Beyond the Breakwater

by Catherine Foley

  ‘What?’ he says, upset and ashamed that he is only finding out now, that he has not sympathised with the family. ‘But I never knew he was dead. No one told me.’

  Often overruled by a houseful of women, he created corners that were out of bounds to us. The desk was a no-go area. ‘That’s my desk,’ he used to declare defiantly. Now I riffle through it, happily clearing and organising his papers, aware of my trespassing fingers combing through documents that he valued, folded away and labelled – bank statements, lotto numbers, valuations from auctioneers, passports, medical records and diaries where he wrote down the sayings and stories he heard that appealed to him.

  He is more biddable and easier now than before. There are no more territorial stand-offs. ‘Don’t touch anything in that shed,’ he’d warn, forestalling any intentions we had of clearing out the great maw of tangled things where the coal was kept, along with all the garden tools, his lobster pots and fishing gear, the old tins of paint and any bits of building materials that might have been left behind. Before we began to reclaim this dominion, it was his place, his terrain. Dark, dusty and cluttered, it was full of broken things that he dreamed of re-using, of resurrecting in some way when he had the time to fix and release their potential. I remember my mother pulling his leg gently when he rescued the rusty rim and handle of an old tin bucket. ‘I might use that someday to harness a goat,’ he told her, trying to conceal the laugh in his own eyes. We never did get a goat but he looked out the window that day and imagined tethering such a stubborn animal to the hedge.

  ‘Daddy, did you shave yet?’ I ask him, and the question will worry him for the entire morning, taking root in his mind. He will return again and again and ask me if he has shaved. I will stroke his cheek and tell him that he has, or that he has missed a bit under his chin.

  In all his working life he rarely stayed late in bed, unless he was very sick. Now, he loves to have his breakfast taken up to him. Is it the petting he never got as a child? This softer, quieter man is my father too and we are getting to cosy up to him like we did on the strand long ago. We have almost forgotten the energetic, bellowing man who slammed doors in frustration and ended up losing most domestic battles, and in the end, didn’t mind at all. That man is harder to find nowadays.

  63

  Ballast

  In all the photographs I come across

  I am leaning in to him,

  Like an old wheel standing up against a wall,

  His arm draped around my shoulders.

  We often posed together like that.

  And I recall the solidity of him,

  He was like ballast in a boat,

  He’d not stir,

  He was steady as she goes,

  On that garden seat.

  64

  Christmas by the Graves

  That first year after my mother died there was a palpable draw to those flat green plots. We couldn’t resist. I suppose the quiet enclave had become a place of familiarity to us after Mama passed away. It was my sister RoseAnn and her friend Kathleen next door, both of them grieving for their mothers, who sent word out that we’d meet there in the graveyard to remember and say the rosary.

  It was probably the emptiness we craved when we wandered up through the graves to wait for the others. It was almost 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, a time when all the shops were still open and shopping was at its peak.

  But like a little miracle, a raggle-taggle bunch of people began appearing. We watched when a car stopped outside on the road and a young man got out. He sauntered up as if he wasn’t quite sure if he was coming or not. But, forgetting his jacket and with just a set of keys jangling from his hand, he kept coming. Next a mother and her daughter came along, both buttoned up and gloved, booted and scarfed; it was clear they were determined to attend.

  We had nightlights in jam jars in readiness for everyone and the process of getting the candles alight and keeping them lit helped to diffuse the shyness, the communal embarrassment, and instead reminded us that we wanted to be in that forgotten, sad place on that happiest of days. A handful of couples, a sprinkling of families and one or two on their own also arrived.

  At 3 p.m. we drew in near to the priest for the opening lines of the ‘Coróin Mhuire’ and the first decade of the rosary. It began quietly, the Irish prayers wafting across the cemetery, but it soon seemed as if we were all stepping out onto a sonic tightrope, moving as one, going from one bead to the next, from one ‘Hail Mary’ to the next, bound together by that old prayer. The sounds seemed to swell and take possession of us, until we came to the end of the first decade on a communal breath, inhaling and exhaling.

