The Blackwater Lightship (3 page)

Mick Joyce and the boys came into the house when the piping began. Some people had already left, but the kitchen was still half-crowded, and there was a silence now which had been there before only for the singer. Those who had been playing left their instruments down: this was, Helen knew, more than anything a world of hierarchies, and no one came near this player's reputation. They listened, full of respect and deep interest in the technique, the movement of chanter and drone, the sense of control and release. Cathal and Manus had been learning the tin whistle; they sat on the floor listening, Manus making sure that Mick Joyce was sitting on the chair right behind him, and paid attention, even though it was after midnight now, and they should have been asleep three hours earlier.

Helen sat on the floor and relaxed for the first time that evening; she noticed the tunes and rhythms changing, becoming faster, a display of pure virtuosity, full of hints and insinuations, good-humoured twists and turns. The room was half full of cigarette smoke; cans and bottles were being used for ashtrays. All around, people sat or stood and listened to the music. Hugh stood with his shoulder against the wall; he caught her eye and grinned at her.

When the piping stopped, the crowd began to thin out. It was then that someone shouted at Mick Joyce that he hadn't sung yet, and that the night would not be complete until he did.

'I'm too drunk to sing,' he shouted. He stood up and pointed to the man with the guitar and his companion with the mandolin. 'Don't try and join in,' he instructed them. 'You'll put me all wrong.'

'I thought you were too drunk to sing,' one of them said.

'I'll give you singing now, if you want singing,' he said.

He began 'The Rocks of Bawn'; this time his voice was even louder than when Helen had heard him before. Cathal and Manus still sat on the floor, fascinated by the sheer passion in his delivery, his face all lit up by the rage of the song, as though at any moment he would start a fight or burst a blood vessel. A few people who were at the front door, about to go, came back to witness the end of the song:

I wish the Queen of England would write to me in time

And place me in some regiment all in my youth and prime.

I'd fight for Ireland's glory from the clear daylight 'til dawn

And I never would return again to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

When he had finished he lifted Manus up and laughed when the child pulled his ears. He looked at Helen as if to say that he had fooled them all again. Helen brought him a cold can of lager; he opened it and offered some to Manus first, but he refused. Manus didn't like the taste of beer. Cathal put his hand up and asked for some and when Mick Joyce handed him the can he put his head back and drank the beer. He saw Helen -watching him. He knew he was allowed to take sips of beer, but he was still uncertain about her reaction.

'He gave it to me,' he said as he handed back the can.

'You'll be drunk,' she said and laughed. 'You'll have a hangover in the morning.'

•          •          •

Helen closed the doors to the garden. The party was nearly over. She remembered Hugh telling her that Mick Joyce knew only one song, and she was relieved about this. His singing could have been heard by the neighbours on both sides, and possibly further down the street. She wondered about Mick Joyce: since he liked children so much, why he didn't have children of his own, and how he managed to pretend, in his manners and speech, that he was in the west of Ireland. She wondered what it would be like to be married to someone like that — the mixture of control and anarchy, the unevenness. She turned around and watched as Hugh began to sing in Irish, his voice nasal and thin, but sweet as well and clear. His eyes were closed. There were only about ten people left, and two of these joined the song, softly at first and then more loudly. She stood there and thought about Hugh: how easygoing he was and consistent, how modest and decent. And she wondered — as she often did in moments like this — why he had wanted her, why he needed someone who had none of his virtues, and she felt suddenly distant from him. She could never let him know the constant daily urge to resist him, keep him at bay, and the struggle to overcome these urges, in which she often failed.

He tried to understand this, but he was also frightened by it, and often succeeded in pretending that it was nothing, it was her period, or a bad mood. It would pass, and he would wait and find the right moment and pull her back in again, and she would lie beside him, half grateful to him, but knowing that he had wilfully misunderstood what was between them. As she watched him now, his voice soaring in the last verse of the song, clearly in love with the sounds of the words he was singing, she knew that anybody else would have laid bare, in the way that he had covered, the raw areas in her which were unsettled and untrusting.

