The Heather Blazing

  “I find it hard to imagine,” she said.

  He selected a book from the pile, a history of convicts in Australia, and took it out to the glass porch where he sat in an armchair facing out towards the sea. The rain was still coming down. He flicked through the pages of the book and looked through the index, noting the references to Irish convicts and checking back to read those passages. Soon, he became engrossed in the book.

  After lunch the rain turned to a fine drizzle and after a while that, too, eased. He went back to the porch with his book, checking the weather every so often to see if he could go out. There was now a soft white line along the horizon and an opaque light coming in from the sea.

  Carmel said that she was happy to stay indoors; there were still things to unpack. She seemed rested. He put on his raincoat, took an umbrella from the car and set out along the lane, trying to avoid the potholes full of muddy water. In the field to his left, which led straight down to the cliff, some of the corn looked windswept and beaten down. When he came to the turn in the lane he saw Mike’s house. The back wall and the side walls were completely intact, but the entire front of the house was missing. The land around jutted out on both sides. The electricity was still connected. It was as though what remained of the foundations and the fabric of the house was being held on the earth by the electricity wires. It was strange too how the small house appeared to have been singled out by the erosion. It seemed unlucky and hard to understand. He went into the house by the back door and stood on the stone floor of the front room. He inspected the walls, half mud, half stone, like all the old houses around here, including his house. He went to the edge of the cliff and looked down. The collapse of the cliff here had created a new pass down to the strand. There was no steep drop, as there had been in other years, after the winter had created new forms in the cliff’s face. Clearly, this year there had been no need to build steps down to the strand.

  He was not sure now that he could in fact remember the field which ran from Mike’s house to the cliff. It had been so gradual, this erosion, a matter of time, lumps of clay, small boulders studded with stones becoming loose and falling away, the sea gnawing at the land. It was all so strange, year after year, the slow disappearance of the one contour to be replaced by another, it was hard to notice that anything had happened until something substantial, like Mike’s house, fell down on to the strand.

  There had been other such dramas in the past, other ways to mark and remember the way this coast was being eaten into. There was the year that they blew up the old watchtower on the hill above Keating’s in Ballyconnigar, afraid that it would topple of its own accord and crush someone on the strand below. They blew a huge hole into the hill. He remembered going up to see the damage they had done; the hole was all thin sand and, winter by winter, the hill itself began to disappear until now there was no sign of it. He was there years ago with Carmel one summer’s Sunday. They had come down from Enniscorthy on bicycles; they lay there sunbathing on the hot grass. Not a soul came by. He remembered her bare legs, the smooth, silky skin and the slim, lithe shape of her under the bathing costume, and his own excitement as she lay close in against him and kissed him.

  He turned now in this shell of a house and walked into the bedroom which was damp and dark. There was no furniture, but Mike had left a stack of books behind. He looked through them, half tempted to take one as a souvenir. They were old novels, a collection of classics. He picked up the book on the top; it was Cranford by Mrs. Gaskell, but the pages were mildewed and he put it down again. Some memory stirred in him, as though he was about to remember the dream he had had, and he picked the book up again and held it, staring at the title. When he turned he was shocked by the missing wall, by the bare, raw light from the sea. He felt he was trespassing now, and he began to walk down to the strand.

  * * *

  He walked south towards Ballyconnigar. The drizzle had completely lifted and the afternoon became mild and warm with patches of blue in the sky. Each time a wave rolled inwards it unsettled the small stones at the shoreline, forcing them to knock against each other. They made a clattering, gurgling sound as each wave hit them and then retreated. He listened for it as the waves came in, a sound unlike any other, definite and oddly comforting, like two hollow objects being banged against each other, except that this was more modest, intimate. He moved back and listened, realizing that he could not remember that there had ever before been small stones here on the shoreline.

  He felt warm as he walked along; soon he was forced to take off his raincoat and put it over his arm. There was no one on the strand. Some mud boulders had rolled down from the cliff and were standing at the bottom; it would be only a short time before the sea would roll up and dissolve them. As he looked up he saw that all the time fine grains of sand were being blown down the cliff-face.

  At Ballyconnigar he could see how close Keating’s house was to the cliff; even since Easter some of the land had been eaten away. The house was like a monument: it was as though it had always been there, its glistening whitewash visible for miles. The old woman was dead now; he wondered if the sons, who must be old men now, were still living there. He had an idea that one of them had got married, but he was not sure. He must ask Carmel; she knew about everybody in the area, and kept in touch with Christmas cards and Mass cards, letters and visits when they came for the summer.

  Every year the river at Ballyconnigar changed its course when it reached the soft sand. It channelled through turning this way or that several times during the winter, but when the spring came it settled on one route and the County Council came and put up a small wooden foot-bridge to facilitate the summer visitors. The river was shallow here, but fast-flowing. Further back, it was deeper and slower in its pace, perfect at certain points for salmon and brown trout. He had forgotten—again, he smiled to himself, Carmel would know—who owned the fishing rights, but most of the locals poached the river, and there was no shortage of salmon or trout at cheap prices. He had to be careful to let Carmel do the dealing and the buying, making her pretend that the Judge believed that everything was legal and above board. Over the years, there had been raids by bailiffs and several of the local men had been to court and paid fines.

