Traveller_Levin's Blog

The Color of Shadows

by Colm Tóibín April 13, 2009

Ali Hyland, one of the neighbors in Enniscorthy, phoned Paul in Dublin to say that his aunt Josie, his father’s sister, had been found that morning on the floor, having fallen out of bed in the house where she lived alone; they thought that she had been lying there most of the night. An ambulance had come, Ali said, and taken Josie to Wexford hospital, ten miles away.

When Paul contacted the hospital, the nurse in charge of the ward said that his aunt was stable. He explained that he was busy at work and wondered if he might postpone his visit until the weekend, and the nurse told him that his aunt was in no immediate danger and it would be fine if he came on Saturday. He left a number, in case they needed to reach him. Later, he was phoned by a social worker, who said that she did not think his aunt could return to living alone; nor could she stay in the hospital indefinitely. She gave him a list of residences for the elderly in the Enniscorthy area; she refused to recommend one over another.

When Paul phoned Ali Hyland on the Friday of that week, she seemed unsurprised that the social worker wanted his aunt in a nursing home.

“She won’t go easily, that’s all I have to say.”

“Has anyone mentioned it to her before?” Paul asked.

“We all have, but she likes her independence.”

“Is there anywhere local that is good?” Paul asked.

“Noeleen Redmond and her husband have a place near Clohamon, and some people say that it’s lovely. Noeleen was a friend of your mother’s.”

Paul almost replied that he did not believe his aunt would want help from someone who had been a friend of his mother’s.

“Is there nobody else I could ask?”

Ali hesitated before she replied.

“That’s all long ago, Paul. It’s all long ago.”

“I know it is,” he said, “and I’m grateful for your help, Ali, so maybe I’ll call Noeleen Redmond now.”

“That would be the best, Paul.”

He arranged, having phoned Noeleen Redmond and explained the situation, to come and visit the new residence for senior citizens once he had seen his aunt. And then he drove the two-hour journey from Dublin down to the hospital.

“She won’t eat,” the nurse said to him as they both stood looking at his aunt, who was asleep.

“She eats well at home,” Paul said.

“She spat out her toast this morning.”

“That’s very unlike her.”

The nurse looked at him and shrugged.

“There’s nothing actually wrong with her. We did X-rays and everything.”

“She probably doesn’t like being in hospital.”

“Well, she’s lucky someone found her.”

He sat with her. After almost an hour, she turned and saw him.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“You’re all right.”

“I hate those nurses.”

“They’re awful,” he said. “You’re right.”

“I hate those nurses,” she repeated. It was clear to him that her hearing, which had improved after she had had her cataracts removed and the wax cleaned out of her ears, had now worsened again. “But they’d better not hear us or they’ll starve me altogether.”

“You were fast asleep when I came.”

“You were good to come down, but don’t say too much, now—they are all listening.”

She tried to sit up.

“Tell them I want a private room.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Tell them I want a private room in my own house.”

Once he’d made sure that she was comfortable, he drove to Enniscorthy, passed through the town, and turned off the Dublin road to Bunclody. It was a crisp early-winter day, and he was surprised, as he always was when he visited Enniscorthy, by the volume of traffic and the new roundabouts and the tiny scale of things that, when he was growing up, had seemed to him like monuments. This was what he still called home, he thought, but if his aunt was to go into a residence, then he might best begin thinking of his own house in Rathmines, in Dublin, as the only home he had.

He turned left, away from the Slaney, as he had been told to do, and then right again, and drove along a narrow road until he came to the nursing home, which had a large sign outside. Already, he could see, from the gardens and the layout, that the place was well kept, with a clear view of woodland and the soft light over the river.

Noeleen Redmond was waiting for him on the porch. She made him tea and said that she had a place free and he could move Josie in whenever he liked. When she told him the price per week, he thought for a moment that she meant per month. She spoke then about the cost of things, the amount of regulation there was, and how hard it was to keep staff. He tried to work out in his head how much Josie’s pension was, wondering also how much money she had saved, and thinking then about what her house was worth.

