Time of the Child: A Novel

by Niall Williams

To mask despair against God, he chose an old tactic: retain a semblance of order, and in this way meet the greatest challenge of life, which is always nothing more nor less than how to get through another day.

loading their tractor with the same imperturbable quiet and compose the world employs when it pretends its plot is not turning.

From those first days, the doctor soon learned the lesson that in all places far from the centre there is no standard way of being. People make it up as they go and prove their individuality by being unpredictable. In a parish of one-offs, each house was its own story.

The moment undid gloom, for in it was the substance of everyday, the small and ordinary which, against catastrophe, is discovered marvellous.

a hand pushing away a straying hair as she turned to some urgent chore, shutting down discussion by an intractable industry, need to be elsewhere, or any one of those checking behaviours we use to shield ourselves from the life we haven’t lived.

All of which was as clear to him this evening as if it had happened an hour ago. He could recall all of it, could recall her pushing back her hair to expose the whorl of her ear and the flesh of her neck where the scent had kissed, could recall the risen hem of the strawberry-coloured coat on the seat and the fingers of her right hand coming down in repose on it, but no matter how he tried, he could not make himself turn in the car seat and tell her that, though at his age he thought it ridiculous, it was nonetheless certain: he was falling in love with her.

Changing your mind is one of the most difficult feats of the living. Easier to change your nose.

Regret is a fruit of age. The longer you live the more you know its sour taste.

God wants us to love, was a saying of his father’s, despite the way he made us.

He did not write the question that had first lodged in his heart, Why does no one love my daughter?, for that afternoon he feared he had found the answer.

She was a soft and kind woman, with blue eyes of long hurt, and the anxious look of one married to an instability.

Jude knew all, and though he had not the words to say so and would only realise it eight years and six thousand miles away, the large, twisted response inside him when he thought of his father was in fact love without condition.

‘Now,’ his mother said. She looked at him for the last time in the grey light, the red Aran jumper she had knitted too small in the sleeves now, the whole of him stretching out of the child he had been. It was both a blessing and a loss to her. She reached over and gave a tug to one sleeve with small effect, then the other. ‘Did you comb your hair?’ required no answer.

Mamie hadn’t taken her eyes from him. There, in the narrow road with the morning coming over it, she held him in a look that needed no translation. It was Mind yourself, it was God bless, but above both of these it was Bring your father home, and Jude heard each, and more.

Jude’s hair was brown and straight. In a lank loop across his forehead a lock fell. It was the one his mother always pushed aside, in a gesture he wouldn’t admit to liking until long after, when, in Fort Polk, Louisiana, a buzzcut would make uniform his look, and Faha would take on the unreality of all made-up places.

He says Patrick’s name again, this time softer, as if the name has already left the world and is being recalled in the way of prayers for the departed. And every time there is the same absence. No story, no meaning. Nothing to which you can hold on and by that explain. This happened, the all of it. The stillness of the boy on the ground was beyond that of any living. It was not the lull of rest or the breathing stillness of sleep. It was in every possible way wrong. That is what Jude understood. When asked, he could not say how long it took for him to come to Patrick’s side. It was not that time stopped; it was that sense had left the world.

Sweet Jesus,’ was what she said. She fell to her knees beside her eldest son and lifted his head into her lap and began a rocking that was like a boat sailing that no one else could board.

It took long enough for the good fortune that had landed at his feet to put back on its wings and take off.

Into this he had to add his father’s gambling, the knocking on the door of heaven that to Pat Quinlan would not open one inch, he had to add the drinking, and to the accumulated sum of disappointments find a way to forgive. Why did his father not love them enough to stop?

Like all failures of love, it was a question without answer, but, once Jude had thought of it, he could think of nothing else, trapped in the prison of all who have flawed fathers, unable to mend them, yet knowing they are the only ones they will have.

The instants between the first sensory apprehension of the warm milk bud, and the opening of the lips to receive and then suck on it, were a history of the world in miniature. Seeing it, Ronnie let out a sigh. She wanted to shout out, she wanted to let back her head and cry the single Yes! that is the testimony of all when endeavour meets engagement and one of the cogs of the universe

Then the doctor, who had a lifetime of emergencies behind him, said, ‘We do not get to live only the best parts of life.

On the counter, Guerlain’s Vol de Nuit. ‘Katherine Hepburn’s favourite, so it is,’ said Mrs Griffin.

It was one of those days in the run-up to Christmas when you expect nothing from it, knowing all energy and light must be going towards what is to come.

The doctor’s eyes opened on the peculiarity of his name in the priest’s mouth. ‘That’s easy, I’m trying to be a Christian,’ he said. ‘Only the Church and the State are in my way.’

The doctor sighed, because he was not in his bed, and because once again nothing had been solved.

It was the time it takes all of us to figure out how to go on living when in the company of despair, and it could not be abbreviated.

Like the missives of all children to parents, he had read it before he opened it.

‘O God,’ is what came out of him, but it was neither prayer nor appeal, only the involuntary response to the irreconcilable truth that things could get worse than you had imagined, that there was more pain than the one you were already suffering, and that all that was left to you was to fall to your knees.

And he recalled then the fantastical notion of the old man, who, in his last year, claimed that the purpose of ageing was to grow into your soul, the one you have been carrying all along.