Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘You from the local paper?’

  She sighed inwardly, half in embarrassment and half in irritation. She’d been finding it impossible to scrape off a particularly stubborn spat of mud. And she was used to people approaching her after court cases, asking her, in effect, to censor their names from her report of the court proceedings.

  In a small community like this, publicity in the local paper was more of a punishment than any penalty imposed by the court. Over the years, she had become hardened to tales of fathers with weak hearts who would drop dead at the shock of seeing their son’s or daughter’s name in print for double-parking.

  ‘Yes, I’m working for the Clare Independent today,’ she replied without looking up.

  ‘I’m Fergal Kennedy.’

  She glanced up for the first time. The green eyes were direct and serious.

  ‘Hello, Fergal. I’m Tara Ross.’

  He laughed. ‘Not Tara Ross from Rathmitchel? John Ross’s little daughter? Well, I’ll be damned.’

  In Claremoon Harbour, you always remained somebody’s daughter or somebody’s son. Tara closed her notebook and forced a smile. ‘Not so little any more, Mr Kennedy. Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘You can keep this damnfool case out of your bloody paper.’

  The accent was an attractive mixture of Clare and Canada, but the phraseology and the direct approach was purely transatlantic. An Irishman would have made the same request obliquely, putting on what locals called ‘the poor mouth’, wheedling, coaxing, and asking her if she could see her way clear to letting the hare sit.

  They left the cinema together, Tara delivering her well-practised speech almost automatically.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry, but my job is to report all the cases. The editor of the Clare Independent decides whether or not they’re published.’

  ‘What a load of bull, Tara. You know as well as I do that he hasn’t a clue which cases are going on. You could drop one without him even knowing.’

  She laughed in spite of herself. It made a refreshing change from the tales of woe she normally had to endure.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ His eyes were fixed on her, bright and wary as a falcon’s. He couldn’t see the joke. His muscles tensed and, just a fleeting instant, she had the ridiculous impression that he was about to hit her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fergal, but that’s the way it is,’ she said, turning serious. ‘Really.’

  He snorted. ‘I’m having enough trouble trying to insure the goddam ’vette in this country as it is.’

  She spun around and confronted him. ‘So that’s what it’s all about – saving money on your insurance?’ she challenged.

  A typical Irishman would have been offended. But Fergal just nodded. ‘Sure it is. Can you think of a better reason?’

  By this time they were out in the street. The torrential rain had eased off, and a pale yellow sun was trying desperately to break through the mist.

  ‘Can’t do it. Sorry,’ Tara shouted over her shoulder as she dashed between a tractor and a filthy delivery van to get to her ancient Fiat. Claremoon Harbour was unusually busy today. However, once the court traffic had dispersed it would return to its usual state of contented sleepiness. The most exciting thing about the afternoon would be pick-up time at the tiny national school; three hours later there would be evening Mass at the old Victorian church; then a bit of lively craic in Breadon’s pub. That was how it was; that was how it had always been, for as long as Tara could remember.

  She opened the car door quickly – there was never any reason to lock it in Claremoon Harbour – and tried to start the car. The tiny electric motor whirred gallantly but nothing happened. Wait, she reminded herself. Pause for five seconds. Try again. Wait five seconds.

  Whirr, clunk, silence.

  Damn it, she thought. It’s finally kicked the bucket.

  ‘Damp plugs,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I’ll fix it for you…if you keep that case out.’

  She looked around furiously. His head was halfway through her driver’s window, grinning insolently.

  ‘You go to hell,’ she shouted. And for the next ten minutes she worked in the misty drizzle, head halfway into the rear engine compartment, replacing the spark-plugs with spares and trying to dry out the distributor.

  Her fury grew as she watched him lounge against his shiny red Corvette, judging all her efforts with a critical smile. But finally she finished the job. Jumping triumphantly into the driver’s seat, she turned the ignition key…only to find that the battery had gone flat.

  ‘Well?’ she said at last. ‘Aren’t you going to laugh?’

  He shook his head, the grin temporarily gone.

