The South (20 page)

“Are you really my granny from Spain?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re much younger than my other granny.”

“Yes that’s true,” Katherine said, “some grannies can be younger than others.”

“And you know my great-granny in London, is she your mummy?”

“Yes, she is.”

“We’re going to see her in London.”

“Are you?”

Deirdre came into the room.

“I was looking for Clare. Come with me now, Clare, you’re not to be disturbing your grandmother.”

“She’s not disturbing me,” Katherine said.

“It’s her bedtime anyway.”

Richard was reading one of the Sunday papers. Several lamps were alight in the sitting-room and a log fire was burning in the grate.

“How comfortable this house has become,” Katherine said. “You live very well now, don’t you? Tell me, do you love Deirdre?”

He looked up and faced her for a moment. “It’s not a question I want to answer. But yes, yes I do. And I don’t want any trouble about that, I really don’t.”

“Do you think I would make trouble?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Do they come here often, her parents?”

“I’m not going to talk about them.”

“They seem very friendly anyhow,” Katherine said.

“Yes, they’re very nice.”

“The mother talks non-stop, doesn’t she?”

Richard folded his newspaper.

“Could you get me a drink?” Katherine asked him.

“What would you like?”

“Anything.”

“What?”

“A gin and tonic?”

He went out to the kitchen and came back with her drink. Deirdre came downstairs after putting Clare to bed.

“Deirdre,” Richard said, “would you mind if we talk on our own for a while.” Deirdre went out. He stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece first but then sighed and sat down opposite Katherine.

“What do you want to say to me?” she asked.

“This. You are going to be in Ireland for a while. You are short of money. No, don’t interrupt me, your mother tells me you are short of money. You are unhappy in some ways and we want to see something of you, and to help you if we can. There’s one thing you need to know for this to happen. You might have guessed but I’m telling you anyway. Until I was ten years old I lived with two people who hardly spoke to each other or to anyone else, and who had no friends. From the time I was ten until I was thirteen and after that during the holidays, I had a father who hardly spoke and who had no friends. When I came back here to the farm it was to night after night of silence, of isolation. My father died from isolation and loneliness and I didn’t enjoy watching that. And I don’t like the cold rooms I was brought up in. I hate everything about the way I was brought up. I like this house now, I like my wife, my daughter, and my wife’s family. Will you please not sneer at them?” He looked at her directly. He seemed close to tears.

“I don’t know if you remember what happened here. When the house was burned to the ground. These people, the locals . . .”

He stopped her. “I remember other things that happened here,” he said. “You abandoned me. I remember how I felt then. So how dare you talk about my relations like that? You have no right. The people who burnt this house down are long dead.”

“I’m going anyway in the morning,” she said. “What time is the train?”

“I don’t know,” he said and went over to the television to turn it on.

“Could you find out for me?” she raised her voice.

“It goes at twenty past eight,” he said and came back to sit down. “I’ll drive you there.”

“Good. You can wake me in the morning. I’ll have my things ready.”

“Will you not sit with us for a while?”

“And do what?” she said.

“And talk, perhaps,” he said and laughed to himself.

“I’m going to bed, Richard. I’ll see you in the morning.”

*   *   *

In the morning, she woke to a grey light as the dawn came. She dressed and walked down to the river to look at the early morning mist over the Slaney. It was as she had always remembered. When she went back into the house by the kitchen Richard was there.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I thought you were a ghost,” he said.

“I am. That’s what I am, a ghost.”

“I was going to make breakfast before I woke you.”

“You must tell Deirdre I am sorry,” she said.

“I shall, I’ll tell her that.”

“I will write to her, maybe I will suggest we meet in Dublin.”

“I’m sure she’d love to meet you in Dublin.”

“Tell her that, will you?”

“I shall. I promise I’ll tell her that.”

“And I’ll think about what you said to me.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it.”

“No, Richard. I’m pleased that you did. How little one considers other people.”

He drove her towards the town by the back road. There was no traffic.

