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The Heather Blazing: A Novel
The Heather Blazing: A Novel
The Heather Blazing: A Novel
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The Heather Blazing: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic.

Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).
LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateOct 30, 2012
ISBN9781476704470
Author

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.

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Rating: 3.7160494716049377 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I understand why the main character was fairly emotionless and somewhat arrogant. I felt the story ended well, but it took an awfully long time getting there. He spent an enormous amount of time walking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An elderly judge Eamon Redmond lives with his wife Carmel and travels to the fair city of Dublin everyday to fulfill his high court role. A quiet, thoughtful, deeply intellectual man Eamon often reflects on his life in the present and moments of his childhood that helped shape and create the person he is today. His childhood was a time of order, daily chores, and routine but always under the auspices of the only binding force in the community; the catholic church. A church that demanded allegiance and in return for such devotion and faith man could be saved from the evils of the world, but "without God’s help, we will all die in our sinful condition and remain separated from God forever". The truth of the situation was that the church offered few answers for a young man exploring his sexuality, trying to make sense of the often painful passage from boyhood to manhood. However politics and the allegiance to a particular party played a much more prominent role in the life of the citizens with its constant reminder of past struggles and romantic leaders most prominent of which was Eamon de Valera and the famous Easter rising of 1916 against British rule. As Eamon Redmond becomes immersed in the politics of the age he meets and falls in love with a young party worker Carmel who is equally smitten by her admirer's oratory skills and his ambitions within the political arena.The story is told in two parts a reflection, often romantic, view of childhood with its warmth and sadness at the passing of close relatives, and in contrast adulthood, responsibilities and complex decisions that constitutes the daily routine of a high court judge. To me The Heather Blazing celebrates the importance of family and how the youthful formative years impress and influence our decisions and mindset into adulthood. Colm Toibin is a great observe of daily routines and the Ireland he describes reminds me, as an Irishman, of my own childhood with simple family routines embedded forever in my mind....."They all settled around the fire, the women with glasses of sherry, the men with beer, the three boys with glasses of lemonade. Eamon watched as his father tipped his glass to the side and poured the beer in slowly, letting it slide softly down the edge of the glass"....The harsh beautiful untamed Irish landscape with wild unpredictable seas somehow compliments the simplistic yet deeply moving narrative of one of Ireland's finest authors.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The best description I can find for Colm Toibin's "The Heather Blazing" is that it's a quiet novel. The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond, a somewhat cold Irish judge who spends some gloomy days recollecting his past. Being set in Ireland, the book includes a bit of politics as well as a pretty typical domestic life. There really isn't a ton happening plot wise here.I found the book to be an easy read and the characters were interesting enough to keep my attention. That said, I didn't find it especially compelling either... (it's one of those books that I'm afraid a year or two from now, I'll have absolutely no recollection about except that the title is familiar.) So, overall for me, this was just an average book for me... I honestly didn't really love it or hate it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Eamon Redmond, the narrator of The Heather Blazing, is a middle-aged Irish judge nearing retirement. The novel opens as he and his wife return to their County Wexford family home from Dublin where Eamon works on a ruling in the controversial case of an pregnant unmarried teacher who was fired from her position at a Catholic school. Most of the novel is composed of Eamon's reminiscences of his earlier life in Enniscothy (Toibin's home town): his grandfather's and uncle's deaths, his schooldays, his father's launching of a museum and his later stroke, his first sexual experiences and falling in love with his wife, his political activities and early days as a government prosecutor, etc. These memories are interwoven with present-day episodes involving his wife Carmel and his adult children, Maeve and Donal. One repeated refrain is Carmel's complaint that Eamon seems "distant" and her unsuccessful efforts to break through his reserve. The closest he comes is early in their marriage, when he admits that, his mother having died when he was a baby, he grew up to be self-sufficient, believing that if he ever had to ask anyone for something, they would likely refuse. "No one ever wanted me," he tearfully confesses. Yet decades later, as Carmel struggles to speak after a stroke, she tells him, "We need to talk. You are always so distant. You never tell me anything. You don't love me. You don't love the children." I have to admit that I was a bit mystified by her complaint, having been privy to a lot of Eamon's thoughts, feelings, and concerns, and having seen him caring tenderly for his ailing wife, grieving after her death, and reaching out to his children in his loneliness. There are, after all, a lot of ways to express love besides talking about one's feelings, and Eamon seemed to me a good man who was devoted to his family.This is not a book with a powerhouse plot and lots of action: it's a quiet revelation of and meditation on a life. The afterward reveals, as I suspected all along, that much of it was based on episodes from Toibin's own life, although he insists that Eamon is a totally fictitious character. Toibin's writing is moving and insightful, his love of Ireland and small town Irish culture apparent. A lovely book overall.