The Heather Blazing (29 page)

“It could do with a lick of paint,” Donal said. There were flies circling the lampshade in the living room; and the room seemed darker than usual and oddly untidy.

“It'll be over the cliff before we know where we are,” Eamon said. “One bad winter and it could all go.”

“Oh there's still a field between us and the cliff,” Donal said.

Niamh and Cathy, Donal's girlfriend, went out to the car to get Niamh's computer and her cases. They left the child down on the living-room floor. As Donal and his father spoke the child began to scream, his face becoming red. Donal went to pick him up, but he screamed even louder and tried to hit Donal. He seemed inconsolable as his mother came in and took him in her arms. She carried him out into the garden where he continued to cry. Eamon watched them from the window as the child pointed towards himself and Donal and continued to scream.

“You're all right now,” Niamh said as she rocked him in her arms.

“We brought some food down with us, cold stuff,” Donal said.

“That's good,” he said. “But it's early yet. I'm going into the bedroom to read the papers. Maybe you'll give me a shout when it comes to lunchtime.”

He closed the door behind him and carried a chair across to the window. Niamh was outside rocking the child, but the boy had become placid and preoccupied now as he rested his head on her shoulder. Eamon flicked through the newspapers again, found the foreign section of the
Observer
and began to read an article. He was uncomfortable in the straight-backed chair and soon he went and lay on the bed, resting on his side, and continued to read. When he had finished he lay back, his head on the pillow, and closed his eyes. The muscles in the neck were still painful.

The light from the window kept him awake, and he did not feel that he could go over and draw the curtains. They would think that he was sick. He heard his grandson crying again and other voices in the living room.

When he went out into the living room he found that all three of them were cleaning. Niamh was dusting, while Cathy and Donal worked in the kitchen. All the windows had been opened wide. The child was walking around wearing
just a nappy, a bottle half full of milk held firmly in his mouth. Niamh took the chairs and put each one upside down on the table so that she could sweep the floor. She had already put the rugs out on the gravel in front of the porch. Eamon thought of going out into the garden, but the sky was low and dark. He turned to warn Niamh, who still paid him no attention as she began to clean the windows, that the rugs would get wet if it rained, when he noticed the child looking at him. He looked down and smiled. The child still had the bottle in his mouth, he stared at his grandfather, remaining still. Suddenly, he began to scream again, running towards Niamh as though he was about to be attacked. She lifted him.

“Don't worry. You're all right,” she said.

The child continued to cry, even when she carried him into the garden. Eamon wondered what he should do now: he could not sit down at the table since the chairs were still resting there upside down. He could not go into the kitchen as Donal and Cathy were there. He could hear the clattering of plates and cutlery and he wondered what they were doing. He could not go into the garden as the child was there in his mother's arms, still crying. He stood there doing nothing, looking out of the window.

He was hungry now, and he would have enjoyed eating his lunch alone. He wondered when they were going to eat and decided to go back into the bedroom and wait for them to call him. He sat beside the window again. He searched the room for a book but could find nothing that he wanted to read.

After lunch the sky became brighter. Cathy was in the kitchen making coffee with a new machine which they had brought with them from Dublin. Niamh was in her room changing the child's nappy. Eamon stood up from the table.

“I think I'll go for a walk while the day is still clear,” he said.

“Are you not going to have coffee?” Donal asked.

“No, I'll take my walk now.”

“We'll be going back early,” Donal said.

“I'll maybe not see you then.” He looked at Donal evenly.

“We'll wait until you come back, if you like.”

Cathy came into the room with the shining new coffee pot. Eamon had his raincoat on and an umbrella in his hand.

“Are you not going to have coffee?” she asked. It sounded like an accusation. He did not reply. There was silence in the room as they both looked at him.

“Are you sure you won't have some?” she asked again.

“I take a walk every day at this time,” he said.

He walked down the lane to the cliff. The eastern sky looked like rain, but he went down to the strand anyway. He did not want to go back to the house. There was a wind blowing from the north which whistled in his ears and made walking difficult. The clouds were inky black over the sea.

*  *  *

He woke early to the sound of the wind whistling around the house. When he opened the curtains he discovered that the sky was blue and the light clear and sharp. But the wind was up and it would be hard to find shelter outside. He went quietly down to the kitchen and had a glass of water. As he passed Niamh's door he could hear her talking to the baby and laughing as Michael tried to shout out some words. He was going to ask her if she wanted tea, but worried in case the child would begin to cry on seeing him.

He drove into the village to get some groceries and the morning newspaper.

“They were all down yesterday,” Jim Bolger said to him.

“Were they in here?” he asked.

“No, I saw them going up the hill. Have they all gone back?”

“No, Niamh and the baby are still here.”

“You'll have plenty of noise then,” Jim Bolger laughed.

The child was sitting on the rug on the living-room floor when he came back. He was playing with bricks. Niamh was in the kitchen.

“Have you had breakfast?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “I haven't even shaved.”

He went and sat at the table, paying no attention to the child, afraid that if he tried to lift him or talk to him he would cry. He spread out the paper and began to look through the news pages. The wind was still strong outside. After breakfast he would search the garden for a sheltered spot to put his deckchair. He looked behind and saw that the baby was creeping towards him, but as he caught the child's eye, the boy began to scream as though he had been hit. Niamh came running from the kitchen.

“What happened?” she asked.

“He just looked at me and started to squeal,” he said.

“He's acting strange. It must be very unsettling for him,” she said. “Mrs. Murphy is going to take him every afternoon, so I can do some work.”

“He'll be even more unsettled up there.”

“He's used to women.”

“A small recently-born feminist,” he said and grinned. Niamh did not smile.