“How wonderful it all is,” she said. “The hanging trees.”

“Are you glad you came?”

“Yes I am. I’m sorry. It’s so difficult.”

They drove along the Rectory Road and turned down to the station.

“We’re early,” he said. “We’ll wait in the car.”

“No, no. Please, leave me here. I want to be on my own,” she insisted and made as though to get out.

“Well, I’ll go in with you for a second.”

They walked into the station where a few people were already waiting.

“I must talk to you about money,” he said.

“Another time,” she replied.

“Why not now?”

“Because we don’t know one another well enough. The next time we meet we’ll talk about it.”

“I have some to give you now.”

“Don’t give me any now.”

“When will we see you again?”

“I will write. You go now and I’ll see you soon. Give my love to Deirdre and Clare.”

*   *   *

He left her there in the grey morning to watch the Manse up on the hill; he now paid his dues to the priests who lived there. If Katherine’s father had ever imagined such a thing! Cold grey light of the morning in Enniscorthy, the Slaney running softly towards Wexford and the sea, the Dublin train moving past the river and the Ringwood and Davis’s Mills and then under the tunnel at the Model School to cross the bridge and arrive at the station where she was waiting.

THE SEA

The sea. A grey shine on the sea. Every morning Michael Graves left Katherine and walked into Blackwater to buy whatever food they needed and a newspaper. Katherine had not painted in a long while. Sometimes Michael’s comments irritated her but she paid no attention. Sea, sky, land. Connections. The port of Barcelona; the sea at Sitges in the bright grey early morning; the mud flats at Faro on a brilliant day, all shimmer and glare. And then this, this too. The dull grey light on the gun-metal sea at Ballyconnigar. Each colour a subtle variation of another: cream, silver, light blue, light green, dark grey.

Michael built her a windshield. Nothing was firm in this light. At first she worked in watercolours on small sheets of paper, using a crayon to make the lines. It was hard to paint how the waves separated from the sky, it was difficult not to give it too much definition.

“All my summers were spent in a hut when I was young.” Michael showed her the tiny wooden hut which his father had rented. “It was this spot here, this exact spot,” he pointed at the ground and made her look. “On the first Sunday in the summer of 1947 I knew I was for it. I knew for certain I was done for.” He searched her eyes again to make sure that she understood. “I spent two years in the sanitorium. I was lucky I didn’t die. The best of them died. Three or four in a family died.”

That summer Michael talked a lot about the past in Enniscorthy.
Lives she knew nothing of, although she lived so few miles away: the poverty, the despair, the emigration. Some afternoons Michael met friends from his schooldays in Blackwater and did not return until the early hours of the morning. There was only one room in the hut and the bed was small; she disliked the smell of alcohol when he came in late, but otherwise she was happy to get on with her work and leave him to Blackwater and his friends.

She asked him to help her stretch a canvas, so big that she would have to leave it outside at night covered by plastic. He told her it was too ambitious, he told her to go easy, but she insisted. She would start with the grey Wexford light on a grey July day, with a certain pale yellow warmth. And work from memory with the canvas leaning against the side of the hut. She would make everything fade into itself, build the colours up carefully so there was a texture: the sea a vague shimmer of grey light.

He would get up in the early afternoon and come out with his shirt unbuttoned and look at what she was doing. He would tell her over and over that she was working on too large a scale. One day she turned to him and said: “Can we rent this place for another month?” He was going into the village and said he would try to arrange it.

“Can you watch one hour with me?” He grinned at her. He stood as though waiting for her. “I have no money,” he continued suddenly.

“I thought you had the gallery money,” she said.

“I spent it.”

“Don’t worry. I think I can give you some. But will you promise me something? Will you please?”

“What? What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop saying I’m working on too large a scale. I know I’m working on too large a scale.”

“So you want me to be the man who just helps to stretch the canvases.” He began to move away.

“Michael, where are you going?”

“I’m going into the village.”

“Do you have to go? What are you going to do there?”

“Ah, I’ll meet someone I know.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to come? Why can’t I come?”

