The Blackwater Lightship

CHAPTER SIX

In the morning Helen found her mother in Declan's room, cradling his head in her hand.

'You must have come back very early,' she said, and immediately realised that she sounded as though she were accusing her mother. 'You look tired,' she said then, trying to soften her tone.

'Declan wasn't well again this morning,' her mother said coldly.

Declan stared at her. The bruising on his nose had become darker, almost purple, and seemed to have spread; yet there was a strange contentment in the way he lay without moving. He did not appear to be in any pain.

'Are the boys up yet?' she asked.

'They're being fed by your granny,' her mother said. 'She's in her element \a151 she thinks she's running a guesthouse again. It's rashers and sausages and how would you like your eggs?'

'If we had rashers,' Declan said hoarsely, 'we could have rashers and eggs, only we've no eggs.'

'You've been saying that since you were about five,' Helen said, laughing, 'and I've never thought it was funny.'

'Go in and have your breakfast before they eat it all,' her mother said.

When Helen went into the kitchen, Larry was talking and her grandmother was giving him her full attention. Paul acknowledged her arrival, but the other two ignored her.

'No, Mrs Devereux,' Larry was saying, 'no, knocking down a wall costs nothing, and widening a door costs nothing. You could do the whole thing for a thousand pounds, but if I were you I'd put in the anti-damp system too and an oak floor, or at least a pine floor…'

'Is that fellow still talking?' Helen asked.

'Your breakfast is in the Aga, Helen,' her grandmother said.

'Granny, I hope you're not listening to him,' Helen said.

'But where would I put the kitchen?' her grandmother asked Larry.

'No,' Larry said, 'leave the kitchen where it is, but put in a ramp and a rail.'

'We're talking about if I fell, Helen,' her grandmother said. 'Or if I was in a wheelchair. And, anyway, I can't be going up and down the stairs much longer.'

'No,' Larry continued as though no one else had spoken, 'put the bedroom and the bathroom where Helen and Declan are sleeping, with a big, wide door between them, but make them both much bigger by using some of the dining-room. Sure I bet you never use that.'

'Have you brought your measuring tape, Larry?' Helen asked as she sat down.

Larry ignored her. 'I checked those walls,' he went on.

'It would take half a day to knock them down. It would be like a new house. You wouldn't know yourself.'

By the time Helen had returned from the village, having bought groceries and the newspaper, and phoned Hugh, Larry was making drawings to scale in a large sketch pad on the kitchen table. He had the measuring tape beside him.

'There's no talking to him,' Paul said. 'He's a maniac'

'Where would the bed be, though?' her grandmother asked, turning away from her washing-up. 'I don't want it against the window.'

'Is it a double bed or a single bed?' Larry asked.

'That's a very personal question,' Helen said.

'What sort of bed do you think I should get?' her grandmother asked, turning again, her hands covered in suds.

'Oh, that's up to you now,' Larry said.

As soon as the sun came out from the clouds, Helen took a chair to the front of the house and sat there reading the Irish Times. She would wait, she thought, until her mother left Declan's room, and try to see him on his own. If Cathal were sick like this, or Manus, she thought she would want to do as her mother was doing, but she was unsure if it was what they would want.

Paul came and sat on the ground beside her, his back against the house.

'Do you think Declan is all right?' she asked.

'How do you mean?'

'I think my mother has been with him since the dawn.'

'No, she hasn't. She arrived just before you got up,' he said. 'But she seems to be guarding the room, keeping his evil friends away from him.'

'And his evil sister,' Helen said.

'And her evil granny,' Paul added, laughing.

'No, I wouldn't call her evil. "Bad" is the word I'd use.'

'You're in good form this morning,' Paul said.

'Years ago,' Helen said, 'when we were children and my parents were away somewhere and my grandfather was out, my grandmother caught her hand in the window and she couldn't lift the sash. I don't know what age I was, six or seven I suppose. Anyway, she says, and she loved telling the story, that I used the occasion to go through every drawer in the house, rummaging freely, while Declan sat close to her, crying and trying to comfort her. I, of course, don't remember doing that at all. And I'm sure I didn't take advantage of the situation like that. But that's what she's doing now, what she accused me of doing when I was six or seven: she's rummaging in the drawers with your friend Larry.'

'Oh come on, give her a break,' Paul said. 'She lives on her own. It isn't often that she meets a real live architect. And Larry can never go into anyone's house without suggesting that they plant a bathroom somewhere entirely unsuitable.'

'What are you saying about me?' Larry came out and stood in the sun.

'I was telling Helen that your middle name is Frank Lloyd Wright,' Paul said.

'Your granny says that we're all to go for a swim,' Larry said. 'She gave me these.' He held up two pairs of black nylon swimming togs.

'God, I wouldn't wear one of those,' Paul said.

'I brought my own,' Helen said.

'Where did she get them?' Paul asked.

'"Left behind by bathers", she said.'

'She calls outsiders "bathers",' Helen said.

'God, they are skimpy,' Larry said, holding up the togs. 'They must have had fierce small mickeys in the nineteen-forties.'

'They're from the sixties,' Paul said, 'when blokes didn't mind having their mickeys squashed.'

'Do you think we should ask Declan if he wants to come with us?' Larry asked.

'Go in and find out,' Helen said.

They waited in silence until he came back.

'He's asleep now,' Larry said. 'I didn't even ask. I said I'd get your mother a cup of tea.'

'We'll wait,' Helen said. 'Get towels.'

Helen took her swimsuit from a bag in the boot of Declan's car, and all three of them walked down towards the cliff. If these men were not gay, she thought, she would have found an excuse not to go down to the strand with them. There would be too much tension and uncertainty. She would not have known how to behave unless Hugh were in the company as well, and then she would keep close to him. It was only when they were on the strand and Paul took off his shirt, and she saw the pale, smooth skin on his long back, that she realised how strange and new this was for her. If he saw her undressing, she thought, it would mean nothing to him. Maybe he would be curious, but he would not feel what she felt when she saw him now standing up in the black nylon togs.

'Last in is a sissy,' Larry shouted and began to wade fearlessly into the water until he suddenly stopped and jumped in the air as though he had been hit by an electric current. 'It's freezing, oh Jesus, it's freezing!' he roared.

