Sunrise with Sea Monster by Neil Jordan

Author:Neil Jordan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Over the next few weeks I laid nightlines religiously morning and evening, bought more so the promenade became festooned with a string of hooks. I waited for word of those I might inform on or inform, but none came. To pass the time, I began selling what I caught. I found shops in the city who were glad of anything that slipped by the ration books. We ate the rest, and soon with the money I made I placed a down-payment on a boat, nets, lobster-pots, lines. Meat and vegetables being scarce, I sold everything the ocean gave me. I laid lobster-pots from Bray to Dalkey, supplied every eating-house from Jammet's to the local chippers. I would read him the news of the war each morning, then row out with the first light to empty the pots, use the net and lines all afternoon. I would play with her in the evening, my fingers, which I could never quite free of fish scales, moving with hers over the keys. He would sit in the kitchen, quietly vacant, listening to the notes that drifted round him. We became a family of a kind, a warped reflection of one, but at least a family. Outside of time, of the ferocious time that waged round the continent beyond us. After a while I hired a local boy to help me with the boat. We extended our reach to beyond the Kish lighthouse, covered the coast from Wicklow Head to Donabate. And with the cash the sea now gave to me in fistfuls, I bought Rose a dress.

She had never added to her wardrobe since I left. Eking out what was left of his pension, the only new garment I'd seen her wear was the smock she welcomed me back in. She was brushing flour from it in clouds with her hands when I made the suggestion. I was feeding him from his plate his now familiar dinner of smoked mackerel. Rose, I said, with a new and heady sense of possessiveness, let me buy you something. You buy us enough, she said, with that slight air of tetchiness she used to disguise embarrassment. No, I told her, I want to buy you something. You, Rose. She looked at me and blushed. What? she asked me. Anything, I told her. Whatever you need to lift your spirits. My spirits, she said, don't need lifting. Does that mean you're happy then, Rose? I asked. Father had finished the plate. He stared at the fork absentmindedly. Maybe, she said, blushing again. All the more reason, I said. And why are you blushing, Rose? Am I? she asked and blushed again.

I knew it had to be a dress, but let her lead to the suggestion. Any hint that her wardrobe was deficient would have driven her to silence, the kind of blush from which she wouldn't emerge for hours. So I fed him and listened, while she went from pots and pans to a music stand, a new coat for him, and eventually to what she so rarely allowed herself think of, herself.

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