The Blackwater Lightship

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was after nine when Helen woke to the sound of shouting and laughing. She listened and heard the revving of a car and then some more voices. She heard her mother coming down the stairs and shouting something. She wondered if the cats had returned, or if morning light had unveiled them on the roof of one of the outhouses. A car revved again, as though someone were having trouble starting the engine.

She looked into Declan's room when she got up, but his bed was empty. From the dining-room window she could see what was happening in front of the house. Her grandmother was trying to drive Larry's car; Larry was giving her lessons in the front seat. Her grandmother would start the car, rev the engine, get into gear and move forward in a sudden jerk, and then the engine would cut out.

Declan and Paul were sitting in the morning sunlight watching this, laughing and applauding. Lily was at the front door, where Helen joined her.

'She'll crash the car and then she'll blame someone else,' Lily said.

'She can't go far,' Helen said.

This time Mrs Devereux had edged the car slowly towards the gate before it cut out. She opened the window and shouted, 'Lily, Paul, Helen, put your cars out in the lane. I don't have room enough here.'

'We're afraid to move. You'll kill us all,' Lily said.

'Helen, hurry up now!' her grandmother said.

Mrs Devereux listened carefully as Larry explained the gears to her once more. Helen turned Declan's car under her grandmother's impatient gaze. Lily followed her, as did Paul.

'Helen, my flat shoes!' her grandmother shouted as she made her way back to the house. 'They're in the hall.'

She found a pair of flat shoes in the hall and brought them out. Her grandmother had already taken her other shoes off, which she handed imperiously to Helen, immediately going back to Larry to discuss a point about the gearstick.

'Come on, Granny!' Declan shouted. His thin legs were folded around each other.

Mrs Devereux started the car again as they all "watched. She changed the gear and then took her foot off the brake. She let the car forward until it began to shake. She shouted at Larry, 'What'll I do now?'

'Indicate, Granny, indicate,' Declan shouted.

The car stopped. She pursed her lips and looked ahead. Then she opened the door of the car and turned towards her audience. 'Go inside, all of you! I can't learn if you're all going to be watching me and jeering me. No one can learn like that.'

'She's serious about learning,' Helen said. 'I thought it was a joke.'

'Since she got the money for the sites, she's gone cracked,' Lily said. 'Cracked! And wait until the winter comes and she gets depressed and she won't speak to anybody and Father O'Brien will ring me up like he did last year to say that she's been seen walking into Black-water with a string bag for the second time in the same day, and she won't say a word to anyone she meets.'

'Are you serious?' Helen asked.

'Cracked,' Lily said again. 'And she'd a sister Statia, you'd be too young to remember her. She sent me into her in Bree one Christmas. I had an awful time. She was cracked as well. All that family were cracked. So don't start blaming me now for leaving her on her own out here, there's nothing I can do about it.'

'I'm not blaming you,' Helen said.

'What was that yesterday then?' her mother asked.

Declan had gone back to bed. Paul, Lily and Helen had breakfast together while Larry and Mrs Devereux continued their driving lesson.

'I told Declan', Paul said, 'that he should go back to St James's today, but he says that if it remains fine as it is now, he'll stay. Louise is worried about his stomach: there are various things it could be and they would require treatment, but only after a good deal of testing.'

'Could they do the testing today?' Lily asked politely.

'No, but they could start very early in the morning. Louise doesn't want to mask the symptoms any more, so she won't treat him until she knows what it is.'

'You mean treat him with drugs?' Lily asked.

'Right,' Paul said.

Paul and Lily looked at one another across the table and nodded gravely. Helen made more tea for them as they continued talking. After a while, Larry and Mrs Devereux came into the kitchen.

'It's that first gear has me flummoxed,' Mrs Devereux said.

'And second and third too, I wouldn't be surprised,' Lily said.

'No, Mrs Breen, she has great potential,' Larry said. 'My father taught my mother to drive only last year.'

'You'll have to get a provisional licence,' Helen said.

'Oh, sure that's no problem, Helen,' her grandmother said. 'Didn't I tell you what Kitty Walsh from The Ballagh did last year, and she's so blind she can't see in front of her nose, and that's God's truth. Didn't she go into the eye man the day before her appointment, and she just said she was looking at spectacle frames \a151 her sister Winnie told me this \a151 and didn't she look closely at the letters when the door was open, you know, the letters you have to read. She wrote them down and went home and learned them off. So by the next day the eye man complimented her on her sight when she could hardly see the colour of the money she was paying him with. And she driving a Mazda mad all over the country now. Get into the ditch if you see her coming. A red Mazda.'

'Someone should report her,' Lily said.

'It was Winnie told me, and she thought it was a terrible thing. But there was never any talking to Kitty. Their mother was an awful oul' rip and she lived into her nineties. Kitty had put up with a lot, and nothing would do her but a car once the mother was dead. So watch out for her now!'

At a quarter to eleven Mrs Devereux and Helen, Lily and Paul drove into Blackwater for eleven o'clock Mass.

'Walk straight back to the car now after Mass,' Mrs Devereux said. 'No dawdling around the paper shop, and no talking to people.'

Helen had not been to Mass in Blackwater for well over ten years, since her last summer working at the guest-house. She had forgotten the scene at eleven o'clock Mass: the women in headscarves or mantillas or fancy hats on one side of the church, the men on the other side in suits – even the young boys in suits \a151 and the sense of awe and unease in every face, the silence and the watchfulness, and the soft, old-fashioned edge to everything. The respect and the conformity was broken only by visitors, people from Dublin or from towns who walked up the church and sat together as a family and wore summer-holiday clothes.

When the Mass started she was aware of Paul praying beside her, calling out the responses firmly and loudly. Her grandmother, her mother and Paul went to Communion, but she sat back and watched as each communicant walked down the church in bowed, concentrated prayer. Paul, she noticed, was dressed conservatively and could have fitted in as a local farmer's son, a staunch pillar of the community.

As soon as the Mass was over her grandmother nudged her. 'Come on now, quick, before the crush.'

People she half knew smiled at Helen in recognition as they joined the queue to leave the church. She wished she had worn a scarf or a mantilla like her mother and grandmother. She felt oddly conspicuous, as though by coming here bare-headed and not going to Communion she was trying to make a statement. As soon as they reached the porch of the church, her grandmother caught her by the wrist and began to talk to her animatedly so that no one else could get her attention. Lily had gone ahead; Paul was coming close behind.