Paul walked casually into the water, but he too stopped and wrapped his arms around his torso as though protecting himself from the cold. Helen realised that she would have to resist the temptation to splash him as she passed. He was too serious and distant for teasing. She thought of whispering the word 'sissy' into his ear, but she thought he would be offended.

'Come on, Paul,' she said, 'you're a big boy.'

'Don't even speak to me,' he said, shivering. 'You never told me it was this cold.'

By now, Larry was swimming out to sea, and as soon as it was deep enough, and with as much effort and determination as she could muster, Helen dived in as well. When she surfaced, knowing that Paul was watching her, she nonchalantly tossed the seawater out of her hair.

Afterwards, they dried themselves and lay on their towels in the sun.

'Your granny says', Larry began, 'that if she broke her leg or got sick, they'd sort of capture her and keep her, and she'd never get home. She was in hospital once and the old woman in the bed opposite thought everyone was a priest, even the nurses, and was all father this and father that, and your granny says she couldn't bear it. They started to treat her like she was demented as well.'

'She is demented,' Helen said.

'God, it'd be awful, though, when you think about it,' Larry said.

'Shut up, Larry,' Paul said.

'No, seriously,' Larry said.

'I don't care about Granny,' Helen said. 'I mean, I do care about her, but not now. Now, I'd like to get Declan out of that room.'

'I think maybe he wants to be there with your mother like that,' Paul said.

'Are you sure?' Helen asked.

'I think he was so afraid that your mother would refuse to see him or something,' Paul said. 'I think he desperately wanted her to know and help him and yet he couldn't tell her, and now he's told her and he has her there and she's trying to help him.'

'It might be better in small doses,' Helen said dryly.

'It might also be exactly what he wants,' Paul said. 'He talked about it so much.'

'Imagine being locked up in a room like that with your mother,' Larry said. 'I'd sooner be taken hostage by the Hizbollah.'

'Shut up, Larry, you told us your mother was nice,' Paul said.

'I suppose if I was sick, it would be different,' Larry said.

'Stop telling Larry to shut up,' Helen said.

Paul stood up and walked towards the shoreline and then began to wade fearlessly into the water.

'Maybe he'll cool off in there,' Larry said.

'What's wrong with him?' Helen asked.

'He has his own problems,' Larry said.

'Is he sick?' she asked hesitantly.

'No, not that. Boyfriend problems. Can you imagine trying to be his boyfriend?'

'I'm sure he's very nice.'

'Oh, a bundle of laughs, our Paul. He reads books about relationships.'

'And that's the limit, I suppose?'

'Well, it would be for me, big-time,' he said.

'Yes, it would be for me too,' Helen sighed.

Later, Larry went back to the house and Helen and Paul walked south along the strand towards Ballyconnigar and Ballyvaloo. The day was hazy, but the sun was strong and warm.

'Do you live alone?' she asked him.

He looked at her sharply. They both knew that the question had been rehearsed.

'No, I live with my boyfriend in Brussels,' he said. He sounded bored.

'Sorry, I should mind my own business,' she said.

'No, it's OK,' he said.

They walked in silence until they came to the Keating\a146s' house, where she began to explain the erosion. He seemed interested in it, asked questions about who had lived in the house and how long it had taken this part of it to fall over the cliff.

They crossed the stream at Ballyconnigar and continued walking. Without thinking, she asked another question. 'Is your boyfriend Irish?'

'No, he's French, but I met him in Ireland.'

'How did you meet him?'

She did not know why she was so curious, and she promised herself that, if he put her off this time, she would ask him nothing more.

'We were on an exchange scheme when we were both fifteen.'

'And did you…?' She hesitated, and he looked at her as though he did not understand what she was asking. 'Did you…?'

'I think I know what you mean,' he said. 'No, no, not until four years later.'

'But did you know?'

'I knew I was, but I didn't know he was, and vice versa.'

'And what happened?'

They sat down against one of the small sand dunes. He put his arms around his knees and stared out to sea. 'A lot of French students came to the town,' he said, 'and they all joined the tennis club so we were all down there day and night. There were hops and tournaments and all sorts of things. The way all of us – I mean the Irish boys – the way we dealt with each other puzzled the French people, but I didn't realise that until much later. We were all surprised at how they shook hands with each other and kissed each other, and they were amazed at how we slagged each other off all the time. Looking back on it, that was, I suppose, how we communicated. If anyone got a haircut, or was caught holding hands with a girl, or had any weakness, it could be anything, they'd all jeer you and slag you and it could go on for days.'

'That's what you and Declan do to Larry,' she said.

'He deserves it,' Paul said.

'Sorry, I interrupted you.'

'You'd have to know my father,' he went on. 'He's an engineer, and he's really interested in problems in maths, and he's also big into logic. All my brothers are engineers. From the time we could talk he had us solving problems. And when we were older, if we had to decide anything, like how to spend your Confirmation money, or whether to watch television or study, he'd make you write out the problem and then the pros and cons, and then the decision. We all had slips of paper for this, and he'd love if you showed him how you worked something out. So the winter before Francois came to stay with us I wrote on a slip of paper: "I am gay. I feel about blokes in my class the way they feel about girls." And then I hid the piece of paper. I read an article in the Irish Times about a couple where the husband was gay, but they didn't talk about it until they had two children. They were going to try and stay together, the article said, but she knew that he didn't really fancy her.

'I used to take out the slip of paper and write down options: I could ignore it. I could try and forget about it. I wrote down the most outlandish things I won't tell you about. One night I wrote down the option that I should look out for someone my own age who was gay too. I remember I underlined it twice because it was less drastic than some of the other options.

'And very soon someone came along, or I thought he came along. I used to play rugby then, until I got sense, but our club was tiny and we had no showers or anything like that. We used to put our clothes back on after the game and then go home and shower and change. The first time I played in an away-game there was a communal shower and we all noticed that one of the guys on our team \a151 he's a big barrister now \a151 got an erection in the shower. I stupidly decided that he had to be gay. He was a really good-looking guy, so I watched him, and then one night I managed to walk home with him after a debate, and I don't know what I said to him, but whatever it was he understood my meaning. He said he would be interested, but just not tonight, and we left it like that, and I went home happy. I had met somebody. I wouldn't need to consult the slip of paper again.

