She adjusts the seat and finds a map in the glove compartment, needing to check the route. The last time she’d come she had flown in unannounced, running away after Aidan dumped her. She was seeking solace in her grandmother’s steady routine, remembering the cottage as a safe haven, a place removed from and untouched by the world’s troubles. That day, raw-eyed, she had taken a bus from the airport to Castlegray and got a taxi to the cottage. Her grandmother had embraced her and made boiled eggs and tea, taking soda bread straight from the pot over the fire, the iron, cauldron-like container she called a bastaple. The eggs were a deep yellow, fresh that morning, the bread dark and dense. Afterwards, there was a fruit loaf, warm too from the fire, butter glistening on the plump sultanas. Liv hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, since the meal she had abandoned as Aidan’s words sank in. She was sick at heart, but she had felt suddenly ravenous at the sight of the food and demolished it all. Her grandmother had asked no questions, talking in her low voice about the Brennan’s harvest and the Mahony’s new herd as she ferried butter and milk to the table. Nanna’s gift, she thinks, realising it only now, had been stillness. When she had finally blurted out her story, Nanna had stroked her hair, saying, ‘ah, child of grace, this old world would make your heart raw.’
She traces the route on the creased map with her forefinger as far as Redden’s Cross, deciding to stop there for some groceries, and familiarizes herself with the dashboard. She’ll need the windscreen wipers and maybe the lights, judging by the drifts of rain on the horizon. She starts the engine and links her knuckles, pressing down on them so that the joints give staccato cracks. Nanna used to tell her off when she did this, claiming that it would give her arthritis in later life. ‘It’s then you’ll rue the day, Olivia child,’ she would say with a raised warning finger.
She couldn’t claim to have been close to her grandmother; a scattering of visits throughout childhood hardly counted as an intimate relationship, yet since she died, Liv has been hearing her voice often. She had never been Liv to Nanna, always Olivia. Phrases that she hadn’t thought of for years spring into her head: ‘The man who made time made plenty of it; every little helps, as the old woman said when she weed in the ocean.’
She fishes her mobile from her bag and rings home, hoping that the answer phone will be on. She’s relieved when her own voice replies, inviting her to leave a message. She tells Douglas in that light tone she can’t help using that she’s arrived, everything is fine and she’ll ring tomorrow. ‘Look after yourself,’ she adds. When they were first in love, she’d sing to him: ‘Take good care of yourself, you belong to me.’ And she had buttoned up his overcoat, smoothing the lapels down, telling him that someone had to look after the doctor or he wouldn’t be able to look after all the others.
The burden of the call lifted, she exhales, taps her foot on the floor, switches the phone off and drives out of the car park, towards the rain-laced west. At Redden’s Cross she pulls in outside the grocery store. It has been recently decorated, judging by the sheen of white paint but the sign is the same: O’Donovan’s General Provisions and Post Office (Fish Bait Sold Also). She’d always loved those brackets. The rain has passed, slanting eastwards and the pale sun is glinting on the chrome of a tractor parked at the side of Crowley’s pub across the road.
Stepping out of the car, she moves to drape her bag diagonally across her chest as she would in London and realises that there is no need; not much chance of a grab-and-run here. She hangs it on her shoulder and pushes open the door of O’Donovan’s, setting the bell ringing. The shop has been modernised so that it is now in the style of a mini market with the post office section in the corner, but the floor is still dark oak and the Guinness clock hangs over the counter. Jim Reeves is crooning mournfully in the background about distant drums.
She smiles at the young girl with pigtails behind the till who grins back, gap-toothed and carries on reading her comic. Taking a basket, she collects basic foodstuffs: tea, milk, bread, eggs and cheese and two tall bottles of water. The fridge holds some reasonable wine and she selects a bottle of Chenin Blanc. She notes that bean sprouts and tofu are now being sold and wonders if Nanna ever tried them. Matches, she thinks, and firelighters; her father said that there should be plenty of turf in. She picks up a box with a picture of a roaring fire on the front: light in the wrapper, no more oily fingers! it says. She feels a trace of disappointment. She’d always liked the whiff of paraffin from the white blocks.
