Rainsongs Page 11

  He was to go off directly they got back from Ireland for the last week of the school holidays. It was his first trip alone away from home. He was nervous but the thought of meeting up with his friends somewhat made up for the disappointment of not going out to the Skelligs. Back home she laid out his newly-ironed Cub-Scout uniform, his scarf and green jersey covered with badges for swimming and tracking. She baked a carrot cake, which she put in a tin in his rucksack. And before he went to sleep they sat together on his bed underneath the darkening skylight and he asked: Mum, where do the stars go when it’s light?

  They don’t go anywhere, darling. They’re always there. It’s just that you can’t see them in the day.

  The next morning she dropped him off at school to catch the coach to Exmoor. He was excited, torn between kissing her goodbye and not wanting to appear babyish in front of his friends. There was quite a little gang of them. They played football together on Sunday mornings, rode their bikes together, went to each other’s birthday parties and had sleepovers in one another’s houses. She delayed the moment of separation by reminding him to put his ground sheet under his sleeping bag and brush his teeth. Telling him that there was clean underwear in the inside zipped pocket of his rucksack and several pairs of socks, as he was bound to get wet. And then she turned, climbed back into the car and waved goodbye as he stood in his green and yellow T-shirt and a hat a size too big for him, chatting with the other boys.

  He phoned a few days later from a pay phone full of it. The midnight feasts and songs round the camp fire. The marshmallows roasted on sticks and the soaking they’d got on a moorland walk. And he’d made a new friend, James, a member of another pack who had loads of badges and was nearly eleven.

  And tomorrow, Mum, we’re going canoeing.

  3

  Brendan took the call. There’d been heavy rain and the river was swollen. The canoe had tipped up in the fast moving flow and Bruno hit his head on a rock. There was no blood, no gash but he lost consciousness as his lungs filled with water. One of the teachers had waded into the torrent and managed to pull him onto the bank and give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But when the air sea rescue helicopter finally arrived he wasn’t breathing properly. And by the time they got him to the local hospital, he was dead.

  She vaguely remembers Brendan trying to catch her flailing arms as she screamed in his face: it’s not true, it’s not true. I spoke to him yesterday. He phoned me. You’re lying. What do you mean you fucking idiot, dead? Healthy ten-year-old boys don’t just die.

  Poor Brendan. She hadn’t meant to attack him but she punched, spat and kicked as if killing the messenger would kill the message. He took it badly but she was out of her mind. When they arrived at the hospital to identify the body, still tanned from their holiday and perfect except for the bruise on his left temple, she climbed onto the bed and held his small frame in her arms, just as she’d done when he had mumps or had been unable to sleep, willing him to get warm. But he no longer smelt of Bruno. Just the chemist’s lab. She remembers the venetian blinds drawn against the warm September afternoon. Outside she could hear people laughing in the visitors’ car park. A car door slamming and the wail of ambulance sirens bringing emergencies to A&E. Eventually, the ward sister came in to ask her if she needed more time. She shook her head but requested a pair of scissors. Then she cut off a lock of his hair, kissed him goodbye and walked out of the door.

  4

  Brendan hadn’t particularly wanted children. They weren’t part of his life’s plan. He was good at selling paintings and writing books but not certain that he had it in him to be a father. She agreed at first because she wanted what he wanted but then, slowly, the desire grew until it became a physical ache and each month, when her period arrived, she felt a deep sense of loss. She never cheated, never stopped using contraception. Yet, somehow, five years into their marriage she found herself pregnant. Cliché though it was, she bloomed. And Brendan had, in fact, been delighted as though she’d just presented him with a surprise present that he didn’t know he really wanted. As she grew larger and the child became more real, he lay in bed, his head on her distended stomach, listening to its heartbeat. She thought he might be turned off by her expanding girth, her swollen breasts with their dark, prune-like nipples. But he was protective and kind, bringing her breakfast in bed, holding her head over the toilet as she threw up, and taking time off to come with her for her check-ups, even though he loathed hospitals.

