The Dead House

by Billy O'Callaghan

  It was not her job to dissuade an eager buyer, but perhaps she was reacting to some felt vibration or had already absorbed hints of the place’s past through the stories and rumours that tend to linger like mud stains in the collective consciousness of towns and villages everywhere. Most likely, though, she probably just wanted to do the right thing. Maggie’s obvious fragility was hard to miss and impossible to ignore: eyes used to seeing beyond edges now fixated into a permanent, lost-looking stare, the brackets dimpling both ends of a mouth held slatted for too long, the vague sheen lingering after a period of swelling and discolouration in the softer pockets of skin.

  But Maggie just smiled and shook her head, no. This place spoke to her, she said. She had no interest in looking at other houses, not now that she’d seen this, walked its ground, breathed its air. This, she said, with a smile that must have beamed from the greatest depths, was where she belonged.

  And it was. I could feel it, too, even through the phone. I’d known it before, in other aspects of other lives. Such a level of passion can’t be faked.

  ‘I hate to ask,’ she said to me, into a silence that had opened up between us, ‘but I need money.’

  She’d not produced a saleable painting in nearly a year, and after laying out cash on the place, which she’d eventually been able to negotiate down to the bedrock number of nineteen grand from the initial asking price of twenty-two five, had all but emptied her pockets. I finished my toast and told her between bites that it was no problem, that I’d have it in her account within a day or two. Which, looking back, is why I feel so responsible for everything that happened. Even if the place really was her perfect fit, I still sensed in my heart that she was making a terrible mistake. In her state, such isolation would be anything but good for her. And yet, I said nothing. I enabled her, I suppose. I fed her habit and made it all too easy, too comfortable. But what else could I do? We were friends, closer than that, even. And she’d already been through so much. I wanted to help. I wanted her to be happy.

  ‘Do you have any idea of a figure?’

  I could feel her shrug.

  ‘It’ll be quite a bit,’ she said. ‘Mairéad has already spoken to an architect. And I want work to begin immediately. The most pressing issues need attending first, the structural problems, a new roof, plumbing, electrics. Just to get the place habitable.’

  ‘What are we talking about? Roughly?’

  ‘With what’s left in my savings,’ she said, and I could hear the tremble in her breath, ‘I’ll need another thirty thousand. But it’ll likely run to higher. Can you manage that much?’

  I didn’t hesitate. I said I could.

  *

  A cursory survey clarified the magnitude of the property’s many ills. The walls needed to be strengthened and secured, the foundations damp-proofed, the roof stripped away and new beams and thatch laid, new windows installed, new doors, a kitchen and bathroom, units and utilities, the well cleared and re-bored and an entire plumbing and heating system put in, along with a generator to supply power. From day to day, the scale of the project seemed overwhelming, yet within six weeks the major renovations were completed, and though the final costs far exceeded the original estimate, coming within whispering distance of the fifty-thousand mark, Maggie had only praise for the dedication of the contractors and the standard of their craftsmanship. She’d moved in towards the end of the second week, once the smaller of the two bedrooms had been made safe, slept on a roll-up mattress spread out across timber pallets, and mainly so as not to get in the way of the work spent the lengthening days of late spring either down on the beach or exploring the surrounding area, walking the hills and roads, chatting with locals, seeking out places of interest – the copper mines, the druids’ circle, the cliffs and shoreline reefs where the cormorants nested, the ancient stone associated with the Children of Lir, one of the three great sorrows of Irish myth. Trying desperately to understand something of this place, she said, and to come to terms with its elemental wildness.

