The Blackwater Lightship

CHAPTER FOUR

Her grandmother was waiting for her in the kitchen.

'I don't think you slept, Helen,' she said.

'I lay awake for a long time, but then I slept for a while,' Helen said.

'I knew you were awake.'

Her grandmother put slices of bread into an electric toaster and then made tea.

'I lay awake,' Helen said, 'thinking about all the things that happened years ago. Maybe it was the room and the lighthouse brought it all back, and Declan being in hospital I suppose. Anyway, I went over everything, Daddy dying and us being down here.'

'That was a very hard time, Helen,' her grandmother said. She poured tea and took a boiled egg from a saucepan on the Aga. When the toast was done, she put it on a plate.

'Do you remember us coming down here in the year after he died? You mentioned it on the phone the day you rang me,' Helen asked.

'I do, Helen,' her grandmother said.

'You know, I would come out of school and Mammy would be sitting there in the car, the old red Mini, with Declan in the back, and as soon as I'd get in, she'd start up the engine without saying a word. I used to dread it. God, I used to dread it.'

'She couldn't manage, Helen, that's what it was. She couldn't get over losing him.'

'She'd drive us up to school in the morning from here, and I'd close my eyes when I came out at the end of the day and hope when I opened them that she wouldn't be there. But often she'd be waiting there again, and we'd know that she hadn't been home, she'd spent the day driving around the country or sitting in the hotel or in Murphy Flood's. I used to dread coming out of school.'

'You and Declan were all she had,' her grandmother said.

'I don't want to criticise her, Granny,' Helen said, 'we've been through all that, and I know it was hard for her, but the whole journey down and back she wouldn't speak to us. I have my own children now and I couldn't imagine doing that.'

'Helen, she was doing her best. She couldn't manage. She was very good to me when your grandfather died. I remember that you were doing your Leaving Cert. She looked after me then, even though she was back working herself.'

'When you rang me, Granny, you said she had never done anything for you.'

'Well, that was wrong, Helen,' her grandmother said.

Helen drove towards Wexford. The drizzle became blustery rain as she approached Curracloe. It was past ten o'clock now and her mother would, she supposed, be at work. She was glad she did not have to tell her the news at the door of her house; it would be easier to arrive at the office.

As she was having breakfast with her grandmother that morning, a memory came to her which she put out of her mind. It was something she could not mention. Now, as she reached the main road into Wexford, the wipers criss-crossing the windscreen of the car, she pictured the scene which had earlier come back to her.

It was a Sunday in the summer the year after her father died. For the previous few months, they had not travelled much to her grandmother's at Cush during the week, but had always gone on Sunday, setting out from Enniscorthy after twelve o'clock Mass. This Sunday – it might have been June or early July – she noticed that they were driving along the Osborne Road towards Drumgoole. She said nothing, but Declan, from the back of the car, asked why they were not driving the usual way.

'I think we'll go to Curracloe instead,' her mother said.

'Are we not going to Granny's?' Declan asked.

'I made sandwiches so we can have them on the strand if it stays fine.'

Curracloe had a car park, a shop, sand dunes and a long strand. It possessed, for Helen and Declan, a tinge of glamour and newness; Ballyconnigar and Cush were, on the other hand, stale and dull. There were, Declan maintained, too many country people in Cush and Ballyconnigar, whereas people from Wexford town came to Curracloe.

'And we're not going to Granny's?' Declan asked.

There was no reply. They drove to Curracloe and made their way to the strand, carrying the picnic which their mother had prepared without their knowing, a rug and their swimming gear. Helen wanted to ask her mother if their grandmother knew they were not coming to Cush, or if she was there waiting for them now, keeping the dinner hot, listening out for the sound of the car.

In Cush, in all the years, her mother had never gone into the sea for a swim. She would come down to the strand with them, and watch them bathe, and on a hot day she might change into a bathing suit, but she would never even get her feet wet. On this Sunday in Curracloe, Helen and Declan presumed that she changed into her bathing suit because it was hot. When she put on a bathing cap, Declan began to laugh. 'Your face looks all funny,' he said.

