The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín Read Free Book Online

of news. Guess who I saw? Guess who has come back?
    I told your sister-in-law that I had come back.
    Later, when I went down to the strand, using the old path, the old way down, when I was wondering if I would swim, or if the water would be too cold, I saw them coming towards me. They were wearing beautiful clothes. Your sister-in-law has aged, but Bill was spry, almost youthful. I shook hands with him. And there was nothing else to say except the usual, what you often say down here: you look out at the sea and say that no one ever comes here, you say how empty it is, and how lovely it is to be here on a bright and blustery June day with no one else in sight, despite all the tourism and the new houses and the money that came and went. This stretch of strand has remained a secret.
    In strange, odd moments I have come here over all the years. I have imagined this encounter and the sounds we make against the sound of the wind and the waves.
    And then Bill told me about the telescope. Surely, he said, I must have bought one in the States? They are cheaper there, much cheaper. He told me about the room he had built with the Velux window and the view it had and how he had nothing there except a chair and a telescope.
    Years ago, as you know, I had shown them this house, and I knew that he remembered this room, the tiny room full of shifting light, like something on a ship, where I am sitting now. I had cheap binoculars to watch the ferry from Rosslare and the lighthouse and the odd sailing boat. I cannot find them now, although I looked as soon as I came back. But I always thought a telescope would be too unwieldy, too hard to use and work. But Bill told me no, his was simple.
    He said that I should stop by and check for myself, anytime, but they would be there all day. Your sister-in-law looked at me warily, as though I would be needing her for something again as I needed her all those years ago, as though I would come calling in the night once more. I hesitated.
    ‘Come and have a drink with us,’ she said. I knew that she meant next week, or some week; I knew that she wanted to sound distant.
    I said no, but I would come and see the telescope, just for a second if that was all right, maybe later, just the telescope. I was interested in the telescope and did not care whether she wanted me to come that day or some other day. We parted and I walked on north, towards Knocknasillogue, and they made their way to the gap. I did not swim that day. Enough had happened. That meeting was enough.
    Later, it became totally calm, as it often does. As the sun shone its dying slanted rays into the back windows of the house I thought that I would walk down and see the telescope.
    She had the fire lighting, and I remember that she had said their son would be there, I cannot remember his name, but I was shocked when he stood up in the long open-plan room with windows on two sides that gave on to the sea. I had not seen him since he was a little boy. In a certain light he could have been you, or you when I knew you first, the same hair, the same height and frame and the same charm that must have been there in your grandmother or grandfather or even before, the sweet smile, the concentrated gaze.
    I moved away from them and went with Bill, who had been standing uneasily waiting for me, to the small stairs, and then down towards the room with the telescope.
    I hate being shown how to do things, you know that. Wiring a plug, or starting a rented car, or understanding a new mobile phone, add years to me, bring out frustration and an almost frantic urge to get away and curl up on my own. Now I was in a confined space being shown how to look through a telescope, my hands being guided as Bill showed me how to turn it and lift it and focus it. I was patient with him, I forgot myself for a minute. He focused on the waves far out. And then he stood back.
    I knew he wanted me to move the telescope, to focus now on Rosslare Harbour, on Tuskar Rock, on Raven