by John Lynch
‘What's wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
She edges her hands across the small of his back, lacing them together so that he feels sewn to her, hip to hip, groin to groin. ‘Do you fancy a walk?’ he says suddenly.
She looks up at him, her eyes glazed with the lilting seesaw of the waltz. ‘OK.’
They walk along the headland where Seamus the grocer had dispatched Captain. He tells her of the episode with the dog, of the buckling of the sack, of the sharp edge of the brick jutting through the cloth, of the old man's face, the hard matter-of-factness in his eyes.
They pass the headland and walk along the arm of the coast, clambering down a jagged patch of rocks to reach a small hidden beach, made silver by the moon. They stop and watch the outgoing tide, their arms linked. Then she turns and faces him. ‘James Lavery, I've waited a week for this.’
When she kisses him, she stands up on her toes, her eyes closed, and her lips parting to welcome his. He feels the childlike thread of her breathing mingle with his, and tastes the soft prayer she offers him.
‘You're owed that, Mr Lavery, for being my hero.’
He walks her home. After a week of silence and shyness they begin to speak. She tells him that she believes in reincarnation and that people meet each other for a reason, and that nothing in God's world happens by chance. She tells him that she believes she was a bird in a previous life. She says a fortune-teller had told her she would have three children, one of each. She laughs playfully as she makes her joke, her tongue coming to rest teasingly between her teeth.
‘You know, I thought there was something wrong with you.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
‘Well… you wouldn't touch me or anything. I thought you were … you know …’
‘What?’
‘You know …’
‘No way.’
Between their final goodnight kisses they promise to stay in touch, to write to each other as soon as they reach home, and for him to come and see her in Dublin. He walks away from her cottage. He looks back to the doorway where they had parted. He imagines her undressing. He sees her standing naked in his thoughts, like the promise of sun in winter.
The next morning he joins the rest of the students at the small pier on the far side of the island. Suitcases are loaded on to the waiting ferry by fishermen, who bark instructions to one another over the gurgling of the engine and the screeching of panicked gulls. The sky is heavy with cloud, and a wind blows in off the sea. He looks nervously about the pier, hoping to see her before he goes.
He feels angry that his time on the island is at an end. He spits on the ground and feels some of the moisture spray back on to his cheek. When he thinks no one is looking he brings his hand to his face and wipes it off.
‘Good morning.’
He turns his head to see her standing before him, and blushes as he wonders if she has seen his pathetic mess of a spit. ‘Morning.’
It all sounds so mundane, as if they are meeting for the first time and all the fiery things they had said and done the night before are nothing more than smoke.
‘Did you sleep?’ she asks.
‘Kind of.’
‘Me too.’
‘I'll call you.’
‘You'd bloody better.’ She skips forward and places a fleeting kiss on his lips, then moves away from him in the direction of the café, her head cocked, her eyes laughing gently at him. ‘Give me a call, James Lavery.’
This time the ferry journey seems shorter, the sea passing by the side of the boat like a long grey soup. The students are subdued, gazing back at the island as it recedes. Rain has begun to fall. They dock in Burtonport. Manus organises them, roughly guiding them off the boat, delivering barked instructions in Irish. As James passes him, the teacher tousles his hair and winks at him. ‘Slan leat, James.’
‘Slan, Manus.’
For a moment James stands on the pier and looks in the direction of the island, trying to see it one last time through the mist. The rain is falling more heavily now, hammering the surface of the sea with small, bullet-like explosions. People start to disperse, scurrying towards the waiting coaches. He turns up his collar and moves towards the Newry coach. On his way he suddenly stops. Manus is standing with a smaller man; there is something about him that looks familiar.
He watches as Manus looks around the pier, his eyes running over every student who passes. Once or twice James can feel his tutor's eyes, and wonders why he hasn't seen him, as he is sure that the man with his back to him is Sully, and that the student they are searching for is him. He walks towards them, the rain smacking harshly on his forehead.
It is Manus who sees him first. He inclines his head towards the man beside him and spits a few words out of the side of his mouth. The man turns abruptly in James's direction, and James sees immediately that he was right: it is Sully.
When he reaches them, they stand in silence for a few moments. Sully, he realises, can't look at him. Eventually Manus speaks: ‘Mr Sullivan has something to tell you, James.’
Sully nods, and for the first time looks straight into James's eyes. He has been crying. ‘It's your mother, James.’
No One Is Talking to Me
Is this what it is like? To be dead? To be no longer a part of things? You see, no one is talking to me. No one is saying a word. I'm trying not to panic. Just like Al Pacino in The Godfather, I'm trying to stare down the news I see in their eyes. Or, like John Wayne in Stagecoach, I'm trying to be brave, and face everything with only my rifle and my horse. That's all I need. Or maybe I'm King Arthur and I know God's mind and I accept everything with a kingly smile. Or I'm Errol Flynn and all I have to do is swashbuckle my way out of this.
No, no one is talking to me. Sully is standing in front of me, and his eyes are red, and he looks so small and stupid. Manus just stares at the ground as if his head has got too heavy for his shoulders. So is this what it is like? Is this the way people stare into a coffin, with that frightened look in their eyes?