  Carmel was sitting on the porch when he got home. She was reading a novel.

  “Who’s in Keating’s house now?” he asked.

  “Jack is in there with Rita, but I hear she’s not well. I went up to Murphy’s so I have all the news.”

  “I’d say they were talking about Mike,” he said.

  “Mrs. Murphy said that he wasn’t in any danger at all, that he’s stayed in the caravan during bad weather over the past few years. I never knew that. She says that he won’t get any compensation.”

  “No,” he said. “I checked up on that years ago.”

  * * *

  After a few days of drizzle the weather improved. They sat out in the front garden in deckchairs as the strong sun appeared at intervals from between the clouds. He took his togs and towel and walked down the lane to the strand. The sea was rough, the water a glinting steely-grey. He moved down the strand, away from a family group who had installed themselves at the bottom of the cliff. He took off his socks and shoes and rolled up his trousers so he could paddle in the water, test the temperature. The water came in over his feet with a shock of cold, the sun had gone in again, and he wondered if he should not just go for a walk and come back along the cliff in time for lunch.

  He would have to brave it. After a few days he would get used to the searing cold and once down in the water it would be pure pleasure as long as he kept moving and did not think about the cold. He changed into his togs and looked up at the sky to see if the sun would soon appear, but a few heavy black clouds had blown in over the sea. He shivered as he stood there before walking down to the shoreline with slow determination. He waded in, trying not to be put off by the cold. He put his hand into the water, and wet his face and chest. He jumped to avoid the impact of a large wave,
but he was now wet up to the waist. He stood for a moment, hesitant and undecided, and then in a flash he dived down into the water, swimming right out, keeping under the surface as much as possible and then turning on his back and letting himself float with his head tilted into the water and his eyes shut. He swam out beyond the point where the waves broke, where the sea was just a slight swelling and falling. The water became bearable as he swam around, he crawled further out and stopped to look back at the low cliff at Cush, all yellow marly sand and tufts of grass, rising to the higher cliffs at Ballyconnigar where the sand was paler, like gravel.

  He shivered with the cold as he dried himself. He could not wait to get his clothes on. He dressed as quickly as he could, and as he reached the shell of Mike’s house, having walked up the cliff, he felt a comforting warmth, a sense of ease. The sky was now overcast and grey. Carmel was in the porch and when he opened the door he noticed that she had been dozing with a book on her lap. She woke and smiled at him.

  “This weather makes me sleepy,” she said.

  He put bread and cheese and salad on the table and made tea. She yawned as she came into the living room and sat down.

  “I forgot to tell you that Madge Kehoe invited us for our dinner. She said that maybe we’d play cards afterwards. I said that we hadn’t played cards for years.”

  “When?” he asked.

  “Next week,” she said. “They have a Christian Brother staying with them.”

  “And they want us to play cards?” he laughed. “I used to play cards with Madge and her mother years ago. Old Mrs. Keating was a great player.”

  * * *

  Some days the rain never lifted. It began as a dense drizzle in the mornings and cleared up for an hour or two in the afternoon before coming down again in heavy showers. He watched from the window for any sign of light over the sea, but the sky remained grey. They kept the fire lit and sat indoors reading.

  Carmel showed him a letter from Niamh to say that she was living in their house now and wondering where all the plants had gone. She had been to see a gynaecologist, she said, and he told her she was in good shape. There was nothing to worry about, she said. The letter was written to Carmel, but she sent her father her regards in the last paragraph. He left the letter on the table beside the window, took an umbrella and went out for a walk.

  * * *

  On the day they were to go to Madge Kehoe’s they drove to the village and bought a bottle of whiskey and a box of chocolates to take with them.

  “Do you think that this is too much?” Carmel asked him. “Maybe I should have got sherry instead of whiskey.”

  “Is there anything worse than sherry?” he asked, and smiled.

  “Tom and Madge will be delighted to see you. Madge went on about the Judge and they missed you last summer.”

  “I remember Madge well. She’s a good few years older than me,” he said.

  He drove along a narrow lane towards Ballyvalden and Knocknasillogue. The late afternoon sky had suddenly become bright. He passed a herd of cows which were being goaded along by a boy with a stick.

  Madge Kehoe was standing at the door when they arrived, holding two eager dogs by the scruff of the neck. She had grown to look so much like her mother that he was sure for a few moments that the old woman, long dead now, with whom he used to play cards, was still alive and standing at the door. Madge’s face was wrinkled and her skin withered in the same way as her mother. The hair was white, but still thick and curly. But the voice was different, lower and stronger.

  “Don’t mind the dogs now, just come in,” she said. The dogs continued to yelp and bark as she held them.

  There was a fire lit in the front room; a sofa and two armchairs had been placed around the hearth. Tom, Madge’s husband, stood up when they came in. He had the air of a man sitting in a room he wasn’t used to, wearing clothes that he normally wore only to Sunday Mass.

  “You’re looking well, both of you,” he said.