The sea was rough and few bathers went beyond the point where the waves broke. Declan always stood at the edge of the water for a while and then made his way in as though walking on glass. Helen had learned that it was easier if you didn't think about it, it was easier just to wade in and swim out, but it was still hard. Now, suddenly, as they both stood at the edge of the water, their mother walked past them, blessed herself, waded in confidently and, as soon as she was up to her waist, dived under the water. She looked up at them and waved and dived again and then emerged just as a huge wave broke. Declan ran into the water as the wave pulled back and tried to reach her, but he was knocked over by a second wave. Helen saw that he was laughing as the wave pushed him in towards the shore. She moved in his direction and caught him and held his hand.

'I want to get out to where Mammy is,' he said.

Close by was a group of children and adults standing waiting for the next wave to roll in, shouting at each other in delight and letting themselves be lifted by the high waves and pulled in towards the shore. As Helen and Declan picked themselves up, having been knocked over, their mouths full of salt water, they could see that their mother was still swimming out beyond where the waves broke. When they got her attention, she began to swim in to where they were.

'You said you couldn't swim,' Declan said.

'I haven't been in the sea for years,' she said.

For most of the afternoon, then, Helen and her mother, with Declan in between them catching their hands, stood waiting for the waves to crash. A few times, when they went back and sat on the rug, Declan was not content until they returned to the water. As soon as a wave appeared, he would shout that this was the biggest one, and when some of them turned out to be small and mild, this did not put him off. He would point to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, laughing all the time, until, finally, a huge wave came and knocked the three of them over.

As the afternoon faded, they sat on the rug and ate their sandwiches and drank tea.

'This is the best place,' Declan said. 'Can we come here every Sunday?'

'If you like,' his mother said.

Helen wanted to ask if her mother had told her grandmother that they would not be coming to Cush, but she knew, as they dressed and got ready to go back to the car, that she had not.

She wondered, as they drove into Curracloe village, would she turn towards Blackwater and call into Cush, but her mother turned left and took the road to Enniscor-thy. Declan sat in the back of the car and talked all the way back home, addressing questions and remarks to his mother. It was the first memory Helen had of what became a constant scene: Declan and his mother in deep conversation, him laughing and his mother smiling and Helen unable to keep up with them, but smiling too, enjoying Declan's jokes and comments, his good humour and his inexhaustible need for his mother's attention and approval.

She drove towards Wexford. She knew that her mother's offices were on the quays overlooking the old harbour, and she wondered if she would get parking near there. She thought she should phone Hugh – he would surely wait at home this morning until she rang – and then she would face her mother.

Two years after her father died, her mother went back to teaching, getting a job, with the help of Fianna Fail, in the local vocational school. Soon \a151 Helen was not sure when \a151 she began to give commercial courses in the school in the evening, until the designing of these courses to suit the needs of the students and the finding of jobs for those who took part became an obsession with her.

Then, with the arrival of computers, her mother began to talk to business groups and others about the need to computerise. She was the first in the county to include computer skills in her commercial course. And this led, eventually, to the setting up of her own computer business, -where she taught basic skills and later began to sell machines to businesses and individuals. The previous summer, her grandmother had shown Helen a full-page advertisement in the Wexford People for Wexford Computers, with quotes from clients in Waterford and Kilkenny who said that they came all the way to Wexford because the courses made using computers easy and the sales force made installation and maintenance problem-free. There was a large photograph of Helen's mother at the top of the page.

'Will you look at Lily!' her grandmother said.

When she had parked the car, Helen phoned Hugh and told him where she was and what she was about to do. She realised as she spoke to him that she had put no thought into what she would say to her mother, and that she would make any excuse \a151 phone the school, move the car, have tea in White's – to postpone her visit to Wexford Computers Limited.

The boys had been up since early light, Hugh said, and had gone down to the strand with their cousins, wearing their raincoats. Everything was fine, he said, and he would come down whenever she wanted him. She told him that she would call him later in the day.

'Things are never as bad as you think they're going to be,' he said.

She was surprised when she saw the lift in the hallway of the Wexford Computers building, and surprised, too, by the lighting and tiling and paintwork, which were all modern and cool, as though from a magazine, and not like anything she expected to find on the quayfront in Wexford. A sign in the lobby told her that the showrooms were on the first floor and the reception on the second floor. She pressed the button for the second floor.

She was checking herself in the mirror, expecting to arrive into a hallway or lobby. She wondered if she would be able to find a bathroom up there and put on make-up before she saw her mother. But when the lift doors opened, she stepped into a vast room with windows looking on to both the harbour in front and the street behind, and skylights in the high-beamed ceiling, the attic having been removed. There were twenty or more people seated on chairs in the room; some of them turned to look at her, but most of them continued to face her mother, who was standing.

