Molly stands by the sink in gym shorts and a coat running a glass under the tap when her hand jolts back, she makes a disgusted sound and drops the glass into the sink. Mam, she says, the water’s brown. Eilish can feel the eyes of her daughter upon her back but chooses not to look. She leans forward spooning apple puree into Ben’s mouth, thinking, it is her father she wants, the no that is a yes, the yes never a no. Last night in a dream they spoke about Molly, something he said that seemed hazed puzzled her as she awoke. She arrests a dribble of food using the spoon, seeing for an instant something far underground, a fragment of corroded piping coming loose into the mains, it is being whisked by the water, the water growing fouled by rust and lead contaminant, the water rushing onwards through the piping dark into the city’s homes, its businesses and schools, passing out of the taps into kettles, glasses and cups, passing into their mouths, the lead being absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract, being stored by the tissues and bones, the aorta and liver, the adrenal and thyroid glands, the poison doing its work unseen until it makes itself known in the lab in the urine and blood. She turns and studies the water jetting out of the tap and says, just let it run out a while. The rattling of a key in the front door. Molly says, why don’t we have bottled water in the house? She grabs an apple from the bowl and huffs into the living room while Eilish looks up listening, seeing inwardly the fall of light as the door opens, wishing upon her hearing for the familiar steps, the thwack of the umbrella into its stand, the sigh and then out-shucking of the coat, the call for missing slippers. Mark carries his bike through the hall and into the kitchen, passes without word through the French doors where he places his bike on the decking. She looks to Ben in the highchair and thinks about her eldest son, this silent process of growth, the cartilage extending and converting to bone, the bones solidifying, sustaining the child towards a future unknown and yet such a future must contain within it the sum total of all possibility. It was only a heartbeat ago when Mark was crawling on the floor and she turns to watch him as he steps into the living room, the future made instant. She hears hushed talk, Molly raising her voice, you have to tell her, she says. Eilish calls out, tell who, what’s going on? Molly stands by the door and pushes Mark into the kitchen and he comes before her holding out a letter. She tells Molly to turn off the tap, takes the letter out of Mark’s hand and reaches for her glasses. She does not notice that she has been brought to her feet, she reads the letter slowly again as though she cannot understand it, the meanings behind the words have become unfixed, the black text unintelligible. She looks up into her son’s eyes and sees the child vanished. This cannot be, she whispers, searching with her hand for the chair but she is unable to sit. She closes her eyes and sees the glimmering dark of her eyelids. But you are only sixteen, she says, you’ll have the Leaving Cert next year, they cannot do this now—— Mark hangs his jacket on the chair and stands for a moment sensitive and solemnly quiet. The date of registration is for the week after my birthday next month, he says. She does not see him as he goes to the sink, runs the tap and fills a glass and begins to drink. It is Molly who pulls the glass from his hand, don’t drink that shite, she says, the water’s brown, tell Mam to buy bottled water instead and tell her what they did, how they came into the school, Mark, tell her. Who came into the school? She is watching her son, seeing him distinctly by the sink, the frown weighing upon the brow, the brooding hair, the jaw forcing into expression the young man. I didn’t think to tell you, he says, it was a doctor and some woman, an army official, they called all the boys in my year out of class and we had to go to the gym, they looked us over one by one without telling us what it was for, I had to stand in my boxers behind a screen while the doctor took my height and examined my feet and my teeth, asked if I had any allergies—— This sudden feeling of pressure within the body, it has begun within her heart as though something had climbed into it and begun to swell there, it is dilating outward, forcing upon the lungs the feeling of a scream. She finds herself sitting on the chair quick with fatigue, whispering now, it must be some mistake, you will only be seventeen. Her hands reaching out for her son, to nurse him now, to hold him to her cheek, to wash him in the balm of her fury. I want you to listen, she says, taking his hand, seeing that he is not listening at all but staring out onto the garden. You will not be leaving this house, do you hear, you will not be leaving school, they cannot call you up for national service like this. He turns away with a pained look. And how are you going to stop them, they can do whatever they like, what was it you could do to stop them taking Dad? It is Molly who turns upon her brother, shoves him backwards towards the sink. Don’t speak to Mam like that. Shut up you, he says. Molly stays her brother with a venomous look, the dull pinging of a hammer from nearby and then Ben drops the spoon. Eilish bends to pick it up and carries it to the sink. At least the water from the hot tap is clean, she says. What’s going on? Bailey says, stepping into the room. Mark takes the letter from the table and goes outside and closes the door taking a lighter from his pocket. She watches through the glass as he jets gas but cannot spark the flame, watches and has no urge to stop him, to ask him where he got the lighter from, the lighter clicks an amber flame that tastes the corner of the paper then forms a black mouth, watching the letter come to smoke in his hand and when he lets it drop he turns and looks through the glass with the blackest eyes of anger.
