Chapter One
A Song
Noel was the driver that weekend in Clare, the only musician among his
friends who did not drink. They were going to need a driver; the town was,
they believed, too full of eager students and eager tourists; the pubs
were impossible. For two or three nights they would aim for empty country
pubs or private houses. Noel played the tin whistle with more skill than
flair, better always accompanying a large group than playing alone. His
singing voice, however, was special, even though it had nothing of the
strength and individuality of his mother’s voice, known to all of them
from one recording made in the early seventies. He could do perfect
harmony with anybody, moving a fraction above or below, roaming freely
around the other voice, no matter what sort of voice it was. He did not
have an actual singing voice, he used to joke, he had an ear, and in that
small world it was agreed that his ear was flawless.
On the Sunday night the town had grown unbearable. Most visitors were, his
friend George said, the sort of people who would blissfully spill pints
over your uilleann pipes. And even some of the better-known country pubs
were too full of outsiders for comfort. Word had spread, for example, of
the afternoon session at Kielty’s in Millish, and now that the evening was
coming in, it was his job to rescue two of his friends and take them from
there to a private house on the other side of Ennis where they would have
peace to play.
As soon as he entered the pub, he saw in the recess by the window one of
them playing the melodion, the other the fiddle, both acknowledging him
with the tiniest flick of the eyes and a sharp knitting of the brow. A
crowd had gathered around them, two other fiddlers and a young woman
playing the flute. The table in front of them was laden down with full and
half-full pint glasses.
Noel stood back and looked around him before going up to the bar to get a
soda water and lime; the music had brightened the atmosphere of the pub so
that even the visitors, including those who knew nothing about the music,
had a strange glow of contentment and ease.
He saw one of his other friends at the bar waiting for a drink and nodded
calmly to him before moving toward him to tell him that they would soon be
moving on. His friend agreed to come with them.
“Don’t tell anyone where we’re going,” Noel said.
As soon as they could decently leave, he thought, and it might be an hour
or more, he would drive them across the countryside, as though in flight
from danger.
His friend, once he had been served, edged nearer to him, a full pint of
lager in his hand.
“I see you are on the lemonade,” he said with a sour grin. “Would you like
another?”
“It’s soda water and lime,” Noel said. “You couldn’t afford it.”
“I had to stop playing,” his friend said. “It got too much. We should move
when we can. Is there much drink in the other place?”
“You’re asking the wrong man,” Noel said, guessing that his friend had
been drinking all afternoon.
“We can get drink on the way,” his friend said.
“I’m ready to go when the boys are,” Noel said, nodding in the direction
of the music.
His friend frowned and sipped his drink, and looked up, searching Noel’s
face for a moment, then glancing around before moving closer to him so
that he could not be heard by anyone else.
“I’m glad you’re on the soda water. I suppose you know that your mother is
here.”
“I do all right,” Noel said, smiling. “There’ll be no beer tonight.”
His friend turned away.
As he stood alone near the bar, Noel calculated that, as he was
twenty-eight, this meant he had not seen his mother for nineteen years. He
had not even known she was in Ireland and, as he looked around carefully,
he did not think that he would recognize her. His friends knew that his
parents had separated but none of them knew the bitterness of the split
and the years of silence which had ensued.
Recently, Noel had learned from his father that she had written to Noel in
the early years and that his father had returned each letter to her
unopened. He had deeply regretted saying in response that he wished his
father had abandoned him rather than his mother. He and his father had
barely spoken since then and Noel resolved as he listened to the music
rising and growing faster that he would go and see him when he got back to
Dublin.
He found that he had finished his drink quickly without noticing; he
turned back to the bar, which was busy, and tried to capture the attention
of John Kielty, the owner, or his son, young John, as a way of keeping
himself occupied while he worked out what he should do. He knew that he
could not leave the bar and drive away; his friends were depending on him,
and he did not, in any case, want to be alone now. He would have to stay
here, he knew, but move into the background, remain in the shadows so that
he would not meet her. A few people in the bar would know who he was, he
supposed, since he had been coming here in the summer for almost ten
years. He hoped that they had not noticed him, or, even if they had, would
not have occasion to tell his mother that her son, two hundred miles away
from home, was among the company, that he had wandered by accident into
the same bar.
Over the years he had heard her voice on the radio, the same few songs
always from her old album, now released on CD, two of them in Irish, all
of them slow and haunting, her voice possessing a depth and sweetness, a
great confidence and fluency. He knew her face from the cover of the album
and from memory, of course, but also from an interview done in London
maybe ten years earlier for The Sunday Press. He had watched his father
burn that week’s edition but had surreptitiously bought another copy
himself and cut out the interview and the large photograph which had been
printed alongside it. What had struck him hardest was the news that his
grandmother in Galway was still alive. His father, he later learned, had
banned her visits as well, and visits to her, once his wife had fled to
England with another man. His mother told the interviewer that she often
returned to Ireland and traveled to Galway to see her mother and her aunts
from whom she had learned all the songs. She did not mention that she had
a son.
Over the months that followed he often studied the photograph, noting her
witty smile, her ease with the camera, the dazzling life in her eyes.
When he had begun to sing in his late teens, and the quality of his voice
was recognized, he was used on a number of albums as harmony and backing
vocals. His name was printed with the names of the other musicians. He
always looked at the CD covers as though he were his mother, wondering if
she would ever buy these recordings, and imagining her idly glancing at
the names listed on the back, and finding his name, and stopping for a
second, and remembering what age he must be, and asking herself about him.
He bought another soda water and lime and turned from the bar, trying to
work out where he should stand. Suddenly, he found that his mother was
staring directly at him. In the dim light, she seemed not much older than
her photograph in The Sunday Press had made her appear. She was in her
early fifties now, he knew, but with her long fringe and her auburn hair,
she could have been ten or fifteen years younger. He took her in calmly,
evenly, not smiling or offering any hint of recognition. Her gaze was
almost too open and curious.
