Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'I don't think that at all,' Helen said.

'We felt that we had been singled out to receive a very special grace. All three of us knelt and prayed for a long time.'

'Why did the priest do it? What was his history?'

'We never asked and we never found out. He had a housekeeper who was nearly more dishevelled than him and just as unfriendly, but that didn't bother us after the ceremony because we were so happy. Anyway, the padre asked us to eat with him, and it was straight out of Babette's Feast. Have you seen that?'

'No,' she said.

'It's a film where the most sumptuous meal is made for the most unlikely people. This housekeeper brought plate after plate of pate and lobster and prawns and stuffed everything, and then meringues and amazing cheese and a wine that the padre had removed the label from \a151 we knew it must have cost a fortune – and champagne. Our priest barely touched it, he sat back with his hands over his little paunch like an old Christian Brother, and almost smiled. We ate what we could. He loved us cooing every time more food came, although the housekeeper who had cooked it didn't look at us once. At the end he raised his glass and said something extraordinary. He said: "Welcome to the Catholic Church." And we proposed a toast to him and his housekeeper, but he said the person to thank was not them, the person to thank was Jesus Christ. But we didn't think we could propose a toast to Jesus Christ, we felt we had pushed our luck far enough, so we nodded in agreement, and we went to the airport soon after that. When we got into bed in the hotel that night, I said, "This is our first night as man and wife," and Francois asked who was the man and who was the wife. "Turn off the light," I said, "and I'll show you." We laughed until we shook, and that was the beginning of a new life for us. Although Francois still has his bad moments, it was a turning point and we're very close now. He hates me being away like this, but he loves Declan and he understands.'

They scrambled up the cliff at Mike Redmond's and sat on the edge with the sea wide and calm and blue beneath them.

'Did you see much of Declan during all that time?' Helen asked.

'He didn't come to Brussels over the past two years, because he knew we had problems and because he wasn't well, but before that he was a regular visitor. He would come for long weekends and he'd make us hang out in bars and clubs with him, and he'd usually abandon us at a certain time and then come back home in the early hours like a half-drowned dog. My best memory of him was in the morning; he would crawl in the bottom of our bed. He was like a small boy, and he'd talk and doze and play with our feet. Francois always joked about adopting him; he even bought a child's pyjamas for him as a joke and folded them on his bed. Francois loved his visits. Usually, by Saturday afternoon, the phone would ring and someone from Friday night, or Thursday night if Declan had come earlier, would be eager to talk to him and Declan wouldn't be interested. He checked out all our friends from the Catholic gay organisation and a few of them really fell for him – everybody fell for him – and he would bounce up and down with them for maybe two weekends, and then he'd arrive again and we'd know by something he 'did or said that he hadn't been returning So-and-so's calls, so we learned never to tell anyone he was coming. And then the whole routine would start again; he'd laugh about it himself. Francois used to say that once he went to school and met all the other toddlers he'd be all right, and Declan loved being fed and looked after and listened to and protected from his former lovers by us. He was fascinated by how we never had it off with anybody else. He was always listing out the names of actors and asking us if we'd sleep with them. He'd go "OK, Paul Newman in Hud," and we'd shake our heads; "Marlon Brando in Streetcar," and we'd still shake our heads; "Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" and we'd still shake our heads. And then he'd get fed up \a151 he got fed up very easily – and he'd call out other names like Albert Reynolds or Le Pen or Helmut Kohl.'

When Paul and Helen got back to the house, they saw that Larry's car had gone and her mother's car was not there either. When they opened the kitchen door the two cats scrambled back to their vantage point. There was no one in the house.

'Do you think Declan is sick?' she asked. 'Do you think they had to take him to hospital?'

'I'll be able to tell you instantly,' he said.

He went to Declan's bedroom and looked into the locker beside the bed.

'No, all his drugs are here. He wouldn't have gone anywhere without them.'

'Maybe they've gone shopping,' Helen said.

She heated the soup that her grandmother had left in a saucepan Beside the range and made toast and tea. She put two bowls on the table and went back to the range.

'You know that priest in Brussels?' She turned to Paul, who was sitting at the table.

'Yes?'

'Does the Pope know much about him?'

He narrowed his eyes and pointed at her. 'That is exactly the sort of thing Declan says, and he uses exactly the same tone of voice, as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.'

'I was just wondering,' she said.

'And I have no intention of allowing another member of your family to start. I'm sorry I told you the whole story now. It's amazing that people like you are let bring up children.' He smiled ruefully.

'Ah no, Paul, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

'That's why I left this country, remarks like that. French people, even Belgian people, never talk like that.'

'You really are a sensitive boy,' she said.

'You're starting again.'

'But all the same, can you imagine if the Pope got to hear about it?'

'I'm not listening.' He put his fingers in his ears.

Later, they took deckchairs to a spot at the front of the house which still caught the sun. The day was calm, with milky clouds in the sky and a heat which had not been there in the previous few days.

'This is a beautiful place,' he said.

'I suppose it is,' she said, 'for an outsider it is maybe. I have only bad memories of it.'

'Did you ever get on with your mother and your grandmother?'

'When I was a little girl and had no choice.'

'When did you all fall out first?'

'It was years ago.'

'Over what?'

'Sometimes I'm not sure I know.'

'But when did the fighting start?'

'This doesn't look much like a guest-house,' Helen said, 'but in the old days my grandparents would move into what is now that shed, where there were two rooms. And there are, as you know, three and a half bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. A whole family would take over a room; the place was bedlam and they had to be fed morning, noon and night. The summer before I finished school I worked here for a month. My grandmother paid me, my mother and Declan came on Sundays and it was all fine. So I agreed to come and work again the following summer before I went to college. This time, however, my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was different. As soon as I arrived she stopped doing anything herself except bossing me around and not letting me out of her sight. I went into Blackwater one night without setting the table for the morning, and there she was waiting up for me, going on and on about how I had treated her. I know my grandfather had died not long before, but there was no need for it. I couldn't wait for the summer to be over, and by the time it was over I was exhausted.

'I loved UCD from the first moment I arrived there. I met Hugh in my first term and we started going out together, and that was great, even though there were problems because Catholic girls from Enniscorthy did not sleep with men from Donegal without a lot of persuasion. Hugh was going to America for the summer after first year with a whole crowd from Donegal, and they had guaranteed work there. He asked me to come with them and I said I would. By this time I was on the pill, you'll be glad to hear. During the Easter holidays, when I told my mother about America, she instantly became hysterical, and asked me what my grandmother was going to do. "She has a few months to find someone," I said. "And who would she find?" she asked. "Anyone she'd find would be an awful fool for putting up with her," I said. And so you can imagine the screaming and shouting and the letters that followed me to Dublin in case I had not properly understood. She didn't threaten to cut me off, or anything like that, but it was all full of stuff about my father and my grandfather and the two of them \a151 my mother and my grandmother – left alone now and needing the support of those around them, and instead finding themselves insulted and let down by one of the people they loved most. It was all sick. And I gave in. I told Hugh I couldn't go, and when I arrived here the old witch wouldn't speak to me. And the place coming down with guests. If I asked her a simple question, she'd ignore me. And for the first month the only food she bought was ham, boiled in the middle of the day with potatoes and cabbage, in a sweltering July, and cold with a half a tomato and a few leaves of lettuce at six o'clock. The guests – some of them were the lowest forms of life -used to groan when I appeared with the food.