TransAtlantic: A Novel

by Colum McCann

  THE TAP OF his cane on the floor. The clank of the water pipes. She is wary of making too much of a fuss. Doesn’t want to embarrass him, but he’s certainly slowing up these weathers. What she dreads is a thump on the floor, or a falling against the banisters, or worse still a tumble down the stairs. She climbs the stairs before Ambrose emerges from the bathroom. A quick wrench of worry when there is no sound, but he emerges with a slightly bewildered look on his face. He has left a little shaving foam on the side of his chin, and his shirt is haphazardly buttoned.

  She disappears into the bedroom. The worrywart’s dance. Out of her nightdress. Into a pair of slacks and a cardigan. A peek in the mirror. Gray and bosom-burdened. A little bit of weight around the neck now, too.

  She peeks her head around the bedroom door to make sure that Ambrose has made it safely down the stairs. His bald head bobs away, around the bottom banisters, towards the kitchen. The ancient days of the Grand Opera House, the Hippodrome, the Curzon, the Albert Memorial Clock. The two of them out tripping the light fantastic. So young then. The smell of his tweeds. The Turkish tobacco he used to favor. The charity balls in Belfast, her gown rustling on the steps, Ambrose beside her, bow-tied, brillantined, tipsy. The music of the orchestra moving in them both. Good days. When the stars were ceilings, or ceilings were stars. She was treated every now and then to songs about Canada. The Irish had a great penchant for singing and could dredge a song from just about anywhere. Some of them even knew the words of the ballad of the First Newfoundland Regiment, doomed to the Bulge, Beaumont Hamel.

  Old soldiers from other wars. Captains and colonels. Pilots and navigators. Oarsmen and show jumpers. Elegant men, all. There were times they got together for a gallop of a foxhunt out beneath the Mournes. Summer lawns. Folding chairs. Tennis tournaments. They used to call her the American, much to her chagrin. She even tried to lose her accent, could never quite manage it. She took to stitching the Red Ensign of Newfoundland on the hem of her skirt. The tournaments stretched until sundown. The dinners in the evening. At the big houses of Belfast. Hours of preparation at the dressing table. Leaning into the small oval mirror. Fixing back a strand of hair. Dabbing on the makeup. Not too much rouge on the cheeks. Light on the mascara, but bright with the lipstick. How do I look, honey? Quite frankly, my dear, you look late. His usual answer, but said with a wink and his arm curled tight around her waist. Afterwards she stood naked in front of a mirror, unplaiting the tress of her hair while his white collar fell onto the bed, and the night was kind to them, always kind.

  Down the stairs she goes, a spryness in her step. He is sitting by the window with his tea and toast. She leans across to adjust his shirt buttons and manages to swipe away the small patch of shaving foam from his neck without him noticing. He accordions out yesterday’s newspaper, folds it down on the table with a sigh. A bomb scare in the city center. Seventeen men rounded up in a sweep. A boy kneecapped in the Peter’s Hill area. An incendiary device found hidden in the bottom of a baby’s pram.

  —The great and loyal heroes of Ireland are at it again, says Ambrose.

  ON THE WAY to the lough, the car itself seems to relax. An ancient church, a flock of blackbirds in the eaves, auction notes on stone pillars, sheds bulging with fodder, milk cans at gateways, marshland.

  They drive past the heritage site and over the small bridge to the island, then around the red gate in the early morning.

  The cottage sits on the edge of the lough, hidden by trees. The thatched roof has long been converted to slate, but the rest still nods to the past. The whitewashed walls, the blue half-door, the old copper flowerpots hanging outside the windows, the faded deckchairs, a dinner bell set on a fence post out the back. How many days has she spent out here, hammering nails and hanging doors and painting walls and puttying window frames? A whole new heating system that never worked in the first place. Pumps and pipe work. Rolls of insulation. Wires and water wells. It began as a two-room cottage and made a gentle spread along the lake. She and Ambrose did most of the work together in the years after the war. Days of calm and quiet. Wind and rain. It weathered their faces. Up on the ladder to fix the slates. Cleaning out the drainpipes. Their summer cottage slid over into winter. All those nights, stunned with simplicity, lying next to him in the back bedroom. Facing east across the water. Watching the light drain.

