Time travelling

Ais and I had never actually met Granny. From her photo, we weren’t sure we wanted to. Pinned between the album’s curling cellophane sleeves, Granny’s sepia likeness cast a formidable figure. Rigidly posed, tightly buttoned in her floor-sweeping black dress, she fixed us with a Medusa stare and a downturned mouth. When Mammy saw us looking she smiled but her eyes were sad and she hugged us both tightly.

That summer, we visited Granny for the first time. Daddy didn’t want to. We’d heard them talking them through the thin bedroom walls.

“She’s dying Frank, I have to!” Mammy said. 

There was silence then followed by Mammy’s quiet sobs and Daddy’s soft shushing.

Daddy borrowed our neighbour’s car. The exhaust wheezed and shuddered as we drove alongside the Liffey, the seagulls cawing and circling manically overhead.  Ais and I knelt on the back seat, the hot pleather sticking to our legs, as we stared out the window watching the tidy red-brick terraces with their squares of concrete garden fall away .

There are several photos of us from that day, preserved in perpetuity, in our well-worn family album.  There we are, in front of the heavy rust-red iron gates facing the shore with its ribbon of sea shimmering like old window glass in the distance. Mammy stands at the back, arms encircling us, mouth slight open maybe replying to something Daddy said. Ais and I are wearing our summer dresses, and those big bows that were fashionable then in our hair. She’s one hand clasped in mine the other shading her eyes from the sun. I’m standing beside her, one foot tucked behind the other, head slightly ducked, smiling shyly. 

I fumble with the glasses that hang on a chain on my neck. My mind trips me up, plays tricks on me now, but I swear I can taste the salt tang at the back of my throat, the smell of the sun on my skin and I’m a young girl again, her whole life unfurling in front of her.

Our feet crunched up the gravel drive, the windows were taller than Daddy, stretching almost to the ground and salt encrusted. There was a stone path that went around the side of the house and a low-sized door its knocker rusted red. Mammy disappeared through the maw of the door and we weren’t allowed to follow.

We stayed in the back meadow . Daddy had unfurled sacks, and was bagging the grass that had been cut, piled and yellowed, his soft whistling mingling with the chiming with the lazy buzz and hum of the insects. We explored the orchard squishing the rotten apples with their high sweetish tang, underfoot and carefully treading along the narrow stone paths bordering it. We played our favourite game then, criss-crossed hands locked together, heads tipped back to gather speed, we whirled like dervishes, heel then toes our only tentative connection to Earth until finally we broke apart. The photo captured us lying in a tumbled heap on the grass, laughing as we looked up at the blue sky.

We wandered down to the shore. I can almost feel the folds of my cotton dress slapping against my legs and the chafe of my summer sandals against my heel. We walked along the corrugated oozing sand, stomping on the bubbly brown seaweed until it crackled underfoot, slime green fronds draping around our sandal buckles. I lay back on a sun-warmed rock, making shapes from the scatter of clouds drifting across the crayon-blue sky. I must have dozed, the tide crept in and the water lapped gently at my feet. Panic rising in me, I jumped up, calling for Ais. She had drifted away and was isolated on a sandbar, wrapped in light, surrounded by the tide. I shouted out to her, until finally she took heed, waved and waded through the waist-high water laughing, her dress bunched up in her arms.

I put the album to one side and cover my eyes. “Oh Ais” I think, tears rolling down my wrinkled face “I miss you”.

Maybe I was angry with Ais and scared too at what could have happened. Either way, I decided we would go into the house.

We pushed through the door and clambered up the narrow stairs, the lift and slap of our sandals seemed to echo around the dark and quiet of the house.

There was another narrow stairs, a sharp turn and there we were in a bedroom awash with light. I was surprised at how small and child-like Granny’s form seemed under the blanket, the pink skin of her scalp visible through the thinning hair. Her bony hands like little bird beaks peeking out from the sleeves of her cardigan mottled hands, were ravelling the white cover. At another time I would have wanted to explore the full length mirror, freckled with age at the front of the wardrobe, the dressing table, creams and unguents pushed to one side, now holding a plastic tray full of syringes.

I saw Mammy’s face in the mirror, set and hard, her eyes narrowed, her mouth a thin line.

“They’re your grand-daughters” she said, pushing us forward.

 Granny beckoned us to come closer, there was spittle shooting from her mouth and the up and down swell of her chest under the blanket seemed to become more frantic. Her bony hands clawed at the blanket as though it pinioned her in.

“You’re here now” she said, looking at us and then at Mammy.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” and tears leaked from the red-rimmed eyes.

A cage of shadow fell over the bed, Mammy reached for us and ushered us out of the room.

“I’ll come back, Granny” I called out over my shoulder.

 We spill out of the dark and gloom into the meadow and it was one of those late summer days where everything seemed split open with sunlight.

Gently, I close the family album. Through the shimmering window glass I hear the muted yelps of hardy sea-swimmers climbing into the water and flinging themselves off rocks. I wander around the room, picking up my book and putting it down again. I sink onto the piano stool and play a few short pieces slowly and then in a more lively tempo.

It’s 70 years since that first visit, those photos. I’m the age now Granny was the first time I met her. She died shortly after that visit, and I imagine she was grateful for the reconciliation with her family. I’m the last one of my family as we were then and, while they’re gone I feel them around me and the gossamer thin veil barely separating us. Standing up, I touch each of the framed photos on the piano, our wedding day, the children, grandchildren, birthday cards and wedding invitations, new and shining memories unfurling forward.