The silence in that room had a warmth to it. It was the kind of silence which could only exist after years of knowing one another. There hadn’t been a need for filling the air with aimless conversation for decades. As Winters cooled themselves to become Spring, and the colours of Summer were painted over in the Autumns, the two of them stayed perched there on that hill, comforted by each other and by the family they had spread out into the hidden nooks of their lives. Love exists when you can tell how another person is feeling without them having to utter a single word. That’s what their silence felt like.
I imagine them often, sitting there with the teapot between them on days when the sun is smothered by clouds. The teapot’s body heated by a woollen jumper someone had knitted with intention. The two of them, sitting there, looking out of the window at the years gone by. The world hardly seemed familiar to them now. It had changed more than they were able for as the evening was drawing in for them. They’d have the same conversation, over and over.
Sure isn’t the weather awful? Tis. Tis. Hopefully it’ll clear up now in the afternoon? I’m sure it’s supposed to at some stage.
Neither of them fully addressing the past, or how short the future was likely to be. The pair wore their years in deep creases on their foreheads, and in the protruding veins that appear only on delicate, bony hands. They belonged to the last few of a generation for whom life in the present came naturally. Sitting there between an entire lifetime and the end, in the quiet melancholy of it all. The silence between them was at least a comfortable one, but silence too often overstays its welcome.
He was told to stop driving eventually. It ate away at him like rust does on abandoned bicycles. He’d been driving his whole life. There was a freedom that came with owning a car. There was purpose in it. He’d never owned anything but a Ford.
They’re a fine car, he’d say.
Now the driveway is empty, and he’s reminded every time he looks out of that vast window. The glass used to act only as a window to the present, now it displayed a vision of his future. He wouldn’t know himself without the car. A piece of his life was taken from him by apathetic lawmakers. He never allowed himself to get over it.
He never really was the same after the driving stopped,. It aged him as much as anything could age a 90 year-old antique. The skin on him became paper and his legs had the uncertainty of a new born again. His energy slowed right the way down. His silence was of the sulking variety for a while but this wasn’t something he would ever admit to. He’d pretend not to hear her. He’d say everything was fine and then he’d hum a melody under his breath like he always had. It was an ancient habit of his. Somehow, it proved to himself he wasn’t bothered by the loss of his car. She knew herself he was blaggarding, and often told him so with her chin up toward him.
Every so often, at least when it started, you’d be a stranger in the doorway. It might only take him a moment. He’d ask you about the weather and then he might talk about some forgotten thing from years ago. These monologues weren’t products of reminiscence. They were a reliving of the past.
He found himself tangled in them. The mists of memories from long ago surrounded him and he breathed them in through rattling lungs. He was loading lorries out on the empty street. He was figuring out a way to get a lift home to his wife from Kinsale. He was away in Singapore, a young man again, while we all drank coffee in a room that was never cold and nowhere near South East Asia.
There was a panic inhabiting his expression in the beginning of it. The blues of his eyes would flicker in the dull light of a room that didn’t get much sun. There was a persistent fog rolling in over his mind, making everything damp. The type of fog that rolls down from hills in heavy brushstrokes. You might wear the same sort of confusion for a moment when you’re pulled from the depths of a good sleep.
The disappointment was a wetness in the whites of his eyes. The slight shake of his head, or a forced laugh to hide cheeks that were turning a soft pink. He had always prided himself on a memory that went right back to the black and white days, and now he often struggled to remember the names of the people that filled up his afternoons.
You never hear anyone talk about denial as a symptom, but it’s as disruptive as any other. It wasn’t a symptom he had, mind you, but she suffered from it desperately.
He’s just acting up, she’d say. He was only trying to get her going. He was playing old tricks to wind her up.
Her heart was breaking inside her. The man she had loved for 70 odd years was fading quickly on the other side of the teapot.
Some days he scared her. Sometimes he wasn’t her husband at all for entire smoky afternoons. The fog became a more permanent fixture for him. He’d want to leave the house to go home. He’d ask her where his wife was. She’d brandish her hurt as a badge of anger. Anger was more tolerable than the heartbreak you’d reckon. He’d rarely notice the silent tears finding their way to her high cheek bones. Still, he’d take her hand in his whenever he did, not knowing why she was upset, but sensing that her hand needed his. Those silent moments would cut anyone deeply.
Yet, she refused to abandon him. His memory of her might have been corrupted, but her love for him would never be. There’d be no one that would take care of him better than she did, despite her terror during his worst times.
In sickness and in health, she’d say.
There’d be no convincing her otherwise. She’d dig in and any words trying to convince her out of it would be words wasted. She’d maintain him until the day he passed away from old age, or she’d die trying. That’s an awfully sad thing to watch unfold but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t admire her for it. That type of integrity is as rare as anything. It won’t make sense to most of us, but then again, not all of us are meant to understand it.
They still sit there in the silence of it now, on either side of that all-knowing teapot. Often she prefers coffee for the black energy of it. The silence keeps its warmth, and it heats that small house that’s still too big for the pair of them. Adult grandchildren arrive as newcomers to him. Sons and daughters look older than they should for their age. He still knows how to crack a joke with the best of them despite it all.
Every so often, when the clouds part for a single moment, he’ll rise up from the his place on that couch like a great mountain on the horizon.
There’s only one ‘um, he’ll say.
The pause will be drawn out in long breaths. We’ll all be sat there to hear the punchline we’ve heard a thousand times before. Mind, the room is never short of anticipation.
And then eventually.
Fuck ‘um, he’ll say.
The room erupts with laughter, with smiles that begin in the eyes and crack the skin of lips. They linger in the room. He’ll allow a sliver of a smile spread briefly and reveal ancient teeth, before dousing it promptly.
And then he’ll slip back into the memories of a life he loved entirely and try to remember the name of the young man sipping coffee across from him.
Learn more about Daragh on our Contributors’ Page.
Daragh’s latest book, If You are Reading This Then Drink Water, is published by Riversong Books and available here.
(Photo: Marianne/flickr.com/ CC BY NC 2.0)
- An Old Classic, by Daragh Fleming - November 11, 2021