Mothers and Sons

by Colm Toibin

  ‘This is rich in toxic energy,’ Fergus said. Alan fell down on the soft sand in laughter.

  ‘You sound like God the father, or Einstein,’ Conal said.

  Mick was putting the towels into the holdall, and checking to make sure that they had left no litter.

  ‘I’ve got bad news,’ he said. ‘We’re going for a swim.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus!’ Alan said.

  ‘I’m on for it,’ Conal said, standing up and stretching. ‘Come on, Alan, it’ll make a man of you.’

  He helped Alan to his feet.

  ‘I’ve no togs,’ Alan said.

  ‘And no clean underpants either, I bet.’

  Mick handed Fergus the bottle of tequila, which they drank from as they walked away from the last ravers to a point at the far end of the cove, where there was nobody. Mick left down the holdall, took out a towel which he left on the sand and began to undress. He handed an Ecstasy tablet to Alan and Conal.

  ‘This will warm you up,’ he said.

  He bit on another and handed half of it to Fergus, who was suddenly aware of Mick’s saliva on the jagged edge of the pill he put into his mouth, and sharply alert to the afterglow of the long hours when they had been sharing and touching and staying close. He stood on the strand watching Mick until he was fully undressed, realizing with a gasp that he was going naked into the water.

  ‘Last in is Charlie Haughey,’ Mick shouted as he neared the edge of the sea.

  In the strange, inhospitable half-light, his body seemed oddly and powerfully awkward, his skin blotchy and white. Soon, Alan followed him, also naked, skinnier, shivering, dancing up and down to keep the cold at bay. Conal wore his underpants as he moved gingerly towards the water. Fergus slowly undressed, shivering too, watching as the others shrieked at the cold water, jumping to avoid each wave, until the look of them there began to interest him. Mick and Conal chose the same moment to dive under an incoming wave.

  As soon as his feet touched the water, Fergus stepped back. He watched the other three cavorting further out, swimming with energy and abandon, letting themselves be pulled inwards by the waves, and then diving under as though the water itself were a refuge from the cold. This, he thought, as he wrapped his arms around his body to keep warm, and allowed his teeth to chatter, was going to be an ordeal, but he could not return to the strand and dress himself now; he would have to be brave and join the others, who showed no sign of coming back to dry land as they beckoned him not to be a baby.

  He made himself think for a moment that he was nobody and nothing, that he had no feelings, that nothing could hurt him as he waded into the water. He crashed into a wave as it came towards him and then dived under it and did a breast stroke out towards his friends. His mother, he remembered, had always been so brave in the water, never hesitating at the edge for a single second, always marching determinedly into the cold sea. She would not have been proud of him now, he thought, as he battled with the idea that he had wet himself enough and could run back quickly to the strand and dry himself. He dismissed the thought, tried to stay under the water and move blindly, thrashing about as much as he could to keep warm. When he reached his friends, they laughed and put their arms around him and then began an elaborate horseplay in the water which made him forget about the cold.

  When Alan and Conal waded in towards the shore, Mick stayed behind with Fergus, who was oblivious enough now to the cold that he could spread his arms out and float, staring up at the sky growing lighter. Mick did not venture far from him, but after a while urged him to swim out further to a sandbank where the waves made no difference and it was easy to float and stand and float again. As they swam out they kept close and hit against each other casually a few times, but when they found the bank Fergus felt Mick touching him deliberately, putting his hand on him and keeping it there. Fergus felt his own cock stiffen. When Mick moved away he floated on his back, too happy in the water to care if Mick saw his erection, being certain that Mick would swim back towards him before long.

  He did not even open his eyes when Mick swam in between his legs and, surfacing, held his cock, putting the other hand under him. When he tried to stand, he realized that Mick was holding him, trying to enter him with the index finger of his right hand, pushing and probing until he was deep inside. Fergus winced and put his arms around Mick’s neck, moving his mouth towards Mick’s until Mick began to kiss him fiercely, biting his tongue and lips as he stood on the sandbank. When Fergus reached down, he could feel Mick’s cock, hard and rubbery in the water. He smiled, almost laughed, at the thought of how difficult it would be to suck a cock under water.

