Beyond the Breakwater

by Catherine Foley

  My friend Máire introduced me to them. We were all there together in Edinburgh. I had just finished a course in journalism in Dublin and I was on holidays visiting Máire, who was working at the university. They may as well have stepped out of the pages of a Mills & Boon story. These men were so like film stars that I hardly spoke to them for the duration of my stay. Saying that, they were friendly and open. I learned that they would be conscripted into the navy on their return to Germany and that they’d have to complete a term of compulsory service as commissioned officers. They didn’t like the idea at all. It hung over them like a prison sentence. I listened with a sort of glazed look on my face as they spoke about this upcoming conscription.

  When I returned home to Dublin, I forgot all about the two men who had so dazzled me for all of five days and my romantic imagination soon righted itself, especially as I knew I would never see them again. Or so I thought.

  I soon got a job as a young freelance reporter for Anois, an Irish-language newspaper, and I spent the months of September and October skipping from one event to another, learning the job.

  Then one day I waltzed back into the Anois offices in Merrion Square and the friendly sub-editor handed me a telephone number and told me I had missed a telephone call and that I was to contact the German submarine in the port. It was moored alongside a south-side quay, he said in Irish, a wide grin on his face.

  I was confused, certain that something had been lost in translation. I berated myself at the paucity of my Irish vocabulary. A submarine! As I picked up the phone, the small newsroom crew smiled at my confusion and they waited to hear what would happen next. I listened to the dialling tone. When my call was picked up I heard the tell-tale sounds of disembodied voices and a whooshing sort of interference on the line. The penny dropped when I heard a voice relay my message over a tannoy and I remembered Heinrich and Christian just in time, seconds before one of them came on the line.

  ‘Hello, this is Christian,’ he said. He told me they were on the submarine with shore leave that evening and that they would love to meet me.

  I felt my cheeks go red from a mixture of shyness and anxiety, and I experienced a terrible urge to run away, but I could not be so rude so I arranged to meet them on O’Connell Bridge at 6 p.m. I don’t know why I suggested we meet on the central island of the bridge. In hindsight I think it was blind panic that made me suggest this very public spot. I suppose part of me worried that they might get lost or that I’d miss them.

  I need not have worried. There they stood later that evening on the central island of O’Connell Street, the two tall Germans in full naval dress. Not a gold button or a white braided cord was missing. Every tassel and insignia imaginable was present on some part of their persons, from their peaked caps to their double-breasted jackets. They fairly took the wind out of my sails. I sidled up to them, knowing how inappropriate my Jesus sandals and casual clothes were. I felt the incongruity of our worlds keenly while they, in contrast, were only happy to see me. They hugged me, towering over me, still stark and stiff in their uniforms but desperately wanting to relax and feel the fresh Liffey air on their faces. And so we set off into the night.

  I wish I’d been a more gracious host but I fairly raced them along until we were in off the street and settled in an anonymous bar in a nameless hotel where no one would see us. I kept watch the whole time in case someone who might know me happened along.

  What was I afraid of? That someone would think these two exotic creatures, naval officers from a German submarine, were paying for my company; or that they were observing me, studying me like they would a creature in a zoo as part of some anthropological experiment.

  And so I kept them out of sight. I did not consider their loneliness or their need for some lively companionship to divert them from the constricted lives they had on board the submarine. Even as we chatted I was completely taken up with planning how to be rid of them. After a few drinks I looked at my watch, as if I’d suddenly remembered something, and told them I had to go.

  It was only 9 p.m. and not late at all when I stood on O’Connell Bridge to wave them off down the quays. As they walked off together, handsome, tall, their silhouettes in the glow of streetlights and the reflections from the river cast a spell on me and I felt the loss of their company and friendship. But I let them go and I knew for sure that night that I would never hear from or see them again.