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read The Master when it was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker. I loved the cool, elegant prose and the delicate exploration of Henry James' feelings and manners. I'm not sure why its taken me 5 years to pick up another Toibin novel but I'm very gald I did. The Heather Blazing won't be for everyone. There are no fireworks here, no vampires or wizards, no sudden plot twists or amazing coincidences - nothing out of the ordinary really happens at all. Instead we get a subtle exploration of the differences between a person's public and private personas. Eamonn Redmond is a High Court judge in Ireland. Each of the three parts of the book starts with his ending a case just before summer recess and heading down to his holiday home on the east coast of Ireland. Interspersed are chapters from his early life - first as a boy, then a teenager and finally an aspiring and promising barrister. Redmond's mother died during childbirth and his father had interests in many matters other than his son. He grows up self-reliant and reserved - qualities that work well in a judge but are less attractive in a husband and father. As well as exploring the development of Redmond's character, there is some beautiful writing on the Irish landscape and sea in particular. Also interesting are the passages about the post-independence Irish civil war which is not well known about in England but was very nasty indeed (c.f. Sebastian Barry's excellent The Secret Scripture). But what really shines out is Tobin's wonderful prose. Every sentence is crafted so that there is not a word out of place. There is precision and honesty in his style reminiscent of Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea and in Orwell's later works. Not a book that you want to gobble up in one go, but worth savouring slowly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Heather Blazing reads as a very 'Irish' book (as one would of course expect from Colm Toibin) with themes and elements of family, memories, the sea, religion, politics and death. There's not much action or plot here as such, but who cares? I found the start a bit slow, but the final result is a poignant character study of an intelligent and 'successful' man whose need to be self reliant from a very early age leads him into his own little island of emotional isolation.The writing is deceptively simple, having a controlled quality reflecting the emotional tone of the book, and the narrative flows effortlessly to and fro between past and present.While reading, I was reminded of similarities between this book and Old Filth by Jane Gardam . . . another piece of brilliant writing with the main protagonist also a Judge, and the present being juxtaposed with memories of his past. Very different settings and stories, but remarkably similar emotionally stunted characters.A very melancholy book, but not wholly depressing. The ending has a redemptive quality, but it's just such a shame that it took his gut wrenching grief and sense of loss on the death of his wife, Carmel, to force Eamon to leave his little island.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a random purchase from my local charity bookshop a few weeks ago, and was just the kind of fiction I was in the mood.The Heather Blazing is one of those books were the chapters alternate between the past and the present. In the present day, the protagonist is a senior judge in the Dublin courts enjoying the escapism of weekends at his old family home at the coast with his wife. For a while, the jumps back to his boyhood frustrated me a little, as they seemed to be going nowhere and I tire easily of Ireland-of-yore fiction, but as the novel progressed the point of these chapters became clearer and they provided the back story of why Eamon Redmond had become the man he was, for good and for bad, politically and socially.It took me a while to warm to this novel, but in the end I really enjoyed it. Toibin writes with warmth and compassion towards his characters, and although Redmond had his flaws by the end of the book I loved him because of his flaws, not despite them, understanding how his earlier years had shaped him.With the historical backdrop of Enniscorthy in Wexford, a key location in the 1916 Easter Rising, Irish republican politics are woven into the story, past and present. I often struggle with the romanticising of terrorism in Ireland, but Toibin handles it delicately enough.4 stars - probably not a book I'll remember too much about in the near future, but recommended when you're just in the mood for a decent page-turner.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “He went out to the shed to get coal. The night was pitch dark: with no moon or stars. Back inside, he sat at the window and looked out at Tuskar and the fierce beam of light which came at intervals. He watched for it, it was much slower than a heartbeat or the ticking of a clock. It came in its own time, unfolding its light clear and full against the darkness which was everywhere outside” (p. 157).


