by Neil Hegarty
As the sea mine exploded, the black-eyed gulls rose into the air as one and flew north into open ocean, south into the lough, east towards the far shore. On the little beach, a wide crater yawned where the sea mine had lain on the sand; the strand was empty now of life.
*
Sarah ran down the stone steps and onto the grass. The sun was shining now brilliantly on the sea, and she raised a hand to shade her eyes. She had seen them from the road, walking slowly north along the coastal path towards the beach: she was on time, she had a stitch in her side and her bag jiggled in her hand – but she was on time. She was leaving Cassie, she was making Cassie explain to her father, later – but she was on time.
She reached the coastal path herself, now, and turned north. They were only a minute away, two minutes away – and now as she turned a corner, the force of the explosion lifted her off her feet. She fell heavily back on the grass and lay for a moment, dazed and shocked – but already she knew what it was. She knew the dull thump and report of torpedoes exploding out to sea, she was accustomed to going down to the shore in the days that followed, accustomed to the sight of what they saw there: a foreshore littered with bodies, bloated, nibbled, their humanity barely in evidence.
But this sound was different, closer, more violent: this was no secure cataclysm at sea. This would affect them all. She staggered to her feet, she dragged herself on along the path, she turned another corner. There was Cassie, on hands and knees at the foot of the black rocks. There was the beach and the crater. Nobody else in sight. Nobody else alive.
*
Sarah built up the dying fire into a decent blaze: soon, the chilly kitchen would warm up nicely. The short December day was already over, the furry frost was returning to the yard, Cassie in bed on the doctor’s instruction, Brendan in his room with the door closed. Sarah sat down now at the table. The backs of her legs pulsed and stung. She hardly knew what she had to do, although she understood that she had little time in which to do it: the word had gone out; and soon a neighbour or two would be calling on them. But in her mind’s eye, the town fell upon them in force; she saw rivers of people filing out from the town and descending the lane and filling the yard and encompassing the house, all in silence. She had scant time, but for the moment she sat and looked at the fire.
She had always been responsible for Cassie: she knew that, had always known it. Cassie could run a house, that was true. She could mend and bake and keep a place ticking over – very nicely indeed. But always she needed looking after, in a million other ways to do with people. Always, always; and Sarah had always known it. Always, until recently. Always, until the world had muscled into her own life, and left her with no time and certainly no compassion or patience for anyone else and for Cassie least of all.
She was sitting very upright, and her hands were grasping her knees. On the shelf, the copper bowl glowed in the firelight, its new dent a shadow on its lip. Help me with this, she said aloud to the empty kitchen. She said it to the kitchen, not to any actual person – Brendan, her mother, being all long gone. She looked at the pair of family photographs, dim on the wall in the far corner of the dim room. Help me with this – silently now. There was no longer any help to be had. Help, she knew, would have to come from within.
It made sense, now, that the kitchen was so dim. She felt as though she had to feel her way to some kind of conclusion, something that would make sense. That would form some solid shape in this bleak light. Perhaps not the right shape, perhaps not a form that would be of any great use in the months and years to come – but something that she could take hold of, that she could carry with her, that would give form and weight and substance to what remained of her life.
That would protect her.
Because yes: there was nobody else – not even God who, she realised with a sort of dull surprise, had not been around for some time now. She thought: I didn’t notice that. I didn’t even know.
This, then, was the job she had, the task she had been set, had set herself: to protect her life. To protect herself, come what may. She did not yet know, sitting there in that dark room, how she would go about this; on whom she might conceivably call to help her in this task; what consequences might flow as a result. But at this moment, none of this mattered. What mattered was salting away her emotions, salting away her weakness.
Arming herself for her life.
It was like this with her memories of – of violence (for even here she flinched at the prospect of naming) and of betrayal by Brendan: by the person she had a right to look to for succour, to love. Salt away her weakness, so that it could be retrieved, examined again as necessary – later, much later, when its potency was gone. Then she could look at it again – and remember again why protection must be the key to her life.
And arm herself too, armour herself so that she could never hurt anyone again.
For this is what had happened today. Anthony, who had liked her too much and who had been prepared to come and bring her away: Anthony was dead now. And this was her responsibility, was it not? Yes: it was her responsibility; and she knew she must make certain that she could never create such a situation again.
So she reasoned. Arm myself, armour myself – and nobody else need ever get hurt again. Had she protected herself in the course of these last months – so she reasoned – nobody would have got hurt.
And she would dedicate these efforts to Cassie. After this, Sarah thought, my hands at least will be clean. Because she was clear about this: that what had nearly happened to Cassie too – it too had come about as a direct result of Sarah’s own actions. She was clear about this; she was flinty when it came to her own culpability. Cassie did not take walks, by the sea or anywhere else; it was not something she ever did. So the fact that she was walking this morning – by the sea, on the beach – could be traced back and back. Back and back, Sarah thought: not only back to this morning but further and further back: on and on, and always involving me. She would protect herself from now on, and in doing so, she would protect those around her.
