Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

She told him about Seamus Fleming, and Hugh said that he remembered Seamus asking when he was going to Donegal, but he never knew he was a friend of Declan's, he didn't even know he was gay.

'I hate the idea', she said, 'of him coming to the party, knowing that we didn't know.'

'Declan must have told him not to tell us,' Hugh said.

As she drove south, the sky began to brighten. Declan's car was old, and she had to be careful not to overtake on these narrow roads beyond the dual carriageway. At times she felt she was driving in a dream, one of those dreams that you wake from still unsure that it is over, but she was certain now as she drove on past Rathnew towards Arklow that she was wide awake. The evening light was clear, the sky blue with white clouds banked in the distance. She had not put a single thought into what she would say to her mother. When she began to picture the time they would spend together, whether in Wexford or in Dublin, she realised she would do anything to avoid it. She began to work out options.

She thought of booking into a hotel in Wexford and going to find her mother in the morning, but it was only when she stopped at Toss Byrne's in Inch, on the road into Gorey, that she knew for certain what she would do. She would not drive to Wexford that night. Instead, she would drive to Cush on the coast, where her grandmother lived, and tell her first. She would stay the night there; her grandmother would know how her mother should be handled.

She realised as she went into the lounge that she was starving. She had never stopped here before and, even though she had spotted the sign which said Food All Day, she was surprised to find a full-dinner menu on each table. She waited at the counter for a while, expecting to be told that the kitchen was closed, but a barman came and took her order and told her that he would bring the food down to her table. There was something typically Wexford about his accent and tone, a slightly awkward friendliness and openness which she had forgotten and which she now recognised, and it made her feel lighter as she went to the table and sat down. She had believed that nothing could lift her spirits, and now the barman's angled smile had made her almost cheerful. She knew, however, that what had really changed her mood had been the decision to postpone meeting her mother.

Her grandmother Dora Devereux lived alone in her former guest-house near the cliff in Cush. She was almost eighty and, except for her failing sight and fits of intense bad humour, was in good health. Helen pictured her now: her long neck and long thin face, grey hair pulled back in a bun, thick glasses, thin bony wrists, her expression alert, curious, watchful, tuned into every change in the wind or news in the neighbourhood. Helen smiled to herself as she thought about how her grandmother, in a rambling phone call a few weeks earlier, had told her about selling three sites for \a16315,000 each. She had done the deal without consulting Helen's mother, she had said defiantly. Her tone was that of a conspirator, seeking Helen as an ally and friend.

Helen had asked her grandmother if she was not getting on with her mother. Instead of replying, the old woman had gone on to remind Helen of how good she had been to Helen's mother in the time after her father died, how she had comforted her and consoled her, had sat up with her at night, slept in the room with her. How little she had got in return, her grandmother had said. She had seemed surprised, almost affronted, when Helen did not reply.

As Helen drove through Gorey and then turned left down the coast road, she thought to herself that with her grandmother it would somehow be easy to come like this, with bad news, looking for help. It would not be so easy to approach her mother. As she drove through Black-water, Helen found herself unable to imagine what telling her mother would be like. She realised that the bitter resentment against her mother which had clouded her life had not faded; for a long time she had hoped that she would never have to think about it again.

When she turned at the ball-alley, she felt she was entering a new realm. For the first mile or so there were no houses, and then a new bungalow appeared on a corner just after the turn into the forest. She was over- whelmed now by sadness, a feeling which replaced the sense of foreboding and shock which had filled her. It was a feeling which she could deal with; there "was no fear in it. The sudden rise in the road and then the first view of the sea glinting in the slanted summer light made it easier. The sadness brought tears to her eyes: she felt it sharply -that this would all go, that Declan would never see it again, never walk these lanes again, just as her father never would; soon they would only be a memory, and that too would fade with time.

She passed a mud ruin where old Julia Dempsey had lived out her days, and she would have given anything then to go back to the years before their father died, when they were children here and did not know what was in store for them.

At her grandmother's gate she stopped the car, pulled up the handbrake and turned off the engine. Her grandmother appeared at the door, her hand shading her eyes even though she stood in shadow.

'Here you are now, Helen,' she said as Helen approached from the car.

She had never in her life kissed her grandmother, or shaken her hand; now as she came close to her she did not know what to do.

'Granny, I'm sorry for barging in on you like this.' 'Oh, it's a great surprise, Helen, it's a lovely surprise.' Her grandmother searched her face and then looked back towards the gate to check that no one else was coming. She turned and walked into the house. The big old Aga cooker in the kitchen was on full, and the room was warm. As Helen came in, the two cats jumped up to the top of the dresser – their constant presence there looking down on the room had amazed Cathal and Manus the previous year – and sat there watching her suspiciously.

'Now, Helen, there's tea on and I could make you up a fry.'

'No, Granny, I'll just have tea. I had a meal on the way down.'

She realised that her grandmother was biding her time, asking nothing, waiting to be told.

'Granny, I have very bad news.'

Her grandmother turned and put her two hands into the pockets of her apron as though searching for something. 'I know, Helen. I knew that as soon as I saw you.'

She remained standing as Helen told her the story. She concentrated fiercely on what was being said so that Helen felt, when she was finished, that the old woman could have repeated every single word she had said. There was something which she had forgotten: in the corner of the kitchen sat a huge television; her grandmother had access to all the English channels as well as the Irish ones. She watched documentaries and late-night films and prided herself on being well informed on modern subjects. She knew about AIDS and the search for a cure and the long illnesses. 'There's nothing can be done, Helen, so,' she said. 'Nothing can be done. It was the same years ago with your father's cancer. There was nothing the doctors could do. And poor Declan's only just starting his life.'

'What will I do about my mother?' Helen asked.

'You'll go into Wexford in the morning and you'll break the news to her softly, Helen. Let her sleep tonight now. It's the last night's sleep she'll have for a long time.'

Her grandmother made tea and put biscuits on a plate. She sat down opposite Helen. It was still bright outside, and Helen felt a desperate need to go down to the strand, to get away from the intensity of her grandmother's attention.

'I'll make you up a bed now,' her grandmother said. 'The room hasn't been used since you were here last summer. Your mother never stays, and she hasn't been here much recently.'