An Ark of Light

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘How long did you stay in the bar?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Maybe I ordered a taxi or else the men loaded me up onto their truck and dumped me back here. I’m afraid I have the most atrocious hangover.’

  ‘Are you going into work?’

  Francis grimaced slightly. ‘Not today. We’re finishing a small job and Peter can handle it. The garden is so small that we’d be in each other’s way. These days the big gardens seem to slip us by.’

  ‘You must keep going.’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m trying? Hustling for business, even quoting below the breakeven point just to let the bank see some cashflow. Most evenings I sit here trying to grasp the figures but they simply slide across the page.’ Francis lit another cigarette, holding the tobacco deep in his lungs for a moment. ‘Nothing feels real, Mummy, everything feels second hand.’

  ‘I’m real. You’re real.’

  Francis smiled. ‘That’s true. I’d be lost without you. Remember the terrible English boarding school where Daddy enrolled me? I never told you but I was caught with a chap. Just one fleeting kiss but the other boys were like baying hounds sensing blood; teachers turning a blind eye, figuring I deserved whatever beatings I got – being queer and Irish too. I couldn’t sleep or eat out of pure blind terror. Then out of the blue you came to rescue me, instinctively knowing I was in danger. Daddy would have left me there to toughen me up. But you arrived, all five foot two of you, like a tiny general leading an invisible cavalry. I swore then that if you were ever trapped I’d come and rescue you.’

  ‘I know you would.’

  ‘I often think about the daffodil lawn in Glanmire Wood. It’s my favourite place on earth. My first memory is of waddling across that lawn with daffodils up to my waist.’ Francis closed his eyes to quote: “And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.” He opened his eyes. ‘Wordsworth lived too long and became a bore. Maybe Keats had the right idea, his name writ in water.’ Francis reached for the coffee beside the bed. ‘I’ve made a decision, Mummy: it’s time to get ship-shape and focused.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Today I’m taking back control of my life.’ He took a sip of coffee and looked at her solemnly. ‘I’m wide awake, Mummy: your mission is accomplished. You should go home and get on with your life. You’ve spent too long looking out for me.’

  ‘I’ll make you some breakfast first.’

  ‘Just some more coffee, strong and black and hot.’

  ‘You need more than coffee.’

  ‘I need two of those blue pills on the table.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘They keep the pain away. Regrettably they can also make the figures blur on any balance sheet. Just give me one. I’ve so much to do and these blue pills stop me doing it.’

  ‘Then stop taking them,’ Eva pleaded. ‘Let me stay today and mind you.’

  Francis smiled. ‘I’d love that but you’d only distract me, Mummy. We’d waste the whole day talking, because you love to talk, you can’t help yourself. It’s better if you go. I’ve so much to sort out. Just leave some coffee by the bed.’

  Eva entered the kitchenette to re-boil the kettle. At least Francis sounded more like himself and yet Eva felt a gnawing unease she could not articulate, a sense that she was missing something. When she returned with the coffee, he had his trousers on and was examining the letters and files strewn on the floor. He looked so thin that she could see his ribcage. He was wearing a creased white shirt that needed washing, something he would never have done before. She placed the coffee cup next to the ashtray beside his bed.

  ‘I’ll call back tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Do that. And bring someone with you.’

  ‘Who?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Alan.’ Francis waved a hand distractedly, as if the effects of the pill were kicking in. ‘He’s a good sort, Alan. He’s always felt like a sort of brother to me. Bring Alan. I’d like some company and I need to discuss how to move my stuff to his flat tomorrow. But leave it until after ten because I’ve so much to sort out today.’ Tenderly he took her hand. ‘I was a frightful disappointment to Daddy, but have I been a disappointment to you?’

  ‘The moment you were born a light entered my life,’ Eva replied. ‘You give me purpose on this earth.’

  ‘Do you believe in heaven, Mummy?’

  ‘Maybe we all carry our private heaven inside us.’

  ‘My heaven would be the lawn at Glanmire. One part of me will always be twelve years old, lying bare-chested in the sun there with our dog beside me.’ He put his arms around her in a particularly effusive show of affection. ‘Do you know your most special quality?’

  Eva laughed, suddenly as shy as a young girl. ‘What?’

  ‘You have no notion just how special you are. Now away with you: you have your own life to lead.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ she asked, still perturbed by a foreboding.

  ‘Remember when I was small and Daddy made me shoot a rabbit. You and I hid in the woods afterwards, hoping the world would never find us. But in the end we all need to come out from the wood and confront the hunters who are only happy when hurting someone. Do you know my biggest regret in life, the one thing I’d go back and change if I could? It was shooting that wild rabbit now that I know the pain he must have endured.’

  ‘I love you dearly,’ Eva said. ‘I hope I’ve never caused you pain.’

  ‘It would only pain me if you could never forgive any hurt I cause you.’

  Eva looked up at his suddenly solemn face. ‘You could never hurt me, Francis.’

  ‘Never is a big word.’ He kissed her forehead softly. ‘Go now, Mummy. I love you so much.’

