On Sundays

Me and my Da visit Ballycotton Lighthouse every Sunday after church. I’m comforted by the ritual of it. At the end of each mass, Father Conway reminds us that we’re being sent forth to live out the mission of Christ, which Da tells me just means we should try to be good to each other. Then we reply, "Thanks be to God,” loosen our ties and shuffle out of the pews as fast as we can. If we miss the noon ferry, there isn’t another sailing until Monday. Luckily, we only live a few houses down and have become quite good at the quick change.

As soon as we step inside, we strip off our church clothes in the front hallway, leaving the crumpled laundry on the floor, and slide into our jumpers and wellies. I know Mam would shake her head at the state of our fine blazers lying there wrinkled and covered in bits of mud, so sometimes when we aren’t too hurried, I hang them properly on their hooks before we’re out the door. Sad to say that today wasn’t one of those days though, so I mumbled my apologies – “Tá brón orm, Mam.” She always loved when I’d give Gaeilge a try, no matter how badly I bungled it so.

~

My Granda, my Mam’s father, had been the last keeper of Ballycotton Lighthouse before the light became electric and then automated altogether. Each time we walked up the winding path to the summit of the island, my Da would tell me the same stories about his work there. How he began before dusk, but continued well past dawn. How he was not only in charge of the lighting and maintaining of the beacon’s wick and lens, but the rest of the lighthouse as well, and all the surrounding grounds. The island was full of creatures o’course, from soaring falcons to families of goats, and it was important to maintain the unspoiled nature of it all.

I always thought that the lighthouse, painted entirely black save for the bright red gallery at the top, looked out of place sitting upon the lovely green grass, surrounded by shimmering blue-gray sea. The world around it was like something out of a story book really, and in comparison, it could look quite sad or sinister depending on the weather. Today, I thought it looked a bit melancholy myself, and I told Da. He chuckled and said I’d become quite the deep thinker at the age of 15.

He then laid our flannel blanket on the spot near the boathouse that gave us the best view and unpacked a picnic of brown bread, cheese, biscuits and two thermoses of hot tea. The tea was essential to battling the sea breeze, which could make you feel bitter cold to your bones. Today it whipped at our faces and turned our noses bright red, but it didn’t much matter because our bellies were quickly full and warm.

After eating, we sat and listened to the woosh of the waves for as they knocked against the shoreline, keeping time like a metronome, until Da left to have a smoke. I laid back with my head propped on my backpack and looked up to the gallery. I thought of how Granda had to paint every single banister on that balcony fresh each season because the harsh salt air could turn a bright red to a dull, lifeless pink in only a few short months.

I continued to stare off for a while, following the Herring Gulls as they glided on gusts of wind, when a sudden shift in the weather caused the clouds to thicken and the sky to grow dark with a quickness. I heard a rumbling of thunder in the distance when I realized Da still hadn’t come back, so I stood and called to him, cupping my hands over my mouth. “Da!”

There was no reply.

I started hastily packing our things, as a lashing rain began to fall. But just as I bent over to reach for our blanket, I heard a crash so loud and close that I swear I could feel my insides vibrating. I stumbled backward, tripping over my bag and sending our pair of thermoses tumbling down the hill. I meant to start after them, but as soon as I’d gotten back on my feet, a great flash of lightning struck the rod atop the lighthouse and lit the entire sky. I was absolutely gobsmacked at the sight of it all until I saw something even more mental - the silhouette of a man standing on the lantern gallery’s balcony, dangerously close to where the lightning just struck.

As I squinted through the whipping rain, he slowly raised his arm and seemed to gesture for me to come.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve to get a better look, but when I opened them again, he’d disappeared on me. Was that Da, I wondered, calling me to come in from the rain? Maybe he knew a secret way to get in, like Granda had a hidden key under a well-placed rock that was still there all these years later. I couldn’t say for sure, but it was really bucketing down, so I decided I’d take my chances. I threw the blanket over my head for a make-shift umbrella and sprinted toward the lighthouse.

When I reached the base of it, the iron barred security door was swinging open on its hinges in the wind, so I thought for sure now that Da had gone inside. I used both hands and leaned on the heavy inner door with my shoulder to push it open. As it scraped against the stone floor, it made a screeching noise that echoed through the lighthouse chamber and sent shivers straight through me, but still I was glad to be inside and out of the rain.

“Da?” I called once more.

It was quiet and dark inside, the sounds of the wind and rain muffled by thick sandstone walls. I moved toward an old lantern resting on a table in the middle of the room. And, as if it was placed there just for me, a matchbook lay open next to it, holding a single match. I had to strike it three times before it finally caught, as my hands were shaking on me. Once I was able to light the well of the lantern, it cast a warm glow about the room, and I let out an unsteady breath.