'The problem was that I never got to be on my own with him properly again, even during the day, and I tried everything: waiting until he was leaving, trying to find him during the breaks in school. I even called around to his house once, and every time I was about to bring up the subject, he would do something like leave the room or zap the television. It was all hopeless. But I didn't realise he had told everybody. I didn't realise that until Francois was staying and we were sharing a room. Francois' English wasn't great then. Anyway, one night, we were all in the tennis club, it was too dark to play but too early for the dancing to start. So we were all just sitting around. And there was the usual jeering or banter going on. Somebody said that Francois was looking for a transfer to another house and everybody sort of cheered, including the girls who were there. Is it the food, someone mockingly asked. No, someone else said. Is it Paul's oul' ma? No, someone said again. It all sounded like they had planned it. What is it then, someone shouted. It's because Paul's a queer, one of them said, and they all laughed and cheered until one of them said to Francois \a151 who hadn't a clue what was going on \a151 "Isn't that right, Francois?" and Francois, who is very polite, said "Yes" in a French accent and they all fell around laughing.

'My father's system of logic didn't mean much that night. I went home and I was already in bed when Francois came in. "Those boys are not your friends," he said. He tried to explain that he didn't understand what the question was, but I knew that anyway, and I told him so. He turned the light off and got into his bed. I started to cry and he came over and sat on my bed and tried to comfort me and then he lay down beside me and he said that he was my friend and we wouldn't go to the club any more. Anyway, slowly, as he lay against me, I realised that he had an erection. He put his hand inside my pyjama-top and touched my shoulder. But I'd had enough of boys with erections, so that even when he kissed me I lay there frozen. Nothing happened and he didn't do anything more. After a while he went back to his own bed.'

'And what happened then?' Helen asked.

'We became very close, especially when I went for a month to his house in France. His parents were young and he was an only child and they treated us like adults. They had a lot of time for us and they were so polite. Francois thought my father didn't like him because he used to banter with him all the time. But Francois' father always said what he meant and normally that was something quite gentle and straightforward. I loved how straightforward they all were. And Francois was like that too, he was loyal and serious and polite. Sometimes he was also very funny, he wasn't a drip. I loved how clear he was, and how careful about everything he did and said. And I knew he liked me as well and that was amazing. His parents rented a house by the sea in Normandy and we swam and played tennis. We never touched each other, but we did things in France that we didn't do in Ireland, like we stripped off in front of each other, rather more perhaps than was necessary.'

'It sounds like true love,' Helen said.

'It was a sort of pure happiness, yeah it was,' Paul said. He stared out to sea and closed his eyes.

Helen wanted to ask him what happened next, but felt that a single question, phrased badly, could stop him now, and she desperately wanted him to go on. When he did not speak, she decided not to prompt him. Then he began again:

'Francois came back to Ireland when I was going into my third year in Trinity. He had changed a lot, he was taller and stockier. His face was thinner. He had new gestures and was funnier. We had corresponded over the years, but less as time went on. I had a bedsit in Dun Laoghaire but he had rooms in Trinity for the month of September, and the first night we met we found ourselves in the city with the last bus gone. I took up his offer to use the other bed in his room. It was like the old days except we were both nearly twenty. I knew that I was gay, but I had done nothing about it, except wank myself to death, if you'll excuse the language. He'd been with a guy, but only once. Anyway, that night in Trinity, we were half drunk and we made a big play of stripping off and wandering around the room. Someone had to make the first move, but it wasn't going to be me. After we'd been in bed for a while there was a silence, and then he asked me in French if he could come to my bed. I still remember the words and we often laugh at them. But I was too nervous. It was too much, I wanted him too badly, and it was all too real. I said no, but he could tomorrow. I made sure he understood that I meant yes, that I wasn't just putting him off. He stretched his arm out towards me in the dark and we held hands for a while between the two beds. And then the next night we went to bed together for the first time.'

'And have you been together ever since?'

'Well, for the next two years we saw one another as often as we could, and then when I graduated I went to Paris for a year, and then we both came back here for a year. So we've been together for the past eight or nine years but the last two years have been very difficult.'

They stood up and brushed the sand off themselves and began to walk back towards Cush.

'How have they been difficult?'

'When we got together,' Paul went on, 'Francois' parents were just unbelievable. They bought a big double bed for us and put it in Francois' room. I don't think he had a single moment's problem with them about being gay. We saw them often. We usually stayed with them on a Saturday night, or saw them on Sunday. They were our best friends. And they were both killed in a car crash, killed instantly, almost two years ago, they were still in their forties. They were driving out from a side road, the car behind them crashed into them and pushed them out into the path of a lorry. And then our world fell apart. There were no close relatives as both of them were only children; there were no cousins or aunts. Francois was alone except for me, but after a while I was no help to him because he couldn't handle the idea that I might abandon him.

'I said I wouldn't. I tried to reassure him and I thought that soon he would be all right. He had taken time off from work, and I thought that when he went back he'd be better, but he wasn't better, and he couldn't manage -he's a civil servant \a151 so he had to take extended leave. He believed I was going to desert him and after a while no reassurance was any use. The phone would ring at work, and the person on the other end would hang up, but I'd know that it was him checking on me. He was falling apart; he went to a counsellor and a therapist but it made no difference.

'Then I had to go to a conference in Paris. I told him way in advance that I was going, it was a job I couldn't get out of. It was a three-day conference on fisheries. I was in the translators' box on the last day and I suddenly saw Francois walking into the hall. He looked lost and strange, he was like someone who had gone out of his mind. All I felt was anger. I ran down and grabbed him and brought him up with me and kept him there. I was really pissed off with him, and I realised that I couldn't handle much more. Back in the hotel, I'm afraid I let a few roars at him, which I don't think I'd ever done at anyone before, and I told him he would have to pull himself together. I remember that we went to bed without speaking. We got the train back to Brussels without speaking and I realised we'd lost it.

'I thought that maybe we'd split up for a trial period and I went around with this in my head for a few days, but it was a stupid plan. I was just letting him down, I wasn't helping him, and I knew that if we split up now we'd never get back together again. So I remember one night when things were at their very worst asking him if he loved me and he said that he did. I said that I loved him as well, and I knew he was afraid of being alone, and I told him I would do anything to prove to him that I would stay with him. I told him I would show I meant it. And I did mean it.' Paul stopped and wiped his eyes with his hands. He stood and looked at Helen.

