The Blackwater Lightship (8 page)

'I've got clean clothes out for you. Mrs Byrne of the Square is going to look after you and Declan.'

Helen felt a sudden surge of happiness that they were leaving here and would never have to come back, but she quickly felt guilty for thinking about herself like this when her father had just died. She tried not to think at all. She went into the kitchen, where Father Griffin was drinking tea.

'We'll all kneel down and say a prayer for his soul,' her grandmother said.

Father Griffin led a decade of the Rosary. He said the words of the prayers slowly and deliberately and when he came to the Hail Holy Queen he recited the prayer as though the words were new to him: 'To Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.' Softly, quietly, Helen began to cry, and her grandmother came over and knelt beside her until the prayers ended.

They sat and drank more tea in silence; her grandmother made toast and aired clothes.

'Why isn't Declan up?' Helen asked.

'Oh, I let him sleep, Helen. It'll be time enough for him when we're packed to go.'

'Have you not told him?'

'We'll let him sleep.'

'He'll be awake.'

As Helen was packing their schoolbooks in the parlour, Declan called her. 'What are you doing?' he asked.

'I'm packing. We're going to Enniscorthy.'

When he looked at her from the bed, she thought that he knew, but she was not sure.

'How are we getting there?'

'Father Griffin.'

He looked at her again and nodded. He got out of the bed and stood on the floor in his pyjamas.

'I want to pack my own schoolbag,' he said.

•          •          •

Somewhere on the road between The Ballagh and Enniscorthy, with Father Griffin driving and Helen in the front seat, she realised that Declan didn't know their father was dead.

'Are Daddy and Mammy already back from Dublin?' he asked.

Even now, twenty years later, as she lay between the sticky nylon sheets with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling as the lighthouse flashed on and off, Helen could still feel the terror in the car as neither she nor Father Griffin answered the question. She expected Declan to ask again, but he sat back and said nothing and they drove on towards the town.

Helen desperately did not want to go to Mrs Byrne's house in the Square. Declan was friendly with the two boys, it would be easy for him, but she had no friends there and knew that Mrs Byrne would treat her like a child. Mrs Byrne was like all the shopkeepers' wives in the town: they were always watching everything, always on the lookout, even their smiles were sharp, and she did not want to be under the control of Mrs Byrne or any other Mrs in the town.

They drove past Donoghue's Garage in silence and crossed the bridge and drove up Castle Hill. Helen was determined not to go into Mrs Byrne's house.

When Father Griffin double-parked in the Square and left them alone in the car, Declan asked her nothing and she told him nothing. Mrs Byrne came out, all smiles. She opened the driver's door and put her head into the back of the car.

'Now, Declan,' she said, 'when Thomas and Francis come home for their dinner, maybe they'll both take the afternoon off so you can play upstairs.'

Helen got out of the car and stood beside Mrs Byrne. 'My granny says I'm to go up home and have the place tidy for Mammy.'

'Helen, I'm sure some of the neighbours will do that.'

'Granny said I was to go and Father Griffin was to drive me up and Declan was to stay with you.'

Father Griffin stood there listening carefully. Helen knew that she had sounded too sure of herself for him to disagree. He was a mild man, uncomfortable now and anxious to get away since his car was blocking the traffic.

'So,' Helen said, 'if you could take Declan's things and then we'll see you later.' She was trying to sound brisk, like somebody from the television.

'Hold on a minute,' Father Griffin said, 'and I'll park.'

Declan took his bag from the boot and they stood outside Byrne's shop waiting for Father Griffin.

'Isn't your grandmother very good?' Mrs Byrne said to Helen.

'She's marvellous,' Helen said.

Mrs Byrne looked up and down the street. 'Your poor mammy now will be glad to see you,' she said.

'I'll go and wait in the car,' Helen said, and she walked across the Square to where Father Griffin had parked. As he left the driver's seat, she opened the passenger's door.

'Will you be all right here?' he asked.

