Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Blackwater Lightship
The Blackwater Lightship
The Blackwater Lightship
Ebook290 pages4 hours

The Blackwater Lightship

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

From the author of The Master and Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín weaves together the lives of three generations of estranged women as they reunite to witness and mourn the death of a brother, a son, and a grandson.

It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother, Lily, and her grandmother, Dora, have come together to tend to Helen's brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. With Declan's two friends, the six of them are forced to plumb the shoals of their own histories and to come to terms with each other.​

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Blackwater Lightship is a deeply resonant story about three generations of an estranged family reuniting to mourn an untimely death. In spare, luminous prose, Colm Tóibín explores the nature of love and the complex emotions inside a family at war with itself. Hailed as "a genuine work of art" (Chicago Tribune), this is a novel about the capacity of stories to heal the deepest wounds.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateOct 7, 2014
ISBN9781501106927
The Blackwater Lightship
Author

Colm Toibin

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.

Read more from Colm Toibin

Related to The Blackwater Lightship

Related ebooks

Literary Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Blackwater Lightship

Rating: 3.7096774193548385 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

31 ratings25 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an early novel from Toibin, whose rather quiet explorations of human interaction and emotion sort of sneak up and clobber you. Helen, a married woman with two small sons, learns that her brother Declan is desperately ill and has asked for her. When she arrives at the hospital in the company of her brother's friend, a stranger to her, she realizes the nature of Declan's illness, and what it means about his life. Declan is dying of AIDS-related complications; he is a gay man in Ireland in the 1990's, and has no permanent partner...just a good many loving and caring friends. Declan and Helen have been estranged from their mother and grandmother for years, (in fact her husband and children have never met her mother) but he insists that she must go inform their mother of his situation. Furthermore, he wants to spend time at their grandmother's home on the coast, where they were "abandoned" as children one summer while their father--unbeknownst to them at the time--was dying. In the course of a difficult few days, Helen shares stories with Declan's friends, Larry and Paul, who have been caring for him during his bad patches. She learns a good deal about them, about Declan's life, and of course, about herself. Eventually, she and her mother find some common ground in their love for Declan and desire to help him. There are flashes of brilliant humor, both the wry and the raucous sort.. There are also moments that unexpectedly knock the wind out of your chest and make your eyes a bit leaky. I loved it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a beautiful book with a moving story and the kind of writing I am simply a sucker for:

    "For some time, then, no one would appear in this landscape; the sea would roar softly and withdraw without witnesses or spectators. It did not need her watching, and in these hours, she thought, or during the long reaches of the night, the sea was more itself monumental and untouchable. It was clear to her now, as though all week had been leading up to the realisation, that there was no need for people, that it did not matter whether there were people or not. The world would go on. The virus that was destroying Declan, that had him calling out helplessly now in the dawn, or the memories and echoes that came to her in her grandmother’s house, or the love for her family she could not summon up, these were nothing, and now, as she stood at the edge of the cliff, they seemed like nothing."

