Colm Tóibín - Mothers and Sons

Tibn is a writer of extraordinary emotional clarity these are beautiful stories, beautifully crafted.

Literary Review

Colm Tibn is a master of emotion.

Observer

Astonishing. A rich but supple prose style seals each storys and thus the collections absolute success.

Booklist (starred review)

Tibn relentlessly strives for psychological truth and ends up making literature of a pleasingly grown-up kind. He is a subtle, intelligent and deeply felt writer.

Guardian

Characterization, dialogue, controlled narrative and scenic description are expertly blended throughout, often to stunning emotional effect.

Kirkus Reviews

Profoundly resonant stories.

The Times

Tibn has an ability to encapsulate an entire community in just a few words. Add to that Tibns fearlessness, his seemingly effortless command of dialogue and character and his sensitivity to nuance, and the result is a powerful and winning collection.

Winnipeg Free Press

FICTION

The South
The Heather Blazing
The Story of the Night
The Blackwater Lightship
The Master
Mothers and Sons

NON-FICTION

Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border
Homage to Barcelona
The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe
Love in a Dark Time

AS EDITOR

The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels
in English Since 1950 (with Carmen Callil)
The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction

Copyright 2006 by Colm Tibn

Cloth edition published 2007
First Emblem Editions publication 2008

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tibn, Colm, 1955
Mothers and sons / Colm Tibn.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-574-8

1. Mothers and sons Fiction. I. Title.

PR6070.O44M67 2008 823.914 C2007-905236-3

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

Series logo design: Brian Bean

EMBLEM EDITIONS
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com/emblem

v3.1

For
Michael Loughlin
and
Veronica Rapalino

T HE CITY WAS a great emptiness. He looked out from the balcony of one of the top flats on Charlemont Street. The wide waste ground below him was empty. He closed his eyes and thought about the other flats on this floor, most of them empty now in the afternoon, just as the little bare bathrooms were empty and the open stairwells were empty. He imagined the houses on the long stretches of suburb going out from the city: Fairview, Clontarf, Malahide, to the north; Ranelagh, Rathmines, Rathgar, to the south. He thought about the confidence of those roads, their strength and their solidity, and then he allowed his mind to wander into the rooms of suburban houses, bedrooms empty all day, the downstairs rooms empty all night, the long back gardens, neat, trimmed, empty too for all of the winter and most of the summer. The sad attics empty as well. Defenceless. No one would notice an intruder scaling a wall, flitting across a garden to scale the next wall, a nondescript man checking the back of the house for a sign of life, for alarm systems or a guard dog, and then silently prising a window open, sliding in, carefully crossing a room, watching for an easy exit. He would open a door without making a sound, so alert as to be almost invisible.

He thought of the emptiness of Clanbrassil Street as his mother made her way to the Dock. It was as though the very air around her, the pavement too and the bricks on the buildings, were aware of the danger she posed and got out of her way. Her blonde hair untidy, her house slippers dragging as she slouched towards the public house. A fake gold ring, and fake bangles, and loud gold earrings hitting against the redness of her lipstick, the green of her mascara, the blue of her eyes. His mother turned now to see whether a car was coming so she could cross the road and found, he imagined, the road completely empty, no traffic at all, the world made empty for her deepest pleasure.

His mother, as she neared the public house, knew that the neighbours were afraid of her sudden kindnesses as much as her tantrums and her drunken rages. Thus a smile from her could be as unwelcome as a scowl. Mainly, she managed a look of indifference. In the street as much as the pub, she did not need to threaten, it was known who her son was, and it was believed that his loyalty to her was fierce. He did not know how she had managed to make everyone believe that he would extract revenge for the slightest insult to her. Her threats too were empty, he thought, emptier than anything.

He stood at the balcony and did not move when his visitor, who had approached the building by the hidden side door of the complex, appeared. He allowed, as he did each week, Detective Inspector Frank Cassidy to pass him and enter the small flat, which was owned by his sister-in-law, and used by him only once a week. Cassidy was in his day clothes, his ruddy face displaying a mixture of furtive guilt and businesslike self-confidence. He paid Cassidy every week, a sum either too much or too little, the amount wrong enough to make him feel that Cassidy was fooling him rather than betraying his own side. In return for the money, Cassidy gave him information he mostly knew already. Nonetheless, he always felt that if the forces of law and order were coming close to him Cassidy would somehow make this clear. Cassidy would let him know, he believed, either as a favour, or as a way of making him panic. Or perhaps both. He himself told Cassidy nothing, but he could never be sure that some day his reaction to a piece of information might not be as much as Cassidy would need.

Theyre watching the Wicklow mountains, Cassidy said by way of greeting.

Tell them to watch away. The sheep are eating grass. Its against the law.

Theyre watching the Wicklow mountains, he said again.

From a cosy armchair in Harcourt Street, he said.

Do you want to hear it a third time?

Theyre watching the Wicklow mountains, he imitated Cassidys midland drawl.

And theyve put a young fellow on to your case. Mansfield is his name and youll be seeing a bit of him, Id say.

You told me that last week.

Yeah, but hes busy already. He doesnt look like a Guard. Hes looking for jewellery.

Tell me something new next week.