The Beach at Doonshean

by Penny Feeny

  ‘There’s time enough to get here tonight,’ Ronnie had said. ‘I’ve your beds made ready.’ (She didn’t mention the dinner.)

  ‘But you shouldn’t be waiting up for us. You should get your beauty sleep. We’ll be with you right after breakfast.’

  Beauty sleep. That made her laugh. Though in point of fact, she’d no idea what she looked like. The mirror never gave her a glance. It might as well have been a piece of slate. She didn’t believe the promise about after breakfast anyhow.

  When she took the lamb out of the cupboard and unwrapped it again, it had lost its attraction as the centrepiece of a laden table. She’d got in a few loaves of sliced pan so she’d make sandwiches instead. A sandwich would give them something to do with their hands, give a lining to their stomachs. She took a knife and began to hack at the meat. She preferred a generous chunky filling. But handling the cold grease of the leg made her palms slippery; the blade of the knife shot forward and skidded into her fingertips. The next thing she knew, she was hunting for plasters and trying to staunch the flow of blood so the bread didn’t turn pink.

  This was how she was fixed when her boys came marching in, ducking their heads beneath the lintel, filling the space between the table and the range. The room seemed to have trouble containing them. Were they so much bigger than her other visitors? Vince Hogan, for instance, was a little gnome of a man, shrinking as he aged. If he’d still been running the bar, he’d hardly have been able to reach the optics. At least, that was Ronnie’s perception, but her perception was shot to pieces these days. She needed to get herself to the optician for an eye test – though there were some advantages to missing the cobwebs and the desiccated insects and the dust balling in the corners; dirt couldn’t bug her.

  ‘Will you look at this, Mam,’ Tom greeted her. ‘We’ve brought you a surprise.’ He whipped an old fiddle case from behind his back and held it out like a votive offering.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s your violin.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah? Is that all? The wood had a crack in it, don’t you remember? Kieran took it to Sean McCauley to be fixed only you never went to fetch it back. I don’t know why Sean didn’t drop it off but there you go…’

  ‘I expect we both had other things on our minds. I didn’t miss it. Lord, I haven’t played a tune for years.’

  ‘Then you can give us one for Dad’s birthday bash and liven things up. We want to hear you play again.’

  ‘Well I can’t.’ She held up her bandaged hand. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if you’d been on time.’

  ‘That isn’t fair, Mam. You know—’

  ‘And don’t think I can’t see your game, the both of you. Trying to flatter me into forgetting you’ve arrived nearly a day late, that it hasn’t been the greatest inconvenience to get everything ready and have you tell me you’ve been partying with some English girl.

  ‘We never said we were partying.’

  ‘How do you think your father felt?’

  ‘Look,’ said Kieran with a helpless shrugging of his shoulders. He might be a full-grown man with more than one failed relationship behind him, but as far as Ronnie was concerned, he remained the ungainly adolescent whose good intentions never quite came off. ‘I’ve taken a whole week off work to make this trip for Dad. I’m not arsing about. We had a delay, that’s all. You can ask Tom for details. But, if you recall, you told me not to turn up without him. So I got him here, didn’t I? I deserve some congratulations, I reckon.’

  Tom laid the violin case on the kitchen table beside the ragged leg of lamb. He put his arm around his mother’s waist and laid his cheek against hers. ‘It’s great to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about the girl,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Then what secret are you hiding from me now?’

  ‘Always so suspicious,’ he said lightly.

  ‘Answer me. Why is it one girl after another? Are you never going to settle down?’

  ‘You know you don’t want me to. It’ll make you feel old. You said so yourself.’

  ‘That was years ago,’ declared Ronnie. ‘I am old now. So it’s not a question of what I feel. It’s more a question of not having enough grandchildren.’

  Kieran nudged Tom; Tom said, ‘Enough for what? A five-aside football team?’