    Loved it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tóibín is a true master and this book is part of the proof. The beauty and suppleness of the prose serves both to mediate and enhance the emotional tone. It is unbearable and delightful. Worth it for anyone who has a family. Or is mortal. Or would like to know about familial relationships Ireland.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    "It might have been better, she felt, if there never had been people, if this turning world, and the glistening sea, and the morning breeze happened without witnesses, without anyone feeling, or remembering, or dying, or trying to love. "Three generations of women from the same family - Helen, a young married woman, her mother Lily and granny Dora - after decades of dissent come to an uneasy truce generally by avoiding each other whenever they can. Suddenly they are forced together in the grandmother's house in order to nurse Helen's brother, Declan who is dying from Aids. Two of Declan's friends, also gay, are there to help give assistance. None of the women were previously aware that Declan was even ill. However, this is in no means an Irish gay novel it is more about tolerance, acceptance and how unresolved issues can affect families making them disjointed. In the background, as the participants de-camp to the coast of Wexford to a cliff top house whose neighbouring dwellings have succumbed to the force of the sea we are painted a picture of the decaying Ireland outside of the metropolises. I found the female characters in particular believable and you can see in Helen, a mother of two young boys, a woman trying to reconcile what she regards as the failings in her own upbringing in the relationship that she wants to engender with her own sons yet to do this she must omit her own husband from the proceedings. There are also some pretty raw emotions on show at times however, IMHO there was something lacking in it all.As the relationship between the three women improved so Declan's condition worsened but perhaps the truth is that the antipathy between the characters had gone on for far too long to be resolved. As they confess their perceived causes for this friction I never truly felt that any them really meant it rather it was just talk to try and placate Declan. I wasn't expecting some happy ending at the end but perhaps something more than you got. On the whole I found this an OK read but nothing more than that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is about three generations of an Irish family, brother and sister Declan and Helen, their mother Lily, and grandmother Dora. The family are virtually estranged from each other, but when they discover that Declan is seriously ill, they are brought back together and forced to spend time in each other’s company. Helen is perhaps the main character, if there is one, as we learn most about her inner life and memories of childhood. She is quite a complex person, married with two sons, very determined, a very successful headteacher, apparently quite intimidating to people who don’t know her well.After being shocked by the news of Declan’s illness, Helen goes to stay at her grandmother’s house on the coast for a while, where she and her mother look after her sick brother, and it’s in the house that all the family tensions and buried dramas come to the surface. Two friends of Declan’s, Larry and Paul, also end up in the house. They know much more about Declan’s adult life than his family do, which is the source of more tension and conflict.At first I didn’t feel involved with this book as the writing seemed too flat and prosaic, but after everyone had arrived at Dora’s house and the drama resulting from the characters being confined together started to play out, I felt much more interested and the novel became more emotional and gripping. I think this book has two separate threads to it, which intertwine in the family history. One is about being gay in Ireland in the 1990s and the need that some of the characters have to keep their sexuality hidden from their families, the story of how they ended up breaking away from their repressive backgrounds and finding a new life. Larry and Paul end up telling some of their stories to Helen and Dora. Among the older generation, there is a lot of prejudice against them and against homosexuality in general. I think the novel is also more widely about traditional and modern Irish life and how they co-exist.The other thread is about Helen’s relationship with her mother, the grudges she holds against her for the way Lily behaved after her husband (Helen’s father) died, the period when Helen, as a young child, became independent and suppressed her own vulnerability for good. The novel really captured the complicated relationship between the two and the way in which Helen partly desires a reconciliation and partly fears it, as she worries it will undermine her independent life in the city with her husband and draw her back into the web of guilt and duty that her mother and grandmother have woven. The grandmother, Dora, is a vivid, brutally honest and sometimes shocking character who I’m not sure I’d like to meet in real life but found quite entertaining on the page. I liked how the novel didn’t suggest in some cheesily heartwarming way that by the end all the family relationships have become perfect, but it did give an impression that Lily and Helen could somehow be involved in each other’s lives again, in a careful and tentative way.Although I enjoyed this book, it didn’t have the same impact on me as Brooklyn (which was written ten years later). I think that Colm Toibin’s writing seemed much more intense, unusual and moving in the later novel. However I still liked this book a lot.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I thought this was an excellent book. I found the relationship between the women of the three generations to be well presented with the right balance of mystery and revelation. The context of the homes in Ireland was, of course, also one of the features of the book, but Toibin seemed to be generalising that too - the idea that places we encounter when we're growing up can have a lasting impact on our lives. Similarly, a person's childhood relationships with siblings and parents can leave them emotionally scarred (or presumably the opposite), or at the very least can be an enduring unconscious influence on our later feelings and behaviours. The gay people and their relationships seemed to be appropriately dealt with, and reflecting of the degree of actual and feared social rejection that I would have expected would have been present at the time.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Helen lives a predictable, pleasant life, until suddenly a stranger turns up and tells her that her brother is sick--is, in fact, dying of AIDS in a nearby hospital. Declan wants to stay in their grandmother's cottage while he recuperates from his latest hospital stay. His sister, mother, and grandmother are thus thrown together in a small sea-shore cottage, forced into close quarters after a decade of estrangement. Two of his friends come to keep him company and look after his health, causing further moments of awkwardness.

    Basically, six adults hang around a cottage for a few days, constantly splitting off to have one-on-one conversations with each other about the others, and about the past. Helen resents her mother who resents her own mother, and they all talk and think about it endlessly. Maybe these ruminations on what to do when you don't like or emotionally trust your family would feel more poignant or important if I identified with them more. As it was, it was all just really boring. Helen would walk along the shore, think about how cold the water looked, how strong and enduring the cliffs looked, and then come to some minor realization about her feelings for her mother. "I resented her for not being around when my father died," she realizes wonderingly. Rinse, repeat. Thrilling stuff.

    My boredom with the complete lack of plot or conflict might have been alleviated if the characters read more believably. But alas, they're written, particularly Declan, Lily, and Dora, with broad strokes mixed with minutia. By the end of the book I knew that Declan liked self-service restaurants as a child, disliked carrots, and feared escalators, but I still had no idea what he did for a living, how he'd made the friends he did, or even his hobbies. It felt like his sole purpose in the story was to suffer and force Helen and their mother to have uncomfortable emotional moments together. He never felt like a person in his own right.

    Although I felt Tóibín relied too heavily on the sea and the lighthouse as metaphors, without doing any heavy lifting of his own, some of the writing is lovely. But some is just crap. An example: She put the car into gear and drove it slowly to the barrier. 'You need fifty pence. Do you have a fifty-pence piece?' she asked her mother.
    Her mother searched through her bag and found a purse with loose change. She handed Helen a fifty-pence piece and Helen opened the window and put it in the slot. The barrier lifted.
    'We should have gone to the other car park,' Helen said. 'You don't have to pay there.'
    I assume he's trying to say something about the mundane details of survival persisting despite looming tragedy, but dear god is it boring to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are three contemporary authors writing in English whom I find extraordinarily engaging: Cormac McCarthy, Tim Winton and Colm Tóibín . They are all stylistically brilliant and all three weave worlds that address significant issues regarding the human condition. All, also, have received significant recognition for the quality of their production. Among that recognition, McCarthy by Pulitzer; Winton and Tóibín , by Man Booker.