  “It’s terrible weather,” Carmel said.

  “We’ve seen the end of the summers,” Tom said. “We had a few nice days in June, but there’ll be no more summers like we used to have.”

  They were sitting down by the fire when Madge appeared with the bottle of whiskey which Carmel had left on the hall stand.

  “I found this out in the hall, wrapped in brown paper,” she said. “And this.” She took the wrapping of the box of chocolates. “I don’t know how they got there,” she laughed. “Isn’t God good to us, all the same?”

  “The house is looking lovely, Madge,” Carmel said.

  “We’ll have to have a drink,” Madge said. “And maybe we’ll get a bit of sunshine. Will you all drink whiskey?”

  “I won’t, thank you,” Carmel said. “But I’m sure Tom and Eamon will.”

  When they went into the large modern kitchen to eat they found another guest at the table. He was an elderly Christian Brother.

  “This now is Brother McDonagh,” Madge said, and she explained how he used to come every year for the month of August in the days when she kept guests for the summer.

  “And we had too much work here and I couldn’t keep it all up, so I wrote to all the regular guests and told them that I was too busy with the farm, but Brother McDonagh wrote back and he was so disappointed and heartbroken that I couldn’t let him down, so I wrote and told him to come, and he still comes every August.”

  “I love the sea air,” the Brother said.

  Madge began to put the food on the table, and they sat down to eat together as a damp August evening settled in.

  “I knew your father well,” the Brother said to him halfway through the meal.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Madge said. “I forgot to tell you. Brother McDonagh taught in the Christian Brothers’ School in Enniscorthy.”

  “That’s funny,” Eamon said. “I don’t remember you. It must have been before my time.”

  “Yes, it was before you were born. I was in Enniscorthy for a good stretch. I remember your father coming to the school, and I remember your mother, God rest her.”

  Madge gathered up the dinner plates and put a tart and a bowl of custard in the middle of the table. Eamon looked across at the Brother.

  “I loved Enniscorthy. I was sad to leave. It was a beautiful place. There were some great walks. And it was steeped in history.”

  There was silence then, interrupted only by Madge serving the dessert. Eamon felt that if he lifted his glass he would not be able to hold it steady, that his hand would shake. Maybe, later, he would be able to talk to the Brother alone and ask him: what were they like? What was his mother like? They began to talk again, about the weather and the crops and Mike’s house, but he could not stop wanting to know something, some detail, anything about his father and his mother. He wondered how he could make a question sound casual, how he could ask about them without showing how anxious he was.

  “What did you teach, Brother?” he asked.

  “I taught History and Geography,” the Brother said. “Your father taught everything; he was a great teacher,” he continued.

  “Oh, he was. We all remember him,” Madge said. “He was a nice man.” She smiled at Eamon and Carmel. “All the Redmonds were nice.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He stood in his suit in the hall while his father searched for the red sashes. He must have been seven then, or eight. His father had found the pins which lay on the kitchen table, and now he frantically rummaged through the drawers and wardrobes in the two bedrooms in search of the red sashes.

  “They must be somewhere,” his father said.

  Eamon opened the back door and threw out crumbs from that morning’s breakfast on to the concrete of the yard. He put the plates in the sink.

  “Have you touched the sashes?” his father shouted. “Have you been playing with them?”

  He knew that there was no need to answer. He wished that this crisis would come to an end.

  “Go into Mrs. Cooney next door and a
sk her if she has any sashes,” his father shouted from the top of the stairs, but Eamon stayed where he was for a while, listening as his father pulled out another drawer in the small room. He opened the front door and closed it behind him to make it seem that he had gone, but instead he sat on the steps. There was no one on the street. The sun was high over Vinegar Hill. Suddenly his father came to the window.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right. You needn’t go. I found them.”

  His father put the sash around his shoulder and Eamon held the two ends together while his father put the pin into the clasp. They could go now, his father said as he folded his own sash and put it in his pocket. Later, he said, when he got down town, he would put it on.

  Eamon left his father at the bottom of John Street and walked down to the school. He was early, and sat in the shelter until most of his classmates arrived. Already hot in their suits in the afternoon sun, they were put into a line as soon as the Brother blew his whistle. They marched down the Mill Park Road to the bottom of Friary Hill, but were stopped there and told to wait. Friary Hill and Slaney Place were festooned with bunting. At the bottom of Friary Hill there was a huge arch. The Brother in charge had moved back along the line, so it was easier now for the boys to play without anyone noticing. A fellow from the Shannon gave Eamon a kick and put his fists up, daring him to fight, but Eamon stood his ground and ignored him, knowing that the Brother would come back at any moment. Soon, the lines of four had broken up into groups of boys laughing and fighting, but one of the men in sashes came up and told them to conduct themselves or he would have to report them. After a while, the man gave them leave to march towards Slaney Place.

  The Brother ran up to the front of the march. He walked backwards as he shouted instructions at the marchers.

  “Sing out loud now, so that everyone can hear you. Sing out loud, lads, so that everyone will know that your faith is strong. Louder now. Louder, come on, lads.”

  They were stopped again at the bridge while the girls from the Presentation School went by.