'Oh there'll be people raging,' Mrs Devereux said when they got into the car, 'wondering how we slipped by them. People who wouldn't look high up or low down at me for the rest of the year would love to detain me now that I'm with Helen and Lily. And they'll think Paul is your husband, Helen. And they'll say what a clean-looking man she's married. I don't know what they'll say about you, Lily.'

'Well, that priest would put years on you. I don't know what his name is,' Lily said.

'Start up the car,' Mrs Devereux said to Paul, 'and just drive it out. Someone will just have to give way.'

'When you get your own car, Granny, you'll learn all about giving way,' Helen said.

'Oh, I'll need a lot of practice first,' Mrs Devereux said.

When they arrived home, Declan and Larry had everything packed for them to go to the strand. Mrs Devereux, however, refused, said she hadn't been down there for years and if she went down now, she would never get back up. 'And furthermore,' she said, 'you'd never know who you'd meet down there, and you could get a pain listening to people.'

Declan appeared frail and white in a pair of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. Lily carried a basket with a flask of tea, sandwiches and biscuits. As they turned in the lane, they heard Mrs Devereux whispering the cats' names, trying to entice them back into the house, but they did not appear.

In the previous few days, a number of boulders of mud and marl, studded with stones, had fallen on to the strand from the cliff; soon, they would disintegrate as the tide came in and washed over them. After a few days there would just be stones, until they too, or some of them, in the winter and spring, would be swept out, or buried in the sand.

Lily stood behind one of the boulders and changed into an old-fashioned swimsuit she must have found somewhere in the house. There were a few families further down the strand, but no one near them. Helen spread out a rug and Declan lay down on it, but sat up again to watch as his mother marched down the short strand, blessed herself as soon as she touched the water and swam out without a moment's hesitation.

'She's a brave woman, your mother,' Larry said.

'She met her match with Paul,' Declan said. 'Paul would put the fear of God into anyone's mother.'

'Leave me alone, everybody. That Declan fucker, saving your presence, Helen, has me awake all night.' He smiled at Declan.

'We'd tickle Paul, only Helen's here,' Declan said. 'You see a whole new Paul when you tickle him.'

'I can't think of anything I'd like more than to see Paul being tickled,' Helen said. 'But maybe we should wait until my mother comes back.'

Paul, who had already changed into his bathing togs, stood up and charged down the strand and into the sea. But he stopped as soon as he was up to his thighs in the cold water and jumped to avoid each wave. Eventually, to cheers from Larry and Declan, he swam out. Helen joined him, and as soon as she was down in the water, and almost warm as long as she kept moving, she noticed Declan, still in his shorts, paddling on the shore with Larry beside him. She knew that Declan could not swim because of the line which the doctors had put in his chest.

Later, when the sun left the strand in shadow, Larry, Paul and Declan went back to the house, leaving Helen and her mother alone. It was still warm and the sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the distance over the horizon. They lay on the rug first without speaking once they had changed from their swimsuits into their day clothes. After a while, when Helen was almost dozing, Lily began to speak.

'I don't think Declan is going to last much longer. It's funny how we've all absorbed the shock, and we're used to it now. It's a part of life. Sometimes, he looks like your father; there's something he does with his face, some way he turns.'

'Was my father thin before he died?' Helen asked.

'Not noticeably, no. Not like Declan is. But he was like Declan in that he was sitting up in bed and laughing, well, not laughing so much, but talking. And, of course, he didn't know he was so sick.'

'But you knew?'

'No, the thing was I didn't know either. They all thought they had told me, but they hadn't, none of them, and when after the operation the surgeon asked to see me, I went to his office, but he was never in, I never could find him. So I left it. And your father was different in hospital. He was like all the men around here, he didn't talk much, he left all the talking to others, but he loved company and he listened and he was never without company. So he found the hospital lonely, but it was a new world for him, and he'd notice everything and remember everybody, and when I'd come in he'd talk about everything that had happened during the night. And, of course, I was staying with my cousin Pat Bolger, and there were all sorts of comings and goings in the house, so I'd have my own news, and we'd read the paper and we'd talk. There was a man opposite said he never saw two people talking as much. And we planned everything out, what we were going to do.

'We were going to have another child if we could,' her mother went on, 'maybe even two more, like a second family, to thank God for him getting better. We talked about having another boy and another girl, or maybe the opposite way around. We planned everything in detail, and I learned a lot about him even though I'd been married to him for years. We had our own little world there. He was in a corner bed by a window, and nurses came and went, and doctors came and 'went, and I never asked them a question. Maybe I knew he was sick, and avoided it, but really I didn't know, and one day I was walking up and down the corridor waiting for the nurses to finish with him when one of the nuns came up to me and asked me if I would come down to the chapel and pray with her. She lit candles and we knelt down.

'"We'll ask Our Lady", she said, "that he has a happy and a peaceful death." Well, I prayed with her, and she held my hand, but I thought she had mixed me up with somebody else. She was a slow, placid old woman, and I'd noticed her from as soon as we arrived, and she'd noticed me, and I knew she wasn't making a mistake, but still I asked her. She brought me down to meet the consultant, who was very arrogant and brusque and had no time for me. Then I had to go back to your father, and pretend nothing had happened. They had given him an injection, and he weakened after that and was dead within two days, and after he died, if that nun hadn't been there I don't know what I would have done.

'I couldn't part from him. You know, I wanted them to draw the curtains and leave me on my own with him, but they kept coming in to say I would have to go. I knew I'd never see him again. And the nun brought me back down to the chapel and I prayed for him, but the praying made no difference, I did not know that there could be blackness like I felt that day.'

'Did you let Granny know he was very sick a good length before that?'

'Well, she knew he was sick.'

'I mean that he was dying.'

'Sure I didn't know myself. I suppose I would have let her know the day I knew, or the day after. I left it all to Pat Bolger. But your father was dead within a day or two. He was so young, he was ready for another life, he was looking forward to coming home. He was the light of my life and he loved you and Declan so much. He didn't want to let you out of his sight. And now he was cold, like he was nothing.

'And I made a promise that day in the chapel, after they'd taken his body out of the ward, that I'd do my best with you and Declan, that I'd try to be as good as the two of us would have been. I made a promise to do my best, but I don't suppose, looking at it now, that I did very well.'

Her mother's hands were trembling as she looked out to sea. Her last remark was made so flatly, the tone so factual and melancholy, that Helen did not feel she should say anything in reply. They sat in silence listening to the waves sweeping in towards the shore. Eventually, Helen spoke.