  ‘I have sort of wanted to do this,’ Mick said, ‘but just once. Is that all right?’

  Fergus laughed and kissed him again. As Mick worked on his cock with his hand, he tried to ease a second finger into him and Fergus cried out but did not pull away. He spread his legs as wide as he could, letting the second finger into him slowly, breathing deeply so that he could open himself more. He held his two arms around Mick’s neck and put his head back, closing his eyes against the pain and the thrill it gave. In the half-light of morning he began to touch Mick’s face, feeling the bones, sensing the skull behind the skin and the flesh, the eye sockets, the cheekbones, the jawbone, the forehead, the inert solidity of teeth, the tongue that would dry up and rot so easily, the dead hair.

  Mick was not masturbating him now, but putting all his concentration into his two fingers, moving them in and out roughly. Fergus touched Mick’s cock, his hips, his back, his balls; then he began to direct his energy, all of it, all of his drug-lined grief and pure excitement, into taking Mick’s tongue in his mouth, holding it there, offering his tongue in return, tasting his friend’s saliva, his breath, his feral self. He realized that neither of them wanted to ejaculate; it would, somehow, be a defeat, the end of something, but neither could they decide to stop, even though both of them were shivering with the cold. Fergus became slowly aware that Alan and Conal were standing on the strand watching them. When finally the water became too cold for them and they began to wade in towards the shore, the other two turned away nonchalantly.

  BY THE TIME they were all dressed and ready to walk back towards the car, the day had dawned. They passed the organizers taking the machinery of the previous night asunder, working with speed and efficiency.

  ‘How do they make their money?’ Alan asked.

  ‘They make it on other nights,’ Mick said, ‘but they do this out of love.’

  Mick had to reverse the car without any passengers so that the wheels would not get stuck in the sand. When he had the car turned, Fergus sat in the front passenger seat and the two others in the back. They rocked silently along the lane, the brambles on each side laden with blackberries. Fergus remembered some road out of his town, empty of traffic with tall trees in the distance, and each of them, his brothers and sisters and his mother, with a colander or an old saucepan gathering blackberries from the bushes in the ditches, his mother the most assiduous, the busiest, filling colander after colander into the red bucket in the back seat of the old Morris Minor.

  As they made their way from a side road towards the main Dublin road, Fergus realized that he could not face the day alone. He was not sleepy, although he was tired; he was, more than anything, restless and excited. The taste from Mick’s mouth, the weight of him in the water, the feel of his skin, the sense of his excitement, had allied themselves now with the remnants of the drugs and the tequila to make him want Mick again, want him alone in a bedroom, with clean sheets and a closed door. He regretted that he had not come off in the sea, and was sorry too that he had not made Mick come off with him. Their sperm mingling with the salt water and the slime and the sand would have put an end to his yearnings, for a time at least. He knew that his house was the first stop as they entered the city; he wished he could turn to Mick, without the two in the back overhearing, and ask him to stay with him for a while.

  When Alan asked Mick to stop the car, announci
ng that he was going to be sick, and Mick pulled in on the hard shoulder of the dual carriageway, they watched him without comment as he heaved and vomited, listening calmly to the retching sounds. Fergus thought then that it might be a good moment to mention to Mick that he could not go home alone.

  ‘Conal, why don’t you go and help him?’ he asked.

  ‘He always pukes,’ Conal said. ‘It’s genetic, he says. There’s nothing I can do for him. He’s a wimp. His father and mother were wimps too. Or so he says, anyway.’

  ‘Did they go to raves?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Whatever it was in their day,’ Conal replied. ‘Dances, I suppose, or hops.’

