Sunrise with Sea Monster (2 page)

I lay awake for a while thinking about how everything had changed. He would later ask me about that time and about my memories
of her, which grew dimmer as the years went on. I remember her well enough, I would say, to disguise that image I had of the
bed in which she sat daily, surrounded by the paper into which she coughed. My one regret, he would say, is that she died
before you got a chance to know her. The fact that this phrase, my one regret, became the prefix to many different statements,
all of which he seemed to regret, did not pass me by. But I came to see that all of his regrets were centred round the one,
the one he wept about as he stood in the bedroom and asked who he was, the one he felt as he deserted those fish and ran towards
Maisie when that strange cry came out of him like a seagull's. I didn't know adults, I didn't know they could not state the
obvious and only cry when alone. What I did know was that everything had changed and that my soul would change into a cold
hard crystal because it had changed. I felt a sadness oozing out of me that I must dispel since I knew I must be free of it
or live underneath its moisture for ever. It hovered above me like a departing soul and went out the window and I knew then
that if she had gone anywhere it was into that sea from which we had plucked so many fish.

And I could see her as time went on gathering crusts of things the way objects do that are exposed to the tide. Things that
have nothing to do with them: weed, shellfish and the dull green colour of copper when it rusts. Then again I would think
the opposite: that she would become hard and smooth like a pebble or a piece of glass that loses its edges with the movement
of the water, acquire the water's pale green colour, become something between water and stone. And I heard pebbles thrown
against the window, as if to interrupt my thinking. I shook myself, walked out of bed in my communion suit and saw Mouse down
below, throwing stones at the window.

C'est la vie,
he said. He still had the empty bottle of milk in his hand. What does that mean? I asked him. Something deep, he said. Come
on down, Dony, I'm in trouble. Why? I asked. Spent the money for the milk, he said, and I'm afraid to go home without it.
As I climbed down he heard the money jingling in my pockets. By the sound of it, he said, you've got some spondulicks. I have,
I told him and when I reached the ground I emptied my pockets. I knew by now that he knew, but he would wait for me to mention
it. Of uncertain parentage, he knew the etiquette of these things. So the money clinked, the coinage of the thing itself.
There were four half-crowns and assorted sixpences. Where'd you get them, he wondered. People give you them when your ma dies,
I said. He looked at me in the light coming from the upstairs window. His brown eyes like cocker spaniel's, pale creamy face
that made the lips too red and a lick of dark hair over the forehead. Mine were brown too, the hair was dark, but the skin
was olive, like a foreigner's.

We walked across the sparse grass that led to the broken wall that led to the promenade. I'm sorry for your trouble, he said.
But we must be thankful for small mercies. I didn't know mine. I didn't reply to this. I knew he spoke the way older kids
spoke, for the sound of it mostly, and he mostly got the words wrong. We climbed over the broken wall and began running towards
the lights of the amusements in the distance. But I stopped. I'd noticed something just beyond the line of the tide. Two poles
sticking out of the water and a couple of shapes flapping between them.

He left his fish, I said and began to want to cry again.

What fish? Mouse asked.

Those ones. I pointed.

Ah come on Dony, and he dragged at me again.

No. They're important.

And I clambered down towards them, into the water in my good suit, the shoes making a sucking noise each time I stepped. He
stood at the edge, still jingling the coins.

What do you want them for? he asked.

For posterity, I said. It was a word I thought would have shut him up, since we both would have to pretend to understand it.

Ah yes, he said. The noise of the coins stopped. I grabbed both rods and dragged them out of the water. There were three plaice
we hadn't yet unhooked. Their surprised eyes bulged and they shivered with their last pieces of life.

Got to go now, I said, dragging them behind me, towards the house.

I'm going to get it, Mouse said.

How much was the milk? I asked. I surprised myself, assuming control.

Sixpence, he said.

Here, I said, and held out my hand. He looked at me silently, his lips red in the moonlight, then he held out his. I took
the coins and left him sixpence.

Don't go, Dony, he said. It was changing the rules somehow.