She is distracted at work, pacing within, seeing before her some shadowed obstacle and seeking a path around it, saying to herself over and over, they will not take my son. There are rumours in the company of a bloodletting, of a phased wind-down, none of it can be true. They are called into the meeting room where it is announced the managing director Stephen Stoker has been stood down, he did not come into work this morning, they are told that Paul Felsner will replace him. He comes before them pulling on the tips of his fingers with a small hand and cannot hide his delight. She watches about the room as he speaks selecting for his supporters by the clapping hands and smiles, seeing the wild animal among them, seeing how it has done away with concealment and pretence, how it prowls now in the open as Paul Felsner raises his hand in hieratic gestures speaking not the company speak but the cant of the party, about an age of change and reformation, an evolution of the national spirit, of dominion leading into expansion, a woman walks across the room and opens a window. Eilish finds herself stepping out of the lift onto the ground floor. She crosses the street and goes into the newsagent’s, points to a pack of cigarettes. It has been a long time, she thinks, standing alone outside the office building, sliding a cigarette from the box, fondling the paper skin, running its odour under her nose. The cottony taste of cellulose acetate as she lights and pulls the hot smoke into her mouth, recalling the day she last quit, this feeling of some younger self, perhaps Larry was with her, she doesn’t know. Memory lies, it plays its own games, layers one image upon another that might be true or not true, over time the layers dissolve and become like smoke, watching the smoke that blows out her mouth vanish into the day. Watching the street as though it belongs to some other city, thinking how it is so that life seems to exist outside events, life passing by without need of witness, the congested traffic fuming in the dismal air, the people passing by harried and preoccupied, imprisoned within the delusion of the individual, this wish now she has to escape, watching until she is brought clean outside herself, the light altering tone by tone until it becomes a lucent sheen on the street, the gulls nipping at food in a gutter are dark underwing as they whip up out of the path of a lorry. Well now. Colm Perry is standing beside her tapping a cigarette on its box. I didn’t know you smoked, Eilish. She is squeezing her eyes as if to see an answer to a question she has not been asked and then she shakes her head. I can’t say that I do. Colm Perry lights a cigarette and exhales slowly. Neither do I. She pulls the dark burn inside her and wants the burn some more, studying Colm Perry’s wrinkled shirt, knowing the cerise face of a drinker, the look that rests sly in the eye of a man well in on the joke though he is laughing at them from the outside. He glances behind towards the automatic door. The gall of that man, he says, there will be a purge soon enough, they like their own kind so keep your head down, that’s all I have to say. He looks again over his shoulder and pulls out his phone. Have you seen the latest? What she sees on the phone are images of graffiti on windows and walls denouncing the gardaí, the security forces and the state, triumphant scrawls in sprayed red paint. The writing looks like blood, the building looks like a school. St Joseph’s in Fairview, he says, they are saying the principal called in the GNSB who came and arrested four boys, they haven’t yet been released, it’s gone on a few days but the story’s only online now, there are parents and students gathering outside Store Street Garda Station waiting for the boys to be freed. My son has been called up for national service, she says, he is to hand himself over the week he turns seventeen, he is still just a kid in school, and this after they take his father. Colm Perry looks at her and then he shakes his head. Bastards, he says. He cups his hand to his mouth and thinks long upon a drag then extinguishes the cigarette on the smokers’ box. You’re going to have to get him out, he says. Get him out where? She watches him shrug and open his hands and then he puts them in the pockets of his jeans. He is looking across the street to a newsagent’s. Right now, he says, I’d love an ice cream, an old-fashioned cone with a 99, I’d like to be on a beach freezing my butt off, I’d like for my parents to be still alive, look, Eilish, I don’t know, England, Canada, the USA, it’s only a suggestion, but you’re going to have to get him out, look, I must go back inside.
She watches online the growth of the protest, parents and children dressed in white before the Garda station. They hold white candles and do not speak, waiting for the return of the boys. Their number is growing all day. By next morning it is past two hundred, it is said they are all from the school, a dark band of security forces standing in front of the station. She knows the square where they are gathered, a paved plaza with granite platforms to sit on, a stainless steel octagonal bi-pyramid in the centre that is a symbol for something or nothing perhaps. In a time not so long ago this square was designed for openness and light, for sitting down or taking one’s time, this feeling now the protest has forced open a door, light reaching into a dark room. She can see Larry’s face looking up as though in expectation, if the boys are soon to be released, she says, more will follow. On Saturday morning Molly comes into the kitchen dressed in white. Look, she says, have you seen this? Viral messages are being sent from phone to phone, one message says that a friend of a close friend says the boys are soon to be released, another message says the boys were released days ago and are with their family, the protest is a conspiracy, a plot to shame the state. Yes, she says, I’ve received them also, none of them are true, I forgot to remind you, Saoirse’s wedding is next Saturday, I’ve told Mark he has to stay home till I get back. I don’t need Mark to keep an eye on me. I know that, but it’s better to have the both of you home to keep an eye on the two boys. Molly lifts a chair and brings it outside and places it on the grass under the tree. Eilish watching as Molly stands on the chair and pulls a branch towards her, she ties a white ribbon and watches it hang, the ribbons like long empty fingers playing the silent music of the tree, Eilish does not want to count them. Fourteen weeks, Molly says, stepping through the door with the chair, she puts it down and goes to the sink and runs the tap, leans down to examine the water with narrowed eyes, fills a glass and drinks. She puts the glass down half full and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. I’m going out, she says. Out where? I’m going into town. Eilish regards her for a moment, the white denim jacket, the white scarf coiled around her neck. If you’re going into town, she says, you can take them off right now. Molly looks down at her body with mock surprise. Take what off right now? You know what I’m talking about. How do I know what you’re talking about, how do I know what anybody is talking about or even thinking of for that matter if nobody says anything, if nothing is ever said in this house? Eilish turns to the table and lifts up a magazine and puts it down again. For goodness’ sake, she says, where are my glasses? Your glasses are sitting on top of your head. Well, she says, aren’t I a right eejit? When she turns around Molly is watching her strangely and then her mouth wrinkles as though she might cry. I want my daddy back, she says, I just want him back, why aren’t you doing something? Eilish looks into her eyes seeking for something, she does not know what, something from the old Molly to hold onto, some sense of give, but Molly instead is pushing at her, pulling on some lever. And do you think going out like that is going to bring your dad back? Molly’s face darkens, she turns and lifts the glass and slowly pours the water onto the floor. That’s fine, Eilish says, do as you like, pour water onto the floor, go out onto the street dressed like that, maybe you’ll get as far as the bus stop without somebody passing a remark at you or taking note of your behaviour to report it later on, maybe you’ll get off the bus without being seen by the wrong person, or maybe you will, maybe there’s two men in a car and one of them doesn’t like how you look, maybe you’re just wearing white because you like the look of it or maybe you’re trying to say something else, something provocative, something the man doesn’t like, maybe he stops and gets out and takes your name and address and creates a file with your name on it, maybe you’ll be quiet or maybe you’ll say the wrong thing and instead of taking your name and address he takes you, puts you in the car, and where’s that car going to, Molly, have a think about that, maybe it’s going to where all the other cars go, the unmarked cars that pull up silently and lift people off the street because of one thing or another, the people who do not return home again, you think because you’re fourteen years old you can do what you like, that the state isn’t interested in you, but they arrested those boys and those boys haven’t yet been released and they’re your age, you think I’m not doing anything, that I’m just standing about waiting for your father to return, but what I am doing is keeping this family together because right now that is the hardest thing to do in a world that seems designed on tearing us apart, sometimes not doing something is the best way to get what you want, sometimes you have to be quiet and keep your head down, sometimes when you get up in the morning you should spend more time choosing your colours.
