The Blackwater Lightship (19 page)

'I "would have hated their two faces looking at me. That's all. I told Declan and he told them. And I told Declan when I was pregnant and I suppose he told them that too. But my mother has never met Hugh or the boys.'

'And how long have you been married?'

'Seven years.'

'I knew it was a long time. It's a long time not to see people you're close to. But did something not happen last summer?' Paul asked.

'Declan organised a big reconciliation last summer,' Helen said. 'I came down here for a night with Hugh and the boys, and my mother was to drive out from Wexford, but she never turned up. My granny was full of apologies for her. And then I think they all gave her such a hard time that she rang me and we met in town one Saturday in Brown Thomas, if you don't mind, and she bought me the most expensive coat in the shop. And she bought presents for the boys as well and they wrote her thank-you letters. And the plan was that we were all going to drive down here again later this summer for a repeat of last summer, except this time she would turn up.'

'Do you mean that this has been going on for ten years and all because of this row in the Shelbourne?' Paul asked.

'Yes, that's correct,' Helen said stiffly.

'Has it ever occurred to you that they wanted you home because they loved you?'

'No, it has not. That is not why they wanted me home.'

'Has it ever occurred to you that your mother would have been worried about you going to America with people she didn't know?'

'Whose side are you on?' Helen asked.

'I don't understand the reason you didn't want them at your wedding and the reason you didn't see them for so long. What you've told me isn't reason enough.'

'I was angry with them for the reasons I told you.'

They heard a car in the lane. When Helen looked at her watch she saw that it was almost five o'clock. Larry and her grandmother smiled and waved as they drove into the yard in front of the house, but Paul continued talking.

'They just tried to get you a job,' he said. 'If you'd said that you didn't see them much for a year, I'd have understood, or two years. But a whole ten years and you didn't let your children meet your mother and your grandmother! Wow, there must be something between the three of you, something . . .'

Paul stopped as Larry stood in front of them. The old lady was taking a bag from the car.

'I don't know what he's saying,' Larry said, 'but he has that funny, pompous, know-all look on his face. I saw it as soon as I drove around, and if I were you, Helen, I'd get away while I could. I'll distract him and you just run. People have been known to go crazy just listening to him. Look at the self-righteous set of his chin. God! Aren't you lucky we came along!'

'One of the reasons I left Ireland', Paul said and stood up, 'was to get away from this sniping and sneering and cheap stupidity.'

He went over to the car and helped Mrs Devereux into the house with her shopping.

'Sorry,' Larry said. 'I didn't know why it needed to be said. It just needed to be said.'

'Where were you?' Helen asked.

'We went for a trip to Wexford, looked at bathrooms and ended up like all good married couples in the supermarket. Incidentally, what was he saying to you?'

'He was talking about reasons.'

'Yeah, he's good on reasons. Has your mother gone to Wexford?'

'She's gone with Declan somewhere. We thought you might have gone together in convoy.'

'No, they were here when we left.'

•          •          •

Helen drank a strong cup of coffee in the kitchen as the others wandered about. She noticed Paul looking at her, and she wanted, now more than any other time in the previous few days, to be away from his interrogation, and to be away altogether from this house. She was uneasy with what had happened between them; Paul had told her the truth about himself and she had been evasive. There was something now that she needed to put words on, something she needed to hear herself saying. She made herself another cup of coffee and when Paul left the room she followed him. She could feel her heart thumping. She stopped him at the bottom of the stairs. 'I need to talk to you,' she said. She motioned him to follow her into the back- bedroom. When they were in the room she closed the door. She sat on the bed and he stood close to the window.

'You asked me about my mother and my grandmother and I told you things, but there are other things I left out that are harder to understand, and maybe I should try. I feel bad because you were so honest and open with me.'

'I knew there was something else,' Paul said. 'I hope I didn't offend you by saying so.'

'No, you didn't offend me.' She drank her coffee and began to talk.