    Cormac McCarthy’s writing is probably the more unconventional. He is less attentive to traditional grammar, punctuation and style. And the worlds he created are categorically darker, disheartening. Even in the comparatively brighter Border Trilogy (brighter than, say, “The Orchard Keeper”, “No Country for Old Men” or “Blood Meridian”), John Grady Cole and Billy Parham in the final volume are clearly marching into the postapocalyptic future of “The Road”. Hope and redemption dissipate in the ravaged earth.

    Hope—or at least thoughtful resignation and conditional re redemption—survive in Tim Winton and in Colm Tóibín’s worlds. The futures their people face are not suffocatingly black. It would be difficult to imagine one of McCarthy’s people writing about his life in retrospect as did Bruce Pike in “Breath”: “And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made….”

    Tim Winton, compared to McCarthy is a more academic writer—at least in terms of the mechanics of writing. But like McCarthy, his prose is ultimately lyrical. It is clear and expressive—beautifully poetic that never misses a beat. So is Tóibín’s writing poetic. Tóibín’s writing, however, is also more elliptical than that of the other two writers. It moves quietly—stealthfully—page to page, focusing on what appears to be the mundane, on minutiae. In “The Blackwater Lightship”, Tóibín describes, at the beginning of the novel, Helen’s preparations for a party. The preparations seem to be limited to the delivery and the final pick up of chair and tables. But that economy of description ultimately explodes in the reader more than the words would seem to do. Tóibín , with his words, is a bit like Picasso with his brushes during his cubist period. He throws them out on the page, seemingly disordered and unrelated but re-structured to have them recomposed in the reader’s mind, infused with sudden insights and complex visions.

    The physical environment also plays a different role with each of the three. For Winton, the physical environment is integral to his plots. With the exception of “The Riders”, his novels unfold in Western Australia—in the narrow stretch of land sandwiched between the western sea and the eastern desert. It is a within that littoral that the bulk of Western Australians live. But that said, the waters of the ocean and of the rivers that empty into it are a living presence in Winton’s writings. In “Breath”, the ocean and its waters dominate. But they play a role in his other works as well, linked often to the very souls of his characters.

    In contrast to Winton, the physical environment for McCarthy and Tóibín are more simply stages on which their stories unfold. McCarthy’s plots play out in specific regions in the United States—in the Appalachians and, starting with Blood Meridian, the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. Tóibín is more varied, with stories set in Argentina, the United States and Europe. But Toíbín and McCarthy’s characters are not entwined inexorably to their environments as are Winton’s. For Tóibín and McCarthy, place helps define the themes but it does not control them.