  Eva climbed the steps from the basement and, glancing at Jonathan’s house, which seemed utterly bereft of life, tried not to feel spiteful towards that man who was paying a solicitor to do his dirty work. Francis was right about her need to attend to her own life. Her meagre savings were gone and she’d had no time to try and find a small job to keep her going. Thankfully her rent was paid until the end of the month and she ate so little that she could scrape by on almost nothing. Hazel would gladly send money from Kenya, but it did not feel right for a mother to ask her child for money. If Eva wanted to be of help to Francis, she needed to find part-time work serving in a café. It was vital to focus on her own finances, but as she walked through the streets Eva found it impossible to think of anything except her desire to be back with Francis. Nothing else mattered: her inability to pay next month’s rent, her patched-up clothes, the fact of not having eaten in twenty-four hours.

  She recognised how necessary it was to give Francis the space to focus on saving his business, yet she just wanted to speed up the hours until ten o’clock tonight when she could return to that basement to be with him. The fact that Francis had asked her to bring Alan was a good sign: it meant he was ready to discuss the practicalities of temporarily moving his possessions to Alan’s flat until he found a new home. That bearded science teacher who perpetually dressed in woollen jumpers was a true friend to them both: the calmest man she knew. She could phone him later, but for now she bought a ticket for the Circle Line because it was starting to rain and at least the Tube was warm. If you sat quietly as the Circle Line went on its loop people left you in peace, too preoccupied with their own concerns to notice your presence.

  For hours London spun past her in an endless circle: South Kensington, Westminster, Embankment, Blackfriars. The carriage perpetually filled up and emptied out: busy people preoccupied with jobs and tasks. But eventually even Eva could no longer stand the constant swaying through dark tunnels. She realised that a man sitting across from her was also only there to avail of the free warmth and fill out his vacant hours. It was just a matter of time before he tried to talk to her and just now she wanted to speak to nobody. Emerging out into the air at Great Portland Street, she spent her daily food allowance on a bar of black chocolate and a
coffee at a café in the station forecourt. She hoped that some customer would leave behind an Evening Standard, which would allow her to circle any small ads for flats of interest to Francis. After sitting in the café for so long that the waitress began staring at her, Eva decided to walk to Regent’s Park.

  But this was simply a ploy to allow her to pass by the chambers at Harley Street where Jonathan conducted his private practice. She paused outside but knew that if she entered he would refuse to see her. The notion of a separate basement flat had always only been a convenient cover, a token address from which Francis could entertain clients or fellow members of the Irish Genealogical Research Society: people with no clue to his other life which started after they left and he stepped through the baize door to join Jonathan upstairs. But now that door was kept locked: the break-up all the more harrowing for having to occur in secret. Yet everything in Francis’s world was secretive. His friends’ gaiety was the gaiety of desperation: their world built around invisible bars and secret fears – the fear of losing your liberty, losing your reputation or losing your looks.

  Therefore Eva walked on past Jonathan’s chambers and entered Regent’s park. She sat alone there for several hours, allowing exhaustion to finally catch up with her. At sixty-two years of age her possessions fitted into two suitcases under her bed. Her most precious possession was a watercolour of an old woman sitting alone on a park bench, entitled ‘Lonely Soul’, which Francis had painted as a schoolboy in Aravon. This was who she had now become. When dusk came she left the park to phone Alan but got no reply. She walked for a while longer, but it was only on the second occasion when she entered a phone box to call Alan and listen to his unanswered phone ring, that she grasped the significance of why Francis did not want her returning to the basement alone. Why was she always so slow-witted, too caught up in the ether to grasp the obvious? The subconscious anxiety gnawing at her all day crystallised. There could only be one reason why Francis wished Eva to have someone with her when she re-entered that basement.

  She left the phone booth without even replacing the receiver and started to run. It was seven o’clock. The worst of the rush hour was over. Light had drained from the sky. Francis had said to not return before ten o’clock. Did this mean that he planned to do nothing until close to that time? Panic drove her forward, passers-by surprised at how she elbowed her way onto a crowded Tube just as the doors closed. All day she had been longing for time to pass but now she yearned for the seconds to slow down.

  She ran from the Tube station to Jonathan’s basement, not caring if anyone thought that she looked like a crazed woman. She just needed to reach him, her first-born, her wounded fawn. The first thing she noticed upon opening the door was the cleanliness and order of the basement. Files, which had been untidy this morning, were meticulously arranged. An entire table of overdue correspondence was answered and stacked for posting. The figures had stopped sliding across the page. Francis had grasped them in his palm: every bill paid and a four week advance in wages totalled up for Peter in an envelope. Alongside it was a letter with detailed instructions concerning what to do with his genealogical research files. He must have spent the whole day finalising every detail with absolute calmness, even parcelling up all his books with string and attaching labels to denote which friend should receive each parcel. The only untidy thing was the two letters from Jonathan’s solicitor, torn into tiny pieces.

  Eva knew there would be no reply when she called out his name. She ran frantically towards his bedroom: each step seeming to take an inordinate time. The door was ajar. His death was the only untidy aspect in his plan. Francis lay on the carpet and there was no question but that he was dead because his face was discoloured by several blue blotches on the skin. His shoulder was hunched up and she knew that he had been trying to rise and get even more pills in case he had not taken enough. The door was open to the bathroom where several empty pill bottles lay on the floor, while the bottle beside his bed – filled with blue capsules this morning – was also empty.