“She was very good to you, wasn’t she? And now she’s lucky to have you.”

Noeleen smiled at him warmly.

“She won’t feel lucky leaving her own house,” he said.

“She’ll be treated very well, and she’ll be well fed and warm here.”

“I might tell her that it’s just for a while.”

“That might be best, all right.”

It was almost dark when the ambulance arrived with his aunt at the nursing home. He was waiting with Noeleen at the front door.

“You go in and they will make you a cup of tea,” Noeleen said to him. “We’ll come and find you when we have her comfortable.”

As he made his way to the dining room, he passed a large room with chairs all around the walls and figures sitting in them, none of them speaking or reading, some of them asleep or staring at a television that was blaring in the corner. He stood and looked at them, but then felt as if he were intruding on something strangely private and he moved on.

Directly outside the door to the dining room, there was a woman sitting in an armchair. He felt for a moment that he recognized her, knew her from childhood, but she was so old now and frail that it was hard to think who she was, or had been. Her gaze as he passed her was defiant, almost challenging. Whoever she was, he thought, she knew how to be difficult.

As he sat in the darkened dining room and drank his tea, he asked himself how long it would be before Josie would demand to be released from here. He wondered if there was another solution, if there was someone who could spend nights with her and call in to check on her throughout the day, and he thought that he would ask Ali Hyland when he next came down. There were a lot of new people in the town, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Nigerians, and maybe there would be some woman whom he could pay to look after his aunt in her own house.

When Noeleen came to find him, she suggested that he merely tiptoe into the bedroom where his aunt was but not disturb her.

“We’ll find out what she likes,” Noeleen said, “and we’ll feed her. She needs to put on weight. And she’ll be asleep in no time. She’s not sure where she is.”

When Paul drove down from Dublin the following Saturday, he found his aunt in the large room with all the others. She was asleep, her head slumped. One of the nurses on duty carried in a chair for him, and he sat down in front of Josie and waited for her to wake up. Although there was a low sound coming from the television, there was a hush in the room, of which he became acutely conscious as he sat there.

When he looked behind him, he found that five or six old ladies were watching him, some suspiciously, others in a way that was too dulled to be menacing but was nonetheless unfriendly. It occurred to him that he could go and check Josie’s house, light a fire in the living room, maybe, and return later. But he resisted this impulse; he knew that it was really an urge to flee from this place and not have to deal with whatever his aunt had to say.

She smiled when she woke and saw him, and nodded her head.

“They said you’d be down,” she said. “You’re great to come down.”

“How are you?”

“Did you bring the car?”

“I drove down.”

She did not seem to hear him.

“Is the car outside?”

“I drove down.” He was aware as he raised his voice that everyone in the room could hear him.

“We’ll go so,” she said. “I knew you’d come. They all said you’d come. Do I have a bag or anything, or a case?”

“It’s very cold outside,” he said.

She looked at him, puzzled.

“What?”

“It’s a freezing day.”

“I’d say that.” She smiled.

“You’re very warm in here.”

“Will you get me my coat?” She made to stand up.

Later, when she had been calmed by one of the nurses, he left her, promising to return the next day and saying nothing when she asked him if she would be leaving then, if he was coming back in the car then, to take her to her own house. He was aware as he turned and carried his chair back to where it had been that the roomful of inmates had heard every word that had passed between him and his aunt.

Noeleen was waiting for him in the hallway. As he sat in the dining room with her, she suggested that he get a set of forms from his aunt’s bank and her solicitor, which would give him power of attorney, or at least the power to deal with her financial affairs.

The house had a smell of damp and old cooking. As he stood in the downstairs room, he was amazed at how small everything was, not only the rooms themselves but the objects in them—the armchairs and the television in the corner of the front room, the dining-room table and chairs in the back room. Somehow, the place had shrunk in Josie’s absence. He remembered spending Christmas here in recent years and loving the coal fires lighting both rooms, the Christmas tree, the warmth of the place as he helped her package presents for neighbors and friends and later watched the television with her or helped her in the kitchen.

