Finally, along the quay in the crumbling Old Quarter, I peered in Sullivan’s, and, through the yellow tinted window of the door, I saw him on a stool at the far end of the bar. The men glanced at me; most were from the country and nodded as I passed. Grudgingly Lugh gestured toward Brendan Walsh, the barman, and ordered me a Coke.
I climbed onto the bar stool on his left. His eyes were bloodshot and the warm smell of porter and whiskey was strong on him.
Go away, boy, he said. Can’t you go away and leave a man in peace? Sure why are you always bothering me, hanging on me like a bleedin dog. There’s no bloody end to it, is there? He looked about the bar and raised his voice. Is there?
I knew all the men in the pub could hear him. I stared soundlessly at my Coke. I hadn’t asked for the thing and wished he’d never bought it for me in the first place. I wished I’d never come looking for him, and when I climbed off my stool to leave, he didn’t even glance in my direction. I crossed the river, and the orange-yellow halogens faded and everything became dark. It was cold. A barge sounded from somewhere up the waters, and the tops of trees bowed and shook. The land opened up and the same wind pressed the clouds. Three miles into the country, and nothing but the odd, broken beam of a car’s headlights curling the tops of hedgerows far in the distance, my footsteps sounding on the macadam, and cow shit brightly sparking the black tar of the road as if it were tinder.
It was sometime after midnight when the sound of Lugh’s raggedy song woke me; I climbed from my bed, tiptoed down the stairs so as not to awaken Mother, and waited by our gate in my pajamas. Soft almost invisible sheets of mist moved over everything, were momentarily framed by the courtyard light before passing into darkness again. In that darkness, carried on the same drift that pushed the mist, was the sharp smell of silage spread across recently turned fields, and Lugh’s song coming from all the way down the lane.
Last night she came to me, my dear love came in,
So softly she came that her feet made no din,
She laid her hand on me, and this she did say:
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”
He only sang this song when he’d been thinking of Asha, and, sometimes, at odd moments, I surprised myself by humming or singing the words myself, not ever really considering that—having heard Lugh sing it so many times in that raggedy way of his, his voice cracking with the cigarettes and the drink—I knew the song by heart.
I’d often thought that it wasn’t numbness or inebriation that Lugh wanted, it was death, the long slow suffering death of failing kidneys and livers, of rot from the inside, a bleeding out of himself, to mirror how Asha had died. All these years he had punished himself in readiness to face her, because he was ashamed that he’d returned to Ireland. He was ashamed that he’d lived at all.
Lugh’s face was ashen with stubble, his skin beneath the color of a burst peach. There were broken veins in his nose and in the swollen flesh beneath his eyes. His breath smelled of rot and his body smelled as if he had fouled himself.
Michael, he said softly, sadly, as if he had done me some great wrong, and my anger—or whatever was left of it—was suddenly gone. Michael, he said, you’re a good lad, and then in Latin, the motto of his Irish Guards: Quis Separabit. And more softly as if the words were taking him away to some other place: Quis Separabit. And then he said it again, as if it were a question: Who shall separate us, sure who shall separate us? Ahhhh, Michael, did I ever tell you of Asha? My dear sweet Asha.
I shook my head although he had told me many times. I knew that he had lost Asha to cholera in India during World War II, that he served in the British Army, that he came back the captain of an Irish regiment, educated and skilled, and ended up as this—a drunken day laborer without any family or friends, working for a bastard of a farmer. I’d heard this story before, but somehow it was different now; I knew that he would never tell it to me again.
I sat by her bed, he said, sat with her until the end. After she died—he sighed, waved his hand at the air—I lost all interest. He stared across the road toward Meaney’s high-gabled hay shed, eyes searching the shadows lurching there. He licked his lips and ran a hand over his grizzled chin.
Her body wasted away to bones, he said, and I kissed her, her with the cholera. I kissed her, Michael, and I never kissed a woman since. He laughed, high and sharp and his voice broke as something caught in his throat. He looked up and down the road and then toward Meaney’s cowsheds, the milking pens, the hay barn again. Only the feckin bottle, he said. It’s all I’ve been good for.
