The Heather Blazing

by Colm Toibin

  Again, he was silent, and stood up to remove the dishes from the table. When he came back he sat down on the sofa beside her.

  “I learned never to need anything from anybody. I suppose that’s true. Do you find that difficult?”

  “No, I want to know how you feel about it.”

  “I have never asked anyone for anything. I think I feel that if I did I would be turned down.”

  “From me?”

  “I don’t believe that anyone has ever wanted me,” he said and turned away. There were tears in his eyes.

  She held his hand; they sat on the sofa without moving. She made coffee and when they had drunk it she suggested that they go out into the street for a walk. It was a bright, sunny evening as they walked around the Green and then down Kildare Street and over into Molesworth Street. They went into the downstairs bar of the Royal Hibernian Hotel. There were one or two people at the bar but the tables were empty. They sat down and had a drink. They whispered at first, but then they realized that voices did not carry in the bar and spoke in normal tones.

  He told her about the house and his father; his grandfather’s death followed by his Uncle Stephen’s. He told her about his father’s illness and his time with his aunt in the farm near Tullow. He left out the bit about the girl, but he told her about his father’s voice and his waiting in the classroom for his father to hobble in, knowing that they were waiting, a few of them at the back, to shout up “Sir, we can’t understand you” as soon as his father spoke.

  She knew some of it. She remembered his father’s illness and she had heard about the death of his grandfather and his uncle from her mother. But she listened to him as though it was new to her, and he watched her as he spoke for a sign that this was boring her, that this was information which she did not need to know.

  “He would come into the classroom. I could understand him and if you listened you could follow what he was saying. He was a brilliant teacher. And he worked out ways of saying as little as possible. But still there was the dread as he came in the door of the classroom, and there was the phrase he couldn’t get right, and he would catch my eye sometimes and it would be really hard not to look away.”

  Night was coming down when they walked up Dawson Street. He felt drained; he wanted to sleep. He would have to get up early in the morning to look at the case. When they arrived home they went into the bedroom and lay on the bed in all their clothes, holding each other, not saying anything.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  One day when he was coming back from a long walk he turned in the lane to find a Garda car outside his house. There were two Guards in the car, but they did not notice him until he was close up. Both of them got out of the car. One of them was bare-headed; the other had his cap pushed back on his head. He did not recognize either of them.

  “We’re the Guards from Blackwater,” one of them said. “We were told to give you a message. We couldn’t find you all day. You must have been out.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “Your daughter wants you to ring her.”

  “Have you been here long?” he asked them.

  “We were told to wait until you came home.”

  “I’ll ring her then. Did she say it was urgent?”

  “Oh, I think that it’s urgent all right,” one of the Guards said.

  “I’ll ring her this minute then. Thanks,” he said.

  When he rang there was no reply. He waited for a while, then wondered if he could go back down to the strand and have a swim since the sun had come out, but he felt that he should not leave the house again until he had made contact with her. He did not know why she could want him to ring her. He made himself a sandwich and a cup of tea and looked through the newspaper which he had bought in the village that morning as soon as the shop opened.

  He dialled again but there was still no answer. He did not know Donal’s number, but he rang directory enquiries who gave him the number. Donal answered on the first ring.

  “Niamh sent two Guards here with an urgent message for me to ring her. Do you have an idea what it is I should ring for?”

  “Yes,” Donal said. “She’s been trying to ring you for days and has got no answer. She’s been really worried about you.”

  “I’m fine. Will you ring her and tell her I’m fine.”

  “Will you be there this evening? I’d say she wants to talk to you herself.”

  “Yes, I’ll be here.”

  * * *

  It was becoming easier to sleep in the big old bed which he had shared with Carmel. And he was making an effort to keep the house clean. But he still wanted to be out of the house for most of the day, walking on the strand or on the road. When it was too rainy to walk he read his law books, keeping careful notes on cases he would need to look up when he went back to Dublin.

  He watched the evening news on the television and when it was over he went out into the kitchen where he started to stack the plates to wash them. When the phone rang he knew it was Niamh.

  “I’m sorry about the Guards. I was going to come down myself,” she said. “Or Donal was going to drive down.”

  “I’ve been out a lot,” he said.

  “I was going to take two weeks down in Cush. I don’t think you should be on your own like that. I can take the computer down with me and get some work done if I can find a babysitter.”

  “Niamh, I’m all right. I don’t need a babysitter,” he said and laughed.

  “No, I meant for Michael.”

  “I understood what you meant.”

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m managing,” he said.

  “Donal is going to drive me down on Sunday. Is that all right?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to be looked after,” he said.

  “Do you want us not to come?” she asked.

  “No, come if you want, you’d be welcome, but I’m not a patient. I was worried about you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Can we come early on Sunday morning then?”

  “Niamh, will you ring Aunt Margaret and call on her when you’re here. I just can’t face going into the town. I’d be afraid I’d meet someone who’d want to talk to me all about your mother. People are very nice and well-meaning but it’s very hard to talk.”

