Sunrise with Sea Monster (12 page)

But he wouldn't, I knew, or wouldn't have been. The sun must have been particularly hot, or the blanket round him, for there
was a glimmer of sweat on his brow which gathered into a drop and trickled down his nose to his cheek. I could almost have
mistaken it for a tear. Are you too warm, father, is she too eager for your comfort and wraps you in blankets when your astrakhan
will do? Or could it be a tear? I wiped his cheek with my hand and turned the wheelchair to face the battleship. Boats on
the horizon had always meant a lot to him. Thoughts of the Americas, of the edge of the world, those days before Galileo when
the earth was flat. Those monsters at the world's end, fabulous creatures whose pleasure was to whoop as the galleons tumbled
through the void. Maybe he has chosen silence, I thought then. The battleship edged slowly past the crown of his waving hair.
The world being so unspeakable, he would rather be mute. This condition was a blessing he would have desired.

I walked on again, and saw another tear gather. I thought paradoxically how pleasurable his silence was. Not because I wouldn't
hear him speak, but because it was only his infirmity that allowed me approach him without embarrassment, circumspection,
and all of those awkwardnesses that had made us what we were. Do you hear me, father? I thought and felt for a moment from
his inert shoulders a resounding yes. But I leaned forward and looked at his eyes and saw them fixed upon the battleship,
quite blue, with all the vacancy of cornflowers.

I pushed him on again to where the railings ended and the promenade moved easily and gently on to the sand. The sand was hard,
strewn about with pebbles and the wheels moved easily over it. When we made it to the point from where the tide had retreated,
the wheels bumped and splashed over the ridged pools, his head jerked periodically. I apologised uselessly to him but pressed
on. We reached the edge of the rippled water then and I faced him towards it, with his eyes fixed on the slowly moving fortress
of grey. I took the spade then and dug, in the way he had taught me. I was rewarded with a handful of worms and jammed both
rods on either side of his chair, the hooks swinging in front of his face. I skewered a worm on each hook, looking at his
eyes each time for a hint of recognition. I felt the urge to talk, but kept it down, remembering the silence he used to maintain
with me. When the work was finished and each worm struggled on its hook I stood for a while with my arms on his shoulders,
looking out to sea. I remembered the wall of water in my dream and imagined the battleship carried by it, smashed against
the shore like a child's toy. I felt the same peace again, the same lack of need for speech. I pushed him back then towards
the promenade, wondering had he felt it too.

I spent the day in the house, with Rose and himself, seeing whatever rhythm they had established between them. She moved him
from the front door to the back yard, following the movement of the sun. She worked through papers in his room, told me the
details of his finances, which were almost nonexistent. She played the piano in the afternoon. As the tide came in, the battleship
passed out of view. I sat upstairs in what once was my room listening to the soft rustle of her Schubert. The music called
for me to come down, play with her, share whatever mood it was we had before, but I didn't dare. I felt it was a chord between
the three of us, threading through the house. I saw her cycling down for groceries at half-past four, when the tide was on
the wane. I went down and played myself then, the same tune she had played, as if to keep him company. When the light was
beginning to fade, several hours later I went to my room again and could see, way down the beach, my rods beginning to emerge
from the retreating water. I went to Rose, who was in the kitchen, and asked her could I walk him once more. With a little
luck, I told her, we might have caught something.

So I wheeled him down the promenade again, through the evening chill that was descending from the Head. He sat with the same
rigid intensity and when I bumped him over the sand his spine hit the seat with the rhythm of a jackhammer. I could see a
silver glint in the evening light, jerking between the rods. When we reached them I found seven mackerel hanging from the
hooks.

We cooked them that evening, and the first pebble of our new existence fell into place. I had a function, however humble.
I was a gatherer of flesh from the sea outside. I gutted them, Rose prepared them and father sat by the radiator, his eyes
on the metal bars, blinking regularly, as if aware of his impending meal. His breath quickened slightly as the fat began to
spit. When he heard the chink of the bowl against the cutlery, I could swear I saw his lips move.

