When the evening stretches beyond teatime again, they’ll look at it. They’ll run their hands along it, they’ll let the green slime fill the little rivers on their fingertips. And they’ll marvel and say, isn’t that amazing?
That it got that high. And they’ll say the word ‘shocking’ several times. And they’ll be thankful for something. Anything. That the Sacred Heart lamp still works. That no-one got electrocuted. Thankful for the kindness of strangers and friends. And they’ll sigh. And their eyes will go back to it, that watermark. That dirty greasy stain that has taken its place on their walls, in their homes, on their doors, in their barns. That watermark that reminds them of how bad things were. And they’ll feel a shake in their hands that wasn’t there before. And an ache in the chest that is either their broken heart or blood pressure or a muscle strained from lifting something out of the water’s way. Whatever it is, it can wait, ‘cos there’s work to be done. Lots.
And then there is the pungent smell of bleach and detergent. And elbow grease. And sweat and tears and exasperation and relief and fear and anger. And the constant scrubbing of late spring will take away that green line, that lime shade that says that this part was under water in the days when the sun got up late and went to bed early.
Watermarks are important.
They leave their dirty trail on all that come before them. A sort of ecological boast. Nature’s way of saying ‘Kilroy was here.’ Staining those obstacles of stone and tree and glass and paint against which the dirty waters lapped as they snaked in across the land, invading parts where they ought not to be.
But watermarks are also stark reminders of sadness — they sit there like pencilled growth charts of long grown children, just daring to be erased, challenging them to try to forget.
And even after the scrubbing, they’ll feel the watermark on their hearts. And they’ll remember the tired limbs and the red eyes and the pale faces and the images of clothes rushed into boxes, of treasured photos in frames, hastily collected to avoid the water. Lifetimes gathered against the backdrop of splashing boots in rooms built for comfort. Living rooms for living. Not for wading.
And for a while they are on the front pages and on the news. And politicians come to them and tut tut, and say things like ‘shocking’ and sigh with them, and show their solidarity by donning wellingtons that are soon eschewed for dry shoes once back in the snugness of their cars as they go back to the dryness of their homes.
Turmoil is an emotion that is not appreciated but by those who live it. When the heart and the home are not at ease, there comes a great pain that sits across your chest, that makes nothing right, that rips at you as you struggle to get by, that allows you only to exist but not to live. Many many families feel that way this morning.
In a few months’ time, when the roads and boreens give up their last drop and let the waters slope off into the rivers and the sea, the memory of the waters and the floods will sink from the general psyches. By then, the world will have moved on to a different story, a different cause; the flooded homes of South Galway will not fill the front pages or the inside pages or the radio news or the television news. The visual richness of the story will have given way to something else. The world will have moved on. For most.
But the nightmare is just beginning for those whose homes have been ruined.
The floods will come again, if not this year or the next, then perhaps the year after. A solution to the crisis will probably be kicked down the street like an old tin can. The watermark on the wall will remain, but the green slime can be washed off with a cloth and some detergent.
The watermarks on their lives, though, will take longer to erase, if ever.
And as long as the flooding is treated as a freak that comes once every few years, their ache will go on, and their hearts will sink when they hear the pit-pat of the rain on the roof, and the frightening images of rain clouds on the nightly television news.
