Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What an amazing house!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I'll find it,' she said.

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

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

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

'The pub?' she asked.

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

'Are they all right?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'It gives me the creeps,' he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helen woke and looked at her watch; it was ten o'clock. She heard sounds: voices and something being pulled or pushed. She lay back and dozed, and then woke fully and lay with her hands behind her head. Her mind kept wandering back to her mother's house, and the glimpses she had had the previous day of her new life. She could not understand how her mother faced going back to that house after a day's work, or why she had chosen to live alone so far from the town.