The Beach at Doonshean

by Penny Feeny

  ‘I’ve been meaning to come over,’ said Vince. ‘For I don’t know how long. Have you everything sorted for the party now?’

  Pat’s shoulders lifted. ‘I’m leaving it to the women.’

  Anna said, ‘And we have it all in hand.’

  ‘You’re not letting that tiresome Rooney fellow bring his accordion? I value my hearing.’

  ‘The music’s under control, Dad. I told you. And Nuala’s sorting the menu. It’s going to be a grand night.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Pat had not been so curmudgeonly before his illness, but Vince understood his reservations. You couldn’t tell how a party would go. Sometimes there’d be too many vested interests, too many lads spoiling for a fight, too many girls upset at the state of their dresses. Or the buffet would get trodden into the floor and the music would be shite. In truth, a wake was often more enjoyable than your average wedding (or even a christening) because it had a spontaneity you couldn’t drum up any other way. Not that he would mention such a thing to his old friend. Instead, he said, ‘I hear the lads are coming home?’

  One of Anna’s sons clambered onto his grandfather’s knee and reached up to stroke his face. Pat gave a melancholic smile. Anna said, ‘Yes. We thought they might not make it, on account of the airports being closed, but Kieran has decided to drive so they’ll be staying for the week.’

  ‘When will they get here?’

  Ronnie had her back to them, assembling cups while the tea brewed. She said, ‘Oh later this evening. I have the lamb ready to go in the oven.’

  Anna, swinging the child from Pat’s lap onto her hip, mouthed at Vince: ‘Fingers crossed.’

  7

  The Graveyard

  This was the third week in which Julia was living out of her small suitcase. Vince Hogan had brought her round to Dolphin Cottage in the morning and hopped about in that sprightly way of his, showing her the ropes. But she’d wanted to be alone – she hoped she hadn’t made it too obvious – and so he’d left her to unpack. She’d unfolded tops and trousers and hung them in what he called the press. She’d stored the case under the bed and tossed a batch of underwear into the washing machine.

  Built in a traditional design with two bedrooms flanking a central living area, Dolphin Cottage was the perfect hideaway. It was picturesque from the outside, with a thatched roof and a clump of hollyhocks sprouting beside the door; snug within. The ceilings were low, the walls thick and the windows tiny – but the glimpse of lush green pasture with the mountains beyond was spectacular. Julia, gazing through the pane, could see a swirl of mist, light as chiffon, on the distant mountain peak. It brought to mind the ash cloud that had blown her here, into retreat. She’d almost confessed this to the Hogans on arrival – they had been so friendly and hospitable – only it sounded too whimsical, too Wizard of Oz. Finding it difficult enough to explain her actions, she’d made up some bland story, pretending she was reconnoitring for a healthy spot for her daughter to recuperate.

  She checked the room where Bel would sleep. The sheets were scented with bergamot and there were towels at the end of the bed: a white one for the bath and a striped one for swimming. She hadn’t commented on this, hadn’t said to Vince, ‘Swimming! In April?’ She’d noticed the surfers in their wetsuits, like glossy black beetles riding the waves. The water wasn’t cold if you were encased in rubber. The ocean wasn’t dangerous if you knew the right places to go.

  Most of the beaches along the peninsula were perfectly safe, but Doonshean was known for its riptide and each day so far Julia had paid a visit there, in memory of William. The first time, she had made her way down the ancient stone path in the lee of the cliff to find the waves pounding the rocks, casting spray in her face, swallowing every scrap of sand. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought the beach no longer existed. Subsequently she’d planned her visits more carefully. At its lowest ebb the full wild beauty of the strand was exposed: the glisten of seaweed at the shoreline, the frill of lacy foam, the scattering of shells. And all around her, the rocks rose like exotic hanging gardens, rich with jewelled clumps of sea thrift and mallow.