    Colm Toíbín isn’t a stylist in the traditional sense of the word. There’s no single sentence you can point to in this novel and call it ‘lyrical.’ Rather, his entire oeuvre has a quietly lyrical quality. He paints his prose in minimalist brushstrokes.


    If there’s something to be learned from Colm Toíbín, it’s that mood, setting, dialogue, drama – even the national character of an entire people – can be gleaned, at least intellectually, from the barest of brushstrokes.


    That – at least to my way of thinking – is no mean accomplishment.


    As I sit here now in Brooklyn, New York on the cusp of winter, I’ve had the advantage of chilly, drizzly, gray days as background to my reading of The Heather Blazing. It couldn’t have been staged any better! God knows, this is not a beach book. It’s not really a spring or summer book of any kind. An occasional crackle from a fireplace – together with a cup or two of tea – might enhance my reading experience, but neither of them is really necessary to complete the picture of Colm Toíbín’s portrait of contemporary Ireland.


    ‘Bleak’ is the word that first comes to mind – but not ‘bleak’ in the traditional sense. That kind of ‘bleakness’ has been done to death in Irish, British – and more recently, in American – literature. Colm Toíbín’s ‘bleakness’ feels as natural to this story as unremitting sunshine would feel to most stories about Southern California. And it’s the ‘bleakness’ of Ireland in the mid-twentieth century that sets the tone of the entire novel.


    But the novel is also about a marriage – starting with a courtship at the time of a political campaign in which both characters are engaged in a supporting role of the Fianna Fáil national party – and about growing old together and dying, all of it told in Toíbín’s singular, minimalist style.


    Highly recommended – not for the fireworks, but for the admirable restraint.


    RRB
    12/05/14
    Brooklyn, NY

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This quiet novel is a man’s compelling reflection on his life. Eamon Redmond is a 60-odd-year-old High Court judge in Dublin. He is married to Carmel, and they have a grown son and daughter. Each year, they spend their holidays at their vacation home in Cush, a remote village by the sea. It is set in Ireland so images of the weather abound, as do magnificent descriptions of the land and sea.Eamon spent his childhood holidays in Cush, so visits there evoke memories of times gone by. As he reminisces, a portrait of a man emerges. His mother died during childbirth,so he grew up with his father and together they led a comfortable existence. He recreates that kind of life with Carmel, where they do a lot for one another, and lead a peaceful, contented life. When Carmel has a stroke, he cares for her in the most touching way – just as he cared for his father when he took ill, many years before. There were numerous poignant passages in the text.Tóibín is a hugely accomplished writer and his spare, understated prose speaks volumes. This was a well-crafted novel indeed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Eamon Redmond’s mother died when he was a baby. Raised by his emotionally distant father, he suffers shock after shock to his sense of self as first his grandfather and then his beloved uncle pass away in one foul week. And later his father, whose eloquence and dedication as a teacher he admires greatly, suffers a debilitating stroke that renders him severely speech-impaired, the butt of jokes from his now unruly students. His father’s eventual death is perhaps the final blow. Though love, in the form of his future wife, Carmel, rescues him in part. In part, because he may be too emotionally damaged to ever fully risk himself with anyone, even his dearest love. Nevertheless life proceeds, solidifies into history, and gradually erodes to become nothing at all.Now a high court judge toward the end of his career, Eamon is given to remembrance, especially of his youth, but also of his early efforts to woo Carmel. Over the course of three years, divided between the last day of the court term and the hurried escape to his childhood retreat at a house near (ever nearer) the encroaching sea cliff at Cush, we follow Eamon’s thoughts and his muffled emotions that protect him even as they bar him from the full and warm relations he desires with his wife, children and grandchild.Tóibín’s writing here is measured, thoughtful, poignant. Through Eamon he connects us to the political and legal history of Ireland. But those grand themes are as but a backdrop to what it must be to be Eamon, the man, or the boy, suffering quietly and without relief. At times the writing achieves a stillness, even peace, that is like that which a fine poem can bring forth. Indeed the quietude is so pronounced that almost any action or intrusion of historical “events” seems harsh or clumsy. That’s a bit unfair since, at its best, The Heather Blazing surely marks a writer coming into his full powers. And indeed Tóibín’s later career fully justifies that estimation.Gently recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A quietly beautiful novel about family, intimacy and the passing of time, the slow rhythms of a life, the simple but moving stories. Little happens, but a picture builds up with Toibin skilfully using narratives from two periods of Eamon Redmond’s life as youth near Wexford and High Court judge in Dublin, including the significant silences. It then looks like it might all be washed away, but there is still life and life goes on.

