The Blackwater Lightship

They scrambled up the cliff at Mike Redmond's and sat on the edge with the sea wide and calm and blue beneath them.

'Did you see much of Declan during all that time?' Helen asked.

'He didn't come to Brussels over the past two years, because he knew we had problems and because he wasn't well, but before that he was a regular visitor. He would come for long weekends and he'd make us hang out in bars and clubs with him, and he'd usually abandon us at a certain time and then come back home in the early hours like a half-drowned dog. My best memory of him was in the morning; he would crawl in the bottom of our bed. He was like a small boy, and he'd talk and doze and play with our feet. Francois always joked about adopting him; he even bought a child's pyjamas for him as a joke and folded them on his bed. Francois loved his visits. Usually, by Saturday afternoon, the phone would ring and someone from Friday night, or Thursday night if Declan had come earlier, would be eager to talk to him and Declan wouldn't be interested. He checked out all our friends from the Catholic gay organisation and a few of them really fell for him – everybody fell for him – and he would bounce up and down with them for maybe two weekends, and then he'd arrive again and we'd know by something he 'did or said that he hadn't been returning So-and-so's calls, so we learned never to tell anyone he was coming. And then the whole routine would start again; he'd laugh about it himself. Francois used to say that once he went to school and met all the other toddlers he'd be all right, and Declan loved being fed and looked after and listened to and protected from his former lovers by us. He was fascinated by how we never had it off with anybody else. He was always listing out the names of actors and asking us if we'd sleep with them. He'd go "OK, Paul Newman in Hud," and we'd shake our heads; "Marlon Brando in Streetcar," and we'd still shake our heads; "Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Di

When Paul and Helen got back to the house, they saw that Larry's car had gone and her mother's car was not there either. When they opened the kitchen door the two cats scrambled back to their vantage point. There was no one in the house.

'Do you think Declan is sick?' she asked. 'Do you think they had to take him to hospital?'

'I'll be able to tell you instantly,' he said.

He went to Declan's bedroom and looked into the locker beside the bed.

'No, all his drugs are here. He wouldn't have gone anywhere without them.'

'Maybe they've gone shopping,' Helen said.

She heated the soup that her grandmother had left in a saucepan Beside the range and made toast and tea. She put two bowls on the table and went back to the range.

'You know that priest in Brussels?' She turned to Paul, who was sitting at the table.

'Yes?'

'Does the Pope know much about him?'

He narrowed his eyes and pointed at her. 'That is exactly the sort of thing Declan says, and he uses exactly the same tone of voice, as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.'

'I was just wondering,' she said.

'And I have no intention of allowing another member of your family to start. I'm sorry I told you the whole story now. It's amazing that people like you are let bring up children.' He smiled ruefully.

'Ah no, Paul, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

'That's why I left this country, remarks like that. French people, even Belgian people, never talk like that.'

'You really are a sensitive boy,' she said.

'You're starting again.'

'But all the same, can you imagine if the Pope got to hear about it?'

'I'm not listening.' He put his fingers in his ears.

Later, they took deckchairs to a spot at the front of the house which still caught the sun. The day was calm, with milky clouds in the sky and a heat which had not been there in the previous few days.

'This is a beautiful place,' he said.

'I suppose it is,' she said, 'for an outsider it is maybe. I have only bad memories of it.'

'Did you ever get on with your mother and your grandmother?'

'When I was a little girl and had no choice.'

'When did you all fall out first?'

'It was years ago.'

'Over what?'

'Sometimes I'm not sure I know.'

'But when did the fighting start?'

'This doesn't look much like a guest-house,' Helen said, 'but in the old days my grandparents would move into what is now that shed, where there were two rooms. And there are, as you know, three and a half bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. A whole family would take over a room; the place was bedlam and they had to be fed morning, noon and night. The summer before I finished school I worked here for a month. My grandmother paid me, my mother and Declan came on Sundays and it was all fine. So I agreed to come and work again the following summer before I went to college. This time, however, my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was different. As soon as I arrived she stopped doing anything herself except bossing me around and not letting me out of her sight. I went into Blackwater one night without setting the table for the morning, and there she was waiting up for me, going on and on about how I had treated her. I know my grandfather had died not long before, but there was no need for it. I couldn't wait for the summer to be over, and by the time it was over I was exhausted.

'I loved UCD from the first moment I arrived there. I met Hugh in my first term and we started going out together, and that was great, even though there were problems because Catholic girls from E

'Gra

'A few days after I arrived back in UCD at the end of the first summer, I was walking down the stairs of the canteen, and I saw Hugh sitting there with a group. He glanced away and pretended he didn't see me. I thought at least he would wave and wander over to meet me and we'd have coffee together, even though I'd only had a single postcard from him all summer. All his crowd had been to America, they had money now and confidence, you'd notice them on the campus. This little mouse, on the other hand, ran scared of her grandmother, had no new clothes, was back in Loreto Hall, run by nuns, had lost her boyfriend and wouldn't meet him again for three or four years, but got used to nodding to him discreetly on the way into the library. He was always on his way somewhere. I became very interested in my studies.'