The Boatman and Other Stories

by Billy O'Callaghan

  For a while, Miss Reilly was there, the same as everyone else, as part of the casual background. And then, for me, she simply slipped out of the picture. I’m not sure why I can’t recall the last time I was in her home or spoke a few words to her on the road, but I suppose endings only reveal themselves with the benefit of hindsight, and I’d have had no cause, in actually living those moments, to mark them out as in any way special.

  In the Mill I spent my days shoulder-deep in grime, alongside grown men; I rolled cigarettes and smoked with them during lunch breaks and smiled and even laughed at the teasing things they talked about, their voices hushed and crackling like gravel under running feet, their eyes flashing for the room’s corners and across the floor to make certain that there were no women or girls within earshot, and if I understood little apart from the lowness of their words I still felt my way along, the way all the lads of my age did, learning my lessons until the mysteries started to unravel. Work was everything then, swallowing days and leaving you so tired that, after the short walk home at the end of your shift, and slouched in a shallow stupor, you ate the bit of dinner that your mother put up for you, your mind having already dropped to a slower speed, and then sat for a couple of hours by the fire or, if the evening was a fine one, outside to stand a while with whoever was around, and you went to bed early so that you’d be up the following morning, bright and ready for more of the same.

  Against all of that, the weekend was an interlude in reality, a day and a half’s worth of time that afforded an extra hour’s sleep and which got to be spent playing hurling or running drag hunts, with Kelleher, who’d also gone into the Mill, McNamara, who was serving a carpentry apprenticeship under his mother’s brother, and some interchangeable handful of the dozen or so other lads that we’d known forever, that we’d climbed trees and fought and sang and laughed and come out of school with. And Saturday night, once we’d all found our appetites, was for dancing.

  I recall the big night out as being part of an almost weekly routine in the same way I remember long hot summers and perfect snow-clad Christmas Eves, but that’s just how my ageing mind works, living for diamond moments plucked from the otherwise incessant drabness. In fact, we probably only got to indulge our hormones once every couple of months, if even that often, travelling by bus the ten miles down to the Majorca in Crosshaven and usually walking the ten miles back, the late hour be damned, happy to be saving the shilling’s fare and fuelled by passed-around bottles of stout, our heads swimming with rock ’n’ roll beats and the thoughts of those girls who had let us take them out on the floor to swing beneath the over-amplified howling of Brendan Bowyer and the Royal Showband, or Butch Moore and the Capitol.

  I couldn’t help but change. Life demanded it. I grew up, set my sights in different directions and answered different needs. I made no conscious decision to step away from Miss Reilly, or from any of the details that had comprised my childhood; it was simply that my ear attuned itself to other callings. Bríd was still at home, and if anything changing only for the worse, her voice airy from having to so constantly speak down to lesser intellects, her eyes always a flicker away from a superior roll, and yet still existing to taunt, flirt and antagonise, but because of work, and my own occasional play, I saw less of her and her friends, and even when I stayed in of an evening she was usually off somewhere, leading some Blackrock or Passage boy astray with promises that she had no intention of fulfilling.

  And then, somewhere around my sixteenth birthday, after months of watching from afar and a few awkward attempts at conversation, Sally Donovan agreed to come out for a walk with me. It’s still like yesterday in my mind, the Carrigaline Road of a bright early evening, unexpectedly fine for so deep into autumn even with little more than the memory of a sun remaining in the sky, and she in a navy-blue skirt to her knees, tight-fitting yellow wool cardigan with the top button undone and the sleeves pushed up her forearms, and her wheaten hair in a swept-back shoulder-length wave that, to my eyes, made her look just like Grace Kelly.