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The Heather Blazing - Colm Tóibín

More Praise for The Heather Blazing

[A] stunning Irish novel, which seems to derive its clear and affecting style in part from the staunch personality of its protagonist . . . and in part from the chilly beauty of the southeast coast of Ireland.

The New Yorker

A triumph . . . Rich and moving . . . The portrait of Eamon Redmond and his world is as grim and exacting as the nature of the character himself.

—John Banville, Vogue

The quiet but relentless force of Tóibín’s prose, its honed honesty and extraordinary shading of color and mood, animates his stories far beyond what might be achieved in the creation of mere ‘dramatic situations’ . . . You hear in Tóibín a tone more contemporary and therefore more comfortable sounding than Joyce’s; you can detect a trace, quite distinct though perhaps inadvertent, of Hemingway . . . What Tóibín has that Hemingway never possessed is wisdom. There are breathtaking moments, episodes of glassing clarity and trueness to the deepest chords of emotional and spiritual life.

—Vince Passaro, New York Newsday

A moving tale . . . The more one thinks about this clear-headed yet intense book, the stronger the impression it leaves.

—Mark Harman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

There are . . . a handful of writers who manage to combine our time’s awareness of the boot tracks families leave on their members’ psyches with a direct and uncomplicated experience of those wounded lives. They are masters, and there are precious few of them . . . To nominate someone for that august company, Colm Tóibín seems an unavoidable candidate.

—Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Globe

"The Heather Blazing makes a breathtaking leap into the realm of Joyce’s Dubliners."

Mirabella

"Tóibín dispels all possible doubts that he is one of the most important Irish writers of his generation . . . The Heather Blazing is an amazingly dense and complex work, containing . . . not only the life story of its protagonist, but also in a sense an account of the life of the modern Irish state since its inception."

—Eamon O’Kelly, The Irish Voice

"Splendid . . . The Heather Blazing is a story of illumination . . . a seductive, absorbing character study, the work of an accomplished realistic novelist."

—Bruce Allen, USA Today

Colm Tóibín spins [a] beautiful and haunting character study in [this] powerful, moving celebration of life and the cycles of change and sameness all humans must endure.

—Phyllis Lindsay, Irish Echo

The novel is narrated dispassionately and with deceptive simplicity, moving between the public figure of the judge in his study and the terrible deaths of childhood . . . It is impossible to read Tóibín without being moved, touched and finally changed.

—Linda Grant, Independent on Sunday

Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Three

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Afterword

About Colm Tóibín

For Brendan, Nuala, Bairbre and Niall

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Eamon Redmond stood at the window looking down at the river which was deep brown after days of rain. He watched the colour, the mixture of mud and water, and the small currents and pockets of movement within the flow. It was a Friday morning at the end of July; the traffic was heavy on the quays. Later, when the court had finished its sitting he would come back again and look out once more at the watery grey light over the houses across the river and wait for the stillness, when the cars and lorries had disappeared and Dublin was quiet.

He relished that walk through the Four Courts when the building was almost closed and everyone had gone and his car was the last in the judges’ car park, that walk along the top corridor and down the centre stairway; old stone, old wood, old echoes. He loved the privacy of it; his solitary presence in the vast public building whose function was over and done with for the day.

Years back he would stop for a moment, as he had been instructed to do, and examine his car before he opened the door. Even though the car park was guarded, it would still be easy to pack explosives underneath; often as he turned the ignition he was conscious that in one second the whole car could go, a ball of flame. He laughed to himself at the phrase as he stood at the window. A ball of flame. Now things were safer; things were calm in the south.

He went over to his desk and sifted through his papers to make sure that everything was in order for the court. He noticed, as he flicked through the pages of his judgment, that the handwriting, especially when he wrote something quickly, had become exactly the same as his father’s, a set of round squiggles, indecipherable to most others.

He gathered the papers together when his tipstaff told him that it was time.

I’m ready when you are, he said as though the tipstaff were the one in charge. He put on his robe and his wig, pushing back some wisps of hair before walking out into the broad light of the corridor.

