The Heather Blazing Read online

  More Praise for The Heather Blazing

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

  —The New Yorker

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

  —John Banville, Vogue

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

  —Vince Passaro, New York Newsday

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

  —Mark Harman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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

  —Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Globe

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

  —Mirabella

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

  —Eamon O’Kelly, The Irish Voice

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

  —Bruce Allen, USA Today

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

  —Phyllis Lindsay, Irish Echo

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

  —Linda Grant, Independent on Sunday

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  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Afterword

  About Colm Tóibín

  For Brendan, Nuala, Bairbre and Niall

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, my lord.”

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, my lord.”

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

  “My lord, I wish to say—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

  When he was back in his chambers he telephoned Carmel.

  “I have everything ready,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

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

  “Do you feel all right?”

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

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

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

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