Eilish moves about her father’s bedroom searching for a tie. The green fleur-de-lis carpet stacked with yellowed newspapers and journals, clothes heaped on two chairs placed side-by-side to the wall, dirty cups and plates on the dresser. She rummages through a drawer meeting the odour of must, discoloured white shirts, a spider of old ties. She selects a pink tie and puts it to her nose sensing the past heavy within it yet grown obscure, she stands up and turns and meets her mother windblown in a photo, the young woman catching at her hair, the promise of her daughter’s face secret in her own. Eilish moves the cups and plates onto the floor and arranges the photos in order. Jean leans into Simon and wipes water from her eyes on a cold beach. She is willow in a wedding dress gripping Simon’s arm but does not see the photographer. Her gaze sharpens towards the camera as she sits on a chair with the two girls on her lap. Eilish closes her eyes seeking her mother as she was like this, stepping through their first house, she walks the shadowed rooms recalling, her fingers trailing the handrail of the staircase and upward past the window seat, towards her old room, each step sounding upon the boards, seeking the vast ceiling. She can hear her mother’s voice now, recalling this not as a sound but as a feeling never decayed within the weakening of her memory. What she can see from the old bed, the window giving to sky, the open wardrobe mouthing the dark that invites the sleeping child to nightmare. Jean’s mouth sours in a photo and her hair withdraws from her shoulders to her ears. She greys in a garden chair while the climbing roses bloom. She leans gaunt upon a stick by the waterfall at Powerscourt and seems caught by surprise, turning one last time away from the camera. Eilish carries the dirty cups and plates downstairs and stacks them in the dishwasher while Simon sits at the table forking bacon and eggs, his shirt open to the navel, his chest hairless and white. He seizes the salt cellar by the throat and shakes it over his eggs then gives her a rancorous look. I know what you were doing up there. She closes the dishwasher door with her hip. Dad, your room is a pigsty, the amount of plates and cups I had to bring down, button your shirt and put this tie on, I picked it to go with your shirt. Do you think I did not hear you up there, you can look all you like but you won’t find anything. She finds herself galled before him, begins to fill the kettle though there is no time for tea. Dad, please, we are going to be late, the service starts in an hour. He straightens the knife and fork on the plate and pushes it away from him with the heel of his hand and turns to face her, the corner of his mouth yellowed with yolk. Do you think I keep it all stashed in my room, none of you are going to get a penny. She looks into his face aghast and then she grows afraid, seeking past the face to what is changing inside him, seeing the self as though it were a flame respiring in the dark, the flame never still, the swollen flame tapering to its narrowest self. He is but he is not, this is what she thinks, and yet he seems to be himself again as he moves towards the mirror and she stands behind him as he studies his face, the skin pinkly shaven, a bleb of shaving foam behind his ear, she smooths it away with her thumb. She turns him around by the shoulders and buttons his shirt and loops the tie around his neck. It’s a lovely day for a wedding, don’t you think, they got lucky with the weather. He gives her a dismissive look and she knows he is himself again. That cousin of yours, he says, I cannot see her taking to the wedding bed. Dad, you cannot say things like that, Saoirse is your niece. Saoirse is a middle-aged woman approaching forty and her father is an ass, my sister never had any taste. Yes, well, it’s better late than never, don’t you think? She stands knotting the tie then pats his shoulder and lifts her eyes and something in the way he looks at her makes her think he is staring at his wife. She looks away, seeing out to the garden to where her mother stood, the climbing roses now ragged and slashed to the wall.
From the university church the wedding party steps out onto St Stephen’s Green. She takes her father’s arm as they cross for the park, the women promenading in their clicking heels lit by plumed and coloured hats, the hushed sensation of trees. By the lake the bride and groom couple for photos while a groomsman loosens his tie. They exit the park towards a Georgian building strewn with ivy, the smell of freesias reaching to greet them as they are escorted inside to a reception room with tall windows overlooking the green. She looks across the room to her father who is speaking with her aunt Marie, sees the woman hide a yawn behind pink shellac nails, her eyes casting about until she snares Eilish with a summoning look. Oh, it’s you, Simon says, I’m just telling Marie about this bill the NAP are putting through, they are looking to take control of the academy, they want to put their own people in, Marie, take charge of the board, it seems there is nothing anyone can do, it’s simply grotesque, unbelievable—— Marie is squeezing her arm and turns away from her brother as though to keep Eilish to herself. Your father hasn’t said a word about your little one, she says, I thought you might have brought him along, it must have been a lovely surprise at your age. Eilish smiles into the powdered face seeing the pink lips soft with spittle then feels her spirit fall, seeing now what has not been said, how their talk has been kept to questions about the children or how she is doing at work, nobody wants to talk about Larry. She looks into her aunt’s face and sees the unspoken injunction that today shall pass under some absolute of happiness. She smiles and says, Larry would have loved to have come, can you excuse me? She steps through the room looking for somebody else to speak to, there are so few here from her own generation, her father’s cousins stooping into old age and yet the years between them are not so very much, what is twenty-five years or thirty, she orders a drink, thinking how this time of her life will pass, it is passing already, it is past, the light as it falls through the tall windows giving to them all this moment, the world hushed to a murmur, the bride in white beatitude. When the bell rings they take their glasses into the dining room and find their places at the round tables, the groom standing up as though to give address but instead he raises his hand to his chest and begins to sing the national anthem. Tattooed birds on his hands, arcane symbols inked on his neck. Chairs are pushed back and people stand and begin to sing and someone is pulling at her sleeve, it is her father’s cousin, Niamh Lyons, whispering down at her with crinkled lips, stand up, Eilish, for goodness’ sake. She looks across to where her father should be but his chair is empty, he has gone to the bar for another drink, he has got lost again on the way to the bathroom, she is looking up into the mouthing faces and sees the eyes watching down and feels her mouth go dry, Niamh Lyons pulling again at her sleeve but she will not stand and sing along with them, she will not sing the lie. Without knowing it, she begins to arrange the white napkin before her and when she looks up she sees the groom’s face and what is worn openly, what is worn in the face of his groomsman and those standing around them, the unmasked contempt of the party. The bride has closed her eyes and the groom is met by applause though not everyone in the room is clapping. A pale elderly woman with slender hands gives Eilish a quick benevolent smile that is gone the moment she looks for it. Eilish reaching into her bag, she pulls out a white chiffon scarf and ties it around her neck, stands up as the others sit down. Excuse me a moment while I go and look for my father, she says.