  ‘Nope. Not at all. You did everything right. Where did you learn to be such a good mechanic? Here,’ he offered, ‘I’ll start it from the Corvette’s battery with these jump-leads. No charge, no conditions, no hidden agenda. Honest.’

  She looked at him and saw he was serious. ‘Okay. Thanks,’ she said, watching carefully as he attached the leads to the battery with crocodile clips. If he put them on the wrong terminals, they’d both be in trouble. ‘I learned a bit about motor maintenance with the diesel on the Róisín Dubh,’ she explained. ‘If you could keep that old engine going, you could fix anything.’

  As Fergal opened the hood of his American car, Tara contrasted its sleek, shiny paintwork with the pitted surface of her own rust-bucket. ‘Mind you, this old Fiat is something of a special challenge,’ she admitted. ‘It was a great car in its day. But it should have been allowed to die a natural death years ago.’

  ‘Well, let’s do a Frankenstein.’ Fergal clipped on the jump-leads, and the Fiat’s engine roared instantly to life. He turned to her and grinned. ‘We have achieved a miracle, Igor!’

  Tara revved up the motor and nodded her appreciation.

  After disconnecting the leads, Fergal wiped his hands on a clean J-cloth and offered another one to her. He looked down towards the harbour where John Ross’s fishing boat lay waiting for the tide. ‘Funny you should mention the Róisín Dubh,’ he said nostalgically. ‘I used to help your da occasionally when the cod were coming in. The pay wasn’t great, but I always enjoyed it. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.’

  ‘Why? Are you at a loose end?’

  He looked slightly offended. ‘No, not at all. I’m an artist. I’m trying to organise an exhibition of my paintings. But I could spare him a bit of time now and then if he needs help.’

  ‘He always needs help,’ said Tara. ‘Give him a call. And thanks again for the jump-start.’

  She was about to drive away when he signalled her to stop. ‘Listen, Tara. I owe you an apology. I acted like a bit of a heel.’

  She smiled. ‘A bit? I’d say you were more of a giant platform job.’

  ‘Let me make it up to you,’ he said genuinely. ‘I have a real news story that you might be interested in. Let me tell you about it over dinner tonight.’

  Tara shook her head. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. Call me cynical, but I’m used to men inviting me out to dinner to give me real news stories. The stories usually don’t exist, and I end up fighting them off afterwards when they think that buying me a meal gives them a right to stick their tongue into my ear. Sorry for being direct, but you were direct with me.’

  His eyes had grown wide with surprise and she steeled herself for another outburst. Instead, he roared with laughter.

  ‘Good for you, girl. That’s the spirit.’

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘I’m always interested in news stories. It’s my job. If you really have one, I’ll listen. Come over to Breadon’s and I’ll buy you a coffee. What was the phrase you used? No conditions, no hidden agenda.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Almost immediately, she found herself regretting her invitation. From a professional point of view, she would almost certainly be wasting her time. She’d been in journalism long enough to know that most people’s idea of a good news story had nothing in common with an editor’s idea
of a good news story. But – and here was the difference – he was Ann Kennedy’s son. She was curious about him, intrigued by him, interested to know whether he’d anything at all in common with the women’s rights campaigner she’d always respected and admired. So far, the answer seemed to be a definite no.

  They entered the bar, passing through the tiny old-fashioned grocery shop at the front where the local women would still pop in for a packet of tea and stay for a half-pint of stout or a whiskey to keep away the winter chill; and on into the sanctum of marble, brass and polished wood which for years had been reserved for males only.

  It turned out, to Tara’s surprise, that Fergal did have a real news story. It was an environmental issue involving a plan to erect a giant electricity transformer in a field just a few yards from a primary school in the next village. The scheme had been kept quiet, but Fergal had got wind of it through a friend in the council.

  ‘They’d never get away with it in Canada,’ he pointed out as they drank their second coffee and then, all caution to the wind, ordered sandwiches as well. ‘There’s all sorts of scientific research indicating a possible link between these transformers and increased rates of cancer, especially among kids. Nobody knows for sure, but until we find out it’s as well to keep them away from schools. I’ll get you photocopies of the research if you like.’