'About seven or eight years ago I worked as a career guidance and home liaison officer in a new comprehensive school on the west side of Dublin. There was a girl in the school, a student, who used to cut herself. She was about fifteen. She'd cut parts of her body that no one could see. A friend of hers came and told me, and then I met her and asked her, and eventually, after a lot of tears and denials, she told me it was true. I had to get involved in her case, even though I had no experience. So I spoke to her parents, but it was no use. There was a strange atmosphere in the house when I went to visit. It was all new to me, I was a nice middle-class girl, and there was silence and fear mixed with poverty and a sort of contempt for people like me. And the girl herself was a mystery. She was so bright in class, the teachers said, and so poised and intelligent in the sessions which I had with her.

'The only thing she would not do was talk about what she was doing to herself. I found her a psychiatrist who was in the public health system because I felt that other help was needed if she was to be all right. I thought maybe if we talked to her and made her realise that she must stop before it all went too far, she might be better. I know that sounds stupid. I was learning then and I listened a lot to the psychiatrist, who was a man in his fifties with a beard who was always in his stockinged feet. He told me that it would take time to help the girl, that we were dealing with something fundamental, something that could not be easily dislodged.

'I took the girl to and from the sessions, and I spoke to her about what was happening, and I spoke to the psychiatrist. And it all made me think about myself, why I felt no need to make up with my mother or my grandmother, that I had put away parts of myself that were damaged and left them rotting. When my father died, half my world collapsed, but I did not know this had happened. It was as though half my face had been blown away and I kept talking and smiling, thinking that it had not happened, or that it would grow back. When my father died I was left alone by my mother and grandmother. I know that they had their own problems and maybe they could not have helped, maybe even the damage was already done, but I got no comfort or consolation from them. And these two women are the parts of myself that I have buried, that is who they are for me, both of them, and that is why I still want them away from me.'

Helen's voice was hard and low. Her hand was shaking.

'My mother taught me never to trust anyone's love because she was always on the verge of withdrawing her own. I associated love with loss, that's what I did. And the only way that I could live with Hugh and bring up my children was to keep my mother and my grandmother away from me.

'I knew that it was wrong, I knew that I could not go on for ever like this, but I did not have the courage to confront them or even see them. And now that we're all here, you watch them: they are pulling me back in. So what's going on between me and them is not about how I spent my summer holidays when I was a student or where I got a job.

'I am telling you this only because you asked me. But I am not looking for sympathy or help, because Declan needs that from all of us. Someone else would probably have softened, but I haven't softened. We have to put up with these people, my mother and my grandmother, and be polite to them because Declan is here. So we should go into the kitchen and see if he has come back.'

Helen was pale when she finished talking. Paul put his arms around her and held her until she was calm again.

'I'm caught between wanting to make up with them and wanting to get away from them,' Helen said. 'But actually what I would really like to do, if you insist on hearing . . .' She smiled.

'I insist,' he said, ruefully.

'I would really love to run my mother over in the car, that's what I would really like to do.' She laughed sourly and opened the door.

•          •          •

At about eight o'clock Declan and her mother came back. From the dining-room window, Helen watched her helping him from the car. She and Paul went to the front door.

'He wants to go to the bathroom,' her mother said.

'Was there a problem?' Paul asked.

'Not until we were driving home, and then he was sick in the car.'

'I'll clean it,' Paul said.

'Sorry about that, Paul,' Declan said. He began to make his way upstairs to the bathroom.

'It was a very sad day, Helen,' her mother said. 'We were talking about the house and the garden, and it was always something I planned for him, that he would come down at weekends and take an interest in it. He has only ever been down once. But he saw it all today and he was so good. I brought him into the offices; he hadn't seen them since they were refurbished. I had to leave instructions for next week.'

Declan shouted down the stairs for fresh underwear and clothes, which his mother went to get. Helen remained surprised, almost shocked, at the tone her mother had taken with her just now, which was instantly confiding and intimate. It was like tasting something not consumed since childhood, or smelling something not encountered for twenty years. It brought anxiety with it as much as reassurance.

