Departures (4 page)

When she resurfaced, the water ran off her in all directions with the soft spit and sigh of a bubble breaking. The deacon caught hold of her wrists as she straightened and gave her a push as her eyes scanned the shore, a little shove to get her started as she struck out towards whomever she'd come with, waving, bright pearls of water sliding off of her skin.

Ah, your poor sister, my father said. We both knew my sister had wanted this for herself. Standing once in the corridor just outside the ward, I'd heard her describing her plans to my mother, the changes she'd make in the way she'd been living, the difference that Christ had already made in her approach to things, good or bad. I'd listened to their voices, rising and falling like gulls in strong wind, until my father returned with three cups of coffee and a glass of orange from the hospital canteen. Whatever brings you strength, my mother had said, whatever you trust enough to believe. But then her church had acquired a transparent tank with internal wiring, waterproof lights, and a set of steps with a handrail leading down, and though she'd considered moving to some other parish, eventually she'd reconciled herself to a second birth indoors. Poor thing, my father said, it's been hard for her, too.

The next woman, taller, lay back in the Lough like a plank of wood. When she righted, the water broke over her arms first, then her face, burbling from her mouth and nostrils, twist-spinning off her hair; she was smiling. The minister helped stand her erect, kept his hand at her elbow as she moved away, until the swing of her arms as she walked through the water pulled his touch free and other arms reached out towards her with towels, welcoming her back to the shore.

Then it was Eddie. I heard the tide hiss and swallow on
the sand as he entered, and made up my mind not to take my eyes off him until I was sure he was going to be okay. I'd asked him once why he'd never learned to swim, and he'd answered quite simply, I don't like the water. I know in the absence of riptides and whirlpools the odds of drowning are very slight, but still I'm afraid of being pulled under, of stepping suddenly out of my depth. You must think that's awfully silly, he'd said. Not at all, my father'd said. There's no one I know who isn't afraid.

When I was younger, I'd spent a week on a peace camp with Catholics, one of several cross-community ventures to be held that summer in Ballyclare. The leaders who had organised it had stood each one of us on a four-foot stump the second day, had us fold our arms across our chests, close our eyes and fall backwards stiffly, into the arms of the rest of us below. I remember the sensation of gathering momentum, the surge of my heart and the heaviness behind—and then the clutch of many fingers, my clothes tightening like sheets snapped taut, and the hard heels of hands, buoying me up. A trust fall, they'd called it. There'd been twenty-eight altogether, fourteen of them and the same number of us, and we were almost through it when one of the boys had refused to participate. No one would do anything after that, and the rest of the week went trying to remember just how much each one of us had told the others, wondering what they'd do with the information, wondering if we'd given too much away.

My own ears filled as his went below water. The sound of everything suddenly grew thick, as when I lay in the bath with my head submerged listening to the subterraneous whine of a tap in the kitchen, the soft, hollow whisper of my knee on enamel, or the low, cetaceous echo that answered when I knocked on the floor of the tub with my heel. I held my breath when I saw him go under, felt fire
spread from my heart to my lungs to the pit of my stomach, my whole body brimming with a flammable gas, my joints swelled, I could see only udders, old tubes of toothpaste, bakers in white hats filling pastry with cream, and I gasped. When I opened my eyes Eddie's arms were reaching up through the face of the water, and I thought of a picture I'd seen of some famous fountain—Laocoon and his sons encoiled by serpents: their fingers, too, had been sharply angular, just so had the water around them heaved and churned. From the top tier the gods had looked down through the windows of heaven, and wide jets of water had streamed out from their mouths.

Later, back in school, we'd tried it ourselves, the trust falling. There'd been no stump so we'd stood in a circle and taken turns being in the middle and allowing ourselves to fall back against the crowd. But part of the circle was weaker than the rest; it did not surprise me when at last I broke through. It seemed to take ages before I hit asphalt, and as I was falling I imagined them watching, caught off-guard by their error, observing the breeze in the force of my fall.

He came up choking. Even as he left it the water dragged him down. He'd thrashed so much all three were sodden—Eddie, the minister, and the deacon as well. When they reached the shore with Eddie between them, my father was there, and together they lay him out on his back a few yards from the water. Then my sister got down on her knees in the sand beside him, and when she had loosened the clasp at his collar she took his chin in one hand, his nose in the other, covered his mouth with her own and kissed him, kissed him, till his eyes fluttered open and again he breathed.

Departures

My father did the double the year that Harry died. By the same reasoning that led him to drive his brother's car only on Saturdays because he had no license and was not insured, he worked only part-time to minimise his chances of getting caught. As a strategy for survival it worked remarkably well, and he could have gone on that way forever, had Harry's nephew not turned him in.

My father was fifteen years in the city before he moved into the house beside Harry's. The second son of a man whose farm was neither large nor rich, he'd had no choice but to leave the country and try his luck away from the land. At twenty-three he'd taken a bus from Ballymoney to Belfast and arrived in the city just as the shops were closing. He'd walked from the depot to the centre of town amid the sluggish flow of people emptying out of offices and into the streets. In search of a boarding house or a YMCA he'd hired a taxi and headed west, to the home of a girl the driver knew, a girl from the Shankill who lived alone and took in lodgers.

When I was old enough to appreciate romance, my father would speak to me of her as any aging artist would speak of what was once his inspiration. Her name was Madelaine Andrews, and she had just turned twenty when they met. She was tall, slim, and glamorous, with the wide, liquid eyes and the full, pouting lips so favoured by the fashion-conscious of a later era. Her hair was long and auburn, and so unreasonable that she wore it where it fell,
or else piled it up haphazardly. In every way she defied expectation: she was bookish, yet beautiful; privileged, yet unpretentious; street-wise, but unbruised.