  “Do you want her to come down on Sunday as well?” she asked and when he did not respond she said: “Maybe that’s not a good idea. But I’ll ring her anyway before I come down.”

  He put the phone down and waited, toying with the idea of ringing Donal and asking him to tell Niamh that he would prefer if she did not come. Niamh would disturb his slow routine. He was becoming used to this: the solitude, the long walks, the law books. He did not know what it would be like to have someone else in the house.

  He began by cleaning up the house, making sure that nothing was out of place. He found this difficult and boring, but he took long breaks with his books and then went back again, dusting and sweeping.

  The area around the back of his neck and the top of his spine had become tense. If he put his chin down on to his chest a pain ran down his back. When he touched the base of his neck he could feel the hard tension. He went to the window and looked out feeling the pain moving through his shoulders. For a split second he thought of asking Carmel to deal with the situation, presuming that she was nearby. He thought about her.

  The night when he had washed her in the bath and lay on the bed beside her came back to him now. He had avoided thinking about it. He remembered that it was a warm, close night like this with moths blundering against the windowpane. He remembered her voice, her voice telling him that he had never listened to her when she tried to tell him about her parents. He had gone over everything, every talk they had in all the years and he could recall nothing. He thought that she loved her parents, he remembered her talking about them in the months after they died. He could not remember her telling him that they fought in the house, nor that her father drank too much. As he sat
there now in the night he asked her to forgive him if he had done anything wrong, he told her that he had tried to remember everything, but nothing came back to him, no time when he could have listened to her and comforted her about what had happened during her life at home. He simply could not remember.

  * * *

  He got up early on Sunday morning and drove into the village to get the papers. None of the English papers had come. He sat in the car, looking through the Irish ones before deciding to drive into Wexford to get the other papers. He had not been in Wexford since Carmel died. No one would stop him on the street there, or know anything about him and on a Sunday morning it would be quiet.

  The roads were busy with people coming and going to Mass, the women wearing bright clothes. He turned on the radio and listened to Gregorian chant broadcast live from a church. He turned it up. As he drove the weather grew more blustery, with sudden bursts of sunlight followed by short showers of rain.

  When he saw the spires of Wexford he became unsure: why was he coming back here? He still had in his mind the image of her walking with him through the streets of the town, both of them content, having bought enough food to do them for a week and some wine. He saw it again, the car parked on the quays in Wexford, the flat light on the water and the huge sky, the box of groceries already in the boot, him opening his own door carefully to avoid the sweep of an oncoming car and then sitting in the driver’s seat and pulling up the knob on the passenger’s door to find that there was nobody there, then getting out of the car and looking all around, tracing back their movements to find that she had never been with him that day, that her body was under the ground. It had been buried fresh and perfect, like a flower which had been picked, and slowly it would rot and decompose until there was nothing.

  He drove across the bridge and parked on the quays. He walked up one of the side streets into the main street until he found a newsagent, but they had no English papers either. They told him to walk to the very end of the street, near the barracks. It was quiet in the town. Soon, he knew, crowds would spill out from the three churches where Masses were in progress. He thought of sneaking in, standing at the back. That moment when you took communion on your tongue and then the slow walk back down to your seat, avoiding all eyes, the kneeling down with your head in your hands, the deep, concentrated prayer, the movement all around in the gaunt, arched building as people walked up the centre and side aisles and back down again, and the sense of each person wrapped up in prayer. He wished he could do it now, wait for one of the later Masses and take communion again, having been away from it for so long.

  He found a newsagent with the English Sunday newspapers and took the papers with him to the lobby of the Talbot Hotel where he ordered a pot of tea and sat reading as people came and went. He read some of the foreign affairs articles and a few interviews. He flicked through the magazines. He thought of having lunch in the hotel but he realized he had to go back to Cush to receive his daughter. He would come back, he thought, during the week, if things became difficult at home.

  He walked along the quays to the car, wondering if he could find music on the car radio for the journey home. He thought that he should get a cassette player in the car. There was no traffic on the quays when he started up the engine. He turned and drove back across the bridge.

  * * *

  When he reached the house in Cush he knew that he had stayed away too long; Donal’s car was parked in the lane and there seemed to be people in the back seat. He pulled up behind it. Donal and his girlfriend were in the front of the car; Niamh and her son were in the back. Donal got out of the car.

  “Have you been here long?” he asked.

  “We didn’t know what to do. We were going to break in.”

  “There’s always a key under the stone beside the door,” he said.

  By now the others had got out of the car as well. Niamh was carrying the child.

  “Well, come in. I went into Wexford to get the papers. I didn’t think that you would come so early.”

  When he opened the door of the house he caught a smell of damp air and stale cooked food. It seemed stronger than before, and the house, too, seemed shabby. He was conscious of Donal and Niamh looking around as though it were their property.