Her mother was in mid-sentence when she appeared. Helen found herself helpless, exposed; she could not retreat or try to find a bathroom. She moved forward until she found a chair. She noticed how beautiful and bright the room was, and how expensive-looking. Her mother kept talking, and acknowledged Helen's presence merely by moving her spectacles from her hair to her nose and peering short-sightedly in Helen's direction. A few others looked behind as her mother continued to lecture, slowly, almost absent-mindedly putting her glasses back where they had been.

'Now you must all remember', she was saying, 'that we are here for you. If your company installs a new system, or if you find that you need to expand your skills, then simply call us, just as you would call a plumber if you had a leak in the house, and we'll sort you out as quickly as possible, even if it means coming here in the evening or at the weekend. Just call us and we'll be here for you.'

Her mother stopped for a moment and put her glasses on again, peering once more at Helen as though to make sure that she had not been mistaken the first time.

'Now,' she went on, 'we began only as a provider of courses in computers and word processors, but, as we worked, we found that almost everyone coming here had a horror story about buying or installing a system, or about maintenance. So it is by default that we have the best range and the best sales and technical force in the southeast. And I can tell you that it wasn't hard to be the best. You can laugh all you like, but you'll find that our prices are lower, and we have a twenty-four-hour service. Our showrooms are on the floor below, but you're not here to buy computers, you're here to use them, and for each of you we have a special programme; we've studied your needs, and we're ready to start now. There's a machine here for each of you as well with your name on it, and if you could move your chairs to the computers, we'll start. The staff are the ones with name-tags on.'

Helen watched her mother moving towards the table beside a window which looked on to the harbour. Her mother spoke to one of the staff, then picked up a sheet of paper and looked at it. Helen resisted an urge to go back down to the street in the lift, drive to Dublin and inform Declan that he could send his friend from the European Commission to tell his mother. She waited as her mother moved about the room, checking names and details, clearly in command. Eventually, her mother moved towards her, but suddenly thought better of it and went back to the table beside the window. Once she had satisfied herself about something there, she crossed the room and approached Helen.

'I thought it was you when you came in, and I wondered had you come all the way down here to learn computers,' her mother said.

'No, thanks. Your offices are lovely.'

'It's all new,' her mother said.

'I need to talk to you. Is there a private office?'

'I don't have much time,' her mother said, but as soon as she had said it, she stopped and searched Helen's face. 'Has something happened?' she asked.

They went into a small private office opposite the lift. Her mother closed the door.

'What is it?' she asked.

Helen sighed. 'It's Declan.'

'Helen, tell me!'

'He's in hospital, in Dublin, and he wants to see you.'

'Has he had an accident? Has he hurt himself?'

'No, not that. He's sick, and he'd like to see you. He's been there for a while, but he didn't want to trouble us.'

'Trouble us? What is it you're talking about?'

'Mammy, Declan is really sick. Maybe it would be better if you talked to the doctors about it.'

'Helen, do you know what's wrong with him?'

'No, not exactly. But he wants to see you today. I have his car outside and I can drive you to the hospital. He's in St James's.'

Her mother went to a desk and flicked through her diary until she found the right week.

'What day's today?' she asked.

'Wednesday.'

'Right. You wait outside and I'll make two phone calls and then I'll be with you.'

'Why don't I see you in White's?'

'If you wait outside, I won't be a second.'

They drove to Dublin as the day brightened. Her mother did not speak until they were beyond Gorey.

'I hate this road,' she said. 'I hate every inch of it. I never thought I would have to travel on it again on my way to a hospital.'

'I stayed with Granny last night,' Helen said.

'You went down to her first? Why didn't you come to me first?'

Helen did not reply; she stared straight ahead, concentrated on the road.

'Oh that's right, don't answer me now,' her mother said.

'Hugh and the boys are in Donegal,' Helen said.

'I don't know how he puts up with you,' her mother said.

They drove in silence until they reached the dual carriageway. Her mother pulled down the sunshade and began to put on lipstick using the small mirror.

'I have to tell you what's wrong,' Helen said.

'You've left me waiting for an hour and a half,' her mother said, looking at her watch.

'He has AIDS, he's had it for a long time, and he has kept it from us.'

She could feel her mother holding her breath as a dark shadow seemed to pass in front of the car.