The oven alarm begins to bell and she turns calling for the children, spoons casserole onto rice-piled plates, would someone please set the table? Molly comes yawning into the room. The dusk has entered before her and enshrouded her mother. She turns on the lights and reaches into the drawer for knives and forks, stands a moment staring as though her thoughts had fallen into the drawer. Eilish calls out again, the dinner is ready. She can see Bailey stretched on the rug before the TV. She turns to Molly, tell Mark to come down. Down from where? Molly says, he’s not upstairs. Where is he then? Molly shrugs and leans across the table setting down the knives and forks. How am I supposed to know, can you give me a lift later on? Eilish goes to the stairs and calls for Mark, she goes upstairs to his room then returns downstairs. He is not in the house, he is not in the garden, she rings his phone and it is ringing upstairs, she is scolding him as she ascends the stairs again knowing his response, how the mouth will grow tight and he will fix his eyes to the floor preparing some sly comment. She finds herself standing by the door to the boys’ room, his phone is ringing on the bed, it is strange he does not have it on him. When she picks up the phone she looks at it as though it were some forbidden object, Bailey shouting from the kitchen that he is going to start eating, she hears two voices speaking, one that is a no, the other that is a yes, she listens for movement by the stairs. She reads her son’s messages and clicks on the video he last watched, a prisoner in a red jumpsuit is on his knees wearing a hood, another man in black stands over him wearing glasses, a teacher or perhaps an intellectual ranting in Arabic, he tears off the prisoner’s hood and brings up a large and sickled knife while the camera begins to zoom in slow motion as though seeking to perceive something in the eyes of the victim in the instant of his death. She throws the phone on the bed and when she picks it up again she scrolls through a search history of brutality and murder, videos of beheadings and summary executions. A feeling has entered her body that will not speak but sits black and knotted inside her, she can hardly talk during dinner. She is moving through the house picking up one thing after another, putting them back down again without thought, Bailey is tussling with Molly for the remote control who slaps him on the head and throws the remote across the room, Eilish shouts at them to be quiet. She is standing on the landing with the baby in her arms when it strikes her that what has entered her body is the feeling of death, that death has entered her son, seeing him now almost seventeen years old and the blood corrupt by rage and silent savagery. It is past eight o’clock when she hears the porch door slide back, the key going into the lock of the front door and she moves to cut him off, placing her hand on the bicycle to stay him, searching his eyes for some sight of the darkness growing within, seeking her old authority. His eyes slide past her while she speaks, her voice risen and sharp. You didn’t tell me you wouldn’t be here for dinner, where did you go? She has not seen Samantha coming behind him until she is stepping through the door, the girl stops as though afraid to enter and Mark turns towards her screwing his mouth in silent apology for his mother. It’s alright, Mam, would you ever calm down, I had dinner at Sam’s, I wanted to message you but I forgot my phone, I can never remember your number.
She drives through rain and hesitating light, her phone buzzing in her bag. She waits for the traffic ahead to stop then reaches for her bag and pulls out the phone. When she reads the message she looks up and sees the road before her vanished, her hand reaching to turn off the radio before she reads the message again. Two of the detained boys are dead, their bodies released to their families. Photos of the bodies with the markings of torture have been made public. The Touran is moving forward by itself, she can see the boys laid out before their parents, seeing the broken bodies and whispering to herself, it is one thing to take a father from a house but another to return the bodies of children. Feeling within her heart the coming tremor, knowing now it will come, the outrage and disgust that will rise up from the silent ground into their mouths. At home they gather around the table watching a live feed of the demonstration on the international news, the crowd has grown outside the Garda station, people are bringing their children, everybody is wearing white and holding lighted candles. The vigil spills around the bus station and onto the nearby streets and she goes to bed and cannot sleep, lies watching her fear parade before her like some wretched spectacle, a small voice that wants to speak is shouted down. By morning the crowd has outgrown the space and begins to march towards College Green. She stands to the window looking out, Mark and Molly watching her now, waiting for her to speak. The dormant trees are beginning to swell. Soon the trees will open their buds to see again the spring light, thinking upon this, the strength of a tree, how a tree abides the dark season, what a tree sees when it opens its eyes. It is then she sees that her fear is gone, this feeling of relief in her body that something now can be done. We shall wear white, she says, turning around, we shall go and join them. Watching the children go upstairs, this feeling of daring and excitement in the house.