  Alan, much chastened and very pale, got back into the car. Since there was no traffic, Fergus knew that he would be home in half an hour. He would have no chance now to tell Mick what he wanted. He could try later on the phone, but this would be a day when Mick might not answer the phone. His own desperate need might have abated by then in any case, become dull sadness and disappointment.

  His small house, when he came in the door, seemed to have been hollowed out from something, the air inside it felt trapped, specially filtered to a sort of thinness. The sun was shining through the front window so he went immediately to close the curtains, creating the pretence that it was still the early morning. He thought of putting music on the CD player, but no music would please him now, just as alcohol would not help and sleep would not come. He felt then that he could walk a hundred miles if he had somewhere to go, some clear destination. He was afraid of nothing now save that this feeling would never fade. His heart was beating in immense dissatisfaction at how life was; the echo of the music in his ears and the aftershine of the flashing lights in his eyes were still with him. He felt as though he had been brushed by the wings of some sharp knowledge, some exquisite and mysterious emotion almost equal to the events of the past week. He lay on the sofa, dazed and beaten by his failure to grasp what had been offered to him, and fell into a stupor rather than a sleep.

  He did not know how much time had passed when someone banged the knocker on the front door. His bones ached as he went automatically to answer it. He had forgotten what he had wanted so badly in the car, but as soon as he saw Mick, who looked as though he had gone home and showered and changed his clothes, he remembered. Mick had a bag of groceries in his hand.

  ‘I’m not coming in unless you promise that you’ll wash all that sand out of every orifice,’ Mick said.

  ‘I promise,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Immediately,’ Mick insisted.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll make breakfast,’ Mick said.

  Fergus deliberately turned the hot-water tap on too high to see if this could restore him to the state of excitement he had been in. He washed and shaved and found fresh clothes. Quickly, he changed the sheets and the duvet on his bed. When he came downstairs the table was set; there was steaming tea and scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice. They ate and drank ravenously, without speaking.

  ‘I would have bought the morning papers,’ Mick said, ‘except I can barely see.’

  Fergus wondered how quickly he could move Mick to the bedroom once breakfast was finished. He smiled at him and nodded in the direction of upstairs.

  ‘Are you ready so?’ he asked.

  ‘I am, I suppose, but I haven’t been converted or anything. Just once, OK?’

  ‘You said that before.’

  ‘I was drugged. I mean it this time.’

  Mick took out a small plastic bag from his pocket and pushed back the tablecloth to the bare wood of the table. With his credit card he began to make two long orderly lines of cocaine. He took a fifty-euro note from his pocket.

  ‘Which of us goes first?’ he asked and grinned.

  A Summer Job

  SHE CAME DOWN from Williamstown, the old woman, when the baby was born, leaving a neighbouring girl in charge of the post office. She sat by Frances in the hospital, looking fondly at the child even when he was sleeping, and holding him tenderly when he was awake. She had not done this when any of her other grandchildren were born.

  ‘He is lovely, Frances,’ she said gravely.

  The old woman was interested in politics and religion and fresh news. She loved meeting people who knew more than she did, and were better educated. She read biographies and theology. Her mother, Frances thought, was interested in most things, but not children, unless they were ill or had excelled in some subject, and certainly not babies. She had no idea why she stayed for four days.

  Her mother, she knew, was careful with her own grown-up children, even Bill her youngest son, who still lived with her and ran the farm, asking them few questions, never interfering in their lives. Frances watched her now maintaining silence when the subject of a name for the baby arose, but she was aware that her mother was listening keenly, especially when Jim, Frances’s husband, was in the room.

  Frances waited until late at night when her mother had gone before she discussed the baby’s name with Jim, who liked names that were ordinary and solid, like his own, names that would cause no comment now or in the future. Therefore, she was sure that when she suggested John as a name for the baby, Jim would agree.