    With their differences, the three writers are similar in regard to their voices. For example, Tóibín’s “Blackwater Lightship”, “Brooklyn” and “The Story of the Night” are more about emotion, thought and communication than about action. But the same is also true of McCarthy and Winton’s novels. All three tell engaging and compelling stories. But those stories engage and compel because they embroil the reader in the very themes of life. They all translate into works the same questions Paul Gauguin asked in paint: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nice, well-crafted novel about 1990s Ireland, families, AIDS, and lighthouses (rather disappointingly there's no actual lightship involved). Helen has been getting along very nicely without any contact with her mother and grandmother for so long that she doesn't quite seem to remember what it is that she can't forgive them for. But then there's a crisis and she's forced to re-establish contact...There are some rather predictable elements to this book (wherever two or three are gathered together, they shall recite their coming-out stories...) but on the whole, the idea of an AIDS novel told from the point of view of the straight suburban sister works pretty well, and allows Toíbín quite some scope to freshen up a genre that had - thankfully - almost outlived its raison d'être by the time he wrote this.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I never would have read this book had it not been for a reading group I'm in, but I'm glad I did. I feared because of the subject matter that it would turn out to be sappy or overly sentimental, but Toibin kept those well in check and instead presented the stories of a family (perhaps one might argue two families) in a way that was very endearing, funny and saddening. Overall it was a great reflection on life and all the influences, challenges and pitfalls that come with it. In a way I felt like I came to understand the characters a bit, like I got to know them, and I admit I was sad to have to turn that last page.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I began this book because Tóibín handed readers a pretty unlikeable protagonist. Her bitterness becomes somewhat overbearing in certain points throughout the novel, but Tóibín is emphasising Helen's refusal to forgive her mother for leaving her and Declan, the younger brother who is now dying of AIDS, with their grandmother during the slow death of their father when they were young. She also has been unable to forgive the grandmother for keeping them. This anger and resentment follows Helen through her life and affects her relationship with her own children and husband, something she doesn't necessarily notice. The mother, Lily, is pretty much a stock hardened-by-tragedy mother figure who softens as she takes care of her ailing son. The grandmother is both entertaining and frustrating in her own rights. Honestly, the most enjoyable characters are the three gay men: Paul, Larry, and Declan. Their stories are what kept me so engaged with this novel and it's through these three men that our female characters learn humility and to regard love as something other than manipulation.The ending is the strongest part of this novel. There are no heavy handed morals and no awe-inspiring epiphanies. Tóibín presents readers with a possibility, crafting the narrative starkly and with lasting impact. It's definitely worth reading, if only to recognise some elements within yourself which might be reflected in these three women and need some attention.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    could not get into it; abandoned pretty quickly
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed Toibin's writing and characterizations, but I have to admit, this book just didn't hold my attention. Simply, I never found a way into really caring about the characters, and there wasn't enough originality--newness--to keep me truly involved. I have a habit of finishing books...so I did. It wasn't something I'll particularly remember, and it wasn't something I'm sorry to have found. If you like family dramas and the re-knitting of family ties, this may be up your alley--it just wasn't up mine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the story of Helen Doherty and her family. Helen is told that her brother Declan is in the hospital and needs to see her. She and her brother go to their grandmother's delapidated guest house with his two friends. Declan's friends know the whole truth that Declan's family does not: that Declan has AIDS and is dying. Declan and Helen have sad memories of their grandmother's guest house - they had stayed with their grandmother while their father died of cancer. Their mother, Lily, had returned to them cold and remote and their relationship with her and subsequently their grandmother was seriously affected into later life - especially for Helen. I loved this book; the story was poignant and beautifully written. I give it an A+! and recommend it to anyone who likes stories about the dynamics of families.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Like "Three Junes" in the sense that it's a family drama built at least in part around a gay family member and the effect of AIDS on that community. But Toibin does it so much better.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I picked this up because I loved Brooklyn: A Novel, also written by Colm Toibin. Although this was fine, it did not live up to my expectations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read in August 2000. A family brought together by their brother, son and grandson who is dying of AIDs. This is beautifully written and it was one that inspired a great deal of discussion in our group.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A young man is dying of AIDS and he invites his sister, two of his friends and his mother and grandmother to spend his final weeks in his grandmothers house by the sea. His sister has been estranged from her mother and grandmother and this enforced time together helps to rebuild their relationships. An interesting story with characters from several generations and walks of life thrown together at a sad time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a family story: a grandmother and a mother (both widowed) and the two grown children of the latter come together after years of misunderstanding and estrangement, in the house of the grandmother on a cliff by the sea in Southern Ireland (where the two lighthouses shine in on them nightly). A couple of friends of the son, who's just revealed that he has AIDS, join them. Each character is carefully drawn. The writing is exquisite. I couldn't put it down.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Did not enjoy this very much at all. It's a patchy, unfocused work, thick with uninteresting family crises and bitter, unpleasant, irritating characters. The resolution isn't strong enough to make up for the pages of uninteresting guff you have to wade through to get there. The one thing this book could have had that would have made it interesting-- more on what it was like to be gay in Ireland in the later decades of the 20th century-- was simply not there. There were two chapters where two men told thier stories, but it was a bit thin, and left me wondering why Colm Toibin hadn't fleshed that out more.Worst of all, the main character, Helen, is one of those 'sensitive modern woman'-people who I am now beginning to recognize as a character archetype I hadn't known about before I started reading all of this contemporary fiction. She's one of those successful ladies, a leader in the workplace, who also has a gorgeous little family and a perfect life, but whose inner metal space is shot through with poorly-explained self-doubts and neuroses. We see very few of her thoughts, particularly when she's in company. She could do with being a bit more unique. But Toibin is relying on his readers to say "oh, I know people like that," and fill in the blanks for themselves. But because most of the books I read are not about sensitive modern women, I don't have the literary background to fill these details in for myself, and the archetype coes across to me as just what it is-- an irritating stereotype. I find these characters highly annoying. Give us some people with character, for crying out loud! I'm sick of sad broken silent ladies. I'm sick of books about painfully normal 30-year-old ladies, basically. If she had some wit to her, some kind of insight, it would be a joy to read about her, but she has none, and she's depressing. Male writers make their modern female heroes so god-damned boring and typical these days, and I have no idea why.I have no idea whether Toibin's written anything more interesting than this, but this is pretty dull, and I wouldn't waste my time on it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Helen, her mother, and her grandmother, come together after years of estrangement to care for her dying brother. This is the story of family relationships, communication, and the need to find meaning in a sometimes-seemingly random world. The writing is good, in this the author’s fourth book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Intense and claustrophobic, the novel focuses on three generations of women and the bitterness they have harboured for one another over decades. Faced with the impending AIDS death of Declan, the brother of the youngest of them, they are forced to not only share space and come to terms with each other and with the past, but also to deal with the fact of Declan's gayness and with the friends who stand by him.This is a deceptively easy read. Toibin's prose is sparse and clear and has a lyrical beauty which suits the story and its atmosphere beautifully but which doesn't overwhelm the relationships between his characters or intrude upon their self-explorations and coming to terms with each other.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Colm Toibin's novel The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Book Prize in 1999. Set on the coast in Ireland near Dublin, the novel centers around Declan, a young homosexual man dying of AIDS whose sister, mother and grandmother come together to care for him. Declan's sister Helen narrates this tale of heartache, loss, redemption and healing.Toibin's simple, luminous prose captures the discomfort and estrangement between the family members. Helen's voice is at once sad, angry and contemplative as current events bring up memories she has worked hard to forget. After years of estrangement, her brother's impending death brings them back together and forces them to deal with the past.Toibin's slowly evolving novel looks at the fragility of family relationships and the desire to return "home" when we are most vulnerable. Lighthouses are commonly symbolic as beacons of safety or, in dreams, as beacons of truth - and so it is no surprise that The Blackwater Lightship is about both finding a safe haven and uncovering the truth.This novel is melancholy and moody, but in the end I felt a sense of satisfaction and hope; the feeling that even in the face of death, healing and redemption are possible.Recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Declan, dying of AIDS, returns to his grandmother's house at Cush on the isolated wild coast of Ireland. The book is narrated by his sister Helen who organises family and friends to nurse Declan through his last days. It is clear that Declan is more intimate with his friends than his family and the priorities of these two separate factions of Declan's life are symbolised by the two local beacons - the Tuskar lighthouse and the discontinued Blackwater Lightship of the title. A closed in book where the six characters interact with their differing views on Declan's sexuality and terminal illness. A melancholy read for melancholy thoughts.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    From the back cover of the dust jacket:"Colm Toíbín's rich new novel is a portrait of three generations of strong, independent women, sorting through the love and resentments that bind them. As Helen helps her mother and grandmother care for her dying brother in a remote, crumbling house by the sea, she confronts her own strengths and vulnerabilities. The Blackwater Lightship is written with tenderness, precision, and remarkable insight. It is a deeply moving novel and ultimately, a hopeful one." -- Stephen McCauley, author of The Man of the HouseI'd have to say I agree with this review. I was most frustrated with Lily, the mother, as I read the book. I could not understand how she could be so self-centered and manipulative, and still profess love for her children. I think I came to understand it a little, but, like Helen, I would have had a hard time with forgiveness.The story was beautifully written. And I do think hopeful at the end. But there is much pain along the way.I'll look for more of Toíbín's work based on the strength of this novel.