'I was just thinking,' she said, 'that I have a son who reminds me of my father sometimes, just like you said about Declan, when he turns his head.'

'Which son is that?' her mother asked.

'He's Cathal, the older one, he's quiet, he's like the men down here, he loves not having to talk. And then the other is the opposite.'

'Declan was the opposite to you when you were small. Your father loved having the two of you in the bed on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning. I never wanted it, but if there was a sound out of you he'd bring you into our bed, and if you came, Declan was sure to follow. And you'd be quiet, you'd suck your thumb, but Declan would crawl all over us, he'd pull his daddy's ears, or he'd want to tickle his feet, and you'd hate all the noise, and Declan would get worse until we got up.'

'I always wanted to be an only child, especially when I was around that age,' Helen said.

'All I ever wanted was a sister,' her mother said. 'Your granny tried to adopt. She was all ready and then a woman in a tweed suit \a151 I don't know who she was, some sort of inspector – came down and asked her where the adopted child would live when our house fell into the sea, and was there an insurance policy? And, of course, there wasn't. And my mother was raging. "You couldn't bring a child up here," the woman said to her. And we were turned down for adoption. She was in a terrible state, your granny; that was the winter she didn't speak to us at all, me or your grandfather.'

'A sister would have changed everything, wouldn't it?' Helen asked.

'It would, yes, it would,' her mother said thoughtfully, regretfully. She said nothing for a while, and then began to shake her head and frown.

'What is it?' Helen asked.

'There's something I will never forget about the funeral,' her mother said. 'It's hard to talk about it. Coming home like that from Dublin and your father so young, and everybody looking and watching, there was a sort of shame about it. It sounds mad, doesn't it? I know it does, but that's what it felt like, so exposed, or maybe that isn't the word. But it felt like shame, those days after he died when we came home.'

'But you didn't look like that,' Helen said.

'I don't know how I looked. I spent those days trying to put back time. And maybe trying to stop time too, because I knew when it was all over and the people went away I would be alone, I'd be sleeping alone, I'd be alone at night, and the job of dealing with you and Declan I'd have to do alone. And I couldn't manage, you know I couldn't manage. I don't know why I'm thinking of all this now. I suppose it's because of Declan.'

The strand grew colder as the afternoon wore on. Helen and her mother folded the rug, and took their swimsuits and towels from where they had half dried on the boulder, and they walked until they came to the gap at Mike Redmond's house, where they scrambled up the cliff.

As they made their way back to the house along the lanes, Helen stopped for a moment.

'There's something I've never realised before, that's just struck me now,' she said. 'I've always believed that you took him away and you never brought him back. I know it's irrational, but that's what it was, that's what I felt. I thought that you had locked him away somewhere, that you knew where he was, that it was all your fault. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed all this.'

Lily shivered as she stood there.

'I locked no one away, I'm afraid, Helen,' she said wearily. 'He died in my arms. I watched him go. I know I came home to you all without him. There was nothing I could do.'

'I know, Mammy, I know,' Helen said, and linked arms with her mother and they continued walking.

At the top of the lane they saw Madge and Essie Kehoe approaching.

'Say nothing now,' Lily said.

'Well,' Madge Kehoe said as she came close, 'we've just been down to Dora's house and we were wondering where you were.'

'Dora will kill someone,' Essie interrupted. 'You'll have to stop her. She nearly drove into the ditch.'

'Oh, but she used to be a great driver,' Lily said. 'She'll learn again in no time.'

Helen knew that what her mother had just said was untrue; she felt that the Kehoes also knew that.

'Did you hear about Kitty Walsh from The Ballagh and her poor mother hardly cold?' Madge asked. She spoke quickly, breathlessly.

'There should be a law, you know,' Essie said. They were both excited at what they had just witnessed.

'There is a law,' Madge said, 'but it's the guards, they won't stop her.'

'Sure she's too blind to see them. She wouldn't stop for them,' Essie said. 'And now Dora is driving.'

'Oh, it'll be a while now before she hits the road,' Lily said. Helen noticed that her mother was sounding aloof, almost posh.

The Kehoe sisters' eyes darted from Helen to her mother. 'And is your husband still in Donegal?' Essie asked.

Helen nodded.

'And isn't Declan looking very thin?' Madge said. 'He'll never get a wife if he doesn't fatten up a bit.'

'Oh I'd say there are girls only waiting for him to make up his mind,' Essie said and smiled sourly.

Neither Lily nor Helen spoke; the sisters slowly seemed to realise that they had said too much too quickly. For a second or two they said nothing more until it was clear that Lily and Helen were going to move away. Eventually, Madge broke the silence.

'God knows who we'll have driving next. Old Art Murphy, or Kate Pender.'

'I'd say it'll be a while now before they get their provisional licences,' Lily said, laughing.

'And the judge is a queer dangerous driver,' Madge said.

'We'll all have to watch out so,' Helen said, and made as though to move.

'And who is the other fellow in the car teaching Dora?' Essie asked.

'He's a friend of Declan's,' Helen said.

'Is that so now?' Essie asked. 'And is he teaching in your school?'

Helen did not answer.

'God, you've a right crowd,' Essie continued.

The Kehoe sisters searched their faces to see if there might be some more information for them to gather.

'We'd better be going,' Lily said.

'Call in before you go back,' Madge said.

'We'll have the kettle on for you,' Essie added.

'They're mad, they were always mad,' Lily said as soon as the Kehoes were out of earshot. 'You should be down on your knees thanking God, Helen, that you didn't have to go to school with people like that. I pinched that Essie so hard one day that her oul' father came down home to complain about me. God, when I was growing up here I couldn't wait to get away! Even seeing the two of them puts years on me.'

The driving lesson had just ended when Lily and Helen arrived at the house. Mrs Devereux and Larry were standing beside the car; Declan and Paul were sitting on chairs outside the front door. Declan's face,. Helen noticed, was almost green; she had not seen him looking so sick and so strained before. But he was smiling now and laughing. She realised as she watched him that he was making an effort to keep going.

'Show them now,' Larry said to Mrs Devereux.

'We met the Kehoes,' Lily told them.

'They were full of admiration for you,' Helen said to her grandmother.

'Show them,' Larry repeated.

