Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'I never knew that,' Helen said.

'Oh, the nuns loved her,' her grandmother went on, 'and when she was in her final year and we drove her back up after the Hallowe'en break, they called us in, and they had never looked up or down at us before, oh they were very grand, the nuns, a French order. And Mother Emmanuelle, the grandest of them all, told me that she believed Lily had a vocation. I smiled at her and said that would be the happiest thing for us. It was all smiles until I got out to the car and I said to your grandfather that I was going to pray to God to stop Lily entering the convent.'

'And did you not want her to be a nun?' Paul asked.

'Lily? Our beautiful daughter? Have all her hair cut off? And a veil and a draughty old convent and only doddery old nuns for company? I did not! And I lay awake every night thinking about how to stop her. I knew that we could say nothing to her, that talking to her would make no difference. Your grandfather, who was a very good man and is getting his reward in heaven, said that we should accept God's will, and I said that my not wanting her to be a nun could also be God's will.'

'Good man, Granny,' Declan said.

'So what did you do?' Helen asked.

Her grandmother looked at the floor and said nothing.

The others looked at her in silence, waiting for her to continue.

'I'll make tea,' she said. 'I'm talking too much.'

'No, you're not, you have to tell us,' Declan said.

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

'Well, I thought and I thought,' she said, licking her lips. 'And I knew that I had until the end of the Christmas holidays to stop it. And I thought about Lily. You know, when other girls were playing nurses, she had to be the best nurse, and when it came to dressmaking, she'd keep me up all night with patterns and material. She always did what everyone around her did, only more so. It was the same with her studies. She had to be the best and the most enthusiastic. She was with the nuns day and night, so, of course, she wanted to be one of them. And once all that struck me, then I knew what to do. It was just before we collected her for Christmas.'

'What did you do, Granny?' Helen asked as she filled the teapot.

'Lily needed to have her head turned, that was all. And my sister Statia was married to one of the Bolgers of Bree and she had five sons and no daughters, and they were the wildest young fellows in the county Wexford. They were nice and decent, mind, but Statia loved them all, and she was softer than I was, and she'd let them roam the countryside and have parties, when no one else was having parties, and go to dances in their father's car and not come home until dinnertime the next day. And they had cousins on the Bolger side who were nearly as bad. All they thought about were hurling matches and girls and dances. Three of the cousins were on the Wexford team.

'I went out to Bree. I left your grandfather in the car and I talked to Statia, and Statia understood, and even if she hadn't understood she would have done what I asked. And I asked her to take Lily for the time after Christmas and let her loose with the Bolgers. So we left her in there on St Stephen's Day. She was a bit surprised but she suspected nothing, and we didn't collect her until the day before she was due back in school. And Statia let her go to every dance and hop. She flew around the country in cars and vans, wearing clothes she borrowed from one of the Bolger cousins. She was as mad as a cat, Statia told me. She had them in stitches describing oul' farmers who came to the dances. She was the best dancer and she was a great goer. Her cousins knew everyone, and their cousins knew everyone else. Soon then Lily knew everyone too. It was the same as the nuns. She wanted to be one of them, except that now she wanted to be at the dance in Ballindaggin or the dance in Adamstown. When we didn't hear from her, we knew it was working.'

'Granny, were you not afraid that she'd get into trouble?' Declan asked.

'They were different times, Declan. Her cousins were looking out for her. And she wasn't the sort of girl you could take advantage of

'I'm sure she wasn't,' Helen said as she began to pour the tea.

'So she went back to the FCJ, and spent her time sneaking out letters to fellows with the day-girls and keeping the other girls up late on the dormitory. She must have studied as well, because she got her scholarship, but her head was turned and we were called in before we took her home for Easter, and we were told that she was becoming a bad example to the other girls, and she had changed completely. Oh, I said to Mother Emmanuelle, I said, we haven't noticed any change. It must be something in the convent, I said. Oh, she gave me a look, and I looked back at her. And she knew she'd met her match. And that's how we stopped Lily becoming a nun.'

'And wasn't that lucky for all of us?' Helen asked.

'It must have seemed like that at the time, anyway,' Declan said.

In the morning Helen found her mother in Declan's room, cradling his head in her hand.

'You must have come back very early,' she said, and immediately realised that she sounded as though she were accusing her mother. 'You look tired,' she said then, trying to soften her tone.

'Declan wasn't well again this morning,' her mother said coldly.

Declan stared at her. The bruising on his nose had become darker, almost purple, and seemed to have spread; yet there was a strange contentment in the way he lay without moving. He did not appear to be in any pain.

'Are the boys up yet?' she asked.

'They're being fed by your granny,' her mother said. 'She's in her element \a151 she thinks she's running a guesthouse again. It's rashers and sausages and how would you like your eggs?'

'If we had rashers,' Declan said hoarsely, 'we could have rashers and eggs, only we've no eggs.'

'You've been saying that since you were about five,' Helen said, laughing, 'and I've never thought it was funny.'

'Go in and have your breakfast before they eat it all,' her mother said.

When Helen went into the kitchen, Larry was talking and her grandmother was giving him her full attention. Paul acknowledged her arrival, but the other two ignored her.

'No, Mrs Devereux,' Larry was saying, 'no, knocking down a wall costs nothing, and widening a door costs nothing. You could do the whole thing for a thousand pounds, but if I were you I'd put in the anti-damp system too and an oak floor, or at least a pine floor…'

'Is that fellow still talking?' Helen asked.

'Your breakfast is in the Aga, Helen,' her grandmother said.

'Granny, I hope you're not listening to him,' Helen said.

'But where would I put the kitchen?' her grandmother asked Larry.

'No,' Larry said, 'leave the kitchen where it is, but put in a ramp and a rail.'

'We're talking about if I fell, Helen,' her grandmother said. 'Or if I was in a wheelchair. And, anyway, I can't be going up and down the stairs much longer.'

'No,' Larry continued as though no one else had spoken, 'put the bedroom and the bathroom where Helen and Declan are sleeping, with a big, wide door between them, but make them both much bigger by using some of the dining-room. Sure I bet you never use that.'

'Have you brought your measuring tape, Larry?' Helen asked as she sat down.

Larry ignored her. 'I checked those walls,' he went on.

'It would take half a day to knock them down. It would be like a new house. You wouldn't know yourself.'

By the time Helen had returned from the village, having bought groceries and the newspaper, and phoned Hugh, Larry was making drawings to scale in a large sketch pad on the kitchen table. He had the measuring tape beside him.

'There's no talking to him,' Paul said. 'He's a maniac'