'What did you do?' she asked.

They sat down on the hard sand under the cliff at Cush and watched the waves breaking softly and the haze on the horizon and the mild sky.

'I did two things. I brought him home and reintroduced him to all my family, including my brothers, as my partner and my lover. Only my sister knew I was gay before that, and it was all difficult and emotional. It was OK in the end, mainly because of my father, oddly enough. That was the first thing I did.'

'And what was the second?' Helen asked.

'Maybe I'm boring you with this. I'm worse than Larry.'

'No, tell me,' she said.

'So, we went back to Brussels, and every time Francois talked about me leaving, I just said the same thing: "I'll do anything to show you that it's not true." He still hadn't gone back to work and he was depressed, and I'd come home from the Commission and he would have been in bed all day, and he was on all sorts of pills, but I kept saying to myself that I had to try and help him. We had a photograph of his parents enlarged and framed. We selected a gravestone. We went through all their things. I just said to him all the time like a mantra: "I'll do anything to show you that it's not true. I'm not going to leave."

'Both of us were part of a group of Catholic gay men in Brussels who met on a Wednesday night. Declan used to fall about laughing at the idea, and even more when I told him some of the things that were said. He used to call it Cruising for Christ. He just couldn't believe that we went there. But anyway, we did, and we made good friends there, and I asked a few of them \a151 I had to do this very discreetly because there were some activists in the group who were angry with the Church \a151 I asked a few of them if there was a priest in Brussels or anywhere who would bless us. One of them was an ex-priest himself, and he told me he knew someone, and would call on him and find out and come back and tell us. He came back and said that the priest he knew was worried about being set up for a publicity stunt, so I should go and see him and tell him that this wasn't about politics or publicity.

'The priest in question was a grumpy little old man, badly shaved, with dandruff everywhere and huge bushy eyebrows. He lived in a big shabby house in a part of Brussels I'd never been in before. He was hostile, but I knew that I hadn't been sent to him for nothing. He asked me things like when was the last time I had been to Confession. I said it was years. And Communion? I said it was a long time. He let a big shout at me that I just wanted to use the Church. I had no intention of arguing with him. He said he would phone me and he hustled me out.

'A few nights later he phoned and said that he wanted to meet us in our apartment. He came and sat there and looked at the two of us. He never smiled once or was in any way friendly. He asked us questions in a really abrupt tone. And then he stood up and said he would do it on three conditions \a151 one, that we made good confessions before the ceremony; two, that we went to Mass and Communion every Sunday for a year; and three, that we told no one. We said to him that the third was impossible, we would have to tell two people, but we would guarantee that they would tell no one – and, in fact, within a few days, we had told Declan and my sister. He mumbled something and left, and a few days later he phoned with a date and a time.

'He came to see us once more and informed us that he had something very important to say. He spelt it out carefully: he was prepared to marry us rather than conduct a blessing. He said, "I am willing to perform the sacrament of matrimony, if that is what you want." And we said that was what we wanted but we didn't think it could be done. "It can be done," he said, "but it is a grave step, and you must let me know if you have any doubts." We assured him that we wanted this. One day he rang and asked us if we "were going on a honeymoon and we said that we had thought of it. "Leave a few hours free after the ceremony," he said. We booked a flight to Barcelona for later that day, which was a Saturday, and booked a posh hotel for a week. We bought suits and had haircuts. The only things missing were the photographer, the organist and the wedding guests. That morning we packed our bags and we got a taxi out to the priest's house. Francois couldn't stop giggling when we were waiting at the door. It was the first time he had giggled like that since his parents died and I couldn't take my eyes off him.

'The priest heard our confessions separately, and then he brought us together and asked us again if we were sure. We told him we were sure. He brought us into a small church by a side door which he then locked. The church was done in gold and when he turned on all the lights it was all rich and glittering. He changed into his vestments and said Mass and gave us Communion and then he married us. He used the word "spouse" instead of husband and wife. He had it all prepared. He was very solemn and serious. And we felt the light of the Holy Spirit on us, even though Declan thought this was the maddest thing he'd ever heard and I suppose you do too.'

'I don't think that at all,' Helen said.

'We felt that we had been singled out to receive a very special grace. All three of us knelt and prayed for a long time.'

'Why did the priest do it? What was his history?'

'We never asked and we never found out. He had a housekeeper who was nearly more dishevelled than him and just as unfriendly, but that didn't bother us after the ceremony because we were so happy. Anyway, the padre asked us to eat with him, and it was straight out of Babette's Feast. Have you seen that?'

'No,' she said.

'It's a film where the most sumptuous meal is made for the most unlikely people. This housekeeper brought plate after plate of pate and lobster and prawns and stuffed everything, and then meringues and amazing cheese and a wine that the padre had removed the label from \a151 we knew it must have cost a fortune – and champagne. Our priest barely touched it, he sat back with his hands over his little paunch like an old Christian Brother, and almost smiled. We ate what we could. He loved us cooing every time more food came, although the housekeeper who had cooked it didn't look at us once. At the end he raised his glass and said something extraordinary. He said: "Welcome to the Catholic Church." And we proposed a toast to him and his housekeeper, but he said the person to thank was not them, the person to thank was Jesus Christ. But we didn't think we could propose a toast to Jesus Christ, we felt we had pushed our luck far enough, so we nodded in agreement, and we went to the airport soon after that. When we got into bed in the hotel that night, I said, "This is our first night as man and wife," and Francois asked who was the man and who was the wife. "Turn off the light," I said, "and I'll show you." We laughed until we shook, and that was the beginning of a new life for us. Although Francois still has his bad moments, it was a turning point and we're very close now. He hates me being away like this, but he loves Declan and he understands.'

They scrambled up the cliff at Mike Redmond's and sat on the edge with the sea wide and calm and blue beneath them.

'Did you see much of Declan during all that time?' Helen asked.