Mrs Devereux got into Larry's car, closing the driver's door and seeming to concentrate hard. She started the car and let the engine rev for a minute. She acted as though no one were watching her as she put the car into gear and let off the handbrake and then slowly and smoothly edged forward towards the gate. As she prepared to turn into the lane, the car began to shudder and the engine cut out. She started it again, the engine revving and revving until thick, black smoke poured out of the exhaust. She turned the corner and made her way up the lane. All of them went out to the gate to watch her. She stopped the car with a jolt and applied the handbrake and waited until Larry reached her. She moved over into the passenger's seat and let Larry reverse the car and drive it back down. When the car stopped in front of the house, Mrs Devereux got out and dusted herself down. Larry, Paul, Declan and Helen applauded. Lily stood still, stony-faced.

'She's high now,' Lily whispered to Helen, 'but wait until the winter and she'll be screaming at me from the coinbox in Blackwater, or she'll be walking the roads like Moll Trot.'

In the late afternoon Declan's mood darkened. When they had tea in the kitchen, Declan sat apart from them in the armchair by the Aga. All of them were aware, Helen realised, that he was lower now than he had been at any time in the week. He did not speak, but stared straight ahead; no one at the table spoke either, and finally when Larry said something, it was clear that he was merely trying to break the silence by making jokes about Mrs Devereux's driving and the disappearance of the cats. No one laughed or responded, and Larry gave up and became oddly morose in a way which disturbed Helen more than anything.

When they had drunk their tea, Mrs Devereux fussed nervously about second cups. All of them had, at some stage, left the room to use the bathroom and come back. Paul now tried to ease the tension by asking Declan if he wanted to go to bed.

'No, I don't want to go to bed, Paul, I don't want to go to bed. Leave me alone. Do you have a problem with me being here?'

Helen watched Paul's face redden; it was the first time she had seen him at a loss. He said nothing. Mrs Devereux clattered the teacups and saucers in the sink.

'Leave them. I'll do them later,' Helen said.

Her grandmother went to the window and looked out. 'We'll have the dinner later on,' she said. 'I don't have the energy now.'

'I'll make the dinner,' Helen said.

Declan still did not speak, and paid no attention to any of them. He was pale now; the bruise-mark on his nose had spread into his cheek and turned ugly and dark. Helen noticed for the first time how thin his hair had become. He crossed his legs and then crossed his ankle around his leg again, emphasising his thinness. In the dim light of the kitchen, as Helen watched him, he seemed strangely beautiful, despite the spareness of his face and frame, like a figure in a painting, with shadows under his eyes and dark shadowy tufts where he had not shaved. She observed his long, bony fingers.

He caught her looking at him and she looked away. By this time, all of the others except her grandmother had left the kitchen. Mrs Devereux went to the window over and over, as if expecting some sudden arrival, and then went back to the sink, where she had started to peel potatoes. Helen went to help her, noticing as she crossed the room that Declan had turned the sickly, almost green colour he had been outside the house earlier.

Helen and her grandmother worked at preparing the vegetables while Lily came in and out of the room and Declan sat silently staring ahead. Whatever was happening to him filled the atmosphere so that they became conscious of every sound they made \a151 the scraping of vegetables, the clattering of saucepans, the turning on and off of taps \a151 as a disturbance, an irritation, a direct breaking of Declan's fierce and anguished concentration.

Helen could not wait to get out of the room. She wanted to close the kitchen door behind her as she left, with only her grandmother and Declan in the room, but she felt it would be like closing the lid of a pressure cooker. She left the door ajar.

Larry and Paul were in the dining-room.

'Larry is going back tonight,' Paul said. 'He should really go back to work. I'm going to hang on. I think Declan should go back up tomorrow.'

'I'll wait around until after dinner,' Larry said.

As the meat sizzled in the oven and the vegetables boiled and the smell filled the kitchen, Declan sat impassive and immobile, staring at a fixed point ahead of him as though ready to explode in pain or anger. Paul and Larry remained out of the room while Helen and her mother set the table in the kitchen, carefully including a place for Declan, knowing, however, that he would not sit with them. They moved gingerly, silently, aware that every sound seemed to grate on his nerves. Mrs Devereux filled a saucer of milk and went outside and put it near the shed for the cats.

Eventually, they sat down to eat. They left a chair for Declan but he did not join them, nor did they ask him to. They busied themselves passing food, alert all the time to Declan's brooding presence.

'Would you not eat something, Declan?' Lily asked.

'No, leave me alone,' he said without looking up.

'Leave him alone,' his grandmother said. 'He's my pet.'

Helen saw how uneasy Paul and Larry had become. Declan's sunken mood had rendered them useless; if the family were not there, she felt, his friends would have been able to do something, but the signals in the room, the connections, were too tangled and complex now, and no one could think of anything to say, and a strange embarrassed sadness descended on the company.

When Larry got ready to go, Declan did not move. Larry left his bag in the hallway and came into the kitchen and tossed Declan's hair. Declan held Larry's hand for a moment and squeezed it, but he did not turn to look at him, and did not say anything.

In the dining-room, Larry stood and discussed the plans for renovation with Mrs Devereux. 'I have all the measurements now, and I know what you want, and I'll draw up the plans, and we'll find a good local builder, a real reliable fellow, and I'll do the talking. And all these plans will come free of charge. Rob the rich and feed the poor, that's what I say. No offence meant now.'

Helen noticed her mother standing in the shadows listening suspiciously to this.

'Oh, I'm very grateful to you,' Mrs Devereux said. 'I don't know where I would be without you.'

'And you should get the work done before the winter,' Larry said.

'Oh, indeed, indeed,' Mrs Devereux replied.

'So I'll post the plans to you during the week for your approval, and I'll come down again when we get the builder.'

'Oh now, that's very kind.'

'So you'd need to be sure now this is what you want,' Larry continued.

'Come on, Lar,' Paul said. 'It'll be midnight and you'll still be talking.'

As Larry got into his car, the two cats appeared briefly on the roof of the shed, meowing sharply and watching the departing guest. Mrs Devereux ran in and filled another saucer of milk for them. Accompanied by Helen and Paul, she moved up and down the space in front of the house, and then, alone, she walked up and down the lane, calling to them, but when it was clear that they had gone back into hiding, she returned to the house.

It was almost dark and the beam from Tuskar had begun to wash across the front of the house when Declan's stomach cramps started. Helen noticed the spasms coming lightly at first, with Declan gasping and holding his breath, and then as time went on she witnessed Declan's panic each time the spasm approached.

All of them tried to talk to him. Lily knelt down in front of him and held his hands, but he would not look directly at her or speak to her. Paul sat quietly at the kitchen table, watching him. Mrs Devereux did the dishes and swept the floor and went out again in search of the cats. Helen stood at the window.

'Could you turn off the light?' Declan asked.