'Yes, perfect,' she said confidently.

She watched him walk across the Square and go into Byrnes' with Declan and Mrs Byrne. She knew what he was doing: he was telling Declan that his father was dead. She wondered why he was taking so long. Two passers-by saw her in the car and came over. She rolled down the window.

'Are you waiting for your mammy?' they asked.

'No,' she said. 'No, I'm not.'

'Is she still in Dublin, the poor thing?'

'Yes,' Helen said. She was trying to sound grand, as though used to being accosted by people like this.

'Well, we're very sorry for your trouble.'

'Thank you.' She knitted her brow and rolled up the window.

When Father Griffin came out of Byrnes', he walked with his head down, hunched.

'I'm not sure that we can leave you up there on your own,' he said. 'Mrs Byrne wants you to come back in.'

'Oh, Mummy is very particular. Everything will have to be spick and span for her.'

'But you can't be on your own in the house.'

'No; I'll call on Mrs Russell, she's the one who's closest to Mummy, and she'll come in with me.'

She pretended that she was a Protestant girl being driven to Lymington House by this slow country priest. She knitted her brow again. Father Griffin started the car. She wondered what had happened with Declan, what he was doing now.

'Are you sure you'll be all right?' Father Griffin asked her.

'Perfectly sure, father, perfectly sure. I'll go in and then I'll call on Mrs Russell.'

He drove along John Street and then up Davitt Avenue.

'You can leave me here, father, and we're very grateful to you.'

He drove her to the house. She did not want him to know that she would have to climb in the kitchen window. She would have tried anything to make him drive away.

'I'll take my case from the boot,' she said nonchalantly. 'I left it open. It's better to reverse back down, father, easier than trying to turn here.'

She closed the door of the car and fetched her case and waved at him casually as she opened the garden gate. She walked around the side of the house without looking behind. She stood the case up, using it to reach the ledge of the kitchen window, and then levered herself up until she was able to kneel on the ledge. The clasp on the lock had been broken for years. She pulled the bottom part of the window up with all her strength. It opened just enough for her to lean in on to the draining board beside the sink, and edge her way into the kitchen. As soon as she stood up, she did not wait to close the window but went and opened the front door and found Father Griffin, as she expected, still sitting in his car looking at the house. With her right hand, she motioned him imperiously to go. She shut the door again and put her back to it, and closed her eyes. When she went into the front room and looked out of the window, she saw that he was already reversing the car; he was on his way. Now she had the house to herself.

•          •          •

She listened: there was no sound at all. She had never noticed silence before. It was five months since she had been in this house. She looked around the room, touched the cold tiles of the fireplace, sat on one of the armchairs. She walked into the back room and opened the curtains. It was the stillness which surprised her, the emptiness. She had thought about these rooms so much in Cush, she now expected them to come to life for her, but they did nothing. She opened the back door and collected the suitcase from under the kitchen "window; she came back in and closed it. She sat in the back room and thought about Mrs Byrne's big living-room over the shop, and everybody being nice to her because her father had died, and she shivered.

She was glad she had come back here. When she put her hand on the kitchen door handle, she had realised that her father's hand would have touched it too, his fingerprints or the print of the palm of his hand had probably — no, definitely — been left there. His hand was dead now, lying cold in his coffin. And this house, every inch of it, had his traces imprinted on it: the chair where he sat, the cups and glasses he used must still have some trace of him, the knives and forks he touched, in all the years he would have touched every one of them. She went to the front door and touched the handle and lock that he must have touched.

Upstairs, in her parents' bedroom, his suits and jackets and trousers and shirts and ties lay in the wardrobe. She opened the wardrobe and touched one of the suits and it swayed on its hanger. When she pushed the hangers along, she found a pair of braces that he must not have worn for years. She ran her fingers along them and then recoiled, putting all the hangers back evenly in place.

She went to the window and looked across the valley at the Turret Rocks and Vinegar Hill, and then down into the street, at the carefully tended front lawns bordered with flower-beds. There was no one on the street. The neighbours must have not seen her arriving or they would have come to knock on the door immediately.