In the kitchen her grandmother was sitting by the window looking out, with the two cats on her lap. On seeing Helen, they immediately jumped and sat on the top of the dresser, although Larry had been in the room all the while.

'Some people like cats, and cats like some people, but they're not always the same people,' her grandmother said.

'Did you buy anything in Wexford then?' Helen asked.

'Oh, we've fresh everything, fresh bread, fresh eggs, fresh fish and fresh meat. All from the supermarket. "You'd swear'', I said to Larry on the way home, "that we lived on a farm by the sea."'

Paul came and stood at the door. 'Declan says he wants to go for a short walk at Ballyconnigar. He says he wants to get being sick in the car out of his system. His mother is going to come.'

Larry and Helen agreed that they would also join the walk.

'Tell them I'll stay here,' Mrs Devereux said, 'and ask them if they want salmon or lamb chops for dinner. Explain how fresh everything is.'

Declan said he did not think he would eat much, but he'd try the salmon. The old lady came and watched as Helen, her mother and Declan got into Declan's car and Larry and Paul got into Larry's car. She waved at them as they turned in the yard.

'Helen,' her mother said from the back of the car, 'I wish you'd talk to her about looking after herself. Even getting in a proper telephone, any small thing would be a great improvement.'

'My husband says there's no getting around the women in our family,' Helen said.

'But he doesn't know us,' her mother said.

'I've told him about you,' Helen said.

Suddenly she looked up and saw her mother's face in the rear-view mirror; her eyes seemed magnified and unguarded and vulnerable, nervously watching her. She was tempted for one second to slow down and turn to see if the mirror were making her mother's eyes like that, or if they would appear like that too if she saw them directly. When Helen looked again, her mother's eyes were cast down.

They stopped in Keatings' car park in Ballyconnigar, Larry and Paul parking in the space behind them. They got out of the cars and walked across the small wooden bridge and moved south in the half-fading light. Tuskar lighthouse had started and they stood and watched as a beam circled towards them.

'There used to be two lighthouses here,' her mother said. 'I don't know what they needed the other for, but I suppose the Irish Sea was busy and bits of it were dangerous. It was just out there now — no, a bit further north, towards Cush and your granny's house. Do you remember it, Helen?'

'I do, Mammy, but only when we were children.'

'It was taken out of commission by Irish Lights. I don't know exactly when,' her mother said.

'What was it called?' Paul asked.

'It was called the Blackwater Lightship. It "was weaker than Tuskar. Tuskar was built on a rock to last, I suppose. Still, I loved there being two. I suppose the technology got better, and maybe there's not as much shipping as there was. The Blackwater Lightship. I thought it would always be there.'

Slowly, they walked towards Ballyvaloo. Helen eased close to her mother. The three others moved ahead, Larry and Paul with Declan between them, quietly protecting him. Helen noticed that the beam of the lighthouse did not flash when she calculated it should. Each time she expected it to come too quickly.

'When I was young, lying in bed in your granny's house,' her mother said, 'I used to believe that Tuskar was a man and the Blackwater Lightship was a woman and they were both sending signals to each other and to other lighthouses, like mating calls. He was forceful and strong and she was weaker but more constant, and sometimes she began to shine her light before darkness had really fallen. And I thought they were calling to each other; it was very satisfying, him being strong and her being faithful. Can you imagine, Helen, a little girl lying in bed thinking that? And all that turned out not to be true. You know, I thought your father would live for ever. So I learned things very bitterly.' When Helen looked down, she saw that her mother was clenching her fists. 'If I could meet him here for one minute now, your father, you know, even if he were to be allowed to pass us on the strand here, here now, when it's nearly night. And not speak, just take us in with his eyes. If he was only to know, or see, or acknowledge with a flicker of his eyes what is happening to us. This is just morbid talk, don't mind me, but it's what I think about when I look at Tuskar lighthouse.