There was still a faint glow in the sky so that after a while when they got used to the semi-darkness, they were able to make out shapes in the kitchen. At regular intervals now Declan began to groan. He asked for the basin under the sink to be put near him, and soon, with each spasm, he vomited and retched into it. When he had vomited the first time he put his head back and cried out. When Helen came near him, he motioned her away. He was breathing heavily all the time, waiting for the next heave to begin, holding his stomach and then moaning when it came, and putting his head back when it was over.

Helen signalled to Paul to come outside; Lily and Mrs Devereux were already in the dining-room. They left the kitchen door ajar, aware that Declan had observed them crossing the kitchen.

'If everyone stays outside here,' Paul said, 'I'll talk to him. It's probably too late to ring Louise, and we could ring the local doctor again, but he really wouldn't know what to do. I think I know what it is; it's one of the common opportunistic infections, and it can be treated. So if it lasts much longer, and doesn't look like going away, then Declan will have to go to Dublin, whether by car or by ambulance.'

Helen felt that Paul was enjoying his authority and the sound of his own voice. Her mother and grandmother listened to him respectfully, grateful that he knew what to do. He moved quietly back towards the kitchen and closed the door. The women waited in the dining-room.

'I don't know what the two of you are doing,' Mrs Devereux said, 'but I am saying a prayer.'

'Do you know if it is the first time he has suffered like this?' Lily asked.

'I don't think it is,' Helen said.

'Say a prayer now that his suffering will be eased,' Mrs Devereux said. She knelt down and bowed her head, but Helen and her mother remained seated.

They waited for something to happen in the kitchen, hearing at intervals the sound of retching and spluttering and hearing, too, low cries of pain. Helen could not imagine what Paul was saying to Declan. In all the years she had known her brother, she had never seen him rude or sulky or difficult. As she sat there and waited, she regretted her feeling when Paul spoke earlier that he was pompous and self-regarding. She realised that if Paul were not there they would be helpless, unable to deal with Declan or know how to manage.

After half an hour Paul came out of the kitchen with Declan leaning on him. 'He needs to go to the bathroom,' Paul said, 'and he wants to go to bed.'

Paul helped Declan up the stairs. Lily and Helen went into Declan's bedroom and smoothed his bed, putting his pillows in place, switching his light off but leaving the light on in the dining-room. They sat in the dining-room waiting for Declan to finish in the bathroom. When Paul called down for fresh pyjamas, they went into Declan's room again and rummaged in his bag. Helen brought the pyjamas upstairs and handed them to Paul through a chink in the bathroom door. She could hear the shower going.

'We won't be long,' Paul whispered to her and closed the door again.

When Declan came down the stairs he was still leaning on Paul, gasping at each step he took as though moving caused him pain.

'You're all right now, Declan, you're all right now,' his grandmother said as Paul brought him into the bedroom.

'He's too hot,' Paul said. 'And he just needs a sheet. And he needs water, maybe with ice in it if you have ice, and he needs the basin and a towel.'

As Declan lay down on the bed, the light from Tuskar spilled across the wall of the room.

'Do you want us to draw the curtains, Declan?' Helen asked.

'No,' he whispered, 'but don't go away, stay around, "will you?'

'Of course,' she said. 'I'm just going to get you some water. Are you all right?'

'No,' he said and looked at her evenly. 'I wish it was over.'

'You'll be all right,' she said, and immediately felt sorry she had said anything. She gripped his hand, still wondering how she could have said such a stupid thing. He was watching her, and she tried to smile, but she could not think what to do. She waited with him, and held his hand until her mother came into the room.

In the hour after midnight, Declan's stomach cramps began again. He had been sweating heavily; Helen and her mother were sitting by his bed, her mother holding a towel to wipe his brow. He had been still for a while, with his eyes open, and light coming from a covered lamp in the corner. Suddenly, he started to heave; he sat up and held his stomach, pressing hard as though to prevent the cramp coming, and then moaning under his breath in small fits and starts until it died down.

Helen called Paul, who was in the kitchen, and moved so that Paul could take her place beside the bed. Declan had his eyes closed now. Paul told Helen to get an ice pack or a packet of frozen peas to cool him down. She found her grandmother in the kitchen, sitting alone at the table, studying the veins in the back of her hands.

'I think we're in for a night of it,' her grandmother said.

'He's very sick,' Helen said.

'I'm praying for him. Do you think we could tell him that?'

'I'll tell him,' Helen said.

Helen, Lily and Paul sat in the room with Declan and waited with him each time for the pain to come, and tried to comfort him as he held his stomach and let out deep cries. But after an hour or two the cramps subsided, and Declan lay back in the bed with his eyes closed. He was sweating profusely, but shivering at the same time, and they could not tell whether he was too hot or too cold.

When he quietened, Helen convinced her grandmother to go to bed. And after a while, she decided to go herself. Paul and her mother said they would wait until Declan fell asleep. Paul whispered to her in the kitchen that he did not think the cramps had ended, merely stopped for a while. He was almost sure, he said, that they would return during the night, or the following day. He said he had told Declan earlier that he should return to Dublin. Declan had said that he didn't want to go.

As soon as she fell asleep, Helen heard him crying out. She got up and dressed. It was almost three o'clock in the morning. Her mother and Paul were sitting by the bed in the darkened room. The pain this time did not seem to come in waves as it had done before. Declan now held his stomach all the time. When he opened his eyes, it was clear that he was frightened. He tried to talk, and murmured something, but they could not make out what he was saying. They asked him if he wanted water, but he shook his head. Helen realised that there was nothing they could do, except stay with him; whatever was happening in his stomach was getting worse. Several times over the next half-hour they brought him to the toilet. Paul went in with him, while Lily and Helen changed the sheets and opened the window of his room and encouraged Mrs Devereux to go back to bed when she appeared in her dressing-gown.

Declan lay on the bed, covered only in a sheet. As soon as he drank some water, he vomited into the basin, his whole thin frame shuddering with the nausea. He tried to turn on his side, but he could not manage it and lay on his back again. Sometimes the pain intensified, and he cried to himself, beyond their comforting.

Paul signalled to Helen to come to the kitchen again. 'He's not going to sleep,' he said, 'and he's not going to get better down here. There's no point in going near the hospital until about eight or eight-thirty. So we should think of leaving here at six or six-thirty. I'll have to take my car, and if you could take his. I don't know what your mother wants to do, but she can drive separately with Declan, if she wants, or she can come with one of us. I'll go first and alert the hospital and do all that, or I'll take Declan with me, if that's what you want.'

