Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'Have you fallen out with her?' Helen asked.

'Ah, not really. She still thinks she's going to get me to move into Wexford. What if I broke my leg out here, she asked me. And I told her I've plenty of money now that I sold the sites; that old field that was full of ragwort. I never consulted her or asked for her opinion. And that's all is wrong with her, but she's well over it now. She's good at forgetting things, putting them behind her. And I had the central heating installed without as much as a by-your-leave from her. Come on until I show you.'

She stood up and Helen accompanied her into the old dining-room. She pointed at the new white radiator, and then opened the doors of the two bedrooms off the dining-room with iron beds and bare mattresses. These two rooms also had radiators.

'I had it put in all over the house, and a big oil tank out the back. I bought a deep-freeze as well, so I have no worries. Your mother came down when the work was half done and said that the house would rot. She said that she had everything set up for me in Wexford. "It's a wonder, Lily," I said to her, "that you don't look high-up or low-down at me and I only ten miles out the road and you with your big car. Isn't it funny now that you've started to call when you know I have money?" Oh, she was raging. That was Easter and I didn't see her again until the end of May. She brought me down this.' She took a mobile phone from her apron pocket. She held it in her left hand as though it were a small animal. 'Oh, I told her I couldn't have a phone in the house. I'd worry about it, so I keep this here, it's turned off, I never use it.'

'But, Granny, you didn't mean it about the money.'

'No, Helen, but it was the only thing I could say that would make her stop trying to move me into the town. Oh, she was raging. And she'd be even more raging if she thought I told you. God help her, she'll have other things to think about now.'

Her grandmother went over to the window and peered out through the curtains.

'Is it easy to get down to the strand this year, Granny?' Helen asked.

'Oh yes, Helen, they dug steps and the steps have stayed, except for the last bit which is all marly and mucky.'

'I'd like to go down, just for a minute, just so I can think, it's been the longest day I've ever spent.'

'You go down, Helen, and I'll make up your bed, and I'd be glad if you'd drive the car into the yard or I'll have dreams about it rolling over the cliff.'

'I won't be long.'

The last strong rays of the sun could be seen over the hill behind the house. The air was still, with hardly a hint of the night about to fall. She felt almost healed and enclosed by her grandmother, but she knew, too, that her grandmother's attempt to suggest that nothing could hurt her was half pretence; the other half was a hardness built up over a lifetime of expecting the worst and then watching it unfold.

As Helen walked down the lane, she could see only the soft blue horizon and she could not imagine what the sea would look like in this light. And when she came to the edge she saw it down below: blue with eddies of dark blue and green in the distance. The sea "was calm and the waves rolled over with an easy, whispering crash. There was no barrier at the end of the lane; a car could easily be driven over and would tumble down the clay and marl on to the sand below. But no strangers were expected here; even in the summer it was not a place for casual visitors.

She found the steps and began to make her way down to the strand. The first stretch was easy, but soon she had to move carefully, holding on to weeds and tufts of grass, trying and failing to avoid the muck and the wet marl. She had to run down the last bit; it had always been like that, there was always too much loose sand at the bottom.

She stood on the narrow strand and shivered. Down here in the shadow of the cliff it seemed darker, colder, more like late August than late June. A line of sea birds flew a hand's distance above the calm water. And as each wave came in, it looked as though it might not break, but merely casually spill in and then get sucked back, but every time there came the inevitable lift and curl and a sound that was almost remote, a sound that, she believed, had nothing to do with her and had no connection to anything she knew, the quiet crashing of a wave.

From here as far as Keatings' the erosion had stopped or slowed down. No one knew why. Years earlier, it had seemed just a matter of time before her grandmother's house would fall into the sea, just as Mike Redmond's and Keatings' outhouse had done. And now Keatings' old white house itself was falling, but there was still one house between her grandmother's and the sea.

The erosion had stopped, but when she watched now she noticed fine grains of sand pouring down each layer of cliff, as though an invisible wind were blowing or there was a slow, measured loosening of the earth. It was bright enough still while she looked south to see Raven's Point and Rosslare Harbour. The strand, as she walked along, became narrower and stonier; she listened to the waves hitting the loose stones, unsettling them, knocking them against each other and then withdrawing. She saw, as she walked towards Keatings', that some of the red galvanised iron from a shed at the side had fallen now, and raw walls with strips of the old wallpaper were open to the wind, and soon they would fall too, until only a few people would remember that there had once been a hill and a white house below it way back from the cliff.

Here, the county council had put huge boulders to protect the cliff, but they had no impact. When she turned back, she saw that the line of coast from Cush to Parle's Gap and Knocknasillogue was as it had been ten or fifteen years before, as though time had stood still. The colours were darkening now, night was coming down. She would walk up the gap where Mike Redmond's house had been and then along the lanes to her grandmother's house or along the clifftop if it seemed easier.

She noticed something out of the side of her eye, and when she turned she saw it again: the lighthouse flashing in the distance, Tuskar Rock. She stood again and watched it, waited for the next flash, but it took a while to come, and then she waited again as the rhythm of the night set in.

She walked on, knowing what she was facing into now. She imagined Declan in Dublin, afraid, wondering what had happened, alone in the small hospital room with the long night ahead. It was something which she could barely imagine, and as soon as she started thinking about it she stopped herself, and began to dream about him now arriving in his car, hearing the sound of it approaching and seeing him turn in the lane, and knowing that he was, most of the time, able to get around his grandmother in a way that Helen never could. He could talk to her as no one else was able to; he pretended to share her prejudices, he managed to laugh at her in a way she never minded. Declan would have loved her showing him the central heating and the mobile phone. He would have known what to say.

The climb was easy at Mike Redmond's, easier than the steps to her grandmother's lane. Helen walked through the ruin of the house, the front wall having long since fallen into the sea. She looked at the old chimney and the back wall still in place, and then stood at the edge waiting for the next flash from Tuskar. It seemed brighter now, stronger, from this height. She could feel the dew falling and could hear the sound of cattle somewhere in the distance as she made her way back to her grandmother's house.

The bed was uncomfortable and the nylon sheets, she felt, had not been used for years. They must have been from the time of the guest-house; they had a thin, almost slippery feel. The mattress sagged. She was so tired that she had gone to sleep as soon as she lay down, but she woke an hour or two later, unsure where she was, reaching out for a light, unable to think what house she was in, and feeling a strange, hard thirst. Then she remembered where she was and how she had got here. She put her head on the pillow and wondered how she had let this happen. Earlier on, it had seemed a good idea to come and spend the night here, but she had not bargained for being wide awake like this, the light from Tuskar through the curtains flitting across the wall over her bed, and a smell of must and damp in the room.