  Tomas swings the car into the driveway. A little too quickly. Ambrose stirs in the backseat, but doesn’t waken. The tires slide in the soft ground. Several other vehicles are already parked in the long grass near the barn. Her son-in-law, Lawrence, has invited far too many guests. So be it. It’s his weekend. His ritual.

  —Leave your grandfather sleep a minute.

  Lottie leans over the car seat and tucks the blanket around Ambrose’s neck. He gives the faint hint of a snore. The ground has been turned to mush. Puddles and tire tracks. She has forgotten her Wellington boots and she slops her way towards the back of the car.

  —Give me a hand here, Tomas, good lad.

  He slouches against the side of the car and stretches out his arms, his hair down over his eyes.

  —Buy yourself some windscreen wipers.

  He squints at her, perplexed, until she swipes the curls away from his brow. He laughs and Lottie loads him up with bags, books, blankets, directs him towards the house. She watches him drift through the long grass at the side of the cottage, the stalks brushing wet against his jeans. He still wears large elephant flares. His shirt hanging out at the rear. Never a boy for fashion. He struggles under the load, almost slips, but finds his footing in the gravel near the front door, steadies himself.

  He slides towards the half-door—the top portion open, the bottom closed—and leans his way into the cottage. Half in, half out. The load he carries propped on the rim of the door. Even from a distance Lottie can hear the high greeting of her daughter from inside. The spill of happiness out the door. An apron. A few strands of hair over Hannah’s blue eyes. A smell of tobacco when they hug.

  —Where’s Dad?

  —Snoozing. Leave him two minutes.

  —Did you roll down the window?

  —Of course. Are they at it yet?

  —They put out the decoys at five this morning.

  —They what?

  —They began in the dark.

  And, as if on cue, Lottie hears her first gunshot of the weekend. Followed quickly by a second. She turns to see a flock of birds bursting their way over the cottage.

  AMBROSE WAS, IN his time, a good shot, too. A few of the men from the linen business would get together on the autumn weekends. Headlamps pouring down the road in pale shrouds in the early mist. Boots. Duck-hunting hats. Tweeds. Green slickers. Brownings tucked away in rifle bags, slung over their shoulders. They walked out the island road with the dogs trotting behind them, Labradors, yellow and black. She could hear the heeltaps on gravel as they moved away. They returned in the late afternoon, a faint smell of gunpowder from their clothes. Pochard, tufted duck, goldeneye. They made a ritual of dropping brandy in the boiling water to ease the pellets, they said, from the flesh. She could never taste the meat without thinking of flight.

  Arthur Brown. God rest him. She still has the unopened letter from her youth. He is dead now these past thirty years. His own son, Buster, smashed out of the clouds on a mission of war. The second savaging of the century. The failed experiment of peace. She recalls Brown at his home in Swansea, standing on the low wall, his body bent backwards, the ball in midflight and an arc of brief joy on his face.

  RANDOM GUNFIRE PUNCTUATES breakfast. She sits in the kitchen, with Hannah at the table, the red-and-white-checked tablecloth spread out in front of them. Tomas perches by the fire, reading, while Ambrose takes a stroll along the shore between naps.

  She is happy to spend some time alone with her daughter: it happens less and less these days. The inevitable teapot, the butter, the scones. The lilies leaning in a tabletop vase. The hard whiff of tobacco: Lottie allows it to drift across her face.<
br />
  On the windowsill stand a bunch of opened letters and a checkbook. Destiny has given her daughter two things—an agile mind, and a gift, or a curse, for giving away money. It has been that way for years: as a child on the Malone Road she would come home shoeless. Even now, there is always a check being dropped in an envelope. Red Cross. Oxfam. Shaftesbury Children’s Home.

  —What in the world is Amnesty International?

  —Just another bunch of Canadians, Mother.

  —Does the postman not hate you?

  —I’m on their watch list.

  Lottie holds the bundle of letters in the air, flicks through them as if they were a moving cartoon: pound notes disappearing over the hill.

  —Everything I know I learned from you, Mum.

  Not a lie. She was, in her day, hardly a penny-pincher. Still, always a mother. Impossible to escape. She wraps an elastic band around the checkbook, tries to hide it behind the flowerpot.

  They weave the hours away, moving fluidly around one another, swapping spoons, handing off bowls, borrowing dishtowels from one another’s shoulders. The state of the farm. The pulse of the village. The business Hannah has made with the purebred dogs.