This was the resolution she made. This was the deal into which she entered, drawing now on the dense, reddish silence of the room for strength. There were additional advantages: by salting the past away in such a fashion, she need never look at it again unless there was good cause to do so. She need not drag it around behind her for the rest of her life. Distinct advantages, yes: she could see this, she could think clearly even at such a terrible time. She could cast off anything she needed to cast off – such as (she was honest enough to admit) the feelings of self-importance that seemed to arise, in spite of the efforts of her best self to damp them down. Self-importance? – well yes: because when the neighbours began to arrive, to enquire after Cassie, and bring the names of the dead, to drink tea and eat brack, it would be the grief of those bereaved, as well as the thrilling nature of the day’s event on which they would want to dwell. That was where Sarah would come in – since Brendan hardly fitted the bill.
So yes: once this was over, she could salt away – right away – these feelings too. She could consign them to the darkness, where with a bit of luck she need never remember them again. She flushed with shame at these thoughts, though – and here she sat upright once again – at least they were honest ones.
She looked again across the room. Then, slowly, she stepped across the room, reached up, unhooked the second photograph from its large brass sickle-shaped hook driven into the wall and lifted it down, holding it by its length of rough twine. There they were, the three of them, the polished black mahogany chair. There was Cassie, looking into the distance. She slipped across the room once more and into their bedroom, where Cassie lay sleeping in the big bed. The room was stocked with Cassie’s few possessions – the blanket in red and green plaid laid across the bottom of the bed, the solid trunk that she had brought with her from the Home, the St Brigid’s Cross woven from rushes and pinned onto the wall. Sarah glanced at the sleeping figure in the bed: and now she glanced again at
Cassie, and stole from the bedroom and returned to the main room. She took a cloth and dusted the photograph – its glass, its plain silver frame – until it shone, and replaced it on the wall beside its twin. Her grandparents, the boy who became her father, gazed at her: their faces, their chins tilted upwards. She looked back and then sat down in the silence. The coals hissed, settled in the hearth with a tiny sigh.
A matter of minutes later, the white lamps of the first visiting neighbours came bobbing down the lane.
14
Margaret was sitting with her back to the light. Her features Patrick could not make out; the edges of her silhouette, when he closed his eyelids and looked through his lashes, smeared and melded into a corona of yellow and white.
It must be midday or thereabouts: the sun was shining into the room, onto the waxy floor, the blue coverlet and those glossy yellowish walls. ‘Shall I pull the curtains?’ she’d said, and he had shaken his head and she sat and settled herself. And now here she was, backed and lit and obscured by the sun.
And his vision was going, besides. This was a stage, they had told him: the next stage. The next stage sounded as though a further stage might eventually be reached: a joyful stage, over Jordan, involving the return of his vision.
But no: hardly.
He knew better. His vision was going and was not coming back: Margaret would be blurred, regardless of where she sat.
‘Move your chair a little,’ he said.
She did this, angling the chair so that the sun now fell at an oblique. Now he could make out her face a little better: dark eyes and dark shadows and pale skin.
It had been the usual pattern, these last few weeks. He had kept her away, at arm’s length – even while he longed for her to be there, the only visitor he ever wanted to see among armies of the eager unwanted, pressing their noses against the little porthole window, misting the glass with their breath, bustling about offering dreadful sympathy. His mother had visited yesterday. He had sent her away. ‘Go away,’ he said – and she went. With relief, he’d thought.
No: he wanted to see only his sister; and wanted only to shove her away.
The sunlight slipped, hard and white, between his eyelashes. Now the sand in the hourglass was running out.
He moistened his lips a little, moved a little in the bed. ‘I thought I had all the time in the world,’ he said. ‘I thought I had time, that we all had time.’
Margaret nodded.
‘This really stinks,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘I thought I had time to try to put things right. I didn’t know I’d run out of time.’ His voice grew feeble with these last words and he sank back into his pillows.
A nurse clipped in. ‘Everything alright?’
Margaret nodded. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘thank you.’
‘Tea’ll be coming around in a few minutes,’ the nurse said and smiled.
‘Lovely,’ Margaret said. ‘Thanks.’ The nurse left; and Margaret turned towards the blue bed once more.
They had spoken only once more about what happened to Christine Casey and her mother. A year or so later, a year or so ago: another chilly October day, and in Margaret’s over-furnished living room, this time, rather than in some clattering cafe with ears wagging and eyes on the watch. Knowledge in this period had sat like a stone in his stomach. He felt weighed by this knowledge: its presence contaminated his days, his profession, his relationships. He saw how he was responding to its presence: by cultivating even more a sense of dryness, a desiccated air, that kept them at arm’s length and that kept him safe.
And with the rest of the world, too: dry and papery, like autumn leaves. It had never been likely that he would meet someone, that he would have the chance to reconfigure his life to allow in heat and fluidity. The scales, already weighed against him, now seemed to topple over. No chance: the very idea seemed absurd; and now it was too late.
