‘Oh God,’ said Bronagh. ‘I can’t stand any more. Come on, I need a drink.’
‘I think I might be experiencing abandonment issues,’ said Bronagh, when Matt placed the drinks in front of us. ‘My lodger Susie decided to hand in her notice. Not that she was ever around, but still… she’s moving in with her boyfriend. Hopes I don’t mind… et cetera…’
‘Do you mind?’
‘No, not at all. Glad she’s happy. Mies is delighted. She has a very loud voice and I think it hurt his ears. He’s a sensitive little chap. And she had a tendency to dry her huge grey bras in the bathroom. Every time I brushed my teeth, I came face to face with them. It was traumatising.’
Bronagh waved at someone behind me. ‘Hello!’ she said, cheerily. ‘Yes, just a quick drink! Lovely!’
She looked back at me with a funny expression on her face. ‘There’s your Dr Butler,’ she said. ‘Looking particularly handsome this evening.’
‘He’s not my Dr Butler.’ But I felt my stomach swoop suddenly and I forced myself to stay facing Bronagh.
‘Well, you’ve been to his house. Which is more than anyone else in the village has done. What’s he doing in a pub on a Monday night? I thought only ne’er-do-wells like us did that.’ She kept her eye over my shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Matt’s giving him a coffee… now, they’re chatting. Dr Butler is laughing… oh, look, Matt’s giving him one of his special biscuits… he must like Dr Butler.’ She looked back at me. ‘But then again, who doesn’t?’ She glanced up and dropped her voice. ‘Oh God, it’s that guy from swimming. The lifeboat crew member!’
I looked up and recognised him as that nice beardy man from our walk last week.
‘But he looks so nice,’ I said. ‘Like a sexy teddy bear.’
Bronagh groaned. ‘God, he’s insufferable. Always in the sea, swimming around, showing off his big arms. And there’s me, just wanting to do my own thing. And he always wants to chat. Like chatting is what I go to the Forty Foot for! He’s always asking about the weather, how cold the sea is, remarking on the rainbow or clouds or whatever. He’s like a cross between a Connemara mountain man and David Hasselhoff. He keeps trying to organise dinners in the Sea Shack, so we can all get to know each other better.’ She looked horrified. ‘Like, being sociable! The very idea!’
I laughed. ‘Maybe he likes you.’
She shook her head. ‘The only people who like me are pasty types, the kind that don’t see much daylight, who consider speaking and eating as complicated multitasking and think ordering chips with curry sauce counts as being exotic. Anyway, as you know, I am off men and glorying in my wonderful aloneness!’
‘He’s coming over!’
‘Oh God.’
The mountainy man stood at our table, looking down at us, smiling, torso and chest and shoulders like Croagh Patrick on a sunny day. He had red hair and a huge matching beard, his T-shirt looked two sizes too small, probably because it was impossible to buy something to sheathe that rippling body.
‘Hey, Bronagh,’ he said. ‘Good to see you.’ He smiled down from his great height. ‘Is this the first time with clothes on? I mean…’ He’d gone as red as his beard, hair and T-shirt. ‘You know, I mean… usually we are swimming…’
Bronagh laughed. ‘I know what you meant. Fergal, this is my friend Olivia O’Neill, Liv, this is Fergal…’ She looked up at him.
‘Ferguson,’ he said, holding out his hand to me. ‘Fergal Ferguson.’
‘Wait,’ said Bronagh. ‘You’re Fergal Ferguson, the architect? I just finished your book… I had no idea.’ She looked utterly puzzled. ‘I thought you were the lifeboat crew.’
‘Only part-time,’ he said. ‘I’ve just moved back from Los Angeles…’
‘Yes, I was reading about what you did there… that house in Laurel Canyon… oh my God.’
‘You liked it?’ He blushed again.
‘I loved it. The way every room was facing the courtyard and how you used the trees outside… it was beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to introduce myself for ages now, because I saw your library in Cork… I think I spent an hour in it, just walking around and sitting down… it was like being in a church.’
‘That’s what I wanted,’ said Bronagh, ‘this feeling of worshipping books. And a feeling of peace. I wasn’t sure if I had quite achieved it, but I am so glad you liked it.’