  Today, however, she would concentrate on practicalities and buy some food with the last of her cash. She set off down the lane, rolling past high hedges lively with green shoots of fuchsia and the starry white petals of wild brambles. She often felt as if she’d spent half her life in the driving seat. Much of her job had involved travelling from school to school, cajoling reluctant children with her toy medical kit: the magic thermometer, the rattling pill boxes, the fake syringe. The stethoscope in particular had fascinated them. She used to explain she was listening to their heartbeats, and for any whistles or wheezes, skips or jumps. Their young bodies would writhe and twist like eels in a basket and she’d been glad she’d chosen a speciality so full of boundless life. Year after year she’d dispensed prescriptions, referrals, advice, tussled with red tape, drafted reports.

  And now it was over.

  For someone accustomed to discipline and structure, the infinity of time stretching ahead took some getting used to. She knew she should seize it, mould it, enjoy it – this lovely lazy future – but look at what happened in France! She’d been anticipating a relaxing fortnight with old friends, eating meals infused with garlic and drinking rich red wine, visiting chateaux and cathedrals and galleries, sipping strong coffee in tree-lined squares. Instead, she’d been shocked to have Leo sprung on her.

  She’d made an effort to behave in the cool-but-civilised manner appropriate to an ex-wife, but then – it was such a silly little thing – a chance remark about the house-swap had kick-started one of their more spectacular rows. She cringed at the memory. She’d always had a fiery temper and Leo could get her going like no one else (which, long ago, had been part of his attraction).

  The atmosphere in the farmhouse had become tense and hostile. Rather than embarrass the Culshaws any further, Julia decided to remove herself. Dorothy protested, of course. She couldn’t accept that Julia wasn’t hiding some ulterior motive that she was choosing to be impulsive for once. Wasn’t that the point of being retired: not having to cater to anyone’s needs except your own? In retrospect, her early departure was cowardly, as if she were running scared. But she had turned things around. She would never have set out to revisit Dingle but, by taking the chance when it came, she could prove she had courage after all.

  Her foot was depressing the clutch, her hand shifting the gearstick, but her mind was elsewhere. Perhaps this was the reason the car began to stray towards the ditch. Pulling the steering wheel sharply to the right, she attempted to accelerate out of trouble. She caught the flash of a swift scurrying creature and felt a thud. She stopped the car and got out. She had hit a rabbit, now quaking on the verge.

  Julia knelt and laid her hand on its soft fur. Both back legs were smashed; blood was soaking into the ground. Oh hell, she thought, I’m going to have to break its neck. She had nothing sharp with her; she cast around for a heavy stone. Speed and accuracy were essential: the animal wouldn’t feel a thing. She wouldn’t lift the stone up afterwards. Even so, she hesitated and as she did the rabbit’s eyes acquired a filmy glaze; the heart ceased to thump beneath her palm.

  She was quite irrationally upset by this small death. After all, no one in the country would worry over roadkill and she had encountered far worse ends. But for a moment she could not lift her hand, detach it from the still-warm flesh. She had to force herself to rise on unsteady legs, dust her knees and return to the driving seat. She sat for a while, bent over the steering wheel, resting her forehead on her forearm. She knew it was only a release of suppressed tension in her nerve endings; even so, the stupid shaking wouldn’t stop.

  Then she heard a squeal and another car, its passenger wing dented, came out of nowhere. It juddered past, narrowly missing her. Julia felt for the keys. She was blocking the road – she had to move on. A little way beyond, she could see a cast-iron gateway leading to an old church in a walled
graveyard. In front was a strip of shale big enough for a hearse to stop and unload. She started the engine and crawled towards it. This would do.

  The church was derelict and abandoned, a romantic ruin, like hundreds of others strewn throughout the countryside. Most of the tower had tumbled inwards and crows flapped around its high remaining wall. The original wooden door was missing and trails of ivy festooned the entrance arch. Moss spread across the flags and the gravestones had a neglected air, as if the descendants who might have cared for them had long moved away. New populations worshipped in the grey stone churches built at the outskirts of towns and villages, with their electronic bells and their loudspeakers broadcasting Mass to latecomers in the car park.