Book preview

The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin

ONE

Helen woke in the night to the sound of Manus whimpering. She lay still and listened, hoping that he would quieten and turn on his side and sleep, but when his voice became louder and more insistent and she could vaguely make out words, she got out of bed and moved towards the boys’ room; she was unsure whether he was dreaming or awake.

She had left the landing light switched on and she was able to see, as soon as she came into the room, that Cathal had his eyes wide open. He looked at her from the bed, an uninvolved spectator in the scene about to be enacted; he then looked over at his brother, who was crying out hoarsely and fending off some unknown terror with his arms. She woke Manus gently and pulled back the blanket which covered him. He was too hot. Only half awake and rubbing his eyes, he began to whimper again. It took him a while to realise that she was there and the dream was over.

‘I was frightened,’ he said.

‘You’re all right now. Maybe you’ll go back asleep.’

‘I don’t want to go back asleep,’ he said, and began to cry.

‘Will I carry you into our bed?’ she asked.

He nodded. He was motionless now, sobbing, waiting to be comforted. She knew that it would be better if she stayed with him and soothed him until he fell asleep again, but she lifted him and let him cling to her. Always, when she held him like this, he became quiet.

Cathal was still watching them.

Helen spoke to him across the room as though he were an adult. ‘I’m going to take Manus into our bed so that it will be easier for you to sleep,’ she said.

He pulled the blanket over himself and closed his eyes. At six, Cathal was clever enough to know that she was not carrying Manus into their bed for his sake, but because she was prepared to treat Manus like a baby. She wondered what Cathal thought about this, if he were hurt or disturbed – but he would be too proud to let her know, too ready to play the part of the grown-up big brother.

The half-light of dawn had broken through the landing window. She moved slowly into the bedroom. Hugh lay curled up sleeping, his arm across her side of the bed. She stood watching him, wondering at how easy it was for him to fall in and out of sleep. Manus stirred in her arms and turned to see why she had remained motionless in the room. He, too, watched his father sleeping and then turned away and huddled against her. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a car moving. She brought Manus over to the bed.

‘Will you sleep on my side?’ she whispered to him.

‘No, I want to be in the middle.’

‘You know what you want, don’t you?’ She smiled at him.

‘I want to be in the middle,’ he whispered.

She put him down with his back to Hugh and pulled the sheet over him. Some time in the night Hugh had pushed the duvet off the bed; she left it on the floor, it would be too hot now with the three of them in the bed. She rested her head on the pillow, relieved that Manus was lying quietly between them and trying to reassure herself that Cathal had fallen back asleep in the other room.

They had gone to bed early when there was still vague light in the sky and made love and she was filled now with a tenderness for Hugh and a wish, something which had become a joke between them, that she could be more like him, even-tempered, easy to please – easy to please? he had laughed when she said that – with nothing secret, nothing held inside.