When he went upstairs and looked at his old bedroom, he noticed how worn the carpet was and how the color on the wallpaper had faded. He must, he thought, have noticed this before, but now the room seemed shabby and strange, almost unfamiliar, and not the room he had slept in every night throughout his childhood, with the small desk in the corner where he did his homework.

Suddenly, he realized that he was dreading the night ahead in this house; he did not think he would sleep. When he went to look for sheets to put on his bed, he found a musty smell in the hot press. He turned away and walked down the stairs and made up his mind that he would search for Josie’s papers and bank statements and then he would go.

He made a call to the Riverside Hotel, and when they told him they had rooms free he said he would be there in an hour. Josie would hate the waste of money, and the thought that he might not want to spend the night in her house, but the idea of having to make up a bed for himself and try to sleep in this old room made him shiver. That’s all over now, he thought. He suppressed any urge to feel sorry for himself at losing it.

As he rummaged through papers on the shelf near the chair where Josie usually sat in the front room, a knock came at the door. He knew that it would be Ali Hyland, who would have seen the light on. He invited her into the front room and told her that Josie was unhappy and wanted to come home.

“It’s the same for all of them,” she said. “But they get used to it, or maybe they just stop complaining. But it’s a good place, although it isn’t cheap.”

“And her hearing seems to have gone,” Paul said, “and her sight maybe a bit. I don’t know.”

“Her sight is fine since she had her eye done,” Ali said. “Before that she wouldn’t recognize me some days.”

“It was the same with me,” Paul said. “One day she thought I was Tom Furlong.”

“I know,” Ali said. “She told me. She was mortified. She thought she had offended you.”

Paul asked her if there was another solution, if there was anyone who could look after Josie at home, but she replied that she did not think so.

“There’s work for everyone now, so no one wants to look after old people,” she said. “No one wants to do real work. I hope it lasts, that’s all I have to say.”

“But if you hear of anyone?”

“I’ll let you know. But maybe she’ll settle, Paul. That would be the best.”

When Ali had left, he located Josie’s post-office book among her papers and was shocked at the amount of money she had saved. He had thought at first that he would have to sell the house to pay for her care, but now he realized that she would have enough for some years, especially when her pension was added to the savings. As he looked for her pension book, her missal fell to the floor and out of it five or six memory cards, all bordered in black. He picked them up and looked at them: one for his grandmother and one for an uncle, and one for Carmel Fleming, an old friend of Josie’s with whom she had worked for many years at Whyte’s Insurance off the Market Square. And then among them he found one for his father, who had died when he was a baby. He looked at the date of his father’s death and his age and realized that his father would be in his eighties if he had lived. He would likely be too frail to help, Paul thought, or advise him on what to do about Josie. There was no point anymore in regretting that he had not lived.

Once he’d put his aunt’s missal back where it belonged, he decided that it was best not to keep looking through her private things. He took the post-office book and found his coat and turned off the lights in the house and locked the door before making his way to the hotel.

As he sat alone in the dining room having his supper, he smiled to himself at the thought of someone mixing him up with Tom Furlong, a local elderly member of the Knights of Columbanus. He knew how much Tom Furlong would disapprove of him. In all the years, Josie had never once referred to Paul’s sexuality; it was not something that could be mentioned. And he had never found out when she’d known for certain that he was gay. He had made a point of bringing friends to the house to visit; they were always male, and some of them were boyfriends or lovers, and thus they appeared in Aunt Josie’s front room a number of times over a year or two and then never again. Somehow, it seemed, she had understood, or maybe, he thought, someone had told her.

She had not mentioned, either, that at Mass on Christmas mornings he did not go with her to Communion but sat in his seat. He remembered her face as she walked back down the aisle toward him, her expression a mixture of reverence and strain. He knew that others would have noticed his not going to the rail, and he supposed she might have minded that, too.

Only once, as the AIDS crisis was daily in the news, had she made any oblique reference to his being gay. One day when he was leaving her house, having stayed over on a Saturday night, she turned to him gently as he stood up to go.

