Seeing Things

Deena Linett

I called him Lark although his given name is Laurie. I made it up, a love-name, so I reckon when they asked him for a name he said what came to mind, quick-like, and told them Lark.

The lark is singing, the lark’s aloft, the lark’s in his nest, like that.

I’d got involved after my brother was shot on the way home on a winter afternoon. There’d been an American movie and they fancied they were like the lads over there, did some of that fooling around they do—singing rock music and strumming the air before their stomachs with the make-believe guitars. It might’ve been they’d found a few tins and some metal lids. They were on their way home when the Gardai got there. The clang of metal as it hit the paving stones probably began it. There were shots and Colum died, he was fifteen, and apart from smoking a few fags now and again he never did one thing wrong.

I joined the women’s group after that, the mother’s group. Mum couldn’t, so I did.

I didn’t like to tell our story, and as time went on it became a matter of pride not to, at the meetings, but I marched and served tea. I stood out to be counted. Of course all the neighbours knew, but the women from the other side, and even some of our own, they didn’t know why I was there, and I was young then, only seventeen, and one of the few unmarried. Then Lark came into my life, like the very bird he was, wiry and quick. A bit flighty and nervous, he didn’t like to look at you direct, but I made him.

I settled him some. Didn’t ask what he was about and he didn’t ask me either.

He’d come for me at the end of the day, to the office where I did the typing. We had it in common that we stayed away from the pubs. He worked in a shop that caters for visitors across the road from Belfast Central. He liked to talk about us getting on the train one day, going to Derry or Portrush, which is on the sea, and—I’ve seen pictures—very pretty, with boats and little houses right along the water.

He did stock and that at first and later sold like a regular haberdasher. His shop had a long alley along the back, and there was commerce back there. I know that now but I didn’t know it then, and when the day’s work was done and we’d helped our mothers (in his case it was his granny) with the washing up, we’d meet for a walk, or if it was soft, out in the park. We’d go to the films, or down by the river. On a Saturday we’d have a pint or two, but not other times, and I was glad of that.

In those days I believed all the trouble must begin in the pubs.

That’s not true, and I know it now, but I was a girl then, and stupid. I thought a person could be safe if he just worked hard and stayed about with family and didn’t go for the drink.

He knew what I did. He knew I went to those meetings. There was even a night I was on the news—pure mistake!—right at the edge of a march, behind the banners and the signs, PEACE NOW, and STOP THE KILLING, and RUC OUT! and the camera saw me.

On film I could see what I couldn’t see in a mirror. Doesn’t she look just the spit of her Mum, Aunt Lou used to say. And Lark once. We were walking in the moonlight and he said the way the light caught the side of my face, I looked just like my mum.

My mum was beaming at the television, and Lark nodded and gave me a hug about the shoulders, in front of my mum he did, and I thought he was right proud. Nobody knew I called him Lark. My mum did not, nor Aunt nor Uncle Simon. Nobody ever heard me call him that.

It seemed like that was almost as much a betrayal as the other. It was a package he said came to the shop after he had locked it up. He’d leave it in my room and take it back on the Monday. I didn’t ask him anything. Afterward you think How could I not have asked? but at the time life’s busy, there are smells coming up from the kitchen and telephones going and the telly from the neighbours blasting away, and Aunt Lou shouting up the stairs where’s the buttermilk for the biscuits she’s after making, and I’m thinking about my friend Gabrielle and when will I see her, she’s got a new red striped jumper she wants to show me, and too, I’m thinking about when I’ll be alone with Lark, to touch him, when his hands will be on me.

I didn’t ask.

We ate the supper Aunt Lou fixed for us, herself and Lark and me and Uncle Simon. Mum had gone to see her sister over the water, which would leave the house empty for us when Aunt and Uncle’d gone up the road home. I was looking forward to that, with Lark. There was a word or two when Aunt said I should come to them, for the place was big for one alone, and empty, but Uncle’s face solemn as church, he said, Lou. He said, Lou, she was nineteen in December. I looked into my soup.

While Aunt helped me with the washing up, Lark and Uncle did something to the furnace and then they went home, all bye! bye! waves and calls goodnight, and I felt like the cat who’d got the pet canary. Then we went to the pub, it being Saturday night. At some point I remember I thought to call Da, who’d moved out years before, but didn’t, with one thing and another. It was misty and cool. We went down to the bus but then decided to walk the mile up toward the museum, and so we did, and had a few pints. Charley was there with his mouth organ, and Jim with his guitar, and we told each other the news and sang some of the old songs, “The Holy Ground” and “Four Green Fields,” and as we were about to leave—it was light still, because it was the summer—Jim got all red, said Look, look!

What’s to look at in your local pub? thought I, and glanced around. Same old crowd. There’s a small window on the narrow end of the bar, and that’s where Jim was looking so of course we looked, Lark and Margaret and some others who had joined us. And there, out the window, framed in it almost like he was in a picture, talking to someone, was that poet who had won the prizes, the one looks an elf, with white hair like a cloud and that funny-looking face.

That’s him, Jim said, his voice gone all quiet. Margaret and I laughed, but I could tell he was right serious. That’s him, he said. I mean to buy his other books, I’ve one here, and pulled a worn paper book from his jacket pocket. A slight thing it was, with a pretty cover, black, and had a wee gold ship on it. Seeing Things. Well now I’ll have to buy one of his books, said I, and meant it too, but with everything that happened after, I forgot.

Lark came back with me and we slept together in my girlhood bed. I was glad, but it wasn’t easy, and he said it wouldn’t always be like this. My eyes burned when I saw the sheet.

Can’t help it. I wonder sometimes—this really is daft—if then what happened was my punishment. He must’ve pushed the package, it was wrapped in brown paper and tied with ordinary string, under the bed. I forgot it. I supposed he must have too. More likely they didn’t want it yet. Was it a phone ringing at a certain frequency or a siren so? Perhaps a freak of chemistry, a wire frayed, some physical decay? It was the Wednesday, clear and cool, and Uncle Simon was fixing some glass in a basement window, so he was able to get her out, for Mum was the one at home when it went. She had come back Monday night and was polishing the Waterford in the front room just beneath mine. The glass cut the side of her face. She lost most of the movement on that side and the sight in one eye. We’re in a pretty muddle now: Mum’s grieving that I was so taken and I have to force myself to look at her straight on.