  “It could do with a lick of paint,” Donal said. There were flies circling the lampshade in the living room; and the room seemed darker than usual and oddly untidy.

  “It’ll be over the cliff before we know where we are,” Eamon said. “One bad winter and it could all go.”

  “Oh there’s still a field between us and the cliff,” Donal said.

  Niamh and Cathy, Donal’s girlfriend, went out to the car to get Niamh’s computer and her cases. They left the child down on the living-room floor. As Donal and his father spoke the child began to scream, his face becoming red. Donal went to pick him up, but he screamed even louder and tried to hit Donal. He seemed inconsolable as his mother came in and took him in her arms. She carried him out into the garden where he continued to cry. Eamon watched them from the window as the child pointed towards himself and Donal and continued to scream.

  “You’re all right now,” Niamh said as she rocked him in her arms.

  “We brought some food down with us, cold stuff,” Donal said.

  “That’s good,” he said. “But it’s early yet. I’m going into the bedroom to read the papers. Maybe you’ll give me a shout when it comes to lunchtime.”

  He closed the door behind him and carried a chair across to the window. Niamh was outside rocking the child, but the boy had become placid and preoccupied now as he rested his head on her shoulder. Eamon flicked through the newspapers again, found the foreign section of the Observer and began to read an article. He was uncomfortable in the straight-backed chair and soon he went and lay on the bed, resting on his side, and continued to read. When he had finished he lay back, his head on the pillow, and closed his eyes. The muscles in the neck were still painful.

  The light from the window kept him awake, and he did not feel that he could go over and draw the curtains. They would think that he was sick. He heard his grandson crying again and other voices in the living room.

  When he went out into the living room he found that all three of them were cleaning. Niamh was dusting, while Cathy and Donal worked in the kitchen. All the windows had been opened wide. The child was walking around wearing just a nappy, a bottle half full of milk held firmly in his mouth. Niamh took the chairs and put each one upside down on the table so that she could sweep the floor. She had already put the rugs out on the gravel in front of the porch. Eamon thought of going out into the garden, but the sky was low and dark. He turned to warn Niamh, who still paid him no attention as she began to clean the windows, that the rugs would get wet if it rained, when he noticed the child looking at him. He looked down and smiled. The child still had the bottle in his mouth, he stared at his grandfather, remaining still. Suddenly, he began to scream again, running towards Niamh as though he was about to be attacked. She lifted him.

  “Don’t worry. You’re all right,” she said.

  The child continued to cry, even when she carried him into the garden. Eamon wondered what he should do now: he could not sit down at the table since the chairs were still resting there upside down. He could not go into the kitchen as Donal and Cathy were there. He could hear the clattering of plates and cutlery and he wondered what they were doing. He could not go into the garden as the child was there in his mother’s arms, still crying. He stood there doing nothing, looking out of the window.

  He was hungry now, and he would have enjoyed eating his lunch alone. He wondered when they were going to eat and decided to go back into the bedroom and wait for them to call him. He sat beside the window again. He searched the room for a book but could find nothing that he wanted to read.

  After lunch the sky became brighter. Cathy was in the kitchen making coffee with a new machine which they had brought with them from Dublin. Niamh was in her room changing th
e child’s nappy. Eamon stood up from the table.

  “I think I’ll go for a walk while the day is still clear,” he said.

  “Are you not going to have coffee?” Donal asked.

  “No, I’ll take my walk now.”

  “We’ll be going back early,” Donal said.

  “I’ll maybe not see you then.” He looked at Donal evenly.

  “We’ll wait until you come back, if you like.”

  Cathy came into the room with the shining new coffee pot. Eamon had his raincoat on and an umbrella in his hand.

  “Are you not going to have coffee?” she asked. It sounded like an accusation. He did not reply. There was silence in the room as they both looked at him.

  “Are you sure you won’t have some?” she asked again.

  “I take a walk every day at this time,” he said.

  He walked down the lane to the cliff. The eastern sky looked like rain, but he went down to the strand anyway. He did not want to go back to the house. There was a wind blowing from the north which whistled in his ears and made walking difficult. The clouds were inky black over the sea.

  * * *

  He woke early to the sound of the wind whistling around the house. When he opened the curtains he discovered that the sky was blue and the light clear and sharp. But the wind was up and it would be hard to find shelter outside. He went quietly down to the kitchen and had a glass of water. As he passed Niamh’s door he could hear her talking to the baby and laughing as Michael tried to shout out some words. He was going to ask her if she wanted tea, but worried in case the child would begin to cry on seeing him.

  He drove into the village to get some groceries and the morning newspaper.

  “They were all down yesterday,” Jim Bolger said to him.

  “Were they in here?” he asked.

  “No, I saw them going up the hill. Have they all gone back?”

  “No, Niamh and the baby are still here.”

  “You’ll have plenty of noise then,” Jim Bolger laughed.