'He didn't come to Brussels over the past two years, because he knew we had problems and because he wasn't well, but before that he was a regular visitor. He would come for long weekends and he'd make us hang out in bars and clubs with him, and he'd usually abandon us at a certain time and then come back home in the early hours like a half-drowned dog. My best memory of him was in the morning; he would crawl in the bottom of our bed. He was like a small boy, and he'd talk and doze and play with our feet. Francois always joked about adopting him; he even bought a child's pyjamas for him as a joke and folded them on his bed. Francois loved his visits. Usually, by Saturday afternoon, the phone would ring and someone from Friday night, or Thursday night if Declan had come earlier, would be eager to talk to him and Declan wouldn't be interested. He checked out all our friends from the Catholic gay organisation and a few of them really fell for him – everybody fell for him – and he would bounce up and down with them for maybe two weekends, and then he'd arrive again and we'd know by something he 'did or said that he hadn't been returning So-and-so's calls, so we learned never to tell anyone he was coming. And then the whole routine would start again; he'd laugh about it himself. Francois used to say that once he went to school and met all the other toddlers he'd be all right, and Declan loved being fed and looked after and listened to and protected from his former lovers by us. He was fascinated by how we never had it off with anybody else. He was always listing out the names of actors and asking us if we'd sleep with them. He'd go "OK, Paul Newman in Hud," and we'd shake our heads; "Marlon Brando in Streetcar," and we'd still shake our heads; "Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" and we'd still shake our heads. And then he'd get fed up \a151 he got fed up very easily – and he'd call out other names like Albert Reynolds or Le Pen or Helmut Kohl.'

When Paul and Helen got back to the house, they saw that Larry's car had gone and her mother's car was not there either. When they opened the kitchen door the two cats scrambled back to their vantage point. There was no one in the house.

'Do you think Declan is sick?' she asked. 'Do you think they had to take him to hospital?'

'I'll be able to tell you instantly,' he said.

He went to Declan's bedroom and looked into the locker beside the bed.

'No, all his drugs are here. He wouldn't have gone anywhere without them.'

'Maybe they've gone shopping,' Helen said.

She heated the soup that her grandmother had left in a saucepan Beside the range and made toast and tea. She put two bowls on the table and went back to the range.

'You know that priest in Brussels?' She turned to Paul, who was sitting at the table.

'Yes?'

'Does the Pope know much about him?'

He narrowed his eyes and pointed at her. 'That is exactly the sort of thing Declan says, and he uses exactly the same tone of voice, as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.'

'I was just wondering,' she said.

'And I have no intention of allowing another member of your family to start. I'm sorry I told you the whole story now. It's amazing that people like you are let bring up children.' He smiled ruefully.

'Ah no, Paul, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

'That's why I left this country, remarks like that. French people, even Belgian people, never talk like that.'

'You really are a sensitive boy,' she said.

'You're starting again.'

'But all the same, can you imagine if the Pope got to hear about it?'

'I'm not listening.' He put his fingers in his ears.

Later, they took deckchairs to a spot at the front of the house which still caught the sun. The day was calm, with milky clouds in the sky and a heat which had not been there in the previous few days.

'This is a beautiful place,' he said.

'I suppose it is,' she said, 'for an outsider it is maybe. I have only bad memories of it.'

'Did you ever get on with your mother and your grandmother?'

'When I was a little girl and had no choice.'

'When did you all fall out first?'

'It was years ago.'

'Over what?'

'Sometimes I'm not sure I know.'

'But when did the fighting start?'

'This doesn't look much like a guest-house,' Helen said, 'but in the old days my grandparents would move into what is now that shed, where there were two rooms. And there are, as you know, three and a half bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. A whole family would take over a room; the place was bedlam and they had to be fed morning, noon and night. The summer before I finished school I worked here for a month. My grandmother paid me, my mother and Declan came on Sundays and it was all fine. So I agreed to come and work again the following summer before I went to college. This time, however, my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was different. As soon as I arrived she stopped doing anything herself except bossing me around and not letting me out of her sight. I went into Blackwater one night without setting the table for the morning, and there she was waiting up for me, going on and on about how I had treated her. I know my grandfather had died not long before, but there was no need for it. I couldn't wait for the summer to be over, and by the time it was over I was exhausted.

'I loved UCD from the first moment I arrived there. I met Hugh in my first term and we started going out together, and that was great, even though there were problems because Catholic girls from Enniscorthy did not sleep with men from Donegal without a lot of persuasion. Hugh was going to America for the summer after first year with a whole crowd from Donegal, and they had guaranteed work there. He asked me to come with them and I said I would. By this time I was on the pill, you'll be glad to hear. During the Easter holidays, when I told my mother about America, she instantly became hysterical, and asked me what my grandmother was going to do. "She has a few months to find someone," I said. "And who would she find?" she asked. "Anyone she'd find would be an awful fool for putting up with her," I said. And so you can imagine the screaming and shouting and the letters that followed me to Dublin in case I had not properly understood. She didn't threaten to cut me off, or anything like that, but it was all full of stuff about my father and my grandfather and the two of them \a151 my mother and my grandmother – left alone now and needing the support of those around them, and instead finding themselves insulted and let down by one of the people they loved most. It was all sick. And I gave in. I told Hugh I couldn't go, and when I arrived here the old witch wouldn't speak to me. And the place coming down with guests. If I asked her a simple question, she'd ignore me. And for the first month the only food she bought was ham, boiled in the middle of the day with potatoes and cabbage, in a sweltering July, and cold with a half a tomato and a few leaves of lettuce at six o'clock. The guests – some of them were the lowest forms of life -used to groan when I appeared with the food.

'Granny and I began to leave lists on the kitchen table, as a way of letting each other know that we had run out of eggs or toilet paper. One day, when there was about a week to go, she left a bar of chocolate on my pillow. That was the signal that the cold war was coming to an end. By the time I "was going back she was addressing some civil words to me. And the worst part was that I went back the following year as well.

'A few days after I arrived back in UCD at the end of the first summer, I was walking down the stairs of the canteen, and I saw Hugh sitting there with a group. He glanced away and pretended he didn't see me. I thought at least he would wave and wander over to meet me and we'd have coffee together, even though I'd only had a single postcard from him all summer. All his crowd had been to America, they had money now and confidence, you'd notice them on the campus. This little mouse, on the other hand, ran scared of her grandmother, had no new clothes, was back in Loreto Hall, run by nuns, had lost her boyfriend and wouldn't meet him again for three or four years, but got used to nodding to him discreetly on the way into the library. He was always on his way somewhere. I became very interested in my studies.'