  Eva knelt to cradle his body in her arms. For a moment she prayed that by some miracle the touch of her tears trickling down onto his cold check might bring him back to life. But then she realised that she was being selfish. If Francis woke up again, it would be to endure more suffering and rejection that he could simply no longer bear. Here was the baby she had cradled with such hope; the child so compassionate that he used to make burial mounds for dead birds they found in the woods; the boy who had never grown hardened enough to accept life’s perpetual betrayals; the man who had desperately needed his lover to stand up for a love whose name could not be spoken. Francis’s nightmare was over, but Eva knew that her nightmare was only beginning. She had no idea how long she knelt there, stroking his cold face and listening to herself repeat the same words over and over: ‘My precious, precious darling, I’m just so glad that they can’t hurt you anymore.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The Moonlight Sonata

  London, 15th September 1966

  Without Alan she would never have got through that night after the police and ambulancemen arrived, with Jonathan’s basement flat sealed off like a crime scene. The detective in charge insisted on her phoning someone. Alan knew what had happened from the tone of Eva’s voice before she even told him. It was Alan who collected her from the hospital to which Francis’s body was finally taken in the early hours and then drove her back to his own basement flat. He was calm and quiet, instinctively sensing that she would wish to sit out in the moonlight on the wrought-iron patio chairs, near the herbaceous border that Francis planted last year when painstakingly remodelling Alan’s lawn. Eva could imagine her son carefully planting each bulb, conscious of their need for light and space. His personality seemed to radiate from the arrangement of shrubs, his handiwork even more beautiful now that the clouds had cleared to reveal the constellations of stars.

  Alan urged Eva to have a stiff gin but she declined and requested instead that he simply take her hand. He sat beside her on the patio, never complaining even though Eva knew she was gripping his hand so fiercely that his fingers must be crushed. But she could not let go. As a fellow Scorpio, Alan understood that what she needed most was silent support. She made him promise not to call his two young nieces who lived nearby. They were wonderful girls, full blooming roses, but they would want to wrap their arms around Eva and kiss and console her when just now she wanted nothing like that. Her grief was too real for physical intrusion. It felt as if her life before finding Francis’s body had belonged to someone else. She found it impossible to imagine ever rising from this patio to resume living. But she could not allow herself to think selfishly like this because Francis had left her detailed instructions. She had urgent telegrams to send, although she didn’t know how she would find the strength. Closing her eyes, she tried to relax her grip on Alan’s hand, but pain had locked her fingers into a tighter vice than arthritis ever could. The French doors were open, lamplight spilling out. Alan winced silently, trying not to complain. Eva finally managed to relax her grip. She saw how discoloured his palm was where her nails had dug in and apologised for hurting him.

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You could dig your nails into me all night and I still wouldn’t feel a fraction of the pain you’re surely in. Do you want me to try again to see if I can put a call through to Kenya?’

  Eva shook her head. He had already tried to contact Hazel twice without success. Just now she could not bear another wait while a London telephone operator contacted other operators in a line stretching to whatever remote telephone exchange was closest to Hazel’s plantation, only for the chain to break down or Hazel’s phone to ring unanswered. There was a new darkness hidden within Hazel’s life in Africa that Eva felt she was being shielded from, an unspoken unhappiness lurking behind the brisk tone in Hazel’s letters. But Eva longed to have Hazel with her in spirit at least, because Hazel and Alex were all that Eva had left now to root her to this earth. A memory returned of rockin
g Hazel to sleep on her knee in Glanmire House when Hazel was a child, after placing Hazel’s favourite record, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, on the gramophone as a bedtime treat. Eva glanced at Alan.

  ‘Do you have the ‘Moonlight Sonata’?’ she asked

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder could you possibly play it for me?’

  Alan rose and after a moment she heard the record start in the room behind her. The music seemed to draw Hazel’s essence closer and Eva wanted to believe that, whatever Hazel was doing now, her daughter would intuitively hear those notes inexplicably surface in her consciousness. Eva rocked slowly in the chair but this time her arms were empty; her arms that had held Francis moments after his birth and sensed her true purpose in life. She tormented herself with guilt for not having done more. There were enough signs if she had only allowed herself to read them. But, even amidst her grief, she took a curious comfort in the fact that his suicide had been no hasty decision. Francis had taken back control of his life. During his final hours he was methodical and calm in how he arranged everything. This was how he would wish her to behave in the terrible days ahead. She closed her eyes until the sonata’s first movement ended.

  ‘That’s my favourite part,’ Alan said softly. ‘I love the quietude, barely ever a whisper above pianissimo. Would you like me to play the start again?’

  Eva opened her eyes to see Alan crying softly without making a sound.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We have too much to do for Francis. Maybe you could try the operator one more time to see if we can get through to Kenya? Hazel will want to travel to London. She will know exactly what we should do.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The Jacket and the Hat

  London, Late September 1966