“Are you all right?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I was just worried about you, that’s all. I read the paper and I watch the television and I worry.”

“There’s no need to worry.”

“Are you sure, Paul?”

“I am,” he said. “But thanks for asking.”

He almost moved toward her to touch her arm or hold her hand for a moment, but instead he tried to smile to show that he loved and appreciated her tact. And then he left and drove back to Dublin.

The evening when she mistook him for Tom Furlong he had entered the house with his own key, as Tom must also have done regularly. With the light going, Josie was in the front room listening to the radio. It was the time when both her eyes and ears were failing her, and she had not even heard him enter. He did not want to turn on the light without asking her, in case he frightened her.

Slowly, however, his aunt became alert to his presence. But he had to shout his name several times, even though he was standing in front of her.

“Oh, sit down, Tom,” she said. “And it’s always lovely to see you.”

“No, it’s Paul. Paul.”

She said nothing for a while, and he wondered if he should turn on the light. But he waited and then sat down on the small sofa at the window.

“Tom,” she said warmly.

“No, Paul, Paul.”

“Oh, Paul,” she said sadly. “Paul got involved with a rotten crowd up in Dublin, Tom. A rotten crowd! I don’t know whether I was right or wrong when I decided I wouldn’t even pretend I knew about it. I made the decision all on my own not to get on to him about it. Oh, I don’t know.”

“Aunt Josie, it’s Paul. This is Paul.”

In the shadowy light, she stopped talking and peered toward him.

“What?” she asked.

He wondered if it would be possible to run out of the room and behave as if this scene had never taken place, make her feel that she might have dreamed a visitor, so that she could put it out of her mind, as he would, too.

“Aunt Josie, it’s Paul.”

“Oh, Paul,” she said, and then mumbled something. “Is it you, Paul?”

“Yes, it’s me. How are you?”

“Paul,” she said, and then stopped. “Paul, you won’t . . . I thought . . . Will you turn on the light?”

They talked for some time about the roads and all the traffic and the work being done and the length of time it took now to get through the town of Gorey. When he stood up to leave, she looked at him imploringly.

“You will come again, won’t you, Paul?”

“Of course I will, Josie, of course.”

He almost laughed to himself now at the memory of this scene, the one moment in all the years when her tact and sense of decorum had failed her.

When he came down to the nursing home the following Saturday, she was ready to leave once more, insisting that she knew where her coat was and that she had nothing of any value in her room, so they both could slip out—he could help her, and no one would be any the wiser. He sat patiently with her, explaining how fiercely cold it was outside, and asking her about the food and how she had slept, and smiling each time she pressed him to take her home and slowly explaining again that her house was freezing and that she was warm here.

“Did you not bring the car?”

“Aunt Josie, it’s the coldest day of the winter.”

“What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Will you go and get the car?”

He tried to change the subject and spoke about all the new houses being built on the edge of town and all the new people who had been taken on at his office, including two accountants from England. As he spoke, he became more determined to ask her to sign the forms that would give him power of attorney. Observing her, he realized that she must know where she was, and he believed that she must have some inkling that she was not going back to her own house. She seemed to alternate between an almost childish helplessness and a weary resignation.

He took the forms out of his jacket pocket.

“I need these forms signed for the bank,” he said. “I have a pen here.”

“What are they for?”

“They mean that I can lodge your pension for you, and get you money when you need it without you having to bother.”

She pretended that she did not hear. He knew that every word was being taken in by the others around them. He decided not to repeat what he had said. He merely handed her the sheet of paper and held out a pen and pointed to the spot where she should sign.

“Just your name. I’ll put the date in.”

She looked at him, her expression cold and hard and wounded. He knew that if he flinched now, or changed the subject, or offered any further explanation or even apology, he would lose this chance.

“Here,” he said, and pointed to the line where she should sign.

“I never thought . . .” she began. She looked down and left silence.

Paul did not move. He held the paper steady and offered her the pen again. Slowly, Josie signed her name and pushed the sheet of paper away from her.

