No Way to Say Goodbye

by Anna McPartlin

  “So you’ve heard I’m an adulterer?” Penny said, matching the grins to disguise her humiliation.

  “Technically he’s the adulterer,” Josie said.

  “You’re the coveter,” said Jamie.

  “And, yes –” Josie said excitedly.

  “– we can’t believe it!” finished Jamie.

  “Maire McGowen said it’d been going on in secret for years,” said Josie.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” Jamie said in awe. “I mean, nobody can keep a secret in this town.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m the Inspector Clouseau of sluts,” Penny said, chortling at her own joke. The sisters didn’t get it. “I wore disguises,” she qualified.

  They laughed, but she could tell they still didn’t understand.

  “You’re filthy,” Josie observed ruefully.

  “You’ve no idea,” Penny said, and swigged her drink.

  “You and Adam,” Jamie said, “even if we didn’t know you were actually doing it, there was always something between you.”

  Suddenly Penny felt like crying. Clearly Jamie spotted this because she ordered her another drink, and Ger was quick to bring it.

  “Is he gone for good?” Jamie asked.

  Penny sighed and nodded. “I believe he is.”

  “You’re better off without him,” Josie said.

  “I’m really sorry,” said Jamie.

  “Thanks,” Penny replied. “Me too.”

  After that the twins spoke of their kids, and how their husbands played golf too much, and when they weren’t playing golf they were working, and when they weren’t working they were watching sport, and when they weren’t watching sport they were flicking channels as though they were brain-dead. The kids didn’t get a look in, as far as their fathers were concerned, and yet when the men did the smallest thing the kids considered them bloody heroes. Jamie was remodelling her house and the builders were her new nightmare. Josie was taking yoga lessons and her periods had become heavier since she’d started. Still, she was sticking to it because it was nice to get out on a Tuesday morning and her thighs felt firmer. Penny made jokes and they told her she’d always been a scream. All the while they drank and neither sister noticed that their friend was imbibing three drinks to their one, so delighted were they to offload their crap and so happy that she could make jokes to lift them from their perceived misery.

  “Josie?” Penny leaned in, drink in hand.

  “Yes?”

  “I know your husband’s a dick but look at it from my point of view,” she drawled.

  “And what’s that?” Josie played along.

  “Men are like car spaces – the best ones are always taken and the rest are handicapped.”

  The twins laughed, and Penny silently gave thanks for joke email.

  Eventually they asked for her news but, aside from the scandal, she didn’t have any, which, for a journalist, was pretty sad. She could have talked about work but why bother? They could read that and, anyway, it wasn’t hers, it was someone else’s. Instead she stuck to making them laugh and drinking.

  “So, is there anyone here you’re interested in?” Josie asked, as she surveyed the bar.

  “Are you looking for me or for you?” Penny queried.

  “Ah, stop it!” Josie said. “For you, of course… Still, the one in red with the black and grey speckled hair, the sharp jaw and the dick the size of a large foot towards your left looks interesting.”

  Penny and Jamie’s heads spun towards the man in question. “I believe that’s his hand rather than his foot in his pants.” Penny squinted to negate the double vision.

  “Oh, my God!” Jamie spluttered, and Bacardi Breezer dribbled from her delicate nose.

  “As I said before, the best ones are taken and the rest are handicapped.” Penny smirked.

  The two girls were crying with laughter when she called for more drinks.

  12. A diamond day

  The next morning Mary woke up around seven. She was meeting her dad at the bar at eight. She showered quickly and fed Mr Monkels, who seemed sleepier than usual. He ate his breakfast and flopped back into snoring. Sam hadn’t woken so she closed the door to the kitchen and quietly ironed a shirt while she had a slice of toast. She drank her coffee in the car.

  Her dad was standing outside the bar. He waved and got in. They hugged.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  “Morning, love.”

  They drove to the graveyard in silence. Mary parked the car and lifted the large bouquet of her mother’s favourite flowers from the back seat.

  Her dad smiled. “It seems to get bigger every year,” he remarked.

  Mary inhaled the lilies as they walked together through the little iron gate that brought them to the grassy hill, covered with graves. Like the living inhabitants of Kenmare, the dead also overlooked the water. Mary and her father strolled along the narrow paths, making their way to the family plot. The sky was white and the water glistened, as though fresh from a diamond downpour. Mary held on to her dad so they didn’t trip over the rocks that poked intermittently through the hardened mud surface.

  When they arrived at the grave they began their yearly ritual. Mary would lay the flowers on it and her father would bless himself. They would stand in silence for approximately five minutes, although on a rainy day this was cut to between two and three because Mary’s dad was susceptible to bronchitis. Then he would signal that it was time to say goodbye. Mary would lean down and place a black marble pebble on the white marble gravestone to signify the passage of another year, and her father would blow his wife a kiss.

  “She turned out all right, love,” he’d say. “You’d be proud of her.” He’d take his daughter’s hand and they’d walk back to the car.