  ‘Every mother hopes to see her child established in the world. A good job. A happy family.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He was going through that routine he followed on a rare visit home, touching all the old things: the mantel clock, the framed photos, the Waterford glass vase that ought to be filled with flowers rather than string, scissors, pens and Sellotape. It was as if he were making sure the objects were three-dimensional and hadn’t lost substance. He was moving around the room with his back to her. He’d always had a swagger to his stance, a cocky tilt to his shoulders, but she could see beyond that, couldn’t she? To the wayward impulsive little boy.

  She shouldn’t spoil the homecoming. The dinner was ruined and her sons had let her down – but they were here now, weren’t they. She should be drinking them in, their powerful masculine presence. Why would they unsettle each other with reproaches? ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘Or a bite to eat?’ She indicated the sandwiches. ‘Or will you see your father first? He’s been waiting for you.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the back room watching the television.’ They could hear its murmur through the wall. Pat wouldn’t get up to greet them, she knew. He didn’t want his sons to see him leaning on his walking stick.

  ‘We’re not hungry,’ said Tom. ‘We had a massive breakfast.’

  ‘What makes me think you don’t look after yourself, I wonder?’

  ‘Because you’re not there to dose us with cod liver oil every bedtime? Actually, Mam, as I remember it, that was about your limit: a window of opportunity at nine o’clock of a night. All day long we’d to fend for ourselves.’

  ‘Because I had my hands full with getting the milk to the creamery! And weren’t you forever running off, hiding in the blanket box because you couldn’t stand the oily taste?’

  ‘It wasn’t only the blanket box. I was way more imaginative than that.’

  ‘Indeed you were. Hours I’d spend ferreting in ditches. And wasn’t my heart in my mouth every five minutes in case you’d electrocuted yourself or fallen off the barn roof or—’

  ‘Happy days.’ Tom grinned.

  She’d no more idea what he got up to now. She’d lost count of the job openings, the enticing deals from new contacts he generally seemed to meet in bars. London, which she seldom visited and didn’t much like, must be a more convivial place than it appeared at first sight. She knew he’d given up on the music industry, or maybe it had given up on him. The band had been on the verge of a breakthrough that never came. Tom was the lead singer and he should have tried for a solo career, but off he went on a film-making course. He was going to get into TV: all these channels, he said, not enough ideas, not enough technical expertise. But he ran out of money so the course was never completed. He went back to pulling pints for a living – oh, and painting and decorating.

  Ronnie didn’t like to think of him stinking of turps and being ordered about by some rich banker’s wife who never chipped a fingernail. ‘It isn’t like that,’ he’d said when she’d once phoned him in the middle of a job. ‘What is it like then?’ she’d demanded. ‘Put me in the picture, Tom. Describe it to me, where you are now.’

  She was half-joking but he’d answered without a whiff of hesitation. ‘Well,’ he’d said. ‘I’m in a fine big room on the first floor with long windows overlooking the street but you can’t hear the traffic because they’re double-glazed. I’m knee-deep in wet wallpaper because I’ve been stripping it off with the steamer and my next job is to fill in the cracks in the plaster and touch up the architrave and then…’ And that was when she heard a giggle (fast suppressed but a giggle
nonetheless). And the elegant room she’d been imagining, in a stuccoed town house, disappeared from her head. She didn’t want to replace it with an image of a double bed and sweaty sheets and some randy unfulfilled banker’s wife (or worse), so she pretended there was someone at the door. ‘Call me back when you’re on your next break,’ she’d said, but he hadn’t done so.

  He’d had cards made up with Tom Farrelly Interior Design printed on them, but it seemed an awful waste of a talent to be choosing other people’s wallpaper because they were too lazy to do it themselves. More honest to call yourself a decorator and earn a bit of respect. She would tell people he was running his own business; she didn’t have to tell them he had no employees.

  Kieran was a different proposition. He had a steady job and there was no point asking about it because she didn’t know the first thing about computers. She and Pat had a slow old thing Kieran called the dinosaur, where she processed the accounts and emailed suppliers. They kept it in the boys’ old bedroom, but it was Nuala who had to sort it out when anything went wrong.