'How long have you known?' her mother asked.

'Since yesterday.'

'Does your granny know?'

'Yes, I told her.'

Her mother pushed back the sunshade and put the lipstick back into the make-up bag: 'Is he very sick? How sick is he?'

'He's very sick, but it's not clear how sick.'

'And there's no cure, is there?'

'No, there's no cure.'

'And how long has he had it?'

'For years.'

'And how long has he been in the hospital?'

'I don't know.'

'Why did he keep it from us?'

Once more, Helen did not reply. Suddenly, it started to rain, and when she switched the wipers on, they began to tear against the windscreen. She turned them off, but the rain was coining too hard and she could not see, so she turned them on again. Her mother remained silent until they reached Bray. Battling with the windscreen wipers distracted Helen from her mother's sighing and clenching her fists and facing towards her as though about to say something and then facing away again.

Eventually, she spoke. 'Just when I have managed to pick myself up, this happens now.'

The rain stopped and Helen turned the wipers off.

'Why couldn't Declan have told me himself?' her mother asked.

'He was very worried about how you would react,' Helen said.

'And is that why he sent you to tell me?'

Helen stared at the road ahead. When she saw a double-decker bus, she thought of asking her mother to make her own way to the hospital, but it was a thought which she did not entertain for long. She softened and tried to imagine what it must be like for her.

'I think he felt that at a time like this we would all forget our differences,' Helen said.

'Well, I don't notice any difference in you,' her mother said.

'Bear with me, I'm making an effort,' Helen said. She could not keep the dry tone out of her voice.

By the time they reached the hospital Helen believed that the car would explode if either of them tried to speak. She parked it in the car park Paul had used, and they walked to the wing where Declan was.

'The doctor said that the consultant will see us at any time.'

'Is Declan in a private room?'

'Yes.'

'What does he look like?'

For one moment Helen felt a great tenderness towards her mother and wanted to say something which would make things easier. She was close to tears.

'No, he looks all right. I think he's afraid.'

'And the consultant? What's he like?'

'It's a she. I didn't meet her, but they say she's nice.'

At reception, they asked for the consultant, and when she could not be located Helen asked for the doctor whom she had met the previous day. They waited in silence. After a while, the consultant and the young doctor arrived together. The consultant was much smaller and younger than Helen had imagined. She was almost girlish. It took her mother a while to realise that this was the consultant. She brought them down a corridor to an office.

'Now, doctor,' Helen's mother said as soon as they sat down, 'could you give us your considered opinion on the case?'

'I'm afraid I'll have to be very blunt,' the consultant said.

'There's no point in mincing words with me,' Helen's mother said.

'Declan's very sick. His T-cell count, which is how we measure the progress of the disease, is almost down to nil. Most people have more than a thousand. He's open to any number of opportunistic infections. He had a small operation this morning to put a line back into his chest, and that went all right. He could go on for a while, but he could also go very quickly. It depends on each individual. I should say about him that he's very brave and very resilient but he won't survive too many more onslaughts.'

'Are there any drugs you can use?'

'There's one drug, called AZT, but I'm afraid it isn't a cure, and we are developing better medicine for each infection as it arises.'

'And what are the chances of a cure?'

'There's nothing in the pipeline, although you never know; but I think that most doctors would agree that Declan's immune system has been destroyed and it would be hard to envisage a way for that to be restored.'

'Could anything be done for him in America?'

'Our systems here are just as advanced.'

'Is he in pain?'

'No, he was actually sitting up in bed half an hour ago when I saw him. He has a group of friends who make sure that he is well looked after. I'll take you down to him and we can talk afterwards, if you want.'

As Helen opened the door, her mother turned to the consultant. 'Could I speak to you alone for a minute, please?'

Helen waited outside and then walked down the corridor and stood looking out of the "window. She knew what her mother was asking: the question she had refrained from asking Helen in the car. She had always wondered if her mother knew about Declan being gay, and was not sure now whether the consultant would tell her or not. But as she watched her mother walking out of the consultant's office and coming with her down the corridor, she knew that she had received a reply. Her mother's shoulders were hunched and she kept her eyes on the ground. It was years since Helen had seen her look defeated like this.

When they walked into Declan's room, he was sitting up in bed listening to music on a Walkman. Paul, who was sitting on a chair beside the bed, stood up immediately, nodded at Helen and left the room.

