Finding Alison

by Deirdre Eustace

  ‘I won’t, Tom, thanks all the same.’

  ‘I’ll leave ye then, if ye’re sure.’ Tom pulled the back door behind him and breathed out his heaviness into the night air.

  * * *

  Kathleen had changed the beds, walked the dogs and washed the floors, and although the evening wasn’t cold she had lit a small fire in the sitting room. It would make the place nice and welcoming for them.

  Alison hadn’t told her much on the phone. Just that William would be returning with her and staying at her place for a few weeks. Something in the rush of her voice had told Kathleen there was a lot more to the story.

  There was no sick aunt, Kathleen was sure of it. The two of them had had some falling out and that’s why he had left so suddenly. That would explain Alison’s bad form before she went. Think of her, the sly little minx, going after him like that and not a word, Kathleen smiled. Well, they’d obviously made up – more than made up, if he was coming back to this house. Kathleen clasped her hands together, smiling. She hoped she was right, hoped Alison had at last found someone to share her life with. If anyone deserved a bit of happiness, it was Alison, she thought, unable to ignore the little voice that reminded her that it would help ease the weight of her own guilt too.

  She sighed as she turned on the tap to rinse her hands, remembering how she had watched Alison turn from a vibrant, young bride into a tense and anxious mother and wife. If only Alison had known what Sean was really like – what her so-called friend Kathleen was really like. All these years Alison had spent in love with his ghost. With this person that death had elevated to near sainthood. Sean Delaney was no saint. He was a selfish fucker, if ever there was one, who put himself and his boat above everything and everyone else. Even at the end, who else was he thinking of but himself? Well, good riddance! The world was a better place without him. There was no point in trying to tell Alison that, though. And she never had. What would be the point? It would only make her suffer more and cost her the only friend she knew. But this William fellow, maybe he had opened her eyes, had helped her to see the real—

  The ring of the telephone interrupted her thoughts. She dried her hands on the tea towel and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Alison?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alison is away at the moment.’

  ‘She’s away? Away where?’

  ‘She’s in Dublin, visiting an aunt. Can I take a message?’

  There was silence on the other end.

  ‘Can I say who’s calling?’

  But the caller had already put down the phone. As she allowed the full realisation of what had just passed to dawn on her, Kathleen slowly lowered her trembling body onto the kitchen chair, the receiver still in her hand.

  ‘Sean Delaney? Jesus, no,’ she whispered, her heart almost jumping out of her chest. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no.’

  * * *

  Sean stood for a moment, staring at the telephone. He could nearly swear that was Kathleen on the other end – who else would Alison have in the house when she was away? Shit! What if she had recognised his voice? No, she couldn’t have, he reassured himself, he had hardly spoken two words. It would be typical of her to mess the whole thing up on him again. No, put her out of your mind, he instructed, keep your focus. Time enough to deal with Kathleen, with that whole side of things. For now, he had to concentrate on getting to Alison, and things, it seemed, were beginning to line up in his favour. It would be much easier to meet Alison in Dublin without the eyes of Carniskey looking on, to get her on her own. They could sort everything out between them up there and he would have her well on his side before they went back down home. If he could manage that much, then the rest would be easy sailing.

  He climbed the stairs to his bedroom, his heart rising with every step. Lying back on the bed, he lit a cigarette and began picturing their meeting: what he would say to her, how she would look, the feel of her in his arms again. He didn’t get into bed but lay fully clothed on the quilt, waiting for morning and the early bus that would bring him to her.

  * * *

  Alison opened the door and flicked on the hall lights before helping William from the jeep. It was well after ten and the journey had absolutely exhausted him. They’d had to stop several times along the way so that he could get out and stretch his legs and his back. What planet was she on? The pain that such a long journey would put him through had never even crossed her mind. She had thought they’d never reach home, had prayed that William couldn’t see through the veneer of her forced humour to the doubts, the trepidation that haunted her.