  It was a difficult birth. A forceps delivery in the early hours of a November morning. Brendan was with her throughout. From the moment Bruno was laid on her stomach in the delivery ward and she held his tiny fingers in hers, all the pain of labour dissolved. As the first light broke through the venetian blinds, she knew that this was her life’s greatest achievement. And Brendan? Well, he was thrilled to have a son. They called him Bruno after her father.

  Bruno the bear. Her little blond bear.

  5

  For weeks after the accident she didn’t go out. She had compassionate leave from school but when, finally, she went back she was struck by the world’s indifference. Its relentless normality. Why didn’t the sky turn black or the sun go out? Her child was dead. Yet still her pupils misbehaved, didn’t do their homework and ignored her in class. People continued to push trolleys around Sainsbury’s, go to the cinema, argue and make love. When she first lost Bruno she thought she would die. The ache, the longing, was like a wound. She could hardly breathe and found herself gulping for air like someone drowning, as if her lungs were unwilling to take in sufficient oxygen to go on functioning and just wanted to shut down. She was swathed in migraines that clamped her head like a metal vice, her body mimicking her mental anguish. She could barely see, her vision disturbed by the slightest light. All she could do was lie in the dark with her head under a pillow until she was violently sick then lie curled on her bed, limp as an old dish cloth.

  Again and again, drifting between dreaming and sleep, she tried to imagine his last moments. The canoe overbalancing, the collision with the rock, the icy water filling his nostrils and lungs. It was as if she was watching a film in slow motion. She tried to call out to him but no sound emerged. Had he known what was happening? Been afraid? She can’t bear to think about it. She goes over the last things she said to him. Don’t forget to clean your teeth. Don’t stay up all night talking. And under her breath, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed, I love you, before heading back to the car.

  For days after she came home from the hospital without him she lay on his bed under the skylight looking up at the phosphorescent glow-in the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling, which they’d bought at the planetarium, his Arsenal posters and judo certificates, willing it to be a mistake, willing herself to wake up and find that it was all some grotesque dream. But, even then, she knew that it wasn’t. Eventually she climbed out of bed and sat for hours in her dirty pyjamas, her hair lank and greasy, as she watched endless daytime television: gardening and game shows, cookery programmes, American chat shows. She drifted through re-runs of Brief Encounter, The Sound of Music and Dallas. It was as if she was trapped in a goldfish bowl and that the real world was somewhere on the other side of the glass.

  Finally she forced herself to go to the supermarket where she bumped into people she knew who gave her a wan smile and a wide berth. Acquaintances avoided her or, worse, waylaid her in the butcher’s or the greengrocer, grasping her hand, their eyes filling with tears, so she felt the need to comfort them. It went on for days. The cards, the flowers, the phone calls. Each well-meant but like another thorn in her flesh reminding her that her loss was an inescapable reality.

  Brendan wasn’t able to comfort her and she didn’t let him. She didn’t want to be consoled, didn’t want to do anything other than grieve. It was then that he must have turned to Sophie. He was working hard, finishing the book, getting together the plates, still chasing up museums and private collections that hadn’t got b
ack to him to give permission. It kept him afloat and Sophie was full of enthusiasm. Often he came home late and climbed into bed, smelling, Martha realises, of another woman, as though he hardly had enough strength to conceal the fact. They lay side by side unable to reach across the gap between them. Poor Brendan. He loved Bruno, too. Had coped in his own way. Then one evening, while standing in the middle of the living room during the Six o’clock News, he took her in his arms and, without a word, buried his head in her neck, his whole body convulsed with dry sobs. She stood there holding him, then took his hand and gently led him upstairs, where she helped him onto bed and covered him with the duvet, before lying down beside him. They lay like that, fully dressed, clinging to each other as the light faded and the room gradually grew cold.

  6

  The weather for January is glorious. The clouds above the two uninhabited little islands of Scariff and Deenish, that are normally shrouded in halos of mist like those mountains in Japanese prints, have lifted. Rain and blustery storms have given way to sunshine. The bay is shimmering. In the pine tree behind the cottage a blackbird is singing, fooled into thinking it’s spring.