Her father's shoes under the bed surprised her more than anything. They needed polish on the toes, and the laces on one of them were somewhat frayed. More than anything else in the room, they suggested her father's presence rather than his absence, as though he could arrive at any moment to sit on the bed and slip them on, and lean over to tie up the laces.

On the back of the door was her mother's dressing-gown and behind it hung two ironed white shirts. She took one of them down and held it up against her and looked in the mirror. She put her feet into his shoes, which were much too big for her. She opened the wardrobe again and found a dark grey suit. She put it on the bed and went through the ties, searching for one which was dark but not too dark, with dots or stripes. She put a few ties against the suit, as she had observed her mother do, to see if they matched, and eventually chose one with grey and white stripes on black. She opened a drawer and found a white vest and white underpants and in another drawer she found a pair of socks.

She laid the suit full-length on the bed. She put the shirt inside the jacket and stuffed the sleeves of the shirt into its arms, and opened the buttons of the shirt and put the vest inside, and then closed up the buttons. She put the tie around her own neck, as if it were her school tie, and tied a knot in it and placed it inside the collar of her father's shirt and tightened it. Then she put the underpants inside the trousers and laid the trousers out, tying up the buttons of the fly, and tucking the shirt into the trousers. She found the socks and put one inside each shoe and placed the shoes at the bottom of the trouser legs, but they didn't look right.

She went downstairs and picked a pile of books from the bookcase in the front room and brought them upstairs. She placed books on either side of the shoes, and, on realising that she needed more, she went downstairs and carried up another armful. She propped the shoes, the toes facing upwards, between the books.

She looked at the figure on the bed and decided he needed something else. She went downstairs to the press under the stairs where the coats were kept and she found a cap hanging on a hook. She found a small pillow in her bedroom and brought it into her parents' room. She put the pillow resting against her parents' pillows, close to the neck of the shirt; she placed the cap over the pillow, as though her father had fallen asleep with his cap on his face. And then she stood back and watched.

She closed the wardrobe door and the drawers, and then left the room and stood out on the landing with her eyes shut. Slowly, she walked back into the bedroom. It was the shoes that made the difference, made it seem that he was lying there asleep and she could come and lie beside him. She placed herself on her mother's side of the bed, carefully and gingerly so as not to disturb him. She reached out and held the hand that should be there at the end of the right-hand sleeve of the jacket. She reached over and lifted the cap and kissed where his mouth should be. She snuggled up against him.

•          •          •

By the time she heard them, Mrs Morrissey and Mrs Maher were already in the hall. She realised she would have to move very fast and very quietly, but she knew that if they came upstairs now she would be caught and it would be impossible to explain. She reached for the shoes and put them on the floor, leaning over the figure she had made of her father. Without making a sound, she bundled up the suit and shirt and tie and underwear and socks. She placed the books on the floor and took the clothes and the pillow and the cap and moved slowly towards her own room, knowing that the creaking floorboards would soon alert the two women downstairs to her presence. She did not have time to smooth the bedspread or check the room.

'Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is there someone upstairs?' Mrs Morrissey shouted.

Helen shoved the clothes under her own bed and sprang to attention, calling over the bannisters.

'It's me! It's Helen!'

'Helen!' Mrs Maher shouted. 'You're after giving us a terrible fright. What are you doing here in the name of God? What are you doing here? You're meant to be down in Mrs Byrne's.'

'My granny said I was to come up here,' Helen said, and then rushed into her parents' bedroom to check that she had left nothing important on the bed. She smoothed out the bedspread and went back to the landing and walked downstairs.

'Well,' Mrs Maher said, 'you gave us a fright.' She had put white plastic bags full of large sliced pans on the kitchen table, and other bags on the draining board and the kitchen floor.

'You shouldn't be here on your own,' Mrs Morrissey said. 'If your mammy heard you were here on your own!'