  Years before, when Mary was a child, her father had decided that to avoid his daughter enduring the pain of her mother’s anniversary on her birthday he had to separate them. Of course, it was impossible to change the date of his child’s birthday or the date of his wife’s death. The only answer was to change the day on which he remembered her. Every year on his wife’s birthday he and his daughter would lay flowers and remember her so that Mary’s birthday was for Mary alone. That way the dead could rest and the living could get on with it. And he had decided that because his daughter had been robbed of her mother he would ensure that on his wife’s birthday they would spend the day together, and each year he would tell Mary something she didn’t know about her mother.

  It had been a great idea and had worked very well, especially when she was a teenager. If she was going through an awkward phase he could pick a memory of his wife that would speak to her even if he couldn’t. Of course, as the years passed it was harder to find a memory he hadn’t already shared. Sometimes he might think of one during the year and write it down in preparation but then he’d lose it – he’d never been known for his organizational skills.

  They drove to the Silver Strand and took a walk on the beach. A man was throwing a stick for his dog – she was pretending she hadn’t noticed, preferring instead to rub her face in the sand. They didn’t talk on the beach, just listened to the wind, the waves hitting rock and the birds screeching, taking turns to dive into the water. The dog barked, and the man yelled, “Fetch!” Mary smiled at her dad as they walked arm in arm. He smiled back, but he was far away – not with his daughter but his wife and they were courting.

  When he was a boy and she was a girl, they’d walk the strand and she’d talk to him about her latest craze. One week she’d be into knitting and she’d arrive with a woolly jumper full of holes and ten different stories about the making of it. The next week she’d be an avid swimmer, regaling him with the benefits of the breast-stroke. Then she’d find swimming lonely so she’d move on to Irish dancing, which was very social and she was quite good at it.

  She made him laugh and he liked her flightiness: she was always moving on – but he noticed that she didn’t move on from him. Their walks on the beach were his favourite
memory of her. It was when she was outdoors with the wind in her face and hair that she entertained him with her whole self, expressing her every thought about dreams and reality, habits and doubts, plans and obstacles. It was on the beach that she was most alive. And while he walked with his daughter, his wife’s voice was calling to him inside his head.

  “Jack, put it on!” she said, and he could see her holding the oversized jumper and beaming at him.

  “I don’t even know if I can,” he replied, trying to work out the neck from the sleeve.

  She laughed. “Sure the way you’re built it won’t make a difference.”

  He put on the jumper, which gaped at the neck and met his knees, with a hole in the side. He stuck his hand into the hole.

  She took it and placed his arm at his side, covering it. “There now! You can’t see a thing wrong with it.”

  “You want me to keep my hand by my side for all time?”

  “I do.”

  “And what if I need to use this arm?” he queried.

  “Now, Jack, you’re a man of industry and I have no doubt that, whatever needs doing, you’ll find a way.” She laughed and he pledged that, for her love, he would.

  Later, behind the dunes, she had stripped him of his new jumper and they had fooled around until they were interrupted by an old man and his wife tutting and warning them of the wrath of the local parish priest.

  Now Jack laughed to himself and Mary squeezed his arm, bringing him back to the present. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Your mother,” he admitted. “You look so like her.”

  “I know I do, Dad.”

  “And you’re as bold as she was.”

  “Maybe once,” she said.

  They walked on in silence.

  Later they had lunch in a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Each year they found a new place to eat – they liked to keep the day fresh. The food was good, and as Mary was driving, her dad allowed himself a Guinness, which was rich and creamy. He held it up. “Now that’s a good pint.” He admired it as an antiques dealer would admire a rare teapot.

  After they had consumed their steaming beef stew, he placed a small wrapped box on the table. “That’s for you,” he said.

  “Dad!”

  “It’s not from me, it’s from your mother,” he told her, bowing his head.

  Mary opened the gift. It was a solitary diamond on a short gold chain. “Dad, this is beautiful!” She was shocked and delighted.

  “It was your mother’s engagement ring – I had it melted down,” he said, sad and happy at the same time.

  “Why now?”

  “Well, initially I thought that if a young man ever asked for your hand in marriage and he was a little stuck, I could slip him the ring.”

  “Father!” Her outrage was pretence.

  “Anyway, no one ever did because they weren’t given a chance to, and time’s pushing on so I thought ’twould be nice to see that diamond worn again and sooner rather than later.”

  “So you’ve given up on me?” she asked, giggling.

  “No. I wouldn’t say that – but I wouldn’t say I was holding my breath either!”

  She looked at her diamond necklace. “Thanks, Dad,” she said, hugging him.

  Mary and Jack arrived home around six. Pierre and Jessie had been handling the bar alone all day and it was a surprise to find them laughing together in the kitchen. Jack, the greatest victim of their ongoing dispute, had to ensure this was not a momentary ceasefire. “You’re friends?” he asked tentatively.

  Jessie looked at Pierre and nodded to indicate that he could speak for them both.

  “We are.” Pierre bowed.

  “Oh, well, isn’t this just the greatest day?” Jack grinned widely. “And thank the Lord above for it.”

