by Tim Buckley
No, Emily did not take to motherhood that night. In some ways, I’m not sure she ever took to it at all, not really. It’s not that she didn’t love Cara; I know that, in her own way, she adored her and was devoted to her. She did everything she had to do. She had read all the books and she followed all of the rules. She was attentive and meticulous in the way she cared for Cara but… Well, that was just it, I thought but could never say, it was all a bit mechanical. It was done with cold, military precision, not with the overwhelming emotion that I’d expected. The Emily of those early days was a different person, a woman I’d never met before. My Emily was passionate and confident, and yet gentle and soft. My Emily wouldn’t have slavishly followed the advice of a guru because my Emily would have known better herself. Even if she didn’t. My Emily would never have left her baby to cry just because that’s what the book said – she couldn’t even bear the plaintive bleating of the babydolls without singing them to sleep. But this Emily was afraid and uncertain – a little bit lost, even – and she needed the reassurance that her library of books provided. For my part, I was overwhelmed, there was no doubt. On my own, I would have been a useless catastrophe of milk too cold and bathwater too hot. Between us, between my frantic overreaction to everything and Emily’s clinical adherence to the rules, we might have got it just about right.
5
My uncle Eoin was my hero. When their father died, Eoin and my father inherited the family farm in County Tipperary. With a growing herd of Friesian cattle on prime Golden Vale pastureland, it was one of the largest dairy farms in the area and the two brothers loved every minute of every day they spent working it. They were more than brothers, they had always been each other’s closest friends. They knew their neighbours well, of course, and helped out with the others at calving or when it was time to save the hay or bring in the turf. But they were always a self-contained little unit, independent and aloof, even. They never really travelled far from the land. Aside from the usual pilgrimages to Dublin for the Spring Show or Christmas shopping on the eighth of December or to follow the county hurlers to Croke Park, they were happy to be at home and never seemed to feel the need for a holiday or a break or a change of scenery. Eoin’s wife, Mairéad, was easy-going and faithful and never questioned her husband’s simple choices. She was a local girl and they’d known each other since childhood.
Their world started to change when my father brought his new bride back to their home. My mother was a more independent spirit and there’s no doubt that her arrival upset the delicate balance of life on the farm. It’s not that there was any ill will or malice in her and she would never have set about to bring down on them any discord or disquiet. She had married my father after a whirlwind romance and not comfortably long before I was born. She was still waiting for her life to begin, and starting to wonder if it ever would. As I grew up and was better able to understand, I got the impression from things that Mairéad or Eoin might let slip that she seemed to unsettle my father. It seemed that he had to cling on to keep hold of the life he knew. But they divided the huge old farmhouse into homes for two families and, the usual vagaries of farming life aside, they all lived happily enough, for the most part, anchored to the farm.
It was therefore, perhaps, a cruel irony that a rare deviation from that well-worn path led to the end of it all. My father decided to surprise my mother for their wedding anniversary with a romantic trip to Galway, without me in tow. I was still very young but I remember hearing the news with a sense of dread. I couldn’t remember a day, never mind a night, when they had both been away from me and even the fact that I was going to stay with my uncle did little to quell the unease. I went to my mother to tell her that they couldn’t go, or that at least they had to bring me if they insisted on leaving home. She smiled that sympathetic smile of hers as she ruffled my hair and assured me that it would all be fine, that they’d be back in a couple of days and I’d hardly notice they were gone. My father was less patient with my interference in his plans for the weekend, plans that had taken him painstaking weeks of unaccustomed effort, and he shooed me out of the room while he packed a bag.
Inevitably, they ignored the tearful pleading of a child and, inevitably, they never came back. Somewhere between Ennis and Gort, on the barren rocks of the Burren, their car left the road and they were killed. I have travelled to that spot many times and nobody has ever been able to explain to me how, on that straight stretch of road on a bright spring day with no other cars around, they came to grief and my whole world fell apart.
Even now, sometimes when I close my eyes or just before I fall asleep, I see in cruelly stark high definition every moment of the week that followed. The return of their bodies to the house and being terrified of the coffins in the front room. The shock of touching their cold, white faces when my uncle lifted me up to kiss them goodbye. The hearse that seemed to taunt me as it crept away with them to the church. The funeral and the emptiness after. The wake and the hushed murmur of respectful voices in the good room. Friends and neighbours standing elbow to elbow, cups and saucers and plates in clumsy hands, stiffly holding their ground lest they might bump each other or bump the now-precious artefacts that told the ordinary story of a life that was over. What I remember too, even though I was so young, is that my uncle seemed never to leave my side. Never cloying or interfering, never offering empty reassurance or pointless consolation, just always there.