Because this is how it is with secrets. So he realised now. They stay intact – it is an easy matter to keep a secret, in spite of what people say: but the price is a deformation of the soul; and eventually, the secret will create a hollow which the soul had once inhabited. So Patrick told himself: he noted this in no time at all. Noted the change: and saw that there was no help for it.
This is how it would be.
This was the price that must be paid for protecting his sister. There might have been time to set things right – but no: his story would not evolve in this way. It would barely evolve at all.
And the strange thing, he thought, was how naturally it came to him. It was as though he had been in training for such a scenario, his whole life long. As though the skills were there already, taught and honed and ready to be deployed. He knew how to keep the world around him at a distance, how to cultivate this tough, lacquered veneer, how to do what was necessary to maintain this situation.
Ironically, Margaret was less adept – and he was there, perched on her unyielding and over-contoured sofa on that October Saturday, because he had observed this lack of adeptness for himself. He drove to her house – a Sixties bungalow with steeply pitched roof, overgrown hedging, overgrown back garden – and parked on her quiet street. This had once been part of a far-flung suburb, but it was now well inside the city limits; he could hear the steady hum of Saturday traffic on the new road nearby. He rang the bell and Margaret admitted him and directed him, not to the kitchen, but to her good front room, with its excess of furniture.
Such seriousness, now, was part of the deal – though they did at least drink their tea from everyday mugs, and not from her good china. That would have been too much.
She had aged in the course of the last year. Perhaps Robert had aged too, but perhaps not: it was difficult to tell, what with his rangy frame and prominent bones. And besides, Patrick did not care to study this brother-in-law of his, did not care to look at him at all if he could help it.
He no longer cared to look at Margaret all that much either – but this was crucial. An untrained observer might have thought she looked better these days: her hair was shorter and lighter of shade; and she was lighter of frame too, trim and neat. ‘I’d hardly recognise you these days,’ he said, ‘you look so changed.’
Margaret shrugged at that. ‘I am changed.’
He kept his gaze on her. Lighter hair and a lighter frame – but less substantial, to his eye, already; more hollow. To his eye – yes, a replica of the being who eyed him, hollowed-out, in the bathroom mirror each morning. On the other hand, the colour of her hair suited her, and he could imagine people saying so: and why care about anything else?
‘So,’ she went on, tucking herself into a wide, spreading armchair, ‘what brings you here?’
He had stopped calling in, though she refrained from making this point. He appreciated that.
‘I wondered how you were,’ he said. ‘Last time I saw you, I didn’t think you looked yourself.’
This was it, wasn’t it? Margaret had ceased to look herself.
But she laughed at that. ‘I don’t think any of us do, really – do we? But there it is. And at least we’re still alive, aren’t we? How we look is neither here nor there, really: not in the face of the basic facts.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Is that why you’re here? – to say that I look a little different?’
He shook his head.
‘No,’ she went on. ‘You’re here to make sure that I’m OK in the head. That the deal I struck with myself still holds. Yes: well, it does.’ She ran a hand over the velvet arm of her chair. ‘I’m sorry I involved you: it was wrong of me, completely wrong. But,’ paused – though not from delicacy, he thought; there was a touch of brutality, instead, ‘you would have figured it out yourself, in the end. You would have winkled it out of me, wouldn’t you?’
Brutal, yes – but Patrick nodded. Because it was true: he would have. He had worked this out himself, already; and in the face of it, he had less reason for these jangling feelings of bitterness and resentment. He felt these sensat
ions, though, just the same. They were lodged, immoveable, they were going nowhere.
‘So you don’t need to worry about anyone blowing the whistle,’ Margaret added. ‘That won’t happen.’
The sofa was terribly unyielding.
‘What will happen instead?’
She shrugged – and now she looked at him, and he read again a terrible bleakness in her eyes.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We carry on living. Isn’t that what we’ve always done?’
It was true. How many times had she pulled his head back into the air, into the light? How many times had she made sure that he carried on living?
And now look at us.
And that was that conversation.
Not so long ago, Patrick thought now, as he lay in his blue hospital bed. Not so long; and not long to go. For me. He watched his sister through virtually closed eyelids. And it’s true: we’ve carried on living.
Although in my case, no. He smiled slightly and closed his eyes. No, not me. I’ve carried on dying.
‘Do something for me.’
She stiffened a little. ‘What?’
‘Something difficult,’ he said.
‘Oh – Patrick –’
‘– but not impossible.’
Margaret relaxed a little. ‘Go on.’
‘Just – make a little effort with her, that’s all.’ No need to name names. ‘She is the way she is: and besides, you might need each other in the future.’ Margaret stirred uneasily at that – well, he could see why, pregnant with potential meaning as those few little words were – and Patrick went on, speaking as clearly, as lucidly as the drugs and his dry mouth permitted. ‘I mean, it’ll just be the two of you left. You might need one another, that’s all.’