Sunrise with Sea Monster

by Neil Jordan

  He shakes my hand and with his gloved one; his green eyes smile.

  Scarlett, he says.

  Rhett, I say. Did you believe a word I told you?

  It needs interpretation, he says. Do not think badly of me.

  I won't, I promise and walk out on the ridged plank.

  Tell your father, says the Corkman, Jeremiah Noonan sends his regards.

  I will, I promise. His black eyes fall from mine to the water.

  Are ye comin' or goin', shouts a Dublin voice from the boat. I look at the Spaniards, standing in a triangular phalanx behind them. I walk up the gangplank and step aboard.

  We headed down the tip of Spain, past fleets of destroyers massing round Gibraltar. By Algeciras we saw a submarine slink below the waters like a giant seal. The coal-scuttle sent a constant trickle of black smoke into the air. When we hit the Atlantic it developed a sickening roll. I vomited for a day, then learnt sea-legs. Somewhere past Bilbao, the wizened stoker with the voice like grinding coke told me that Germany had invaded Poland. I looked out over the rolling seas and wondered would I think badly of him and wondered where his Hispano-Suiza was now. We pulled into Portsmouth for an afternoon and while the stokers looked for whores, I tried to find a cinema where I could see Vivien Leigh on the staircase going up, Clark Gable going down. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

  II

  I GET OFF THE boat in Dun Laoghaire and try not to feel familiar which is difficult, seeing nothing has changed. The buses are the same green, smoke hangs in the air like a cloud of its own, the train that takes me out to Bray chugs with the same old languor. I tell myself that I have changed and all else hasn't, but even that isn't true. The old self folds round me like a comforting cloak. I want to see him, the old devil, I realise. The eucalyptus trees bend on the Vico Road and their scent comes through the window with the odour of tomcats. The bowling green is sodden outside the station and the long walk up to the terraces chills to the bone. The gates are hanging open, there is green moss and the accretions of rust over the ironwork. I look up at the house and see new lace curtains at the windows and realise that it's true, she must be there. So I walk on past all the railings and knock on the door and she answers.

  Were you expecting me? I say, with as much quiet as I can muster.

  Yes, she tells me.

  Well, I say, here I am.

  Good, she says.

  Was he expecting me too?

  In a way.

  Her odd reply throws me for a moment. I can't bring myself to walk inside, nor can she, it seems, bring herself to ask me in. I throw my eyes up to hers and see hers fall away, searching for the spot I had been staring at on the carpet. Her face has still got that Italianate way to it and the eyes are as startling as ever. The blonde hair is even longer, falling round her shoulders.

  I should talk to him, I tell her.

  Maybe that's not wise.

  I know he arranged my release, I say, and she brings her eyes up from the carpet and looks at me straight. Her eyelids flicker, there are lines beneath them but the eyes are as young as ever.

  He didn't arrange it, she says. I did.

  A wave comes up from the sea and hits the promenade, shaking the house. The pathetic fallacy, I think, and it's my turn to look at the carpet.

  Tell me that again, I ask her.

  He didn't arrange your release. I did.

  Why?

  She doesn't answer, but steps back slightly, which I take as an invitation and I walk inside. I try to stop my hands from shaking. Should I have guessed, I wonder, and does it matter anyway? But something tells me it matters a great deal. The smell of cleaning wax inside is like incense in a church. The old painting is still there, I am glad or indifferent to see, I don't know which. She is very close to me and her perfume overtakes the odour of wax.

  Why did you do it?

  I didn't want you to die.

  Thank you. And he did?

  No. He didn't either.

  Can I see him then?

  She looks at me, blocking my way. I lay one hand on her elbow to move her aside, and she puts her hand over it. There is an engagement ring on her finger, with a band of gold.

  Are you sure you want to? she asks.

  Yes, I'm sure, I say. I move her aside and she moves back in front of me and it's becoming like a waltz.

  There's something I should tell you, she says.

  Yes, I say, but I can't stand it any longer, whether it's her closeness or the hand on mine. I move past her. She follows me and then grabs my sleeve.

  Donal—

  That's my name I say. I make it through the hallway and walk into his study.

  But the study has changed. There's a bed where the green table used to be and beneath the mirror there's a dresser with a bowl and a jug of water. The typewriter is lying on the floor covered in dust, and he's sitting by the window, staring out to sea. He has not turned, still the same old Gore pride as rigid as the grizzled mane of hair that's all I see of him.

  Father, I say and he still doesn't turn. I can feel her behind me at the door. As I walk forwards I see the sun gleaming over the silver lines of the chair he's sitting on and wonder why the chair is silver.

  Father, I repeat and I see the chair has wheels.

  Father, I say for the third time and then I reach him. He sits rigid in the wheelchair, turning neither right nor left. I touch his face and he still doesn't turn. The skin is cold and waxen as if he could be dead. But I can hear the slow rise and fall of breath. Death doesn't breathe, I think. His eyes stare out the window to the sea, his mouth moves slightly with his breathing and that is all. I look from him to her.

  He had a stroke the week you left, she says.

  Why didn't you tell me?

  I couldn't reach you.