*  *  *

After a few days watching Niamh with her son he took the view that she carried him around too much. He said nothing, but avoided the child as much as possible, and suggested to Niamh that they wait until the child went to bed before having dinner in the evening. He went back to his law books, setting up a table in the bedroom, as Niamh had set up a computer in her room, and he became absorbed once more in the intricacies of European law.

He noticed on the fourth morning that Michael had nothing to do: he had been put down on the floor while Niamh had a shower. She asked Eamon to keep an eye on him. The child crawled towards the door, checking to see if he was being followed. Eamon let him go. It was a fine, dry day. He carried out the toy bricks which were on the table and put
them on the gravel in front of the house, pretending that he was paying no attention to the child. He acted absent-minded and distracted, making sure not to catch the child's eye. He went back and sat at the window, keeping the child in view, making sure that he did not start eating the gravel. The child played with the bricks for a while and then sat doing nothing.

Eamon went into the kitchen and filled a basin with water. He found a few plastic cups in a press above the sink and put these into the water. He carried the basin out to where Michael was sitting and put it down in front of him without looking at him. He stood back and watched as Michael eyed the water suspiciously and then looked around him to see if there was anyone other than his grandfather watching. The child looked at the water again and then took up a brick and threw it into the water. He put his hand in and fished it out, and then threw it in again, this time with greater force. He was concentrating on the water, so that Eamon could watch him without worrying about the child looking up and seeing him and starting to cry. Michael now put his hand into the water and splashed, ignoring the plastic cups. The sun came out between the clouds; Eamon carried a chair from the living room into the garden, but the child did not notice him. He had become so absorbed in the water.

Niamh came out and stood at the door.

“Did you give him the water?”

“Yes; he had nothing to play with.”

“He is usually afraid of water. He hates having a bath.”

“He's happy enough there.”

“Yes, he does look happy.”

Michael had begun to laugh and squeal as he emptied the water on to the ground with the plastic cups. He protested as Niamh held him to take off his jumpsuit. He refused to wear the white hat she had brought out for him, so she took it back inside and left him there with the water. He played a
little longer with the plastic cups, then stood up and tried to empty the basin but fell back and sat down again, trying to turn the basin over from a sitting position. When a tractor passed along the lane he looked up and tried to crawl towards the gate. Then he stood up, but the gravel was too hard on his feet. Eamon went over quickly, picked him up and brought him to the gate just as the tractor was going by. He pointed at it, and tried to say “tractor”; he laughed and clapped his hands at the noise and the smoke, as the tractor went away from them up the lane. As soon as it had gone Eamon put him down again beside the water.

The following day, while Niamh was having her breakfast at the table by the window, Michael followed his grandfather into the kitchen and pointed at the basin. He looked at Eamon and tried to say something. Eamon filled the basin up with water and put it on the kitchen floor, as the day was too dull to go outside.

They watched as the child splashed the water with his two hands.

“How did you get the idea for water?” Niamh asked.

“Your mother used to do it all the time. Do you not remember? You and Donal were put sitting out in the garden with a basin of water. You used to play with it for hours. I remembered it the other day.”

“I don't remember it at all,” she said. “I must have been too young.”

*  *  *

She worked after dinner most evenings; he saw very little of her, he still walked for hours during the day. He had lunch alone in Wexford a few times. In the evenings he read, watched television and had a few glasses of brandy to help him sleep. Once the child was asleep, or out of the house, Niamh's presence was calm, unobtrusive. He noticed that she seemed to dress carefully every day, as though she was working in a city office. When the weather was warm enough
she went for a swim in the early afternoon, but the autumn was slowly encroaching, and the nights were becoming cold.

Michael was still fascinated by the water, and came to associate his grandfather with the red basin. One night when he woke and was carried into the living room, he looked at his grandfather and pointed to the kitchen. He wanted his basin of water and cried when he was told that it was too late.

Every night before going to bed he and Niamh had a cup of tea together. At times Eamon found her strangely like her mother in the way she spoke and responded. Sometimes when she smiled she looked exactly like Carmel, even though her face was a different shape and her colouring was different.

“I see there's a For Sale sign at Julia Dempsey's,” she said one evening.

“It's only a few fields,” he replied, “and the house. But the house is in a terrible state. I don't know who could buy it.”

They said nothing for a while.

“Was Julia Dempsey born in that house?” Niamh broke the silence. He looked up and thought for a moment.

“No. Her aunt and uncle lived there and she came to stay with them and they left it to her.”

“She had a great collection of caps,” Niamh said. “I never saw her without a cap.” She poured more tea.

“There was a funny thing about her,” Eamon said. “She always believed that her uncle had money hidden away somewhere.”

“And did he?” Niamh asked. Her way of responding was so like Carmel's that Eamon sat back for a moment and hesitated.

“She never gave up the idea that it was somewhere,” he went on. “She told your mother that she'd often wake in the middle of the night and think of a new place where it might be hidden.”

“And she never found anything?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “I don't think there ever was any money. But all her life she was convinced that her fortunes would change if she could only find it.”

Niamh looked at him, smiled and nodded her head.

“I never knew that about her,” she said. She was interested in the story and attentive in exactly the same way as Carmel.

*  *  *

A few days of Indian summer came to Cush, the temperature higher than it had been all summer. Eamon found it hard to sleep in the heat and woke at first light, feeling tired and worn, with a pain in his back and the base of his neck which became acute when he bowed his head. He tried to do exercises with his arms to loosen the muscles, but it was not enough, and he decided he would have to swim much more to ease the pain.

At half past eight he drove into the village to get the paper. When he came back the sun was already strong over the sea. Michael was sitting up in his high chair being fed, banging his spoon against the plate and laughing. Eamon patted him on the head with the newspaper and he blinked his eyes as though afraid, and then Eamon did it again and he laughed, wanting more.