  Julia got out of the car again and trod through leafy docks and stinging nettles. The headstones were marled with lichen; the engraving was too faint to read. At the back of the churchyard were more recent plots, marked with slabs of shining granite and green marble chippings. They looked incongruous in this gothic Victorian setting, where you could so easily conjure up the ghosts of another era: generations of farmers and fishermen, mothers and milkmaids, babies wrapped tight in shawls.

  She stooped to right a jar of plastic roses that had blown over. Straightening up again she saw a gate that led to an extension of the cemetery, to fresh mounds of soil awaiting recognition. A group of trees hovered at the far boundary, their crowns distorted by the wind, their branches straggling in the same direction as if trying to escape.

  She continued on and found herself in a field that hadn’t yet acquired the gravitas of an ancient burial ground. It was like the chiming electric bells: the notes were technically the same, but they lacked depth and resonance; they couldn’t compare with sonorous brass. Nevertheless, the field was peaceful and her muscles had relaxed; she was no longer trembling. She decided to walk to the trees and back to stretch her legs and then she would complete her errands.

  A path had been cut through the turf but the grass had regrown and damp soaked into her shoes. Coming back towards the gate she stepped aside to avoid a molehill and noticed a plaque set into the wall. Something about the shape of the letters caught her eye.

  ‘William Langley,’ she read. ‘Drowned 9th July 1981. May he be Rewarded in Heaven with Everlasting Grace.’

  Julia gasped, put her hand out to the dry stone wall, felt its sharp edge bite her palm, wondered if the silly business of the rabbit had affected her vision, if she were hallucinating.

  She read the inscription again. It couldn’t refer to a different William Langley. The date was correct. She would never forget that date.

  She tried to think logically. This was a memorial plaque, not a gravestone. There was no grave. William hadn’t been interred. His body had been flown back to England, to Bristol, where they had been living. Over two hundred people, colleagues from the Bristol Royal Infirmary, neighbours in Clifton, friends and relatives, had packed the crematorium. His heroism had been celebrated in style. And then afterwards, in the awful throes of anti-climax, Julia had been left with a container of ashes.

  One evening after work, when the Avon was at high tide, she’d collected Matt from the childminder and brought him onto the suspension bridge. Dusk cloaked the gorge; lights began to spring alive on the rods and cables strung between the two towers. What else could she do but return William to the water? Matt seemed to understand the solemnity of the occasion. He hadn’t fidgeted. He had watched with the steady unswerving gaze so reminiscent of his father as she’d taken the lid off the urn and let its contents drift down towards the river and ultimately out to sea.

  Another thing she would never forget, nearly thirty years on, was the kindness of the locals here, their astonishing capacity for goodwill wherever she and Matt had fetched up. At the time she’d found it difficult to respond to their compassion, their friendly words and gestures. She presumed she’d thanked people, but her brain had frozen as a way of anaesthetising the pain and her thanks would have been as mechanical as the endless telling of a rosary.

  But for someone else, it seemed, gratitude was a strong and deeply felt emotion, powerful enough for them to erect a memorial. Perhaps a parish collection had raised the funds? Or the family of the little boy William had saved? She’d forgotten their name: her recollection of that period was hazy, as if it had been filmed with a hand-held camera using the wrong exposure.

  She traced the lettering gently with her finger. She had tried so hard to put the tragedy behind her and look for a new beginning, to bury her guilt at the role she had played, to kid herself that Matt was not the image of his father. How strange now, to find that somebody in this distant part of the world had wanted to make sure he was remembered.

  8

  The Hotel

  It would have been easier to make conversation if she’d been in the front seat, but Bel was in the back of the car with Clemmie dozing on her shoulder. Tom dozed too and Kieran wasn’t much of a talker, so she sat watching the ribbon of road unspool ahead through the rolling green landscape, while the radio churned out a slew of forgettable pop tunes. Two hours into the journey, a sudden blaring of horns roused Tom and he jerked awake. ‘Fuck, are you trying to kill us!’

  ‘There’s no accounting for eejits,’ said Kieran, accelerating away from danger. ‘Still, we’re nearly on the home stretch.’

  Tom snorted with such derision that Bel said, ‘What was it that made you leave? I mean, in the first place.’