At first he didn’t answer and she asked again.

“We might meet people,” he said.

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Think for a minute.”

“You don’t want them to meet me?”

“They come in with their wives. This is Ireland. It’s the country.”

“And I’m not your wife.”

“They all know that you’re here and who you are.”

“So why can’t we have a drink together?”

“Because they would be uncomfortable. They’re ordinary people I grew up with.”

“I think you mean
you
would be uncomfortable.”

She stood with her arms wrapped around her as though she were cold. There was silence between them for some time.

“Do you need some money?” she asked.

“Aye, Missus,” he said.

“I’m in need of a few drinks myself, but since you won’t let me drink with your friends I’ll go on my own.”

“Go where?”

“Into the village.”

“When?”

“Whenever I feel like it, later on.”

“Come now then,” he said.

“Why don’t we walk to Curracloe,” she said. “I’ll have a swim on the way.”

“It’s too cold for bathing,” he said.

“We can have our tea in the hotel.”

“It’s a long walk.”

“It’s even longer when you’re sober,” she said.

“Why won’t you come to Blackwater?” he asked.

“You don’t want me to come.”

“We can go to Mrs. Davis’s, there’s never anybody there.”

“Michael has the landlord’s daughter but he keeps her in the hut,” she began to sing as though it were a rhyme. He looked at her and laughed.

“Let’s go to Curracloe,” he said.

She put her swimsuit and towel into a string carrier bag and asked him to help her cover the canvas with plastic before they went. Although it was still early afternoon a grey haze had come down over the sea and the fog horn was blaring.

“Tuskar lighthouse will start soon and go until morning,” he said. “The weather is going to get fine. There’s going to be a heatwave.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am, but it’ll only last a few days. In 1959 it lasted the whole summer. That summer I painted the hill up there behind the hut again and again and I sold every one of them.”

“You painted here as well?”

“As well as what?”

“As well as me?”

“They were as good anyway.”

“I never knew that you painted here,” she tried to keep him serious.

“I remember this first when the coast was out nearly another half mile. It gets eaten away every winter, that hill
above Keating’s used to have a watchtower. It was a great hill to sit with a book.”

“Do you have any family around here?”

“No, not around here. In Enniscorthy. I’d introduce you only you won’t marry me.”

“I’m going for a swim,” she said, “you’ll have to come after me if you want to marry me.”

She changed into her bathing costume. Michael sat on the sand with his hands clasped around his knees and stared out to sea. He looked old and despondent. When she waded out she found the water even colder than she expected. She stood for a while shivering in the cold sea.

“Michael, it’s freezing,” she shouted back to him.

“Only a Protestant would go for a swim on a day like today.”

“Watch me Michael, watch me. One, two, three.” The first shock, then pleasure as she lay on her back and kicked hard in the freezing water.

When she came out of the sea he had the towel ready for her.

“Aren’t you the brave woman, aren’t you?”

“It’s lovely when you’re in the water. I wish you’d come in with me some day.”

“It’s thirty years since I’ve been in the sea.” They made their way past Flaherty’s Gap and Ballyvaloo.

“I could have stayed here all my life,” he said. “I could have been down here all the time,” he stopped and looked out to sea. They were nearing Ballineskar.

Something had loosened in him; he started to tell her about Brownswood sanitorium, about Enniscorthy, about Ballyconnigar, how when they got older they used to rent a place, a few of them, his brother, friends, fellow teachers. The others came and went but he always stayed the full two months.

“I read everything up there. Dickens, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Herman Melville. I’d go up on the hill and maybe just lie in the sun, and at night we’d sit around and talk or play cards. No one drank then.

“We always used to talk about the last day of summer when we’d have to pack up our stuff and go back to the town. We’d all go for a swim that day and stay in the water as long as we could. The first time I coughed blood I went straight in for a swim. Straight into the sea. I knew I was dying. I’ll never forget it. I must have stayed in an hour, thinking this would really be the last day. I tried to concentrate on it so I would never forget it.”