  More than once since leaving the hospital she’d had to ask herself if it really was William’s best interests she’d had at heart when she’d made her decision. Yes, her decision, because she had ploughed right in without really allowing William any say in the matter. But only because she knew he’d refuse, that he would put her feelings before his own and try – again – to protect her. But she didn’t need protecting, she reassured herself now, as, with William settled in bed, she sat to eat the supper that Kathleen had left prepared. She had thought this through and she wouldn’t have offered if she didn’t believe she had the strength and courage to see it through.

  It felt good to be back in the comfort of her own surroundings, sitting in front of the fire, the dogs sleeping at her feet. She felt her confidence returning. Dr Clarke had been so supportive on the phone and she had an appointment to see him tomorrow to get everything moving. And Kathleen. She knew without asking that she could count on Kathleen one hundred per cent. But she wasn’t fooling herself that this was going to be easy – the journey alone had brought that home to her. It was probably going to be harder than she could ever imagine. And it would test her, test every last raw nerve in her body, she knew that too. But she would do it. They would do it, her and William, together.

  * * *

  Kathleen tiptoed from the bedroom. It wasn’t fair, she was keeping Rob awake and he had an early start in the morning. She crossed the landing to the bathroom and sat on the side of the bath in the darkness. Maybe she had just imagined it. It could have been anybody. Maybe, because she had been thinking about him just as the phone rang . . . But then why hadn’t he given a name or left a message? She had grown up with Sean Delaney, she knew him more than most. And God knew she had heard him say the name ‘Alison’ enough times to recognise the mouth it came from, the slight mispronunciation: ‘Aluson’. In her heart of hearts she knew it was him and there was no point in trying to deny it. She lay a hand over her thumping heart. Was it really possible that he could have been out there somewhere all this time? That he was thinking about making his way back? Why now? Why just when Alison had finally begun to accept that he was gone and had started to find some happiness? Why, just when Kathleen herself had found someone who truly loved her, loved Jamie? She ran her tongue over her parched lips. Oh sweet Jesus, help me, she prayed. How would she tell Rob, poor Jamie, Alison? But she would have to: what other choice had she? She gripped the sides of the bath, her stomach heaving.

  When she had told Sean she was pregnant, he had stormed from her bed and ended their passionate three-month affair with a callousness that had numbed her throughout the pregnancy. When the child was born and she wheeled him to the house one evening to visit, Sean had barely glanced in the pram in his hurry to bundle Hannah in his arms and whisk her outdoors. What a strength Alison had been to her then. Over the following few years Kathleen had hardened her heart to Sean Delaney and found a true friend in the woman she had once so envied and deceived. But as Jamie grew, Kathleen’s sense of shame and injustice had grown with him until she was prepared to sacrifice even that friendship if it meant that the child could grow up knowing his father. She had no interest in Sean any more, had seen him for the selfish coward that he was, but she was damned if he was going to walk past his own child in the street without as much as a glance in his direction. And so she had told him that if he wasn’t prepared to come clean with Alison, to play
a part in Jamie’s life, then she would tell Alison herself.

  When the news broke that Sean’s boat had gone down, Kathleen had been consumed with a confusing cocktail of loss and guilt and relief. In a blind effort at coping she had buried all memories of Sean Delaney, locking them down with a driving determination to be both mother and father to Jamie and to support Alison and Hannah in every way she could. For three years she listened to Alison’s pain, all the time trying to ignore the echo of what Sean had inflicted on her. Their friendship deepened through those years, Kathleen secure in the knowledge that her secret was safe, buried in the depths of the sea.

  No, he couldn’t come back now. Look at all the lives he would tear apart. No, please God, no, hadn’t he done enough of that already? She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. She could just ignore it, just put it out of her head, pretend it had never happened. She had learned to be good at that too, thanks to Sean. But what if he turned up? What if he rang Alison again tonight, tomorrow? And Rob – how could she go ahead with the wedding, while keeping a whole part of herself hidden from him? Hot bile burned her throat and she lurched for the toilet bowl.