  Hannah’s hands have aged a little. Thirty-eight years old now, half her life a mother herself. A tilework to her skin. A braid of veins at the base of her wrist. Such a curious thing, to watch your daughter grow older. That odd inheritance.

  —Tomas behaving himself up there, is he, then?

  —Playing tennis every Wednesday.

  —Good on him.

  A wistful note in her daughter’s voice: Not driving you mad with that new stereo of his, is he?

  —Sure the two of us are deaf anyway.

  Hannah turns and takes the bread from the stove. With bare hands. A scorch at her fingertips. She steps to the kitchen sink, runs cold water on the burn.

  —I was thinking, Mum. You know. Maybe you’d have a word with him? Maybe he’d go out, just this once? Lawrence has been talking about him all week long.

  —You’re his mother.

  —Aye. He listens to you but.

  —He could maybe row out the decoys.

  —He could, that.

  Through the window, along the shore, she spies Ambrose wandering under the brown of his hat. He has always loved the lake. It stretches beyond him, a wide plash of gray. He will come in shortly, she knows, rubbing his hands together, looking for the warmth of a fire, a small brandy and a newspaper, the ordinary pleasures of an early September.

  THE HUNTERS RETURN at lunchtime, trudging along the laneway, shotguns swinging. She doesn’t know many of them. Friends of Lawrence. A lawyer, a councilman, an artisan boatmaker.

  —Where’s Tomas? says Lawrence.

  —Beyond in his room.

  Lawrence wears his shirt buttoned high. He is big-boned underneath it. He holds, by the neck, two goldeneyes. He drops the birds on the table, turns away, fills his pipe with tobacco, tamps it on the heel of his hand.

  —He’ll be on then for tomorrow?

  —Ach, leave him be, says Hannah.

  —Do him the world of good.

  —Lawrence. Please.

  He shrugs off his cardigan and hangs it by the edge of the fire, mutters. A big man, a small voice. He livens when he joins his friends in the living room.

  By late afternoon Lottie and Hannah have their hands in the warm guts of a cooked bird. Hannah pulls her fingers expertly along the bottom of the body and the flesh separates in her fingers. She spreads the meat out on a platter, with some slices of apple and a berry garnish. An extravagant gesture of color.

  The men sit at the table, eating, all except Tomas. Jackets draped over the backs of their chairs. Hats perched on the windowsill. A loud laughter rolling amongst them. An ease to the day. A slow banter. A sliding away.

  SHE IS GLAD to see Tomas emerge from his room, darkdown, when the guests have left. He wears an old fisherman’s sweater many sizes too big, belonging once to Ambrose. He wanders around, an air of sleep still about him. Nods to Lawrence across the room. A gulf between them, stepfather and son. Always a layer of cloud.

  He rows out in the evening, after dinner, to check his star charts. In his long wading boots. Binoculars at his neck. They can see him operate on the lake, a small pinpoint of red flashlight drifting along the shore. There is a low moon, a small rip of wind across the lough.

  When he hits the oar against the water, the light jumps and swerves and shifts, then settles down once more.

  EARLY ON SATURDAY morning she wakes Ambrose for the hunt. The night is pitch-black outside. The cold stuns her cheekbones. She has prepared his clothes already. A warm undershirt and long johns. A heavy tweed jacket. Two pairs of socks. Folded on the small wooden chair. His toothbrush laid out, but no razor. It is the one day of the year when Ambrose does not shave early.

  A sweep of headlights over the ceiling. The other guests coming down the laneway. Three, four, five of them this morning. The squelch of their tires in the mud. Lawrence’s voice already among them. A whisper and a shushing of the dogs. The drift of cigarette smoke from outside.

  In the kitchen she and Hannah ready breakfast: just toast and tea, no time for a fry. The men are dark-eyed, gruff, weary. They glance out the window at the early dark. Fixing batteries in their torches. Checking cartridges. Tightening their laces.

  His silhouette shows sudden in the hallway. She is quite sure, at first, that Tomas has been up all night. It has happened before. He has often spent the whole evening out on the water with his star charts. He slouches his way through the kitchen, nods to the men at the table, sits down next to Ambrose. The ritual acknowledgments. They eat breakfast together and then Tomas rises with Lawrence—not a word between them—and together they go to the pantry where the bolted silver safe is kept.