'I've brought you a visitor,' Helen said.

'I knew the last time I saw you that you weren't looking well,' their mother said, approaching the bed and smiling at Declan. 'But you look much better now.' She held his hand.

'I didn't think you'd be up so soon,' he said.

'This room is a bit dark, isn't it? Are they treating you properly at all?' her mother asked.

'Oh, it's fine, it's fine,' he said.

'We're only here to make everything nice for you, isn't that right, Helen?'

'Yes, Mammy,' Helen said.

'Could you find out when I was getting out?' Declan asked.

'We met the consultant, but she didn't say anything about it,' his mother said. 'But I'll go down now and ask her if you like.'

'No, wait for a while,' he said.

'Have you any pain?' his mother asked.

'I don't feel great today. I had a local anaesthetic in my chest this morning, and it always leaves you feeling drowsy.'

A nurse came in with a small plastic cup with pills which Declan took with a glass of water.

'You know,' his mother said, 'if you wanted to come down to my house, everything would be set up for you. There's a great view, as you know, and we could have a nurse call around if there were any problems.'

'I don't know what I'll do,' Declan said.

'Whatever you want now,' his mother said. She put her hand on his forehead. 'Well, you don't have a temperature, anyway.'

Helen found Paul waiting in the corridor outside the room. Her mother stayed with Declan while they had lunch in a pub close to the hospital. Afterwards she drove across the city to her school. The previous week, letters had gone out to certain applicants for teaching jobs calling them for a second interview. She wanted to check dates and times for the interviews.

Anne, her secretary, read her a list of phone messages which she had, as instructed, taken verbatim in shorthand. Most of them were routine; one was from John Oakley in the Department of Education. Helen looked through the post. Anne told her that one of the teachers had phoned up to ask why they were doing a second interview since no other school had adopted this practice.

'What does she teach?' Helen asked.

'Irish and English.'

'Could you read me her message exactly?'

The secretary read her out the phone message. Helen thought for a minute and then said: 'We'd better write to her. Could you type out a note saying that the position has been filled, and thank her for her interest, and I'll sign it before I go. She sounds like a real nuisance.'

'Also,' Anne said, 'there's a problem with Ambrose. He was drunk, or at least he had a lot of drink on him on Monday. He implored me not to tell you.'

'When was the last time he was drunk?'

'The sixth of April,' Anne said.

'He's the most obliging handyman in Ireland,' Helen said.

'He's afraid of his life of you,' Anne said.

'But he was sober yesterday, and is he sober today?'

'Yes, and really sorry.'

'I'm going to do nothing about it,' Helen said. 'But tell him you told me, and I've gone off to think about it. Frighten him a bit.' She laughed, and Anne shook her head and smiled.

She walked around the empty, echoing corridors of the school, then went upstairs and sat on a bench opposite the staffroom. Suddenly, the whole weight of what had happened and what was going to happen hit her as though for the first time: her brother was going to die, and they were going to watch him sicken further, suffer and slowly fade. A vision came to her of his lifeless, inert body ready to be put in a coffin and consigned to darkness, closed away for all time. It was an unbearable idea.

She tried to put it out of her mind. She felt tired now, worried that if she stayed too long in one place she would fall asleep and be found by Anne. She walked slowly down to the office and signed the letter and then drove home, desperately wishing that she could lie down on the bed and sleep until the morning. She had a shower and changed her clothes. When she phoned Hugh in Donegal, there was no answer. At four o'clock, she drove back across the city to the hospital.

She met her mother and Paul in the corridor outside Declan's room.

'They're just doing a general check-up on him now,' her mother said. 'They're going to let him out for a few days.'

'Does he want to come to my house?' Helen asked.

'No, he wants to go to Cush, to his granny's house,' her mother said. T don't know why he wants to go there.'

'To Granny's house?'

'Of course, when I tried to phone her, she had the phone turned off,' her mother said.

'He's been talking a lot', Paul said, 'about Cush and the house by the sea.'

'If he wants to go there, then we'll take him there. I told him that.'

'When?' Helen asked.

'If he's going he'll have to go now, because he might have to be back here in a couple of days,' her mother said.

The consultant and the doctor came out of the room. 'He has the all-clear for a few days anyway,' Louise said. 'I'll make out a list of drugs and as soon as pharmacy has them ready he can go.'

'One day we waited here two hours for pharmacy,' Paul said.