  Because I’d promised, or at least grudgingly agreed, I flew into Cork early on the first Friday morning in June, hired a car at the airport and made the long drive west. Taking my time, allowing myself to enjoy the scenery and doing my best, though it went against every natural instinct, not to worry. The morning was warm and bright, as perfect as early summer ever gets, the sky that pale mottled blue of a robin’s eggs, the fields everywhere lush with the growth of a good spring. I stopped off in Skibbereen, judging it a reasonable midway point, ate a massive fried breakfast in a cramped but lovely six-table café that kept the coffee coming as fast as I could get it down, and by eleven I was back behind the wheel. The radio was tuned to a station busily giving away tickets for an upcoming Van Morrison concert and playing a number of his songs, including some old gems that I hadn’t heard in years but which took much of the hardship from the remaining two hours or so of road.

  Quite what I’d been expecting is difficult to express, but the cottage looked magnificent in its setting. I pulled up behind three cars that were already lining the road’s verge, killed the engine and got out to survey the view. In the sunshine, it truly was something to see, the sidling hills and verdant fields, the low, loose-stone boundary walls, the ditches overgrown with bramble and gorse, and beyond, a stretch of ocean silvery and bluish to a clear horizon. Allihies was still a couple of miles further on along the road, but no sound carried apart from the occasional screech of a passing petrel or gannet. We tend to smother our lives, collecting all the burdens we can carry, forever sweating the inconsequential. I drew and spent a deep whispering breath and, for the first time in several weeks, since Maggie’s hospitalisation at least, felt my shoulders open up and the natural constriction in my chest give a little, and then a little more, and I began to understand.

  Before I reached the bottom of the incline, the front door of the cottage opened and Maggie came outside at a little half-run. I stopped and set myself for the impact, but the feel of her against me was still beyond prediction. She wrapped me in a tight embrace and began to peck my face and mouth with tiny laughing kisses, and the only option was surrender. The transformation in her astonished me. Her hair had grown, thickening again to an alluring feminine fullness from the unfortunate severity of its recent crew-cut, she was barefoot and dressed in faded jeans and a sleeveless white cotton blouse, and it was as if the past had fallen away for her and she’d been reborn to a new level of freedom. Her smile simmered with love and happiness, and I held onto her and returned her kisses with all my strength, feeling a share of that newly found joy myself.

  Then she released me and turned so that we could consider the scene together.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’

  ‘I suppose I’ve seen worse.’

  She laughed and punched my arm. ‘Asshole. Come on, let’s get inside. You’re the last to arrive. I wasn’t even sure you’d actually come.’

  I gave her my hand and let myself be led down the last few steps of the pathway. Then, just as we were about to enter the cottage, she stopped, put her arms around me and kissed me again. ‘Thank you, Mike,’ she sighed, and I could feel tears of relief in the soft press of her voice against my chin and throat. ‘For everything. I’d have no one if I didn’t have you.’

  ‘You say that, and yet I’ve been here five minutes and you still haven’t offered me a beer.’

  ‘Beer. You’ve got a one-track mind, you know that? But come on. The others are already here. And there’s someone I want you to meet.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘What. That look. The smile.’

  ‘I can’t smile now? It’s some kind of a crime to smile?’

  ‘I’m warning you, Maggie. No games.’

  But she had my hand again and dragged me inside, and I had no choice, now that I’d come this far, but to follow.

  The cottage looked good. It looked and felt
like a home. She’d spent the weeks well and had made great progress. There was still work to be done, with elements of the rawness that defined unfinished construction, but she’d clearly settled in and had already begun to put her mark on the place. The living room in particular was decked out in a very comfortable style, with the walls bare yet of art but painted soft shades of fandango pink and a yellow that she announced as babouche, and on the floor, at angles of their own accord, two large cheap rugs, one paisley, the other a seemingly random patchwork of greens and blues, helping to mask the chill of raw flagstone. I glanced around and saw, with some pleasure, that her books, the paperback westerns and science-fiction novels, Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Bradbury, Heinlein, had made the transition, too. They’d increased to a small horde over the preceding decade, and packed in upright back-to-belly fashion the three built-in shelves of the alcove beside the small, open fireplace.

