Finding Alison

by Deirdre Eustace

  ‘Hannah sends her love. She has study this evening, but she’ll be in to see you at the weekend.’ Alison hoped this wasn’t another empty promise. She’d make sure that little madam visited on Saturday whatever it took. She couldn’t get her head around Hannah’s refusal to visit her gran. To be fair, she had gone regularly to the hospital at the beginning, but in the weeks since Maryanne had moved here she had visited what, two, maybe three times at most. ‘The whole village is anxious to know how you’re doing, wondering when they’ll see you out and about again.’

  Maryanne’s soft blue eyes stared straight through her, as if she were speaking in a foreign language. As if she didn’t have the first notion what Alison was rabbiting on about. No, more than that. As if she absolutely did not care. Her whole face was a blank porcelain mask: no pull on the corners of her mouth, no hint of a set in her chin. But the eyes. God, what Alison wouldn’t give to see a flicker of something in them – anger, sorrow, fear – anything that would let her know that Maryanne was still in there, still with her. She bit down hard on her lower lip, squeezed the limp hand.

  ‘Your hair looks nice.’ Someone had washed it, made an effort to tame its straggling length into some kind of style. Alison’s eyes moved from the two inches of grey at Maryanne’s hairline down to the purple zigzag scar above her left eye where she’d struck the door jamb in her fall. She wished the ulcer on Maryanne’s leg wound would show some signs of healing. If she could walk unaided again, feel she was getting some of her independence back, perhaps then she might find the will to come back to them.

  ‘The doctors are pleased with your leg.’ Alison smiled her encouragement. ‘Another week, they say, will see a big difference.’ Maryanne turned her head slowly, her gaze drifting past the row of chairs to her left, on out through the rain-spattered window and fixing on the darkening ocean. Alison smiled and nodded to the lady in the next chair, her gaze following Maryanne’s. Was she looking for Sean, willing him back to her? Alison swallowed hard. Was Maryanne trying to say that she wanted to go, to be with him?

  Alison let her head drop, closed her eyes, that now familiar heat of resentment bubbling up somewhere deep inside her, a cold overlay of guilt fighting to keep it in check. To his mother, Sean would always be the tragic hero, the handsome young son cut down on the cusp of life. Running a forefinger and thumb over her closed lids she drew a long, slow breath. Sean’s face flashed before her in the darkness: the wide smile, the creases that winged his eyes when he laughed. The face that had lit her world. Jesus, she couldn’t blame him for dying but another part of her railed that he should be here now, looking after his mother, sharing in the rearing of his child! And there was that other face too, that closed, sullen face she remembered more often of late as she struggled with Maryanne and Hannah, with money and work. He should be here, with her. He should have to share this mess! She shook her head as if to shake out the anger, the guilt and confusion.

  She opened her eyes, lifted her head. Maryanne was staring, not at her but deep inside her, as if she were reading her very thoughts. Alison felt a pink shame ignite at the base of her neck, felt its heated fingers reach upwards to her cheeks and set them alight. She dropped Maryanne’s hand back into her lap, cleared her throat as she hoisted her handbag to her shoulder. ‘I’d better head home. Tea, for Hannah.’ Her voice trembled, each hand massaging the knuckles of the other in quick succession. Leaning forward she placed an awkward peck on Maryanne’s forehead ‘I’ll call in tomorrow, have a good night’s sleep.’

  Avoiding Maryanne’s eyes, she caught the chair she’d been sitting on and placed it back by the table in the centre of the room before rushing to the front door, her trembling fingers pressing in the wrong security code.

  ‘Have you seen any of my people?’ Alison knew without looking that it was that tiny little woman with the long grey hair and eyes as blue and as blank as a doll’s – was it Gretta they called her? – stealing up slowly on her walking frame behind her, she was looking for a face, an escape, some route back into a world that had long ago disappeared. Alison stabbed her finger at the keypad again then shouldered open the heavy door and bolted out into the rain.