As the year went on, and spring gave way to summer, she began to complain less, agreeing that she liked the food at the nursing home, and that she found being put to bed at six each evening very restful; it was something she looked forward to, she said. When Christmas approached, he spoke to Noeleen, who said that many of the patients went to their families on Christmas Day, but she would be happy to look after Josie if Paul wished. He had friends in Dublin who usually had their Christmas dinner at four in the afternoon, so he could drive to the nursing home on Christmas morning and spend an hour or two with Josie and then return to Dublin.

When he came in at about eleven that morning, Josie was asleep and Noeleen was in the office. She was the one on duty all day, she said as she sat with him in the hallway, but she didn’t mind. She would have her Christmas dinner in the evening and be able to relax then.

“She talks about you all the time,” Noeleen said. “When you’re coming next, and what you’re doing. That’s her big subject.”

Paul smiled.

“She’s great most of the time,” he said. “And she’s put on weight.”

“I was thinking about you and her just this morning,” Noeleen said. “It was awful what happened, of course, and I knew your mother well. Josie was marvellous the way she took you in and reared you. I used to see the two of you walking back to her house together after her day’s work was over. And she was very proud of you.”

She looked at him and nodded cheerfully. He could think of nothing to say in reply.

“And, of course, your mother always got news of you and she must have been glad that you were being looked after. There were people in the town who kept in touch with her. She always asked about you, Paul. I heard that, now.”

Paul glanced over at his aunt. He hoped that she would wake up soon, so that this conversation could end.

“And she was wise to come home to Enniscorthy after all the years, to be among her own in the town,” Noeleen continued. “There’s a friend of mine is a neighbor of hers on the Ross Road, and she says that she’s in right form.”

Paul saw that Noeleen was watching him carefully. He did not know that his mother had come home to Enniscorthy and was living on the Ross Road. He wondered how long ago this had happened.

“There’s no love lost, of course, between her and Josie,” Noeleen said. “But that’s the way. That’s the way the good Lord made them, and they’re too old to change now. It would take a miracle.”

He had, he thought, no real memory of his mother, just a sense of being somewhere in a car with her and the memory of a smell of something that had made him sick. But he was not even sure about the memory. It was too vague. He had known, because he had heard someone say it, that she drank, but it wasn’t until he was a teen-ager that he understood what this meant. He knew that his mother had come to Josie’s house once when he was seven or eight and created a fuss in the street when Josie would not let her see him, because his friend Shane Colfer had told him the next day. He had been in the front room that night watching television and had not known what all the shouting was about. Josie had merely said that it was a woman who delivered kindling and she would be coming back on Saturday, thank God, with that delivery, which was long overdue. She had refused to pay the woman, she said, until she delivered the kindling.

His mother, he supposed, had gone back to England then. He had never asked about her. Her name had never been mentioned. Every day after school until he was twelve he would go and sit at Whyte’s Insurance, at his own special desk close to Josie’s, and do his homework, or make drawings, or read comic books. And then, at half past five, he would go home with her.

Josie made sure that he was happy and that he studied hard. As soon as it became obvious that he was good at maths and science, she learned everything she could about careers for him and what points he would need. She paid for grinds so that he would have honors in maths and thus gain entrance to University College, Dublin, to study engineering.

He was always sure that his mother was alive, because he knew that someone, even Josie herself, would have to tell him if she died. She had sisters in the town whom he knew by sight, and a few times he had met cousins of his in one of the bars in the town, but he had not spoken much to them. Someone, he believed, would tell him if anything happened to his mother. But no one had told him that she had come home.

Over the next year he saw Josie whenever he could. Slowly, he became used to the atmosphere in the room where she sat during the day and he got to know some of those who sat with her, most of them silent, half asleep, but often friendly to him when he arrived, ready to offer a moment’s recognition or warmth, even if they seemed dazed or forlorn or too old to do much for themselves.

Halfway through the year, Josie changed and became brighter and less complaining. Not only did she put on weight but she seemed happier and smiled if one of the nurses came toward her. She also often seemed more forgetful and could ramble when she spoke. But she always recognized him and smiled at him and thanked him for visiting. Noeleen told him that the woman who had recently begun to sit beside Josie, Brigid, looked out for her, and they often talked to each other in whispers.

