OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  Her fingers are ash coloured from the fire and the blackened wicks. She rubs them on her jeans and pushes up the sleeves of her angora cardigan, stroking the heathery colours. It is delicate, warm and very expensive. Douglas had bought it for her after one of his ‘episodes’ as he refers to them. She always receives something special when he feels particularly shameful; a digital camera, a leather jacket, handmade gloves. She keeps all these gifts in one drawer, the guilt stash as she calls it privately, rarely using them. Somehow, the reason for them being in her possession sours their value. He packed the cardigan when she wasn’t looking. She thinks of his puffy face, his hamster cheeks, his eyes made bloodshot and squinty by the fluid and toxins in his bloodstream. He is a handsome man grasping a map of self-destruction in his trembling hand. Driving her to Euston, he had promised that in the next month he would go to all the AA meetings: ‘This time it’s for real,’ he’d told her.

  She pushes her hair off her face and holds her hands out to the yellow-red flames, the angry flare that she always thinks of as the colour of a pacing tiger’s eyes. Food, she decides; bacon and eggs and strong tea. ‘A cup of tea you could cut with a knife,’ Nanna would have said.

  She goes to bed as light is draining from the sky. Dark comes swiftly. In bed, she snuggles under the warmed eiderdown. It breathes out a woody, smoky scent. She listens. An owl’s wild cry sounds once, breaking the silence. The high moon touches the curtains with a pale beam. For the first time in ages she relaxes her guard, thinking, this is mine, mine alone. She reaches a hand out, dimming the lamp until the blue flame flickers away. The comforting shade is complete. For a while she lies, gazing into the formless shadows. Then, fumbling for the radio, she switches it back on and is lulled to sleep by the sombre voice of Jacques Brel.

  Chapter 3

  Aidan sees her leave the shop, swinging the plastic carrier bag to and fro. She has her back to him but immediately he recognizes that confident, tripping walk; she holds herself so straight, bobbing up and down with each step, the motion making her shoulder bag rotate. Her coffee-brown hair, a shade that he used to compare to a milky cappuccino, is shorter, shaped to her scalp. He tracks her to the car, telling himself it isn’t possible, everyone has a doppelganger. Then she turns, in profile and he sees that face mapped with freckles, her sunglasses pushed up, holding the fringe of hair back. He watches as she settles her bags and drives away.

  He grabs the box of vegetables and fruit from the back of the van and clutches it to his chest. He is surprised that the first rush of emotion is anger, a hot flush like those his mother-in-law regularly complains of. Then a dry-mouthed shock; what is she doing here — has she come seeking him? He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. It has been a long morning since the downpour that drenched him as he was setting out the stall. He has been damp for hours and now his bones are demanding a hot shower but he has to get Carmel to the dentist.

  He recalls then that Liv had once mentioned family in Cork, a grandmother she had stayed with sometimes as a child. Liv had commented that her grandmother suffered with toothache and treated herself with oil of cloves because she was terrified of the dentist, who she called a butcher worse than Sweeney Todd. He could picture the place where she had told him, an Italian cafe on Fulham Road where they went to eat cheap tomato risotto and drink red wine that rasped their throats. It was where he’d blurted out to her that he wanted to break it off, that he needed to explore life, find himself, have adventures. ‘Aren’t I an adventure, then?’ she’d asked, shoving her fork violently into her food, gulping from her glass. There was cheesy Eurovision music playing, an upbeat nursery type tune – lalalala — and he knew he’d done it all wrong, was annoyed with himself and then with her because he couldn’t find an answer for her and she was staring at him, willing him to look her in the eye.

  Carmel has spotted him and is waving, hopping from one foot to the other outside the shop door.

  ‘Carmelita, Carmelita, you couldn’t get no sweeter!’ he calls.

  ‘Daddy! Did you get my comics?’

  He hefts the box. ‘I did, don’t I always obey orders? Come and give your old man a kiss.’

  She skips over, gawky, so skinny that Maeve tells her that if she stood sideways, she’d be invisible. She flicks her pigtails and squeals as he kisses her.

  ‘Your nails are filthy and you’ve a big stain on your shirt. Gran will say you look like a navvy.’ She pulls her finicky face, the one that makes her look middle aged.

  ‘Honest dirt, baby girl, that’s what it is. The bag with your loot’s in the back. I’ll just check in with Gran, then we’ll get going. Have you got homework?’

