company on the walk. While I was gone, Sarah made curtains, hemmed skirts, knitted, and did whatever she needed to do to keep our household afloat. Gemma went to her lectures, and we waved her off in the mornings, her old bike clicking as she pedalled, her clothes billowed by the breeze. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was happy, the basket on her bike stacked with books, a bag of brushes and pencils on her back. Sarah said she had no idea how we’d get through the next few years and she wasn’t going to be bothered by worrying about it. I knew we would be fine because we always were. My small family didn’t sit back and rely on rosaries and novenas to get us through. We did it on our own, and we minded each other along the way.
I didn’t ask Gemma about Chris. There wasn’t anything I could really say that hadn’t been said or thought. As far as I knew he was in Trinity, but where he lived and what he did was unknown to me. Judith sent an occasional letter to Sarah, always brief, the details light and chatty. Music classes going well. Beth happy in school. New York was hot or freezing, always at the extremes of temperatures. We read of Thanksgiving, Christmas, other celebrations, but little else. It was as though Sarah were someone Judith had met on a weekend away, with whom she stayed in touch out of politeness. Sarah always responded with something short and warm, which she allowed me to read over her shoulder as she wrote.
I missed Beth. I missed her outlook on life, her puzzlement when confronted with anything that could be construed as an obstacle. For Beth, life was for living and obstacles were just something to be blown through. Her fearlessness had chipped away at some of my reservations and, who knows, maybe it was because of her that I was now stronger in some ways, less fearful of what lay ahead.
I missed Judith’s food too. All those concoctions that became familiar with tasting and testing: her blue corn, her stacked enchiladas, the quinoa and sopapillas , chilli with everything. I didn’t mind going back to eating lamb chops and stew, potatoes and vegetables without adornment, but I had tasted what was different and I was unable to forget it. It was a tantalising hint of the future, of all that lay ahead. I was in no hurry to get there, but it was nice to know it was waiting.
But always, there was the other.
I can still see it now, after all this time, all these months and years that have been folded and stacked into great piles behind me, so many years that it’s hard to believe. It is the barest whisper of sound, a glimpse of what could have been. The hesitant track of insect feet across the back of my hand. The jungle heat of a metal-roofed hideout on a summer’s day. An ant tumbling over discarded crumbs. The navy ink of a swimming pool on a moonless night. Dragonflies alighting on a summer bloom. The silent beating of butterfly wings in a glass jar, under a sky so bright, so blue, it hurt your eye
s to look at it.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to everyone who helped and supported me in the writing of Night Swimming :
Adrienne Gill, who years ago read an enormous draft of what eventually became this book.
Bettina Knipschild, for early reading and astute observations on the text, as well as a supply of home baking!
Vanessa Doherty, Tracy May Fung, Brid Brogan, Philippa Buckley, Pat Buckley, Barbara Allen, Toni Hickey, John McCarthy, who variously read, advised, printed, praised, encouraged and helped in myriad ways.
Bill Core, for being a permanent source of sound advice and common sense.
My colleagues at Muckross Park College, for their support and encouragement.
My friends and extended family, for buying my books, coming to events and for generally being there.
Many thanks to all the writers I know who help and support each other, give feedback and provide blurbs for covers – it is indeed a community I am honoured to belong to (and can’t quite believe I do!).
Janet Fitch, for transatlantic support.
Sophie Grenham, who is a true champion of Irish writers.
Margaret Bonass Madden, without whom the Irish book scene would be a very lonely place indeed.
Julia Kelly, Rachael English and Claudia Carroll, for reading and for their kindness.
Catriona McCarthy and John Riordan for the photos.
Special thanks to everyone at Mercier, especially Patrick O’Donoghue, for picking my book up; my editor Noel O’Regan for his phenomenal skill for finding all the mistakes in the text and improving on what I’ve written; Alice Coleman for the cover, Deirdre Roberts for the publicity, and John Spillane for getting the ball rolling.
My agent, Caroline Montgomery, for sticking with me and providing me with countless Skype sessions, where we spend more time laughing than actually discussing writing.
My brother, Alan, who has always had faith in me and makes me pursue what I believe in, and my sister-in-law, Sarinya, and her unrivalled ability with food.