  When someone else took it up, we were off again: Go mbeannaí duit, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta, tá an Tiarna id ’tochar, is beannaithe tú idir mhnáibh agus is beannaithe toradh do bhroinn Íosa. (Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.)

  Each time we answered together. We recited it in a rush, as if we were running out of breath, galloping up into the clouds: A Naomh Mhuire, a mháthair Dé, guigh orainn anois agus ar uair ár mbáis. Amen. (Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.)

  Praying through Irish seemed to power us like a dynamo. It felt as if we were sending a signal up into the heavens.

  We stayed at it like that and when we came to the end of another ten, we seemed to have grown into the calmness. And though we flinched in the rain, and though the ghostly sound of our voices was blown by the wind over the headstones and away out to sea, we stood our ground and stayed the course. And the sky, grey and lowering, darkened stealthily, until it had wrapped us up in a grey, numbing nothingness. It was the quietness all around that drew us down into the clay and stilled us.

  When we finished, Miriam suggested we sing a verse of ‘Adeste Fideles’ and after a timid start we were off. And with the Latin came the powerful sense of all those past Christmases. As we sang that hymn to hope, it seemed we were all together again in a chapel long ago, voices bursting with exuberance and my father singing as if to lift the roof: Venite adoremus, Dominum.

  And so it’s happened every year since, where we do a shy shuffle up to that spot, to stand in the cold in the middle of the graveyard, to pray for all of fifteen minutes and sing. Afterwards we walk carefully away, as if we might spill something en route back to the car. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas now without those cold grey moments by the grave.

  65

  Respite

  Down the corridor at the nurses’ station many of the patients in Buxton chairs were gathered in a glut, pulled in to the low desk as if they were protesting at some airline counter and would begin to wave their tickets shortly. Their animated conversations filled the air. Some nodded their heads, some rocked back and forth; others gesticulated and questioned as if their lives depended on an answer. It gladdened my heart to see them all there as near as they could get to the seat of power, the nurses’ station.

  One man, wrestling with the buckle of a seat belt at the side of his chair, proffered it to me as if it was a key or a wallet.

  ‘This is my fork,’ he said in clear, enunciated words, looking intently at me.

  ‘I’ll put it in here for you,’ I said and buckled him in. He seemed pleased as I stepped away.

  Lost in a darkened world of their own, speaking truths full of wisdom and woe, they linger and live on into their eighties and nineties, men and women who are confused, uttering nonsensical mutterings, their limbs shrivelled and frail.

  A nurse sat at the other side of the counter, writing and answering an occasional question. She glanced at me in a distracted way and we smiled, sane beings in a world of confused souls. She was relaxed as she worked and chatted to them, knowing they were safe under her care and unable to wander

  off.

  ‘They don’t know where they are,’ she said to me as I passed down the corridor.

  I turned in to my father’s wa
rd. He was staying in the local community hospital for a couple of days’ respite for both himself and for us at home. He had gone downhill rapidly after the death of our mother. On the day of her funeral in July 2011, we saw his spirit drop dramatically. Dementia seemed to envelop him even as we led him to the open grave on that lonely morning.

  I busied myself at his side. There at his bedside I could see how the day swelled for him, growing into a lonely echoing space that was foreign and full of quiet. It felt like I’d abandoned him and that he was quietly accepting it.

  ‘Are you looking forward to coming home?’ I asked him, knowing that his week in the hospital was nearly up.

  ‘I don’t look forward anymore,’ he said, with unexpected lucidity and I saw that he was watching me. ‘Sometimes I hope,’ he added.

  He lay prone, his baleful eyes boring into mine. I sat and filled the time with memories of his long ago vigour and purpose. When it was time to go, I kissed him and said goodbye.

  Outside, the patients still clogged the corridor. I passed on and rounded a corner, toying with metaphysical thoughts until the fearful eyes of a white-haired woman stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘I’m lost,’ she said, her voice half-strangled.

