Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'We read all about you on the paper nearly every week, Lily,' Essie was saying as Helen came back into the room.

'Oh, Lily's a big shot now,' Madge said to nobody in particular. 'She's in the IDA.'

'Is the red car your car?' Essie asked Helen.

'That's right,' Helen said.

'But that's the car that stopped and asked us directions,' Madge said.

'No, the white car is Helen's,' Lily said firmly.

'And not the red car?'

'No.'

'Whose is the red car then?'

'They're friends of mine, they teach in my school, and they're staying in Curracloe. They've gone for a walk,' Helen said.

'Well, I hope it doesn't rain,' Madge said. They drank tea and looked around them. 'And will you be staying here tonight now?'

'I don't know,' Helen said.

'It's a while since you stayed the night here, Lily,' Essie said.

'I might well have passed up and down when you weren't looking, Essie,' Lily said.

'Oh, Madge would see you then,' her grandmother said coldly and stared towards the door.

'You haven't been down here since last year, have you, Helen?' Essie asked, ignoring the last remark.

'No.'

'And what do you think of the improvements she's made, Lily?' Madge asked, pointing to the radiators.

'Lovely, lovely,' Lily said.

When they had gone, Mrs Devereux put her finger to her lips and went to the window. 'Say nothing now! They're inspecting the cars!'

Helen and her mother went to the window.

'Stand back both of you!' her grandmother ordered. When the Kehoe sisters had finally disappeared, the three women began to laugh.

'I was in school with Essie,' Lily said. 'She was a right hunt.'

'If you'd known her mother, you'd know that she never could have been any other way,' Mrs Devereux said.

'How do you put up with them, Granny?' Helen asked.

'I don't put up with them, Helen,' her grandmother said. 'Did you not hear what I said to them? They'll be raging about that.'

'The oul' father, oul' Crutch Kehoe, used to beat them with nettles,' Lily said.

'Well, if that's all he did to them, they're not too bad,' Mrs Devereux said. 'They'll go off now and they'll fill whoever they meet with the news and gossip. The only lucky thing is they have no telephone.'

As Helen went down to Declan's room to tell the others what had happened, she heard them talking animatedly. It was Larry's voice she heard, telling a story, and the other two interrupting, laughing, egging him on. She left them there; she did not go into the room.

Her grandmother sat by the window. As the pale light from the sea faded and the shadows grew, Helen focused only on the old woman; she watched her white hair and her long thin face. When her grandmother spoke, the voice was sharp and determined.

'Oh, when I saw you getting out of the car,' she said to Paul, 'when I saw you, I said to myself- here's another of them now.'

'Granny, what do you mean?' Helen asked her.

'I think you know what I mean, Helen,' she said.

'She means homosexuals,' Paul said.

'Granny, you can't talk about people like that.'

'When I saw him getting out of the car' – the old woman spoke as though she were talking to herself, trying to remember something \a151 'it was the way he walked or turned and I wondered what sort of life he was going to have now, what sort of person he could be.' She raised her head and looked across the room at Helen.

'It's a difficult time for all of us,' Helen said.

'It's difficult for them, Helen, and it always will be.'

'I think she means homosexuals again,' Paul said.

'Well, I'm happy,' Larry said. 'I'm not happy being here now, but my life's happy.'

'It's a stupid word, "happy",' Paul said.

There was silence now. The four of them sat in the gloom as the lighthouse began to flash. Her grandmother looked out of the window as if she had heard a sound or someone approaching. Then she faced back into the room. 'I'm old and I can say what I like, Helen.'

Helen realised that she was still afraid of her grandmother, that she would not confront her or defy her. She stared at her across the room, knowing that the old woman could not see the resentment, the dislike. Her grandmother turned to Paul and Larry, her two visitors.

'Declan never told us anything about himself. We always thought that he had a great life in Dublin. No one knew he was sick and no one knew he was one of you.'

She said nothing for a while, but it was clear that she had merely stopped so that she could gather strength for what she was going to say next.

'But I knew something. I've known it for a year now and I never told anyone or said anything. Declan came down here last summer. He left his car way back somewhere so I heard no car, but for some reason I went out to the lane, and I looked down towards the cliff and I saw him coming towards me. He must have passed the house without calling in, or maybe he went down by Mike Redmond's and walked along the strand. And now he was coming towards me, but he didn't expect to see me, and I think he didn't want to see me, and I think that he would have passed by my house if I hadn't come out to the lane. I hadn't seen him since Christmas, and I don't think he had been down here for more than a year. And when he came towards me I could see that he had been crying and he was so thin and so strange, like as though he didn't want to see me. He was always so friendly, even when he was a little boy. And he tried to make up for it when he came into the house. He was all smiles and jokes, but I'll never forget seeing him. He had tea here, and both of us knew that there was something awful, something very wrong. I knew he was in trouble, but AIDS was the last thing I thought of, and I thought of everything.'

Helen held her breath in the semi-darkness as the lighthouse started up. She wondered why her grandmother had not told her this before.

'I knew Declan came down here,' Larry said. 'He used to drive out of Dublin on his own, usually to Wicklow, to the mountains; he would drive along those roads for miles. He drove to Wexford a few times, to his mother's house, but it was always late and he never went in. I think he hoped she'd find him there like you did. But he never saw her. And then he'd drive back to Dublin.'

'I knew something would happen and I waited for it,' Mrs Devereux said, as though she had not been listening.

Helen wanted her grandmother to stop talking. She directed a question at Larry and Paul. 'Do your folks know that you're gay?' she asked them.

'Tell her your story,' Paul said to Larry.

'I've told it too many times,' Larry said.

'Make him tell it,' Paul said to Helen.

'My grandmother would love to hear it,' Helen said. She knew that this was the nearest she could come to defiance. 'Come on, Larry,' she said. 'We're all full of curiosity.'

'All right,' Larry said. 'But if it gets boring stop me. After I qualified, I was involved in a gay group in Dublin, and we organised fund-raising and we started a news sheet, and we had meetings all the time. I helped out a bit, and I was around a lot, so the time Mary Robinson invited gay men and lesbians to Aras an Uachtarain, I was on the list and I couldn't say no. It was a big deal. We really enjoyed getting ready for it. I know it sounds stupid, but we thought that because the law still hadn't been changed it might just be a private visit. Anyway, all the newspapers were there, and radio and television. Mary Holland was there and a fellow from RTE, it wasn't Charlie Bird, I can't remember his name, but I realised that he was from the six o'clock news and they were going to film us all having tea with the President.'

'Oh she's very nice, Mary Robinson,' Mrs Devereux said, 'she's very refined. There aren't many like her.'