She woke early, with a strange feeling of disappointment, as though she had missed something important. Her mouth was dry. She realised that she would not get back to sleep, and she lay there going over the events of the party. It struck her that she felt the way a child feels when a buzz of excitement is replaced by bedtime or dull duty.

It was eight o'clock; she had been asleep for only four hours. She got up and, when she was washed and dressed, began to clean up from the party, emptying and refilling the dishwasher, tying up black plastic bags full of rubbish and leaving them outside the back door. By the time Hugh appeared, it was almost done. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

'You should have left it for me,' he said.

'It's all finished,' she said, 'so you can concentrate on packing.'

He came over to the sink, where she was standing, and held her.

'I'm going to miss you,' he said. 'I'm going to think all the time of things I want to say to you but you'll not be there.'

'If I didn't have this meeting in the Department and the school interviews I could change my mind, but it's only a week or so,' she said.

She closed her eyes and put her mouth against his bare neck. The lack of sleep served only to intensify a sudden desire for him, and now she began to fondle him and he slowly began to kiss her. When she opened her eyes she saw that Cathal was studying them carefully from the kitchen door. She smiled and pushed Hugh away gently with her hands.

'Cathal,' she said, 'your breakfast things are on the table. We're going to he down for a while. We won't be long.' She wondered if Hugh's erection was apparent through his shorts.

Cathal remained silent, watching them as he moved towards the kitchen table. They went up to the bedroom and closed the door.

'Poor Cathal,' she said. 'I hope he's all right. It would be worse I suppose if we were having a big fight.'

'Much worse.' Hugh laughed. 'Much worse.'

•          •          •

By eleven o'clock the boys' suitcases were in the boot of the car and Hugh's rucksack was on the back seat. Helen had written out a list of instructions.

'You're to go up through Ballyshannon,' she said. 'You're not to drive into the North.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Hugh said.

'I'm sure you've forgotten something,' she said.

'We've forgotten to kiss you farewell,' he said.

'And you're to mind all those Donegal people,' she said lightly. 'They're sly.'

She made sure that the boys had their seatbelts on in the back seat. Manus was impatient to be gone. He refused to kiss her goodbye. 'I'm bored waiting,' he said. She waved at them as the car drove off.

•          •          •

She knew as she walked back into the house that this next hour or two would be special, a time when she could savour and appreciate the empty, silent rooms and the sweet energy which Hugh and Cathal and Manus had left behind them.

Before lunch, Frank Mulvey and his son came to collect the tables and chairs. When he learned that Hugh and the boys had gone to Donegal, he nodded his head and looked at her. 'And will you be all right here now?' he asked.

'I'll be fine. It's just a few days.'

'My missus', he said, 'never lets me out of her sight.'

As she stood at the front gate watching the last of the tables being stacked into the van, she noticed a white car edging its way into the street and a man's head peering at houses as he drove by. She watched the car pass as Frank and his son closed the back door of the van.

'It's quiet enough around here.' Frank Mulvey surveyed the road as he got into the front.

'You should have heard us last night,' she said.

'You're not a Dublin woman, are you?' he asked.

'No, I'm from Wexford. Enniscorthy,' she said.

'Wexford,' he said. 'We used to travel to Courtown years ago on motorbikes.'

'Dublin fellows were all the rage in Courtown, I'd say.'

'We were the bee's knees, but that's all years ago, before you were born.' He closed the door. She watched him and his son, who had not spoken, put their seatbelts on. He beeped the horn as he drove away.

The white car had now turned in the road and was slowly coming towards her. She realised that the driver was looking for directions. When he drew up to her he pulled down the window.

'I'm looking for O'Dohertys', number fifty-five,' he said.

'This is it,' she said.

'Are you Helen?' he asked.

