Torn Water Read online

  Cathleen has pulled away from him and run to the far end of the beach. He sees her bending down to pull at some driftwood before returning with a long shank. He stands and watches as she draws their names in the sand, in big, bold strokes. He turns back to the rock pool, and looks once more at the water. Suddenly the wind drops and the pool clears, the long tramlines of ripples giving way to a placid shine.

  He is being carried. Through high imposing rooms, the hands that are around him are big and calloused, but delicate in the way they hold him. He sees the ornate ceilings above him pass by as they go through room after room. At the beginning of the garden he is put down. One of the large hands enfolds his and he feels safe, held in the territory of his father's heart. He looks up and his father gives him one of his strong, secret smiles. They enter the garden of the hotel, blinking as the sunlight floods their eyes. The boy points excitedly at the bees that hover in the air like tiny striped Zeppelins, and at the sudden flurry of rose petals that litter the air.

  They reach the small pond at the bottom of the garden and peer into its dark depths. He can remember his father's reflection towering into view, filling the hushed calm of the pond, his face held in its secret world. ‘Wait here for me, Jimmy.’

  He remembers the cruel arguments that had filled the air that morning, like the sound of knives being sharpened. He remembers his mother's hard features and the savage blur of her fists on his father's chest.

  ‘Wait here, Jimmy, I won't be long.’

  He feels his father's hands leave his shoulders, giving them a small squeeze of comfort before they go. He remembers watching his father's reflection disappear from the face of the pond as if the sky had suddenly claimed him.

  Early that morning they had played their game, in the small garden at the back of their house. He remembers the feel of the stripped tree branch in his small hands, he remembers his father telling him to close his eyes, and hearing his big feet crashing among the rosebushes as he sought a hiding-place.

  ‘Make a machine-gun … Jimmy, make a machine-gun.’

  He remembers lifting the branch up to the cross-hairs of his eyes and scouring the undergrowth for his father.

  Suddenly his father had broken from the cover of his rosebush, scattering soft pink petals high into the air.

  ‘Don't shoot! Don't shoot!’

  ‘Ratatat, ratatat, ratatat!’

  ‘No, please! Please don't shoot!’

  ‘Ratatat, ratatat, ratatat.’

  His father had staggered towards him, legs shuddering, face contorted with pain. He can remember giggling.

  ‘You got me, Jimmy – you got me good.’

  He had watched as his father rolled on the grass, legs kicking in the air. He remembers turning the machine-gun into a knife, a spear, a bow. He ‘killed’ his father in many different ways that morning, squealing with pleasure as his daddy rolled and writhed on the patchy grass of the garden.

  Teezy had told him that she and his mother had watched them from the kitchen window until his mother could stand it no more. She had marched down the garden to pluck him from the game and yank him into the house.

  And later that day, as he stood where he had been put by his father, gazing into the muddy pond, he could hear his parents arguing behind him, their voices lowered in case he heard them. Teezy had told him they were at a wedding, a friend of his mother's was getting married, but at some point his father had needed to slip off as he had a prior engagement. It was this that he and his mother had been rowing about.

  Now, all those years later, as he stands gazing into the rock pool he can remember how fiercely he had concentrated his gaze on the surface of that pond, his face a tight ball of focus, his small fists clenched as he fought to ignore the row taking place behind him. All this he had buried, stored deep within his heart, until Teezy's story the other night had wakened it from its uneasy slumber. Now as he stands by water, separated by time and distance, he sees that small boy fighting the ripples that are obscuring his world. He sees also the small beat of light that leaves his chest, rising into the air like the flash of a mirror in sunlight, or the moving negative of a bird in flight. He watches as it folds itself into the pond, burrowing deep into its sediment.

  He remembers the feeling of loss as he watched his light disappear into the cool water, as if all colour was bleeding from the world. He hears his mother's voice, her pleas, her threats, her insults as she battles with his father.

  ‘Don't go,’ she had said. ‘You promised.’

  He feels Cathleen's arms coil round his shoulders, her hands playing lightly on his chest, her lips on the back of his neck. ‘Come on … I've something to show you.’

  He looks at her, at the strong high colour of her face, the pink of her cheeks, and he smiles. He sees the curl of the clouds behind her head, and the pencil-line hills that frame her face, and marvels at the rays of colours he sees. He feels brimmed with seeing, and a warm tug in his chest where a soft coin of light quietly burns.

  A Letter to Conn Lavery

  Arranmore

  Co. Donegal

  The Republic of Ireland

  Father,

  This is my heart. This is my heart speaking in my throat, using my tongue to say these things. I am your son. I am you too. I miss you. I hate you and I love you. I saw the photograph that Sully had of me when I was a child. Everyone has a photo of someone, don't they? It's easier to look at a photo. A photo will never let you down or tell you that it hates you. I felt sorry for Sully when I looked at myself in that photo. He didn't have to carry it, did he? He didn't have to keep it all this time.

  I gave your photo to Mum. She knew even though she was asleep. That's the problem, isn't it? She knows so much, but still it isn't enough. Teezy took me to your grave yesterday. It upset me. It seemed so cold. Just earth and soil and your bones.

  You're not an astronaut, or a rebel, you are not a star, or a beam of light, you are me, you are in every piece of me.

  There are no more deaths, Dad, I have no more, I don't need them, now I know. You can sleep now, We can all sleep. You will always be in my heart, You will always be alive in me.

  Love,

  Your son,

  James

  About the Author

  JOHN LYNCH is from the north of Ireland and works as a successful film and stage actor. He is perhaps most famous for his heartbreaking performance as the eponymous hero in the film of Bernard MacLaverty's novel Cal, and has starred in numerous other films, including the Oscar-nominated In the Name of the Father. Torn Water is his first novel.

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  From the reviews of Torn Water:

  ‘Lynch clearly has both the wit and the seriousness to plumb the mind of the young Irish male. He is now a man to as closely watch on paper as on screen. Torn Water is as singularly inventive as it is reflective of the all-too-familiar pain of domestic realities’

  Irish Times

  ‘An evocative debut… Lynch is an exuberant writer’

  Observer

  ‘Lynch's flowing and beautifully descriptive lyrical style is a joy to read’

  Irish Examiner

  ‘A tale of great delicacy and originality, in which the fierce intensity of adolescence and, even more, the paranoia and yearning of childhood are evoked with precision, grace and overwhelming conviction’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘With a delicate, elegiac tone, John Lynch reveals the vulnerable mind of a 17-year-old boy in this near-perfect miniature. Lynch skilfully draws out the conflicts’

  Guardian

  ‘Lynch can undoubtedly write… Torn Water has the tight tone and feel of the period it depicts and captures well the uncertainties of someone leaving the capsule of childhood behind and taking their first footsteps out into the vast unknown where there are no certainties and no ghosts or angels to guide you’

  Irish Sunday Independent

  ‘Lyn
ch has an incredible knack of pulling at the emotions with captivating prose. It's no mere “enjoyable” book, but a riveting one that will linger. It deserves time to be read’

  Evening Herald

  Copyright

  Harper Perennial

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harperperennial.co.uk

  This edition published by Harper Perennial 2007

  1

  First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2005

  Copyright © John Lynch 2005

  PS Section copyright © Louise Tucker 2007, except

  ‘The Ink Boy’ by John Lynch © John Lynch 2007

  PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  John Lynch asserts the moral right to

  be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  Set in Sabon by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © 2005 ISBN: 9780007324293

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