The Heather Blazing (24 page)

“I'll tell her that,” her sister said.

He sat at the back of the Cathedral the following morning but he did not see her, and he waited in his seat, watching out for her, as the crowd slowly left the church. He waited there until most of the congregation had gone out. He wondered as he genuflected if she would be in the ground of the church, but he knew that she had not turned up. He walked home along the Back Road and turned down the Tanyard Lane into Court Street. He was tempted to knock on the door of her house and ask for her; even when he had passed he considered turning back, but in the end he continued walking along John Street towards home to have Sunday lunch with his father.

He did not see her until late in the summer when he was staying for a few days with his father and the Cullens at Cush. It was a warm, mild Sunday. He had been at late Mass with his father, after which they had gone for a drink to Mrs. Davis's pub, now run by her nephew. As he started the car in the village he noticed a group of girls going by on bicycles and spotted Carmel among them. They turned left at the bridge in Blackwater. He drove past them, and glanced in the mirror as they got off the bicycles to walk up the steep hill which led to Ballyconnigar.

In the afternoon he had a swim. When he had dried himself he changed into his trousers and shirt, leaving his shoes and pullover with his towel and togs near a marl boulder, and walked along the strand towards Ballyconnigar.

He could see a group of girls sitting on the grass bank across the river as soon as he turned the corner. He was walking in his bare feet in the shallows, and had to roll up the bottoms of his trousers to cross the river. There were a number of groups sitting on rugs in the fields in front of Keating's house, or further along the strand, but he was sure that Carmel's group was on the bank. When he came level with them he stood still and looked up towards her with his hand on his forehead shading his eyes. He knew that they all saw him, he began to move up the strand, slowly approaching them, but stopping halfway to roll down the bottoms of his trousers. When he stood up he could see that Carmel was making her way slowly towards him, wearing a summer dress. He stood and watched her approach.

“I saw you in Blackwater,” he said. “I thought that you might be over here.”

“Are you in Cush?” she asked.

“Yes, I'm staying in Cullen's with my father.”

Neither of them spoke, until it became awkward.

“I should go back up,” she said. “We'll probably go back soon. You forget how many hills there are until you come down on your bicycle.” She smiled.

“I could drive you in later on,” he said. “We could tie the bicycle on to the boot.”

“No,” she said. “I should go back with them. We came all the way down together.”

“I'm sure they wouldn't mind,” he said.

“No, I'd rather not,” she said.

“That's very disappointing,” he said. He could see that she was anxious to go back to her friends. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I'd really prefer to take the road home with the others.”

“I'll see you sometime, then,” he said, and turned back towards home. He wondered what she would say to the others, but was sure that she would not say much. When he had walked a certain length, he sat down in the shadow of the cliff and looked out at the sea. He did not think that he would see her for a long time.

*  *  *

He was surprised, then, when a few months after his father's and uncle's visit to the Four Courts there was a message for him in the Law Library to phone Carmel O'Brien and gave the number of her office in Enniscorthy. As he waited for the receptionist to put him through, he wondered why she would phone him and he felt interested and excited at the prospect of speaking to her.

“It's Eamon Redmond,” he said when he got through to her. “I got a message to phone you.”

“Yes, your Aunt Margaret asked me would I phone you and leave a message. They couldn't get through to you, and they knew I'd be in the office.”

“What's the trouble?” he asked.

“Your father's in Brownswood. He took a turn yesterday, but your Aunt Margaret said that he's improved today.”

“I'll be down as soon as I can. Will you pass on that message please? I'm in the middle of a case but I'll see what I can do to get away,” he said.

“I'll pass on that message. Your Aunt Margaret said that she'd ring me before five,” she said.

“Is it serious?” he asked.

“No, they told me to tell you that it wasn't serious, but they just wanted you to know.”

He could not leave the case and thus had to wait until the weekend before going home. He spoke to his Aunt Margaret several times, and she assured him that his father was merely
being kept in hospital for tests and observation. When he finally arrived in Enniscorthy he felt uncomfortable as he opened the door of the empty house with his key, and then walked from room to room as though he had just returned from a long time away. He knew that he would have to come back here alone when he had seen his father, and spend the night here.

He drove to the hospital and looked into several rooms, searching for his father. It was visiting time and visitors sitting around the beds glanced up at him expectantly and then looked away. Eventually, he found his father in the corner bed of a small ward. They had marked his throat with a bright red paint; he seemed weak as he smiled up at Eamon.

“It's lovely and bright here,” he said.

His father nodded, his eyes alert.

“Do you want anything? I didn't know what to bring down with me.” His father pointed to the bedside table to show that he had everything he wanted.

Eamon sat down in the chair beside the bed and they talked until visiting time was over. He told his father that he would be back the next day; his father's head did not leave the pillow. His father smiled and Eamon remembered what the smile reminded him of: his father in his wedding picture and the solid, kindly, contented expression he wore then.

He drove along the Wexford Road towards the town. He would call on his aunt and uncle and then go home. He dreaded the empty house. He wondered if he could call on Carmel; she had seemed friendly on the telephone. He was puzzled still by his aunt's asking her to telephone him and wondered if it were a ploy to encourage him to contact her again. He decided to try. When he left his aunt and uncle's house he drove to Court Street and parked his car outside her house. As he knocked on the door and waited for an answer several people passed and greeted him, and he knew that his visit would become the subject of gossip in the street. Her mother and her sister came to the door together.

“She's out,” her mother said. “She went out to do a message. How's your father?”

“He's well enough. He's in good form,” he said. “Will she be back?”

“She's only gone out for a while,” her sister said. “I'd say if you call back in half an hour she'll be here.”