Carole Sexton comes with an oaten loaf, some crumble cake and white candles. Mark has already gone ahead on his bike. When they drive into the city they meet traffic slowing to a checkpoint, Eilish turning to the children in the back. Zip up your coats, she says. The car ahead of them is directed into a search lane while a Garda steps towards the Touran, the face of an analytic youth in uniform leaning down to examine her licence, he seeks her gaze and holds it. Where are you going today? he says. What she sees of the face starburst with freckles is a youth a few years older than her son, the lie sliding out her mouth, it rides the air between them. The Garda leans down and studies Carole then visors his hand to examine the children in the back, Bailey snubbing his nose against the glass as he waves them on. The street along the quays is closed to traffic by motorcycled gardaí. She finds parking in a laneway beside a church and they set off on foot with Ben in the buggy, a pedestrian crossing clicking them passage across an empty street and it is strange to find the quays so quiet, sunlight surging along the water, this feeling of racing calm. Carole has not stopped talking since they left the car but Eilish is adrift, watching over her children as though from some great height, seeking to seize hold of her dread. She is speaking with Larry and watching his response though he remains within some shadowed interiority as if out of reach in a dark cell. There are others now walking among them dressed openly in white and they can hear the noise as they cross the river, walking the narrow streets of Temple Bar towards College Green, and then the crowd stands before them, a mass concentration of will, they say the protest has grown to fifty thousand to fill the plaza, her spirit rising so that she cannot breathe. She grips the hands of her children as they push their way in among the white-painted faces and white flags and banners, Carole following behind them, so many people are holding white candles and everyone seems to have brought their kids. A young woman offers to paint their faces, Molly tying up her hair. A stage has been erected before the old parliament and a young woman stands with a microphone calling out for an end to the Emergency Powers, for all political prisoners to be released. She receives enormous applause as another man takes to the stage, it is not even the words spoken, Eilish thinks, but the speaking of their bodies, for here before the world there is no place to hide. Bailey is watching the protest on a phone and she sees their image giant and alive and can sense her fear has gone, that her fear has become its opposite, wanting now to surrender to this, to become one with the larger body, the single breath, feeling her might grow in the triumph of the crowd. For an instant she is met with some inchoate feeling of death, of victory and slaughter in vast numbers, of history laid under the feet of the vanquisher and she stands as though with some great blade in her hand, she brings the blade down and shivers with exaltation then takes a sharp breath, two gardaí are walking among them with cameras recording faces despite booing and jeering from the crowd. Looking up she sees the marksmen on the rooftops, men pointing long-range cameras, the sunless clouds signalling rain and she remembers she did not pack their raincoats or bring an umbrella. Carole hands out sandwiches and bottles of water while images appear on a large screen of the dead teenagers, photos taken when they were boys, one of them tow-headed and smiling, the other caught with a wide-eyed look. She does not know her hand has gripped Bailey’s elbow until he has wriggled free, she is thinking about Mark, seeing him plucked out of school by the state and sent into the security forces, being deployed on the streets against his own kin, knowing the fury and resistance in his heart, she will not allow it to happen. She puts her arm around Molly and pulls her close, is struck by a memory of having belonged to another protest such as this, thinking now that the memory is false or exchanged somehow, the memory belongs to some other people in some other country, she has seen it countless times on TV. Ben wakes with a sharp cry and she gives him his bottle, he wants out of the buggy, he begins to scream until she places her coat on the ground and lets him sit on it, he is trying to crawl away. An elderly lady in jade on a portable chair asks to sit him on her knee. Bailey begins to flop his arms and then he slumps down on his bag giving out, he wants to go home, the smell of hotdogs wafting from nearby, he says he is starving, she sends him off with Carole to get some. Molly is texting on her phone. Mam, she says, Mark is trying to find us. She leaves for a moment and returns with Mark and some other friend they have not seen before. They are both wearing white T-shirts and white bandanas over their mouths and Eilish reaches out and pulls the mask down. What are you doing wearing that, you are not a yob, this is a peaceful protest. She is watching the smirking eyes of Mark’s friend, there is something about him she does not like, she would like to know who he is. Carole proffers Mark a sandwich and in three quick bites it is gone. He asks for one for his friend. I want you home by eight o’clock, Eilish says, and Mark looks to Molly with a smirk and Molly wants to go with Mark but Eilish says no. There is the feeling of rain before rainfall and then the umbrellas open and the unity of the crowd becomes cellular. The children hive under the large brolly of a woman and Bailey asks for some tissues, he wipes his nose then begins to hang off her arm. People are passing through the crowd with their kids on the way home, there are dinners to be made and dogs to be walked, let the students and people without children remain throughout the night. As they turn to go she is watching down the length of the street towards the sky at Christ Church Cathedral, a slow furnace of light as though the world were on fire.