'Has he agreed to go?'

'He knows he has to go.'

'Has he ever been as bad as this before?'

'Yes.'

When Helen went back to the bedroom, Declan was having cramps again, this time more severe. While waiting for the next attack, he mumbled and muttered words which she could not make out. But as Lily wiped his face and forehead and held his hand, and talked to him softly, he began to call out under his breath and, when the next attack came, Helen for the first time understood what he was saying.

He was saying: 'Mammy, Mammy, help me, Mammy.'

Helen wanted to leave the room; she felt she was in the way. Declan's tone when he spoke was abject, childlike, desperate as he called out again: 'Mammy, Mammy, help me.' Lily whispered to him words which Helen could not hear.

Helen tiptoed out of the room, and when she told Paul in the kitchen what was happening in the bedroom, tears came into her eyes.

'He's been wanting to say that for a long time,' Paul said, 'or something like it. It'll be a big relief for him.'

Slowly, hesitantly, the dawn came up in the eastern sky, the sky over the sea. From the window, Helen saw chinks of vague light between the black clouds. It was four-thirty; she did not know that the dawn began so early. She watched from the kitchen window waiting for more light to appear, but what she had witnessed was merely a glimmer, a hint at the beginning of day, and there was no change in the sky for some time. She felt alone now, isolated from everybody, and so tired that she could not summon up, even in her imagination, how she felt about Hugh and Cathal and Manus. Just then, there at the window, she felt nothing except a hardness in her heart against the world.

When it brightened, she put on a pullover and walked down towards the sea. The air was cold and there was a sharp, thin breeze coming from the east. She stood at the edge of the cliff and watched the sea, waves gathering way out and moving deliberately to form and break in a dull curl on the strand, and pull back out.

The sea was a deep metallic blue; there were black rainclouds on the horizon, but the sun was coming through now and it was almost bright. There was no one to be seen; it would be a while before the people in the smallholdings around here woke and got up and started the day. She imagined them locked in the privacy of sleep, or turning slowly, wakened for a second by the dawn light, and then falling back into their sleep.

For some time, then, no one would appear in this landscape; the sea would roar softly and withdraw without witnesses or spectators. It did not need her watching, and in these hours, she thought, or during the long reaches of the night, the sea was more itself, monumental and untouchable. It was clear to her now, as though all week had been leading up to the realisation, that there was no need for people, that it did not matter whether there were people or not. The world would go on. The virus that was destroying Declan, that had him calling out helplessly now in the dawn, or the memories and echoes that came to her in her grandmother's house, or the love for her family she could not summon up, these were nothing, and now, as she stood at the edge of the cliff, they seemed like nothing.

Imaginings and resonances and pain and small longings and prejudices. They meant nothing against the resolute hardness of the sea. They meant less than the marl and the mud and the dry clay of the cliff that were eaten away by the weather, washed away by the sea. It was not just that they would fade: they hardly existed, they did not matter, they would have no impact on this cold dawn, this deserted remote seascape where the water shone in the early light and shocked her with its sullen beauty. It might have been better, she felt, if there never had been people, if this turning of the world, and the glistening sea, and the morning breeze happened without witnesses, without anyone feeling, or remembering, or dying, or trying to love. She stood at the edge of the cliff until the sun came out from behind the black rainclouds.

In the kitchen, her grandmother was at the Aga, still wearing her dressing-gown. 'There's tea on,' she said, 'but maybe you want to make a fresh pot.'

Helen sat at the table. The house was cold and the smell of damp brought her back years. She covered her face with her hands. When Paul came into the kitchen, he told her that she should sleep, that they would go to Dublin in about an hour, and she would need a small amount of sleep if she was going to drive.

'Is Declan asleep?' she asked.

'No, but he's calmer, and he's not in pain, but I don't know how long that will last.'

On the way to her room, she noticed that the door to Declan's room was closed and there was no sound coming from it. She lay down on her own bed, leaving the door of her room open, covering herself with an eiderdown. She curled up, burying her face in the pillow. She dozed lightly and woke with a start and dozed again. She lay there in the grey light feeling that she never wanted to move again; she tried to concentrate on Declan's pain and the need to get him to Dublin, and when she fell asleep she dreamed that she was driving in her sleep, and kept trying to wake, knowing that she would crash if she did not open her eyes. She held the wheel, but saw nothing that was coming and understood that if she did not wake up in the next second she would wreck the car and injure herself. She braced herself for the accident but then found it was Paul standing over her, telling her that Declan's cramps had started again, and there was no point in waiting, that Paul was going to drive ahead, and Helen and her mother were going to follow with Declan in Declan's car and they could take turns driving.

Helen felt sweaty, in need of a shower and a change of clothes, but she knew that she had nothing clean left, not even clean underwear. She packed her things with her eyes half shut, wondering if she should go into the kitchen and invite her grandmother to Dublin – she could travel with Paul, and stay with Helen \a151 but she knew that she would not ask her, that they would leave her grandmother here alone, fretting about her cats, her attitude as steely and direct as ever, but with a loneliness which had only been intensified and deepened by her visitors.

Declan was still in bed. Helen went into his room, where Paul was sitting, and heard him whispering weakly with pain.

'He's going to try and get up soon,' Paul said.

'Do you think you're OK for the journey, Declan?' Helen asked.

He nodded. 'I'll get up soon,' he said.

When she went into the kitchen Helen saw that her grandmother was wearing a bright dress with blue dots, and a navy-blue angora cardigan. She had put on a light lipstick and some make-up. It was as if she were coming to Dublin with them and wanted to look her best, but it was, in fact, Helen knew, that she did not want to appear as though she were being left behind.

When they helped Declan out to the car, Lily insisted on sitting in the back seat with him. Paul and Helen tried to make him comfortable, with two pillows Mrs Devereux had offered them, but he could not settle, lying slumped with his eyes closed. They suggested to Lily that she move into the front seat, but she would not budge from where she was, saying that she wanted to be close to him.

Mrs Devereux came out and stood beside the cars.

'Drive carefully now, and stop if you feel sleepy,' she said.

'Keep that phone turned on,' Lily said.

'Oh God, that phone!'

'Keep it turned on,' Lily repeated.

Declan pulled down the back window of the car.

'Thanks for everything, Granny,' he said weakly.

'Mind yourself now, Declan, mind yourself.'

His grandmother had tears in her eyes.