  From the office window Kathleen watched her raise her handbag over her head and run through the downpour towards the car park. She looked so wretched, so alone. Whoever was responsible for that break-in had a lot more on their heads than Maryanne’s injuries, she sighed. Alison had made such progress in the last year, had begun at last to show signs of the old vitality and passion for life that had marked her out when she had first come to live in this place. These last few months had all but knocked her back to square one, right back to those first raw weeks after Sean had been lost, those weeks when Kathleen herself had been all but broken under the enormity of Alison’s grief. Lately, she’d been so preoccupied with Rob that she knew she had let her friendship with Alison slip. If she were honest, it had suited her when Alison cancelled their plans those last couple of times. It got her off the hook without having to feel any guilt. God, she should have known that it was a sign that everything wasn’t right with Alison but she had chosen not to give it a second thought, had been only too happy to let her focus shift straight back to Rob. And poor Hannah – and that good-for-nothing O’Neill, he spelt trouble.

  She sighed, both hands finding their way to rest on the centre of her chest, right over the spot where a red hot coal of guilt had rekindled. ‘Tomorrow,’ she promised aloud. She would call tomorrow evening after work, spend some time catching up with Alison and maybe get a chance to have a chat with Hannah; she could take Jamie with her, he adored Hannah and hadn’t seen a whole lot of her lately. Maybe she could ask Hannah to babysit for her one night this week – it’d be a bit of pocket money for her, take the strain off Alison a bit. Good, that’s settled then, she nodded to herself, flicking off the light and pulling the door shut behind her.

  Two

  Alison awoke with that same heavy feeling inside and all around her. If only I could stay right here, she thought, eyes still closed. Forget the world, forget everything. A dark sigh rose from the depths of her as she stretched back her neck, arched her body into wakefulness. The dogs pined softly in the back kitchen, somehow sensing her stirring. Turning onto her side, her fingers found the warm dip of her waist, the gentle outward curve of her hip, her thigh, so soft, like a wing, opening. A sharp lick of fire lit her belly, taunting her aloneness. She threw back the covers and padded to the shower. Under its hot stream she scrubbed and scrubbed – at the loneliness, the darkness, that grey hopelessness that seemed to be her constant shadow lately – working the loofah vigorously over and over her body till her skin tingled, tightened, felt some semblance of contact with life.

  Dogs fed and watered and let loose to the garden, back in the bedroom she pulled on her jeans and an old shirt. This house needs air, fresh breath, she muttered, pulling open the curtains and unclasping the window. She fixed her damp hair in a knot at her neck. Not bothering with breakfast, she gathered up the empty bottles and jars from the back kitchen. Like so often these days, she felt the need to be away from the house, from its stillness, its deathly quiet. She grabbed her keys, whistled the dogs into the back of the old jeep and bounced down the pot-holed drive to the beach.

  The sea cha-cha’d in to meet her, its petticoat held high. Alison noticed the ocean’s dark brown under-dress; how it rippled its grey surface, refusing the sun. The 10th of May, first month of summer, Alison thought, and the sea, like me, is refusing to cast off her winter colours and mood.

  The two dogs bounding ahead of her, she strolled towards the water’s edge, catching herself smiling at their playfulness, their joy for life. Five-year-old Tilly, a beautiful, sleek black Labrador, had been Hannah’s tenth birthday present from Sean; Tim was one of the litter of six pups that she had surprised them with last September. Watching them now, she was so glad she had decided to keep little Tim. Tilly had been such a devoted mother that Alison hadn’t had the heart to take
them all from her and tiny Tim, the runt of the litter, had been the obvious choice to stay. Not such a runt any more, she laughed to herself now, as she watched him dance along the wet sand.

  Along the shoreline the sea had spat up a vile yellow-brown froth in its contempt at summer’s subtle gestures. Alison lifted her gaze towards the freshly greened cliff tops, the tiny knots of purple heather and sea pinks clinging in all their brilliance to the outcrops. Why do they return, she wondered, year in year out, with their whispers of renewal and rebirth, only to be killed off a few short months later? Why try again and again, knowing they will perish, knowing death always has the final say?

  She turned from the shoreline up towards the dunes, bending to pick a piece of driftwood from the sand. Salt had bleached away its colour and only in its deepest cuts could you see the remnants of life. Its shape was humped and curved, as if by pain, its face eaten away. Sean. Over three years now in his wet, salty grave. What would remain of him?