Lugh scanned the fields and the shadows cast by the courtyard light spilling across the road. Loose lips sink ships, Michael, yes sir. Our Day Will Come, Tiocfaidh ár Lá, but the enemy has ears everywhere. He tapped the side of his nose to make his point. Mark me and keep it to yourself. Then he stared at me and his eyes had the look of violence to them. Sure, even you, Michael, all this time you could be one of them, an informer to the Cause.
I shook my head but Lugh was searching the fields again. Suddenly he reached for me, took me by the lapel of my pajamas, his arms darting out so quickly I could not have anticipated how fast he could move and then how strong his grip could be. My toes dragged the ground. Lugh! I cried. Stop, you’re hurting me, please, stop.
What do you know! What do any of you know! When have you ever stood up for anything in your lives! Sing the “Soldier’s Song” for me in the Irish. Do it! Sing it! Sure I bet you don’t even know the words! Do you even know what it feckin means!
Lugh! Let go! I tried to wrestle his hands off me, but he was fueled by a feverish strength. Sweat broke out on his forehead; his eyes shone. I felt that I had to say something to him, but all that would come was: Lugh, I’m sorry about Asha.
He looked at me then, and his eyes burned in the present; his face suddenly contorted with anger. What do you know about it at all! he shouted. What do you know! He thrust me away and I fell hard against the wall. He scrabbled for his bike, mounted it unsteadily, turned to swear at me, and then rode off down the lane. I stayed on the ground long after he was gone, feeling the rawness where gravel had scoured my palms, the sense of Lugh’s hand against my chest, burning still.
The door opened and Molly stood there in her robe. She squinted into the courtyard, and I climbed slowly to my feet.
What are you doing? she asked.
I wiped my palms on my knees. Nothing. I’m doing nothing.
She stared at me, drew her robe tight at the neck, and looked about the fields. She stamped her feet on the threshold and looked at me again.
What is it? I said.
It’s Mammy. She was screaming, but now she’s gone quiet. I was looking for you. Where were you?
I was right here, I said, angrier than I wanted to be. I wasn’t anywhere.
Was that Lugh?
I nodded and spat on the ground, worked the gravel from my palm.
How is he?
He’s a feckin old drunk, how’d you expect him to be?
Well, she persisted, impatient with me now, why were you out here then?
My mother’s bedroom door was closed but I could hear her walking in slow circles about the room, her voice soft and bright as if she were talking to a lover. Suddenly tired, I leant my head against the door for a moment, listening—wishing her to be still, wishing her sleep. When she laughed, I shivered and turned back to the hallway. I dipped my fingers in the holy water font on the wall and blessed myself, looked out at the courtyard illuminated by pale mist, then toward the surrounding farms, their barns and sheds and milking pens, in the same way that Lugh had done, as if someone were out there just waiting for me in the dark.
When I brought Mother breakfast, her sheets were on the floor and she was writhing on the bed. The wireless hummed and crackled from the nightstand. She moaned and tossed and clutched her belly with hands riveted by tendons. When she saw me, her face went hard.
Get away from me, she growled. Get away, you bastards.
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I placed my back to her as I turned the wireless off. Mammy, I said gently, more for myself than for her—I needed the security of the word, the safety of its familiarity, before I could turn and look at her. Mammy, I called again. You’re in your own bedroom. You’re home—please, Mammy.
Keep your hands off me, you feckin Black and Tan, she said and spat at me, then groaned and rolled over on her side, holding her stomach. I placed the tray on the floor and sat at the edge of the bed. Mammy, I said, shall I call the doctor—is that what you want? The doctor? I’ll call the doctor then.
I rose off the bed and Mother turned back, tears streaking her face. No, Michael, please. She shook her head and tried to swallow. Please, no doctors, Michael, they’ll take me to the hospital.
I sat back down on the bed, and with the shift in weight the bed dipped and we were suddenly much closer. I wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, but since her illness had come back I hadn’t known how to touch my mother, unsure of what she wanted or allowed. Instead I touched her shoulder, the hard round bone unyielding and sure. Her breath sour like turned milk.