'I'll take the prescription up there myself and if you come with me, Paul, and stand there looking at them, then they might do it now,' the consultant said.

Helen and her mother went into the room, where Declan was sitting on the side of the bed.

'I feel all dizzy when I sit up like this,' he said. 'But I'll be all right in a minute.'

'Declan, I stayed in Granny's house last night,' Helen said. 'The beds are really uncomfortable and the sheets are ancient.'

'I'll get sheets from home,' her mother said.

'How was Granny when you told her?' Declan asked.

'She was worried about you,' Helen said.

They went outside "while Declan dressed.

'Do you know who this Paul is?' her mother asked.

'He's an old friend of Declan's. I think he's been very good.'

'This whole thing is a nightmare,' her mother said.

'Yes, I know. He seems so well. It's hard to believe.'

'You can drive us down,' her mother said. 'You're on holidays, aren't you?'

'Not exactly, but I can drive you down.'

When the drugs came, Paul and Declan began to clear out the room, putting rubbish into a black plastic bag and clothes and CDs into a holdall. Declan began to give Paul detailed instructions on how to get to his grandmother's house in Cush. Helen and her mother looked on, puzzled, as Declan told Paul to give these directions to Larry as well – Helen did not know who Larry was \a151 and ask him to come down to Cush too as soon as he could.

They set out for Wexford. Her mother fussed over Declan's comfort in the car and wondered whether he would be better in the front or the back. As they drove through the city, Declan in the back seat, her mother turned to him and said: 'Helen said on the way up that you were worried about how I'd react. Well, you needn't worry about that at all. You and Helen are the two people I care about most, and nothing would ever change that.'

'I should have told you before,' Declan said, 'but I couldn't bring myself to.'

They stopped at Dunnes Stores in Cornelscourt, where Helen left them in the car park and filled up a trolley in the supermarket with things they would need over the next few days. She did not know how her grandmother would respond to their arrival. She realised that for the first time in years – ten years, maybe \a151 she was back as a member of this family she had so determinedly tried to leave. For the first time in years they would all be under the same roof, as though nothing had happened. She realised, too, that the unspoken emotions between them in the car, and the sense that they were once more a unit, seemed utterly natural now that there was a crisis, a catalyst. She was back home, where she had hoped she

would never be again, and she felt, despite herself, almost relieved.

On the journey to Cush, her mother talked about her staff and her clients; she was trying hard, Helen believed, to be witty and bright. A few times they thought that Declan was asleep, but he turned out only to have his eyes closed. Her mother said that at some stage that evening Helen could drive her into Wexford and she could get her own car and bedclothes from home.

'We'll make you very comfortable, Declan,' her mother said.

'Do you think Granny will mind us barging in on top of her like this?' Declan asked.

'She's always loved you, Declan.'

'Yes, but will she not mind?' he asked.

'If she'd turn her telephone on, we could find out.'

'I think she'll want to help in every way she can, Declan,' Helen said.

It was still early evening when they arrived in Cush. Their grandmother came out and looked into the car, unable to make out who its occupants were.

'Is it Declan you have in the back?' she asked Helen when she opened the front door.

'He wanted to come down here for a while, Granny,' Helen said. 'We couldn't refuse him.'

'Oh come in, all of you. Lily, come in and bring Declan in with you.'

They left the car in the lane and" came into the house. Their grandmother turned off the television and moved over to the sink, where she began to fuss with the teapot and kettle. She kept her back to them while they remained uneasily in the kitchen. When Helen looked at Declan in this light, she saw for the first time how sick he was, how tight and drawn the skin on his face was, how tired his eyes seemed, and how shrunken his whole body had become.

Her mother had Declan sit down while her grandmother stood, washing up cups in the sink, although there was a row of clean cups on the dresser. The two cats watched them from their perch.

'Mammy,' their mother said, 'maybe we shouldn't be barging in on you like this.'

'No, Lily, I was worried about you all day.' Her face, Helen could see when she turned, was as unreadable as stone. 'I'll make tea,' she said, 'and I'll make sandwiches if you like, or will you be having a meal when you go home?'

Helen could not tell whether she was pretending not to understand that they wanted to stay here in the house, or whether she genuinely believed that they were on their way to Wexford. She tried to think back to what she had said to her when she got out of the car, but she was too tired to remember.