It was six-thirty when they set off, Paul driving ahead. As soon as they were beyond Blackwater, Lily put the pillows on her lap, and Declan rested his head on the pillows. He was in pain still. In the rear-view mirror Helen could see Lily stroking his face.

'I've a terrible pain,' he said to her, half crying.

'You'll be all right now,' Lily said. 'Paul says they'll have a bed for you and they'll know what to do and we'll all stay close to you.'

As they drove north, through Gorey and Arklow, Helen felt oddly alert, realising that if she stopped or thought too much about sleep she would need a rest, and she knew, as Declan's pain worsened and he tried to vomit in the back of the car, that she could not stop, she must go on until they reached the hospital.

'You'll be all right, Declan,' her mother said. 'You'll be all right.'

As they reached the twisting road between Rathnew and Ashford, Declan's pain became intolerable.

'Where exactly is it?' Lily asked.

'Here, here,' he said.

'Is it his stomach?' Helen asked.

'Yes, it's still his stomach, but it won't be long now. We're nearly there.'

Declan tried to vomit again, but it was all dry. As she drove, trying to concentrate all the time on the stretch of road ahead and nothing else, she realised that he had soiled himself. Carefully, hoping that she wouldn't be noticed, she opened the driver's window.

What she heard then in the back of the car surprised her. It was her mother's singing voice, which she had not heard since she was a child; thin and shaky on high notes, it started softly as though Lily were nervously checking to see if she could still sing. Then it became louder and stronger. It was a song she used to sing at night when Helen and Declan were very young, when they still slept in the same room:

October winds lament around the Castle of Dromore

But peace is in the lofty hall, a phaiste bheag a stor,

Though autumn winds may droop and die, a bud of spring are you.

And then, making her voice husky and low, she sang the chorus.

When she had finished the chorus for the first time, she stopped. 'Help me, Helen,' she said, and began the next verse. Helen knew the words, she had sung the song in a choir in school. She joined in with her mother and together they finished the song.

As they joined the Monday-morning traffic into the city from Bray, they sang any song they could think of \a151 Brahms' Lullaby, 'Oft in the Stilly Night', 'The Croppy Boy' – as Declan lay still. Helen dreaded the traffic lights as they approached Stillorgan; if she stopped for too long, she was afraid that she would fall asleep, or not be able to go on.

'Think of something else, Helen,' her mother said.

'I wish I knew the words of more songs,' she said. 'You think of something and I'll join in.'

When they arrived at the hospital, Helen could not remember how to reach the building where Declan had been when she visited him first. St James's was a sprawling complex; she turned at a roundabout towards a set of buildings, but these all turned out to be modern, unlike the wing where Declan had been. She wanted to ask Declan to sit up and help her, but from the silence in the back of the car she knew that he was asleep. She found a modern car park and waited for the barrier to lift. She drove in and found a space. 'I'll find out where we should go,' she whispered to her mother. Declan's head lay peacefully on the pillow. Her mother could not move. She closed the car door carefully and made her way to the main reception area of the hospital.

She realised when she began to talk to the receptionist that she had no idea what to say. There was, the receptionist told her, no AIDS ward in the hospital, although there was a clinic, but that didn't open on Mondays. The consultant Dr Louise Farrell had beds all over the hospital. If her brother was very sick, the receptionist said, he should go to Casualty. Helen tried to describe the building she had been in before, but the receptionist was now suspicious of her, and was ready to be unhelpful. Helen, in her tiredness, felt a sudden burst of temper, and made herself turn away.

She walked out of the reception area and decided to turn right. There were signs for everything, but she recognised nothing. She knew that in the hallway of the old building Paul would be waiting for her, and he would be impatient at her inability to find it. She hoped her mother would have the sense to stay in the car.

In another building she found a porter sitting by a desk. He was reading the paper, and although he had seen her approaching him, he looked down as she came near. She turned away and left. She tried to think back: how did she come into the hospital grounds that day with Paul? She believed she was moving in the right direction, but she could not be sure. It struck her that she should have asked the receptionist to put her through directly on the internal telephone system to Louise or one of her staff; as soon as she could find another porter she would ask to speak to Louise, she thought. As she entered another building and realised it was a kitchen complex she was so frustrated she was close to tears.

By the time she found Paul in the lobby of the building where Declan had been before, she could barely speak. He made her walk with him to a hallway where he had a wheelchair ready. 'Has something else happened?' he asked her.

'No, just the car is miles away.'

'We'll get a porter to wheel him over,' he said. 'It couldn't be that far. Is it the pay car park?'

She nodded.

'That's OK. We can handle that.'

Declan woke as soon as they came back to the car. He said nothing, appearing stunned by his new surroundings. He got out of the back seat without any difficulty and sat into the wheelchair. The porter put a blanket around him, and Paul carried his bag as they wheeled him through the hospital grounds. Lily and Helen walked behind.

When they reached the ward, Paul handed the bag to the porter.

'They won't need us now,' Paul said. 'He'll be given tests and he might even be sedated. There's no point in us waiting around here.'

Helen now realised that she had her mother on her hands, with only one car between them. 'I need to make a phone call,' she said.

Paul directed her to a callbox in the lobby, while her mother went to the toilet. She dialled the number and Hugh picked up the phone. She told him where they were and what had happened.

'You sound terrible,' he said.

'We had a bad night.'

'Do you want me to come down?' he asked.

She said nothing.

'Helen, you can't be on your own like this. You've got to let me help you.'

'What about the boys?'

'They're fine, they're happy. Let me come down.'

'No, we can't both leave them.'

'Helen, why won't you let me help you? It would take me four and a half hours to drive down, that's all.'

'Hugh, I had the worst thoughts during the night.'

'Why don't I drive down now,' Hugh asked, 'see you, spend the night in Dublin, and take you back up tomorrow? You can see the boys, and then you take the car back so you won't even be a night away?'

Once more, she did not reply.

'Helen,' he said.

'Hugh, can you come down now?'

'I'll leave in a few minutes and I should be there by two or three. Will I come to the hospital or the house?' He sounded relieved and eager.

'The house.'

Helen stood in the lobby with Paul, waiting for her mother.

'I'm going to go home and sleep,' he said. 'I'll come back in the afternoon. Tell your mother I'll see her then.'

'We're very grateful to you,' Helen said. Paul embraced her before he left.

Her mother walked slowly towards her, as though she had injured herself.

'We should go back to my house and have a rest,' Helen said.

'I've no clean clothes.'

'I have clean clothes at home,' Helen said. 'Or we can go to the shopping centre. Hugh is coming down from Donegal.'

