Sunrise with Sea Monster

by Neil Jordan

  Lord I love the beauty of Thy house, the priest says, and the place where Thy glory dwells. As the boat drew towards the Kish lighthouse I could see the house one last time, the roofs perched above the thin fawn pencil of Bray harbour, barely visible in the mist. A line of three-storeyed late Georgian dwellings at right angles to the sea. With a balcony running the length of them, adding a touch of rococo, white-painted, peeling, sagging under the weight of hard winters. Ours second from the end, protected somewhat from the waves that buffeted them, worst when the tide was high and the wind from the east. A small ledge running the length of them too to prevent flooding. The view was of a promenade, a long stretch of green and concrete leading to Bray Head with a railing to frame the ocean running its length, painted blue sometimes, mucous green at others. A bandstand, quite proud of itself, smack in the middle. The shape of this bandstand, with its top like a Chinaman's hat, was echoed intermittently down the length of the prom by gazebos, follies, small shelters, call them what you will, perched somewhere between utilitarian and purely decorative functions.

  Why he chose that house I will never know, it was too small for one of his Protestant Ascendancy background, too large for one of hers. He would have been by then a veteran of the War of Independence, a fact I would have been inordinately proud of, if he allowed me, if he allowed himself a hint of the same. My mother was from Dorset Street and the pictures he kept of her show a rolling Edwardian glamour not too far removed from the music-hall. They must have been miles apart, aeons, centuries, light-years, if I can judge from the pictures, my own uncertain memories and the uncles that I met, in cinemas, at race meetings, the dogs, places he would rarely have gone. All of them small, with a swagger dictated by the rolling belly, conversation scattered from the left-hand corner of the mouth, between drags of a cigarette, a short rasping cough and a quick guffaw. They met during the Black and Tan War. She was nineteen, spending her summer in her uncle's farm in Mor­nington on the mouth of the Boyne. The uncle kept a safe house; he was billeted on it in the way of those days, came in the dead of night, wet, his Mauser tucked in his greatcoat and slept in a chicken-coop. She blundered in to collect the eggs next morning and found him in the arms of Morpheus among the flying feathers. She cooked him breakfast and that, I suppose, was that. I like to think of her in a cardigan, the rough hem of her dress dangling over a pair of Wellington boots, a young impressionable girl with a tomboy's face, a pair of eggs in her hand, entranced with this figure half covered in hay and chickenshit. He took to visiting her, during the long winter that built up to the truce, in that redbricked slum in Dorset Street. The erratic nature of his visits, the romantic allure of the gunman fastening round her heart I suppose.

  The differences in their nature were left dormant, to emerge. A Trinity student, he became a convert, in more ways than one. To the Republican creed of those days, and then, before his marriage, to Catholicism. They married during the Truce and honeymooned during the Treaty debates, and a certain greyness must have entered his soul as he watched the rhetoric of betrayal lead inexorably towards civil war. Perhaps it was exhaustion that led him to take the Free State side, and perhaps again it was the pull of his background.

  He bought the house before the marriage, I learnt later from the title deeds. She was to die within five years of coming, so it was destined to be her only one. And again I can imagine her first view of it, from the train that would have brought her from Dublin, the harbour and the boatworks behind it swinging past, then the row of houses and the balconies revealing themselves from a sideways perspective that gradually became flat, like a painted postcard. Dishevelled, mid-Victorian, comfortable somehow like the skirts of aunts or a game of bowls on a Sunday afternoon. The peeling white paint of the wooden balconies, the sea beating behind, the brown length of the harbour wall and the shell of the Turkish baths on the ocean side. Did she know she was to die in it, I often wondered, that the regular thump of the waves on the promenade would accompany her last heartbeat? When she opened the front door for the first time and sunlight disturbed the dust the last owners had left, and saw the fleur-de-lis on the linoleum floor did she make a mental note to replace it? If so she never got round to it, for its prosaic ugliness dominated my childhood. The pair of small white high heels with the pearls where the laces should be would have left neat prints on the dust over the linoleum, since I can't imagine him lifting her in the way that tradition demanded. But then again maybe he did, maybe there was a strong, reassuring forearm under the small of her back, the folds and laces of a wedding dress tucked underneath his palm, her lips and chin embedded in his neck, beardless, since the beard came later.

  A foghorn blaring through their first night in that house together. Announcing the mists that would surround it, creep up to the ground-floor windows from the sea beyond. The mists I can imagine would envelop it like a glove, seep through the cracks in the window-panes and drop the temperature inside so she could clutch him more ardently in the brass bed she was to die in.

  Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus. The words are carried on the wind which raises another cloud of dust and the Virgin shudders with her melancholy smile. I will praise thee upon the harp, O God, my God. Why art thou sad, o my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me? There was a piano in the front living-room which I have a dim memory of her playing. Some wet afternoons I would hear the keys tinkle again and imagine she had come back, picture the keys moving of their own accord. I would creep downstairs, the random arpeggios creating chords I'd never heard before, then see Maisie through the half-open door, brushing the notes with her dustcloth. Maisie made a poor substitute for even the hope of her presence, but sometimes at night when the wind whistled through the sails in the harbour outside my bedroom window I would mistake the sounds for music. I would creep down again, in darkness this time, and see the keys gleaming in the moonlight, untouched. I would tinker with them, become her ghost myself, pick out the melodies I most wanted to hear. "Roll out the Barrel," "Roses Are Blooming in Picardy," "The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls." The piano became my way to her, till one night a shadow crossed the moonlight over the keys and I felt the hair stipple on my back. I stayed still, my hands holding the dying notes until the shadow moved to my left and I heard the cough behind me and realised it was him. Where did you learn to play? he asked. I didn't, I said, afraid to turn. You make a good hand at it, he said and came towards me and his voice was hoarse. I thought it was her, he said. I lifted my hands from the keys and listened to the silence, realising it had been years since he mentioned her, and still not by name.

  I have hired you a teacher, he said soon after. Miss de Vrai, and I imagined a thin spinster in a tartan dress, clutching a ruler with which she could rap my knuckles. But what came was Rose. Rose, whom I first saw from the top window, her damp hair lifted in the wind like a flock of starlings. It was just after a spring tide and it was spring too, for the waves were crashing with celebrative bursts along the whole length of the promenade. She clutched her gabardine coat around her, held her music case up to protect her face from the spray and laughed as she struggled with the wind. I understood that laugh, I'd seen it on kids, indulged in it myself, being a kid but had rarely seen it on adults. A wave hit her, nearly knocked her sideways and she stopped a moment to regain her breath. I knew she was bound for our house, by the music case. So she gripped one hand against the railings, her hair wet, the gabardine clinging to her body. She moved to dodge the next wave and walked straight into another and laughed again. She looked up at the house, and I wondered could she see me in the upstairs window. She moved to safer terrain then, and walked on. I tried to imagine what the house would look like to her, a line of peeling facades, buffeted by wind and water, at the farther end of the promenade. I saw her cross the grass verge then, by the broken wall that was meant to protect the green from floods; she tried to pick her way through the numerous pools then gave up, and simply walked, the water coming up to her ankles over her laced boots. I wondered w
hether I should shout to Maisie that she was here. Then I heard the doorbell ring and heard Maisie running anyway to answer it. I walked out of my room to the top of the stairs and looked down. Maisie was ushering her in and the wind slammed the door behind her, leaving her in a small damp patch of her own making. Maisie ran to get towels, gave one to her and dabbed the carpet with the other.

  So where are they? she asked, her face invisible under the towel.

  Dry yourself first, said Maisie. Plenty of time. She drew her inside the kitchen as I came down the stairs. When I reached the ground floor the door was shut. I could hear voices from inside it, Maisie with her high Wicklow whine and hers, which seemed to have the softness of the west coast about it. I opened the door slowly with my foot, wanting to see but not wanting to be seen yet, and saw Maisie wrapping one of my father's coats around her, her skirt and stockings hanging round the stove.

  So I should have known, I suppose, even then: the drizzle-filled accent, her head bent so her straw-coloured hair could catch the heat, wearing my father's coat. I should have foreseen, with the instinct which, if it were given to any of us, would save all manner of trouble, would let us know which door to open and which to leave closed, which corridor to walk down and blunder towards the light. But I doubt if it would have made any difference, maybe only made the possibilities more alluring, more forbidden, and besides, how could I have connected him with this easily natural creature, running her fingers through her dampened hair, turning to greet me with a wry, cracked smile and saying, and you must be Donal.

  I blushed at the mention of my name. Every child hates their name, I discovered later, hates the present they have been given, imagines others far more potent and alluring. Then I saw the stockings and thought my embarrassment might be misinterpreted so blushed again.

  He's a shy one, she said, walking towards me, wrapping my father's coat around her waist.

  Still waters run deep, said Maisie.

  They do, she said, and held out her hand. I'm Rose.

  I shook her hand and smiled and said, hello Rose, and with the sound of my own voice gathered mastery of myself once more. You've come to teach us piano.

  That I have, Donal, she said. When do I start?

  I would have said now, but Maisie shooed me out, told me Miss de Vrai needed time to make herself respectable, whereupon Rose laughed as if such words hardly applied to her and Maisie shut the kitchen door.

  I walked back up the stairs and sat in the living-room. I could see the waves crashing down the length of the promenade. I decided only someone exceptional would let themselves get that wet. Only someone exceptional would wrap a man's coat around them, dry their hair in front of me by the stove and smile even though her stockings were drying on it. I heard footsteps below then and the tinkle of a cascade of scales, light and rapid, the waves outside thrusting up in some odd counterpoint. I became aware, slowly, that some new principle had entered the household, some new element that made me apprehensive and excitable all at once. After a time the music stopped and Maisie's feet trudged up the stairs and I understood I had been summoned.

  You behave yourself, Maisie said, ushering me downwards.

  Why wouldn't I? I asked her.