And slowly, inevitably, I came through it, never the same as before and never without that dull ache of loss, but through it and prepared for whatever came my way. And through those years, my uncle became my hero. As I grew older and better able to understand our circumstances, so I understood Eoin’s sacrifice. With twice as much work to do, despite the labourers that came and went and despite the enthusiastic but clumsy contributions that I made with my cousins, he lived and breathed the farm and its business. Although he loved it still, it came too with the painful memories of what he had lost. He took on a soft, timid only child to raise with his own two, to feed and to clothe and to put through school, but also to guide through the tragedy that had befallen all of us. He never made me feel different in any way to Cathal or Seán. When we played football and hurling together in the fields, or helped with the hay and the silage, or struggled with homework or dressed with nervous fingers and thumbs to go to a party or on a date, I felt the same hand of encouragement as I felt before and the same one that my cousins felt. Or at least that was how it seemed to me. And when they ganged up on me as was natural, I suppose, Eoin calmed the waters and gently but firmly let it be known that there were no outsiders in his house. When my aunt Mairéad favoured them with their favourite food or new clothes, as was natural too, Eoin always seemed to know and always made it up to me, but quietly. I knew, too, Eoin’s hand when it doled out punishment and rebuke, but accepted it with no more than any teenager’s churlish indignation because I never questioned that it was fair and it was deserved.
My uncle was my hero. He still is.
It was, in the end, too much to ask that Eoin could manage that huge farm alone. Though he probably knew it, he couldn’t bring himself to sell off the land that he still saw as my birthright. And so he continued to work it and to work himself into the ground. But eventually circumstances ganged up on him and contrived to beat him down. It was during a particularly lean spell that Eoin had been forced to borrow money from the bank to replace the milking equipment that was falling apart with old age. While he was getting the new machinery up and running and sorting out the teething problems, and trying to keep the farm working as usual, the herd was struck by a mastitis outbreak that almost cut his output in half. When he couldn’t repay the money he owed, the bank repossessed as much of the land and the cattle as they needed to make good the arrears. The cattle were sold at auction in Thurles and that day too is etched on my memory. When the lot came around and the auctioneer invited the first bid, I watched the tears rolling down my uncle’s cheeks. He had
n’t just lost livestock, he had lost his brother’s livestock and, to him, that was unconscionable. Worse, he blamed the outbreak on his own failures of herdsmanship and husbandry and that shame only added to the hurt. The money was repaid and life went on, a smaller farm with fewer cattle but enough to give him a sort of livelihood. But he never got over that day and, in some small way, the bitterness that it begat changed him. Just a little bit.
It was only long afterwards, when I was older, that I began to understand the worry in him that he had failed his family, failed his children. For Eoin, and for Mairéad too, the most important thing in their world was to provide for the boys and to set them up for the life ahead. And so whatever happened to Eoin, whatever tragedy or misfortune befell him, it hit him twice. First it hit him for the trouble it brought to him – the shame of failure, the worry of money troubles, the bitterness that comes from being wronged and all the rest. But then it circled back round and hit him again with the fear that Seán and Cathal – and me, I suppose – might suffer too. Life is hard enough looking after yourself; taking on the responsibility of keeping your family safe and happy and healthy is another story entirely. And then, when you’ve spent fifteen or eighteen or twenty of your best years providing for them and defending them and setting them on their way, they decide that they’ve known so much more than you all along; they’re a little bit surprised, in fact, that you’ve managed to get this far knowing only what you do. So they take off and live their own lives, make all the same mistakes all over again and maybe call in from time to time when they need something or feel a bit guilty. If parenting was a career, I could never see a day when I’d apply. I never did, and yet I found myself taking the job.
6
Cara’s arrival put my plans for the lighthouse on the back burner and that, combined with the endless bureaucracy of the planning process, meant that it was a couple of years after I’d made the decision to buy the lighthouse before I was actually able to start work on it. Cecil Farnham, the local solicitor who took care of the legal process, warned me constantly that it was a risky venture and that I was taking, as he called it, a “leap of optimism”, but I was in love with the place and determined to see it through. The problem was that I knew next to nothing about property development and the council, having finally handed it over, were getting nervous in the face of my baseless and unproductive enthusiasm.
The planning inspector came out on a Wednesday, not long before Christmas. It was a seething hot day, even the breeze felt like a draught from a furnace. Cara, who was by then toddling about like a drunk in high heels, was in the little playpen that I had made for her in the relative cool of the house, under the big ceiling fan that Nathan had just brought back to life. She played happily every day in that playpen, and it allowed me to get on with working on the house without checking every minute where she was and up to what mischief.
“Papa!” she cried. “Look!”
I set down the plaster that I was mixing and wiped my hands on a rag. She was standing in the middle of the playpen in the little denim dungarees that we had bought for her, her dark eyes shining out of her sallow skin under impossibly long eyelashes. Her long, fair hair fell gently around her face and framed the gap-toothed smile that seemed always to light it up. She was pointing up at her little toy monkey who was perched on top of the playpen’s rail.