As she is finding her purse a stout woman wearing a smart beige short-sleeved shirt and trousers bustles through from the back of the shop and replenishes the stock of cigarettes behind the till. Her upper arms are sturdy and mottled, her dyed blonde hair cut short around her square face.
Liv takes a breath. ‘Mrs O’Donovan?’ she asks.
The woman turns, tugging her shirt down. She is wearing a dark orange lipstick on her plump lips and heavy mascara. ‘Hallo, yes,’ she replies.
‘I’m Liv Callaghan.’
Mrs O’Donovan claps her hands together. The motion sets the loose flesh on her arms wobbling. ‘Well, I should have known. You’re very like your father, you have the green eyes and all. Are you just arrived?’
‘Yes, on the morning boat.’
‘Well, isn’t that something! I haven’t seen you in ages.’ She looks Liv up and down appraisingly.
‘No; last time I visited you were away, in Lourdes, I think.’
‘Oh for sure, I was, so. Didn’t I have a touch of women’s troubles and I went to see would Our Lady take pity on me.’ Mrs O’Donovan drops her voice. ‘I’m sorry about your grandmother. It was sudden, her poor old heart just gave way. But wasn’t she a great age, she used to say she’d had a good innings.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll have come about the cottage, and her after leaving it to you.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, isn’t that something. I heard that from your da when he was over. It’s so long now since we saw you, you were always her pet. She mentioned you whenever she came in. And isn’t it a shame you couldn’t come for the funeral.’
Liv feels guilty heat flush the back of her neck. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I couldn’t make it.’
‘A liver infection,’ Douglas had said, writhing and sweating on the sofa. ‘Got to check into hospital for a couple of days, nothing a blast of antibiotics won’t sort out.’
Mrs O’Donovan nods. ‘Ah for sure, she was so proud of you, with the university education and all. And you’re beyond in London all this time?’
‘Oh yes, that’s where I live.’
‘That’s lovely, lovely. Ah, she often mentioned the times you used to come down with her and Susannah. She said she’d have to ask you to walk slower, she couldn’t keep up with your young limbs.’
‘Hold on there, child, you have me winded and poor old Susannah will be ready for the bacon factory if you carry on at that lick,’ Nanna would say.
Liv wonders if Mrs 0’Donovan is thinking that this granddaughter who’s come to claim the house hasn’t bothered to visit for years but the woman is smiling.
‘Who’s Susannah?’ the little girl asks.
‘She was Mrs Callaghan’s pig, her pride and joy,’ Mrs O’Donovan explains. ‘This is my granddaughter, Carmel,’ she tells Liv. ‘She helps me mind the shop sometimes.’
‘You say it Carmel, Gran,’ the child says reprovingly. ‘You say it the Spanish way.’ Her grey eyes are huge, rounded and solemn, heavy lashed.
‘She takes notions,’ Mrs O’Donovan explains, making a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘Carmel was always good enough round here before but sure I suppose times change.’
Liv smiles. ‘Hallo,’ she says to the girl, gesturing at the comic. ‘I used to read Bunty when I was little.’
‘It’s not my absolute favourite,’ Carmel informs her. ‘I prefer Look Lively but I have to wait until Daddy comes from Castlegray with it.’ She has a precise way of speaking, weighing the words in
an adult manner.
‘Do you remember Maeve, my daughter — Carmel’s mother?’
‘I don’t think so. .. .’
‘Ah, for sure, you probably wouldn’t. She was just a baby the last time I saw you in the shop. I expect she was asleep; she was an angel of a baby, she never gave me a moment’s trouble and she slept through the night. Not like Madam here!’
She looks adoringly at her granddaughter who wrinkles her nose back. Jim Reeves is droning another melancholy verse about lost love. Suddenly, Liv’s skin is prickling and she needs to run from the plunking guitars and saccharine lyrics.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’d better make a move and get sorted out.’
Mrs O’Donovan pats her hair and rearranges her shirt collar. ‘Anything at all you need, just come in. It might be a bit chilly up there, but I see you have the makings of a fire. Your father checked that everything was shipshape when he was here after the funeral. And he’s still at the plumbing.’
