This Human Season Read online

  ‘It’s like we’re in the boat ourselves. It makes me feel cosy.’ Aine shivered.

  ‘Didn’t we always say it was the bad weather outside made it good to be inside? I can’t imagine living in a warm climate. I wouldn’t need a family if I did. I’d be off down the road.’

  ‘And we’d all be right after you,’ said Sean, giving her his heavy romantic look, the one she used to dread, full of misplaced admiration, booze-heavy. But he was sober. It was New Year’s Day. It was nice that he bothered.

  The kids got out and went running, they took their shoes off and paddled.

  ‘Only Irish kids could find fun in that, socks off in the freezing cold,’ said Sean, watching them, proud. They had the doors open and smoked together.

  ‘I was thinking of Genoa on the way here,’ he went on. ‘No, I’m not going to tell the story again. But I’d forgotten the bit about how I missed you when I was away. Jesus Christ, Kathleen, you’d have loved it there in Italy, just dripping with pure beauty, so it was. We got a lift round the coast to this wee town called Portofino. A gem of a place. I thought of you all the time, walking about with a plastic bag, thinking how I’d like to get you this and that from the shops they had there. And I brought you back a wee tea-towel with a ship on it, didn’t I, along with that stupid damned ashtray. Ach Jesus. Sorry about that. You know, every foot of the place was flowers, and it was all old and fine and these wee lizards went racing about the hill pathways and there was this big mandarin-coloured church on the hill, sitting in the sun like it owned the place. I’d have liked to have been with you there, to have taken you back to a hotel, to be with you in nobody’s bed and to say, she’s mine and I’m the luckiest man in the world. And here we are in Bunbeg and it’s fifteen years gone by since then, and I’m glad to have you here with me. I’m grateful, Kathleen.’

  Aine was peering into the water, sat on a rock, and Liam was alongside of her looking into the same place. He said something and he splashed her.

  ‘Sean, I was thinking that maybe I should love our Sean less or others more. Other people I mean. But I can’t love Sean less. So I’ve got to love the others more.’

  ‘You think too much.’

  ‘You talk too much. It’s with you talking, I get to thinking.’

  On the way there he’d been telling her a story about his time in Australia. She’d been bored and not heard him and then tried to listen and felt guilty that her thoughts were elsewhere and that her inclination was to look for the lie, to put him down.

  ‘I’m not a good person, Sean, I don’t know why you think I am.’

  ‘Because I believe you are.’

  ‘That just makes me feel worse, so it does. I was thinking about you on the way here. About how baby Sean came along and I loved him so much it took me over. Well, I want to say that I’m proud of you for giving up the drink the way you have. Honest to God it’s a miracle.’

  ‘It’s only been a few days.’

  ‘A wee miracle then.’

  He took her hand in his.

  ‘They’re getting soaked,’ he said, nodding at the children in the pale light as they ran into the brisk waves, grabbing what they could for themselves. She bristled with the cold and closed her door. He did the same.

  ‘Sean’s away,’ he said, and his voice sounded different without the noise of the sea and the wind taking from it. ‘He’s away, love. We don’t know when he’s coming back or even if he is.’ He squeezed her hand.

  ‘He’s my son too.’

  The children had been writing in the wet sand. Liam was putting down ‘IRA’ and Aine had written with her big toe, ‘The Police’. Her brother was standing, hands on hips, abusing her.

  ‘Death comes unasked. That’s what they say. Any time, any place, anywhere – like with your Martini drink. Well so does life, Kathleen, and so does love. The best thing of all is when we don’t do the thinking for ourselves, we just get on with what we’re given.’ He tucked his chin into his coat.

  ‘Do we have to go back to the Murph? Can’t we just take off? On a boat, like you used to, with some handsome strangers?’

  ‘And there’s me on my hammock while you’re off with the captain in first class.’

  And she saw the old Sean and she saw the new Sean and she saw the humour in the both of them.

  ‘Are you ever going to take me on a honeymoon or is this it? Is this all I’ve got to look forward to?’

  ‘This is it, Kathleen.’

  ‘All right then. So long as I know.’

  His eyes were pale and loose with a tiny core of granite, and she felt that she loved him and doubted him, and she was glad she knew both things even though they were hard to take together, and she decided to try not to hurt him any more, even though she would. She couldn’t trust him, he couldn’t trust her, but it was warm there with him and it didn’t matter. She lay her head on his chest. This was just one moment, not the best one, not the last one, nor the beginning of something else; in the next minute they might be quarrelling again. He put an arm about her and kissed her head, his lips moving in her hair. With his hand he stroked her, kept her close.

  The kids’ faces came up at their father’s side window; they were squashing their noses and pressing their tongues into their chins to make monsters of themselves.

  ‘That’s our lot then,’ said Sean, pulling away. ‘Time to break open them iced buns, missus.’

  Afterword

  In 1981, in the Maze Prison/Long Kesh, ten Irish Republican prisoners died on hunger strike in pursuit of their demand to be treated as political prisoners. During the fast one of the prisoners, Bobby Sands, was elected a Member of the Westminster Parliament. The fast was eventually discontinued, largely due to the medical intervention of the men’s families, against their wishes.

  The Northern Ireland cease-fires and subsequent peace talks leading to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement were supported by members of the Republican movement and Loyalist paramilitary groups as politicians, activists, lobbyists, aides, social workers, voluntary workers, committee members, writers etc., many of whom had passed through Long Kesh/Maze Prison.

  Copyright permissions for reproduced lyrics

  ‘AS I ROVED OUT’ Arranged by Colin Finn, Sean O’Rourke, Lindsay Scott, Jim Divers and Des Coffield © 1972. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY.

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  ‘THE ETON RIFLES’ Words & Music by Paul Weller © Copyright 1979 Stylist Music Limited/BMG Music Publishing Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

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  ‘ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL’ (PARTS 1, 2 & 3), ‘GOODBYE BLUE SKY’, ‘MOTHER’, ‘ONE OF MY TURNS’, ‘THE THIN ICE’ and ‘YOUNG LUST’ All Lyrics by George Roger Waters © 1979 Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd Warner/Chappell Artemis Music Ltd, London W6 8BS. Lyrics reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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  ‘THE LITTLE BOY THAT SANTA CLAUS FORGOT’ Words and Music by Jimmy Leach, Tommie Connor and Michael Carr © 1937. Reproduced by permission of Peter Maurice Music Co Ltd, London WC2H 0QY. Permissions courtesy of EMI Music Publishing.

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  ‘THE COWARD OF THE COUNTY’ Words & Music by Roger Bowling & Billy Edd Wheeler © Copyright 1979 Nocturnal Eclipse Music/ Sleepy Hollow Music Corporation. BMG Music Publishing Limited (50%)/ Universal/MCA Music Limited (50%). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

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  ‘ANGIE’ Words and Music by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards © 1973. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY.

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  ‘MY GIRL’ Words and Music by Michael Barson © 1979. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY.

 

 

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