I glanced around, looking down at the floor, and there were no muddy boot prints but my own. No signs of Da, it seemed, until I heard a noise upstairs. I tilted my head to see if I could get a better listen, and sure enough, I heard it again. It was a kind of tinkling sound, maybe like that of coins shifting in a glass jar.

“Da? You’re acting the maggot!” I called out as jolly as I could, trying to calm myself.

I started up the spiral staircase, holding the lantern near my feet so I didn’t miss a step. When I reached the first landing, there was a room to the left so small that I needed to duck to enter. Scattered about were rusted parts of pulleys and gears that must’ve once been used in the clockwork mechanism that turned the light of the beacon above. I was fascinated by them all o’course, but as I shifted the lantern, something shiny caught my eye. And there, beneath the room’s only window, was a set of silver keys. It hung from a small door in the wall, the proper key already inside the keyhole, just waiting to be turned.

I looked from left to right, as if Da was going to jump out and tell me this was all for a laugh, but no – it seemed I was still alone. So, I set the lantern on the window’s edge, knelt and turned the key. As I did, the rest of the keys jingled against one another and it dawned on me that this was the sound that’d led me to this room in the first place. If Da was nowhere to be found, then who’d been here just before me? Who left these keys for me find?

My mind raced as I turned the key and opened the door, only to discover a little compartment that looked empty at first glance. So I stuck my face in the doorway for a closer look, and there, not so far from the tip of my nose, I spotted a bit of newspaper taped in place. I carefully lifted it free and stood back in the light to get a better look as I unfolded it.

A young Granda and Mam were looking back at me.

In the photo, they sat in a small wooden boat settled on the shoreline. She looked happy and wore a funny little flower crown atop her head. Even in black and white, I could tell the spiky flowers tucked within it were water mint, which was her favorite. They thrive in dampness, which is why great purple bunches of it grow all over the island. Ma always dismissed the science, though - said they were proof of the magic of this place.

The caption under the photo read, ‘James’ daughter Siobhan sets off to school, readying her boat on Ballycotton’s north shore,’ and the article that accompanied it was about what life was like for the keepers’ family living in Ireland’s last remaining lighthouse station. I tried to imagine her laughing and smiling with Granda as they took the boat to Cork City to meet her mates, but I couldn’t muster images of anything other than the day of her funeral. The way she looked all wrong because they’d used make up to cover the gray of skin, even though she never wore any when she was alive. The way my father clenched his hands so tightly together as he knelt by her coffin, angry at her for leaving us and angry at all those who said it was God’s will. Was this the same God who wanted us to be good to one another, even though he could be so cruel to us?

And I couldn’t help but to think, o’course, that it was that shite wooden boat that took my Mam away from me.

~

I was six years old when Mam went to the island one Sunday after church. Da later told me that she liked to go there in the weeks and months after Granda’s death because she said she could still feel him there. And he said that, at the time, it was the only thing that brought her any bit of happiness besides me.

She caught the noon ferry, just as we’d done today, but spent so much time lost in her memories that she missed the 6 o’clock home. So, she went into the boathouse to see if her little wooden boat was still there, and sure enough, it was. She dragged it down to shore and set off for Cork City, just like she’d done in her school days. It was summer then, so it would’ve stayed light until 11. I imagine the sky was still bright and full of promise for things to get better when she returned home.

She hadn’t been out too long when she noticed that the boat was moving quite slow on her. Not that it was ever quick o’course, but it was even more sluggish than was usual. She stood up to see if something had caught hold of the side, when she heard a gentle squish beneath her feet. Her toes felt damp and she realized the boat was taking on water.

Later, Da would be told by The Commissioner of Irish Lights that every building in the lighthouse station had been found infested with termites a month earlier. Many of the outbuildings’ contents were either thrown away or had received major repairs, but somehow the little boat was missed, and we still don’t know why. So, poor Mam took it out into the wild Atlantic, full of tiny holes that she couldn’t see. It was on the verge of crumbling right there with her in it.

Although she was a strong swimmer, it was quite windy, so the waves were high and the sea frigid. She had no tool but her hands to bail out water, and it only served to tire her. When she finally abandoned the boat, she had to battle icy currents with no life vest to help keep her afloat. After a time, she simply succumbed to the cold and exhaustion, her body washing ashore sometime near dawn. She happened to be found by a local fisherman who ventured out early to get the best catch of the day.