Paul noticed that sometimes the two women used the same rug to keep warm, and when tea came Brigid made sure that Josie did not spill hers and took the cup from her when she had finished drinking. Often, having driven for two hours, Paul felt guilty for staying only a short time, but it was hard to think of anything to say, and it was, he reassured himself, more important that he simply made the visit each time he promised he would. Despite the fact that her mind was slowly fading, Josie had a way of making him feel loved while he sat with her, and something close to proud that he had driven all that way.

She never mentioned the past, never spoke about her own childhood, or the years working in the insurance office, when she took care of him. All of this seemed to have been forgotten or erased, or maybe, he thought, was simply of no interest to her now that her world had narrowed.

He noticed new arrivals at the home more than he noticed who was missing, but slowly it became clear to him that the line of old ladies who had watched him when he first appeared in the large square room had gone and that some of them must have died or were now confined to their rooms. Josie seemed not to notice new arrivals or to miss those who were no longer there. She viewed the people in the room and the staff, Paul thought, as she viewed the television, with vague puzzlement but no real interest.

Once, when he had supper with an old boyfriend who asked about Josie and seemed to want to hear about the nursing home and the empty house in the town, Paul came close to confiding that his mother, as far as he knew, after an absence of more than thirty years, was now living in Enniscorthy as well. Instead, he decided to say nothing. He knew that his friend would argue that he should try to make contact with her. He did not want to hear that argument.

When it came close to Josie’s second Christmas in the nursing home, Noeleen took Paul into her office one Saturday after he had finished his visit.

“She is worried about Christmas,” she said.

“Why?”

“She’s been talking about it to Brigid. She brings it up all the time, according to Brigid. She thinks, well, she thinks . . .”

“What?”

“That you spent last Christmas with your mother and left her out here.”

“But I didn’t.”

“I know, Paul.”

“I drove down to see her specially, and I went straight back to Dublin.”

“I know, Paul. I remember you saying, but I’m telling you, just in case.”

“What should I do?”

“Maybe try to reassure her. Say something, if you can.”

“But I told her last Christmas that I was going back to Dublin.”

“Well, that’s all you can do again.”

The following Saturday, he raised the subject, telling Josie that he was lucky that his friends Denis and David always had their Christmas dinner at four or five on Christmas Day, reminding her that she had met Denis a few years earlier and mentioning that his friends lived in Rathgar, not far from him. He had gone to their house last year, he said, and he was going to go again this year, once he had seen her. It would take him two hours, or even less, to get back to Dublin.

Josie did not respond.

Normally, Brigid greeted him warmly as he arrived and then pretended not to listen to any of the conversation he had with his aunt, but now she did not disguise her interest in what they were saying. She turned and nudged Josie, nodding at Paul.

“That’s right, now,” she said. “Isn’t that what I said?”

Josie looked at the floor and smiled distantly, as though nothing being said were getting through to her fully.

“Did you hear him?” Brigid asked her.

Josie looked up at Paul, her expression absent-minded. “Have they managed to bypass Gorey yet?” she asked. “Or is it still as much a bottleneck as ever?”

“I hope the new road’ll be done soon,” he said. “But it’s bad at the moment.”

Brigid caught his eye.

“She heard you, all right. Don’t mind her, now.”

On Christmas Day, she seemed cheerful as she tried on the cashmere cardigan he had brought her; he told her again that he had driven down that morning and that he was going back soon to have his Christmas dinner with his friends in Dublin.

“I’d say the road was quiet coming down,” she said. “Years ago there’d be no traffic at all on Christmas Day, but I suppose that is changing, too, like everything else.”

She looked at him directly, as though she were checking now if he really had meant it when he said he was returning to Dublin. He held her gaze, trying to make it clear to her that he was not lying. She grew silent and seemed locked in some reflections of her own for a while until she noticed the buttons of the new cardigan, which she began to admire.