  ‘We’ll go and say hello to Dad then,’ Tom said, lifting the violin onto the table and leaving the case carelessly open. They jostled each other in the hall in a lively enough manner but she could hear their feet pausing before they stepped across the threshold, into the room where Pat was sitting. She wouldn’t follow. Father and sons could get used to each other in private. She ran the fingers of her good hand down the shaft of the fiddle and plucked at some of the strings. It had been well tuned but she was too rusty to play.

  When the phone shrilled it made her start. Anna or Nuala, she guessed as she raised the receiver, checking up on their brothers, but it was Teresa Hogan. ‘Ronnie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not long back from Mass and you know I have a lady doctor renting Dolphin Cottage for the week?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well we bumped into her again outside the church. I have a good memory for faces on me and I’d had a niggling suspicion from the start. Now Mary and Breda have seen her they agree with me; think it quite likely she’s the same person.’

  ‘I’m not following you, Teresa. Which person?’

  ‘Wait till I tell ye!’ Her voice rose in excitement. ‘The widow.’

  ‘Whose widow?’

  ‘Why, his – your man’s! Different surname now, which explains why I didn’t make the connection sooner.’

  Ronnie sat down on a chair; the telephone cord twisted under her arm. ‘How can you be certain?’

  ‘Maybe tis only a hunch, but really, in thirty years, she’s changed remarkably little. Mary got her to show us the family pictures – just on her phone, mind. Her son is grown up now, happily married with a little one of his own. He’s a lawyer, she told me. A proper professional. Done very well for himself. Isn’t that extraordinary?’

  Ronnie felt dizzy. She should have grabbed a sandwich for sustenance.

  Teresa continued. ‘I have the press cuttings somewhere. Vince had a mention in quite a few of them. So I thought I should root around, check the photographs. Then I can let you know for sure.’

  ‘The newspaper reports? You kept them all?’

  ‘You’ve a lot on your plate. You’ll be out and about this week with the arrangements for the party and so forth, but I thought, if there’s the possibility you might run into her…’

  ‘Thank you, Teresa,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘It’s best to be forewarned is it not?’

  PART THREE

  Monday Tuesday

  12

  The Artist

  Three headless chickens were lined up on the kitchen table, the stumps of their legs pointing at the ceiling, their plucked flesh a buttery gold from their corn-fed diet. This should have been a morning of pure pleasure, immersing herself in the sensuous process of cooking – chopping, stirring, assembling, garnishing. But Rachael couldn’t find her boning knife.

  She’d looked in every drawer, in the dishwasher basket and the utensils jar and both knife blocks. Boning a chicken was a delicate operation and the right tool was essential. She’d noticed recently that things were disappearing. Usually they were unremarkable: a pencil sharpener, a small screwdriver, a bottle opener, a box of matches. She’d assumed at first this was the result of Bel’s inability to remember where she put anything, forever borrowing replacements. But Bel had left for Ireland and, anyway, what would she want with a boning knife? Rachael had found some of the missing objects scattered on the lawn and tried to have a conversation with Danny about them.

  ‘You do know you shouldn’t play with matches?’ He’d rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t believe she had such low expectations of him. ‘So you promise you won’t take them again?’

  ‘But, Mummy, I didn’t!’ His lower lip trembled and she had to force herself not to throw her arms around him and squeeze him to death. This was the boy Nathan’s doing. It had to be. He kept turning up like a bad penny, but Dan thought he was the most exciting companion on the planet. She hoped the phase would pass.

  She went into the garden to scour the flowerbeds. Bluebells and lilies of the valley were beginning to open, their fragrance fresh and sweet. The pear tree was shedding petals like snowflakes, drifting beneath its trunk. The trunk itself looked scarred. She made out some kind of inscription but the carving hadn’t been very successful. Pear bark didn’t offer a smooth etchable surface like sycamore or beech – it was too rough. The missing screwdriver was sticking out at right angles, plunged like a dagger up to its shaft in the wood. That wretched boy!