Have to, I said, and gave him another sixpence.

I walked back to the house and left him standing there by the water. Everything had changed, all right. When I got to the
door, he was still there, looking up at me.

My father answered, dressed in his funeral suit.

You forgot these, I told him and held out the two rods and the dying fish. Sam.

They laid her out the next morning, in the upstairs living-room, in a dress that seemed to intimate a genteel party of some
kind. My father held my hand and we both leaned forwards to kiss her perfect cheek. She looked younger in death, not sick
any longer, but somehow distant, as if she was already sleeping beneath the tide that crept over our night-lines. Her brothers
lifted the coffin and my father took his place up front. As he was taller than all four of them they had to stretch to keep
some semblance of balance. They walked gingerly down the stairs and out to the waiting car. We sat in the seat beside him
and I watched through the window as the cortege drew off and every neighbour we passed removed his hat. Outside the church
there was a crowd and each hat again came off. I saw Mouse, his school cap in his hand and his aunt's shock of yellow hair
under a black bonnet. Again I felt numbed and oddly privileged. The wind blew from the Head, my uncles strained to accommodate
my father's height and only when we were seated inside, next to my tall, dark-suited father and the priest walked through,
coughing in his coloured robes, did it strike me how fully gone she was.

Now that the sun has whatever meridian it needs to recreate that vulgar glory behind her head, the priest can make his entrance.
The Guardia Civil straighten their three-cornered hats and the soldiers begin their laconic march forwards. The coloured figure
walks behind them, purple since it will be Easter soon, and behind him two peasant soldiers dressed in white, one carrying
the cruets, the other the makeshift altar. The Virgin flaps once more in the breeze, Mussolini flaps in turn and the tight-lipped
Spaniard stays silent, as if he is today the stoic arbiter of the proceedings. The mackerel-ribbed magenta halo behind her
holds its glory for one last beat and the wind is rising, whipping clouds of dust round the drab procession. The guards behind
us fall to their knees and we stay standing. And maybe that was part of what brought me, tales of disinterred nuns waltzing
in the arms of anarchists in Barcelona. I can see myself as Judas, he who betrays because he dimly perceives that was all
that was expected of him. His stance in the living-room, preparing me for Mass, each Mass in memory of her, I suppose, his
rigid expectation that I too would follow her precepts and the equally rigid certainty that I wouldn't. She had vanished,
effected a trick more complete than any town-hall magician, he had moved his bed from his office back into the big brass bed
where I used to lie with her and the string of pearls she had hung from the metal bars, her wedding and engagement rings now
sat in the drawer, beside the gun and the shoulder-holster, mementoes of a marriage and a conflict of which he rarely spoke.
Perhaps I missed her most for that, for the hints and stories she would give me of that past of theirs, bullets whacking past
the chimney while the Irregulars and Free-Staters fought it out on the hills above.

And I realise that betrayal seeds itself, like a weed through a garden. His memory of his War of Independence was like the
inviolate rose, ravished by the Civil War that followed. And fifteen years later, I joined a remnant of the splinters of that
conflict, a wayward bunch of Republicans who, having exhausted the litany of betrayal at home, sought new possibilities abroad.

Come father, I should have whispered, talk to me, tell me why you so disapprove, show me the drama of your past, not your
stiff present. You will kill him, Rose told me. Rose, who came to teach us piano and stayed. Maybe, I said, but I knew she
was eluding me too. Whatever unspoken promise had been mooted on the piano keys had by now been forgotten, as if it had never
existed. He has proposed to me, she said, her head leaning on the door jamb, the piano gleaming like a black seal behind her.
He told me he would, I said to her. Her eyes wanted to know but I didn't continue. Hands gripping the green baize card-table,
the veins already bulging blue with the signs of age, eyes all avoidance. I am marrying, he told me, because it will be the
best thing for all of us. How? father, I asked him. Don't gall me, he said, you know how. But no, I told him, I honestly didn't.
She has brought some peace to this place, he said, she's from a good family. What else? I asked him. The truth is, he said
and he looked suddenly tired, I've let you run wild. No, I told him, I've done that entirely on my own. Talk some sense to
me, please, he asked. I've done the best I could, under the circumstances. And I thought if the circumstances were different,
she might, we might, get along a bit better. So it'll be on her shoulders, I said. No, he said, it'll be on all our shoulders.
This place hasn't been a home for fourteen years. And have you informed the lady? I asked him and his hands shook, as if at
an insult. Miss de Vrai, he said, is aware of my intentions. Thank God for that, I told him. I need your support, he said.
Just tell me I'm right.