  I’d told nobody about the date, but at the last minute had confided in my father, and he laughed at first and started to tease me but then, understanding, I suppose, grew suddenly serious. He went to his pocket for the handkerchief in which he kept his few coins but, because it was still only Wednesday, all he could do was advise that I walk on the outside of the footpath, which was the gentlemanly thing to do where girls and women were concerned. ‘Just make sure to behave yourself, boy,’ he added, looking at me in an open way that was unusual for him, he being the shy sort even with us. ‘I know you will anyway, but it wouldn’t do to turn forgetful. Jack Donovan is a sound enough fella, but he’d feed you to the dogs over one of his daughters. And he’d be well within his rights.’

  Sally and I had known one another our entire lives; I’d played with her brothers, and with her, too, out on the Pond Bank, damming the river of a summertime so that we could deepen it enough to swim. But because she was that year or so younger than me, and because a year at seven or eight or ten was a chasm, she hadn’t stuck in my mind the way others did. And if anything, having shared a childhood only intensified our awkwardness.

  Hardly a word passed between us until we reached Carr’s Hill, though I was tuned tight to every step she took. Dead leaves from the sycamore and horse-chestnut trees that crowded the road on either side whispered and crunched beneath our feet; the stripped branches, tangled together above us, intensified the gold-white stabs of penetrating light; and occasional pecks of breeze, whenever we reached a clearing, put strands of hair across her face. For us, being so young, those were moments of deep romance, and for me, anyway, but I think for Sally, too, there’d never again be such a heightened sense of awareness, such a feeling of having stepped between life stages and tasting, even if only as a sip, the astonishment of immortality. All along the way, until the tree cover cleared and the great iron cross of the paupers’ graveyard loomed into view, she kept stealing glances at me that I pretended not to notice, apart from once or twice when our eyes couldn’t help but meet and which she answered with an embarrassed grin.

  She’d already told me, just as we were setting out, that she had to be home before teatime, that her father would be at my door if she wasn’t. For that reason, we decided that the top of Carr’s Hill was far enough, and because we still had time and because it was so quiet and peaceful out here, we sat a while on a ditch, side by side and looking out across fields that I knew well, some from having hunted for hares and rabbits and a few from having helped thresh at harvest time. And gradually – mainly, I have to admit, at her prompting – we found things to talk about. She loved music, she said, Elvis, especially, but hadn’t yet been dancing, apart from the occasional hop that was put on at the ICA Hall or the Legion of Mary; and she listened, leaning in, her expression wide with rapture, while I described what the Majorca Ballroom was like, talking as if I knew all about it, even though I’d only been there a couple of times, and keeping the focus on the bustle of the crowds and the bands I’d heard rather than the girls I’d met – not that there’d been many of those, or much of anything to confess. Finally, I helped her from the ditch and we started back, but it had been a good idea to sit a while because something had shifted between us, and we hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when she stumbled slightly against me and, under the pretence of steadying herself, slipped her right hand inside my elbow and held on, and by the time we reached Douglas again we were holding hands as if we’d been born or forged with one another in mind.

  * * *

  That was the turn I took. I can’t exactly say that I put away childish things, but I could certainly feel myself growing up. Friendships remained solid enough, with Kelleher especially, because he was in the Mill with me, though in a different department, and we kicked a ball around together at lunchtimes and shared a smoke most days, but by then he’d started doing a line with Pauline Canniffe, so his time after work was also limited. It’s true that there’d have been plen
ty of others if I had wanted them, lads to go drinking with, but I suppose there’s no shame in admitting that I’d had my head turned. And it was Sally, weeks or months later, who mentioned Miss Reilly.

  I’d joined her, as usual, at Chambers’ Corner, at her end of the village, after putting away a hurried dinner of a few floury potatoes and a small piece of hake that must have been boiling half the day and had my jaw sore from chewing. (‘No decent girl will let you near them with that breath,’ Bríd had said, scowling at me across the table, though I knew by the way her canines were showing that she was thinking not of me and Sally but of whatever boy she had lined up for the evening. She hated fish, and I was glad to have arrived home to only the aftermath of her usual histrionics.) Above at the corner, not long after six, Sally took my hand and gave me her cheek to kiss, but wouldn’t let me near her mouth because it wasn’t yet fully dark and because women stood chatting in most of the doorways along the terrace. And in search of escape and a bit of privacy, we started over along the road towards the church.