He had learned over the years not to look at anyone as he walked from his rooms to the court, not to offer greetings to a colleague, or nod at a barrister. He kept his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. He walked slowly, with determination. Downstairs, the Round Hall was full, like an old-fashioned marketplace. The corridors were busy as he walked towards the ante-chamber to his court.

This was the last day of term, he would have to deal with urgent business before getting down to read the judgment he had been working on for several months. He looked again through the pages, which had been cleanly typed by a court secretary and then covered by emendations. All the references to previous judgments were underlined, with the dates they had appeared in the Irish Reports in parenthesis. This judgment, too, would appear in the Irish Reports and would be cited when the rights of the citizen to state services were being discussed in the future, such as the right to attend a hospital, the right to attend a school, or, in this case, the right to full-time and comprehensive psychiatric care.

He waited in the ante-room. It was still not time. He felt excited at the prospect of getting away. Soon, he would be twenty-five years on the bench and he remembered this last day’s waiting more vividly than the humdrum days or the significant or difficult cases, this waiting on the last day of term, knowing that Carmel had everything packed and ready to go.

They spent each summer recess on the coast, close to where they had been born, where they were known. When he thought about the summer house, he felt anxious and uncomfortable. He knew that he had been brought there as a baby during the first summer after his mother died. He had spent each subsequent summer there as a child with his father. He thought about it now in the minutes before the court sitting.

There was a hush when he came into the courtroom and sat down on the bench. He put his papers in order. The court was full, and it was clear from the number of barristers in the front rows that there was a queue for injunctions and early hearings. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head and a buzzing sound came into his ears. He closed his eyes until it passed, holding the pages of the typescript between his finger and thumb. The heating in the court had been turned up too high; already the atmosphere was stuffy. He looked around the court, waiting for everyone to settle. There were too many people standing at the back, some of them were blocking the door. He instructed the clerk to tell them to come forward.

One barrister in the front row was already on his feet.

My lord, he said, I wish to ask this court to dispose of a matter which is of the utmost urgency . . .

Is it of such urgency that it cannot wait? he asked him. There was a snort of laughter from the barristers at the front.

Yes, my lord.

He listened for a while to the complex story of a company being wound up and its assets distributed. After a time he interrupted to ask if the man would be satisfied with an injunction freezing the assets until the court reconvened after the holidays. He then noticed a barrister from the other side seeking his attention.

There’s no need for you to address the court, you can spare your client much expense if you tell me that you will agree to have the assets frozen.

The barrister, whom he recognized as one of the old Fine Gael establishment, continued to speak, explaining his client’s case.

I must interrupt you to ask if you have been listening to me. Have you been listening to me?

Yes, my lord.

Then there is no need for you to explain the case to me. We simply want to know if you will accept the court freezing your client’s assets, until the court resumes.

My lord, I wish to say—

Wish or no wish, will you accept it or not?

Yes, my lord, on condition that we can have an early hearing.

The conditions are for me to impose. Do you understand? I decide on the conditions.

We would be grateful for an early hearing, my lord.

I shall look forward to seeing you as soon as possible, he said. In fact, I don’t know if I can wait. Again, there was laughter from the front benches.

He listened to several other barristers before reading his judgment; he came to an agreement with each one about early hearings. The barristers left as soon as their business was settled. He began to read.

He cited the facts of the case: the handicapped child who needed constant care and would need such care, in the view of the doctors, for the rest of his life. As far as doctors could judge, his life span would be normal. The father was employed and the mother was a housewife with six other children. He tried to set the case out clearly, factually, coldly. He summarized the arguments which the lawyers for the family had made, and then he came to the case for the hospital which wanted to release the child. He had taken notes during the long hearing, but he had tried also to listen carefully to each side and write a summary of the deliberations when he adjourned the court each day.

He began now to summarize the legal precedent governing the state’s duties and the individual’s rights. There was still a group of barristers standing at the door, adding, he thought when he looked up from his judgment, to the clammy atmosphere of the court. He cleared his throat for a moment and then continued. He cited a number of American cases which had come up in the course of the hearing. He went on to explain that there was nothing in the Constitution which either stated or implied that the citizen had an inalienable right to free hospital treatment. The state’s functions and responsibilities had to cease at a certain point; the state had freedoms and rights as well as the citizen.