  Unquestionably, though, the room’s best feature was the pair of tall, west-facing sash windows. Period pieces, or impressive reproductions, they dominated the space, presenting a most dramatic vantage out over the back acres to the shoreline and the ocean beyond. Already flooding the room with natural light, their promise of a red end to a long day seemed the perfect succour to an artistic heart.

  Two women had been leaning towards one another in laughing conversation from either end of a cream faux-leather three-seater sofa but lapsed into silence as soon as I entered the room. The shape of their laughter lingered and for a moment they continued to hold their tilting pose, and my heart began to beat very hard when I recognised the woman nearest to me as Alison. A small hi-fi system in the corner facing the door filled the background with a series of unobtrusive fiddled airs and I could feel the jig-time insinuation churning through me like a second pulse.

  Alison rose, and after a beat, the other woman did, too. Then Maggie appeared beside me with the can of promised beer, and the atmosphere seemed to shift and lose its heft. She made the introductions in a casual way, and I shook hands with the second woman first, a poet named Liz who had been a friend of Maggie’s in London but who’d moved to West Cork a couple of years back. Her accent was all Galway but, preferring, as she put it, the reality of the south-west, she’d settled in Bantry now, which made them practically neighbours. She was young and pretty in that rough-hewn and slightly tarnished manner of those who only properly come to life on more esoteric plains. Late twenties, maybe thirty at a push, with a profusion of high and wildly piled straw-coloured hair, the sort of tight mouth well used to silence and about five inches worth of metal and plastic bangles weighing down her left wrist. A poet with two books published by a small press and a third scheduled to appear by year’s end, she kept herself fed and found by teaching evening classes two nights a week in Bantry and running a Saturday workshop in Skibbereen, and also by reviewing books on a more or less weekly basis for two newspapers, one national, the other local.

  ‘And I believe you already know Alison,’ Maggie said, and Alison looked at her and nodded. Not knowing what else to do, I offered my hand and mumbled how pleased I was that after all the conversations and emails we were finally getting the chance to meet. ‘Come on, people,’ said Maggie. ‘This is a house-warming, not a summit. What are we? Politicians? Enough with the handshakes. Make this a proper hello.’

  Alison hesitated, then some barrier came down and her laughter was back, and we embraced, kissing cheeks, like the friends we almost were and like the lovers we were soon to be.

  Beside us, Maggie cracked open my can of beer and sucked up the sudden spout of froth. ‘That’s better,’ she said, between sips. ‘Now let the festivities officially begin.’

  *

  Once the initial awkwardness of our situation passed, the weekend took off in a happy, if more than slightly tipsy, direction. I have always been comfortable in the company of women, particularly beautiful women, perhaps because, from an early age, my expectations were curtailed by a strong awareness of my own limits. And, for the most part, women appeared to enjoy my company. Even now I’m not bad-looking, without in any way threatening the realms of handsome, but by my mid to late thirties I’d settled somewhere between twenty and thirty pounds over my ideal weight. I favoured the philosophical slant and chose to think of it less as having let myself go than as the simple, natural realignment of the inevitable, maybe even the genuine expression of my true middle-aged self. Because I am reasonably tall, and broad across the shoulders, the excess girth never hung too badly, not the way it can and does on some, but the extra weight softened me, made me less assured, or at least less significant, than I might once have been. Certainly less ambitious. And women sensed this, I think. Around me, they could relax and even risk a little flirting without having to worry that it would lead them in wrong directions. I’d enjoyed success in my chosen line of work and, as I’ve already mentioned, achieved a modest definition of financial security, but my talent, such as it was, lay largely in recognising the gifts that others possessed, and could be difficult in itself to quantify. So my achievements posed no threat to the greater balance. I dazzled no one, and when it came to thoughts of romance, women could look in my direction and just as quickly look away. And I learned to adapt, and as the saying goes, to accept the things I could not change. There is a point in life when a man gets used to being alone, and anything above and beyond that is a bonus.