~

Like Mam, I started getting lost in my thoughts out here too, ever since she’d been gone. And I was all tangled up in them when I heard a loud crash from above that snapped me out of my head. I noticed there were dark spots spattered across the newspaper clipping I still held in my hands. I’d been crying and hadn’t realized it. Quickly, I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand and shoved the it into the pocket of my pants. I ran up the stairs, worried that Da may be there and hurt. But when I got to the watch room, Da was still nowhere to be found. It was one of the storm panes that’d caused the noise; it had broken, causing little pieces of glass to scatter across the floor.

It crunched under my feet as I moved toward where the pane had fallen. The metal bar that supported it had somehow snapped in the storm, and with a strong gust of wind, the piece of the bar that remained hanging from the window’s frame swung and whacked me straight in the chest. I hit the floor with mighty thud and everything went dark. Although I couldn’t see, I could still feel as a great chill rolled through me and I shivered like mad. Soon, a heaviness settled in on my body, pushing me toward sleep. But just as felt I was about to sink beneath the floor boards to somewhere far away, the air began to change around me. It warmed and smelled not of salt or rain. Instead, it smelled like something more familiar.

When I was a little boy, Da would show me all sorts of photos so I could keep remembering Mam and Granda. In nearly all of them, Granda was smoking a pipe. Da said Mam had grown up smelling the sweet scent of Granda’s favorite tobacco, Peterson Irish Flake, and that whenever she smelled it, she felt safe and warm. O’course, I wanted to know what it smelled like for myself, so Da took me to the smoke shop to pick up a tin after she was gone. I keep it in a shoebox under my bed and from time to time, when I miss her and want to feel safe and warm too, I open it and breathe deeply.

It often smelled like different things to me each time – vanilla and berries and leather and woods – but right now, here in the lighthouse, I could smell all of them at once. The scent grew so strong, it felt almost like being wrapped in a blanket made from it. And that’s when the darkness began to lift.

I carefully got to my feet and ran my hand over my chest to find that strangely, it didn’t ache one bit. I noticed a soft white light shining through the broken windowpane, and as I looked out toward the sea, I couldn’t believe what I saw in the distance. The rain had lessened, and the stars were shimmering brighter than I had ever seen in all my life. Their light bounced off little waves on the surface of the sea, casting glimmers onto a small wooden boat. Upon that boat, I could see a man and woman. They looked more than shadows, but still not quite solid. The woman wore a white dress that billowed softly behind her in the wind, and as the man rowed, she stood and slowly waved. I squinted to try to see them better, but they were made of a mist that the light passed straight through, and soon they simply vanished into the soft rain.

~

“Liam!”

My Da pulled me away from the gaping hole where the window once stood.

“What in Jesus’ name are you doing?!”

I just shook my head and said nothing, because in truth, I didn’t know. What could I say? That I had the truly massive idea to follow some random noises to the top of the lighthouse in the middle of a raging storm? That I was busy chasing ghosts?

He grasped my shoulders and stayed there for a moment, looking me in the eyes. “Right then,” he said, “just come on now, we’ll miss the ferry home.”

When we climbed on board, I slumped in my seat and rested my head against his shoulder, feeling much too old for this sort of thing but needing to do it anyway.

“Where were you?” I asked.

He told me that when he left to have a smoke, he stepped behind the old boathouse to shield himself from the wind. Soon after the rain started, he legged it back to where we’d been sitting but I was gone. Since he knew the lighthouse and outbuildings were all locked, he thought I might’ve made my way down by the pier to wait for the ferry. But when I wasn’t there, he started back up the hill again. And that’s when he saw the lighthouse door swinging open in the wind.

He asked me what I’d been thinking, going up there, but I was too knackered to make sense of it, assuming there was any to be made at all. “I don’t know…Tá brón orm,” I mumbled and drifted off to sleep.

Da stroked my hair like he did when I was little and had been dreaming bad dreams. I was still in a daze when we walked back home.

“Maybe a cuppa and a lie down, yeah?” he said, as we reached our front door.

I nodded in agreement. Right now, I wanted nothing more than hot tea and my bed. So, once we got inside, I threw my jumper on the floor and kept on ditching layers, tossing them over my shoulder as I made my way up the stairs. But then I thought of Mam, so I trod back down to put my jumper on the hook the way she would’ve liked.

When I reached the last step, I was surprised to see my blazer already hanging there on its proper hook and not on the floor where I’d left it. At first, I thought Da might’ve picked it up, but I knew the chances of that were slim because he’s just as much of a mess as me. So, I walked over to get a closer look, when something purple caught my eye.

There, nestled safely in its breast pocket, was a single sprig of water mint. “Mam?” I quietly asked the empty hallway, not really knowing if I expected an answer.

“What’s that, Liam?” Da called, making his way toward me with the fresh pot of tea.

I turned to him just as he asked, “Do you smell…?”

I smiled and finished his sentence for him. “Peterson Irish Flake.”