‘It's your mother, James.’ That's all that has been said. Not Jimmy' or ‘young man. Not even ‘kid’. No, the serious grown-up ‘James’, and that frightens me.
No, I'm Al Pacino, like the day when Sully laughed at me, but he got his comeuppance when he was garrotted in his van for questioning the family. Yes, I'm Al Pacino. I don't even feel the rain, and I don't care about anything – I don't even care for that woman I've just met. I've forgotten who played her in the film – Diane something … Keaton. That's it.
No, no one is talking to me. Well, let them. I'm used to it.
25. The Checkpoint
Just before the checkpoint at Strabane, Sully mistimes the clutch, noisily forcing the car into second gear. They crawl along in a queue of cars, waiting to be checked by the soldiers and the RUC, who stand guarding the border. James gazes out of the window. He sees the reflection of his eyes. They glare back at him, daring him to cry. For the past hour they have driven in silence, broken only by the sweep of the wipers, or the perky blink of an indicator, the car swishing along the roads.
Just before they had set off from Burtonport, Sully and he had sat in the car, gazing out at the rain. He had watched as Sully had turned towards him, awkwardly swivelling in the seat to get a better look at him. ‘Listen, kid, your mother has had an accident.’
James had listened as Sully explained that she had become more and more erratic since he had left for the Gaelteacht. She had begun drinking round the clock every day, failing to go into work, sitting in her front room, surrounded by dirty plates and empty glasses. He told him how she had cursed her son for not calling.
She had insisted on calling Sully by her dead husband's name, Conn, her eyes brimming with taunts. He told him of how he had called the doctor and of how the two men had considered sectioning her, but in the end Sully said he couldn't do that to her. So he slipped sleeping pills into her food when she thought to eat, carrying her to bed when she went under, hoping a long s
leep would turn her round.
Instead when she woke she had sealed her mouth to him, leaving him only her eyes, which followed his every move, accusing him with their fuck-you glare.
One night he said he had left her to it, heading to the club for a few drinks with his mates. He told James he had left her gazing out of the window, holding a piece of the curtain free of the glass. When he had asked her who or what she was looking out for, she had lowered her head in frustration as if someone had just walked in front of a movie she was been watching.
He told James that when he had returned to the house in the early hours of the next morning, he had been struck immediately by the silence. All the lights were off, and the garden gate was swinging on its rusting hinges.
He had told James he knew instantly that something was wrong. He had put his key into the front-door lock and as he had pushed the door forward he had felt the resistance of a bulk on the other side. He reached in and hit the light switch. At first he had thought that the coat-stand had fallen forward, but then he had realised it was Ann, lying collapsed in the doorway.
He told James of the blood on the walls of the hallway and the back of the door. He described the doll-like bundle of his mother's body. He spoke of fumbling with her slashed wrists trying to find a pulse. He told him of his relief and anger when he did find one. Finally he had told James of the haste of the hospital staff to put blood back into her. He had told him of the long hours at the hospital waiting for news, pacing its corridors, looking hopefully into the faces of passing doctors and nurses.
After the first critical night he was eventually told that she had lost a lot of blood but that she would recover. He said he had cried, and tears began to fall as he had recounted this to James. At this point, though, James had already removed himself, turning to look out of the window, his eyelids drooping from the heaviness of the news he had just heard.
‘Your driving licence, please, mate.’
James turns his head to see Sully grapple with his coat pocket as he tries to locate it.
James looks at the young soldier and the RUC man behind him whose eyes flit menacingly around the car.
‘Are you all right, son?’ The policeman leans in over the soldier's shoulder, his pale green eyes squinting slightly. James doesn't say anything, but just stares back at him.
Sully sees the hard look between them. ‘Sorry, but he just had some bad news.’
‘Is that right?’ the policeman says.
‘Yeah. His mother has been admitted to Daisy Hill in Newry. I'm bringing him there now.’
‘Right. What's the name?’
‘Mine?’
‘No, we have yours – it's on the licence. His.’
‘La very, James La very.’
The cop frowns as Sully answers for James, causing his peaked cap to rise up his forehead. ‘Ever been in any bother, James?’
‘No … no bother.’
‘Are you his parrot?’
‘Listen, I'm sorry but he really has had some awful news. His mother tried to harm herself a few days back. He's just found out. So …’
The cop looks once more at James and then stands upright, pulling his upper body out of the window frame. ‘Go on. On your way.’
A Letter to God
On the Road
Somewhere Between Strabane
And Newry
Northern Ireland
Dear God,
I don't believe in you. You don't exist, I don't believe that you see everything and know everything and have all power. Who do you think you are? You just let us scrabble around down here like ants or like children who have lost their way. You probably spend your time laughing at us with all your shitty angels and stupid saints. Yes, it's probably a bloody good laugh watching us make such a mess down here.
How could you let her do this? And why do you make me feel as if I am to blame? You see, you're making me talk to you as if you were there. You're not. You never were.
