Torn Water

by John Lynch

  Teezy brings him a cup of tea, offering it to him tenderly as if he is a child freshly restored from a tantrum.

  ‘Have you anything stronger, love?’

  James leaves them to it. He pulls his coat from the airing cupboard on his way out and feels for the telephone number he knows is stowed in the inside pocket.

  ‘Where are you going, son?’

  ‘Out.’

  The rain has stopped, and the buildings and pavements glisten like wet liquorice under the street-lights. He kicks a beaten beer can along for a while, toying with it, enjoying the sound of its angry clatter in the empty street.

  His fingers tremble as he dials her number. A couple of times he stops and replaces the receiver, holding his hand on it as he summons the courage to redial. He moves to another phone box and this time feeds the coin into the slot, his voice cutting across the beeping hiatus, so for a moment he thinks he's been cut off. Eventually a dark, steady voice at the other end repeats his hello.

  ‘Hi … hello?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Er … is Cathleen there?’

  ‘Not at the moment, no. She's gone out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Who's calling?’

  ‘A friend … er, James.’

  ‘Can I take a message, James?’

  ‘Yes. Could you say … er … James called?’

  The man laughs at the other end of the line, a deep telephone crackly laugh that unnerves James, prompting him to slam down the receiver and jump from the telephone box, wiping his palms along the sides of his anorak.

  For a moment he stands and looks at it. He draws a long spit up his throat and fires it at the muddy glass of the booth and watches as it mingles with the tracks of rain. ‘Fuck.’

  He walks up Nurse's Hill, thinking of the face Cathleen offered to him only two nights before, her eyelashes quivering with anticipation as he had bent to kiss them, her mouth softly stung from the heavy wetness of his mouth. He wonders where she is, what she's doing, if she remembers their embraces.

  How remote the island now seems. He thinks of it sitting in the cold embrace of the Atlantic Ocean, the spectres of their kisses swirling around its salt-driven roads, pooling in the quiet corners of its fields, like storm-driven butterflies, their delicate wings quivering forlornly. He vows to call again tomorrow, to brave the thick challenge of what must have been her father's voice. He feels a shiver of embarrassment sweep up his spine as he remembers the tease of the man's laugh, and as he climbs the steep hill towards the hospital his mind twists it into a deep, patronising guffaw.

  ‘Son, you're soaked.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He says it almost as a challenge, looking straight into the concerned eyes of the ward sister, his hair hanging in rain-plastered lines across his forehead, his hands bunched in his anorak pockets.

  ‘Here, take that sopping thing off you.’

  ‘I want to see my mum,’ he says.

  ‘All in good time, son, all in good time.’

  Delicately she loosens the coat from his back and holds it away from her, a small pool of water growing on the corridor floor. She grins at him and slowly shakes her head. ‘We'll have you in the next ward if you're not more careful.’ She brings him a towel and watches as he dries his hair. He feels the friction of the rubbing bring some warmth back to his scalp and into his hands. She then offers him a blanket and leads him to his mother's bed through the fridge light stillness of the ward. ‘I shouldn't really be doing this, you know.’

  His mother is asleep, her face partially hidden by hitched-up blankets. He pulls a chair up to the bedside and sits.

  ‘She's had a quiet night. She even ate some pudding and drank a cup of tea. Speaking of which …’

  He doesn't look as the ward sister goes off, but hears the squeak of her plimsolls on the tiled floor.

  He looks around the ward at the white mounds of sleeping bodies, and hears the soft snores of one or two. One old woman across from him is awake and stares at him, her arms folded about her hospital gown. Someone coughs.

  He stares at his mother. He looks at the bandages that cover her arms, ragged emblems of her fight against herself. He sees her small empty hands peep out from beneath them, her fingers bent into her palms, her thumbs hidden from view. He thinks of her lying in the dark hallway at home before Sully found her, her ripped wrists offered skywards.