  When I came down my father's coat was draped round the wicker chair and she was sitting by the piano in a flower-patterned dress, rippling up and down it like a concert pianist, her head thrown back and her damp hair hanging down her shoulders. She looked up when I entered, but kept playing. She smiled, said my name silently, and gestured with her head for me to sit beside her. I sat down as close as was comfortable and imagined I got the smell of roses from her, but that could have been her name.

  Rose, I said.

  That's my name, she said, still playing.

  Where are you from, Rose? I asked her.

  A place near Sligo, she said. Strandhill.

  What's it like?

  Like here, she said. Only the waves are bigger.

  So I understood the way she stood on the promenade when the water ran its fingers down her. She was used to hurricanes.

  Where did you learn to play like that Rose?

  School of Music, she said. In Chatham Street.

  That in Dublin?

  Yes. She still played.

  You live in Dublin, Rose?

  Unfortunately.

  Where's your family then?

  Aren't you the curious one, Donal.

  Must be.

  Then her fingers stopped.

  So show me, she said.

  I played "The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls." I was inordinately proud of my mastery of it, so was stunned when I finished and she said nothing.

  Well? I asked her. I looked up and saw her staring out the window.

  Good, Donal, she said. Good. She opened her bag and took a small metronome out and set it clicking on the piano. Try it again and watch the timing.

  There was light rain falling when she left, the kind that created a veil over the head, and the waves had died down. I assumed the tide had changed. She put her music case over her head again and walked through it, in her newly dry gabardine coat. I saw a figure come down the promenade towards her, carrying a briefcase, and knew it was my father, coming home from work. I saw her walk towards him, oblivious, about to pass him when she stopped, summoned by him I suppose. They talked for a moment then she went on. I assumed he must have known her, searched out an ad in the Irish Times, walked to the Music School in Chatham Street, questioned her credentials from the way they spoke. I allowed myself to be jealous for a moment, a warm feeling, creating both need and sadness, with the rain falling round them, her stopping, raising her head from under the music case, a moment of recognition, him stiff against the railings, the sea moving in big slow swells behind them. Then she smiled, placed the case over her head again and walked on. He watched her go, I watched the two of them, then he turned, allowed his cane to rattle off the railings as he walked.

  Confiteor Deo omnipotent, he says and the wind and the hammering carry away his words, but I hardly have to hear them, I know them so well the litany carries on regardless. Beatae Mariae, semper Virgini. I could confess that I wanted her then, but that would be an untruth, or a truth after the fact, a retrospective lie. I was too young to know such things, was glad of a feminine presence other than Maisie in the house, wished to reinvent the mother I had lost perhaps, wished to complete this household in a way I'd never known. So maybe that would be the retrospective truth, the posthumous truth that when I saw them greet each other on the promenade through the patina of rain I hoped that something in her would gladden him. In the way that children have, their knowledge that something is important, beyond their comprehension, but they cling to it and build upon it and work to fill the gaps they feel are missing.

  She came regularly, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, and the music was secondary to the feel of her hair brushing off my cheek, the half-attentive way she listened, the way when I'd finished a piece I'd turn, see her sitting by the window, quite forgetful of the fact that I was there at all. Then she'd come to and whisper, good, Donal, good, better every day, talk of the left hand or the right and once, or if I was lucky twice, during a lesson would come behind me, grip one hand and show me how to hold my wrist. There were no rings on her fingers, which I knew was significant. Much more significant was the smell of her hair as it brushed off my cheeks, the feel of her breasts pushing into the small of my back. There was an eroticism there which was undefined, which I would always connect with the stark glory of a Bach prelude, which even now I could not call desire. It gave me balance and poise, completed me, or more properly, completed the house. That cold structure, perched on the edge of the Irish Sea seemed warmer for it. I allowed myself to wonder would my mother have been like this, had she lived. I lost the memory of the bed surrounded by crumpled paper, the cold imagined grave at the bottom of the sea. I remembered a younger woman now, unencumbered by sickness, hair with a hint of red, in a gabardine coat. They were
the happiest days, looking back on it, me, him and her, twice a week. He took to coming home early on the days of her lessons. He would ask about our progress, hold her coat for her as she went to the door, sometimes walk her to the station.

  The way it goes, said Mouse, as we followed their silhouetted figures on the promenade from the shore below, is that the gentleman takes the lady's hand.

  How? I asked him.

  Like this, he said, slipping his arm through mine. I could see my father's hand above though, wrapped chastely round her music case, a gap of blue air between his shape and hers. Perhaps the feel of the scuffed leather gave him the same pleasure as ran through me when Mouse's fingers curled into mine.

  It's called stepping out, he said. Courting. The bit before the other bit begins.

  And what's the other bit? I asked, though I already suspected.

  The gentleman, he said, gathers the courage to kiss the lady.

  Aha, I said. Try as I would, I could never imagine my father's lips on hers.

  He blushes, said Mouse, coming to a halt. And the lady's heart flutters. Then he goes for it.

  He placed his red lips on mine, not blushing at all. I could feel the breath from his nostrils on my cheek. Then his tongue came through them and played with mine.