No one answered her grandmother, who now went outside, leaving the three of them to look at each other.

'Declan,' their mother said, 'we can drive into Wexford and you and Helen can stay in my house.'

He did not reply, but stared straight ahead of him. Helen wondered if he had built up a picture over days in bed of this house and the cliff and the sea and now the sight of it had disappointed and depressed him. He looked miserable.

Her grandmother came in with a bucket and left it down beside the sink. She filled the teapot from the kettle, once more turning her back to them. Declan closed his eyes and sighed. Her mother glanced sharply at Helen.

'Granny,' Declan said, 'they've let me out of hospital for a few days and I thought of coming down here and looking out at the view, and staying for a few days, but maybe it's too much for you.'

His grandmother turned and looked towards the window. 'Declan,' she said, 'you can always come down here. There's always a bed for you. Let us have a cup of tea first, and then we'll make sure you're all fixed up.'

By half-past nine they had been assigned beds. It was arranged that Declan would have the room he and Helen had shared all the years before, which gave on to the front of the house. Helen would have the room behind and her mother would have one of the upstairs rooms.

Some of Declan's medicine had to be put in the fridge; his grandmother made space for it, and they watched, half fascinated, half repelled, as Declan attached a small plastic container to a tube which ran directly into his chest. He went through his pills and took four of them with a glass of water.

'Granny, the doctor says I'm allergic to cats. It's not a problem as long as they don't come near me.'

'Oh, they stay up there if I have visitors, so I don't think they'll be troubling you.'

'I'm sure it's not a problem,' Declan said.

'Look at them, they know we are talking about them,' his grandmother said.

As darkness fell, Helen drove her mother into Wexford.

'She doesn't want us here,' Helen said as they came near Blackwater.

'Oh that's just pretence and nonsense,' her mother said. 'She likes company, you know.'

'She doesn't want us here,' Helen said again.

They remained silent until they reached the other side of Curracloe.

'How long have you known about Declan?' her mother asked.

'Since yesterday. I told you.'

'I mean, how long have you known that he had friends like Paul?'

'Like what?' Helen asked.

'You know like what.' Her mother sounded irritated.

'I've always known.'

'Don't be so stupid, Helen.'

'I've known for ten years, maybe more.'

'And you never told me?'

'I've never told you anything,' Helen said firmly.

'I hope nothing like this ever happens to you.'

'You sound as though you hope it does.'

'If I meant that, I would say it.'

'Oh you would, all right.'

They drove along the quays in Wexford until they came to Helen's mother's car. She did not speak before she got out; she banged the door as she left as though in temper and walked to her car. She drove towards Rosslare, Helen fallowing close behind, and then turned into a maze of side roads for several miles. Even the indicator of her car was in a rage, Helen felt.

Until she turned into her mother's driveway, Helen did not know that the house had a view of the sea, a view even clearer than her grandmother's because the house stood on higher ground. They were closer here to Tuskar; its beam skimmed across the front of the house as Helen stopped the car. Her mother went into the house without paying her any attention, so Helen waited in the car for her to come out again. Declan had told her that the house was grand and had cost a fortune, but it looked to her like an ordinary, detached bungalow with a tiled roof. It was the site, she thought, that must have cost a fortune.

In the dark she could only vaguely make out the line of horizon in the dwindling light. She realised that the house would catch the sun first thing in the morning. She wondered why her mother had not put more glass in the front of the house. The beam of the lighthouse came again and washed over her.

Her mother emerged now with her two arms full of sheets and pillows and put them in the back of her car, still ignoring Helen. Helen wondered if she should drive back to Cush and let her mother follow whenever she wanted, but she realised that a certain curiosity was now tempting her to go into the house. She opened the door of the car and was surprised by the stillness, the pure silence here, not a breath of wind, and the sea too distant, for its roar to be heard. Her mother came out again with duvets; she almost bumped into her at the door.

'I'll need your help with the mattress,' she said brusquely.

The hallway and the bedroom to the right seemed ordinary, like rooms in any new house, but it was the room on the left which caught Helen's attention: it was, she thought, more than thirty feet long, like an art gallery rather than a living-room, with white walls and pale parquet floors and high ceilings with roof windows. In the middle was an enormous fireplace, and the end wall – the gable wall of the house \a151 was all glass. It seemed barely credible that her mother could live alone here.

When her mother came upon Helen looking at the room, she brushed past her.