  ‘Here you are.’ The ward sister stands beside him and watches as he lifts the cup to his mouth, a faint smile crossing her lips. ‘You have her mouth,’ she says.

  He stops drinking, rests the cup on the saucer and brings the back of his hand up to his mouth, hiding it momentarily from her eyes.

  ‘Now, will you be all right if I leave you for a while?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He notes her fresh round face, and the freckles on the bridge of her small nose.

  ‘Don't worry. God has a plan for us all,’ she says. She retakes her position at her station at the entrance to the ward and smiles over at him.

  He smiles back, half-heartedly lifting his arm to emphasise the sincerity of it.

  ‘Conn?’

  His mother has opened her eyes and is looking directly at him, her lips parted, her tongue resting against her bottom teeth. The air around him seems to buzz as if a sudden flood of electrical power has seized it. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and tries to speak, but something dries the words in his mouth.

  She gently rocks her head from side to side as if trying to shake a heavy foreboding free of her mind, her lips opening and closing. Once again she says his father's name. He sits transfixed; he can feel his heart thud heavily in his chest. The hospital ward falls away, everything seems to stop. The only thing he sees is the fever in his mother's eyes.

  ‘I'm sorry, Conn.’ This time her voice is stronger and hot with rising tears. James feels a shadow touch his face and move across it like an invisible hand. Suddenly she tries to sit, her bandaged arms shooting down by her sides as she raises her torso. ‘Don't go – you promised me. You fucking promised me.’

  James can feel a light begin to burn on his face like the heat of a hurricane lamp. It seems centred on his cheek, a fierce insistence running from the centre to his jaw line. He brings his hand up hurriedly to his face, and in that moment he feels as though he is caressing the burning glow of his father's restless soul.

  The ward sister has returned. He doesn't realise it until he sees her scrubbed hands begin to coax his mother into lying back, clasping her firmly by the shoulders and easing her down into the folds of the bedcovers.

  ‘I think it's perhaps an idea if you left her to me for a while, son.’

  He looks at his mother's face, peaceful now that sleep has claimed it, and back to the sister, his eyes holding hers. ‘Don't worry, she'll be fine. She's in good hands. Go on, get some sleep.’

  It is well after midnight when he arrives back at Teezy's and, to his surprise, she lets him in before he has a chance to knock. She tells him she has been watching for him through the curtains. She also tells him she had rung the hospital and that they had told her he was there. He watches as she walks ahead of him towards the scullery. He notices how much smaller she seems, as if at night she shrinks when daytime confidence flees from her body.

  ‘Sit.’ She points to the chair by the window and goes to put the kettle on. Almost immediately she returns, popping her head round the door, and looks at him for a moment before she says, ‘How is she?’

  ‘She's asleep.’

  ‘A bad business … such a bad business.’

  He puts his hand to his face, letting his fingers dance lightly on his cheek, and remembers the hot insistence that had burned there only an hour before.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good man.’

  She returns with a small tray and slaps it down on the tiny table, causing the large teapot to wobble. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Yeah, two.’

  ‘What's wrong?’
/>   ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It is two, isn't it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Her hands dive into the pockets of her dressing-gown and she brings out a bent cigarette, which she puts wrong way up in her mouth.

  ‘I didn't know you smoked, Teezy.’

  ‘I don't. Sully left me a couple.’ She strikes a match and holds it precariously between the tips of her fingers, one eye squinted closed as she pulls it towards her lips.

  ‘It's the wrong end.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cigarette. It's the wrong way round.’

  ‘Shit.’ Vigorously, she shakes the hand that is holding the lit match. It's the first time he has ever heard her curse and the word hangs in the air like a bad smell. They sit in silence for a few moments, watching the steam lift from their waiting cups of tea.

  ‘What happened to my dad, Teezy?’

  For a moment he thinks she hasn't heard him, but as he watches the small frown of concern appear above the bridge of her nose, he realises that she has.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I promised your mother.’