'And did you say', Paul asked, 'that you came back here the following year?'

'I knew it "would be the last time, because the year after that I was sitting my finals in the autumn, but it didn't make it any easier or any better. That year, of course, she was talking to me, and if she annoyed me in any way I spoke to her in that same clear, reasonable way I use with teachers now, and she found that almost impossible to deal with.'

'Yes, it must have been very frightening,' Paul said. They both laughed.

'I missed my chance. I would love to have had those two summers in America and I learned nothing here except this awful bitterness against the two of them, my granny and my mother. And that meant that I was ready for them the next time.'

'What was the next time?' Paul asked.

'I did my Dip. hours in Synge Street, and the Brothers offered me a job and I accepted it. I had also done a course in English as a Foreign Language, and I found work for the summer teaching Spanish students. I told my mother and my grandmother this news way in advance \a151 not the full-time job story, but the summer teaching story. This meant I was in Dublin, I had money, I worked in the mornings, I had a dingy room that I loved at the top of a building in Baggot Street, with a view right down to the Pigeonhouse. I have good memories of that summer, the freedom of it. The area has changed a lot, but up to a certain time in the evening you could go into the Pembroke or Doheny & Nesbitt's or Toner's and nobody would bother you. But I knew my mother and my grandmother thought I was coming home to teach, and I wasn't, but I hadn't told them I wasn't.

'Earlier in the year, my mother had told me that she would ask about vacancies in the schools in Wexford or anywhere around, including Enniscorthy. I remember that I was really careful to say nothing. I didn't want to have the argument then. I never told them about the job in Synge Street. Then in July I had a letter from her to say that there was good news, it was all arranged and Mother Teresa would be delighted to have me from September. I would need to go for a formal interview, but it wouldn't be a problem.'

'Can you give jobs out like that?' Paul asked.

'You can do what you like when you run a religious school. So I wrote back and told her I had a job, thank you. And then the next day the two of them arrived up to Dublin; they were waiting in the car outside my door in Baggot Street, white-faced both of them, when I arrived home after work. There I was, sauntering along Baggot Street on a beautiful summer's day, only to find these two madwomen sitting in the car taking up valuable parking space. They wouldn't come in; they marched me to the Shelbourne Hotel, and I noticed on the way there that they had both dressed up for the occasion. They sat me down and, as they would put it, tried to talk some sense into me. Two summers of drudgery had me ready for them. It was all Mother Teresa this and Mother Teresa that. "I have a job," I said. "I don't need a job." "You've been in Dublin long enough now," my grandmother said. "You have your qualifications and you'll come home now like your father and your mother did. God knows your mother wants to put her feet up for a while." I realised that the plan was that I would skivvy for my mother the way I had done for my granny, perhaps even commute between them. They had brought notepaper and envelopes with them, and they wanted me to write a letter to Synge Street saying that I would not be accepting their job and to Mother Teresa saying that I would be available for interview at her convenience.

'I told them I was writing nothing. They were fussing with the tea things as though they were Lady Muck and ordering more sandwiches. "You'd be much better among your own people," my granny said. "Everyone is to stop bossing me around," I told them. "No one's bossing you ground," my mother said. "We're both very busy and we've both come up all the way to try and talk some sense to you." You should have heard them both, and all they wanted, of course, was to be driven here and driven there, and have messages collected and dinners cooked. And where was Declan during all of this? He was on his first summer holidays after his first year doing Pharmacy in college and what was he doing? Was he washing out the floor of his grandmother's so-called guest-house? No, he was working as a ticket seller in a cinema in Leicester Square in London, and he was, as he will tell you himself, having the time of his life.'

'I know all about it,' Paul said.

'The two of them said that they weren't going to let me throw away a good chance like this. I listened for a while more and then I took my handbag and my cardigan and I went to the ladies' and then I walked out of the hotel into the street. I bought an English newspaper and I went over to Sinnott's in South King Street and I sat in the snug drinking a Club orange and reading my paper. And I suppose at some stage they went home. And that was the end of that.'

'And when did you see them next?' Paul asked.

'I haven't really seen them since-,' Helen said.

'But you must have.'

'I saw them the following Christmas because Declan called to my flat and implored me to come down with him, which I did. The reception was very frosty. I nearly spat when they tried to stop him doing half the washing-up with me. And I came down again the Christmas after that. And I got used to not seeing them, and I found that not seeing them made me much happier, and I became interested in my own happiness.

'I didn't tell them I was getting married and I didn't tell them when the boys were born. Hugh's family love weddings, and they couldn't believe there wasn't going to be a big wedding, but we got married quietly in a registry office in Dublin and then there was a big party in Donegal.'

'Why didn't you want them at your wedding?' Paul asked.

'I "would have hated their two faces looking at me. That's all. I told Declan and he told them. And I told Declan when I was pregnant and I suppose he told them that too. But my mother has never met Hugh or the boys.'

'And how long have you been married?'

'Seven years.'

'I knew it was a long time. It's a long time not to see people you're close to. But did something not happen last summer?' Paul asked.

'Declan organised a big reconciliation last summer,' Helen said. 'I came down here for a night with Hugh and the boys, and my mother was to drive out from Wexford, but she never turned up. My granny was full of apologies for her. And then I think they all gave her such a hard time that she rang me and we met in town one Saturday in Brown Thomas, if you don't mind, and she bought me the most expensive coat in the shop. And she bought presents for the boys as well and they wrote her thank-you letters. And the plan was that we were all going to drive down here again later this summer for a repeat of last summer, except this time she would turn up.'

'Do you mean that this has been going on for ten years and all because of this row in the Shelbourne?' Paul asked.

'Yes, that's correct,' Helen said stiffly.

'Has it ever occurred to you that they wanted you home because they loved you?'

'No, it has not. That is not why they wanted me home.'

'Has it ever occurred to you that your mother would have been worried about you going to America with people she didn't know?'

'Whose side are you on?' Helen asked.

'I don't understand the reason you didn't want them at your wedding and the reason you didn't see them for so long. What you've told me isn't reason enough.'

'I was angry with them for the reasons I told you.'

They heard a car in the lane. When Helen looked at her watch she saw that it was almost five o'clock. Larry and her grandmother smiled and waved as they drove into the yard in front of the house, but Paul continued talking.