As Manus edged towards sleep he began to pull at her, he wanted her full attention. He did not want her to turn her back on him. ‘Come around this way,’ he whispered.

She looked at the clock. It was only a quarter to five. Suddenly, she was cold. She reached to the floor, found the duvet, pulled it on to the bed and arranged it over them. They would need to be warm for a while.

When Helen woke again, Hugh and Manus were sound asleep. It was just after eight o’clock; the room was hot. She slipped out of the bed and, carrying her dressinggown and slippers, she went downstairs, where she found Cathal, still in his pyjamas, watching television, the zapper in his hand.

‘I’ve finished in the bathroom if you want to have a shower,’ she said to him. He nodded and stood up.

‘Are they still asleep?’ he asked.

‘They are,’ she said and smiled.

‘I’d better go before they wake up,’ he said.

This was their secret language; they mimicked adults, they spoke to one another like a married couple. Cathal hated instructions or orders or being spoken to like a child. If she had told him to go to the bathroom, he would have dawdled and delayed. When Manus is his age, she thought, I will have to carry him to the bathroom.

They were the first to live in this house, and the first in their estate to build an extension – a large, square, bright room which served as kitchen and dining-room and playroom. Hugh had wanted the house for the beech tree which, through some miracle, had been left in their back garden, and the park behind the house. She had liked only the newness, the idea that no one had ever lived here before.

She washed up from the night before and noticed from the kitchen window a breeze flit through the leaves of the beech tree and the fir trees at the edge of the park, and then a sudden darkening in the air, a sense of rain. She turned on the radio – Hugh, as usual, had it tuned to Raidio na Gaeltachta – and found Radio One just as the pips sounded for the nine o’clock news. She would be able to listen to the weather forecast.

As she and Cathal were having breakfast, Cathal engrossed in a comic, the shouting and laughing began upstairs. Manus was squealing at the top of his voice.

‘Listen to them,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to know which of them is the bigger baby.’

Cathal smiled at her and took a slice of toast and went back to his comic. They ate in silence as the noise upstairs continued, Hugh shouting something in Irish at Manus, and then both of them shouting at the same time until one of them – she presumed it was Manus – landed on the floor with a thud.

Soon, they both appeared, Hugh in his dressing-gown carrying Manus, still wearing his pyjamas.

‘I fell out of bed,’ he said.

‘We know, we heard you,’ Helen said.

His cheeks were flushed. He began to squeeze Hugh’s nose.

‘Stop that. Sit down and have your breakfast.’

As soon as Manus was seated, he saw Cathal’s comic and reached across the table and grabbed it. Cathal tried to hold on to it, but Manus was too quick for him.

‘Give it back.’ Helen said to him.

‘He’s finished with it,’ Manus said.

‘Give it back and say you’re sorry.’

He looked at her, calculating what the chances were of her losing her temper. He laughed. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said.

‘We’re all waiting here. No one is moving until you hand it back and say you’re sorry,’ she said.

Cathal sat with his hands by his sides, content to be the injured party. Manus looked at Helen and then at Hugh, who spoke gruffly to him in Irish. Manus sighed and handed the comic back to Cathal.

‘And say I’m sorry,’ Helen said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And I won’t do it again.’

‘And I won’t do it again.’

‘You’re becoming a bit of a monster,’ she said to him and turned to the sink.

‘You’re becoming a bit of a monster,’ he repeated.

She looked out at the garden and wondered how she should respond; she was grateful when she heard Hugh saying something to him. It was, she thought, her own fault for calling him a bit of a monster. She would leave it, forget about it, feed him his breakfast. He hated being smaller and younger than Cathal. What age would they be, he had asked her, when they would both be the same size? Would it be long? Cathal never hit him or bullied him, but he was always aware that he was at an advantage. Even though Cathal was only two when Manus was born, he had immediately seized on his new role – the one who didn’t cry, who didn’t have a dirty nappy, who didn’t want to be brought into his parents’ bed, who didn’t grab comics from his brother, who didn’t give back-answers to his mother.

When she had given Manus his cornflakes and cold milk and left Hugh to fend for himself – Hugh was more at home in the kitchen than she was – she went out to the line to hang a few dishcloths she had washed. She made a note in her head to find out if there was a good book about bringing up boys, which might make things easier to handle. Once again, as she stood there, the sky darkened. She walked down to the bottom of the garden to take in a deckchair which Hugh must have left out overnight.

She remembered once, perhaps a year earlier, when her brother was in the house and witnessed the boys going to bed. Hugh was in charge and both Cathal and Manus, but especially Manus, did everything to be allowed to stay up, such as clinging to their mother and refusing to do anything their father said. When the house was all quiet and the boys fast asleep, Declan said it was proof, if they needed proof, that boys wanted to sleep with their mother and kill their father.

‘They just wanted to stay up late,’ Hugh said. ‘It just happened that I was in charge.’