I wheeled him from the radiator to the table.

He knows something, I said to Rose.

Like what? she asked.

He knows food is coming.

You trying to be funny? She wiped her hands on her apron.

I could hear him breathing when the fish fried.

She opened his mouth and began to feed him gently, wiping his beard all the time, fork in one hand and cloth in the other.
She ate herself while he chewed, then fed him again.

I never thought of fish, she said.

Why not? I asked.

The Emergency, she said. No meat to be had, so I cook potatoes.

Do you consider yourself his wife? I asked.

I've no one else, if that's what you mean.

That's not what I mean.

And what if I do? she asked.

Something in her tone made me bridle.

What did I do wrong, Rose? I asked.

Just about everything.

I touched her neck. She shifted away, slowly.

Tell me.

No.

Go on. Give me a hint.

I touched her again and she let my hand stay.

It's all connected, she said. Something broke in him when you left.

And is that my fault?

You could have stayed.

With both of you? You know I couldn't.

I would have gone, if you'd asked me.

The thing is, I said, you were his intended . . .

Perhaps I was. But that's connected too.

His plate was empty. She poured a mug of tea for him, put a straw in it and placed it in his mouth. The tea slowly vanished
from the mug, silently.

I twirled one of her blonde curls round my finger.

Did you love him, then?

You must assume I did, she said.

She leaned her head back and eased the muscles of her neck against my hand.

But do you know what's more important? she said.

What is?

The fact that he may have loved you.

That's a very large assumption.

Call it what you want.

She got up, suddenly, dispelling my hand.

He'll sleep now.

How can you tell?

He has his habits, like any child. Help me.

I left her in his room, settling him in the dark, the sound of waves outside. I walked back into the kitchen and saw the letter,
where I'd left it by the windowsill. I opened it again and looked over its incomprehensible hieroglyphics. I caught the word
"Scarlett." I knew that somewhere in the dark well of quantum physics, somewhere between the lines of
Gone With
the Wind,
lay a code that would translate it. How appropriate, I thought, that he had written in a symbolic language that was indecipherable.
Then I remembered his statement: that everything must be paid for. I felt a cold wind hit my spine and wondered what form
my payment would take. I opened the grate of the range, placed the letter on the coals and watched it burn.

The next morning I took him for a walk again. It was fast becoming a ritual. I felt some expectancy in his shoulders as I
pushed his wheelchair down the prom. There was a cold brisk spring wind and flecks of white on every wavecrest. The wind parted
his beard in the middle, like a biblical patriarch.

So did you love her, father? I asked him.

But of course, I answered. I could almost speak for him now. I could imagine his voice, like an apologia inside me. So we
walked and talked of her. Rose, in all of her manifestations. Teacher, wife, lover, nurse. We decided we relished them all.
I moved up from the prom on the path round the Head towards Greystones, bumping his chair over the rocky ground so his head
jerked back and forwards as if in agreement with my musings. We can exist, I told him, in the illusion of perfect harmony.
I passed the nest of a hedge-sparrow and leaned the chair sideways so he could see the skyblue eggs. I pointed out a hawk
to him, hovering at knee level by the cliff face. Nature seemed to complement our union. I told him about the Hitler-Stalin
pact. He took this in with his familiar blankness, so I elaborated.

Don't you realise, I said, this means an end to all our arguments. Or to all argument. The beasts are in bed together. Or
doesn't it make a difference? He stared at the metal plate of the sea below us and said nothing so I assumed it didn't.

I bumped him on to the smoother surface of the promenade. Figures passed us and nodded, elongated by the morning light. Then,
approaching the house I saw a burly shape leaning by the railings. In the shadow of the houses, a bicycle propped beside him.
I walked closer and saw a policeman's uniform, topped by a thatch of cropped red hair.

Grand day that's in it, he said, in a thick Kerry accent.

Thank God, I said. I pushed the chair past him, towards the door. He followed, and spoke again.