As he read he became even more certain of the rightness of his judgment, and began to see as well that it might be important in the future as a lucid and direct analysis of the limits to the duties of the state. It had taken him several months, the long afternoons of the spring and early summer in his chambers and then later in his study in Ranelagh, thinking through the implications of articles in the Constitution, the meaning of phrases and the significance which earlier judgments had given to these phrases. He looked through judgments of the American Supreme Court and the British House of Lords. He wrote it all down, slowly and logically, working each paragraph over and over, erasing, re-checking and re-writing. Carmel told him that he needed a computer and his son Donal told him the same, but he worked on his judgment in the same way as he had always worked. He would find that a single sentence by necessity expanded into a page of careful analysis; then sometimes a page would have to be re-written and its contents would form the basis for several pages, or give rise to further thought, further erasures and consultation. Or, in the light of early morning, when he read over his work, the argument would seem abstruse, the points made would appear irrelevant, the style too awkward or too dense. He would take the page and throw it in a ball across his office. He would smile then, for that was what his father had always done with paper when he was writing, absent-mindedly rolling a sheet into a crumpled ball and throwing it across the room. Years ago in the morning, when he came down and drew back the curtains, he would find these small balls of paper all over the room.

He realized as he wrote the judgment what it meant: the hospital would be able to discharge the child, and the parents would be left with the responsibility of looking after a handicapped son. He added the proviso to his judgment that the Health Board should ensure, in every possible way, that the child’s welfare be secured once he was discharged from the hospital. He noted the state’s account of the social services which the parents would have available to them, and he said that his judgment was provisional upon those services remaining at the parents’ disposal.

When he finished the judgment he saw that counsel for the state and for the hospital were already on their feet, looking for costs. He consulted with counsel for the plaintiff who said that he wanted the court to make no order regarding costs. He caught the mother’s eye, he remembered her giving evidence. She would have little chance if she appealed to the Supreme Court, he felt. He decided to put a stay on costs, and he told the lawyers that he would consider the matter in the new term. One of the laywers for the hospital said that his client would rather have the matter decided now.

I think you mean that your client would rather have the matter decided in his favour now but, as I’ve said, I’ll decide in the new term.

*  *  *

When he was back in his chambers he telephoned Carmel.

I have everything ready, she said.

It will take me a while. I’ll see you as soon as I can, he replied.

He put the receiver down and went again to the window. He watched the small, soft delineations between layers of cloud over the opposite buildings, the strange, pale glow through the film of mist and haze. Suddenly, he had no desire to go. He wanted to stand at the window and clear his mind of the day, without the pressure of the journey south to Cush on the Wexford coast.

The murky heat of the day would settle now into a warm evening in Cush, the moths flitting against the lightshades, and the beam from the lighthouse at Tuskar Rock, powerful in the dense night, swirling around in the dark.

He went back to his desk and thought about it: the short strand at the bottom of the cliff, the red marl clay, the slow curve of the coastline going south to Ballyconnigar, Ballyvaloo, Curracloe, Raven’s Point and beyond them to the sloblands and Wexford town.

He stood up and wondered if he had anything more to do; his desk was untidy, but he could leave it like that. He was free to go now; he went over to the bookcases to see if there was anything he should take with him. He idled there, taking down a few books, flicking through them and then putting them back again. He went back to the window and looked at the traffic, which was still heavy on the quays, but he decided he would drive home now, pack up the car and set out.

He drove along Christchurch Place and then turned right into Werbergh Street. It had begun to rain, although the day was still bright and warm. He hated days like this, when you could never tell whether the rain would come or not, but this, in the end, was what he remembered most about Cush: watching the sky over the sea, searching for a sign that it would brighten up, sitting there in the long afternoons as shower followed shower.

He had known the house all his life: the Cullens had lived there until the Land Commission gave them a better holding outside Enniscorthy. Himself and his father had gone there as paying guests every summer, and each of the daughters had been what he imagined his mother would have been had she not died when he was born. He remembered each of their faces smiling at him, the wide sweep of their summer dresses as they picked him up, each of them different in their colouring and hairstyle, in the lives they went on to live. In his memory, they remained full of warmth, he could not remember them being serious or cross.