“Whoa, that monkey’s crazy!” I laughed. “What’s he up to, sweetheart?”
“Climbing!” she squealed with delight, pointing a little finger at the roof. “Climbing to the sky!”
“And what’s his name?”
“Monkey!” she cried. Obviously.
That was how we spent most of our days. I’d sit her on the blanket in her playpen with her teddy bears and animals and picture books while I worked to the strains of nursery rhymes and kids’ songs from one of her CDs. Progress with the work would have been a lot quicker if I hadn’t stopped so often to lift her out so that she could try to catch the lizards that darted around the place or to check for whales breaching out to sea or just to let her rub the different surfaces around the house and the tower. Surfaces transfixed her, the difference between rough and smooth, hot and cool, wet and dry was a source of constant fascination and she’d look at me wide-eyed at the revelation of yet another touch. Dressed in her overalls, as we called them, and a pair of pink boots covered with fairy-tale princesses, she would announce proudly to Emily every morning as we left the house that she was “going to work”. We’d stop for a coffee and I’d read her a story. I’d stop for lunch and we would do one of her puzzles. Or we’d just stop and go for a wander. I loved it and so did she. To Nathan and the subcontractors working on the place, her presence on site was a quirky little curiosity. To her, the men and their work was just another source of wonder to keep her enthralled.
We were walking slowly round the side of the tower, she holding on to my finger as we negotiated the rockery that looked out onto the ocean, when I heard the truck pull up.
“I think we have company, Cara,” I said, and scooped her up onto my shoulders to walk round the front of the house.
“Hi there, Mr Wilde.” Pete Baxter, a jovial-looking man who looked also like he should still be at school, was climbing out of a jeep marked with the logo of the county planning department.
He strode over and shook my hand.
“How you doing, Pete?”
“Good, mate, pretty good,” he nodded, then looked at Cara. “And who is this beautiful young lady?”
“This is Cara,” I said, and she held on just a little bit tighter round my neck as she assessed this stranger.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Cara,” he said with a broad smile, tipping the brim of his hat. “I’m Pete.”
“You’ve timed it well, mate,” I said, “I’ve just hooked up the coffee machine. Get you one?”
So we went back inside and I sat Cara back into her little playpen while I got a couple of coffees.
“So how’s it going, do you think?” Baxter asked, taking the coffee and setting it down on the makeshift table in what was the living room of the old keeper’s house.
I smiled as he stirred sugar and cream into the coffee.
“That sounds like it might be a loaded question, Pete?”
He smiled back.
“That transparent, eh?”
“Long way to come out from town for a bad coffee, I’m guessing? Must be something else on your mind?”
He took a mouthful and put the mug back down on the table then reached into his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of papers, flicking through them quickly. When he found the one he was looking for, he put it on the table and turned it round for me to see.
“Here’s the problem,” he said, reluctant almost to point out what he knew was already obvious. “This is the project plan that the committee signed off, and the fact is you’re already a ways behind schedule. The planning committee is afraid that you won’t get the place watertight by winter and that you’ll end up going backwards. They’re worried you’re going to miss the deadlines and they’re worried you’ll pull out or leave it half-done. They can’t afford to leave another eyesore blotting the coastline. Sorry, mate, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but… ”
I looked at the schedule set out on the page. Baxter was right, we were way behind. We had never really been on schedule, if I’m honest. We’d had to rely too much on subcontractors – to clear the old slate off the roof, to take out the interior walls, to replace old lead piping… and every time one of them was a day late, the dominoes of my project plan tumbled again. Nathan had, in his own quiet way, questioned if it had been realistic, that we needed to build some more contingency into the plan. But I had ignored him, of course, and convinced myself that it would all work out in the end. It wasn’t, really.
I let out a long sigh and drank some coffee.
“It’s not your faul
t, Pete, I know that,” I said. “And I know we’re behind. Look, I’ll talk to Nathan and we’ll call in the subcontractors. Maybe we can come up with a new plan. I have to get better at holding them to their word, and better at making sure the place is ready for them when they get here.”
“A new plan that doesn’t get the place watertight by the end of March just won’t fly, mate, I gotta tell you. You’re going to have to convince them that you can get it to a point where it’s not going to suffer in the winter. Think you can do that?”
I nodded.
“I don’t have much choice, by the sound of it, do I? Let me get Nathan in and we’ll talk to the boys. See what we can do.”
“OK. But the next planning committee meeting is on Tuesday – you’ll have to give me something to work with for that, yeah?”
I turned to Cara who was deep in animated conversation with a polar bear and a doll.
“What about it, Cara,” I said, “think we can have a plan by Tuesday?”
She put down the doll, stood up and pointed at the roof.
“Monkey’s climbing,” she squealed, clapping her hands and grinning at the sheer joy of it all. “Monkey’s crazy!”