He nodded, enthusiastically. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he said. ‘I loved it.’ And they both laughed.
‘Wow, I can’t believe it’s you.’ She turned to me. ‘Fergal’s book is called A Place Called Home – modernism and domesticity and putting the life into real life. I haven’t been able to put it down. I’ve been marking it and underlining bits. You don’t look like the photograph in the book.’
‘It’s my beard,’ he said. ‘As soon as I left LA, I just went wild. I mean, not that kind of wild, the drinking kind, but I’ve just kind of rewilded myself. Grew the beard, ditched the suits and just found myself again. LA was quite restrictive, dealing with rich clients, having to deliver ahead of time… I’m trying to find what I want to do here. So, I’m teaching in UCD, volunteering with the lifeboats. My friend George is part of the lifeboat crew and I’d grown up surfing and swimming so joining them was a no-brainer.’
Bronagh was nodding along. ‘I still can’t believe it’s you,’ she said. ‘Small world.’
‘Yeah… well, it’s Dublin, isn’t it?’ He hovered for a moment and then said, ‘I’ll let you get back to your drinks. Lovely to finally meet you properly, Bronagh. Good to meet you, Olivia.’ He turned to go and then at the last moment, said, ‘Maybe we could meet sometime? Discuss buildings, or is that too nerdy? You probably hate talking buildings outside of work?’
She shook her head and tried to speak. ‘No,’ she said, after clearing her throat. ‘No, I love talking about buildings. It’s my favourite subject.’
He grinned. ‘Mine too,’ he replied. ‘Well, that and cats. I’m afraid I’m a crazy cat man. I just love cats. All my Instagram is either buildings or cats.’
‘Mine too,’ croaked Bronagh. I thought she was going to faint.
22
I looked across to the bar and realised that Will was looking back at me. His face softened and he smiled. I smiled back.
‘How are you?’ he mouthed.
‘Fine. You?’
‘Not bad.’
‘What?’
‘Not bad…’ He was still smiling, when I saw him gather up his jacket and bag and he and Pablo came over.
‘May I join you? Hi Bronagh, hi Fergal.’
‘Hi Will,’ said Fergal. ‘How were the waves today?’
‘Bracing,’ said Will. His hair was still wet. ‘How’s the running going? Still enjoying it?’
‘Weirdly, yes,’ I said. ‘Still aching, still questioning why I am getting out of bed at 6.30 a.m. and plodding around the seafront, but there is something strangely nice about it.’
He nodded, understanding. ‘You feel more alive,’ he said. ‘And you can really enjoy your breakfast.’
Fergal and Bronagh had resumed their conversation, Fergal was now sitting on a stool beside Bronagh, who was laughing at something he had said. I thought of Mum and Joseph Delaney meeting in this very bar all those years ago. Pity he had turned out to be so useless.
‘How’s Jake’s seaweed book?’ said Will. ‘Is it actually interesting?’
‘It’s fascinating. Did you know seaweed is like this magical substance that absorbs all the goodness of seawater and then it’s all there, ready to be used?’
He smiled. ‘I hope you do something with it or set up your business again, it’s obviously what you’re passionate about.’
‘I think it’s the kind of weird passion that will have to go nowhere,’ I replied.
‘I had a few of those when I was a teenager,’ he said, making me laugh.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I have to go back to London. My boss is very needy.�
�
‘Is she a child?’
‘In many ways she is,’ I said. ‘She has meltdowns if she doesn’t have a soy-milk latte by 8.30 a.m. The only way I got her to sleep on a long-haul flight once when she was so wired she paced up and down the gangway for an hour was by downloading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and giving her my headphones.’
He looked confused. ‘And you like this job?’ Will was stroking Pablo as he talked.
I shook my head. ‘I wake up every morning dreading the whole day. I go to sleep with my phone under my pillow just in case Maribelle calls. I’m only home because she is in rehab. I live in fear of her getting better and being given her phone back.’ I’d be back in London in two weeks and I hadn’t realised quite how much I was already dreading it.
