Stone Heart
Page 42
Tara shook her head. ‘I’m stuck in a bit of a dilemma,’ she confessed. ‘You know how much I love Claremoon Harbour, Mel. If I had my way, I’d stay here for ever. But I love Andres too, and I don’t want to lose him.’
‘Can’t you have both? Couldn’t he stay here with you?’
Tara grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t ask him to do that. The South African job means a lot to him.’
‘And I presume you mean a lot to him, too.’
‘I suppose so. But how could he refuse an offer from Nelson Mandela?’
‘Easy. He just says: “Not on your nelly, Nellie”.’
Tara ignored that. ‘It’s an impossible decision,’ she mused, half to herself. ‘I could stay here and continue to build up a successful business in Claremoon Harbour. Or I could take a chance and start a new life in a scary country in another hemisphere, with no guarantees of anything. Either way, I lose something very important to me.’
She searched in her bag, produced a five pence coin, and pushed it across the table without explanation.
Melanie’s face became serious. ‘I can’t give you an answer,’ she admitted frankly. ‘You’ve always talked about finding your dream in Claremoon Harbour, Tara, but when it comes to achieving happiness, the location isn’t really important at all – no matter what the estate agents might say. It’s not a matter of where you are, but who you are – and who you’re with. All over the world, the shrinks’ waiting-rooms are full of people who thought they’d suddenly find paradise if they bought a vineyard in Tuscany or converted a barn in Provence. But you can’t run away from yourself. If you can’t find peace of mind in the centre of Dublin, you’re not going to find it by moving to west Cork or Connemara. If you can’t find it in Cape Town, you’re not going to find it in Clare. And vice-versa.’
‘That’s a great help!’
‘Tara, you’re the sort of person who will find happiness anywhere in the world,’ said Melanie encouragingly. ‘As for guarantees? One thing I’ve learned in my job is that there are no guarantees this side of the great divide.’
Tara still didn’t think she’d got good value for her five pence. ‘What would you do, Mel?’ she persisted.
Melanie smiled. ‘This is a bit of a Jean-Paul Sartre set-up job, I’m afraid.’
‘A what?’
‘Old J-P believed,’ explained Mel, raising her voice above the session music, ‘that we’re often deluding ourselves when we seek advice from other people on major life decisions. Because first we have to select the person we ask for advice. And that’s a choice in itself.’
‘What are you on about, Melanie?’
‘That if you asked Steve McNamara, or Phil O’Rourke, or old Mrs McLaughlin who cleans the church, you know what their answers would be. They’d tell you to stay here. It would be the most sensible thing to do. But you’re not asking them. You’re asking me. And you already know what I’d do. You know me well enough, Tara, to realise that if I were in your situation, I’d be over there in South Africa before you could blink an eyelid. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t mean it’s sensible. But if I were in your shoes, you wouldn’t see me for Kalahari dust.’
‘Well, my father once told me,’ Tara said thoughtfully, ‘that if you loved someone enough, you’d go to the ends of the earth for them.’
Melanie shook her head in mock despair.
‘You want my advice?’ she asked directly. ‘Stop looking to other people for advice. Nobody can make this choice for you. Find somewhere quiet, somewhere very quiet, and just listen to your soul. It’s a still, small voice, and it gets overwhelmed so often that we sometimes forget it’s there. But when you do listen, when you just remain silent and really listen, you’ll find it will rarely let you down.’
Tara stared out through the window at the darkened skyline of Claremoon Harbour. She knew her friend was right. It was her decision, and her decision alone.
She looked back in time to see Melanie gently pushing the five pence coin back across the table to her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
TARA HAD a secret place, a spot nobody else knew about. She had discovered it as a child. If she ever needed time to herself, away from her friends or from her family, she would steal down a narrow, steep path towards the rugged coastline, clamber down the rocks, through a tiny hole between two huge boulders, and on to a perfectly flat ledge that could be seen only from the open sea. There, with the solid rock slabs of County Clare at her back and on either side, and the seemingly limitless Atlantic Ocean ahead of her, she would feel suspended between the old world and the new, between the past and the future.
So when she rose early one morning, and her feet began walking in a direction of their own choosing, she knew exactly where they were headed. Following the overgrown sheep-track through the brambles, she stole down a gully between the rocks, hardly looking downwards because her feet knew each slope, each sharp angle, each tiny slippery precipice.
She paused for a moment to look across at her father’s cottage. The windows of her childhood home stared sightlessly back at her, stripped of their protective curtains, the rooms behind them empty and bare. A large FOR SALE sign had been planted in the front garden, in the middle of John Ross’s treasured petunias.
As she thought about her father, trying to stem an overwhelming flood of memories and associations, she saw Andres emerge from her own cottage and load her few suitcases into the boot of a hired car. Spotting her, he smiled, waved their airline ticket, and pointed at his watch.
Tara swallowed hard. She waved back, and then raised her hand with all five digits extended. He nodded and gave her an OK sign.
Round the corner, through the hidden niche between the boulders, and she was back in her own simple childhood world in which the only elements were stone, sea and sky.
She sat down, with her back propped against an inward curve in the warm rock, just as she had done so many times as a little girl. Above her, the blue sky was streaked with mackerel clouds. In front of her, the sea stretched vast and empty.
What had Melanie said when she’d asked her for advice?
‘Find somewhere quiet,’ her friend had counselled, ‘somewhere very quiet, and just listen to your soul.’