  And how bad is he?

  He can't move. He can't feed himself. He doesn't respond.

  But I don't believe her. I whip the chair round to face me.

  Talk to me, I say. The eyes look at me, then back to the window.

  He sits there, staring at the sea.

  Can he hear? I ask her.

  I don't know.

  How can you not know?

  I tell you, I don't know.

  I touch his face again. I feel his cheek. The eyes look at me again and away.

  He doesn't know me?

  He doesn't know me either.

  She is crying. I walk over to her.

  Jesus, Rose. I put my arms around her.

  You loved him, then?

  Didn't you?

  I suppose I did.

  Don't you now?

  I suppose I do.

  But suppose is not enough, I suppose, or presuppose, I don't know which. I should be livid with some emotion but I'm not. It's as if the real absence happened a long time ago.

  And what do you do now Rose? I ask.

  I look after him, she says.

  Can I walk him somewhere? I ask her, since I don't know what else to say.

  If you keep him warm, she answers.

  So we wrap him in his black astrakhan greatcoat and tie his Trinity scarf around his throat. We bump him gently down the steps and his body slopes forwards into her pressing hand with each bump. I wheel him past the railings towards the sea.

  The wind has died down and the sun glints in the little scallops the water leaves. Occasional neighbours pass and some of them nod. Nothing has changed except him and yet he is stuck in a rigidity that implies no change. It is as if he has been like this for ever. And I think as I walk that it is strangely comforting to be with him and not have to listen. To have him beyond all argument. The wind rises a little and whips his scarf backwards so it strokes my face. And that is all the contact I need. We pass the stretch of sandbank where we'd stick the nightlines and some other kid is doing it now, stringing pieces of gut between two metal supports.

  Do you remember when we'd do that? I ask him.

  The wind ruffles his grey mane in reply.

 
The spade and the lug worms and the tide out, your trousers rolled round your ankles. No?

  The wind parts his beard a little, in the centre.

  Then back in the morning when the tide was out, we'd find the plaice or the codling or the dogfish flapping like sandpaper.

  I enjoyed that, I tell him. I thought of it a lot when I was away.

  His scarf strokes my face again.

  Thought of you a lot, I tell him. I hope my going had nothing to do with it.

  The wheels squeak in some kind of reply. Come on father, I think, where is that barely suppressed rage, those perfectly chiselled sentences, those austere denials of my right to be? His head lolls to one side and I push it upright with my hand. There are flecks of spittle round the edge of his mouth. I stop for a moment, feeling weak. His chair rolls on of its own accord and comes to a halt by a sagging piece of railing. I take in gulps of air and try to clear my eyes of the haze in front of them. His head has fallen sideways again against the rusting metal of the railings. Any fat has vanished from his face, the bones seem welded to the skin, he seems older and more impervious than granite. The eyes stare out to sea and flicker, regularly, to the right and left.

  I'm sorry, I whisper. A priest passes by from behind me. The wind rises and whips his soutane and he glances at us both, as if expecting some obeisance. I let him pass then walk forwards to the chair again.

  I'm sorry, but I don't know what I did.

  The eyes are following the boy now, who has finished his line and is dragging the shovel back across the sand. I can't bear to wonder if they remember. I draw his chair away from the broken rail, turn both of our backs to the wind and head for home.

  She was playing the piano when I came in. I wheeled him into the room and stood there in silence, the three of us listening to the music. She had improved since I left. He sat, with his head on the breast of his coat, looking towards the floor. I wondered was it music to him, or just sound, like the waves outside.

  I should leave, I said when I heard the last chord.

  Why? she said.

  I couldn't bear it.

  Don't, she said. Spend some time with him. Stay.

  And so we ate together. She prepared the meat and I prepared the vegetables. How do you feed him? I asked her. With some difficulty, she said and while we ate he sat there. She told me how she'd found him, on his back on the promenade like a beached whale. A passer-by had lifted him to the house, left him in her arms where she'd collapsed beneath his weight. She'd visited him in hospital for weeks, sat waiting in a room for some sign of remission. The doctors had recommended a home, given his condition. But she couldn't countenance the thought of it and so moved him back home, and had stayed to take care of him.

  So does that make you really his wife, Rose? I asked.

  Don't be flippant, she said.

  It was what he wanted.

  Well, he didn't quite get there, did he? she said and smiled.

  She stood up, put on a blue smock and began to feed him, looking truly like a housewife. I watched as she held his jaw down with one hand, fed him mashed vegetables with the other.

  I can't watch this, I told her.

  Why not? she said. It's the reality. You must have seen worse.

  I thought of Antonio and the blood-spattered wall. Then I watched until I could stand it no more and walked outside.

  I climbed the hill to Bloodybank and thought it odd that I'd only ever done this in search of Mouse. I reached the wooden door, third in a row of tiny cottages, and his aunt answered my knock. Her hair was the same bright blonde, a cigarette hung out of the same reddened lips, but the skin of her face had sagged downwards, grown bulbous. She answered me in slurred words about Mouse's whereabouts, told me he was in the seminary in Hatch Street pretending to take orders.

  Why pretending? I asked her.