  Rachael wrenched it out, catching her knuckles as she did so. She licked the graze and spotted, at the foot of the tree, the knife she’d been searching for. She examined it closely to check the narrow blade wasn’t damaged. She sprang the point against her thumb; it felt sharp but she couldn’t be certain until she slipped it beneath the chicken’s ribcage.

  Sometimes her life seemed a constant series of tests. As soon as she’d completed one, another would demand her attention. She was never able to put her feet up and let the world flow around her, as Matt kept recommending. There was always something to worry about, like a power cut while her soufflé was rising, running out of a vital ingredient, or spilling red wine on her white table linen. She was pondering the unfairness of this when she heard the doorbell ring. There was no reason to assume Nathan was the caller – after all, he generally wriggled through the hedge – but when the ring came again, she stormed back into the house and along the hallway. She flung open the door with her left hand, the knife dancing and flashing in her right.

  For a second she didn’t recognise the figure leaning casually against the handrail. He looked, as he always did, a little the worse for wear. Behind him on the drive was a gleaming but, to her eyes, very dated sports car. ‘Leo!’

  He stepped back, took his hands from his pockets and held them up in mock surrender. ‘I come in peace, you know.’

  Rachael followed his gaze to the weapon in her fist. She dropped her arm to her side and said, embarrassed, ‘Why didn’t you phone?’

  ‘Why don’t you like surprises?’

  She shuffled her feet. This was an odd situation. She’d only occupied the house for a couple of months, had barely begun the process of making it her home and getting to know the area. The man on the doorstep, awaiting admission, had lived here for well over a decade, far less of a stranger than she.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I did phone. Spoke to the delightful BT lady. Don’t you ever listen to your messages, Raquel?’

  She bridled. ‘I use my mobile mostly. Landline calls still tend to be for Julia.’

  ‘Ah… Well, I was passing anyway, saw the car, guessed you were in and thought I’d take a chance. I didn’t expect a disembowelling.’

  ‘The knife’s not for you,’ said Rachael, to match his levity, although he made her feel as if she were trying too hard. ‘It’s for the chickens.’

  ‘Are you keeping livestock now?’

  �
�No! I haven’t killed them myself. They’re for a client who’s having a lunch reception tomorrow. You bone the birds, then you layer them with ham and a spicy stuffing and roll them up and truss them again for cooking. They carve nicely and look pretty on the plate. I know it’s a bit retro but actually retro dishes are quite fashionable and my client…’

  ‘Why don’t you show me?’

  ‘Oh, of course, come in.’ He had a bag with him, she noticed as he followed her, slung by one strap from his shoulder. ‘Are you, um, staying long?’

  ‘I’m waiting for the wind to change in France,’ he said. What did that mean exactly? ‘Thought I’d see how Bel was doing.’

  ‘But Bel’s in Ireland, didn’t you hear? You’ve just missed her. She’s holidaying with Julia for a week.’

  ‘Ireland?’ said Leo. ‘So that’s where they are. And I’m out of the loop again.’ She couldn’t decide whether his tone was irked or ironic. ‘Shall I pop over or hang on here? I’ll think about it. I have a few plans anyway… galleries to visit.’ He dumped the bag and accompanied her into the kitchen. ‘Nice place you’ve got.’

  Surely he was winding her up on purpose. ‘Do you need somewhere to stay?’

  ‘Well, I spent last night with Nick Roden. Sculptor. Did you ever meet him?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘The new wife’s a bit of a cow.’ Leo smothered a yawn. ‘You don’t expect a man to be under the thumb at Nick’s age. So if you have room…’

  ‘I suppose we have. I mean, the attic’s empty since Bel’s away.’

  ‘My old stamping ground.’

  He made her feel ill at ease. His ex-wife had thrown him out of this house, but now that she’d given it up he was wangling his way back in. Could he be trying to prove something? She inserted the tip of the knife beneath the chicken’s backbone. Leo, restless, was pacing up and down, peering through the window, opening the door to the larder, inspecting the dishes and bowls that were hers and Matt’s, that had nothing to do with him or his previous tenure.