The only child of a defiantly mixed marriage, she, like her parents, had made a name for herself as an independent thinker, unfettered by the fads and mores of the moment. At a time when those of her peers who had not embraced some form of Christianity had rejected their gods altogether, she would not join the rush to declare what she believed and why. At eighteen she had moved out of her parents' house and found a place of her own with two other girls from school. Six months later they left to get married but she stayed on alone, readying the rooms and airing the linen and opening the house to any lodger, male or female, who happened to apply.

My father's previous experience with the opposite sex had been limited to brief, ungainly contact with certain farmers' daughters at the infrequent functions his local parish held; he had never met anything like her before. As a child I loved the story of their meeting because it was in its telling that my father's powers as a speaker were most pronounced; yet at that meeting Madelaine struck him dumb. She spoke incessantly, but in a low, mellifluous voice so pleasing that he could not describe her talk as chatter. On the stairwell she explained that she did not own the property, the government did, and that strictly speaking she shouldn't be hiring out the rooms. My father had been raised never to touch things not his own, and such things included the law. Yet with one month's rent already paid and the keys there in his hand, the uncomfortable feeling settled upon him that he'd already committed a crime.

In the small, white bedroom at the top of the house he'd unpacked his belongings while she set his books out on the
mantle. Having inspected their titles she asked to borrow Kavanagh, and as she was leaving with the book under her arm she'd cast a final glance over his collection and remarked that she, too, was an ornithologist. He'd looked at her blankly. You like birds, don't you? she'd demanded. Uncertainly he'd agreed. Well, then, she'd said, as if all had been made clear, you're an ornithologist.

The next morning she broke the rules of her own establishment and made him breakfast. She also pressed his trousers, polished his shoes, and lent him a tie. My father was a handsome man when he was young, well-mannered and polite and clean about his person; but he had never dressed for an interview before, had no idea what to wear or how to behave, and the unfamiliar made him awkward. Madelaine, who enjoyed the process, adopted his cause as her own, fussing over his appearance and advising him what to say, and arranging to meet him in the town that evening to hear how he'd gotten on.

Perhaps it was his country accent, or perhaps he simply wasn't qualified for the jobs for which he applied, but in the weeks that followed my father could find no work at all. Occasionally he was short-listed; now and again he had an interview, but eventually he grew tired of filing forms to no avail and resigned himself to being unemployed. For a while he spent his time in the hills above the city with his books and a flask of tea, but eventually the weather disowned him and he was forced indoors.

Madelaine was an indifferent housekeeper. She liked to keep the floors swept and the porcelain surfaces in the bathroom clean, but dusting bored her so she never did it. She was a competent but unenthusiastic cook, preferring simply to stock the kitchen and have her guests prepare their meals themselves. Gradually, and without intention, my father took on the minor chores: he'd collect the soiled
linen, recreate the unmade beds, or push a broom around the kitchen whenever he grew restless or whatever he was reading temporarily lost appeal. He'd been doing this for more than a month when Madelaine approached him one evening after tea to suggest he abandon his search for a job in the city and look after the house full-time.

It was easy work, and after weeks of frustration and disappointment he accepted with relief. He did the shopping, the cooking, and the washing up; he boiled the tea in the morning, kept track of the lodgers throughout the day, and in the evenings secured the door and banked the fire before he went upstairs to bed. In return for his services, Madelaine allowed him room and board, and finagled him free membership at the private library where she worked. Within the year she'd agreed to be his bride.

My father's marriage did not alter his circumstances or improve his attitude towards his surroundings. The arrangement did, however, provide him with the companionship of a partner who understood and sympathised with him. My mother knew that had it been possible, her husband would have returned at once to his father's pastures; indeed, he never would have left them. Her own wish was simply to leave the Shankill for anywhere else at all, though why she was so desperate to leave was never very clear. By way of explanation she would say only that she didn't like the people, and since she had grown up with them, antipathy was her right. It was true she had never found her niche among the women of the Road, that the schoolmates and relations with whom she'd been most friendly had long since moved to Dublin or crossed over to Stranrear. It was true, too, that she valued her privacy and disliked the tradition of unexpected visits which was so much a part of life on the Road. And yet so many people knew and liked her that the greeting cards we got at Christmas could cover the surface
of every sill and end table, while others hung from lengths of ribbon which each year spilled down like bunting over the branches of our tree.

Every Wednesday on her day off from work she would go down to the Housing Executive to inquire into the status of her application for a transfer. She knew every official and representative by name, and would pester them with phone calls and letters until they either transferred or retired, or departed this world for the next. To whomever replaced them she would send a note of welcome and a copy of her file, but still she wasn't moved.

My father would accompany her on her weekly visits to the Housing Executive, and before Stephen and Nicola were born and I was left at home to mind them, my support was enlisted as well. During these interviews my mother refused to be put off by the kind of excuses that invariably silenced her neighbours. If the files had been lost or the computer had gone down, she had her own copies with her in her bag. If the application forms had been updated and she had to resubmit, if there were no places available in the locations she preferred, even if they told her outright that there was nothing wrong with her present situation and she lacked sufficient points to move, still she would not back down.

Standing just out of earshot with my hand in his, my father and I would watch her through the glass which separated one consulting cubicle from the next and strain to hear as she made the odd suggestion as to how to improve the quality of the service they provided. Do this, she appeared to be saying, gesturing at the collection of cranky children and chain-smoking adults that filled the waiting area behind her with no clear idea of the order of their arrival or who was next in the queue, and all
that
will disappear.

As the years went by without progress on her case, the
younger staff would joke with her and tell her that when they built the next branch office, they'd let her cut the ribbon and crack open the champagne. Get me that transfer, she'd tell them, and I'll let you name it after me.