Most families have their secrets. They vary from family to family. It could be the relative who is never mentioned, the brother who’s avoided, the aunt who is never visited. Most of the time though these secrets remain unspoken. An uneasy peace is maintained. And no one wants it disturbed.
So what happens when that peace is shaken? When family members who have carefully avoided each other for years are forced together? When past hurts are brought to the surface and demand to be addressed?
The Blackwater Lightship explores one such situation. Helen O’Doherty, successful Headmistress and mother of two, hasn’t seen her mother, Lily, for years. She’s introduced her boys to her grandmother, Dora, only once. And she likes it that way. By keeping the past at bay, Helen has created a satisfying life for herself. She envelops herself in her work and becomes the youngest Headmistress in Ireland. Her husband, Hugh, is easy going, dependable and uncomplicated. He is an optimist where she is a pessimist; as outgoing as she is reserved. She surrounds herself with his friends, his family. And she is grateful to find acceptance from him:
She knew that anyone else would have laid bare, in the way that he had covered, the raw areas in her which were unsettled and untrusting.
Nevertheless for Helen, the past influences the present. She knows her reserve distances her from her husband.
She would never let him know the constant daily urge to resist him, keep him at bay, and the struggle to overcome these urges.
She realises that he will never understand her feelings about her family:
the conflicts were too sharp and too deeply embedded for him to fathom.
It is a surprise visit from her brother Declan’s friend, Paul, which forces Helen to confront her demons. Helen knows that her brother is gay. What Paul reveals is that Declan is dying of AIDS. Following her brother’s wishes, Helen finds herself in her grandmother’s old house on the wild Irish coast of Cush. She’s there with her mother, grandmother, Declan, Paul and another of Declan’s gay friends.
What happens is inevitable: a clash of wills and of cultures. Helen is forced to relive the days in her childhood when her father was dying and she and Declan were sent to live with their grandmother. And all of Helen’s resentment against her mother is brought to the surface. We see Helen as a child; confused, scared, and abandoned as her father is sent off to hospital and never seen again. We see Helen’s mother; lost, grieving and unable to connect emotionally with her children after her husband’s death.
Written in a sparse, detached style, The Blackwater Lightship explores the ties that bind, and the unspoken needs and expectations we have of family. Declan, as he is dying, craves comfort, acceptance and understanding from his mother. Helen too comes to realise that ultimately she wishes that her mother would, “be there for her ... take her in and shelter her and protect her.”
While the narrative is presented from Helen’s point of view, she is hardly a likeable character. In fact, none of the female characters in the novel are easy to warm to. But the reader at least comes to understand what has embittered Helen, Lily and Dora. And unlike many writers, Toibin resists the urge to make the reasons for their estrangement melodramatic or simplistic. These women have been antagonised by small misunderstandings, by subtleties that they don’t even understand.
Toibin paints a realistic representation of what relationships are like. And while he ultimately shows the need for reconciliation he doesn’t trivialise the process. For Helen, Lily and Dora, coming to understand each other is slow and painful.
The Blackwater Lightship explores the inner life of a character who has become hardened. At one stage Helen admits, “I got used to not seeing them, and I found that not seeing them made me much happier, and I became interested in my own happiness.” But Helen finds that burying the past comes at too high a price. As the cliffs around her grandmother’s house are devoured by wild seas, so Helen has been consumed and diminished by her own bitterness.