  ‘Kath, you all right?’ Rob switched on the overhead light.

  Fifteen

  The image of William lying pale and lifeless on the bedroom floor woke Alison with a start. She hopped out of bed, threw on her nightshirt and peered in through William’s bedroom door. He was still sleeping. She stood a moment, looking at him. His face had grown thinner, and the arm and shoulder visible over the covers had lost the tautness she had noticed that morning when she had secretly watched him swim. She tiptoed into the room. He stirred but did not wake. The early morning sun stealing through the drapes and touching his pillow cast a peacefulness, a certain vulnerability and aloneness about him that tugged at her. She stepped out of her nightshirt, gently pulled back the bedcovers and slipped quietly in beside him. He did not wake but his body moved to accommodate hers as she lay melting into the warm comfort of him, her hand tracing the length of his back, his hip, his buttocks. The subtle smell of her chased his sleep and he turned, pulling her gently to him.

  ‘Good morning, sunshine.’ His low, throaty whisper was laced with desire, his hand slow-tracing the curve of her back. They lay there, neither speaking, each lost in the intensity of the other’s closeness and touch. His lips and tongue sought her lips, her shoulder, her breasts; her body opening to his, her moist warmth sheathing and caressing his thrust.

  * * *

  Sean stepped down from the bus into a glorious, sun-drenched Dublin morning. He hadn’t slept at all last night and had fought to keep his eyes from closing as the bus moved from the wilds of Donegal, through fields and towns and villages, his heart racing ahead of it, his eyes seeing her face, her smile in every field and hill that rushed past the window. A small knapsack slung over his shoulder, he walked with a new energy and purpose down O’Connell Street, crossed at the Gresham Hotel and waited for the bus that would bring him to her. The ten minutes seemed like an hour. He paced the footpath, stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. He was done with waiting. He flagged a taxi and jumped into the back seat: ‘Terenure, please, Rathfarnham Road.’

  Stepping out onto the footpath four doors down from Alison’s aunt, Sean felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable. What if she should see him? How would he approach her? What would he say? All the rehearsing he had done for this moment and now that it was here all the words and plans that had seemed so perfect in the small hours of morning seemed impossible, ridiculous. Face bent to the ground, he walked briskly down the road and turned in at the entrance to Bushy Park. Finding a secluded spot beside a grove of beech trees, he threw himself down on the grass. He needed time, needed to do this right. If he messed up now, there was no going back. He shook out another cigarette. What if he rang the aunt, he wondered, asked her to arrange a meeting with Alison – or better still to get her to speak to him first on the phone, that’d be easier than face to face. Coward, a voice boomed in his head. But what else could he do? He couldn’t just walk up there and press the doorbell. What if Alison answered? The shock on its own would be enough to turn her away. He could always let her spot him on the street – by accident. That would make it easier for her. Give her a moment before she approached him, would make the decision seem hers. He watched a small girl running on the path below, her mother following behind with a pram. And then, out of nowhere, there she was! The long red hair tied loosely behind her shoulders, her hips moving in slow seduction under her light summer dress.

  ‘Alison!’ He was up and running after her without a thought of what he might say, how she might react. ‘Alison, wait!’

  The woman turned just as he reached his hand to touch her shoulder. The slump of his heart anchored him to the spot. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, ‘I thought you were . . . ’

  She fixed him with a look of annoyance, turned on her heel and walked briskly away, leaving him wordless, breathless.

  * * *

  Alison sat in the jeep outside Kathleen’s house. She closed her eyes and for the umpteenth time that day her whole insides sighed in delicious satiation as she replayed her morning with William. She savoured again the brush and flick of his tongue, the strength and span of his hands; the way his eyes – their intent deep, dark almost – held hers as he entered her, body and soul. Never in her life had she felt such complete and utter fulfilment as in that moment, a moment that seemed to span back through time – a moment that she knew would last through eternity. She bit down on her lip to quell the desire that flared once again inside her.