In the New Year, she started to weaken. Paul began to drive down one evening each week, as well as Saturday. He often found her asleep when he came on Saturdays, Brigid nudging her to wake up when she saw him coming; in the evenings when he visited, she was always in bed and usually did not wake. He moved a chair close to the bed and sat there for a while watching her. She seemed tiny in the bed; he noticed the veins on her hands almost breaking through the skin. Noeleen assured him that if there was an emergency she would call him immediately.

When Noeleen finally did call, in the late morning one Wednesday in the spring, he was not surprised.

“Should I come now?” he asked.

“You should, Paul.”

“How long does she have?”

“It could be a matter of hours,” she said. “She’s weakening. The pulse is slow.”

“Is she awake?”

“No, Paul, she’s asleep, and we have her very comfortable.”

“Does she know she is dying?”

“Ah, who can say?”

When he arrived at the nursing home, he did not go into the large room where Josie normally was but waited by the office for Noeleen to finish a telephone call.

“The doctor saw her earlier,” she said when she put the receiver down. “And he’ll come back if we need him. And I phoned the Manse and told them. There’s no priest there now, but they will phone back as soon as someone comes in. She woke earlier and took a drink of milk, but she’s asleep again now.”

They left him alone with her. A few times when she struggled for breath he thought to go into the corridor and find one of the nurses, but he presumed that they knew she was struggling for breath. A priest came and said the last rites.

Every time he walked down the corridor to go to the bathroom or get some air, Paul had the sense that he was being watched with a sort of grim silence by the old people who saw him. He was the messenger of death, he realized. He was the one waiting. They must have seen it before. None of them even acknowledged his presence.

Later, when it was dark, the doctor came and said that Josie could not last much longer. They left food for Paul in the dining room and put an armchair in Josie’s room, in case he wanted to sleep.

“You can never tell. She could last longer than any of us think,” Noeleen said as she prepared to retire for the night. “That’s God’s decision—it’s not ours.”

One of the women working all night was from Lithuania; the other was local. He was not sure if they were nurses or orderlies; he did not know their names. Slowly, however, as the night wore on, he realized, by the way the local woman came and took Josie’s pulse and by her skill at making his aunt more comfortable in bed, that she was a nurse. A few times when she came into the room he went out into the corridor with her afterward.

“I’ve seen it before,” she said. “She’s holding on. It’s impossible to know for how long. You learn things in this job. And one of them is that sometimes it’s the hardest thing to die, almost harder than to live. For some people, it’s the hardest thing of all.”

A while later, when Paul was alone having a cup of tea in the kitchen, she came and told him that he should return immediately to his aunt’s room. “She’s awake now. I didn’t think she would wake again.”

Josie, he saw, was lying on her back with her eyes open. There was a bedside lamp on, but he kept the door open as well so that light from the corridor came into the room.

“It’s Paul,” he said. “You are having a great sleep.”

She mumbled something and then made as if to turn.

“I’m here now,” he said. “If you need me for anything. I’m sitting here. And I’ll get you anything you want.”

She seemed to grow more agitated, and her right hand began to shake. She was trying to say something, but he could not make out even a single word.

“Don’t make yourself tired,” he said. “You can rest now, and we’ll talk later.”

She turned her head and looked at him and tried again to speak.

“Her,” she said. “Her.”

“Who?”

He could not make out the next thing she tried to say.

“We can talk later, when you are up and dressed,” he said.

Josie’s hand began to shake again, and her breathing sounded like a set of sighs.

“Josie,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

She fixed her eyes on him.

“Can you hear me?”

She mumbled again, and he thought she might be saying that she could hear him, but he was not sure.

“I won’t see her. Do you understand?”

Her gaze was sharp now, almost accusing. She tried to move.

“No, don’t move. I’ll get the nurse in a minute. I just want you to know that I won’t see my mother. I didn’t visit her. I didn’t. I don’t even know where her house is. I haven’t seen her. And I won’t. I promise I won’t.”

She nodded, but he was not certain that it was a direct response to what he had said. He leaned in toward her and held her hand.

