Your story in this week’s issue, “The Curfew,” opens as ex-Hurricane Ophelia is about to hit Ireland. The storm did, in fact, make landfall in Ireland, on October 16, 2017. When did you first start thinking that this might form the basis for a story?
I had originally intended writing a story about a man telling his family that he has coronary-artery disease. But there wasn’t a story there and I left the file on my desk—“Widow’s Block,” I’d called it. And I left it there, annoying me, for quite a while, two or three years. Ex-Hurricane Ophelia came—or, on the east coast of Ireland, didn’t—in October, 2017. The previous summer, I’d been walking in County Clare, on the west coast, and we came across a Wellington boot buried in the tarmac of a road beside the Atlantic Ocean. We realized that the road was brand-new; we could feel its newness, its spring, under our feet. The old road had been swept away by the sea a few months before, during a storm. So I fully expected this ex-hurricane to be spectacular. It was Hurricane Ophelia, after all, not Paddy or Mary. There was a curfew, which I thought was brilliant—daftly dramatic. But nothing happened, really. It was a windy day. I sat on my bed and waited for a bit of a spectacle. I fell asleep, and the world was exactly as I’d left it when I woke up. And I thought, I could use this—a non-event, like the artery disease that had never delivered an ache or a heart attack. I added to the notes, but didn’t start writing. In March, ’18, there was another curfew, this time because of heavy snow. This time, my mother was in the local hospice, dying, and I couldn’t visit her, for a day. And “curfew” took on a new meaning. I felt protected by it, somehow; I could stay at home for a little while, and rest. The following morning, I walked through the snow to the hospice. I took more notes. About a month later, I saw a woman walking toward me, carrying a Teddy bear in a baby sling. It was funny until I saw her face; she was clearly suffering, and she walked straight past me. I looked at the “Widow’s Block” notes and thought that, finally, there was a story there. I was finishing a novel, so I got that out of the way first, then started.
Your protagonist works at home during the day, while his wife leaves every morning for her job in an office. How seriously does he take his responsibility of preparing for the storm?
The protagonist is a Dubliner. We’re not used to weather extremes. It rains, but not nearly as much as it does on the west coast. Anything out of the ordinary—a snowfall, hail—and the supermarket shelves are immediately empty; it’s the end of the world. So, the protagonist is probably underprepared if the hurricane arrives, but it’s not part of the rhythm of his year—if that makes sense. And he’d quite like the excitement, and the story.
He’s been out and, as you say, passes a woman with a baby-size Teddy bear in a sling. He’s puzzled by the woman, but this puzzlement then turns into memories of the times he spent carrying his own children around, in backpacks and slings. When you start writing a story, do you know where that kind of associative thought will take a character, or does it come to you as you’re writing?
I saw the woman myself. Whenever I see a baby carried in that way, I often think of doing the same thing, twenty years ago. This time, the thoughts, the ideas, came as I wrote. It’s always the same. I plan as I write. I’ve never known how a story will end.
He’s suddenly aware of his own mortality—he’s been diagnosed with coronary-artery disease and has returned home with pills to take. What’s it like to capture that moment—when past, present, and future all seem to be colliding? Or when he’ll do anything he can to avoid turning into his own father?
I don’t think anyone likes getting older, but, if you’re a writer, it’s research. The challenge is finding the words, the words that deliver the mood. The term “widow’s block” was wonderful when I first heard it. It was like an invitation to write a story. In a way, the story became a struggle between the medical term “coronary-artery disease” and the more poetic and comical “widow’s block.” It’s all about words.
There’s an underlying tone of melancholy to the story. If Dublin had got the full force of the storm, rather than Ireland’s “wild Atlantic way,” would this have been a different story with a different tone?
It would have been a very different story. Perhaps, he would have been exhilarated by it all. I don’t know. But it became a story—the story I wrote—because it was a non-event. I love the daftness of the phrase “wild Atlantic way.” It’s a shockingly successful marketing campaign that has, somehow, become a geographical fact. I’ve heard people—Irish people—saying that they’re going to the wild Atlantic way when they’re actually going to Galway.