  She’d checked it out, and struck gold. She spoke to international experts about the possible dangers involved, and to other experts who claimed there was no danger at all. The following week she broke the story on her own Internet paper, the Clare Electronic News. It sparked off a furore and suddenly everyone wanted to know more about transformers and health risks. Tara not only made the front-page lead of the Clare Independent, but the main pages of all the national newspapers as well. In the course of one hectic week, she was interviewed four times on radio, and once on a peak-time TV show.

  Meanwhile, Tara and Fergal continued to meet regularly to discuss progress on the transformer issue over lunch, or over a few beers. After a while it just became an excuse. When the transformer plan was finally scrapped, they didn’t have an excuse to meet any more. But they kept meeting anyway.

  Strange thing was, Fergal’s careless-driving case never did make it into the paper.

  Oh, Tara had included it, all right: six lines, name, address, date and location of offence and penalty, in the middle of a long list of similar offences, treating it exactly as she would have treated any other case.

  But that week there had been a major public inquiry into a proposal to site a wind-generator farm on the County Clare coastline, and it had forced everything else off the news pages – including the entire proceedings of Claremoon Court.

  Tara didn’t care. She got paid anyway. ‘It’s an ill wind-farm that blows nobody any good,’ she told Fergal.

  They were sitting in a pub at Clarinbridge, about ten miles outside Galway city, lunching on oysters, wild mussels, smoked salmon and home-made brown bread. Through the window, they could see a river estuary teeming with wildfowl – chiding gulls, aloof swans, officiously busy little oyster-catchers. It was a beautifully mild Saturday afternoon, and the pub was abuzz with the laid-back, pleasurable energy of the weekend.

  ‘Fergal,’ said Tara, ‘can I ask you a personal question?’

  He bristled. ‘What?’

  ‘Do you always wear the same clothes? Every time we’ve met you’ve worn the same-coloured tartan shirt and blue jeans. I’m beginning to think they’re sprayed on.’

  He relaxed visibly. She wondered what question he thought she was going to ask.

  ‘Not always,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wear tartan trousers and a blue denim shirt. Just for a change.’

  ‘Ask a silly question.’

  ‘And underneath I wear tartan underpants and blue denim socks. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just curious.’ She had to admit the outdoorsy Canadian-lumberjack look suited him.

  ‘I hate clothes,’ he explained. ‘I hate shopping for clothes. I hate having to make my mind up what to wear. Be honest, now – how long did it take you to decide what to wear today?’

  Tara glanced down at her own outfit – a heavy bleached-cotton jumper worn over faded black jeans. ‘Five to ten minutes,’ she answered honestly.

  ‘See what I mean? That’s ten wasted minutes, every morning. That’s over an hour a week. What could you do in a year if you had an extra hour every week? You could do all the things you wanted to do but didn’t have the time. You could master Spanish. You could read Ulysses. You could learn to hang-glide. So all my clothes are exactly the same. I have a dozen red workshirts and a dozen pairs of blue Levis. It’s not high fashion, but it makes life goddam simple.’

  ‘Do you wear pyjamas with tartan tops and blue pants?’ Tara asked with deadpan seriousness.

  ‘Do you want to find out?’

  Tara smiled for a moment, enjoying the light-hearted sexual challenge. Their eyes met.

  ‘Hey!’ she said suddenly. ‘Look what I’ve found in my mussel.’

  Hidden in the folds of the wild seawater mussel, she had found a natural pearl. It was only tiny, about the size of a large coffee granule, but it was spherical, creamy-white, and absolutely perfect.

  ‘I’m going to give you a present of this,’ she laughed, polishing it with a napkin and setting it on the centre of her palm. ‘I was born in June, so my birthstone is the pearl. This must be an omen. We’re being blessed with good fortune, Fergal.’

  She placed her hand on the table, palm uppermost, and glanced up at him, expecting him to lift the pearl. Instead, he gently placed the tip of his forefinger on top of it. His eyes never left hers as he began rotating the miniature pearl, under the lightest of pressure from his forefinger, around the centre of her palm.