‘Did you want to sleep with your mother and kill your father?’ Helen asked Declan.

‘No, no,’ he laughed, ‘gay boys want the opposite, or at least eventually they do.’

‘Sleep with your father?’ Hugh asked. His tone was earnest, dead serious.

‘Yeah, and have a baby, Hugh,’ Declan said drily.

‘I still want to kill my mother,’ Helen said. ‘Not every day, but most days. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to sleep with her.’

She had not forgotten the exchange: Hugh’s uneasiness, his innocence, his attempts to suggest to her when Declan had left that talking about killing your parents, or sleeping with them, even in jest, was a sort of blasphemy. She was careful not to seem too impatient with him, aware that she and Declan could without any effort join forces and make Hugh feel that they were laughing at him. Maybe that is what brothers are for, she thought as she walked back into the kitchen, perhaps even now Cathal and Manus are involved in unspoken conspiracies.

‘The forecast is for showers,’ she said to Hugh, ‘and I’ve worked it out. If it rains, all the tables will fit in here and in the front room and we can put all the drinks in the hall. But we don’t have to decide until later.’

It was the end of June, Hugh’s end of term; the next morning he would take the boys to Donegal. Tonight, he had invited the teachers from his all-Irish school to celebrate the school’s first year in existence, and other friends – musicians, Irish-speakers. Helen had made him invite all the neighbours, including the Indian doctor and his wife and their children who lived at the top of the road.

‘No one can complain about the noise if they’ve just been fed in the house,’ she said.

‘Half of them looked at me like I was collecting taxes. I bet that guard in the corner house is from Offaly. He has a big, thick accent.’

‘Who is that friend of yours who sings The Rocks of Bawn? The guard’ll have a big, thick accent when he hears him.’

‘Mick Joyce. He’s loud, all right. Is your brother coming?’

‘I haven’t asked him,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t mix. I don’t think he likes The Rocks of Bawn.’

‘Has he fallen out with us?’

‘He’s busy. He’s doing research full-time.’

‘He has plenty of time so.’ Hugh laughed.

‘My mother says he’s in the laboratory day and night.’

‘Is your mother coming?’ he laughed.

‘Imagine what she’d say about wasting all this money!’

‘She’d be great on the door, though,’ Hugh said.

Hugh spoke Irish to the boys, to his mother and his brothers and sisters, and to at least half of his friends. He insisted that Helen understood more than she pretended to understand, but it was not true. She found his Donegal accent in Irish too difficult, and she made out very little of what he said. Tonight, she knew, she would be irritated by the two or three who would continue to speak to her in Irish, indifferent to the fact that she could not follow, but it was an irritation which would fade easily.

There would be no friends of hers at the party, nobody from the comprehensive school of which she was principal – she was still the youngest principal in the country – nobody from home, nobody from her schooldays or college days. She had one or two women she knew and liked and saw sometimes, but no close friends.

She had given up a long-cherished belief that she was self-contained, or happiest when alone. She could still shut her eyes and bite her lip at how unexpected it was, this life she had made. Nonetheless, she wanted three or four, maybe more, days alone here now after the party, to sit in the garden or an old armchair in the kitchen and read the novels she had saved in the winter, and do nothing else except go to a meeting in the Department of Education, interview prospective teachers and move around the house knowing that, unless there was an emergency, no one would call her or want her immediate attention. But it was important for her to know too that Hugh and the boys were just away for a short while, she would see them soon.

Tomorrow morning, then, Hugh would take the boys to Donegal in the car and she would follow in a while, catch the train to Sligo or the bus to Donegal town, and even now she could imagine Hugh there to meet her, recognising when he saw her how much she feared her own passionate attachment to him, how much she would hold back for a while. After a lot of difficulty, he had learned, as much as he could, to trust her, even though she knew it was hard sometimes.

When the janitor from Hugh’s school, Frank Mulvey, and his son came in a van with the tables and chairs, she had to restrain herself from telling them where to put everything; she wondered, as she watched them, at how blindly they moved, planning nothing, moving forward without direction. She smiled at herself minding so much about this.

She decided to go to the supermarket to buy the food and the beer. Hugh had already collected the wine and the glasses. She watched from the kitchen window as the boys played aeroplanes in the back garden, circling each other, dipping and diving, their arms outstretched as wings. She called Manus and when he ignored her she called again. He moved reluctantly towards her.

‘I want you to come with me to the supermarket,’ she said.

‘Is Cathal going?’

‘No, just you.’

‘Why just me? Why can’t Cathal go?’

‘Come on quickly,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he said.

‘Come on, wash your hands, we’re in a hurry.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

By this time, Cathal had approached and was observing them both.

‘Cathal is going to help your daddy with the tables and chairs,’ she said.

‘I want to do that,’ Manus said.

‘Manus, you’re coming with me,’ she said.

He placed himself in the back of the car so that he could see her face in the rear-view mirror.

‘But why am I going with you?’ he asked.

‘Do you think you need to get your hair cut before you go to Donegal?’ She would have said anything to distract him as she set off for the supermarket.