  ‘I did it inside. Sums. I’ll stay here and read. Can you get my satchel?’

  ‘What did your last slave die of?’ He smiles their old joke at her and she retorts, quick as a flash.

  ‘Not obeying orders promptly.’ She wriggles in the back of the van. ‘It smells of onions in here, and it’s all mucky.’

  He shrugs and heads for the shop. He caught his thumb on one of the carrot boxes earlier and it’s bruised, stinging. He hopes he won’t lose a nail. He has to duck through the shop door. When Maeve first brought him back from Manchester to meet her mother, his height had been the source of all the well-worn jokes; ‘How’s the weather up there?’ and ‘Tell us what’s over the horizon!’ Then, when he’d informed Eileen O’Donovan that he was giving up his computer design job to cross the Irish Sea and sell vegetables in Castlegray market, she’d declared that he must have softening of the brain from all the time he spent with his head in the clouds.

  ‘Hallo, Eileen. Everything OK? I brought the carrots, salad stuff and apples.’ He greets his mother-in-law from the doormat, wiping his boots carefully. He can see that she has just retouched her lipstick; her teeth gleam brilliantly through the orange. He wonders if Liv noticed that Irish dental hygiene has progressed.

  ‘Fine. Carmel’s a joy to have, as always. She wheedled a scone but I said not to eat too much in case the dentist needed to do an injection. She has such a small appetite. She promised me she’d try and eat more vegetables. Still and all, I suppose ’twould be no good if she was like you, big and muscular.’ She gives him a coy look, head slanted.

  ‘Well, thanks, it’s back to usual routine tomorrow so it’ll be Maeve fetching her in the afternoon.’

  The shop is the same as always, yet different. Maeve believes that a place can be disturbed by emotions, by the feelings we carry with us, unaware. He listens to her, indulging her, thinking, mumbo jumbo. Now he thinks that maybe he senses a change that Liv has brought, like an alteration in temperature. His scalp is chilled. Or maybe the change is emanating from him? Stop it, he tells himself, it’s been a long morning, you’re tired and you’ve had a shock. He nods and makes to go, then turns back, steadying his voice.

  ‘There was a woman coming out as I pulled up. I haven’t seen her around here before.’

  Eileen O’Donovan neatens chocolate bars in front of the till. ‘That’ll have been Liv Callaghan, she’s old Mrs Callaghan’s granddaughter, the woman who used to live over at Glenkeen. I don’t suppose you’d have met her.’

  He shrugs, looks out of the window.

  ‘Well, anyway, Mrs Callaghan left your woman there the cottage. She’s over to view her inheritance. She was in here making friendly. Didn’t show her face here for many a year, mind, but that’s the way of things. She’ll be here for a while, she says. Trouble follows that family, they’re all as mad as hatters, the Callaghans, always have been.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Eileen holds a hand up and ticks off on her plump fingers. ‘The great-grandfather drowned himself, there was an aunt who went roaring mad and there’s an uncle over near Castlegray with strange ways who married a Protestant.’

  Aidan laughs. ‘Marrying a Protestant doesn’t mean you’re certifiable.’

  Eileen gives him a knowing glance. ‘That was only the start of it. Anyways, I suppose Liv Ca
llaghan will tart the cottage up and make a quick killing, sell it to some Germans or the like. More customers for your stall, wanting aubergines and such. Were you busy today?’

  He circumvents the possible trap of the innocent-sounding question. ‘I think the weather was against us but it wasn’t bad at all.’

  She sniffs. ‘Well, you’re a highly educated carrot seller, that’s all I can say. I never heard before of a graduate weighing spuds for a living. Maybe the three of you can drop over for a bite of dinner on Saturday, the new priest is coming.’

  He is always disconcerted by her swift changes of subject. ‘I’ll check with Maeve.’

  ‘Oh, do come,’ Eileen says, head tilted to one side again, cajoling. ‘It’s so nice to have little family occasions, and so important. Now that you’ve decided to live here, we must make the most of it. That’s what I said to Maeve when she was so upset at the upheaval and all your things were packed up ready for the lorry; every cloud has a silver lining. We must all pull together.’ She comes towards him, gliding across the shop, tapping his arm, a little too close for comfort.