He glanced toward the door and the dwindling summer light; when he looked
back at her she was still watching him. She was with a group of men; some
of them, by their dress, he judged to be local, but at least two of them
were outsiders, probably English, he thought. And then there was also an
older woman whom he could not place, sitting in their company.
Suddenly, he noticed that the music had stopped. He looked over in case
his friends were packing up their instruments, but saw that they were
facing him as though waiting for something. He was surprised to see that
the owner’s wife, Statia Kielty, had appeared in the bar. It was a rule
she explained to all comers that she never stood behind the bar after six
in the evening. She smiled at him, but he was not sure that she knew him
by name. He was, for her, he thought, one of the boys who came down from
Dublin a few times each summer. Yet you could never tell with her; she had
a sharp eye and missed nothing.
She motioned him to move aside so she could get a better view of the
company. As he did so, she called across to his mother, seeking her
attention.
“Eileen! Eileen!”
“I’m here, Statia,” his mother replied. There was a faint English edge to
her accent.
“We’re all ready, Eileen,” Statia said. “Will you do it now before it gets
too crowded?”
His mother lowered her head and lifted it again, her expression serious.
She shook her head gravely at Statia Kielty as if to say that she did not
think she could do it, even if she was ready to try. John Kielty and young
John, by now, had stopped serving, and all the men at the bar were facing
toward Noel’s mother. She offered them a girlish smile, pushed her fringe
back, and lowered her head once more.
“Silence now!” John Kielty shouted.
Her voice when it rose seemed to come from nowhere. It was more powerful,
even on the low notes, than the voice on the recording. Most people in the
bar would know, Noel thought, one or two versions of the song she sang
which were plainer, and some might also know his mother’s version. This
rendition was wilder, all grace notes and flourishes and sudden shifts of
tone. As she moved into the second verse, she lifted her head, her eyes
wide open, and she smiled at Statia, who stood behind the bar with her
arms folded.
Noel believed that she had started too intensely, that it would be
impossible to get through the eight or nine verses without losing
something, without being forced to bring the voltage down. As she carried
on, however, he knew he was wrong. Her control of her breathing for the
high grace notes was astonishing, but it was also her naturalness with the
language which made the difference; it was her first language, as it must
have been his, but his Irish was half-forgotten now. Her style was the old
style, with electricity added, almost declamatory at times, with hardly
any interest in the sweetness of the tune.
He had not intended to shift from where he stood, but he found that he had
come closer to her and stood alone between her group and the bar. The
song, like many of the old songs, was about unrequited love, but it was
different from most of them in its increasing bitterness. Soon, it became
a song about treachery.
She had her eyes closed as she worked on trills and long notes. At times
she left half a second between lines, not to catch her breath but to take
the measure of the bar and its inhabitants, let them hear their own
stillness as the song began its slow and despairing conclusion.
As she started these stanzas of pure lament, his mother was staring
straight at him once more. Her voice became even wilder than before, but
never too dramatic or striving too much for effect. She did not take her
eyes from Noel as she came to the famous last verse. He, in turn, had
worked out in his head a way of singing above her. He imagined fiercely
how it could be done, how her voice would evade such accompaniment, and
perhaps deliberately wrong-foot it, but he believed if he was ready to
move a fraction more up or down as she did that it could be managed.
However, he knew to remain silent and watch her quietly as she looked into
his eyes; he was aware that everyone was watching her as she sang of her
love who took north from her and south from her, east from her and west
from her, and now – she lowered her head again and almost spoke the last
words – her love had taken God from her.
When she finished, she nodded at John Kielty and Statia and turned
modestly to her friends, not acknowledging the applause. When Noel noticed
Statia Kielty looking at him, and smiling warmly and familiarly, he
believed that she knew who he was. And he realized then that he could not
stay. He would have to summon the others, try to exude a natural
impatience; he would have to make it look normal that his mother would
remain with her friends and that he would leave with his.
“God, that was powerful,” one of them said when he approached the recess
at the window.
“She’s a fine voice all right,” Noel replied.
“Are we going to stay or what?” his friend asked.
“I told the others that I’d drive you to Cusshane as soon as I could.
They’ll be waiting for you.”
“We’ll drink up so,” his friend said.
As they slowly prepared themselves for departure he kept an eye on Statia
Kielty. She had moved from behind the bar, and was accosted by a few
drinkers for polite banter, but she was clearly on her way to speak to his
mother. It could take Statia a while to mention that Noel was in the bar.
Indeed, she might not mention it at all. On the other hand, it could be
the first thing that she mentioned. And it might be enough to make his
mother stand up and search for him or she might smile softly, half
indifferently, and not move from her seat or change the expression on her
face. He did not want either of these things to happen.
He turned and noticed that his friends still had not finished their
drinks; they had barely put away their instruments.
“I’m going out to the car,” he said. “You’ll find me out there. Make sure
you grab Jimmy up at the bar. I’m taking him, too.”
When one of them looked at him puzzled, he knew that he had spoken falsely
and too fast. He shrugged and made his way past the drinkers at the front
door of the pub, making sure not to look at anybody. Outside, as the first
car of the evening with its full headlights on approached, he was shaking.
He knew he would have to be careful to say nothing more, to pretend that
it had been an ordinary evening. It would all be forgotten; they would
play and sing until the small hours. He sat in the car and waited in the
darkness for the others to come.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Mothers and Sons
by Colm Toibin
Copyright © 2007 by Colm Tóibín.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Scribner
Copyright © 2007
Colm Tóibín
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-4165-3465-2