Will’s mobile rang. ‘I’d better take this. I’m so sorry. It’s one of my patients.’ He lifted it to his ear. ‘Everything all right?’ His face was serious as he stood up. ‘No? Okay, I’ll be right over. Stay calm, okay? We’ll get her better.’ He looked back at us. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m so sorry.’ Pablo had already sprung to his side. But at the last moment, he turned to me. ‘Olivia, would you mind coming as well? You might be able to help? It’s Cara. Her nan has collapsed,’ he said. ‘I presume it’s a hyperglycaemic attack. The ambulance is on the way, but Cara’s on her own.’
And, without thinking, I was running behind him and Pablo, down the street to his car.
At her front door, Cara was distraught. ‘The ambulance!’ she said. ‘It’s not here! Where is it? I called half an hour ago!’
‘Where’s Shirley?’ said Will, urgently pushing past her.
‘She’s through there.’ Cara pointed down the hall into the back room.
‘It’s on its way,’ I said, more confidently than I felt. ‘It’ll be here.’ I put my arm around her. ‘Please don’t worry.’ Her whole body was shaking.
‘She was making dinner and I was reading upstairs and…’ Cara began to cry, as we followed Will into the sitting room where he was kneeling on the floor next to Cara’s nan, his doctor’s bag wide open.
‘Hello, Shirley,’ he was saying. ‘It’s Dr Butler here. Can you hear me? Shirley?’
We stood at the door – Cara clutching my arm – as Will placed a vial on a needle and injected it. He held her hand, patting it.
‘Shirley, will you open your eyes for me? We’re all here, Cara’s here… I’m here, Will from the surgery… Shirley?’ But she lay motionless on the floor.
Cara went over to kneel beside her. Panic floated into the air and hovered above us all. ‘Come on, Nan,’ she was saying. ‘It’s me, Cara.’
And then, suddenly, Shirley’s eyes opened, and she tried to sit up.
‘Stay there, Shirley,’ said Will, grabbing a cushion from a chair for the back of her head. ‘A blanket?’
‘I’ll get one,’ I said, seeing a tartan picnic rug on the back of the sofa.
Cara laid it over Shirley, pulling her skirt down and then holding her hand. ‘Nan? Nan? It’s me!’
‘Will you make a cup of tea, Olivia?’ Will said. ‘Lots of sugar, please?’
‘Of course!’
In the kitchen, I flicked on the kettle and found mugs and teabags and milk, and once the water was boiled, I spooned six sugars into both, carried them back into the living room where Shirley was now sitting up, with her back against the sofa.
‘Here, Shirley,’ I said. ‘Some sweet tea.’
Will poured the tea into the saucer and then held it to Shirley’s lips. ‘Here we go, Shirley.’
‘You might need some too,’ I said to Cara, handing her the other mug.
She looked at me. ‘She didn’t take her tablets. She said she was feeling better… and I told her…’ She stopped, listening to something. ‘Is that them?’
From far away, there was the sound of an ambulance.
‘I’ll let them in,’ I said, rushing into the hall, and as soon I opened the front door, the whole street, including the worried faces of the neighbours, was illuminated by the sweeping blue light. In seconds, the ambulance crew were already unloading the stretcher and heading straight for me.
‘She’s in the back!’ I shouted, my voice shaking.
‘How is she?’ one of the neighbours called.
‘Not sure,’ I said.
‘She hasn’t been looking well for a few days,’ I heard another woman, who then crossed herself and muttered under her breath, while I thought about how I could be most useful. Should I pack a bag for Shirley? Her things and some of Cara’s?
Upstairs in the front bedroom – Shirley’s room – I packed a pair of glasses from the bedside table, a holy-water bottle, Shirley’s nightdress under the pillow and an old shawl which was folded neatly on the end of the bed. I opened the top drawer of the old dressing table and found a pair of warm socks. What else? Her toothbrush from the bathroom, along with a clean flannel and towel. In Cara’s room, I found her copy of The Brothers Karamazov, the spine broken in a hundred places, her notebook beside it, full of tiny scribbles. I put both of them in the bag. And I found her long brown cardigan, the one I’d seen her wear before.
