LatinosUSA

Gazing through her living room window, Bernie wonders how this morning and last night could belong to the same season – never mind the same week. In contrast to the dark hours of wind and rain that followed last evening’s thunder storm, this July morning has brought clear skies, warm sunshine, and gentle breezes. Sipping her coffee, she nods her acknowledgment of today’s apology, and concedes that, like people, weather can also have its moods: its highs and lows; its rages and regrets. She won’t, however, be lulled into taking anything for granted: after all, yesterday began just as benignly as today has. After polishing and repositions her spectacles, she opens her back window; she smiles, remembering how Gran, and subsequently Mam, would hose down the west-facing windows after each storm, explaining how the gales had stripped sheets of salt-laden foam from the waves and hurled them against the house and everything else that stood in their way.

            Bernie has always thought of this house as Gran’s – even while it was Mam’s; even though it’s now her own. Maybe that’s because it was Gran’s only home, while Mam only ever referred to it as her holiday home, as did Bernie – until three months ago. Yet, it those weeks, she has had more human interaction than in the two preceding years. You’re going native? You’ll die of boredom. You won’t last six months; her colleagues said when, shortly after Mam’s death, she first voiced her thoughts about leaving Dublin. The isolation will drive you mad, her boss – and sometimes lover – insisted. You’re a city girl: Dublin is your home; it’s where your friends are – your job; your life! Her breakdown silenced them all. Almost overnight, there were no cosy chats with colleagues, no calls from friends, and no career prospects. Her boss was sympathetic but firm: the company’s offer of retirement on health grounds, sweetened with a gold-plated handshake, was the best solution for all concerned. Bernie grabbed the opportunity with both hands, well aware that her ostracism was inevitable from the first mention of a psychiatrist.             

            Bernie shed intermittent tears during last night’s power cut, followed by bouts of self-admonishment over her susceptibility to the heady cocktail of candlelight and wine. Had Gran shed similar tears during the long dark nights before the advent of electricity? Had Gran wept alone on her rocking chair after her husband’s body was recovered from the glaise behind the village pub? Had Mam and her brother lain awake in their beds, covering their ears against migrating curlews’ haunting cries and their mother’s stifled sobs? Years later, long after Mam’s move to Dublin, had Gran wept alone when her only son died after a fall from a pony at the October fair? Gran didn’t have wine to anaesthetise her pain: Gran’s hatred of alcohol began long before it was a factor in the deaths of both her husband and son. Bernie isn’t sure whether it was Gran or Mam who once said that the wind and rain of summer storms are the wails and tears of restless souls. Had last night’s storm borne the cries of Bernie’s grandfather and uncle; of Gran and Mam; of her own dead baby?

            The gulls are crying now, crying with joy at the bounty washed ashore by the spring tide. It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody good; Gran had a saying for every occasion; minor disasters would be summarily dismissed with phrases like, ‘may the bad luck of the year go with it’, or ‘may the good Lord send no greater evil’, or ‘at least ‘tis dry’, or her frequent cant of, ‘it’ll be all equal in a hundred years’.

Gran loved wildlife, especially birds, and waders were her favourite. She regarded waders as fellow beachcombers, and could identify all of the permanent residents and most migrants at first glance or call; she knew from whence they had come, and could accurately predict their departure date. Bernie never doubted anything Gran said about birds, even when she’d quip how the swallows born in Connollys’ barn a year before had returned, twittering in Gaelic – but with African accents. Bernie has bought some beautifully illustrated books about birds, but while there is little she doesn’t know about the breeding habits of sanderlings, dunlins and knots, she still can’t distinguish one species from the other – either in flight or when foraging on the foreshore. Gran didn’t need reference books; Bernie doubts if Gran had ever owned any book other than those on her school curriculum, and her Sunday missal. Gran’s knowledge was acquired from the stories of her forebearers, and her own observations and explorations. Gran had a wealth of stories, and was always willing to share them. Mam wasn’t good at telling stories, even at bedtime, but she always kept Bernie supplied with material appropriate to her age and reading ability. By her seventh birthday, Bernie had sussed how things worked differently in Gran’s house: if Mam was reluctant to read her a bedtime story, she would simply say I’ll ask Gran; it never failed. 