‘I’m not getting my hair cut,’ he said.

‘No, you decide. I just asked you.’

‘Cathal isn’t getting his hair cut.’

‘It’s up to you. You’re old enough to decide yourself.’

This was the plan, this was why she had made him come with her; she had thought about it as she lay awake in the night: she would have to stop treating him like a baby, she would have to begin to talk to him as though he were an adult. But it was having the opposite effect.

‘Cathal can get his hair cut, but I’m not doing it and that’s that.’

She drove in silence through Rathfarnham and parked in the shopping-centre car park.

‘We’ll have to get a trolley,’ she said.

‘Can I have a Ninety-nine?’

‘After.’

‘After what?’

‘After you behave. How are you going to behave?’

‘Impeccably,’ he said. It was a new big word he had learned. When he looked at her, seeking her approval, she laughed and that forced him to smile.

‘What are we getting?’ he asked as they pushed the trolley through the supermarket.

‘I have it all on a list. Minced meat, onions, beer, salad.’

‘Why do you need me?’

‘To mind the trolley when I’m paying at the checkout.’

‘It’s boring,’ he said.

‘Do you think we should get large cans or small cans of beer?’ Again, she was using an adult tone.

‘It’s boring,’ he repeated.

When she got back, she saw that the tables and chairs were set up in the garden. She checked one of the kitchen drawers for plastic tablecloths. The boys were once more playing aeroplanes.

‘If it rains, we’ll move everything in,’ Hugh said as they both surveyed the garden.

At nine o’clock the first guests, two men and a woman, arrived carrying six-packs of Guinness and a bottle of red wine. The woman was carrying a fiddle case.

‘Are we the first?’ one of the men, tall with spectacles and curly hair, said. They seemed uneasy, as though they were half tempted to turn and go. Helen didn’t know them and didn’t think she had seen them before. Hugh introduced them to her.

‘Sit down, sit down, we’ll get you a drink,’ Hugh said.

They sat in the kitchen and looked out at the tables and the long garden. They said nothing. The two boys came in and examined them and went out again.

‘An bhfuil Donncha ag teacht?’ Hugh began to speak in Irish and one of the men spoke back from the side of his mouth, something funny, almost bitter. The others laughed. Helen noticed how unfashionably long the speaker’s sideburns were.

Hugh handed them drinks, and two of them went into the garden, leaving the one with the long sideburns. It struck Helen for a moment that she had interviewed the woman for a job, or she had worked hours in the school, but she was not sure. Hugh and his friend talked in Irish. Helen wondered if she was wearing the right clothes for the party; she watched the woman from the window, noted her jeans and white top and hennaed hair, how relaxed and natural she looked. Helen moved towards the fridge and checked again that everything was in order: the chilli con carne would simply need to be reheated, the rice boiled; the salads were all ready, the knives and forks and paper napkins set out. She opened some bottles of red wine.

Just then, another group arrived, one of them was carrying a guitar case and another a flute case. She recognised them and they greeted her. There was one woman among them; Helen watched her looking around the kitchen, as though seeking something, a clue, or something she had left behind on a previous visit. When she went to take the six-pack from the man with the guitar, so that she could put it in the fridge, he said he would hold on to it, and smiled at her as if to say that he had been to more parties than she had. He was too warm and direct for her to be offended.

‘If you want more, it’s in the fridge,’ she said to him.

‘If I want more, I’ll ask you,’ he said.

He smiled again. His eyes were a mixture of brown and dark green. His skin was clear; he was very tall. She realised that he was flirting with her.

‘I’m tempted to say something,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘What? Say it.’

‘I was going to say that you look like someone who might want more.’

He smiled and held her gaze and then reached into his pocket and took out a small bottle opener. He opened a bottle of Guinness and offered it to her. He seemed somewhat taken aback when she refused it, intimidated.

‘It’s too early for me,’ she said.

‘Well, cheers so,’ he said and lifted the bottle.

For the next hour she was busy filling glasses and opening bottles and trying to remember names and faces. As it grew dark, Hugh lit the flares which he had stuck into the grass and these gave off a fitful, glaring light. When she brought the food out and Hugh put on the striped apron to serve it, people were already sitting at the tables. Cathal and Manus and several neighbours’ children had made a small table for themselves and were eating pizzas and drinking Coke.

‘We’d better hold on to a bit of the food,’ Hugh said. ‘There are a few won’t come until after the pubs shut.’

The Indian doctor and his wife had arrived earlier, greeted everyone, accepted a drink of orange juice and left, but their eldest son, who must have been seven or eight, had remained behind and was at the boys’ table. Helen had promised that she would walk him to his door and that he would not be too late. The O’Mearas next door – she was unsure what they did for a living – were sitting alone at a table watching all the laughter and good humour around them. Helen knew she would have to go and sit with them; it was clear that no one else was going to pay them any attention. She was glad that the guard and his wife had not come.

‘God, we don’t have to talk Irish to you, do we?’ Mary O’Meara said to her when she sat down beside them. ‘I was just saying to Martin that we should

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1