Back downstairs, Shirley had been placed on a stretcher and was being manoeuvred though the narrow house and outside, the crowd stepping back reverently, as she was placed in the ambulance. Cara jumped up behind her. There were calls of: ‘See you soon, Shirl,’ and ‘God be with you!’
Cara’s eyes were filled with tears. She looked absolutely terrified.
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Would you?’
I looked back at Will. ‘I’ll see you there,’ he said.
We sat in the waiting room for hours until, finally, a doctor came to find us.
‘The family of Shirley O’Donnell?’
Cara looked up from under her hair.
‘Here!’ Will said.
‘She’s doing well,’ said the doctor. ‘Asleep now. You can go in and see her. She was asking for Cara.’ She turned to Cara. ‘That’s you?’
Cara nodded.
‘I’m Shirley’s GP,’ said Will to the doctor, reeling off a list of what she had been taking.
‘But she didn’t take it yesterday,’ said Cara. ‘I remember. She said she was feeling a bit sick in the morning and that the medication was making it worse.’
‘Well,’ said the doctor. ‘She’s all right now. Lucky you were there.’
I waited while Will and Cara went in to see Shirley, and after a few minutes, he came back out.
‘Cara’s going to sleep here tonight,’ he said. ‘We can go home.’
We walked out of the hospital, in the dark, to an empty car park and when we opened the car, Pablo was overjoyed to see Will, insisting on sitting on his lap all the way home.
‘Do you always go to hospital with your patients?’
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘But I’ve been keeping a special eye on those two. I don’t want anything to happen to Shirley for Cara’s sake…’
‘She doesn’t want to go to college in New York because she doesn’t want to leave Shirley,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘They’ve both told me all about it, separately. Shirley thinks she should go and Cara is adamant she won’t.’ He shrugged. ‘They are lucky to have each other. Love. You know? Someone to take care of.’ His hand was on the gearstick as we pulled away from the lights and Pablo lifted his head and rested it on Will’s arm. ‘We all need it.’
As we got closer to home, there was a fox standing in a puddle of moonlight, staying absolutely still, his eyes gleaming, his nostrils quivering in the night air. And then in a moment, he was gone again, his tail curling upwards as he disappeared into the night.
‘I love urban foxes,’ I said. ‘They always look like they need a friend.’
Will laughed. ‘I’ve never thought about them like that. But I suppose they do. They are not dogs who are universally loved. Or cats who have warm homes to go ba
ck to. No one touches them or feeds them…’
‘They’re on their own,’ I said.
‘Not like Pablo here,’ he replied, ‘treated like a little prince.’
I laughed. ‘He looks very happy,’ I said. ‘You don’t need much to make a family.’
‘Even just a tiny Yorkshire terrier,’ he said.
Was it my imagination or was Pablo warming to me? The expression on his face was softening. Perhaps one day he might actually let me stroke him?
‘Thanks again for showing us around your house,’ I said. ‘Mum never spoke about her childhood much and I think she found it really…’ I searched for the word. ‘…healing. She had to leave home because she was pregnant. And unmarried.’
He shook his head. ‘The poor thing,’ he said. ‘But she was lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘She got to keep you. So many weren’t allowed.’ And then he brightened, as though he’d had an idea. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘There are boxes up in the attic. I found them when I first moved in and there was a problem with the water tank. There are some letters and things… I remember seeing it but not doing anything about it. I was going to, but I’ve been so busy but… you never know. It might belong to your family?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘There were people there before you…’
‘But it looked completely untouched, hidden behind the tank?’ He looked so desperate to be right.
We pulled up outside Mum’s house. ‘Mum gave me this last week.’ I opened the locket and showed it to him. ‘It’s a photograph of my grandmother. I hadn’t seen her before. That’s her there with Mum.’
He studied it. ‘She looks like you.’
‘Really?’ I peered closely at it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful.’
I don’t know how I managed to get out of the car.
‘Thank you, Will,’ I said.
‘See you, Olivia.’ And he pulled away, Pablo still looking out from Will’s lap.
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Life's What You Make It Page 18