  45

  Angela

  The women outside my flat didn’t intrude on my consciousness for a long while during the period when Miriam and I lived in a flat at the top of a tall Georgian building on Herbert Street in Dublin city centre. Miriam was nursing and I was working as a reporter for The Sunday Tribune at the time and the two of us had been there for a few months before I realised what was going on.

  Snatches of their night-time conversations used to travel up, disembodied and removed – snatches of rows, of obscenities, of breaking glass, of songs, doors banging, brakes screeching, tyres crunching, a woman in heels running or stumbling. And I’d hear their swear words.

  I’d hear them gathering down on the footpath on the wide doorstep outside our building. They were often right below my window, which was four stories up. They would sing ‘The Fields of Athenry’ or ‘I Did It My Way’. I’d hear them cursing and, on occasion, I’d listen to them when they sang together in a drunken delirium, singing snatches of songs, great belters and songs of desire, like ‘Delilah’. ‘Why, why, why,’ they’d sing, growing in volume as the chord reached its zenith. They’d sing out, emboldened and challenging, until a bottle smashed or a car pulled up and one of them had to hobble off, shoes clip-clopping on the concrete.

  I used to have to smile at the self-awareness they seemed to imbue in those songs. They knew what they were doing. They knew where they were and what was happening in their lives. I used to wonder if I could help in some way but I wasn’t sure how I could.

  Sometimes it was only one woman who sat on the pavement and it was only when someone else joined her that I’d hear the timid beginnings of a song, songs by Rod Stewart or Dolly Parton. ‘I Am Sailing’ or ‘Working Nine to Five’. ‘Like a virgin, touched for the very first time.’ The irony was never lost on them.

  When they’d row, the venom and colour of their language shocked me – at first.

  ‘Mary, Mary, come back. Come back and sing with me.’

  ‘Fuck off, you cunt.’

  And then their voices would disappear into the night.

  Their slurred words never let me forget that they were drinking and all the time I’d hear the squeal of brakes. Heavy articulated lorries would pull up across the road and for a while the singing would be suspended. I knew too from the quiet when a woman was leaning in to a luxuriously upholstered car and then I’d listen to the smoothly running engine as it revved up to leave. It was clear what was happening.

  During the day the street was light and airy. As I returned home in the late afternoon, I’d see couriers and taxis drive up at irregular intervals, going from one office to the next, and couples strolling hand in hand. At night, however, the place emptied and shadows flitting across the wide street and dark leafy trees would wave mysteriously from behind old-style Victorian railings.

  I’d lie in bed listening, intrigued and slightly horrified by the goings-on outside, but like any voyeur I was attracted to the sounds and the stories they represented.

  It was late one night when I came upon one of the women sitting alone on the steps of our building. She was leaning against the railings that led up to the front door. She was drinking from a naggin of vodka. It was close to midnight and bitterly cold. It was easy to see her in the streetlights as I came along. Her short skirt was hitched up unevenly around her hips. The curve of her buttocks was visible at the top of fleshy thighs under a pair of torn black tights. She sported a little ponytail at the back of her head. She made to move out of my way as I approached. She curled into herself and tried to stand up.

  ‘Hello,
’ I said, addressing her. She seemed to turn in closer to the railings. ‘Don’t get up. You don’t have to go,’ I said. It was freezing but I was determined to reach out if I could. It was my chance. She muttered something.

  ‘It’s very cold tonight,’ I said to her, nodding. I introduced myself. She looked at me warily for a moment and I think with a hint of shame, until suddenly her face cracked open and she smiled. Pointing to her chest, she said something. It was more of a rasping sound than a recognisable word. She repeated it again as if I was a half-wit. She said it patiently and with great slowness. Finally, I understood. It was her name.

  ‘Oh, Angela!’ I nodded. ‘Would you like to come up for a cup of tea? I live just in here. You must be frozen out here.’

  ‘No thanks, love. I’m all right. I have me bottle,’ she said. And then in a rush: ‘You know, once I have enough so me daughter can get married I’ll be finished here.’ She looked away towards the corner of the street. In a spill of words, she poured her story out. ‘I have to make a bit of money … I’ve no choice, love. She got pregnant so I had to come out. The father is only fifteen and he’s up before the courts in two months so he’s got no money, he won’t be able to pay for the wedding.’