  Lottie watches as the bare bulb throws a globe of light down upon them. Lawrence spins the dial on the safe, reaches in, turns to Tomas. She watches her grandson hold the unfamiliar weight in his hand. Bits and pieces of the language floating towards her: twelve-gauge, five-shot, 36-gram load.

  —You’ll be going out then? says Hannah.

  An astonishing calm in Hannah’s voice, but her body betrays her: the shoulders tight, her neck cords shining, her eyes a premonition of ill fate. She flicks a look at Lawrence. He shrugs, taps at the pipe in his breast pocket, as if that is the thing that will monitor everything.

  —Thought I’d give it a go, says Tomas.

  —Better have your woolies on.

  The kitchen awhirl now. The rumor of dawn. The guests step outside. Tomas leans down to tighten his hiking boots. Hannah takes Lawrence by the collar, whispers something urgent in his ear. Lottie, too, takes Ambrose aside, beseeches him to look after the boy.

  —We’ll be back by noon.

  She is still in her dressing gown as she watches them go. A regiment. The marks of their bootprints in the mud. The dogs loping patiently behind them. They disappear around the red gatepost and the sky rises up as they grow small.

  THE MORNING SOUNDS loud with the retort of the guns. Double blasts. Each one a sharp kick inside her. Lottie finds herself entirely on edge. Just to walk around the kitchen needs the utmost control. She would love to wipe her hands clean of flour and step out the half-door, hurry along the laneway, down to the lakeshore, check on them, watch them, bring them sandwiches, milk, a flask. Her eyes can find no resting place. With each shot she looks out the window. A blankness of gray.

  Columns of rain pour distantly over the lake. The branches of the trees knit the wind. Surely, now, the storm will bring them home. She turns to the radio for the ease of noise. Bombs doing what bombs will. She searches the dial and settles on a classical station. On the hour mark even that, too, is interrupted. An incendiary device in Newry. Three dead, twelve wounded. No warning.

  She watches the shape of her daughter move from table to stove to pantry to fridge. Hannah fakes unconcern. She kneads the dough and allows the bread to rise. As
if the heat from the oven itself might push forward the hands of the clock on the stove. An occasional chatter between them. Did Ambrose have a proper belt? Was Tomas given the thickest of socks? Would Lawrence be alongside them both? Did everyone take an oilskin? When was the last time they shot a scaup? Did he bring his eyeglasses? Has he ever even pulled a trigger before?

  IT IS LATE lunchtime before they hear the bark of a dog. The men come down the road as routinely as one might expect: Ambrose and Tomas bringing up the rear, the width of the grassy median between them. Their jackets dark with rain. Shotguns slung over their shoulders. A hint of fatigue in the walk.

  She greets them at the front of the cottage, opens the latch on the half-door, beckons them in.

  Tomas shucks his jacket and hangs it on the fire irons, bangs his heels on the floor until his boots come off, pulls his wadded socks from his toes, puts them down by the fire. He sits, long and languid, in the chair, hides himself under a towel. A warm smoke rising from his boots and socks.

  —What about ye, Nana?

  She stands close to the fire, her back against the mantelpiece. She will hold the moment for a long time, the sight of him in the chair, a small crease of light from the fire flickering at the end of his raindark boots.

  —Did you like it, then?

  —Oh, aye, I suppose.

  —Get anything?

  —Granddad bagged himself a couple.

  There are times—months later, years later, a decade later even—that it strikes Lottie how very odd it is to be abandoned by language, how the future demands what should have been asked in the past, how words can escape us with such ease, and we are left, then, only with the pursuit. She will spend so much of her time wondering why she did not sit down with Tomas and inquire what exactly it was that brought him out the road in the morning, what guided him along the shore, what strange compulsion led him towards the hunt? What was it like, to walk down by the lakeside and crouch in the grass and wait for the birds and the dogs to disturb the blue and the gray? What words went between him and Ambrose, what silence? What sounds did he hear across the water? Which of the dogs hunkered next to him, waiting? How was it that he had changed his mind so simply? She wished, then, that she had carved open whatever idea had crossed his mind in the early hours that one September morning. Was it just one of those random things, slipshod, unasked for, another element in the grand disorder of things? Perhaps he did not want to see his grandfather stepping out alone. Or he overheard his mother talking of the hunt. Or maybe how his stepfather wanted so badly for him to join. Or perhaps it was just pure boredom.