  Her mother was jubilant. Frances knew that her mother’s father had been called John, but it did not occur to her that she would now think the new baby was to be christened in his honour. It had nothing to do with him. She asked her mother not to talk to Jim about the name of the baby, and hoped that the old woman might soon stop saying how proud she was that the name was being carried on in the family in a time when the fashion was all for new names, including the names of film stars and pop stars.

  ‘The Irish names are the worst, Frances,’ her mother said. ‘You couldn’t even pronounce them.’

  John was cradled even more warmly by her mother now that he had a name. She seemed happy to sit for hours saying nothing, rocking him or soothing him. Frances was glad when she could go home, and happy when her mother suggested that she herself might return to Williamstown to her small post office, her books, her daily Irish Times, her specially selected television and radio programmes and a few kindred spirits with whom she exchanged views about current events.

  ONCE JOHN was home, the old woman began to pay more attention to his siblings’ birthdays, no longer merely sending a postal order and a birthday card, but, having arranged a lift, coming personally the forty miles from Williamstown, staying for tea, bringing the postal order in her handbag. No matter whose birthday it was, however, all of the children knew that their grandmother had come to see John. The old woman, Frances saw, made sure not to try to lift him or cuddle him or demand his attention when he was busy playing or sitting in front of the television. She waited until he was tired or wanted something and then she made clear to him that she was watching out for him, she was on his side. By the time he was four or five, he was often speaking to her on the telephone, and was looking forward to her visits, keeping close to her once she came, showing her his schoolwork and his drawings and asking his parents’ leave to stay up late so he could fall asleep beside her on the sofa, his head in her lap.

  Soon, once Bill was married and she was alone in the house, the old woman began to invite Frances and her family for Sunday lunch once a month. She made sure that her grandsons were not bored in the house, suggesting that Bill take them to hurling or football matches in the locality, or knowing what they and their sisters might want to watch on television. By the time John was seven or eight, his grandmother would send Bill down to collect him so that he could come on his own to stay on the Saturday night before the lunch. Within a short time, he had his own bedroom in his grandmother’s house, his own boots and duffle coat, pyjamas, books and comics.

  Frances was not sure what age he was when he began to go to Williamstown for a month in the summer, but by the age of twelve he would stay in his grandmother’s house for the entire summer, helping Bill on the farm, working in the post office and sitting with her at night
, reading, or talking to her, or, with his grandmother’s full encouragement, going out with some local boys his own age.

  ‘Everyone likes John,’ her mother said to Frances. ‘Everyone he meets, young and old. He always has something interesting to say to everyone and he’s a great listener as well.’

  FRANCES OBSERVED John move effortlessly through the world. There were never complaints about him, even from his sisters. He was quiet most of the time, he did his share of the housework and knew how to negotiate with his mother and father if he wanted money or permission to stay out late. He appeared to Frances self-contained, unlikely to make mistakes or misjudgements. He took most matters seriously. When, a few times, she tried to make light of his relationship with his grandmother and his special place in her house, he did not smile or acknowledge that she had spoken. Even when she made remarks about the more comic customers of his grandmother’s post office, people who did not seem to have changed since she had worked there thirty years earlier, John did not share her amusement.

  In those years as soon as spring began her mother would telephone to say that she was already looking forward to the arrival of John.

  THAT SUMMER when Frances drove him to Williamstown, she went upstairs with him as soon as they had been met by her mother. His bedroom, she saw, had new wallpaper and there was a new bed. On the chest of drawer lay a stack of shirts, all freshly ironed, a few pairs of jeans, shaving cream, a new fancy razor and special shampoo.

  ‘No wonder you come here,’ she said. ‘We don’t treat you properly at home. Ironed shirts! Done by your special girlfriend!’

  As she laughed she did not notice that her mother was waiting outside the door. She realized, as they went downstairs, that both John and her mother wanted her to leave, both were careful not to respond to anything she said. They were almost hostile, as though she had left a gate open in a field, or given too much change to a customer. Neither of them came to the car with her as she departed.