  A car pulled up further down the footpath and she moved off the step.

  ‘I won’t be doing this for much longer,’ she said.

  ‘If there’s ever a night when you’d like a cup of tea, won’t you ring my bell,’ I told her.

  ‘Right love, thanks,’ she said, as she hurried towards the car.

  I put the key in the door and pushed it in. When I had climbed up the stairs up to our flat, I looked down and watched her on the footpath. She’d moved off towards the car around the corner, flicking a cigarette butt away.

  Although I often watched out for her, we soon moved to a different flat on a different street and though we were still on the south side of the city we were far away from any red light district, and so I never saw Angela again.

  46

  Gypsy King

  It was Dublin in the 1990s and I had spread my wings as a journalist and started working freelance, writing feature articles and news stories for a range of publications including The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune, the Irish Examiner and The Dubliner, as well as working occasionally in broadcasting doing reviews and reports for the Irish-language radio station, Raidió na Gaeltachta.

  As I began to get more and more work in the newsroom of The Irish Times, I came to love the life. My uncle, Donal Foley, had been news editor and deputy editor of the paper over many years. He’d died in 1981 but he was still spoken of with great affection in the newsroom. His son, Michael, and his daughter, Deirdre, were working there when I was in the newsroom, so the Foley family was well represented, and it felt good to be part of it.

  Each day I’d go in and wait to be assigned a news story.

  ‘Catherine,’ an editor might say, passing a scrap of paper to me with a couple of typed lines and a phone number. ‘Ring around and see what you can get on this.’

  The editors who sat at a central desk in the newsroom occupied the seats of power. They decided what stories were important and to whom they’d assign them. When they looked across at the reporters’ rows of desks, which were positioned at right angles to their console, they’d wait to catch some reporter’s eye and ask them to follow up on the day’s breaking story. We called the particular row of desks which was directly in front of the editors ‘Snipers’ Alley’.

  Our ears pricked to hear the radio’s signature tune for the 1 p.m. news, which signified that the morning was over and the day had kicked into life. As it got later, the pace quickened again and editors started reassigning stories or began marching over to discover how you were progressing. When the evening deadline loomed, more reporters would come rushing back to write up their stories. The noise levels would rise then, more fluorescent lights would come on and editors would again come looking for stories, shouting and harrying us.

  And so on Friday and Saturday nights, after a week of working in highly-pressurised newsrooms, press photographers, reporters, sub-editors, sports-writers, freelancers and other city centre folk would go out to unwind and meet fellow hacks.

  That’s how I came to meet him first.

  He was wearing a scuffed leather jacket and a khaki shirt. He sported a tan. As he sashayed across to us, there was an air of exoticism about him. Someone whispered that he’d recently returned from Shanghai. A trilby hung nonchalantly from one of his hands.

  The bevelled newels, mantel mirrors, red velvet banquettes and mahogany counters of the Victorian bar suited him well. His dark hair fell down over his forehead and wafted back along a frayed collar. As he came towards us, he seemed to swamp all in his path with bonhomie, moving with the grace of a ballet dancer, throwing his arms out with arabesque-like flamboyance to greet friends. He pushed through the press of bodies and emerged in front of me as if newly sprung from a raging sea.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, smiling wickedly. He looked at me as if we shared a secret and I nodded, throwing off the ennui I’d been feeling. I was immediately captivated and speechless. But I soon found my voice and we began to chat. He was a charming rogue, who exuded fun and warmth. There was a definite sparkle in his eye.

  ‘I’ve seen your by-line,’ he said, soft-soaping my ego. ‘Was that your story the other day on the front page?’

  I was immediately smitten. When he was leaving he entreated me to come with him and I did. As we stepped out of the bar, he dropped the trilby onto my head.