  When Martha gets back from the beach she decides to walk up to Paddy O’Connell’s cottage in the hope that she’ll bump into him. But he isn’t about, though his car is parked by the turf reek. He must be out on the mountain. She’s wanted to have a word with him ever since she had lunch with Eugene and he told her of his plans. She may have softened towards Eugene but she can’t bear to think of Paddy being pressurised to give up his way of life. Anyway, she doubts that he’ll accept Eugene’s offer. He doesn’t seem like someone who’d be unduly influenced by cash. She knows Eugene has his legal team looking for any loopholes where he might take advantage. He isn’t going to let his multimillion-euro scheme be scuppered by one small hill farmer. Apart from being a very lucrative business opportunity it seems to be a way of re-establishing autonomy from Bridget and Siobhán. But he needs the bottom of her field to get in the heavy machinery that his builders require. She wants to tell Paddy that he’s not on his own.

  She takes a shortcut up the back lane past the turkey shed, a long wooden building without any natural light that emits a continuous low hum and a noxious smell, past a battered caravan parked in the lay-by where the sails of a child’s beach windmill turn in the breeze and red plastic roses sprout from a row of cracked white tubs beside a broken picnic table. The caravan windows are held together with string and masking tape and behind one, in pride of place, is a stuffed peacock. It’s so incongruous that she stops to look.

  You likes my Percy then?

  Martha turns to find the question coming from behind a pair of thick pebble glasses. Their owner is dressed in a filthy sweater, his stained trousers tucked into a pair of shit-spattered Wellingtons. Clamped on each ear is a hearing aid attached to the thick blades of his spectacles. He’s wearing a baseball cap and holding a stick, having just shut the gate on the cows in the field.

  It didn’t register when she saw him down on the beach trying to unravel the knotted fishing net that it’s Donald-Four-Eyes. The boy who limped round the village in his outsized Wellingtons and shorts three sizes too big for him during those summers they spent here more than twenty years ago. Everyone knew him. Largely because it was so unnerving to find him heading your way, his head bobbing like a puppet’s on a string, his yellow teeth forming a rictus grin like the smile in a Halloween turnip. Lame, deaf, and a bit simple, she remembers passing him in the lane after a group of local children had pulled down his trousers and left him snivelling as they ran off across the field shouting: Donald-Four-Eye’s got skid marks in his pants. She can still see his scrawny white backside stuck in the air as he tried to pull his mucky pants up over his little twisted legs. She feels guilty that she hadn’t gone to his rescue.

  Yes, he’s certainly fine, she answers. What happened to him?

  He lived up in the big house. It were raining. All his feathers gets wet and he drowns. Drowns dead. Eugene stuffed him. But he got the moth and Eugene gave him me. He lives with me now, he says, with pride, white spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth.

  Martha wonders if Donald is making the story up or has just got things muddled. Though she does remember that years ago Eugene did have a pair of peacocks that used to sit on the dog’s kennel uttering blood-curdling cries. It seems as though Donald does odd jobs for Eugene. Stacking peat, washing his Range Rover, herding cows and clearing ditches. Generally lending a hand roundabout to whoever needs it.

  7

  It’s a wet, cold evening. How could she have be so stupid? She’s run out of turf and the cottage is freezing. The light is fading and the mist so thick that the islands have disappeared. What an idiot not to plan ahead. There’s only one shop within a fifteen-minute drive where she can buy turf briquettes and that’s closed. This isn’t London where she can just pop out for whatever she wants round the clock. She puts on her jacket and begins to look for the scrap of paper Turf Mary left with her mobile number. She hasn’t a clue where she put it. Everything is in chaos since she started to tackle Brendan’s papers. Notes on Anselm Kiefer and the YBAs, essays on Agnes Martin and Chris Ofili collated for the book Brendan had just started on ‘the end of painting’, lie scattered over the floor. There’d been talk of a show at the Royal Academy that might also have gone on to the Netherlands and New York. She doesn’t know what to do with all the files and papers. She can’t just throw them away. But what use is an unfinished project to anyone else? So much effort and so many hours wasted. Eventually she finds the scrap of paper with Mary’s number in a pot on the dresser among a collection of old stamps, and rusty nails.