“I promise you now that I won’t see her. I don’t want to see her.”

He was still not sure that she had understood. When she closed her eyes, her face changed. For a moment it could have been a smile, but it was hard for him to tell. Her breathing grew shallow. He thought that she was going to die then and touched her arm tenderly for a moment and went to find the nurse. When he came back to the room, Josie’s face had changed once more, he thought, the expression softer, calmer. The nurse checked her pulse and looked at her watch.

“No, she has a while to go,” she said. “She’ll go in her own time. The doctor prescribed something for pain if she needs it, and I have the keys to the press where it’s kept. But she won’t need it now. She’s slipping away without any pain, that’s what she’s doing. But she’s not ready yet.”

As dawn broke and the morning light crept in through a chink in the curtains, new nurses came on duty, and the early routines and noises in the nursing home, which he had never witnessed before, began. When Noeleen appeared and said that it must have been a long night for him, he realized that the whole night had felt like an hour or two, nothing more. What was strange now, when he went back to the room and sat with Josie again, was how much she changed every few minutes. He wondered if it was a trick of the light, or maybe his eyes were tired. Her face, for a while in the morning shadows, seemed to him like the face of someone young. He had not known her when she was young. He remembered her always as a middle-aged woman with gray hair, someone content as long as nothing new or unusual was happening, someone always happier in her own house when the day was over and everything was in its place. He sat and watched her.

In the middle of the morning, they asked him to leave for a short time as they changed her position in the bed again.

“It won’t be long now,” the nurse whispered to him when she came to tell him that he could return to the room. He stayed with Josie for the next hour or so until the nurse appeared once more and took her pulse and then returned with Noeleen and another nurse and they said a decade of the Rosary as Josie faded into death.

The day was warm. Paul stood out in front of the nursing home and phoned work to say that he would not be there until the following Monday and then texted some friends in Dublin to say that his aunt had died. As he came back in, he found that Brigid had been taken by Noeleen down to the room to see Josie and say goodbye to her. He waited in the doorway as Brigid stood beside the bed. She smiled at him as she turned.

“Paul, I’d say you’ll miss her now,” Brigid whispered to him as she moved toward the door. “We’ll all miss her.”

“We will, all right,” he said.

Brigid sighed as she passed him.

“Well, that’s the way it is,” she said.

He stood in the doorway and watched her walking down the hallway back to her place in the large room, with Noeleen behind her to make sure that she did not fall. He turned then and closed the door and sat on his own with Josie. He thought for a moment of pulling the curtains back and letting the room fill with light so that he could look at her clearly for the last time, but he knew that it was better to leave the room as it was. Her arm, when he touched it, was already getting cold.

He did not touch her again, but stayed there silently with her. He was tired, but he did not have even the smallest urge to sleep. He checked his mobile phone as a text came through from a friend. He thought that later he would go to Dublin and get a suit and some clean clothes and then come back and maybe stay at the hotel. In the meantime, he would wait until the undertaker arrived and then think about the death notice to be put in the newspaper and the arrangements for the funeral. There was, he thought, nothing else to be done.

As he sat there, he realized that he should go to Josie’s house, that staying at the hotel would do nothing for him. He could, he thought, leave the door ajar in her bedroom and her sitting room, or open a window, do something in the house to mark the fact that she had gone. He was surprised at how much that thought seemed to satisfy him, almost console him, and how quickly that thought led to another, one he had been keeping at bay.

Somewhere not far from here, he knew, his mother was living in the same day as he was, under the same sky, in the same watery light that came from the sea and the Slaney, and someone would surely tell her before evening that Josie, her sister-in-law, had died. The knowledge that he had promised not to see his mother merged in his thoughts with an image of her being told the news of Josie’s death. Her life and the one that he had lived apart from her filled his mind now, as though a space had been freed for them, the shadows cleared, by what had happened in the night and by Josie’s going. He found himself inhaling and releasing breath as a way of nourishing that space, and he breathed in hard for a second at the thought that nourishing it like this was maybe all he would ever be able to do with it. ♦