Lie back, I said, you need to eat. I picked up the tray from the floor and in that moment her eyes began to change—all the light receded and the iris darkened. I’d seen the sudden shift before, and although I was used to it, it still startled me. The first time I’d seen it happen I thought it looked beautiful.
The room was suddenly converging at the edges of my eyes. Everything was moving toward the center before me and I wanted to call out to my sister but there was no time. I tried to step back but Mother lunged up with her body and sent both me and the tray across the room. I landed hard against the wall. She threw herself back upon the bed and screamed again and again. Even though her body must have been exhausted from her struggles, she did not tire but continued, throwing herself against the mattress, and then, screaming, she hurled herself against me.
Molly! I shouted and sprang to my feet, flung my body across my mother’s in an attempt to hold her to the bed. Molly! I shouted again and my sister’s footfalls were on the stairs.
I tried to hold Mother but she was too strong. I shouted at her to stop and wrestled her back to the bed. Stop! I shouted. I swung my arm and slapped her. Stop! She fell back upon the bed and then came at me once more, screaming and raving. I slapped her again, harder this time.
Stop! Stop! Stop! I shouted and then Molly was grabbing at me, wrapping her thin arms about me. Mother lay on the bed, eyes closed, tears rolling slowly down her swollen cheeks. Her mouth, spit-streaked and bloodied, opened in pain.
I’m sorry, I cried, I’m sorry, and sank to the floor. Molly grabbed a fistful of jumper and pulled me close. Wiping her eyes, she held on to me tightly. It’s all right, she whispered, we’re all going to be all right.
August 1981
In the evening I stopped listening or waiting for Lugh-the-drunk; if he passed on the road at all, I was unaware of it. I sat in the living room before the telly and the fire listening to news of the latest dead hunger striker. When the room grew cold I pulled a blanket onto the settee; when the Angelus sounded on the telly I turned the volume off. I stared at the image of the Virgin Mother and of babby Jesus suckling at her ripe breast and I imagined bells ringing across the countryside and little manky children in small, dimming rooms waiting for dinner, waiting to stuff their greedy bellies as night came on, and in the North, empty supper tables and processions of black coffins shrouded in the tricolor.
Molly stood by the threshold but I couldn’t see her expression in the dark. You’ve almost let the bleedin thing die out, she said. Mam will have a fit. When I didn’t reply she said, Jaysus! It’s like talking to a wall. She shoveled some wood onto the embers and then threw coal on top. Slammed the fire screen back into place and then stood there with her hands on her hips—a smaller, less confident version of our mother.
The telly showed a black-and-white picture of Thomas McElwee alongside the pictures of the other dead hunger strikers. I knew the faces by name: Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, and there was Bobby, all long hair and smiles.
The blue light of the telly flickered across the ceiling and the room grew darker still. I saw McElwee and the other hunger strikers on their death cots, blind and shivering beneath blankets piled six high, their skins so diaphanous that I imagined they were already spirits and that upon their deaths their transfigured souls rose immediately to God and to Heaven—the privilege of all martyrs and saints.
I reached into the shadows and began to pull on my boots.
Where are you going? Molly asked.
I’m going to the river.
What about Mammy?
Carefully I worked at folding the tops of my boots. She’s better now, I muttered without looking up. That morning, DeBurgh had come up to administer morphine to Mother. She’d howled and screamed and tore at both Molly and me with her nails. I had to use Dettol on the scratches and bandage them because they wouldn’t stop bleeding. And after, I couldn’t look at Mother; I knew I had to get out if I ever wanted to look at her again. I didn’t tell Molly that DeBurgh gave her twice the usual dose of morphine and that though she should not be feeling a thing, not the sheets or the bed beneath her, not color or sound or sensation, she was still in pain. I didn’t want Molly to know that the morphine, the one thing we’d come to rely upon, was no longer working.
You’ll see, in the morning she’ll be fine. I looked up from my boots but Molly didn’t look convinced. I’m heading down to the river, I said. I didn’t check the traps today.