  We walked into the night together, up along Grafton Street, then passing the Shelbourne Hotel and Doheny & Nesbitt. Wandering down Baggot Street, the literary ghosts of people who hover over that stretch of Dublin seemed to wag their fingers at us.

  When he leaned over to kiss me in the criss-cross shadow of the trees I felt a frisson of excitement. It seemed as if we were swaying in the breeze while his eyes twinkled under the brim of his hat. The kiss was brief but it left me reeling and when he turned to go at the junction of Fitzwilliam Street, I watched him go off towards Merrion Row, like Top Cat or Don Juan, insouciant and devil-may-care.

  Some weeks later he cooked me dinner in his flat. I simpered innocently when I discovered that he was living over a brothel and that he seemed to know each of the women by name. It was so typical of him to be curious, charming and impartial. He was never judgemental. As he mentioned his downstairs neighbours, with true Casanova diffidence, he gave me ice cream with rum, banana and chocolate dressing for dessert.

  We went to parties together and we often stayed out late. I remained at his side, waiting for a further demonstration of affection, looking up at him before we’d go our separate ways, my lips parted coquettishly in hopeful expectation. Usually he’d lean over and wrap me in a great bear hug.

  He was my version of Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester rolled into one. He was a colossus who strode through the city late into the night, striding up dark streets to the next party, the next concert. Often when he returned after a trip abroad, he’d bring me presents – little bangles and scarves, coloured woven purses and the like. And still, I hoped that our next kiss would happen and become the beginning of something between us.

  One night in a nightclub we listened to the Gypsy Kings and, my heart in my mouth, I asked him if he wouldn’t like to become more serious, to make a commitment. As the music boomed out, he nursed his drink.

  ‘Ah, now, don’t you know you’re like a sister to me,’ he said, covering a sort of embarrassment. Clubbers around us heaved as one on the little dance floor, swirling and swinging in time to the salsa beat. Soon he moved away to make eyes at a dark-haired beauty.

  He fulfilled all the criteria of what I was looking for in a boyfriend – tall, handsome, charming, roguish, funny and elusive – and so I couldn’t stop hoping. Until one night after he’d fallen asleep on his couch, the debris of his travels scattered around the room, I sat beside him, waiting, the empty grate stari
ng blankly at me like a warning. Quietly the idea of romance seemed to evaporate. So I let myself out and flagged a taxi, shaking my head at the idiocy of it all.

  It was months before I saw him again, walking up Grafton Street. I stepped quickly into a doorway and watched him, feeling the cold dispassion and displacement of a spy. His coat swung open, his hair and profile stark against the cityscape in the afternoon sun. I imagined him years into the future still going to parties, still weaving his spell and all that remained that day was a widening of the gap between us.

  When he’d gone, I carried on. Passing by Molly Malone and her cart, I had to pull my coat tight against the cold and I told myself to remain stoic as I faced into the chugging buses and biting breeze along Westmoreland Street.

  47

  My Street

  There were three young rowan trees across the street from my house in the Liberties in Dublin. My mother said these trees were lucky. They bore red berries in the spring and their frayed leaves were like yellow hands, bony and long-fingered.

  After a number of years in rented accommodation, I moved into my new house in the Liberties in the spring of 2001, even while the house was still being damp-proofed, dry-lined, rewired and painted. I was now a grown-up with a permanent and pensionable job as a journalist with The Irish Times. I even had a mortgage.

  In the summer the leaves of the rowans turned a darker green. Sometimes I saw little boys running under the branches but that didn’t happen too often, because the trees were off-limits, really, in a narrow space behind the tall railings that front a block of flats.

  This was a nicely proportioned four-storey block that was art deco in design, as a knowledgeable architect friend once told me. I swelled with pride the day he told me. We both looked across at my new inner city neighbours, and enjoyed the straight lines that curved stylishly at the top around windows and corners, the ridged divisions between the storeys and the newly cleaned, red-sandstone brickwork.