‘That’s right, but retiring soon, I think. Barbara, my stepmother, isn’t in good health.’ She lifts the carrier bag. ‘I expect I’ll be in again tomorrow, I’m sure to have forgotten something.’
She keeps moving away, wanting to be gone but Mrs O’Donovan follows her out, holding her hand palm upwards to the fine drizzle that is falling. ‘That’s in for the rest of the day now, I’d say. The forecast says we have the makings of decent weather coming. ‘Twould be good to have some fine days before the nights draw in. Isn’t that a handy little car you have?’
‘It’s easy to drive, I thought it would be useful to have one.’
‘For sure, you couldn’t do without. Are you here long?’
‘A couple of months, probably.’
Mrs O’Donovan makes an O of surprise with her lips and sticks her thumbs in the top of her trousers. ‘And do they give you them kind of holidays in England?’
‘Some of it’s holiday, some of it a sabbatical.’
She waves goodbye from the car and turns left by the pub. She is tired by so much dialogue. At home, she has got into the habit of economical conversation. The fewer words you speak, the less likely you are to be asked the awkward questions that probe your dull secret like a drill bit on a worn tooth: ‘I saw Douglas at the bus stop, is he anxious about driving after his accident?’ ‘Your husband was looking a bit pale when I met him in the market, I suppose he’s had that awful flu virus.’ She is always aware of her fixed, bright smile, the false buoyancy of her voice when she replies. She is the master of the swift glance at the watch and the need to hurry away and has a ready battery of excuses to refuse social invitations. It is understood that she is doing a PhD and needs to study in her spare time.
She reflects on the information that Mrs O’Donovan extracted from her, smiling to herself. Nanna wouldn’t have approved; Eileen O’Donovan, she always claimed, had a curious mind and a careless tongue, a deadly combination. It was best to keep your business to yourself and plough your own furrow, her grandmother maintained; that way you had no grounds to fall out with your neighbours. It is the path she follows herself in London, Liv thinks, shifting down a gear to negotiate a bend. But here, without her heavy history at her shoulder, she can afford to be more open. She thinks how Mrs O’Donovan speaks, the way her rolling accent and easy phrasing tease out a response, her statements disguising questions. The interrogative comment. She tries it herself, adopting the Cork brogue, making a splashing sound with her lips; ‘and ishn’t it . . . and you’re beyond . . . he’s shtill in the plumbing.’ Best of all, she thinks with relish, is a ‘touch of women’s troubles.’ She smiles, then chides herself for being an oversophisticated Londoner.
As she negotiates the deserted, twisting lanes she feels her heart give a little lift. She spreads her fingers wide on the steering wheel and moves her shoulders up and down. The sun has ventured out again, despite Mrs O’Donovan’s forecast and there is a rainbow to her left. She hears the rush of water, smells its brackishness in the air. The hedges are high, filled with the red blaze of fuchsia. Now and again between the hedgerows there is a teasing glimpse of the Atlantic glittering in the distance, like a mirage. Crossing the hump-backed bridge over the river, she counts to fifteen and there it is perched at the top of the glen, a low white cottage with dark green door and windows. Glenkeen; beautiful glen. Before her father had a driveway tarmacked up to it, the only access had been via steep steps, which were often treacherous with moss. She hums and the sound of her voice startles her. It is a long time since she’s sung. Douglas mentioned that to her a couple of months back: ‘when we first got married, you were always singing around the house, it was like living with a lark or a nightingale.’ She’d looked at his rueful face, the flush on his cheeks, flinched at the trace of yesterday’s beer on his breath. ‘I suppose I must have had something to sing about,’ she’d replied, turning away, leaving one of those sour atmospheres that regularly taint the space between them.
Slowing the car, she drives in and parks to one side, near the little semi-circular hut that used to be Susannah’s dwelling. She stands, turning to look back down at the empty road beneath, letting the cool moist air lap her skin. Running her fingers along a dripping laurel bush by the front door, she sucks rainwater that tastes of peat — a smoky, dank flavour — and runs her fingers along her forehead and down to her neck. The little pulse in her throat is steady. She listens; silence.