  ‘If we can . . .’ he says vaguely, waving a hand and dislodging hers. His heart sinks at the prospect of having to eat one of Eileen’s huge meals while she pumps a new clergyman for information and gives them unwanted advice on the rearing of her granddaughter. He wants to get away, think over this information he’s been given about Liv. Eileen is chatting on about the new priest, something to do with West Africa and Aids and how she’s going to be raising money for doctors there.

  He is seeing Liv that last time she walked away, all those years ago, her freckled arms glowing from sunbathing on Hampstead Heath earlier in the day, her head high, and refusing to glance back. He’d admired her for her courage, felt gratitude that she hadn’t raised a storm. In her haste to get away from him, she’d left the book she was reading on the cafe table; Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. He has it still on a bookcase with her writing inside, her careful Italic script, executed in the turquoise ink she used. Liv Callaghan. Some joker in her year, bored during a lecture, had written underneath. ‘If this book should dare to roam, box its ears and send it home.’

  In the van, he listens to Carmel as she tells him about history being the story of civilization and a Roman poet who described the sea as wine dark. They had drunk a deep red Merlot in the Fulham Road, it had a label with swirling lines that Liv said looked like a girl dancing, with her head thrown back. He smiles as his daughter mentions how the Romans constructed a tortoise shape for battle.

  ‘Do you know the rhyme, Carmelita?’ he asks. ‘Julius Caesar the Roman geezer, conquered Britain with a lemon squeezer.’

  ‘Dad,’ she says crossly, undoing and redoing a plate, ‘you never take anything seriously.’

  I’m dreadful,’ he agrees.

  He glances at her in the rear-view mirror; she has her head in her comic and is chewing the end of a plait. The centre parting in her hair exposes her small, delicate skull. He drives carefully, feeling suddenly wild, as if he’s had a couple of glasses of rough Merlot. He hasn’t thought about Liv for years but now, he remembers that before she walked away that evening of his shame, she had grasped the table, reciting: ‘But fools do live and waste their little light, and seek with pain their ever-during night.’ Then, there had been tears filming her eyes. But when she laughed, her mischievous, gurgling laugh, the freckles at the corners of her mouth blended, dancing.

  In the late afternoon he pulls up in front of the bungalow, thinking how much he dislikes this house. It sits, squat and unlovely, fronting the road. He had wanted to buy an old place on the road out of Castlegray and do it up but Maeve had prevailed, keen on a modern home with double glazing. Given that they were going to be on a tighter budget, they needed a place that wasn’t going to spring any nasty surprises, she’d argued, no damp or woodworm.

  He tries to like it but can’t. He finds it featureless, soulless. Sometimes, he almost drives past it because it looks like so many others in the neighbourhood. The rooms inside are big and boxy. Despite the insulation and fierce heating, the place somehow always has a whiff of something mouldering. The furnishings are chintzy and floral, chosen by Maeve, who likes pale yellows and rose tints. There is an abundance of swaged curtains, plump cushions, side tables and knick-knacks. He frequently bumps into ornaments, catching them just before they topple, or stretches his legs and collides with a figurine. Maeve had tended to the fussy when they set up home in Manchester but he had managed to rein her back, achieve a balance between his love of simplicity and her penchant for embellishment. Here, with her mother egging her on, there is no stopping her. He is also aware that there is an unspoken trade-off now; she has reluctantly tolerated his change of work and loss of status and income and in return the house is her territory.

  Maeve is stirring a casserole when he walks into the kitchen. Carmel has already dashed into the living-room, where she is watching cartoons. He sniffs the air, registering that he is ravenous. Maeve smiles at him, gazing up from under the Alice band that holds her long and thick hair back. She has to wash it at night because it takes so long to dry. He can still feel it damp on the pillow when she lies beside him; the apple scent of the shampoo she uses permeates the bedroom, lingering on the bedding.

  ‘I thought I was cooking?’ he says, thinking of the steak and salad he’d planned.

  ‘I got back a bit early, Reagan was delayed at court and he rang and said I might as well head off. How did the dentist go?’

  ‘Fine, all routine. The brace gets fitted next week. She’s quite excited at the prospect now, there seems to be some kudos attached to having one.’ He kisses Maeve’s cheek, her pale, clear skin and peers into the saucepan. It holds a cream and green-coloured substance. ‘Smells good.’

  ‘It’s a recipe I saw last week, chicken with celery and coriander, a Martha Stewart.’

  A few years back, after her husband died, Eileen had spent time with a cousin in Philadelphia, where she had become a fan of Martha’s. From time to time the cousin sends her magazines that she passes on to Maeve. He always knows when one has arrived because there is a new dish, flower arrangement or home decoration courtesy of the guru of American domesticity.