  She dials and Colm answers.

  Oh, I thought this was Mary’s phone. I’m so sorry to bother you. This is Martha, you know from Brendan’s cottage. I realise it’s late but I’ve stupidly run out of turf and it’s freezing. Is there any chance that you might bring me up a load? I’m really sorry to be such a nuisance.

  Sure ’tis no problem. Are you up there now? I’m after finishing the cows. Then I’ll be right over. Is it two or three bags you’ll be wanting?

  I guess three to be on the safe side.

  By the time Colm arrives the light has gone as if a black curtain has been pulled across the bay. A gale is blowing and the rain cascading in a river down the track. Colm parks his red van and unloads the bags as the doors bang on their hinges in the wind. Bowed against the heavy rain he balances the bags on his shoulder and carries them into the kitchen, leaving a trail of boot-shaped prints on the flags. Crouched in front of the stove he stuffs twists of paper and kindling into its mouth, then strikes a match. As it flares he adds clods of dry peat. Watching from the other side of the room, wrapped in her big coat, Martha notices that his anorak has risen up over the top of his jeans to expose a patch of dark hair in the small of his back.

  That should do nicely now. The secret is to mix in a little coal. It gives more heat. I’ll bring you over a bag tomorrow if you like, he says, standing and pulling up his jeans.

  That’s really kind of you. As you can see I’m a bit of a townie. Look, I was just going to have a warm up with a whiskey—can I offer you one? I don’t normally drink the stuff but Brendan left half a bottle and it’s such a filthy night. Though maybe you have to get off?

  A whiskey would be grand.

  So you often met up with Brendan, then? she asks, passing him a glass and settling herself on the arm of the sofa, realising that now that she’s invited him for a drink she’ll have to talk to him.

  We occasionally met for a pint. More by accident than design. He was trying to educate me about painting and he seemed to like my songs. And he was interested in Irish poetry. Not just the usual Yeats and Heaney. He’d read Derek Mahon and Kavanagh’s ‘The Great Hunger’. It was like he was looking for his Irish roots. But I’m sure you know all about that, he says, pulling off his woollen hat and m
ussing up his hair.

  Actually she didn’t. She didn’t know anything of Brendan’s interest in either Patrick Kavanagh or Derek Mahon. This was something else she’d just discovered about the man she’d lived with for thirty-odd years. In all the time they’d been together he had never shown much interest in his Irish side. He’d grown up and gone to school in England, and an English boarding school at that. His relationship with Ireland amounted to little more than a few childhood holidays. Slowly hidden bits of him keep emerging like the secret writing children do in lemon juice, which only becomes visible when held over a flame.

  He always asked after my work, Colm continues. He was on at me to send out my poems to poetry magazines and get a critical response. He said it wasn’t enough to write for myself or the band. That wanting to be a writer wasn’t the same thing as being one. That lots of people have ideas and claim they have a book in them. But that’s just baloney. It’s sitting down and beginning, then keeping going that’s hard. And he was dead right about that.

  So you write poetry?

  Yep. But mostly just for me and Niall to sing. Though Brendan was after encouraging me to put together a collection. He suggested I give it him to read. But it’s exposing showing your work to others. While it’s private you can always pretend you’re a feckin’ genius. Singing to your mates is one thing. Literature? Well that’s something else. You know I did three terms at University College, Dublin, but my mam couldn’t manage the land after my father died. I suppose she could have sold up and gone to live in Caherciveen, got a job in Supervalu. But they’ve always had sheep and cattle and I was brought up here. So I came back. There’s plenty of time to write in your head when you’re feeding animals. Ted Hughes kept sheep. So I’m in good company.