There was something both eager and friendly about him, but formal as well, and it occurred to her that he was a teacher looking for a job, coming with references or a CV to her house. She wondered how he had got the address. Her face darkened.

'Yes, I'm Helen,' she said stiffly.

'Hold on, I'll park the car,' he said.

She had spent the previous two weeks interviewing teachers and she thought she recognised the type: cocky, self-confident, lacking all reticence, the potential scourge of the staffroom and useless in the classroom. She waited for him at the gate.

'I'm Paul,' he said. 'I'm a friend of your brother's.'

She said nothing, still half sure that he was a teacher to whom Declan had given her address. She wondered if it was something Declan would do, but she did not know, it was years since she had met any of Declan's friends.

'You can come inside, but there's been a party here, the house is a mess.'

'A party?' he asked. His tone was odd and unconvincing.

'Yes, that's what I said — a party,' she said dryly.

She brought him to the kitchen and sat down. She did not offer him anything. She expected him to sit down as well but he remained standing.

'Declan's in hospital. He's in St James's. He asked me to come out here and tell you.'

Helen stood up. 'I'm terribly sorry. I thought you were a teacher looking for a job.'

'No, I have a job, thanks.' It was his turn to be dry.

'Did he have an accident? I mean, is he OK?'

'No, he didn't have an accident, but he'd like to see you.'

'How long has he been in hospital? Sorry, what's your name again?'

'Paul.'

'Paul,' she said.

He hesitated. 'He said he'd like to see you. I don't know how you're fixed now, but I could drive you to St James's.'

'He wants to see me now? Hey, is this serious?'

Again he hesitated.

'I mean, is he all right?' she asked.

'I saw him this morning and he's in good form.'

'You don't sound very reassuring.'

It was when he did not reply to this that she stopped herself asking any more questions. She looked at her watch; it was ten-past one.

'I have a meeting in the Department of Education in Marlboro ugh Street at four.'

'If you come now you can be in Marlborough Street by four,' he said.

She realised that he was waiting for another question.

'Right. I'll come now,' she said. 'But it will take me a few minutes to get ready.'

Upstairs, as she changed into her navy-blue suit and white blouse — her nun's costume, Hugh called it — she went over what Paul had said and not said. It would have been easy for him to have said that it was just something minor. Even if he was an alarmist, someone who thrived on bad news, he could still have said something which would indicate that it was not serious. Maybe when he said that he had seen Declan that morning and he was in good form, maybe by this he meant to say that there was nothing wrong really. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and put on a discreet amount of make-up. She felt a sudden urge or longing, which at first she could not identify, but then knew that it was an urge to be back in the house before Paul's arrival, to be back half an hour ago without his heavy, ominous presence in the room below.

She brushed her hair and checked herself in the full-length mirror and then, reluctantly, she went downstairs. As she saw him in the kitchen, she felt an intense hostility to him, which she knew she would have to keep under control.

She found her briefcase in the front room and emptied it of books, leaving only a notepad and some biros. She made sure that the downstairs windows were closed, turned on the answering machine, checked she had her keys and then told Paul she was ready.

They drove in silence through Rathfarnham and into Terenure. Helen knew that the next question she asked would elicit information which would leave her in no doubt.

'You'd better tell me what's wrong,' she said.

'Declan has AIDS. He's very sick. He sent me to tell you.'

Her first instinct was to run from the car, to watch for the next traffic lights and try to open the door and run to the pavement, and become the person entering a newsagent's shop or \a166waiting for a bus, become anyone but the person she "was now in the car.

'I'll pull in if you like,' Paul said.

'No, go on, I'll be OK,' she said. 'How long has he been sick?'

'He tested positive a good while ago, but he's only been sick the last two or three years, even though he's looked OK. He was very bad last year, but he pulled through. He has a line in his chest which gets infected, and he has problems with one eye and he gets chemo once a month. He's much weaker now than he was. He's very worried about your mother.'