  She was neatly dressed in dappled pink, an ironed, floral skirt flowed out from under a lilac cardigan, blue fur slippers cushioned her feet. But her frame trembled as I took her arm and led her on. I tried to channel my energy into our walk.

  ‘I don’t know what to do and I don’t know where to go,’ she whispered timidly, her face still pretty but riven with fear.

  ‘You’re not lost,’ I told her but she remained unconvinced.

  ‘My mother was lost. She was never found,’ she continued, with great secrecy, and the echo of a truth seemed to hang like a cloud over the afternoon. As she stepped along nervously and we went towards the end of the corridor I feared the truth of what might have happened long ago.

  ‘They couldn’t find her,’ she added, her voice nearly breaking. The white light of a sun-shower outside spilled across the ward and she grabbed hold of my hand.

  ‘I’m eighty-five,’ she confided. And in the flicker of her eyes I saw a mirror of my future life and glimpsed my own senility. As one, we walked in to an airy four-bedded ward.

  ‘Here’s your bed,’ I told her. And ever so lightly she sat there, resting on its edge.

  ‘I don’t know where to go,’ she pleaded, her face full of woe.

  ‘Look at the lovely women here,’ I told her, pointing at her fellow residents. ‘They are all going to mind you.’

  And in fairness, they smiled at us and waved and I left her and walked out into the evening, the damp air creeping up my arms as I left the warmth behind.

  66

  Dan, the Man

  I’ll never forget the morning the hurler Dan Shanahan came to our house in Ring to deliver the oil. It was in 2008, the year the Waterford hurlers made a bid to win the Liam MacCarthy Cup against Kilkenny in the All-Ireland final in Croke Park. Of course, RoseAnn had hinted to the receptionist in Comeragh Oil that we’d especially love if the hurling hero were the person to be despatched from the depot to make the delivery.

  The day was still fine and the sun was making an early showing when he arrived. RoseAnn raced up the stairs in a flurry of excitement.

  ‘Dan Shanahan is here with the oil,’ she shouted incredulously. It was better than having a film star or a pop star come to call. We were out the door like greyhounds.

  Dan Shanahan is revered in west Waterford. His prowess on the hurling field was undisputed. He was a gazelle on the pitch. He was grace and power, fire and skill, all rolled into one. He was a wizard with a hurl. He had always been the first player you would spot on the pitch. No one scored or ignited a crowd to the great levels of excitement like he could. In Dungarvan town, middle-aged women smiled with admiring nods when he passed. Men saluted him with a congratulatory shake of the head and a comradely ‘Well, Dan the Man.’ Young boys, and sometimes girls, nudged each other when he went by. Simply put, he was a celebrity in the Déise.

  RoseAnn and I both ran to the back of the house like mad women, hyperventilating and foolish. I patted down my uncombed hair and, with my bed socks, corduroy skirt and torn jumper, hoped I didn’t look like a character out of Dancing at Lughnasa. The giddy confusion I felt at the idea of meeting Dan Shanahan took me by surprise. Who knew I’d be so star-struck, or act so like a schoolgirl?

  He was at our wall, standing tall by the lorry in all his handsome glory, the smile intact, the eyes full of vitality, the big hands hanging empty.

  We were hardly able to talk such was our joy at meeting the man from Lismore. Over the years we’d seen him play in Semple Stadium against Limerick, against Cork, against Clare. We’d locked up and left parishes deserted to go and cheer for the men in blue and white. We’d travelled with neighbours, bedecked in the Waterford colours, to away matches when potential heartache battled it out with the sliver of a chance of victory. We’d seen the team defeated in Croke Park when we stood in the rain, soaked and disbelieving.

  But whatever the match, when Dan raced up the field, it was time to jump to your feet. Pulses quickened when Dan moved. He was like lightning, swinging the hurley in a single flowing swirl of force. It was like watching a great ballet when his fellow team-mate, the great John Mullane – quick as a flash on thin white legs – got possession of the sliotar and passed it seamlessly to Shanahan. On those days of championship games, goals and points would rain thick and fast. The players would veer like greyhounds and they’d send the ball flying under or over the goalposts.