The door gives way to a determined push, creaking and complaining. Liv rests her case against the wall and crosses to the wide hearth. There is a half-burned log in it, maybe the very one her grandmother had thrown on the evening she died. The cottage smells as it always has, of sunflower seeds and childhood holidays; a dry, savoury scent of turf, bran and floury potatoes.
She walks around. Little has changed. Oil lamps provide light, water will have to be fetched from the well and food cooked over the fire. The tin tub for washing is hanging on its hook by the back window. The only concession Nanna had made to modernisation was allowing Liv’s father to lay the driveway. She only agreed to the latter after she slipped on her way down to the well and sprained her ankle.
There is one large room downstairs with a pine dresser opposite the fire and a round oak table covered with an oilcloth. In a corner by the fire is the sofa her grandmother slept on, rarely venturing upstairs. An eiderdown embroidered with yellow primroses covers it. The open tread staircase leads up from one corner of the room to two bedrooms above. She goes up, raising dust that sets her sneezing.
The bigger front bedroom holds an old metal-framed double bed and a washstand, the type with a china bowl set into the centre. In the fireplace is a jug of dried grasses and lavender. She turns in a circle, letting the room grow familiar, noting the patch of damp in the left-hand corner of the ceiling where it meets the outside wall. On the mantelpiece is a small, scratched pink and beige case, like an attaché case, with the name Lady Anne on the lid in raised gold lettering, dulled with age. She takes it down, places it on the bed and opens the rusting clasps. Inside she discovers a radio nestling, with pink facing and chunky beige dials. There are batteries beneath the back panel. She twists a knob on top and it crackles to life. It is tuned to a French station and she holds it as she tests the bed, which is covered in a vast billowing eiderdown, similar to the one on the downstairs couch. The broadcaster murmurs away anonymously, liltingly. The bed is firm, the eiderdown snug, if damp to the touch. Guitar music starts and she carries the radio to the back bedroom, which is empty except for some burlap sacks that would once have held chicken food, and a row of hardback books on the window ledge. She examines the titles; several Dickens, The Mill on the Floss, War and Peace and Dubliners.
She fingers the lace curtain aside and looks from the side window at the acre of land that stretches behind the cottage. The earth has been turned ready for the winter frosts in a few beds near the back door. Her grandmother would have been planning early potatoes, Liv guesses, searching her memory for the names of those she
had favoured; Kerr pinks. Their floury skins parted as they were cooked, revealing a purplish blush. They were served with a hunk of pale creamery butter on an oval blue and white plate, featuring a bonneted lady in crinoline at its centre. The plate is on the kitchen dresser, the centrepiece, middle shelf.
The rain is slanting again, steadier now. She will save a trip to the well for the morning, a treat to anticipate, and make do with bottled water. She shivers, switches the guitar music off and heads to find something warmer to wear.
She wakes suddenly, having lain down on the sofa for a few minutes’ rest and realises that she has slept for nearly two hours. Leaping up, she craves a cheerful fire. The shed is stacked full of turf, not the sanitized briquette version sold in the shops but dark rough chunks with crumbling edges. Against one wall is a row of logs with thinner kindling piled in a basket. She carries several armfuls of these into the kitchen and sets a fire, building a wigwam of sticks on top of the firelighters and hunkering back on her ankles to watch it catch. There is an old bellows in the corner and she pokes it cautiously into the firelighters, wheezing air to encourage a blaze. She brings the eiderdown from upstairs and hangs it on the back of a chair near the fire; it is heavy, dragging on the floor and she sneezes again as she spreads it out to catch the heat.
The sun is slipping down the rim of the sky, casting long shadows. She brings the two lamps before the fire and checks that they both hold paraffin, then pumps them, unscrews the glass and lights the wicks. The glass covers scratch back into place as the flames flare blue, then settle into a steady glow. This had been her evening task during childhood visits; the official lamp lighter. It had symbolized the freedom of the cottage and the glen, where she was allowed to roam at will, chat to passers-by on the roads and handle matches.
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 3