  ‘There’s a couple from England after moving in above in Reillys,’ she said, as we walked. ‘He’s some kind of bookkeeper, and my mother met the wife down in Bresnan’s buying sausages for his breakfast and said that she’s very glamorous and slow-speaking, with a big round north-country accent and her hair done up short in a way that doesn’t suit her face at all. Too wide across the mouth, my mother said. But other than that, very nice. They’re not staying, I don’t think. They’re just over to sort out her bits and pieces. He’s the son, or grandson, I forget which, of a cousin.’

  At first, these were just words. I listened, the way I always did whenever Sally spoke, as much for the soft tune of her voice as anything else, but the sense of what she was saying was lost on me.

  ‘Liz Reilly,’ she said, reading my blankness. ‘You know.’

  I nodded, but slowly. ‘Is there room for them? The cousins, I mean. Or whoever they are. Those range houses are very small.’

  ‘Sure, there’s only the two of them.’ She looked up into my face, studied me closely. ‘You knew she died, didn’t you?’

  We’d planned to go as far as the Finger Post, and possibly even a bit of the way down the Passage Road, as far as Windsor, maybe, since her curfew had been relaxed a little, her father having by now taken my full measure. But there was a rawness about the evening, the weather had turned and a wind was blowing in snaps, cold in our faces and full of the smell of rain, and once we reached the church we went left and followed instead the long lane that wound between the Catholic and Protestant graveyards. We often walked the lane, and liked to, because of the towering cemetery elms and the way the road twisted, making corners that cut you off from everything and everyone; and sometimes, if it was fine and if I sensed that she’d let me, I’d press her against the old wall on the Protestant side of the road and we’d kiss, the smothering fronds of ivy working like a cushion for us against the stone. Nothing more than that, and while I tried hard to hold any devouring thoughts at bay, she kept a tight grasp of both my wrists, making sure that my hands strayed neither higher nor lower than her hips. This evening, though, because of the wind, walking had to be enough.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said, feeling unsettled. ‘And I can’t understand how that could have happened. You’d think my mother would have mentioned something, or that they’d have been on about it in the Mill. Funerals are usually the talk of the place.’

  ‘Probably they were talking about it, and your head was just somewhere else.’

  She squeezed my hand, and I looked at her and, after a second, smiled.

  ‘You were fond of her,’ she said. ‘It’s all right to say so. I remember you carrying her bags up the hill for her. And hearing about that fight you had with Kelleher over all the slagging they used to give you. I always thought it was good of you. Because she was old and on her own.’

  ‘I can’t say why I did that,’ I said. ‘Most of the time she hardly even knew who I was. And she was none of my business. But I felt sorry for her. That’s a fair hill up to her place, and very hard with bags of shopping.’

  ‘They used to say she was a bit funny. My mother would sometimes pass a remark. I heard once, from your Bríd, actually, that she’d lived with someone for a while in England. A woman, Bríd said. If you can imagine. Do you suppose that was why she never married?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully, and flexed my hand for Sally’s fingers to slip between my own. ‘To me she was just an old woman. But, if I’m honest, I could sense a difference. Even if I didn’t understand.’

  ‘Poor thing, all the same. It must have been sad for her, if that’s the way she was. Because that wouldn’t exactly set you up for an easy life, would it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Life isn’t easy for anyone, though. We each have our own set of problems. We’re all small against the world.’

  ‘It’s difficult to imagine her young, isn’t it? I wonder what she was like. Whether she was beautiful, I mean. Whether she laughed easily and a lot. Whether she was afraid of being found out, of people seeing the truth of her. Whatever that might have been.’