  We always roared and cheered on Dan and the men. As he stood there on the road that day beside the oil lorry, unassuming and soft-spoken, he chatted to us about Waterford’s chances in that year’s championship. At that stage, the team had yet to play Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final.

  ‘Ye haven’t peaked yet and that’s good,’ said I, like a seasoned commentator. He listened and nodded indulgently. Up close, he seemed so young and slight. Not the great beefy giant I had imagined. We swelled with pride as he chatted to us.

  ‘Keep the prayers up,’ he said.

  ‘We will,’ we assured him. And with a smile, he climbed into the cab of the lorry and he was gone.

  On that morning at home, our hopes were high but caution and past defeats held our hearts in check. The heady excitement of possibly playing in an All-Ireland final – the first in forty-five years – had yet to lift us to new, dizzier heights.

  A decade later, the idea of winning the All-Ireland is still only a dream. But my heart always rose up with pride when Dan lifted the ball onto his hurley. Time slowed down. All of us in the stands seemed to breathe as one – exhaling as the ball inevitably flew over the bar.

  Even after the disappointment of the team’s defeat in the All-Ireland final of 2008 – and again in 2017 with Dan on the sideline, as passionate as ever – I’m confident that with all the great Waterford men from around the county on our side, men who grew up admiring stars like Dan Shanahan, the Déise will surely be set to go all the way some day soon.

  67

  Nudes

  Years ago, when I was teaching in Tipperary, I joined a painting class in nearby Limerick. On cold Tuesday nights we’d gather on the first floor of a cavernous room in a tall Georgian building somewhere along The Crescent. Our boots would make an awful racquet as we walked in across the bare wooden floorboards.

  Then we’d take up our positions in front of the easels ranged around in a circle, brushes at the ready like guns in our hands, and a slim girl wrapped in a satin robe would walk in. She’d sit on a chair on a little plinth in our midst in front of a two-bar heater and wait for our instructor to give her the nod. After she’d composed herself, she’d untie the sash and allow her robe to fall open. There was an aura of mystery about the model’s remote presence that left us amateur artists in a state of perpetual tension and incomprehension. We struggled with th
e form – the angle of her foot, the slope of her arm, the tilt of her head.

  Ten years later I attended a different life-drawing class one summer when I was on holidays, this time in Cork. Each day I’d travel on a bus from Douglas, where I was staying with RoseAnn, and go into the city centre. I’d walk up along the River Lee to the Crawford College of Art, passing under the shadow of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral and every morning I’d stand at an easel with a group of fellow painters learning how to paint. I remember that summer of charcoal smudges and greasy fingers, oil-smeared clothes and the reawakening of my vocational zeal to paint.

  Again the model remained aloof and private, and her cool remoteness was like a challenge to me, seeing her there, a person who was unknowable, a being I was meant to paint or to sketch, to address only her outward form.

  We did speed drawings with charcoal when we had to do a sketch in less than sixty seconds, and another rapid response in less than thirty seconds and finally we did quick-as-lightning ones in ten seconds or less. We were shocked by the accuracy of these attempts as we drew lines that flowed with grace and ease. It was an exercise that made our hands loose extensions of our emotional responses to the nude. Freeing our minds, which were trapped by logic and rational thought, we learned to let go of geometry and trust our instincts, trust the feeling of the line, of the curve. We had to make that visceral connection and draw a line by taking a leap of faith in our own instinctive response.

  Those days have all but disappeared from my memory now. My drawings of nudes in charcoal, acrylics, oil and pencil are rolled up in a bundle on top of a wardrobe in the back room here in Ring. I opened them recently and saw their disproportionate limbs, their hips like Ben Bulben, their flesh that is sausage pink and garish, dipping wildly into recesses that are red and orange and brown. Why did I keep these misshapen representations of women who sat in remote stillness while I tried to draw what was in front of my eyes?