Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'They'll be back by then.'

'They're in England.'

'Declan, they're not.'

'How do you know?'

It was around the same period she heard the word 'cancer' for the first time. Her grandmother was talking to Mrs Furlong in the hallway and did not know that Helen was listening on the other side of the door.

'When they opened him up, they found that he was riddled with cancer,' she said.

Helen knew that if she asked a question she would get no answer. One day, when her grandmother had gone into Blackwater, she searched for missing letters, but she could not find any.

By now, Declan was consumed by the possibility of escaping.

'You could get a job in Dublin,' he said. 'We'd be much better off.'

'Where?'

'In Dunnes Stores, that's where you can work if you leave school.'

'I'm not even twelve.'

'How would they know?'

In the days that followed she looked at herself carefully when she was in the bathroom. She remembered the opening of the novel Desiree, where the heroine had placed handkerchiefs inside her blouse to look like breasts. Helen was tall for her age, and she wondered, if she claimed to be fourteen, would she be believed?

Something changed in the house as the days grew longer. Their grandmother's softening attitude towards them, the length of Mrs Furlong's visits, a long visit from Father Griffin, the curate in Blackwater, all convinced Helen that it was her father who was riddled with cancer, and this must mean that he was dying, or maybe needed another operation which would take longer. Although she and Declan talked about escaping and going to Dublin and Helen finding a job and a flat and Declan going to school, Helen always treated it like a game, a fantasy. Declan, however, took it seriously. He worked out plans.

'Declan, you've hardly even been in Dublin,' she said.

'I was loads of times. I know Henry Street and Moore Street.'

'But only for a day,' she said.

One evening, he came to her in her bedroom with an old brown leather wallet which was full of twenty-pound notes.

'Where did you get it?' she asked.

'He keeps it in the kitchen press in a hole,' Declan said.

'Leave it back.'

'We can use it when we escape. Now you know where it is.'

'Leave it back.'

Their father died in Dublin on 11 June. This seemed strange to her and even now, twenty years later, as she lay in bed in this house, wide awake, her grandmother upstairs asleep and Declan in hospital in Dublin, she had no memory of that early summer in Cush, of May passing into June. Some things, however, "were still sharp in her memory: the changed atmosphere in the house, at least two other letters arriving and not being mentioned, the smell of damp and paraffin. Years afterwards, she realised that her childhood ended in those few weeks, even though she did not have her first period until six months later.

She knew something had happened on that morning: early, it must have been around eight o'clock, a man arrived, she saw him passing by the window; he spoke to her grandparents and then he left. And then, not long afterwards, Father Griffin from Blackwater arrived. She decided to stay in bed until he had gone, and told herself it was still possible that something else, or nothing much, had happened. She lay there and waited. Declan was fast asleep in the other bed.

After a while she heard her grandmother tiptoeing across the parlour. She opened the door to the bedroom quietly and told Helen in a whisper to dress as quickly as she could.

When Helen came out of the bedroom her grandmother was standing by the window.

'Helen, we've bad news now; your father died last night at eleven o'clock. He died very peacefully. We'll all have to look after your mother now. You and Declan are going to go into Enniscorthy with Father Griffin.'

'Where are we going?'

'I've got clean clothes out for you. Mrs Byrne of the Square is going to look after you and Declan.'

Helen felt a sudden surge of happiness that they were leaving here and would never have to come back, but she quickly felt guilty for thinking about herself like this when her father had just died. She tried not to think at all. She went into the kitchen, where Father Griffin was drinking tea.

'We'll all kneel down and say a prayer for his soul,' her grandmother said.

Father Griffin led a decade of the Rosary. He said the words of the prayers slowly and deliberately and when he came to the Hail Holy Queen he recited the prayer as though the words were new to him: 'To Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.' Softly, quietly, Helen began to cry, and her grandmother came over and knelt beside her until the prayers ended.

They sat and drank more tea in silence; her grandmother made toast and aired clothes.

'Why isn't Declan up?' Helen asked.

'Oh, I let him sleep, Helen. It'll be time enough for him when we're packed to go.'

'Have you not told him?'

'We'll let him sleep.'

'He'll be awake.'

As Helen was packing their schoolbooks in the parlour, Declan called her. 'What are you doing?' he asked.

'I'm packing. We're going to Enniscorthy.'

When he looked at her from the bed, she thought that he knew, but she was not sure.

'How are we getting there?'

'Father Griffin.'

He looked at her again and nodded. He got out of the bed and stood on the floor in his pyjamas.

'I want to pack my own schoolbag,' he said.

Somewhere on the road between The Ballagh and Enniscorthy, with Father Griffin driving and Helen in the front seat, she realised that Declan didn't know their father was dead.

'Are Daddy and Mammy already back from Dublin?' he asked.

Even now, twenty years later, as she lay between the sticky nylon sheets with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling as the lighthouse flashed on and off, Helen could still feel the terror in the car as neither she nor Father Griffin answered the question. She expected Declan to ask again, but he sat back and said nothing and they drove on towards the town.

Helen desperately did not want to go to Mrs Byrne's house in the Square. Declan was friendly with the two boys, it would be easy for him, but she had no friends there and knew that Mrs Byrne would treat her like a child. Mrs Byrne was like all the shopkeepers' wives in the town: they were always watching everything, always on the lookout, even their smiles were sharp, and she did not want to be under the control of Mrs Byrne or any other Mrs in the town.

They drove past Donoghue's Garage in silence and crossed the bridge and drove up Castle Hill. Helen was determined not to go into Mrs Byrne's house.

When Father Griffin double-parked in the Square and left them alone in the car, Declan asked her nothing and she told him nothing. Mrs Byrne came out, all smiles. She opened the driver's door and put her head into the back of the car.

'Now, Declan,' she said, 'when Thomas and Francis come home for their dinner, maybe they'll both take the afternoon off so you can play upstairs.'

Helen got out of the car and stood beside Mrs Byrne. 'My granny says I'm to go up home and have the place tidy for Mammy.'

'Helen, I'm sure some of the neighbours will do that.'

'Granny said I was to go and Father Griffin was to drive me up and Declan was to stay with you.'

Father Griffin stood there listening carefully. Helen knew that she had sounded too sure of herself for him to disagree. He was a mild man, uncomfortable now and anxious to get away since his car was blocking the traffic.

'So,' Helen said, 'if you could take Declan's things and then we'll see you later.' She was trying to sound brisk, like somebody from the television.

'Hold on a minute,' Father Griffin said, 'and I'll park.'