  She held his gaze, giving nothing away. But deep inside, she experienced a tiny, exquisite shiver of pleasure, because the sensation was intensely and unexpectedly erotic. The pearl circled her palm, lingering in the valleys of the life and fate lines, teasing at the crevices between her fingers. As it returned to the sensitive hollow at the centre of her palm, she felt her entire body flex in response, rising a fraction of a millimetre above her chair as though she were caught in the downward plunge of a rollercoaster. It was a familiar sensation, dangerous yet thrilling and enjoyable. She hadn’t felt it for a long time.

  ‘Well?’ she challenged at last. ‘Are you going to mess around forever, or are you going to go for it?’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, I’ll go for it,’ he said. Wrapping the pearl in a twist of paper, he clutched it to his bosom and assumed the voice of a bad actor in an old-fashioned melodrama. ‘I’ll always keep it next to my heart.’

  Emphasising the point, he tucked it into the right-hand breast pocket of his lumbershirt.

  ‘Fergal?’

  He was refastening his button. ‘What?’

  ‘Your heart’s on the left.’

  The ancient diesel engine gave a few cantankerous knocks, then coughed and spluttered to life with all the enthusiasm of a hangover-ridden chain smoker waking up to a wet Monday morning.

  ‘She’s past her best, I’m afraid,’ said John Ross, frowning at the oily black monster that juddered and shuddered just beneath the deck of his fishing boat. ‘A bit like her owner,’ he added with a shrug, looking up at his daughter as she stood on the harbour wall.

  Tara swung her slender legs over the wall and jumped expertly on to the weather-worn deck of the Róisín Dubh. She flung her arms around her father and kissed his grizzled cheek.

  ‘Dad, you’ve been saying that about yourself every day for the past twenty years,’ she laughed. ‘That old engine still has a lot of life left in it. And so have you.’

  Here in the tiny harbour, with its smell of fish and salt and oil and seaweed, Tara felt most at home. She loved the sounds – the regular slop and slap of water between hull and harbour wall, the rattle and clank of the rigging on the handful of yachts, the deep throb of the diesel engine
s, the voices that echoed for hundreds of yards across the open sea on a calm night.

  ‘A lot of life,’ she repeated, squeezing his arm fondly.

  John Ross smiled and eased himself into the skipper’s seat. ‘God willing,’ he said. ‘God willing. If He can perform the miracle of making that old engine start, perhaps He can spare me for a few more years. And talking of miracles, it would be a miracle if you put that kettle on just once without being asked.’

  His deep brown eyes twinkled with humour and life. Yet, Tara thought as she ignited the gas stove, it was not so long ago that John Ross had lain suspended in that limbo between life and death, looking as though the slightest breeze would dislodge soul from body like a dried-up leaf from a tree.

  She remembered how rapidly he had begun to fade after her mother had passed away. Looking back on it now, it was obvious that her father, left alone without the wife he adored, had been slowly dying of a broken heart. Tara couldn’t pretend that her own return to Claremoon Harbour had been inspired by the noblest of motives, but at least her presence had helped him to recover his old zest for living.

  John Ross pushed forward the throttle, concentrating on the rising note of the engine. He wasn’t a big man, but he had an air of quiet self-sufficiency and determination that commanded respect. In his prime, he had resembled the young Sean Connery, and while the advancing years hadn’t been nearly so kind to him as they’d been to Connery, Tara’s father still cut a strikingly handsome figure for a man in his mid-sixties. His hair may have become grizzled, but it remained thick and wiry, and his weather-beaten face still showed the deep contentment and satisfaction of a life lived to the full.

  When the kettle had boiled, he switched off the engine and they sat in silence, drinking their tea and enjoying the companionship of those who are so close that talk can serve only as a distraction.

  ‘I see you and young Fergal Kennedy have been walking out together,’ he said at last, eyes scanning the horizon where two large demersal trawlers were sluggishly passing the Aran Islands on their way north to Rossaveel.