I stood there and said nothing. There was an obscenity at the heart of it I couldn't quite fathom. She is half your age, I
wanted to say. Don't ask me to make your mind up for you, and I remembered what he said when he put me to bed the night she
died. We'll make do, he said, won't we? There was the same question there, the need for reassurance. We didn't make do, I
thought. But I repeated it anyway, wondering would he remember. We'll make do.

That night I played the piano while he tinkered with the fishing gear. She was due at seven. She would come in, I knew, with
the knowledge that he had told me. Outside the sun was falling over the Irish Sea. The tide would soon be fully out and he
would roll his trousers up to his calfs and paddle out, with spade and two rods and a tangle of lines. Some ritual was taking
place, he wanted to be alone where I could see him, remembering that place we inhabited together years ago now while I sat
with her and somehow managed the knowledge of what he had told me. I tried to get the Ravel perfect while I heard the door
below me close and heard the gate creak and soon saw him on the beach below, walking towards the line of retreated sea, looking
for the casts the rags had left. He soon became a thin silhouette against the rage of colour in the evening sky behind. Then
I heard the gate creak again and knew it was her. I heard the footsteps towards the door and saw the silhouetted figure digging
furiously in the sand outside. Then the sound of the door opening and the footsteps up the stairs. I played, hitting wrong
notes with my left and wondered would my rendition of "Pavane for a Dead Infanta" somehow tell her that I knew.

Introibe adaltare,
the priest begins and I think it odd that they have the universal language while we aspire to the universal politics. The
Welshman to my left chews a match and the two German youths stand bolt upright, as rigid in their opposition to the ceremony
that is forced upon them as they would be in the observance. The wind has blown a fine layer of sand on to their faces, barely
distinguishable from the pale down of their cheeks. They throw a glance sideways towards me, and I'm reminded again that they
regard me with something like suspicion. Over the first weeks we lay on the hay on the stone floor under the vaulted ceiling
of what must have been a wine-cellar and they talked about politics with a numb duty, as if only to remember what brought
them here. In the beginning I answered dutifully but then, unable to stand their heroics any longer or even just possibly
out of respect for a more mundane level of truth, I told them I came here because of all courses of action I could have taken
it was the only one I knew with certainty that my father would have disapproved of. The words hung in the air, a dumb reality
they knew, maybe, but would never admit.

So, though I stand with them now, I am suspect. I know in my heart the intimate rituals the priest circumscribes in the sandy
air with his thin white hands. I welcome them secretly as a hint of home. I stand out of some obscure sense of fellowship
but it is neither exhaustion nor the angular pebbles on the soles of my feet that make me want to kneel. I would slip downwards
with relief, would welcome their contempt, would put myself outside once more another sphere of approval. And if I let my
heart quicken the way it wants to, tears maybe would stream down my own sandy cheeks. I can remember those walks on Sunday
down the promenade, both of us in our best suits, to the church on Sydney Parade. Those neighbours who passed us would nod,
their faces set in what came to seem a permanent mask of condolence. The sea would change, from white-capped to still, steely
grey, I would grow, my suit would change, my height would gain on his but the walk was sacrosanct and the hush of the church
interior was always the same. I will go to the altar of God, to God the joy of my youth. There was a shocking relief in the
silence there, in the knowledge that we could abide together amidst this ritual, and as with the nightlines, not have to blunder
towards speech. So I came to think of God as a great mass of quiet, a silence that was happy with itself, a closed mouth.
Till the time came when I would interrupt that quiet.