  ‘Do you remember that photo you gave me when I was small?’

  She nods.

  ‘I still have it.’

  Teezy returns to the kitchen. He hears the squeak of a cupboard opening and closing and the brief spurt of a tap bleeding water.

  He goes to the kitchen doorway, rests against its wooden frame. She has her arms folded and is half turned away from him, He notices she is crying. He waits.

  ‘Come and sit down.’

  He follows her out of the kitchen, shadowing her all the way back to the small table, watching as she lowers her heavy body into the wooden chair, then waits for him to sit opposite her before she begins.

  At around two o'clock that morning he wakes to the sound of a dog barking. It sounds like the plaintive cry of a lost soul, and it brings a shiver to James's skin. He pulls the palms of his hands across his face, and thinks of the dream that still clings to the corners of his mind. He had dreamed of the island; he had seen her shine in the black Atlantic. He had dreamed he was high on the channels of the night wind. Joy had burst across his heart, and he had felt his spirit soar, beating its way clear of his body.

  He hears Teezy's snores rumbling through the house, and his dream fades like the widening ripples on a pond. Suddenly the snoring stops and the house is consumed by a still of night silence.

  He remembers what Teezy had said earlier. He thinks of the two lives she had described, of the youthful patterns of their hopes and dreams, of their love and cares. He remembers how the rain had fallen outside as she told her story, falling in faint spatters against the window-pane.

  PS To the Man of Light

  Aunt Teezy's House

  The Centre of Newry

  Opposite McDowell's

  The Newsagents

  Dear Dad,

  Let her go. Let her go. I know now, please let her go. Everyone is asleep. You could quietly just go. It is better that way. Teezy told me everything. Let us go. I know it's hard for you, and that it has been a lot for Mammy. It is over now, the secret has been shared, so let us go.

  I dreamed I was with you high, high up, and that we were a part of the wind, and that she threw us this way and that. I dreamed that we were over the island and that you saw the place where I was happy. It shone like a diamond in the cold night sea, I dreamed I was everywhere at once and that I was wide and free, falling through space. And I knew all the time that you were there, ready to catch me.

  Don't listen to her pleas, don't come running when she calls. Be strong, as strong as the sun. Let her go, I will take care of her. No more deaths. No more wondering or fighting. Do you hear me, Dad? Do you hear me?

  Love

  Jimmy

  28. South

  The next morning Teezy brings him to the graveyard that lies on a sloping hill on the outskirts of the town. James has often seen it, from a bus or a car, its headstones glinting in the sunlight like rows of haphazard teeth. Teezy is carrying a red rose that she bought earlier in the centre of town. James had watched as she fussed over which to buy, eventually choosing one, saying, ‘This one has a bit of life in it yet.’

  They walk the short distance from the bus stop to the churchyard gates in silence, James slightly behind his aunt, the sun throwing long shadows on the ground ahead of them. As they reach the gate, his aunt stops, her hand resting on the heavy bolt. ‘he's in here,’ she says, without facing him.

  She pulls the bolt back, its hard screech frightening a crow into flight. For almost the first time that morning his aunt looks at him, and nods slowly that he should enter. He brushes past her and stands on the spit gravel that covers every path leading from the gate. He stares at a grave in front of him, at its well-tended borders, and at the small posy of flowers sitting in the heart of it. It is a recent death and the air smells of upturned earth. He has never met stillness like it, a deep, final silence, as if the air has made a pact with heaven to still itself, and the world beyond seems to comply, the cars and buses on the road below moving as though through a muted haze.

  They take the path leading directly down the hill, and James glances at the names cut into the passing headstones, mothers and wives, husbands and fathers, sons and daughters.

  ‘Here he is.’

  His grave is tidy, with a white granite headstone. Across the breast of the grave lies a wilting stem rose, its stalk curling back on its thorns. He watches as his aunt bends and removes it, then places her hand across his father's absent heart. ‘All right, Conn?’ She whispers it as if the world around her is full of listening ears. Then she places the new rose on the grave. ‘I've brought little Jimmy to see you.’