'What an amazing house!'

'Helen, we have to get the mattress out of the small bedroom.'

Helen ignored her and walked into the room, noting an armchair and a sofa and a television in one corner, but aware more than anything of the emptiness in the room. And then it struck her what the room looked like; it resembled her mother's offices on the top floor of the building in Wexford. It also had a high-beamed ceiling and the same roof-lights, the same cool austerity. It must have been done, she thought, by the same designer. She wondered if there was another smaller, cosier room where her mother could sit in the evenings and at weekends, but she realised as she went back into the hall that there were only two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. There were no other rooms.

Her mother came into the hallway pulling a mattress. 'Are you going to stay there gawking?' she asked.

'I can't get over your house,' Helen said.

'We can put the mattress on the roof-rack. I have a thing that -will tie it down.'

'It would be nice to bring a lamp that we could put beside the bed for him,' Helen said.

'God, that house in Cush is depressing,' her mother said. She went into her own bedroom and unplugged a bedside lamp. 'Will he need anything else?' she asked. 'He seemed very sick just there when we were going. I can hardly bear to look at him.'

'I think he's happier now that you know the whole story,' Helen said.

'I hope it doesn't rain on the mattress,' her mother interrupted.

They carried the mattress out to the car. In the darkness, they could see the row of lights at Rosslare, and when the lighthouse flashed, it was like a moment from a film as they were caught in its glare. They tied the mattress to the roof-rack and put the lamp in the boot.

'I'll see you back there, so,' Helen said.

'Do you know your way into Wexford?' her mother asked.

'I'll find it,' she said.

She phoned Hugh from the coinbox in Blackwater. His mother answered the phone and was full of worry about Declan and Helen's mother and grandmother.

'It's a hard time for all of you,' she said, 'and you can be sure our prayers are with you.'

Hugh told her that the boys were fast asleep. Manus had to be carried sleeping all the way home from the pub, he said.

'The pub?' she asked.

'They remembered the pub from last year, and they forgot I existed until they needed money.'

'Are they all right?'

'They're fine, they're asleep. I'm going back down to the pub myself'

'Don't fall into bad company,' she said.

'I won't,' he said. 'I am keeping myself pure and holy.'

She drove back to Cush to find her mother and grandmother dragging the mattress into the house. She felt that she could have lain down here on the cold cement in front of the house and fallen into a deep sleep. She was worried about the night to come, that she would once more sleep deeply for a short time and then wake and spend the night brooding over things.

When they had placed the mattress on the bed-frame they began to make the bed. Helen thought that all the linen her mother had brought was brand new, had never been used before. Her mother must be making a lot of money. They plugged in the lamp and put it on a chair beside the bed.

The cats stared down suspiciously as Helen came into the kitchen to find Declan watching television. The bruise on his nose seemed much darker and uglier under electric light.

'Are you really allergic to cats?' she asked.

'Yeah, they would do something to my stomach.'

She told him that she had been in their mother's house.

'It's amazing during the day,' he said. 'It's really beautiful.'

'Why didn't you want to go there?'

'It gives me the creeps,' he said.

'Does this place not give you the creeps too?'

'I need these creeps,' he said. 'I don't know why.' He laughed.

Helen noticed that her mother and grandmother seemed happier and more satisfied now that they had made the bed and lit the lamp. Declan, too, seemed brighter.

'It's great being out of hospital,' he said.

Helen wondered if he knew how close to the end he was, or if he could live for much longer than anyone predicted. She wondered how much they had told him; it was something, she thought, she must remember to ask Paul. She imagined for an instant them turning on the news and hearing that a cure for AIDS had been invented and would have instant success even for people who'd had the disease for years.

When Declan went to bed, the three women sat in the kitchen eating sandwiches. There was an uneasy peace between them; they chose topics with care and then moved cautiously, alert to the friction which even a stray word could cause. Eventually Helen went out to Declan's car and brought in the groceries she had bought in Dublin and also the rest of the bedclothes from her mother's car.

As she passed Declan's room, she saw that the lamp was still on. He was lying on his back staring at her.

'It's strange being here, isn't it?' he said.

'Yes, I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it.'

'You can close the door,' he said. 'I'm going to turn off the lamp and try and sleep.'

'Declan,' she said, 'if you wake in the night and need someone, you can come into my room and wake me.'

'I'll be all right,' he said. 'I hope I'll be all right.'