Carole Sexton will stay the night. It will be risky to cross the city, Eilish says, thinking of the crowds returning home buoyant over the bridges, the cars driving with white flags from the windows to be met by roadblocks, searches and arrests, the story is all over the international news. Carole is watching footage on her phone of military trucks and personnel carriers entering the suburbs, they are assembling in long rows along the canal. It looks as though they are preparing for an invasion, she says. There is talk online of cars being attacked with bats and bricks, people being dragged from their cars by men in balaclavas, cars being set alight. Eilish defrosts Bolognese and allows Bailey and Molly to eat before the TV while she puts Ben down to sleep, watching for a moment his tiny fists, she wants for him to remain like this and yet how long his childhood will be, he will know nothing of the first few years, it will all become lore, that time your father went away, that time he came back. She goes to the bathroom and wipes the make-up from her face, stares at the mirror and sees Mark, how fair he is, how young, she closes her eyes and can sense him being taken, his hand releasing, seeing them all as though they were on some dark sea, Larry the first to be pulled away, she is shouting for Mark to swim towards shore, she is shouting in the dark to be heard. She opens her eyes and leans towards the mirror and pulls with her finger at the claw reaching for her eyes. Carole is watching a live feed of the demonstration on a laptop. The protest has thinned to a few thousand people who sit in silence on the street with lighted candles in paper bags as though votaries before some religious event, the security forces standing by with water canons and batons. Eilish is watching the clock and listening for the door. It is a quarter past eight, it is ten to nine, soon it will be ten o’clock, Mark’s phone continues to ring out. I cannot shake off the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, Eilish says. Carole is watching her carefully. They would have done it by now, don’t you think? Done what by now? If they were going to attack. Eilish is watching the clock. I keep dialling Mark’s number, listening to his voicemail, he sounds like he’s in a rush. Bailey and Molly are fighting again, she had forgotten they are in the living room. She goes to the door and sends them upstairs, stands at the sink and empties her cup. Is it just me or does this tea taste funny? she says. She watches her phone again. Mark will be fine, Eilish, this is his fight now as much as yours, you have to let him do this. Yes, but I told him to be home by eight. Carole is looking down at the cup. I think you’re right, Eilish, this tea does taste of must, it must be the water. Eilish is watching Carole’s face thinking she does not know this woman who sits so upright in the chair, the face graven by sleepless nights, it is as though the very thing that had given her aspect has been slowly extracted, her grief feeding on the marrow in her bones. Eilish brings up a hand and touches her own face. Do I look tired? she says, I feel so exhausted, I cannot think anymore, I need to go to bed, Molly’s bed is made up for you, she will sleep with me. When she turns for the door she is met with the feeling she has forgotten something and looks vacantly about the room. It’s his birthday, Carole, in two weeks, Mark, she says, I’m talking about Mark, if these protests don’t work, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. There is talk, Carole says, of boys going across the border to avoid national service—— Eilish is watching the clock, she has forgotten to check if the back door is locked, there is a pile of laundry in a basket on the floor. But how am I supposed to get him out, she says, they won’t issue him with a passport, a letter arrived from the Department of Justice, our application declined without explanation. Carole stands from her seat and takes hold of Eilish’s hand and palms her other hand on top of hers. If they were to come looking for him, Eilish, if it were to come to that, he could live in my house for a while until the time came to— look, it might not come to that, but there is a granny flat at the back that gives onto an alley, nobody will look for him there. Eilish pulls herself free of Carole’s hand but the touch remains on her skin. She rubs the feeling away from her hand, marches to the back door and tests the handle, stands to the glass looking out. The false colours of night, the world that remains despite the shadows that hide the harm being done. My son, she whispers, a fugitive, when he is supposed to be at school, palling about and playing football? Carole’s reflection behind her in the glass is an apparition of grief. I can get him across the border to my brother’s house in Portrush, let me speak to Eddie, he married a woman up there and will want to help. You don’t understand, Carole, he’s at school, he wants to go to university. When she goes upstairs Molly is already asleep in her bed. She can hear Carole cleaning up, wishes she could hear instead her husband and son goofing about in the kitchen, Larry taking Mark in one of his strongman grips, soon it will be the other way round. She dials Mark’s number again but his phone is turned off or the battery is dead. She has Larry’s nightshirt balled in her hand and brings it to her nose, his odour is slowly fading. She falls into a sleep of shadowed faces, the babel of the crowd, wakes during the night into another dream where two become one, husband and son, she seeks the one that is them both but cannot find him there.
The window whispering the rain. She comes to be languid with the sense of being before memory, a hollow body filling with the sound of the rain until memory awakens and she is at spill, moving across the landing to see into the boys’ room and Mark’s empty bed. She returns to her room and puts on the bedside light, lowering the shade away from Molly, Ben lying in his cot as though flung into the depths of dream. What it is a child this age must fear from dreaming, the dread of falling from sudden height, the looming unintelligibility of faces, the terror of waking alone in a dark room. He awoke just once, she remembers now, her hands opening the laptop, she clicks onto the foreign news and a low sound issues from her throat as Molly stirs beside her. Mam, she says, what’s going on? Eilish is scrolling, pulling at her hair, she looks at her daughter with a feeling of falling, she wants to shout everybody awake. They smashed the demonstration in the middle of the night, she says, thousands of people have been arrested, they put them all onto buses—— She tries to reach Mark but his phone remains off. They watch footage from the early dawn of the security forces moving in upon the demonstration with flash grenades, tear gas and batons, the protestors resisting in the rain and sodium light until live rounds are fired, the news shows thousands of people fleeing College Green, people being marched onto buses, a man lying prone on the street until he is dragged by the arms by two gardaí, she sees he is missing a shoe. She is barefoot on the stairs ringing the phone that does not answer, the house silent around her. She is standing by the kitchen table ringing again and then she puts the phone down and sits on a chair. The waters have swollen, she can see this now, the waters sweeping them along while she was asleep, taking her son, the tide broken against the shore wall. When Carole comes downstairs she is fully dressed and looks for something to do, Eilish folding her arms, she turns her back, wishing this woman out of the house. But how can you know? Carole says, you just can’t know if it is true or not, at least give him a few hours to come home. Eilish turns sharply on the ball of her foot, watching the face that went to bed at what hour, this aroma of baking that does not belong to the house, the bread and brownies lying under tea-towels, the floor smelling of pine antiseptic, the counters scrubbed down, you let her stay for one night and she treats the kitchen like it is her own. Look, she says, he would have rung somehow, he would have got his phone charged, he wouldn’t have stayed out the night, I know my son. Carole begins scrolling through her phone, she pulls a chair and sits down. It says here they are using the National Indoor Arena as a detention centre, that must be where the buses are going. Molly drifts into the kitchen with a toothbrush in her hand. She sits down to the table and pours cornflakes into a bowl but does not reach for the milk, sticks the toothbrush into the bowl and stirs the dry flakes. Carole says, look, Eilish, if you want to go, I’ll stay here and mind the children, I have nothing to do all day. Eilish is watching Molly carefully, she looks at Ben who is crawling on the mat, looks again to her daughter as though seeking permission for her to go. Do you want milk, love? she says, going to the fridge, she slides a carton of milk towards her. Let us wait a few more hours, she says, he’s bound to return home. Ben has crawled into the living room and pulled himself to standing on the coffee table, he begins to bang on it with his fist. Soon he will walk and then he will run and the hand that pulls on the hand of the mother is the hand that will pull to let go.