  Holding the driftwood with both hands, she closed her eyes and pressed her nose to its belly. At the rush of salt and tar, the memories fast-gathered. She saw herself again, running, demented to the strand each morning, knowing each day that this was the one, today she would find him. Walking and searching every beach and cove for miles, cursing the tide and then falling to her knees, the sea sweeping in around her as she begged and pleaded for Sean’s return; Hannah, cold and tired, little legs trying to keep up yet staying a small distance from the mother with the madness in her eyes. Then returning to the water like a ghost each night when Hannah was safe in her bed, her torch light double-checking every nook and turn in the rocks and caves. In case she had missed him by day. In case he had come on the evening tide and was waiting for her.

  She opened her eyes and let the hot tears fall, Maryanne’s words echoing in her head: ‘Let him rest, can’t you! Haven’t we seen enough of rosary beads wrapped round the stiffened fingers of young men. Let him rest in the one place he loved!’

  Looking out towards the horizon, she drew a defiant hand across her cheek. She was weary of her old grief, of how it had stolen back to reclaim her in the last months, reasserting itself with a vengeance and with a new piercing resentment that, try as she might, she could not shake.

  Closure. She hadn’t had closure. That’s what all the books would tell her. Well, fat chance of that!

  She turned her back on the heaving sea, on its mocking hiss and pull. Fixing a windblown curl behind her ear, Alison felt eyes on her, almost looking through her. She turned to face the steep cliff to the left. There, halfway up the old mud track, a man stood watching her. As soon as she looked he turned and moved away, his step slowed by a limp on his left-hand side. He was too far away for Alison to see who he was, but her skin felt the prickle of his deep stare.

  Reaching the dunes, she climbed the wooden storm steps and leaned for a moment on the weathered railing at the top. Across the yellow bridge, on the little hill overlooking the river, Mick Farrell was painting the outside of his house in preparation for the summer tourists. She could hardly believe it was over twenty years now since she had first come to this place. Her parents had rented one of those very houses and little did she know that morning as they drove and sang the three-hour journey south to Carniskey that she would be bonded to this village forever. Carniskey, ‘Ceathru Uisce’ – the Watery Quarter. The very name and the way it could be whispered hinted at the magic it held. There were a dozen little houses, huddled together in a terrace, their tiny windows squinted against the sun and the winter storms. Alison could almost smell that peculiar mixture of must and wet sand that filled every room of that house; see the maroon swivel armchair in the sitting-room window overlooking the bay, and the sea, swelling and sparkling in its splendour and welcome.

  That very first year Sean Delaney had asked one of the local girls to ‘beg Alison to go out with him’. Just six months older than her, tall and tanned, his dark hazel eyes and shy smile set her legs to jelly. He didn’t talk much, seemed more aloof than the others. But just being in his company was enough for Alison. The words and the kisses she could dream.

  If she had sung all the way to Carniskey, then she cried all the way home. At fifteen, she’d had her first real taste of loss and heartbreak. She couldn’t ring him – he didn’t have a telephone. But he had promised to write. He never did. When her father called herself and Claire together to tell them their mother was unwell and needed surgery, Alison flung Sean Delaney, the fisherman’s son, to the darkest corner of the back of her mind and poured all her love and attention on to her mother.

  And when spring awoke in their tiny suburban garden her father spoke of the sea pinks and how they’d be nodding in expectant gossip now on the cliffs at Carniskey. He put it on the table one evening after supper: the letter from Mrs Phelan confirming their booking of the yellow terraced cottage for the whole month of August. ‘Dr Lawlor says it’s just the medicine you need – a whole month of sea air and sunshine.’ Alison’s heart had swelled and then promptly thumped back into place at the thought of Sean Delaney.