'Hugh? Oh Helen, I don't think this is the right time to meet him.'

'You've no choice now,' Helen said and linked her mother through the hospital grounds.

When Helen got into the car, she felt an overwhelming tiredness. As she reversed out of the parking space, she had to force herself to turn and look behind. She wondered where Declan was now, if he was lying in bed, or being tested for something by doctors. She and her mother should have left a note for him before they walked out of the hospital, she thought, to say that they would be back later to see him. She put the car into gear and drove it slowly to the barrier. 'You need fifty pence. Do you have a fifty-pence piece?' she asked her mother.

Her mother searched through her bag and found a purse with loose change. She handed Helen a fifty-pence piece and Helen opened the window and put it in the slot. The barrier lifted.

'We should have gone to the other car park,' Helen said. 'You don't have to pay there.'

It was a mild, hazy morning, with a promise of sunshine. Helen realised that she would have to phone the school and speak to her secretary and cancel the interviews for Wednesday. All she wanted now "was sleep, even an hour or two of sleep before Hugh arrived.

'It's funny,' her mother said, 'how time flies. Here you are driving me through Dublin, and I remember when you were a little girl and we were taking you to Dublin, you and Declan on the train all in your good clothes.'

Helen drove along Thomas Street and Patrick Street and turned into Clanbrassil Street.

'We used to think the train was going to fall into the sea, it went so close to the edge,' Helen said.

'They were the happiest times,' her mother said. 'Declan and you were so different, but on these trips you were the same. Neither of you would be able to sleep the night before, and you'd both be up in the morning long before us, and you'd both be exhausted on the way home.'

'The strangest thing for me', Helen said, 'was how Daddy used to cross the street in Dublin. At home we were trained to look left, look right and look left again. And if we caught sight of a car coming or heard one in the distance, we were told to wait. But in Dublin, he'd walk out, he'd work out the distance and begin crossing when cars were coming, and then he'd dodge them. Declan and myself couldn't believe it.'

'I remember that there was one thing you loved and one thing Declan loved. Do you remember what they were?' her mother asked.

Helen drove towards Templeogue. 'No, I can't,' she said, 'unless it was Moore Street, or the zoo.'

'No. You both loved Moore Street and you both loved the zoo. It was something else. Declan loved the self-service restaurant in Woolworth's in Henry Street. His eyes lit up when he got in there. You know, he hated ordinary restaurants, the few times we took him; he had no patience, he couldn't understand why it took so long for the food to come. And now in Woolworth's he could get a tray and pick whatever he liked and have it immediately. You were different, you liked restaurants, and had plenty of patience, you liked the ordering and the waiting and the looking around. So Woolworth's was Declan's special treat, and then after it, or before it, you got yours.'

The car was stopped at traffic lights near Templeogue now.

'The escalators,' her mother went on: 'you loved the escalators in Clery's and Arnott's. Declan was afraid of them. He couldn't be persuaded to get on to one. But you could have gone up and down them all day. Do you remember?'

'I do, yes, but I think I liked the sell service as well,' Helen said.

'Yes, but not as much as Declan,' Her mother said. 'I have photographs of the two of you at the zoo and in the airport. I must give you some of them so you can show them to your boys. You both look so happy in them. I'll wait for a while now, because seeing Declan in them would make us all too sad.'

Her mother stopped for a moment and sighed. 'I'd love if some of the happiness could be there in his spirit when he goes, as well as all the suffering.'

They were almost home now. Helen knew that as much as she wanted sleep, she needed silence: no more raw memories, no more of the soft-voiced tenderness that her mother was using in the car. She was dreading her mother corning into her house.

'I hope we were some comfort to Declan, Helen,' her mother said when she had reached the house and stopped the car. 'Do you think we were?'

'Maybe he's easier in his mind,' Helen said. 'I hope he is. I don't know.'

Her mother looked at her searchingly, clearly in need of further reassurance. Helen tried to think of something to say which would cause her mother to relax and cease to be such an uneasy presence.

'We're here, we're here now,' Helen said. 'We'd better go in.'

Her mother did not move, but looked at her again, as though pleading for an answer.

'I think we did our best,' Helen said and got out of the car. She waited for her mother at the gate. She linked her slowly along the path to the front door.

'Yes, that's right,' her mother said wearily, 'and what more could we have done?'

The house seemed cold and strange and, as she walked down the hallway, Helen felt she had entered an unfamiliar place. She would have done anything not to have to make tea for her mother. She forced herself to think that this was her house, where she lived, and it could not be taken away from her now. But she could not step out from her mother's dark shadow. When she turned in the kitchen to face her, she was shocked to find how helpless and broken her mother seemed. In those first moments, as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen, she had imagined someone forceful and pushy coming behind her, determined to stop her having her life. Instead, her mother looked bewildered and shocked.

'Well, this is lovely, Helen, it's lovely, it's very bright,' her mother said. Her voice was quiet and sad.

Helen made tea while her mother sat at the table. When she realised that she had no milk, she offered to go to the shop, but Lily said she would drink it black.

'Declan told me about this house, so I knew what it was like,' her mother said, 'but it's nice to be here.'

'I should go upstairs and make up a bed for you,' Helen said.

'Don't go yet,' her mother said. 'Stay here. You don't have to talk. Sometimes when I'm with my mother, I wish I didn't have to talk.'

'Granny is a great talker,' Helen said.

'Your granny wears me out,' her mother said, 'and now that you and I are talking again I don't want to do that to you.'

'I'll stay up for another few minutes.'

'I come up to Dublin on Saturdays sometimes,' her mother said. 'I'd love to come out here to your house for my tea. I mean I wouldn't stay the night. I hate staying the night in my mother's. And it's your house, and you don't want your mother nosing around too much.'

She sipped her tea and sighed and looked out at the garden. She stared into the distance as she spoke. 'I could see the boys. And then I'd drive home. It'll be all quicker with the new bypass. And that's what's keeping me going, Helen, that's what I dream about now, that you and I could sit here talking about nothing, and watch the boys playing and Hugh coming in and out of the room. And I could stand up and go, and it would be all easy and casual. That's what I dream about now.'

'That's a lovely thought,' Helen said. 'And I promise I'll have milk when you come.'

'Let's go to bed now,' her mother said. 'I've said what I wanted to say.'

She stood up and brought her cup and saucer to the sink.

'We'd better be in good form when Hugh comes,' she said. 'And we'll go and see Declan later, but we'll sleep for a while first, we'll sleep for a while.'