  ‘Hi!’ Kathleen’s rap on the window jumped her back to reality. Alison opened the door and Kathleen wrapped her in a tight hug. ‘Look at you!’ Kathleen smiled, holding Alison apart from her and taking in the light in her face. ‘Oh, you’re a dark horse, Alison Delaney. Come on in, I want all the details!’ She led a silent Alison by the hand in through the front door, hoping that, with her preoccupation with William, Alison wouldn’t notice the state she was in.

  Rob had insisted that she stay off work this morning and give herself a chance to recover from the bug she had contracted in the home. It was the first thing that shot out of her mouth when Rob had appeared in the bathroom last night. The first lie in a line of many, she knew, if she didn’t work up the courage to come clean with him. But the more she thought about it, the harder it seemed. Telling him that she had had an affair with the husband of her best friend, that she’d had a child for him, made her a different woman to the one Rob had fallen in love with. He had always admired her forthrightness, her honesty, the way she would blast out an opinion, no matter how controversial. Rob was in love with someone altogether different to the woman he proposed to marry.

  She had been sick twice again this morning, had just been coming downstairs from the bathroom when she saw Alison’s car pull into the drive. She had watched Alison for a moment through the glass panel at the side of the door: watched her close her eyes, tilt her head back, a glorious smile of utter contentment lighting her whole face. How could she steal that from her? How could she shatter what Alison had waited so long to find and then break her further by confessing the truth about herself and Sean. And Jamie.

  She had taken a few minutes to steady herself before opening the door. She would say nothing for the moment, she decided. First, she would talk to Rob, tell him everything, say goodbye to him, to her dreams. Then, from somewhere, she would dig up the courage to speak to Alison. She had finally admitted to herself that this wasn’t just about Sean Delaney, this was about her too. Nobody had forced her into a relationship. She had taken up with Sean of her own free will, fully aware of his circumstances. When the relationship ended, she could have left it at that, could have got on with her own and Jamie’s lives and left Alison and Sean to mend whatever differences had separated them. But her own spite and sense of injustice, her own pride and stubbornness had driven her back to him, and had driven him away from his wife and from both his child
ren.

  All these years she had buried her guilt about the role she had played in Sean’s disappearance. Buried it under her suffocating love for Jamie – she hadn’t liked it when Rob had pointed that one out; her struggle for independence, for respect; under her supposed concern for and friendship with Alison. Lies, lies, the whole lot of it lies! She had built her entire world on lies, so why was she so surprised that it was all finally about to come toppling down around her, she had scorned herself, swallowing back her self-disgust and planting yet another false smile on her face before opening the door to greet Alison.

  * * *

  ‘How far out would Uncle Sean be, Dad?’ Daniel sat with Tom at the end of the pier at Killybegs.

  ‘Och, a long way, Dan. Those big boats go way, way out there,’ Tom smiled, nodding his head towards the horizon.

  ‘Out past the bending of the globe?’ Daniel’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  ‘Aye, even further sometimes.’

  ‘Even further,’ the child echoed, his eyes fixed on the horizon. ‘Can he still see us?’

  ‘I’m sure he can, son. Those boats have powerful binoculars.’ The child’s face and heart had fallen the morning Sean had left and he’d carried the note that Sean had left him around in his pocket ever since. Tom would catch him, checking his pocket to make sure it was still there, taking it out every now and then to scan the few short lines:

  I’m off again, Daniel. Take care. You’re a fine lad and you’ll make a great fisherman someday.

  Your friend,

  Sean.

  It was the only thing he had left behind. No word of goodbye to Tom or Ella, no mention of where he was going. When Tom got up that morning and found him gone, he’d presumed that Sean would be back before nightfall. It wasn’t until after eight o’clock that night, when he’d peered his head around the bedroom door and found the note for Daniel, that he realised Sean was gone for good. His first reaction was relief. At least now they could get on with their lives without Sean’s heavy presence around the house. And he could relax now too, about Alison, put her out of his mind.