            Sighing, she turns her attention to the little flocks of waders that scurry to and fro on the thin ribbon of sand that lengthens with the ebbing tide. Whatever about the house, Bernie has always thought of the little patch of beach as her very own, and she still harbours a secret fantasy that some superhuman ancestor had once hewn a swathe through the rocky outcrops to fashion the narrow path from the house to the low tide mark. Idly wondering when she last saw a tide retreat so far, Bernie is jolted back to the present when a new movement catches her eye. Somebody, or something, has appeared at the end of the path, and is approaching her home. She blinks; is it a woman or a man, or…? No, there are two distinct figures: one tall, one short; a woman with a red haired child by the hand? Her vision blurs. She removes her glasses, wipes her eyes and then blows her nose. She squints through her cleansed lenses; it’s a man; he has longish dark hair, andthere is a dog frolicking beside him – an Irish setter, its lustrous russet ears flapping like errant ringlets. She has noticed this dog once or twice recently – always unaccompanied. He likes to splash about in the shallows, or to stalk the little huddles of birds that forage at the water’s edge. Bernie doesn’t recognise the man, and is at a loss as to where he has sprung from. Due to the treacherous terrain at the rear of her property, this section of the shore is virtually inaccessible from either side – except from the shore when a spring tide is at its lowest ebb. Again, she removes her glasses; again, she dries her eyes, all the time trying to rationalise what she originally imagined she had seen. Was it a real memory of her younger self holding Gran’s hand, or had her subconscious conjured a vision of Mam – as a toddler – with Gran, or was it herself with…?

            “Oh,” she gasps, at a gentle tapping on the frame of her back door.

            “Sorry,” the man says, smiling apologetically through the glass; “please forgive the intrusion. I’m your new neighbour; we’ve bought the old McCoy place.” he inclines his head southward as though to validate his claim.

            “You don’t sound American!” Bernie responds; her hand hovers for a moment before she slides the door open.

            “American?”

            “I heard ‘twas Americans who bought the McCoy place – as a holiday home.”

            “Well, I was born in The Bronx, but grew up in Dublin; Alice, my wife, was born in Dublin, but raised in New York – it’s a long story. Our births occurred more than three thousand miles apart, but were separated by less than three hours.”

            “I’m Bernie,” she says, extending her hand “This was my gran’s house. I moved here from Dublin a few months ago.”

            “Ray,” he smiles; his grip is firm. “My gran was a McCoy; she was born in our house. We’ve been moving in over the past few weeks. By the way, it’s not a holiday home; it’s our only home – our forever home. Oh, this is Triggs,” he redeploys his hand to fondle the setter’s silky ears.

            “Triggs; like the dog Roy Keane had?”

            “I’m afraid so. Dad is football mad. While Mom was in the labour ward, he found an early bar and watched Ray Houghton put the ball in England’s net: June 12^th 1988.”   

            Bernie isn’t exactly sure of the sequence of events over the following hours. She has a fuzzy recollection of Ray leaning over her, lifting her into his arms, and then easing her onto her couch. She is conscious of a brandy aftertaste, and has a vague memory of sipping sickly-sweet tea, and being bombarded with questions about doctors, family and friends. Jane Connolly, a nurse and childhood friend who lives just across the road, examined her and agreed with Bernie’s assertion that she was merely exhausted following the trauma of her move, the sale of her mam’s house in Dublin, and last night’s loss of sleep. I’d say that storm keep the whole country awake, Nurse Connolly cooed; you’ll be grand after a little rest.

            You’ll be grand after a little rest; the very words Mam used after telling Bernie that her baby had been stillborn. It was the first time Bernie saw her mother smile in the months since she’d been forced to admit her pregnancy. Dad would have been more understanding, but he had been ousted several years before. Mam had taken Bernie’s condition as a personal insult: in Mam’s world, fifteen-year-old girls weren’t supposed to get pregnant – especially her fifteen-year-old girl. Teenage pregnancy hadn’t featured on the chart Mam was plotting for her only child. Mam was determined that Bernie should be the family’s first college graduate – not its first child-mother.   You’re your father’s daughter. No more self-respect than a common scrubber. What did I ever do to deserve this? May God forgive me, but your poor grandmother must be turning somersaults in her grave.

            Who put the ball in the English net? The chant echoes through the Dublin streets as Mam swears, prays, swerves and revs through a heaving green sea of inebriated football fans, and bouncing cardboard cut-outs of Ireland’s manager, Jack Charlton. Filtered through Bernie’s screams, the chant is somehow transposed to who got the leg over Bernadette? Through a cacophony of shuffling feet, slamming doors; contradictory commands, she hears her name. There are other women with Mam – four or five, maybe six; one is a nun; jumbled voices coaxing, threatening, encouraging, bullying… and then that other sound, a sound alien to Bernie’s ears: the cry of a newborn baby? But stillborn babies don’t cry… 

            The crying of gulls jolts Bernie awake; she slides the French door open and inhales the essence of the sea. The ribbon of path is fast submerging, as are the rocky outcrops, and there is no sign of the little scuttling waders. But Bernie knows that the path is still there, that fish are now feasting among the very crevices where birds were feeding only hours before.

            Her doorbell rings. Remembering Jane Connolly’s promise to look in on her later, Bernie doesn’t check through the peephole before pulling the front door wide open. No, she mentally screams, taking an involuntary step backwards and blinking in a futile effort to banish the mirage before her eyes: her mother – her younger mother – clutching her toddler-self by the hand.

            “Hi,” the gorgeous redhead beams, reaching a wicker basket covered with a burgundy and white gingham teacloth towards Bernie. “I’m Alice, Ray’s wife, and this is our daughter Katie. We’ve baked you some cookies.”