He turned off Sandford Road and pulled up outside the house. He left the keys in the ignition as he went in. The rain had stopped now and the sun was out. He found Carmel sitting in the conservatory at the back of the house with the door open on to the garden. She was wearing a summer dress.

What’s wrong? he asked. She said nothing, but held his look. Her expression was rigid, frozen.

Are you all right? he asked.

I was asleep, she said. I woke when you rang, and then I was so tired I fell asleep again. It must be the summer weather, it’s very heavy.

Do you feel all right?

I feel tired, that’s all. Sometimes I hate packing and moving. I dread it. I don’t know why. She put her hand to her head, as though she was in pain. He went to her and put his arms around her.

Maybe we could take some of the plants down with us. Will there be room for them? she asked quietly.

I’ll try and find space for them, he said.

Sometimes it looks so bare down there, as though the house wasn’t ours at all, as though it belonged to someone else.

He began to pack the cars with bags and boxes, and then he carried out her flowering plants and her sweet-smelling lilies and tried to place them carefully and gently in the boot or the space behind the front seats of the car. One quick jolt and they’ll be ruined, he said and smiled.

Oh, drive carefully, please, she said. It had begun to rain and a wind rustled through the bushes in the garden. He found an umbrella to give her shelter as they went out to the car, closing the door behind them.

He drove away from the house. They did not speak until they were beyond Shankill.

There’s something I have to tell you, she said. I was going to tell you this morning, but you were too preoccupied. Niamh came over yesterday to say that she’s pregnant. She thought that we had noticed on Sunday when she came for dinner, but I didn’t notice anyway. Did you notice?

He did not reply. He looked straight ahead as he drove. Niamh was their only daughter.

It was the last thing I thought of, Carmel went on. She sounded very cool, but I think she was dreading having to tell me. How could she be so foolish! I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about it. I rang Donal but he didn’t know either. You’d think she would have told her brother.

Carmel did not speak again until later when they stopped at the traffic lights in Arklow. The atmosphere in the car was tense with their silence.

I asked her who the father was. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend. She said she didn’t want to talk about the father.

When he had driven through the town she spoke again.

She went to England to have an abortion, and she couldn’t face it. She was in the hospital and everything; she had paid her money. I told her that we’d do what we could for her. Imagine Niamh having an abortion. So she’s going to have the baby and she’s going to keep it. Eamon, I wrote her a cheque. But it’s a terrible thing to happen, isn’t it?

When’s it due? he asked her.

November, she said. I can’t think how I didn’t notice.

He turned left at Gorey and took the road south towards Blackwater.

Well, what do you think? she asked.

It doesn’t matter what I think.

It’s so hard to talk to you sometimes, she said.

*  *  *

He parked the car in the lane and opened the side gate into the garden, letting Carmel go in ahead of him. He had the key. The house had been aired; there was a fire burning in the living room, which their neighbour had lit for them, but there was still a musty smell. Carmel shivered and went over to sit by the window. Eamon carried in the first of the plants and put them in the glass porch at the front of the house. The damp smell had always been in the house, he thought, no amount of air or heat would ever get rid of it fully. And there was another smell too which he remembered now: a smell of summer dresses, a female smell. The women who had taken care of him here. He could almost smell them now, vague hints of their presence, their strong lives, their voices which had been heard in this house for so many years.

The nettles had come back into the garden, despite the weedkiller which had been put down in the spring. The nettles seemed taller than ever this year. He would get one of the Carrolls to put the front garden right. Then there would be a new smell of cropped grass, fresh and sweet with a hint of dampness.

He carried the suitcases and boxes in from the car. By now, Carmel had placed her plants all over the house and was in the kitchen. He went over and smelled the lilies which she had put in the porch. He took out the small cassette player and placed the two speakers at opposite ends of the room. He plugged it in, put on a cassette and turned the sound up and listened to the music as he unpacked the cases and cleared out the car.

They were close to the soft edge of the cliff, the damp, marly soil which was eaten away each year. He listened for the sound of the sea, but heard nothing except the rooks in a nearby field and the sound of a tractor in the distance, and coming from the house the swells of the music. He rested against the windowsill and looked at the fading light, the dark clouds of evening over the sea. The grass was wet now with a heavy dew, but the air was still as though the day had been held back for a few moments while night approached. He heard Carmel moving in the front room. She wanted everything in its place, the house filled with their things, as soon as

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