  ‘Damn!’ she whispered under her breath, her eye catching the hurried step of May Reilly crossing the bridge and turning in the path to the beach. May and her marital woes and endless questions was the last thing she needed. ‘Tilly! Tim! Come on!’ she called to the dogs, the tips of their tails just visible in the tall marram grass. She started down the steps towards the car park. She’d have to forget going to the bottle bank now – May’s telescopic eye would have the bottles counted, their numbers doubled and the whole place informed about ‘Alison Delaney’s little problem’ before lunch. Maybe if May concentrated a little more on her own business she mightn’t have found herself in the mess she was in now . . . Well, no point in giving them extra fodder, she thought, slipping her mobile from her jeans pocket and pretending to be engrossed in a call as she waved hello to May and hurried towards the jeep.

  * * *

  Hannah bit down on her pen, her fingers drumming its length. A warm smile spread through her, as she lost herself in the memory of Peter’s kiss, the minty taste of his tongue in her mouth. Tonight couldn’t come quick enough. She’d say she was studying at Aoife’s, concoct some project or other. Mum didn’t go in much for detail – much as she thought she was on top of it all, really she didn’t have a clue. Besides, she’d be mellowed with a glass of wine or two by the time Hannah got home and would probably be in bed, complaining of tiredness or a headache and blaming it all on the stress of Nan. Closing her eyes, Hannah ignored the hot tightening in her chest, encouraged her mind to wander instead back to last night. She could almost feel the warm, soft leather of the car seat beneath her, the hot pressure of Peter’s hand on her thigh, his right hand lightly guiding the steering wheel as the car cut the bends on the Aughtford road; the roar of the exhaust as he shifted gear and that faint smell of mint on his breath when he turned his head to direct the words of the pumping rap song right at her.

  ‘Hannah! Hannah Delaney? Can you grace us with your opinion?’ The sharp edge in Ms Fahy’s voice jolted her back to the classroom.

  * * *

  Alison parked at the side of the house and sat for a moment, looking at the lobster and shrimp pots, the salmon nets and bright pink buoys littering the back and side gardens. Sean was still everywhere around her. She hadn’t moved or stored the stuff the first year, thinking every day that he’d return, that he’d need them for the next season. As the months wore on and one year gave way to the next, they had become so much a part of the place that she had stopped noticing them. Lately, though, they’d begun to prod at her and sometimes she felt they were looking at her accusingly, making her feel somehow like an impostor. She glared at the sorry, useless collection and rounded the house to the back door.

  A sad smile softened her face as she noticed the uncoiled length of rope attached to the post in the garden, the lattice of net falling to the grass below. Joe O’Sullivan. He only ever came now when he knew she was awa
y – she’d given him such a fright that day last October, the day of Sean’s anniversary, when she had let her temper and her frustrations loose on him. But since spring, she would see him often, crouched behind the ditch in the adjoining field, watching, waiting. And heading down the drive, she’d keep watch in the rear-view mirror, smile at his awkward scramble over the ditch, the blue cap perched on the side of his bowed blond head, long legs propelling him towards Sean’s fishing gear. Poor old Joe, ‘Sean’s right-hand man’ – God, how he used to straighten himself up when he’d call him that! Joe would never give up or give in to reality. ‘His Seany’, as he called him, would be back any day now, as far as he was concerned, and no amount of convincing would turn him. And he was as determined as ever to make Sean proud, to have everything ready for him on his return.

  Poor old soul, Alison thought, turning to the back door. But then again, she sighed, cursing the salt-stiffened, unyielding lock, maybe Joe wasn’t the one to feel sorry for. At least he lived his days with hope, with expectation. And even if those hopes were never going to be realised . . . well, didn’t they at least give his days some meaning, some light?

  She flicked on the kettle, set the driftwood on the kitchen windowsill to dry and slipped her mobile from her pocket. One new voicemail.

  ‘Alison, this is my third message in two days!’ Eugene Dalton’s voice boomed at her. ‘We need that article, Friday morning at the latest! I’m going out on a limb for you here. Do you want this job, because there’s plenty others that would . . . ’ – a pause for emphasis – then, ‘give me a ring. Now!’

  ‘Shit!’ Her mobile was out of credit, again. Grabbing the house phone, she punched in the number of the local paper and cringed at the Americanised patter of Eugene’s receptionist.

  ‘Susie? It’s Alison Delaney here. Can you pass a message to Eugene for me?’