She gets into the Touran and closes the door and keys the ignition then drops her hands. Soon it will be dinner time and yet she is afraid to go. She needs to speak to her father, she tries Mark’s phone again then rings Simon, he doesn’t answer, she tries again, watching out upon the street and for an instant she is met with a sense of stillness so absolute not even a bird breaks the Sunday quiet. This low and motionless sky, the windows with their blinds drawn, the street in silent witness as the people live out their lives, the cycles of births and deaths, the endless recurrence of human generation, a hundred years goes by. The phone clicks and Simon answers and she cannot tell him what she wants to say. That woman has taken my glasses again, he says. Did you look in all the usual places, Dad, did you look on the kitchen table or the bath-side chair? One of these days I’ll catch her red-handed, she is trying to destroy my life, last week she stole your mother’s crystal from the cabinet, I’ll bet you didn’t notice. She is watching her father’s mind, seeing at work the neurological weather, a zone of low pressure giving to sudden inclemency, in five minutes’ time there will be sunshine. Dad, I took the crystal last week to clean it, it was black with dust, you watched me wrap it up in newspaper, look, you need home help, you know you can’t get by on your own anymore, Mrs Taft just moves things about when she’s cleaning, I’ll make sure to have a word with her, anyhow, did you see the news? I don’t know what you’re talking about, I never said I needed help, I never said she could come into this house. Her mind narrows down to driving, there is only this, the slur of motorway traffic, the wet road in ashes. She cannot get the interval right on the windscreen wiper, the wipers beating about her head, the GPS navigator tells her again to take the next exit. By the toll booth she sees a man and woman arguing alongside two cars pulled into the lay-by, the woman pointing at the man and waving something orange as the car plunges ahead. She takes the exit and follows onto Snugborough Road watching for the right turn to the National Indoor Arena, there is nowhere to park, cars are lining the verge and blocking the bus lane while a crowd stands before the gates. When she gets out of the Touran she rings a scarf about her neck and zips her coat watching the sky. Something is being whispered into the afternoon, it rests between the rain as she walks and moves between the people standing before the gates, she doesn’t know what it is. This feeling of winter enduring into spring, the cold rain seeping through her clothes, the cold seeking her heart as she stands watching the gates and the fencing crowned with barbed wire, the security cameras nosing down, armed soldiers standing guard in open-face balaclavas summoning people through the security gate one at a time to enquire at a window. She has forgotten to bring any food or drink. A trim, efficient woman in polar gear offers her some pick’n’mix in a freezer bag. I haven’t heard from my daughter for two days, she says, and they won’t give me any information, this morning I got a phone call, just a man’s voice, telling me my daughter was in the city morgue but when I went there with my husband she wasn’t there, my heart is going to cave in. A Garda prisoner van slows to the entrance but is given no room to pass, camera phones are pressed to the dark glass, a woman in her sixties beats on a window with the base of her fist as her handbag slides down her arm. A man in a rumpled business suit shouts hoarsely at the soldiers, take off your masks, what have you got to hide? The gates open onto the sedate vista of a sports complex as the van goes through. She turns watching the faces that surround her, the faces pained with the vertigo of staring into sudden abyss, all of these people the very same, every one of them clothed yet naked, sullied and pure, proud and shameful, disloyal and faithful, all of them brought here by love. Sooner or later pain becomes too great for fear and when the people’s fear has gone the regime will have to go. After an hour she is searched and summoned through, steps towards the glass watching a young woman in military uniform glancing up from a screen. Identification, please. Eilish touches her pockets with her hands. Oh, she says, I didn’t think to bring it, I might have left it in the car, my son went to see his girlfriend last night and didn’t come home, I’ve been waiting here for hours. The face that regards her is plain as milk, she drinks in the face and smiles and something improves in the young woman’s stare, an empty seat beside her. Are you sure you don’t have it? she says, OK, I suppose it doesn’t matter, tell me, what is your son’s name? Her lips move to sound the name but a voice says no. She looks down at her feet and cannot think, toes with her shoe at the yellow line painted on the tarmac. The voice that has spoken is Larry’s. What if he’s not inside? he says, all they want are names, a name that goes into the system cannot come back out, names are the source of their power. James Dunne, she says, 27 Northbrook Avenue, Ranelagh. She wants to go back to the car and buy more time, watching the woman key the name into the system, the slim engagement ring on her finger, seeing her attached to the arm of some young fella, a weekend footballer and drinker of stout, she does not look like a bad person, so few of them are, there is little to distinguish her from any other girl fresh out of college, a bargirl wiping down countertops, a trainee accountant counting the hours to lunch. A door opens inside and a uniformed man steps through, he pulls at the empty chair and places a sandwich packet on the desk and makes a low comment and the girl laughs without lifting her eyes from the screen. About that name, she says, I’m afraid I can’t give you any information, can you take this form and fill it in?