  Kieran said, ‘Why does anybody leave?’

  ‘The real question,’ said Tom, now revived and re-energised, ‘is why does anybody stay? When you’re young you want adventure. You don’t want to spend your life with your arm stuck up a cow’s arse or tootling about on fishing trips. And yes, it’s true, prospects were good for a bit, but there’s nothing to come back for now. Our house of cards has collapsed and our country’s drowning.’

  ‘It was different for you, whatever,’ said Kieran.

  ‘Different?’ said Bel. ‘Why?’

  ‘He had the voice, didn’t he? He was going to be Jesus Christ Superstar.’

  ‘Feck off!’

  ‘Or Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, elevated above the rest of his family.’ He clashed the gears and cursed. ‘But he lost it. Lost that God-given gift, those dulcet tones, his meal ticket.’

  ‘It wasn’t a meal ticket I wanted. It was a one-way out of there ticket.’

  ‘You see, where we come from, there’s not much you can keep private. Some people like it – they have that sense of belonging. Whereas we got too big for the country, did we not?’

  Tom adopted a falsetto: ‘Wait until you hear the latest on those Farrelly boys! Shit, I could never have stayed in the one place.’

  ‘So where does Clemmie live? Not with you, I’m guessing?’

  ‘With her mother.’

  ‘You aren’t married to her?’

  ‘Does either of us look like a married man, darlin’?’

  The mention of her name had drawn Clemmie from sleep. She uncurled herself and stuck out her legs until her toes touched the back of her father’s seat. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Over his shoulder, Kieran said, ‘What about you, Bel?’

  It was a long while since she’d felt a genuine hollow hunger, so the sensation surprised her. ‘Yes, actually I am. I had some sort of wrap for lunch but I couldn’t finish it.’

  ‘Okay, then. I’ll find somewhere to pull in for a bite. We’re not far from Adare.’

  Adare’s wide central street was lined with quaint thatched cottages and generous grass verges, which gave it a peaceful civilised air. Bel sniffed the distinctive comforting peat smoke that told her she’d truly arrived in Ireland. Kieran turned into the car park of a gracious hotel, cloaked in Virginia creeper.

  ‘We’ve a friend who works here. Maybe he’ll give us a discount.’

  He killed the engine and they got out. Tom loped round to the back of the car and tore off his T-shirt. ‘This stinking thing!’ he
exclaimed, shoving it in the boot and rooting for a clean one in his holdall. ‘I need to go for a decent wash.’

  Clemmie was watching him with detachment. Although rumpled from the journey, she carried herself with prim composure. Her pink jeans had a blotch of ketchup on the thigh but the matching cardigan was buttoned neatly; her bouncing hair bobbles were still in place.

  Tom seized her under the armpits and raised her high in the air. ‘Hey, my gorgeous girl!’ he cried. ‘Do I smell better now?’ She wrinkled her nose silently. He crushed her against his bare chest and then set her on the ground with a flourish. She took hold of Bel’s hand.

  ‘Will we start with a drink?’ said Tom. ‘You can have a Coke, Clem, and everyone will think you’re on the Guinness, same as us.’

  The friend they’d hoped to find behind the bar was on his day off so Bel, flush with the cash Matt had given her, offered to buy the round.

  ‘We’ll put it on a tab,’ said Tom waving her money away. ‘We can settle up later, no problem.’

  He went off to scrub himself clean and Bel took Clemmie to the Ladies. She couldn’t help asking, ‘How often do you see your daddy?’

  The little girl squirted a stream of lemon-scented soap onto her palms. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Not very often then. Have you ever been away with him before?’

  ‘I don’t think so… Maybe when I was little.’

  ‘But your mum knows where you are, doesn’t she?’ Her concern was crazy. How could this possibly be an abduction? Two white men travelling with one black child in rural Ireland – they’d be picked up in no time. But Bel couldn’t rid herself of the suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Clemmie.

  ‘Wasn’t she invited too?’

  ‘No, ’cos she’s very busy.’

  ‘At work?’

  ‘She’s on holiday with her friend.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’