Can I not come? she asked and there was something pleading in her voice, something so pained in her expression that I had to look away. I can help so, she said, breathless now as I walked the hallway, her voice calling after me. It’ll be quicker that way, if we do it together. But I was taking my jacket off its peg and Molly was standing at the far end of the hallway, unmoving, stoic now and proud—she would not chase after me although I knew I’d wounded her.
The paraffin lamps glowed warmly from their blackened glass sconces on the wall—the earthy warm smell of wick and oil and burning dust. Molly’s eyes were wide and expectant, her pallor paler than I remembered. There were dark circles beneath her lashes and her eyes were small and feral. It seemed like days since either of us had slept—but if that was what I looked like I didn’t want to see it. I waked and washed in darkness and went to bed in the same—and I’d wondered if, like our mother, we’d learnt to avoid the light.
I’m off now, I shouted and slammed the door behind me.
I rowed through darkness, and each slap of the oar, each ripple silvering the black water, filled my head with a welcome emptiness. Clouds slid before the moon and darkness closed in on all sides as I made my way through the inlet. A fog came boiling over the fields and leveled the banks. Sounds curved and then widened as the boat neared the bay, and often I’d thought I could just keep rowing, out to the estuary where the three rivers merged, and then on and on, across the Irish Sea, then through the straits of Saint George’s Channel. Never mind England, I’d head for France and Spain and Italy.
Something splashed in the water off to my right and I stilled my oars and waited. The whorls spread wider and wider before I heard the flutter of wings and a bittern came out of the fog, skimmed the water’s surface, and then with a cry rose up into the mist again. I began to draw the line in toward the traps but then paused. Half hidden at the edge of the river, in the crescent of the point, was a boat similar to my own but painted blue and with damaged oarlocks. Mist passed over its bow and for a moment it was invisible. I leant back on the oars, and, as quietly as I could, I eased the boat out of the current and into the shelter of rocks and overhanging trees along the bank. I didn’t want to be caught by a poacher on the river. If I lay still until they moved on, I would be fine; otherwise I risked a severe beating. I raised my oars and lay them inside the boat.
The w
ater in the bottom of the boat soaked through my rubbers and I began to shiver. Quietly, I hummed all the songs I knew and figured that when I was done a good hour had passed. I opened my flask and slowly sipped the remainder of my tea; it was still hot and I was glad for it. I had the mug to my lips when I heard someone moving through the trees toward the banks. I squinted into the fog. They were moving slow but steady. Branches splintered, brush crackled, and then a man emerged at the edge of the downstream bank. There was a large bundle slung over his shoulder, which he lowered slowly into the boat with a grunt. The boat dipped and rocked as the weight clattered in its bottom. The figure put his hands upon his knees, worked them as if he were kneading the muscle, then rose and stretched his back.
He unbuttoned his overcoat, rolled it up, and threw it into the boat. He took a handful of his jumper and dipped his head to it as if he were sniffing, then he pulled that off and did the same. When he bent to the water and splashed his face, he was silhouetted in fog-shrouded light and the water sparkled in his curly hair. I was frozen by the image of him.
Something in the boat shifted and the man was up and over the keel quickly—much faster than I could have imagined him moving—and suddenly there was a gaff in his hand and he was swinging it up and then down, again and again, and the boat was rocking back and forth, and with each blow I heard something wet splintering and breaking apart. Finally, the man climbed out of the boat and sat on his haunches by the water’s edge, his deep breaths thumping the night like a heartbeat. He dragged his throat and hacked phlegm. My oars rattled in the bottom of the boat, and I tensed. The figure looked sharply up the bank, stared hard into the mist. After a moment, he scanned the bay, then the far rocks. A bird called to another and then was still. He looked back through the woods the way he’d come, coughed, rolled up his sleeves, and then quickly and smoothly climbed into the boat, undid his mooring ties, and slipped out into the current. The mist covered both man and boat, and but for the deft wash of his smooth oar strokes barely breaking the water, they were gone.
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