'They just tried to get you a job,' he said. 'If you'd said that you didn't see them much for a year, I'd have understood, or two years. But a whole ten years and you didn't let your children meet your mother and your grandmother! Wow, there must be something between the three of you, something…'

Paul stopped as Larry stood in front of them. The old lady was taking a bag from the car.

'I don't know what he's saying,' Larry said, 'but he has that funny, pompous, know-all look on his face. I saw it as soon as I drove around, and if I were you, Helen, I'd get away while I could. I'll distract him and you just run. People have been known to go crazy just listening to him. Look at the self-righteous set of his chin. God! Aren't you lucky we came along!'

'One of the reasons I left Ireland ', Paul said and stood up, 'was to get away from this sniping and sneering and cheap stupidity.'

He went over to the car and helped Mrs Devereux into the house with her shopping.

'Sorry,' Larry said. 'I didn't know why it needed to be said. It just needed to be said.'

'Where were you?' Helen asked.

'We went for a trip to Wexford, looked at bathrooms and ended up like all good married couples in the supermarket. Incidentally, what was he saying to you?'

'He was talking about reasons.'

'Yeah, he's good on reasons. Has your mother gone to Wexford?'

'She's gone with Declan somewhere. We thought you might have gone together in convoy.'

'No, they were here when we left.'

Helen drank a strong cup of coffee in the kitchen as the others wandered about. She noticed Paul looking at her, and she wanted, now more than any other time in the previous few days, to be away from his interrogation, and to be away altogether from this house. She was uneasy with what had happened between them; Paul had told her the truth about himself and she had been evasive. There was something now that she needed to put words on, something she needed to hear herself saying. She made herself another cup of coffee and when Paul left the room she followed him. She could feel her heart thumping. She stopped him at the bottom of the stairs. 'I need to talk to you,' she said. She motioned him to follow her into the back- bedroom. When they were in the room she closed the door. She sat on the bed and he stood close to the window.

'You asked me about my mother and my grandmother and I told you things, but there are other things I left out that are harder to understand, and maybe I should try. I feel bad because you were so honest and open with me.'

'I knew there was something else,' Paul said. 'I hope I didn't offend you by saying so.'

'No, you didn't offend me.' She drank her coffee and began to talk.

'About seven or eight years ago I worked as a career guidance and home liaison officer in a new comprehensive school on the west side of Dublin. There was a girl in the school, a student, who used to cut herself. She was about fifteen. She'd cut parts of her body that no one could see. A friend of hers came and told me, and then I met her and asked her, and eventually, after a lot of tears and denials, she told me it was true. I had to get involved in her case, even though I had no experience. So I spoke to her parents, but it was no use. There was a strange atmosphere in the house when I went to visit. It was all new to me, I was a nice middle-class girl, and there was silence and fear mixed with poverty and a sort of contempt for people like me. And the girl herself was a mystery. She was so bright in class, the teachers said, and so poised and intelligent in the sessions which I had with her.

'The only thing she would not do was talk about what she was doing to herself. I found her a psychiatrist who was in the public health system because I felt that other help was needed if she was to be all right. I thought maybe if we talked to her and made her realise that she must stop before it all went too far, she might be better. I know that sounds stupid. I was learning then and I listened a lot to the psychiatrist, who was a man in his fifties with a beard who was always in his stockinged feet. He told me that it would take time to help the girl, that we were dealing with something fundamental, something that could not be easily dislodged.

'I took the girl to and from the sessions, and I spoke to her about what was happening, and I spoke to the psychiatrist. And it all made me think about myself, why I felt no need to make up with my mother or my grandmother, that I had put away parts of myself that were damaged and left them rotting. When my father died, half my world collapsed, but I did not know this had happened. It was as though half my face had been blown away and I kept talking and smiling, thinking that it had not happened, or that it would grow back. When my father died I was left alone by my mother and grandmother. I know that they had their own problems and maybe they could not have helped, maybe even the damage was already done, but I got no comfort or consolation from them. And these two women are the parts of myself that I have buried, that is who they are for me, both of them, and that is why I still want them away from me.'

Helen's voice was hard and low. Her hand was shaking.

'My mother taught me never to trust anyone's love because she was always on the verge of withdrawing her own. I associated love with loss, that's what I did. And the only way that I could live with Hugh and bring up my children was to keep my mother and my grandmother away from me.

'I knew that it was wrong, I knew that I could not go on for ever like this, but I did not have the courage to confront them or even see them. And now that we're all here, you watch them: they are pulling me back in. So what's going on between me and them is not about how I spent my summer holidays when I was a student or where I got a job.

'I am telling you this only because you asked me. But I am not looking for sympathy or help, because Declan needs that from all of us. Someone else would probably have softened, but I haven't softened. We have to put up with these people, my mother and my grandmother, and be polite to them because Declan is here. So we should go into the kitchen and see if he has come back.'

Helen was pale when she finished talking. Paul put his arms around her and held her until she was calm again.

'I'm caught between wanting to make up with them and wanting to get away from them,' Helen said. 'But actually what I would really like to do, if you insist on hearing…' She smiled.

'I insist,' he said, ruefully.

'I would really love to run my mother over in the car, that's what I would really like to do.' She laughed sourly and opened the door.

At about eight o'clock Declan and her mother came back. From the dining-room window, Helen watched her helping him from the car. She and Paul went to the front door.

'He wants to go to the bathroom,' her mother said.

'Was there a problem?' Paul asked.

'Not until we were driving home, and then he was sick in the car.'

'I'll clean it,' Paul said.

'Sorry about that, Paul,' Declan said. He began to make his way upstairs to the bathroom.

'It was a very sad day, Helen,' her mother said. 'We were talking about the house and the garden, and it was always something I planned for him, that he would come down at weekends and take an interest in it. He has only ever been down once. But he saw it all today and he was so good. I brought him into the offices; he hadn't seen them since they were refurbished. I had to leave instructions for next week.'

Declan shouted down the stairs for fresh underwear and clothes, which his mother went to get. Helen remained surprised, almost shocked, at the tone her mother had taken with her just now, which was instantly confiding and intimate. It was like tasting something not consumed since childhood, or smelling something not encountered for twenty years. It brought anxiety with it as much as reassurance.

