She decides to go to Crowley’s for supper. She lights a lamp and leaves it in the window to guide her back. Remembering Owen’s advice, she closes the damper on the fire. Taking a torch, she sets off down the glen. The sky is almost dark, retaining just a faint flush of high, pink clouds and the air is sweet. A line of cows is lumbering along the road, calling mournfully, a young boy urging them, brandishing a stick, wobbling in oversized wellingtons. She waves to him and turns to Redden’s Cross.
* * *
Aidan is meant to be doing his monthly accounts. He is in the study, the smallest, north-facing bedroom. The spreadsheet is open on the screen, the computer humming comfortingly. A spattering rain has started, weeping down the window. He shivers; unless the promised Indian summer arrives, they’ll have to turn the heating on soon. The radiator in this room makes a grumbling sound like a low level complaint. He’s bled it but can never find a remedy. It resists him, like the rest of the house. Despite his best efforts, the back door always sticks, the kitchen lino curls up at one edge and the dining table maintains its wobble. He is convinced that the house is built on a slant.
He totals a column. Nearly a year into his new business, he is making a modest income. The truth is, accounts, balance sheets and tax returns don’t interest him much. It’s the bustle and activity of the market that makes his days, the frenetic early morning pace of the traders as they dart around in the dewy street, their shouts and calls, curses and laughter, the flavour of scalding, strong tea and a smoky frankfurter from the mobile cafe when the lorries have been unloaded, the cacophony of sounds from the country and western, traditional Irish and rock music sellers. Often as he grasps his mug with fingerless mittens and shivers with pleasure at the heat and the tart aftertaste of tannin, he thinks; just over a year ago I was staring at a screen in an air-conditioned, sterile office and drinking a coffee I didn’t even register the taste of, eating muffins I wasn’t hungry for. Now I have this keen, vitalising air that hasn’t been breathed by scores of other people and my stomach is desperate to be filled. He loves the way all the market people gradually unpeel, shaking themselves, slapping their arms, shedding layers of clothes as the dawn chill evaporates and the day comes into its own.
But above all, there is the pleasure of setting out the stall. He relishes the shapes and colours of the vegetables and fruit he sells, the cold earthy smell of the carrots, parsnips and celeriac, the slight scent of drains from cauliflower and broccoli, the hot glow of tomatoes and aubergines, the speckled skin of cidery apples. The pale ridges of celery remind him of corduroy. He likes the feel of the produce in his hands, the weight and contours, the ribbed skin of radishes and the rough whiskers of spring onions. The white turnips with the purple blush are coming in now, little cousins of the hefty orange swedes that smell acidic as you cook them, but are sweet on the tongue. You have to be careful with the little, soft-coated tangerines that will be arriving in the coming months, they bruise easily, their skin as tender as Carmel’s. On the stall, they nestle cosily in their tissue wraps, orange and cream winter blossoms. He likes to polish peppers until they gleam and arrange his produce seductively; last October, his range of colourful pumpkins from pale cream through hazelnut, burned terracotta and biscuit brown had brought admiring glances. He had constructed a witch’s profile from pumpkin and turnip slices, with a hooked courgette for a nose. There had been a photo in the local paper for Halloween but it hadn’t shifted much extra produce. He isn’t sure the Irish are ready for pumpkin pie.
He runs his fingers around the edge of the keyboard. He has been dreaming about Liv and thinking of her; she is invading his sleeping and waking. The night before he’d married Maeve, he’d dreamed of her and woke, feeling hot and guilty. He had willed and secured the loss of her through recklessness, fear and bad judgement. Always, her memory is framed by what if? He knows that this is immature, that the past cannot be revisited and shouldn’t be, for good reasons. He knows that he shouldn’t consider the life they might be having now, the freckle faced children they could have shared. Sometimes, though, it is hard not to hanker after what you’ve carelessly thrown away. And he hasn’t sought the past; it has appeared before him, a living, breathing past, existing in a cottage in a glen just a few miles away.
A picture forms of the first time he saw her and he smiles. A friend who knew Liv through the university madrigal group had invited him to dinner with her, commenting that she made the best lemon meringue pie in the galaxy. They might never have met otherwise; he was in the final year of his Law degree, she in her second term reading English. Her flat was in Kentish Town, the tiny basement of a tall Victorian House with peeling paintwork and windows that rattled when the wind blew. He had been startled at the sight of her standing in the kitchen, balanced on her left leg, right foot swinging. She was wearing a bright pink cotton dress which made her freckles seem like exclamation marks. He had experienced an instant flash of recognition; he’d never felt that since, that sudden and complete yearning. She had been so unnerved by him that she accidentally tipped the lemon meringue pie she had just taken from the oven into the sink. The rescued, crumpled remains were eaten in bite-sized pieces, the pastry, filling and meringue a glutinous but wonderful tasting mess with only a slight, occasional hint of washing-up liquid. Later, as he walked home, he had licked his lemony fingertips and wondered if she had freckles all over her body and when he might find out.