The children won’t go to bed until she shouts them into their rooms. She lies in the dark walking blind alleys of thought, she thinks she sleeps then wakes into a dark room watched by whispering faces finding herself judged. She sits up and checks on her son in the cot then goes downstairs, moves through the living room when she hears breathing from the couch. She is very still then turns on the lamp. There is Mark stretched out asleep in his jacket, an arm loose over the edge of the seat, a white bandanna around his neck, his clothes still damp from the rain. She fetches a blanket and kneels by the couch careful not to wake him, places his arm by his side. She is holding his hand, watching the face at rest, the features soft around the giving breath, he is at once a child. When he wakes she watches fiercely over him as he butters bread and takes a long drink of coffee, a shadow hiding under his expression, he will not meet her stare. I don’t believe you, she says, the world around you is made up of lies, where will we be if you start lying to me also? I told you where I was, he says, there was no way I could get home until now. He slides back his chair and goes to his phone and sits down typing a message. Where did you leave your bag? she says. He looks away from his phone a moment then shrugs. They said we attacked them with metal clubs, he says, they shot a man in the chest and said he had a heart condition. Look, she says, you’re lucky you weren’t arrested, you need to keep your head down, you can stay home today and get some sleep but tomorrow you are going back to school. She stands by the table watching over him until he looks away. The hair unwashed for how many days, the damp, reeking clothes. You need to take a shower, she says, you need to go upstairs and sleep. He sighs and stands up taking his full height over her, his chin flecked with stubble and for a moment she does not know him. He opens his hands and looks away and when he speaks she senses his resolve, the stony calm in the voice. The world is watching us, Mam, he says, the world saw what happened, the security forces fired live rounds into a peaceful demonstration and then hunted us down, everything has changed now, don’t you see, there can be no going back. She turns away searching for some might over him, the old supremacy of blood, she is watching outside to the garden, the wet light lustrous upon all things, the rain being pulled into the earth. You will have no part to play in what is to come, she says, they have taken your father, they are not going to take my son. She is squeezing her hands when she turns to face him and what she meets is the falsehood that has come out her mouth, one way or another, they will take her son, he stands before her taken. Bailey is pounding down the stairs and comes into the kitchen coughing with an open mouth. Cover your mouth, she says. Oh, he says, looking at his brother, when did you get home? He opens the fridge and pulls at the milk. Mam, the baby’s crying, I have a cold, can I stay home from school?
She stands watching through the blinds onto the street thinking of the gardaí who walked the crowd recording their faces. In the towns and cities across the country the GNSB is knocking on doors and rounding them up, the subversives who occupied the streets, the terrorists hiding in the civilian population. Watching the cars that slow through the street or park nearby, the who of their occupants, this feeling as though a great sleep has been broken, that they are dreamers awakened to the beginning of night. Hearing the sound of the fist on the door in her dreams as though the knocking has come. Protestors have set up roadblocks and are setting fires in the streets, effigies have been set alight in town squares, shop windows smashed and graffiti-sprayed with slogans. There are women in wedding dresses handing out pictures of husbands who have disappeared. There are men wearing Garda bracelets on their sleeves who are not gardaí but move in packs upon protestors with bats and hurling sticks. She watches news footage of a blockade in Cork, the dark pouring of riot police, the rattling staccato of live rounds fired above protestors’ heads. A male student is felled by a bullet and the video circulates on the international news, the slow-motion collapse of the body torn into pixels as it is consumed by tear gas, the body loaded into the back of a car and driven at speed down a side street. She watches it again in disbelief, the known contours of the street, the man in tan sandals with a shopping bag in hand watching from a bus stop, the historic arcade with cosmetics advertising in the windows, she shopped there only last year. Notice is given that the schools are to be closed until law and order has been restored. She is told to work from home. Molly mopes about in her father’s dressing gown refusing to eat anything but breakfast cereal while Bailey complains his shoes are too small. Watching Mark caught it seems within the same brooding savagery of his father. Please, she says, I want you to stay in the house, but he comes and goes as he pleases, he comes home late, she does not know what to do. This unknown air, the soldiers placed at cash machines and banks, the soldiers filing past in personnel carriers on their way into the city. She watches an old man step onto the street and spit at the wheels of an army truck. She adopts a neutral business tone when she speaks to colleagues in New York, speaks to her sister on the phone alert to her own voice and the words she is choosing, the blurriness of certain words, the precise ambiguity of one phrase over another. I wish you would listen to me, Áine says, history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave. Eilish remains silent, watching the words form around her until she takes her sister’s bait, it is always like so, the pair of you would tangle over a phone line, her father always says, she does not care who is listening. That is easy for you to say having abandoned our father to my care, tell me, where is your husband now, he’s at the institute teaching calculus, he’ll drive home in an hour or so and slide into his slippers and put his feet up while you make him dinner, I’m not going to move a bloody inch past my door until I see my Larry home.
She drives to the supermarket and coins free a trolley, slides her son into the facing seat and walks past two soldiers standing guard by the doors while holding her breath, the dark majesty of automatic weapons in the arms of youths no older than her son, chins that have no need of a blade, their faces aggressively expressionless. The shelves have not been restocked. There is no fresh milk or bread. She buys yeast and wholemeal flour, condensed milk, some tinned food and baby formula. She passes the soldiers on her way out the door and shields her son’s head with her hand. She drives home along the canal and slows to a checkpoint, armed gardaí on the road, their faces grave, her throat clamping down on her voice. She is asked to open the boot while a Garda with a handgun at his hip leans down and takes a look at her son. She watches the precise movements around the car, drives away from the checkpoint with her gaze wild before her, thinking about Mark’s birthday, watching the trees along the canal, the willows and poplars giving shade to the path while the swans glide the lengthening light, it has been like so all her life. She finds herself wishing for a stop to spring, for the day’s decrease, for the trees to go blind again, for the flowers to be taken back into the earth, for the world to be glassed to winter. She arrives home and goes upstairs with Ben to put him down for his nap, hears the muffled click of the front door, the sliding of the front patio, quick steps on the gravel. She lifts the blinds and looks out. There is Mark getting into an old Toyota across the street, the car being driven by some youth, another youngster in the front seat, she has never seen either of them before, none of Mark’s friends have a car. She rushes downstairs with the child in her arms and has reached the street when the car pulls away and she follows up the street waving at them to stop but the car slows to the corner and is gone. She stands very still sensing her feet grown cold, she looks down and sees she is wearing her slippers, Ben wriggling to be free of her arms.