In the kitchen her grandmother was sitting by the window looking out, with the two cats on her lap. On seeing Helen, they immediately jumped and sat on the top of the dresser, although Larry had been in the room all the while.

'Some people like cats, and cats like some people, but they're not always the same people,' her grandmother said.

'Did you buy anything in Wexford then?' Helen asked.

'Oh, we've fresh everything, fresh bread, fresh eggs, fresh fish and fresh meat. All from the supermarket. "You'd swear'', I said to Larry on the way home, "that we lived on a farm by the sea."'

Paul came and stood at the door. 'Declan says he wants to go for a short walk at Ballyconnigar. He says he wants to get being sick in the car out of his system. His mother is going to come.'

Larry and Helen agreed that they would also join the walk.

'Tell them I'll stay here,' Mrs Devereux said, 'and ask them if they want salmon or lamb chops for dinner. Explain how fresh everything is.'

Declan said he did not think he would eat much, but he'd try the salmon. The old lady came and watched as Helen, her mother and Declan got into Declan's car and Larry and Paul got into Larry's car. She waved at them as they turned in the yard.

'Helen,' her mother said from the back of the car, 'I wish you'd talk to her about looking after herself. Even getting in a proper telephone, any small thing would be a great improvement.'

'My husband says there's no getting around the women in our family,' Helen said.

'But he doesn't know us,' her mother said.

'I've told him about you,' Helen said.

Suddenly she looked up and saw her mother's face in the rear-view mirror; her eyes seemed magnified and unguarded and vulnerable, nervously watching her. She was tempted for one second to slow down and turn to see if the mirror were making her mother's eyes like that, or if they would appear like that too if she saw them directly. When Helen looked again, her mother's eyes were cast down.

They stopped in Keatings' car park in Ballyconnigar, Larry and Paul parking in the space behind them. They got out of the cars and walked across the small wooden bridge and moved south in the half-fading light. Tuskar lighthouse had started and they stood and watched as a beam circled towards them.

'There used to be two lighthouses here,' her mother said. 'I don't know what they needed the other for, but I suppose the Irish Sea was busy and bits of it were dangerous. It was just out there now \a151 no, a bit further north, towards Cush and your granny's house. Do you remember it, Helen?'

'I do, Mammy, but only when we were children.'

'It was taken out of commission by Irish Lights. I don't know exactly when,' her mother said.

'What was it called?' Paul asked.

'It was called the Blackwater Lightship. It "was weaker than Tuskar. Tuskar was built on a rock to last, I suppose. Still, I loved there being two. I suppose the technology got better, and maybe there's not as much shipping as there was. The Blackwater Lightship. I thought it would always be there.'

Slowly, they walked towards Ballyvaloo. Helen eased close to her mother. The three others moved ahead, Larry and Paul with Declan between them, quietly protecting him. Helen noticed that the beam of the lighthouse did not flash when she calculated it should. Each time she expected it to come too quickly.

'When I was young, lying in bed in your granny's house,' her mother said, 'I used to believe that Tuskar was a man and the Blackwater Lightship was a woman and they were both sending signals to each other and to other lighthouses, like mating calls. He was forceful and strong and she was weaker but more constant, and sometimes she began to shine her light before darkness had really fallen. And I thought they were calling to each other; it was very satisfying, him being strong and her being faithful. Can you imagine, Helen, a little girl lying in bed thinking that? And all that turned out not to be true. You know, I thought your father would live for ever. So I learned things very bitterly.' When Helen looked down, she saw that her mother was clenching her fists. 'If I could meet him here for one minute now, your father, you know, even if he were to be allowed to pass us on the strand here, here now, when it's nearly night. And not speak, just take us in with his eyes. If he was only to know, or see, or acknowledge with a flicker of his eyes what is happening to us. This is just morbid talk, don't mind me, but it's what I think about when I look at Tuskar lighthouse.

'We should go back now,' her mother went on, 'we're all hungry, I'm sure, and we've had a long day, Declan and myself, and I'm sure you've had a long day too.'

The five of them turned and walked back towards the small river which changed its course through the sand each year. There was no one else on the strand now; it was too late for walkers or bathers, and theirs were the only cars in the car park. Helen was surprised when Declan travelled with his friends and left her alone with her mother. He must have been talking to their mother about her, she thought, must have been trying to bring them together. They were together now, Helen thought, and it was awkward. She started the car and then waited for Larry's car to start up. She moved slowly behind it, the lights full on, and they drove back towards Cush as the night settled down.

As soon as she got back, Helen grew restless and wondered if she could find an excuse to drive back to Dublin now. This new softness in her mother was impossible to resist. She felt that her mother was waiting to approach her again with a soothing voice and a tone of easy intimacy. She could not bear it. She took the keys of Declan's car, slipped out of the house and drove into Blackwater.

She dialled Hugh's number from the callbox in the village. When his mother answered the phone, Helen's asking for Hugh was so urgent that she called him immediately and did not make conversation.

'Are things all right?' Hugh asked.

'No, they're not. I'm desperate to get out of here.'

'How's Declan?' he asked.

'There's no change.'

'The boys are fast asleep,' Hugh said.

Tt was mad me not going with you. I'll never do that again. I don't think I can leave them like that again.'

'Helen, it's just a few days.'

'How can you tell whether they're all right or not?'

'Of course I can tell,' Hugh said. 'They're fine. They're on their holidays. They know they'll see you soon.'

'When my father was sick, they all thought it was OK to leave us down here too.'

'There's one big difference,' Hugh said. 'I'm their father, I'm with them. You're talking about them as though I don't exist. I'm looking out for them all day.'

Helen listened and said nothing.

'What you have to do,' Hugh continued, 'is imagine how it would have been all those years ago if your father had been with you. And you mustn't sound worried when you talk to the boys, or they'll get worried too. At the moment they haven't a bother on them. And if there were the slightest problem, I'd tell you.'

'Maybe it's myself I'm worried about. Maybe I'm just afraid to tell you that.'

'I'm here all the time and I'll come down if you want me to, even just for a day.'

'The worst part of it is that my mother is going all soft on me.'

'That sounds like good news.'

'Stop making everything seem good.'

'What are you going to do? Are you going to stay?'

'I'll stay for another day,' she said. 'And I'll call you again in the morning. It's good to talk to you.'