  We spent the Friday just chatting and catching up, revealing piece by piece the small truths of who we were. Maggie lay stretched out on her side on a large beige beanbag on the floor, directing us towards one another, leading the conversations with questions to which she already knew the answers. The beer, and later on, the whiskey, made it easy to talk. And I felt happy and at home. We all did, I think. I enjoyed listening to Liz expound on some of the more remarkable aspects of this area and its history, particularly its ancient history, that misty corner of the past where myth and reality collude, and her passions seemed to mirror Maggie’s own, as if they were each somehow fuelled by the same fire. Alison – being, like me, in the business side of the arts – displayed less of that intensity, less wildness, I suppose, but she looked relaxed, laughed readily and was clearly glad to be here. Somewhere in late afternoon, just before we attempted the chaos of a communal spaghetti Bolognese, she kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up beside and beneath her on her side of the sofa. She’d painted her toenails a crimson that in the shaded living room deepened to the heavy maroon of newly drawn blood, and I tried not to stare but couldn’t help myself. She knew, I think, and caught my eye several times. But she said nothing and didn’t seem to mind. Looking back, it was probably all part of the flirtation ritual, though to me it felt like more than that. Maybe it was the whiskey or maybe something chemically fused, the sparks they sing about in songs, but I felt as if I could see inside her, as if through the tiniest of exposures she was revealing some part of herself that people usually never got to see.

  We didn’t turn in until well after midnight. Maggie and Liz shared a room, and a double bed, Alison scored a folding cot in the small second bedroom, and I was left with a blanket and the sofa. I lay awake for a long time, but when I did drift off, somewhere between two and three, I slept well, thanks in large part to the quantity of alcohol I’d consumed. Even so, I woke early, before seven. I boiled water for tea and drank it from a large mug while gazing out at the ocean. The day had opened pale and bright, with the promise of great things to come, and the flat chrome blanket of water kept an illusion of stillness that came apart only where it met the stabbing black shale flashes of the headland reef. After a few minutes, I felt the presence of someone else and turned to find Alison in the doorway, watching me. She couldn’t sleep either, she said, taking the offered tea and helping herself to three spoonfuls of sugar. We sat at the small kitchen table then, neither one of us saying much. And it was nice, it felt right. I snatched glances at her and tried to absorb all the details without seeming to do so, and I know now, looking back on it all,
that those were the minutes when I finally and truly fell in love.

  Ragged still with sleep, she had on a pale blue cotton summer dress decorated with badly rendered clusters of green and yellow flowers, daffodils, I think, and a lemon-yellow wool cardigan draped over her narrow shoulders to protect against dawn’s leftover chill. She kept her dark eyes low and half-lidded, raising them only occasionally to me and then smiling sweetly and with embarrassment, as if she’d been caught in the middle of something private.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘Now?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just down to the water, see what all the fuss is about. At the very least, the air will do us good, help clear our heads. Maybe we’ll even get lucky and find our appetites down there.’

  We walked slowly, side by side, in silence. The grass, damp from the night’s dew, was thick behind the cottage, and long and wispy as we moved down through the last acre and the ground became more uneven. With every step I was conscious of the eighteen inches or two feet of distance between us, and then, just as the narrow, broken path down onto the rocky beach revealed itself, I felt her hand slip into mine. Her skin was cool, and her grip had the loose delicacy of a child’s. I tried to keep perspective, and told myself that she was wearing low heels and had only grabbed onto me for support against the uncertain footing, a fact that was more or less borne out by the way she drew back her hand as soon as the ground once more levelled out. But her retreat still left me fighting a sudden void. We came down onto the beach and stood a while, close enough that I could feel the soft, relentless pull and fall of her breathing, and the waves spilt hissing up towards us and broke clear except for their greyish fringes across the fine crushed sand. Though the air hardly moved, Alison drew her cardigan across her chest and held it closed in one fist just beneath her throat.