  ‘Good old Martha,’ he says heartily. ‘Is she out of jail now?’

  ‘Yes, the poor woman. I haven’t ruined something you’d planned?’

  ‘No, no. To be honest, it’d be great to have a hot shower while you dish up.’

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘No, just long, you know. I’ll be ten minutes. By the way, your mother said something about dinner on Saturday.’ He watches her stir and add more seasoning. Martha’s recipes always seem too fussy to him, too many layers. Yet somehow they are also bland in a way he can’t put his finger on. On the wall above Maeve’s head is a tapestry that Eileen made for them, a homily picked out in pink against a background of cream and blue flowers, reminding him that home is where the heart lies. He hates it, he always has; everything about it is false and sentimental.

  ‘I’ll ring her later.’ Maeve strokes her right eyebrow. Unlike her mother, she has small hands with plump, almost stubby fingers. She is conscious of this, thinks them ugly, so her nails are beautifully shaped and painted with the palest pink varnish. They are her one true vanity; she has a manicure outfit and sets about them every Saturday morning, filing, cuticle softening, varnishing. Always she wears her gold watch on her left wrist and a bracelet on her right, to draw attention away from her hands. Next to hers, his hands look gigantic and battered. He’s always sucking out splinters or digging at them with needles. She tastes the sauce and offers him some on the end of the wooden spoon.

  ‘Mmm,’ he says, puzzled by the flavours. ‘Is there cream in it?’

  ‘Low fat yoghurt. It’s good for the heart.’ She laughs, waving the spoon at him. ‘I want to make sure you live to a ripe old age!’

  In the bathroom he runs his aching thumb under cold water, tilts his head to look
in the mirror. Now that he is no longer a suited executive but a self-employed trader, his chin is allowed to have stubble and he delights in not shaving every day, even though Carmel calls him Mr Hedgehog. His hair is longer, unconditioned, wind-blown, its curl coming back. He has lost the processed, urbane image that used to look back at him, has shed it like a skin, with the constricting colour-matched shirts and ties. His skin is rougher; he looks both younger and weathered. He feels a real person again, enjoys the solidity of his upper arms where the muscles have developed from lifting and carrying. As a family, they’ve taken a big gamble but it’s paid off. When he reads the papers these days, he sees dozens of articles about burned out professionals downsizing to achieve quality of life and he always points them out to Maeve; a bit of extra self-justification never hurts.

  He stands in the shower, letting the hot water ease his muscles. It is the best feature of the house, strong and rushing, with four settings. He likes to start on moderate, then work up to full power. He reaches for soap, working it across his chest, resting his palm in the centre to feel his heartbeat. It is thudding dependably. ‘He had a heart scare,’ someone said about another stallholder who hadn’t appeared for a couple of weeks. He’d heard a woman in the pub describing her daughter’s miscarriage, saying ‘my heart is scalded.’ The heart, the heart; everything you put in your mouth now was judged by whether it was good for the heart. What is good for his heart, he wonders. Does his low-fat, low-cholesterol, polyunsaturated heart lie here, in this modern bungalow? It’s a long time since it has beaten fast, thudded with expectation and desire. When he was waiting to meet Liv it used to flutter and knock against his chest.

  The soap smells of Maeve’s pale skin, of apricots and the moisturiser she uses. She is like a summer fruit, soft and pleasant. When he met her in his firm’s personnel department, typing up a contract for him, he liked what he came to think of as her refreshing, old-fashioned simplicity. She didn’t obviously weigh him up, play games about when they would meet, have a need to visit the latest clubs and bars. She liked to stay in mainly, have sofa suppers and watch films, relax in her deep cushions. Such domesticity was a relief after numerous flings with career women who always had schedules and deadlines, who liked late, exhaustingly prolonged restaurant dinners. Maeve obligingly fitted in with his schedules, accommodated her life to his like a shoe made to fit. Some of his male colleagues said they envied him, finding himself someone so pretty and uncomplicated; he became pleased with himself, thinking that he was a lucky and clever fellow. He realised how comforting Maeve would be to come home to and had reached a point in his life when the idea of comfort was as attractive as her ready smile and easy manner. Her astonishing, flattering conviction that he was an intellectual as well as a business high-flyer led him quickly and easily to the belief that she was The One.