  We’d had rain earlier in the day, and everything around us was damp. I stopped, and Sally did too, and as she turned to face me I took her into my arms. I’ve never been brazen, and wasn’t, even then. But I felt in sudden need of an embrace, and a deep and long-held kiss.

  ‘Love shouldn’t be anybody’s business,’ I sighed. ‘What lives between two people doesn’t belong to anyone else. And maybe we don’t always have to understand what it’s about.’

  ‘Love?’ she asked, whispering the word as if tasting it for the first time, and I held her against me, then brought my mouth again to hers and closed my eyes.

  A Sense of Rain

  I was stretched out in the centre of the bed, reading, when Ellie emerged from the en suite, naked and with her hair down around her shoulders. She stood for a moment, but then her mouth tightened and she spread a towel over the room’s only chair, sat at the dresser with her back to me and began to feed the pins of the gold-and-diamond studs that I’d bought her for her last birthday into her earlobes. The right, first, and then the left.

  Paris was just as we’d remembered. Our plush, well-lit hotel room was spacious – a rare enough thing in a city known for its cramped accommodations – and ideally located, overlooking the Rue du Bac and the Rue de Montalembert and with the Church of St Thomas Aquinas at our back. I’d requested a room on the fifth floor, one of the large deluxe suites with a huge king-size bed, walk-in shower and a balcony that offered views out over the city. Not quite the honeymoon suite of our first visit, five years earlier, but as much as anyone could reasonably want. An extravagance, perhaps, but one that felt justified. Because we needed Paris now in a way we hadn’t then.

  Since arriving on the Friday, late in the afternoon, the life we’d left behind had ceased almost immediately to exist. All the problems, all the mistakes, and almost all of the grief. That first evening, we unpacked our shared suitcase, freshened up, and ate an early dinner in the hotel restaurant, an intimate little place run by a two-star Michelin chef that seemed to have overblown its reputation only until the food arrived. By eight, we were back in the room and wrestling one another out of our clothes, as if the miscarriage, and the warnings from the doctors, was misfortune that belonged to other people. I felt light-headed and Ellie seemed possessed, and giving in to the frenzy was like coming to a banquet after a stint on hunger strike. We spoke in whispers and gasps, afraid for some ridiculous reason of being overheard, but urging one another on, helpless to stop. Yet our lovemaking, after the initial collision, had a gentle quality, too, as if we were each attuned to the other’s fragility.

  The door of the bathroom had slipped its clasp and fallen a couple of inches ajar, creating a sliver of white, steamy spillage, and the glow of the bedside lamp, good for an arm’s reach, spilt across my chest barely enough to illuminate the pages of my book.

&
nbsp; ‘Still Faulkner?’ Ellie said, watching me in the mirror. I looked up from the book.

  ‘I’m persevering. Some pages, I think I can almost understand what I’m reading.’

  Her blonde hair seemed to swallow the light, and to shine. It lay in damp tendrils down her back and over her breasts, and made me think of feathers tugged loose or askew by a fighting breeze, the roadkill of field birds that have paid a bad price with traffic. Her narrow shoulders, and her long slender face and frail body reflected in the mirror, stood pallid against the dimness.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Almost ten.’

  ‘I’m wide awake now.’

  ‘Good. Then come back to bed.’

  She smiled. ‘God, don’t you ever stop?’

  I was still watching her. We were watching each other, through a piece of glass, she with her back to me and with the room lying between us.

  ‘So, get dressed,’ I said. ‘This is Paris. We can take a walk, stop in somewhere for a glass of wine. Or a coffee. There are places here that stay open long into the night.’

  She sighed. ‘My impression of Paris is always of rain. Why is that, do you suppose?’

  The book lay tented open on my chest, and I picked it up, looked at the page number and tried to memorise it, knowing that without the number I’d never find my place again. And there’d be no question of me ever trying to start over. It was a slim book and I was already well into the second half, but I could only stay with it for so long. Already, my strength was waning. To avoid despair, I stopped myself from analysing or summarising what I’d so far read.