So Tara sat for a little bit longer – just listening.
Once again, she found herself suspended between her two worlds. Behind her, the familiar rocks of her Clare home town, sun-warmed, comforting, nurturing, their banks of heather and fuchsia loud with the summer hum of bees. But those same rocks could be savage and pitiless. They could crush and pound, and tear and rip. In either guise, they were still comforting because they were known. Much more challenging was the unknown – the empty horizon, the vast, wide pathway of silver-cold water that led to who knows where.
Then she rose, her mind made up. Scrambling on to the top of the rock, she could just glimpse the old spa house she’d yearned for so long to own. God, it was so beautiful, nestling there in the shade of a copper beech tree, like some sort of slumbering fairy tale castle just waiting to be brought back to life.
She glanced down at the ugly little sheela-na-gig that rested heavily in her hand. Wendy had been right. Incredible as it seemed, that little stone was worth so much, it could have paid for the house and the renovation work, with money to spare. A few weeks ago, sitting amid the drone of the bees in her back garden, she could have grasped that statue, signed a simple contract, and known that the realisation of her lifelong dream lay literally in the palm of her hand.
But she hadn’t. She’d resolved to take a different course of action, and now she was determined to see it through. There could be no going back on her word.
Her five minutes were nearly up. She thought of Andres, waiting by the car. She thought of the plane that was even now refuelling at the airport, ready to take them thousands of miles away to the southern sunshine. She had to force herself into action. She had to dispel the final doubts, and go for it.
But Tara did
not move. She stood rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by the enormity of what she was about to do. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she willed herself to do it, her limbs refused to obey.
Andres was by her side. ‘It’s time, Tara,’ he said softly, understandingly. ‘It’s time to go.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t do it. I’m sorry, Andres. I just can’t do it.’
‘Yes, you can, Tara. We can.’
‘Is it really time to go? Already?’
‘Yes. Our plane will leave in ninety minutes.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only for four weeks, and then you’ll be back in your beloved Claremoon Harbour again. You’ll enjoy Bali. It’s the most romantic place in the world for a holiday.’
‘I know.’ Her face lit up. ‘I can’t wait. Hopefully the builders will have the place ready when we return.’
He nodded. ‘Let’s hope so. Whoever designed that old spa house really knew how to build. It’s as solid as a rock. It’ll last at least another hundred years.’
She smiled. ‘Long enough for us to raise our family, anyway.’
He kissed her neck. ‘Long enough for us to raise our grandchildren. And great-grandchildren.’
‘No second thoughts about turning down the job in South Africa?’
‘None at all.’ He glanced fondly down towards Claremoon Harbour. ‘I never thought I would grow to love this village so much. It’s so peaceful, so silent, so inspiring…I find I can work better here than anywhere else in the world.’
‘Like having Bach in the background all the time.’
‘Yes. The same peace of mind.’ He looked down at the sheela-na-gig in her hand. ‘You really can’t bring yourself to do it?’ he asked sympathetically.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘I want to do it. I really want to do it.’
He squeezed her hand silently.
‘I want to take this ugly little statue and chuck it into the deepest depths of the sea, where nobody will ever find it again,’ she said angrily. ‘I don’t care how valuable it is. I don’t care if it’s the latest fashion in Manhattan. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a symbol of everything that went wrong in Ann’s life. The violence she had to endure from that brute of a husband. Her humiliation at the hands of Michael de Blaca. But it’s more than that, Andres.’ She turned to him, her eyes bright with tears. ‘It’s also the symbol of everything she rose above. Everything rotten she fought against for the past five years. Everything she challenged and overcame.’
‘Then the best tribute you can pay to Ann is to destroy it forever.’
‘I know that. It’s just…’
Her voice trailed off helplessly.
‘Just what?’
‘I know it sounds ridiculous.’ Tara grimaced. ‘But whether I like the damn thing or not, I’m depriving future generations of an important work of art.’
‘If you can’t do it alone,’ Andres suggested, ‘then let’s do it together.’
‘All right. Let’s do it.’
They didn’t hesitate for another moment. Together, they took hold of the statue, summoned up all their strength, and hurled it in a graceful arc towards the horizon, far out into the ocean, where no tide could ever salvage it.
Tara saw the splash, and felt herself become suffused with a sense of release and liberation as all her troubles sank alongside the ugly little stone, Michael de Blaca’s mad stone, all the way down to the bottom of the deep Atlantic, leaving not a single ripple of regret.
About the Author
Des Ekin is a journalist and the author of four books. Born in County Down, Northern Ireland, he began his career as a reporter. After spending several years covering the Ulster Troubles, he rose to become Deputy Editor of the Belfast Sunday News before moving to his current home in Dublin. He worked as a journalist, columnist, Assistant Editor and finally Political Correspondent for The Sunday World until 2012. His book The Stolen Village (2006) was shortlisted for the Argosy Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year and for Book of the Decade in the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2010. His most recent book, The Last Armada (2014), was shortlisted for the National Book Tokens Nonfiction Book of the Year. He is married with a son and two daughters.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2016 by The O’Brien Press Ltd.,
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First published 1999 by The O’Brien Press Ltd.
The O’Brien Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–861–9
Copyright for text © Des Ekin
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Editing, typesetting, layout, design: The O’Brien Press Ltd.
All characters and events in this book are entirely fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, which may occur inadvertently is completely accidental and unintentional.