  Might take them in, she said, but he won't take me.

  She closed the door, drunkenly, and I continued up the hill towards the train.

  The lights in Westland Row were so dim when the train pulled in, I almost fell on to the tracks. There was a blackout in force, I gathered, because of what they now termed the Emergency. I blundered through the streets, one hand against the sooty walls. I knew them so well, I realised, I hardly needed to see to find my way. Past the pillars of the church at Westland Row, the railings of Merrion Square, my left hand tracing the grey limestone of the Government Buildings. I reached Hatch Street and stood outside the collegiate house watching the black-garbed figures come and go. After what seemed an age I recognised the springy walk.

  Mouse, I called.

  He turned and squinted in the darkness. Then a broad grin filled the space above his ill-fitting collar.

  In the name of Jaysus—

  The obscenity fitted oddly with his costume and I suspected his aunt might have been right.

  He bounded towards me, grabbed me by the elbow and propelled me down the street.

  Quick, he said, before they spot me.

  Who? I asked him.

  They have their spies, he said. And I'm on their list . . .

  He led me down two side-streets, through the back door of a pub.

  Inside there was a line of wedge-like shoulders perched by the bar, a haze of cigarette smoke and conversation in low, barely audible murmurs. The barman squinted at Mouse's clerical garb, then obeyed his order for two pints. I sat down and felt the familiar warmth, the cloak of anonymity Dublin provides.

  I think the vocation left the week you did, he said as the drinks arrived. He raised one in benediction. And I was sorry to hear about your father.

  How easily it comes back, I thought. I drank the thick dark liquid slowly, remembering the sweet ease it brought. I thought of her, in the house with him. I wondered had I hurt him in more than the ordinary way.

  Why do you stay on? I asked him.

  Three squares and a cot, as the man said. Now tell me everything.

  Where do you want to start? I asked him.

  Start with how you got out.

  A consular official in Barcelona, I said, one Jeremiah Noonan from Cork, provided me with a passport and transport aboard a coal-scuttle.

  A coal-scuttle? he asked.

  Ship, then. You know the thing.

  A last-minute dash to freedom, before the walls came down.

  Something like that.

  Tell me everything, Mouse repeated. Everything. So I told him everything, everything but the drab facts. Stories of anarchists dancing with the bodies of disinterred nuns in a bacchanalian Barcelona. I have seen the future, I told him, and it worked for a week. An army without titles, which refused to march in step, tales of simple plain heroism, battles fought with handguns and pikes against massed artillery, the bombing of Guernica, the fall of Madrid, la Pasionaria at the barricades.

  His incredulity grew as I lied. I adopted the plainest of manners, one that implied more horrors than it could ever recount. And I was drawing a crowd now. I scanned their faces, young, fat with Dublin indolence, and saw with some surprise that they were looking up to me.

  Wounds, asked Mouse, any wounds? so I pulled up my shirt and showed them my appendix scar. A girl with a fainne fingered it in wonder. The bullet should have passed through, I told her, but lodged in the hip. Is it painful? she asked. As we speak, I told her and downed some more whiskey and grimaced with the imagined pain. The girl snuggled closer to me as I talked, but I shook my head at her advances, intimating an injury that had left me less than a man. Someone else asked me to recount my experiences at a Republican gathering in the Gresham but I told him the prolonged effects of bombardment had made me agoraphobic.

  Now tell me what was it really like, Mouse whispered as we staggered out after closing time.

  So, I said, you saw through the hyperbole.

  I've got the God's-eye view, he said, fingering his collar.

  It was drab, I told him, drabber than you can ever imagine.

  You're wrong, he told me, I can imagin
e drabness all too well.

  Of course, I realised. You've got a prison of your own.

  One that'll last longer than yours.

  We had reached the barred windows of Hatch House.

  They won't take pot-shots at you if you shimmy down a drainpipe.

  My problem is in shimmying up.

  He stared at a drainpipe that led to a window on the third floor.

  You can leave, Mouse. Come home with me.

  Where would I go?

  Your aunt still speaks well of you.

  Like fuck, he said.

  He walked towards the pipe and tested it. Then began to climb.

  Call me, he said, please.

  I will, I said.

  Why don't I believe you?

  I don't know.

  I do. Because my present state is too depressing. But tell me you'll call and I can imagine it's true.

  I'll call, I shouted, then he put one finger to his lips and almost fell from the drainpipe.

  Remember me to your father anyway. Then he slid open the window and was gone.

  The train left me on the promenade with the moon illuminating the high swelling of the sea. I was light-headed. I had forgotten to ask about a key and found a handful of stones which I flung at the windows. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, I shouted drunkenly, let down your hair. She opened an upstairs window and her hair hung in the moonlight like a skein of rope. Did I wake him? I asked her. She shook her head and had half a smile on her face. A pity, I shouted and she frowned so I shouted again. Don't you want him to wake? She closed the window and I watched the procession of lights down the floors as she made it to the hallway. Then the light showed through the amber glass on the door panels and the door opened.

  She was wearing a virginal flannel nightgown, like a nurse's.

  What's happened to you? I asked her, you've lost all your colour.