She was there when he called back. She asked him if he wanted to come in, but he wanted to talk to her on her own.

“Can I see you tomorrow night?” he asked.

“All right.”

“What time would suit you?”

“Say half past eight?”

“I'll be ready then. Were you in Brownswood?”

“I was. He seems weak enough. I'll know more tomorrow.”

He wondered as he sat by the fire at home if he should tell her that the state was going to abolish hanging. He had advised Charlie Haughey, the Minister for Justice, on the proposed legislation. He had, in fact, drafted a bill for him, and gone with him to a private meeting with representatives of the Gardai, who had to be consulted about any new legislation. Eamon had come up with the suggestion that the murder of a Garda should remain a capital offence. Otherwise, he knew that there would be strong opposition to the legislation from the Gardai. He liked Haughey, admired his pragmatism and his clear mind. Both men had agreed that, despite the clause about the murder of a Garda remaining a capital offence, it was unlikely that there would be any more hangings. As he turned off the lights downstairs and got ready to go to bed, Eamon decided not to tell Carmel about the meeting and the proposed reform. He had become involved because he was asked, not because he wanted to placate her.

*  *  *

Carmel had been to the hairdresser's and put on good clothes. Eamon was nervous in the car with her. He asked her where
she would like to go. She said that she wanted to get away from the town.

“Your Aunt Margaret says that you're going to be a senior counsel, the youngest in the Law Library,” she said.

“In a few months,” he said.

He drove along the cement road to Wexford; she talked about her job and her family. It was good, she said, to go out on a Saturday night, as her father was drinking heavily.

“Saturday night is his big night,” she said. “From about four o'clock you can feel the tension as my mother watches him to see if he's going out. Drink makes him quiet. He's hardly able to walk when he comes in after the pubs close but he never says anything. He sits down and looks at the ground, and then my mother starts to give out to him. He never says anything much, but she attacks whatever he says, and goes on and on at him. Some of the things she has said to him I couldn't repeat to you.”

They went to the Talbot Hotel in Wexford and sat in the lounge having a drink before dinner.

“Do you fancy us seeing a bit more of each other so?” he asked.

“If you're around, I'd love to see you,” she said.

He asked her no other questions, but saw her again the following weekend. On Saturday nights she began to stay in his father's house until late to avoid the trouble at home. She came to the hospital with him a few times to see his father, but there was still no sign of him getting any better.

One Saturday night when he was about to walk her to her own house they stood in the hall. He turned and kissed her and caught a sense of her body, the life in her, and he wanted to ask her to stay with him. As he held her, without moving, he could feel his penis stiffening against her. She opened her mouth and he could feel her small wet tongue against his.

“You won't be involved in any more hanging cases, sure you won't?” she asked as they walked down John Street.

“Are you serious then, about us?” he asked.

“Are you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

*  *  *

One Friday evening he found his father asleep in the bed. He sat down and watched him, trying not to disturb him. But after a time he went over to the window, and then out to the toilet. When he came back again, he examined the chart at the bottom of his father's bed, reading the comments for each day: poor, weak, very poor. He moved away as quickly as he could and sat by the bed again.

A while later, his Aunt Margaret and Uncle Tom arrived; he knew by their attitude that his father was not getting better. He saw his uncle talking to one of the doctors in the corridor. His uncle looked worried. He turned and went to sit by his father's bed once more. His aunt was kneeling by the bed, saying the Rosary. In the corridor again, he saw the doctor coming towards him, but he turned back towards the ward, pretending that he had forgotten something. Later, he telephoned the senior counsel in a pending case, and explained that he would have to be excused.

He noticed everything changing: they did not seem to be treating his father for anything except pain, they put a screen around the bed and restricted visitors to his immediate family. He told Carmel nothing, but realized that she knew, that everybody knew, not just in the hospital but in the town. But still he did not ask, and still no one told him.

His Aunt Kitty came from Tullow; he watched her leaving her chair beside the bed and going into the corridor to cry. She returned and knelt with a nun who had been in school with his mother and they said the Rosary. They put a pair of special beads which had been blessed by the Pope into his father's hands. Eamon knelt with them, but did not pray. He waited with his Aunt Kitty and the nun until it was late. He saw them whispering when they had finished the Rosary, and
then they went out into the corridor while the doctor and two nurses attended to his father. He did not speak to them, but went to the toilet to wash his face.

When he came back his aunt was crying in the corridor as she spoke to the doctor. They watched him as he approached. The nun came up to him and held his hand.

“Eamon,
a stór
, we're going to lose him. Your poor mother will be waiting for him with all her prayers. He's after getting pneumonia and he won't last. He won't last the night. We're going to send word to your uncles and aunts. He needs all our prayers now, Eamon, for his journey.”

His eyes filled up with tears as he went to the window.

“He didn't know up to now,” his aunt said to the doctor in a voice loud enough for him to hear. “None of us could tell him.”

“Is he going to die?” he asked the doctor.

“He's not in any pain,” the doctor said, “but I don't think he'll last the night.”

He turned away crying, and moved further down the corridor away from them.

“Eamon, you'll have to be brave,” the nun came and held him.

*  *  *

After the funeral he went to his aunt and uncle's house. Neighbours called and shook his hand and spoke a few words to him, some of them staying for a cup of tea or a drink. Carmel's mother told him to sleep the night in their house if he wanted to, she had made up a bed for him. When he saw Carmel, he asked her to stay behind with him. They went into the kitchen, but more neighbours called and he had to go and accept their condolences. When it grew late he drove through the town with her, and stopped the car outside her house.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked. “There's a bed for you. You heard what my mother said.”