Not Signed
26. The Man of Light
His mother's face is pale. Her hair is damp with perspiration; it lies in long, matted fingers on her forehead and down her neck. Aunt Teezy stands on watch by her bed. Sully has retreated after leading James to the side of the bed, putting distance between him and his lover's torn body.
The staff nurse, who had brought them in, a young portly woman, stands by James, her hand resting in the small of his back. She explains to James that his mother has lost a lot of blood, that she is under sedation, and that when she is well enough her care and rehabilitation will continue in some form or another. She says that it is such a terrible thing and that he is being very brave, that he is such a handsome, caring son.
He feels nothing: the words of the nurse and the small snuffled ‘Good boy’ that Teezy offers his way fall like half-hearted rain on his ears. He is divorced from what is happening, as if he has wandered into someone else's family.
She opens her eyes a few times while he is there and stares at him, her yellow lips moving as if she is still chewing the remains of food that has long since reached her gut. ‘Conn?’
His mother has turned her head towards him and is calling him by his father's name. He realises that she is looking at him but isn't seeing him, and that her eyes seem to be following a shadow that lies across his face, a shadow that he knows only he and she can feel. Sully takes a step forward, clears his throat, and asks her if she needs anything, but Teezy stops him mid-sentence, placing her hand on his arm. James watches as Sully slowly bows his head, unable to look at her. He follows the track of her eyes as it moves from his face past the plastic and steeled-tube chair and the small exit sign above the ward double doors, until her head rests in profile, her eyes fixed dead ahead.
Slowly, as if forming out of the fluorescence of the overhead strip of light, a shape like a long tablet of shadow and light begins to gather definition. It seems to twitch and quiver like a slowly hatching pupa. First he sees the long shanks of its thighs, then the sweep of its back and the soft curl of the biceps. He senses Teezy look his way, mild panic rising in her eyes. The figure is now inches from his mother's body. James knows that only he and she can see the man of light who holds her body prisoner. He watches as every living part of her strains upward towards it, her breasts, her chin, her hips.
‘Is she having a fit?’ Teezy asks.
‘No.’
He can feel Sully and Teezy look over at him as he says this, but he is beyond them, watching as his mother's bandaged arms rise tentatively from the borders of the bed and form the beginnings of an embrace.
That night he stays with Teezy, watching wordlessly as she prepares them supper. Now and then he can sense her watching him, as if he is an injured cat or dog. They eat in silence, their knives and forks scraping across their plates. Eventually James gives up, pushing away his plate, turning to gaze out of the window.
‘You must eat. You'll need your strength.’
‘I'm not hungry.’
‘That's no good to your mother.’
‘I'm not hungry.’
‘How was your holiday?’
He gets up and goes to sit in the living room at the front of the house. He thinks of his mother lying in the hospital ward. He thinks of all the times he has been angry with her, how he has wanted to punish her for her silences, to scream at her to give his father the decency of a shared memory. He also thinks of the times he felt sorry for her, leading her unsteady body to bed and clearing the house of drink. He now sees there was no room in her heart for him, that it was swollen from the loss that had dogged her for years. He sees that his father lived there, that she had kept him prisoner, refusing to let him die, and in doing so had begun to die herself.
He sees her lying in the sterile cocoon of the hospital ward, her face offered to the light-filled man who hovers above her, the breath tumbling from her lips as she tries to impart life to him or to join him in death.
Letter to the Man of Light
Teezy's Ho
use
The Centre of Newry
Opposite McDowell's
The Newsagent
Dear Man of Light,
Is that what you've been doing to me too? Keeping me prisoner all these years? Tying me up in your light beams, making me believe in your memory even if it hurt my heart and stopped me living? Is that what heaven is like, full of beings of light waiting to be asked back?
Are you really my father or are you just what my mother and I want you to be? Is it hard to be always with us, unable to sleep, unable to fly past in a whoosh like Errol Flynn did last week?
You have always been here, haven't you? And it isn't natural, is it? It isn't something you should be doing, is it? Why haven't you gone? It's not only because we haven't let you, is it? It's because somewhere you don't want to. Somewhere you don't want to believe you're dead, do you?
Teezy doesn't know what's going on. She thought Mammy was having a fit today, and I thought Sully was going to cry, he looked so tiny and scared. But we know what's going on, don't we?
I have to say, it frightened me a little to see you today. You looked so big and angry and you were lying across Mammy as if you wanted to stop her breathing. But then I thought about it and I realised that you would never hurt her because you are lost like us, and the same light that made you made me too.
Best wishes,
James
27. God Has a Flan for Us All
Sully calls round later that evening, his head first peering round the door jamb as if he is unsure he has the right house. For a moment he stands in the middle of the floor gently opening and closing his raincoat to tease the rain from it. He then shuffles to the seat by the fire, a tiny sigh of relief falling from his lips as he sits. ‘Your mammy's out. Fast asleep.’ He gazes at the fire, his profile cutting into the dancing shadows of the flames, like an axe finding its mark. ‘The doctor says to let her sleep.’ As he says this he looks at James and nods.