You received a letter yesterday.

I stopped and nodded. I felt a familiar shiver.

So you would be Donal Gore?

Yes, I said.

Rose opened the door. She looked from him to me to father. The policeman lowered his voice, conspiratorially.

When you're ready, sir, if you'd come with me.

I left father with Rose at the doorway, avoiding her troubled gaze. You'll be back by teatime, said the policeman softly,
touching my elbow with one arm, holding the bicycle with the other.

He walked me to the train and took a seat by the window, his bike perched incongruously beside him. Great weather these days,
he said, despite the bother over the water. I asked him was I under arrest and he shook his head, smiled sagely and winked.
A couple of questions he said, that'll be the long and the short of it. When the train pulled into Tara Street he walked blithely
with his bike from the carriage to the platform and out along the low wall by the Liffey. A grand wee country, he said, if
they'd only leave us be. His cryptic statements seemed to demand agreement, so I agreed. The boys in the Castle, he said,
have a great weight to bear.

The boys in the Castle turned out to be middle-aged with paunches, one with a small holster supporting his. We found them
through a succession of low corridors, in a room without windows, lit by a gaslight. The guard who brought me stopped with
his bicycle at the door, gestured me inside with a grimace of sympathy.

The thing is, one of the boys said, with no introduction, this will have to be investigated.

What will? I asked him.

The letter, said the second, the damned letter.

You will appreciate, said the first, we must keep an eye on things.

What things? I asked him.

Things from across the water, he said.

Absolutely, I agreed.

And your missive did cause quite a stir.

Am I to assume that it was opened?

Assume what you like, the second one said.

The thing is, the first one said, you'd never be up to the antics of that shower.

And what about the other shower? the second one asked. Sure they're even worse.

A silence fell as they contemplated the virtues of one shower or the other. I stood for a moment, then shuffled.

So what am I here for?

They both looked at me sharply, eyes birdlike, chins puffed beneath their collars.

To meet Mr Soames, the first one murmured. He nodded his head to his companion, who opened an inner door. There was a tallish
gentleman sitting by the gas-jets of a fire, shoeless, the soles of his feet raised to the warmth.

Mr Gore, he said and rose and stretched one hand over a sea of papers. Pardon us for bothering you. But you will appreciate
the situation you find yourself in is rather delicate and could be interpreted in a number of ways.

I told him I fully appreciated that.

We could make two assumptions, he said. We could assume this letter came to you as part of some prior arrangement, in which
case your complicity in an implicit act of espionage will result in your spending the remainder of the war—or should I say
the Emergency—in the Curragh Camp. You know the Curragh?

I pictured the row of drab huts surrounded by sheep off the road to Kinnegad and assured him I did.

Or, he said, we could assume that this missive came of its own volition, without any complicity on your part, in which case
you can spend the remainder of the war in any way you choose.

I told him the latter was the case, and to contact one Jeremiah Noonan at the consulate in Barcelona, a small officious Corkman
with rigid sartorial standards.

We have already done that, he said. We found that your stepmother contacted Foreign Affairs in Stephen's Green with a plea
to intervene on your behalf in any way they could. The resultant contact led to a member of the Abwehr conducting you from
your incarceration near Madrid.

He took a long breath. The detective behind me exhaled.

You'd never be up to them, he whistled between his teeth.

I myself favour the second assumption, Soames continued. Which in turn leads to two separate courses of action. One can ignore
this and any subsequent missives—for I have no doubt that more will follow. Or one can act upon it.

He let the silence in the room speak for itself. He looked at me, then away. The first detective scraped his shin with his
fingers and did likewise.

First, I ventured, and found myself copying his syntax, one would have to divine what the missive contained.

We have made some progress, he said and smiled softly. We consulted the professor of mathematics in Trinity College and found
the key was Heisenberg's Leipzig paper on the uncertainty principle, published in 1927. Each equation is simply a reference
to a page, a line and a word within that line. The only puzzle remaining is the colour code at the beginning.