  Pierre and Jessie shared a smile and Pierre mumbled something about God having nothing to do with it. Mary’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yes, Mary?” Pierre asked.

  “Am I ever to know how this amnesty occurred?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “Of course, dear,” Jessie told her, “when your father sells this place to me for fourpence.”

  Pierre laughed.

  Mary’s dad entered the kitchen with a bottle of his favourite wine and poured four glasses. “Here’s to the team back together again! And may whatever it was that was driving us apart be no more! Here’s to a bicker-free future!” He raised his glass as did Pierre, Jessie and Mary. Of course, at that moment Mary’s dad was the only person who wasn’t aware of how the argument between Pierre and Jessie had started but that didn’t matter: some sort of peace had been reached. It would seem that all they had needed was time alone to work it out. Mary did wonder what had been said to bring about peace and how she could find out.

  After they had drunk a second toast to Mary’s long-departed mother, Pierre and Jessie went home, leaving Mary and her dad to tend the bar.

  After a glass of wine and wearing her mother’s diamond, Mary was in high spirits when Penny arrived, bearing news of Ivan’s second date with Sienna. She had accidentally encountered them lunching in the Horseshoe. She described the woman and Mary knew instantly who she was talking about. “We use the same hair dye,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We had words in the chemist over the last box of dye about three months ago.”

  “Words,” Penny said.

  “And a slight tug of war.”

  “Who won?” Penny wondered.

  “She did,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. “I called her a pushy cow!”

  After that Penny stayed for a drink and promised to check in on Sam. Mary was worried about him – she’d left him alone for the entire day. Ivan was supposed to have looked in but in light of his new romance she was afraid he might have forgotten.

  Penny made her way up the street ostensibly on her way to Mary’s house, but before she reached the top of the town another bar lured her in. She intended to stay for only one, but then Jerry Letter bought her a drink to demonstrate that, despite his own clean record, he was not one to sit in judgement on others and Pierre, still celebrating the end of his row with Jessie, was only too happy to include the partying Penny in his round. Five drinks later she remembered the American on the floor. Oh, Christ. She slipped away unnoticed.

  She was halfway down the hill and towards the pier when the oxygen kicked in and she felt kind of dizzy. She sat on a wall for a minute or two and concentrated on sobering up. She got up and pushed herself down the road, zigzagging all the way. By the time she reached the house she’d convinced herself that she’d recovered enough to pull off the appearance of sobriety. She opened the door with the spare key Mary had left under the hedgehog in the pot beside the door. Sam was playing his guitar but stopped when he saw her.

  “Still alive, then?” she slurred.

  “I’m fine,” he replied. “Where’s Mary?”

  “Working,” Penny said, and burped. “She asked me to check on you.”

  “As I said…” He seemed uncomfortable with her there.

  “You eaten?” she asked, realizing she herself hadn’t had anything since lunch.

  “Ivan brought me something.”

  “Oh, good old Ivan! Even in the afterglow of a long-awaited shag he remembers those less fortunate!” She grinned while feeling for the sofa so that she could plonk herself onto it. “Always thinking of others!” She perched precariously on the edge of the sofa, and laughed. “You look so helpless.” Her grin turned into a yawn. “Maybe I should come down there.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He sounded nervous.

  “I promise I won’t hurt you.” She leered at him. “You’re so beautiful.” She sighed. “I bet you get that all the time,” she nodded, “but she won’t notice… she’ll never notice, no matter how pretty you are.” She laughed to herself.

  Sam remained silent, not wishing to engage with her despite his outrage. She won’t notice me. Who? Mary?
Why should I care? I don’t want her to notice me. I’m on the fucking floor, for Christ’s sake.

  Suddenly Penny was on her knees leaning over him, and her hand was reaching to stroke his face. Painfully aware of his vulnerability, he pushed her away so that she fell back. She giggled and attempted to get back to her feet. “I think you need to stop drinking,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  She appeared to sober up briefly and hurt was evident but suddenly her face changed colour and her hand flew to her mouth.

  Oh, my God, thought Sam, I’m going to be vomited on.

  She got up quickly and staggered to the downstairs loo. He heard her evacuate the contents of her stomach, then the flush. Minutes later she was back, wiping her face as though nothing unusual had occurred.

  “You seem fine,” she said, “so I’ll leave you to it.” She let herself out of the front door before he could answer.

  Mary came in after midnight and was careful to be quiet – she didn’t want to wake Sam if he’d managed to fall asleep. She had come to notice that his sleeping patterns were as erratic as her own. He spent much of any night awake, staring blankly at the TV, while upstairs she tossed and turned until she pulled a book from under her bed and lost herself in it for a while.

  She had also noticed that he was not taking his prescribed pain medication. It was never going to make the difference between him recuperating or not but she wondered why he chose to hide it under his mattress rather than take it or, indeed, simply refuse it. She had found the stash, having taken the opportunity to change his bedding while he was in the loo, but hadn’t asked about it. She didn’t need to open any can of worms – life was hard enough.