  Her voice is thick and hoarse. He feels angry and wants to stop her mouth, to tell her that words have no place here, that it is a place beyond words.

  She gets up and walks over to him. There is an apology in her eyes, but he is not interested: all he can see is what's left of his father – the green knobs of grass and the worn headstone, so plain and pathetic in the cold morning light.

  Later that morning he phones Cathleen, braving the taunt in her father's voice, his heart banging in his chest as he hears her off-phone voice enquire who it is.

  ‘Well, Mr Lavery.’

  ‘Hi, Cathleen.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Just all right?’

  ‘I tried the other night.’

  ‘I know. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Do you want to meet?’

  ‘I'd love to. When, James Lavery?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, I can get away tonight.’

  ‘Why? Have you got something on in Dublin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It's a long way to come.’

  ‘That doesn't matter. Do you not want to see me?’

  ‘Of course I do. It's just… You're strange, James Lavery.’

  ‘I'll ring you when I get there.’

  ‘OK. I'll be here.’

  At lunchtime he reaches his house, passing some small kids on the fringes of the estate. They hold stumps of branches in their hands, aiming them at each other, noisily ratatatting each other to death. He steps over a small, writhing body and walks up the narrow passageway at the side of his house, letting himself in through the back door. He knows Sully is there: he has seen the white van parked on the grass verge outside.

  He can hear his snores, and pops his head into the living room to find him sprawled across one of the armchairs, his dirty white shirt open to the navel, his chin vibrating with every snore. His shirt is stained with runs of dried Guinness, and his hands lie at an angle off the sides of the chair, palm upwards. He looks like a drunken Christ, James thinks.

  He goes upstairs and packs a small holdall, grabbing some jeans and T-shirts and stuffing them in. He t
akes his father's photograph from its hiding-place and, without looking at it, places it in the bag and returns downstairs.

  He stands over Sully for a while, looking at the dog dribble sneaking from the side of his mouth, and the half-lidded stupor of his eyes. He sees Sully's jacket lying across the other armchair, goes through the pockets and finds his wallet. He opens it and is stunned to see a small worn photograph of him as a younger boy lying in one of its plastic windows. He looks back at Sully. Then he takes a twenty-pound note from the wallet and snaps it shut.

  It is early afternoon when he reaches the hospital. His mother, he is told, has been moved to a private room as she had a bad night and disturbed the other patients. The ward sister tells him that they should have put her there in the first place, and that they were partly to blame. He nods politely, and asks if it is all right to see her. On the way to the room he is told that she already has someone with her, her friend Marion, and that she has been there for a while. The sister asks him not to be too long as visiting hours are almost over. He tells her he will only be a moment or two.

  When Marion McCartan sees him she stands, walks over to him and then puts her arms round him, burying her face in his neck. He can feel the wetness of her tears. Then she lifts her head and stares at him. ‘How are you, son?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I've been sitting with her this past hour.’

  He doesn't say anything. He knows she's blaming herself. He remembers their arguments and how Marion and his mother had screamed at each other all that time ago. He knows that she understands how stupid all that was now. He can see it in her eyes.

  ‘I blame that Sully one.’ She steps back from him and wipes her eyes with the tips of her fingers. ‘Anyway, they say she's going to be all right, thanks be to God.’ She looks at him for a moment, then says, ‘I did try, son. We all tried. But she's as hard-headed …’

  ‘I know you tried, Marion.’ he's startled by how grown-up he sounds. He can see that what he has said has taken Marion by surprise, and for a moment she says nothing, just looks at him.

  ‘You're a good boy, son. Maybe it'll be different now. It's got to change, James. She's got to change …’ She goes back to the bed and looks at James's mother, running her hand across one of the bandaged wrists. ‘God look after you, Annie.’