They had been together, inseparable, for almost a year. Her thin, muscular frame fascinated him; she was boyish and gutsy and he found her resolve mesmerising. He felt that he would never want to be parted from her and yet somehow it was the strength, the fervour of the bond between them that came to terrify him. Dissatisfaction with himself had made him end the relationship; a deep unease that he had studied the wrong subject, the unspoken belief that there might be, must be other challenges, other experiences to be had, including other women to love. He felt himself to be unformed, needing breadth and density in his life and he fretted that his passion for her, the passion between them would wane and they would be trapped, opportunity flown, roads closed. He didn’t want to complete his studies, marry, and settle down into domesticity. Some of his friends were doing just that, consulting their parents about mortgages, looking at flimsy houses on estates in bleak suburbs where the mud from the building sites still spattered the kerbs and rows of shops offered bargains of the week. They were living their parents’ small, ordered lives, as he saw it and the prospect of this repetition made him yawn with fear. He wanted to travel, breathe the air of other continents, wake to hear languages he didn’t understand and Liv had another two years of her course to complete. Then his childless aunt died, leaving him twenty thousand pounds and the balance tipped; surely it was meant, a sign that he should trust his instincts. Right timing and wrong timing, he had persuaded himself as he agonized about how to tell her.
On a visit to his parents he discussed his predicament with his father, in that veiled, oblique way that men approach such conversations. He chose dusk, under the trees in the back garden so that he could try to hide his shame from this man of integrity whom he held in such esteem, he could barely approach him. He couldn’t hope to emulate his father, who was a litmus paper of all that was honourable and scrupulous.
Aidan senior had come late to parenthood, fifty-two when his son was born and he was a gentleman of the old school, a barrister who experienced life in black and white, no room for blurring and evasion. He took no prisoners where behaviour to the fairer sex was concerned. When his son had stumblingly mentioned difficulties in his love life he leaned on his walking stick and pursed his lips. ‘Be clear about your intentions. If you’re going to break with the girl, do it quickly and cleanly; if you’re not, marry her. Don’t prevaricate, that’s sheer self-indulgence.’
He finally spilled his decision out callously over a meal in the cafe with the numbing pop music playing and a lurid oil painting of sunset over Lake Maggiore on the wall by their table. There
were no shadows, no concealing dusk to ameliorate the hurt in her open gaze.
‘I just don’t understand, what’s wrong, is it me, something I’ve done or said?’ She’d rubbed her eyes, as if trying to wake from a nightmare.
‘No, it’s not you at all, it’s me, I’m not sure what I want or who I want.’ And afterwards, in far-flung places — Shanghai, Boston, Mexico city, Bombay, he had looked in misted, speckled mirrors and disliked what he saw. He had been her first lover and he thought of himself as a predator. She had challenged him even in his leaving of her and he knew there would be a price to pay although what that price would be or when he would pay it was unknown.
He pushes the keyboard aside and draws a notepad towards him.
Dear Liv,
This will come as quite a surprise to you. I saw you leaving the shop at Redden’s Cross a few days ago. My mother-inlaw runs it. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, I had a shock. I still haven’t recovered from it. I understand that your grandmother left you her cottage nearby. I thought that I would send you a note as we might very well meet by chance at some point. It would be good to see you, if that would be OK with you. Isn’t it strange, how paths do cross sometimes in the most unexpected …
A fierce lash of rain hisses against the window. He glances at the clock, starts; time has vanished. Maeve is at her evening class and he has to pick up Carmel. He tears the page from the pad, dislodging a loose sheet that Maeve has jotted a shopping list on: washing-up liquid, loo rolls, strong cheddar, sliced ham, sage and onion mix, hair grips, ankle socks, intensive moisturiser. The last item is for him, to replenish his cracked and torn hands. At the bottom she has drawn the round smiley face that she finishes all her notes with, a kind of reassuring flourish to herself. Her handwriting is girlish, with curlicues on the loops of her Ls and Gs. She’ll have written it with the pen Carmel gave her for her birthday; pink lights flash on the end when the nib presses the paper. He reads the plain script of their intimate, daily routine and tastes the sourness of deceit in his throat. He tears up his note and shoves the shreds in his pocket, grabs his van keys and hurries out.
Chapter 5
The barman in Crowley’s has informed Liv correctly that their cheese and mustard baked spuds are hard to beat. He’d handed her the menu and looked at her, head on one side, as he rubbed the bar with his dishcloth, and said she looked as if she needed a bit of belly timber. She had felt strange and oddly looked after and dangerously weepy. The potatoes had arrived with a vivid carrot and tomato salad that reflect the colours of the fire near her table. The skins are crisp and the cheese is Gruyere and wonderfully elastic.
The pub is quiet this early on a Wednesday evening. The television is on above the bar, David Attenborough stalking big cats. A couple of old men in dark suits sit hunched in a corner by the fire, voices rumbling. The one time she’d visited Ireland with Douglas, a long weekend in Dublin and Wicklow, they’d joked that the same old men travelled around the bars, paid by the Irish Tourist Board to pose scenically with their pipes and flat caps. Why has she never brought him here, to the south-west? They could have visited Nanna, she could have shown him the places she’d played as a child, where she’d made dens, mixed magic potions down at the well, breathed an air dramatically different to Haringey’s. She knows why; he had that cool English attitude to Ireland, encouraged at his public school, an amused eye that viewed it as the land of the little people, Celtic mists and fey story tellers. His parents had an Irish handyman at their country pile in Surrey who they always referred to as Macnamara. The first time she’d met them, his mother had said, ‘Oh, isn’t Callaghan a wonderfully Irish name.’ Later that night, Douglas had crept along the hall to her bedroom and reassured her that beneath his mother’s cool exterior lay a heart of ice. He whispered that his sister had told him that when he was a baby, his mother used to leave him out in all weathers in the pram to toughen him up. Liv had pulled him to her, astonished, wanting to warm him and make up for his infant deprivations. Later, when she heard about his semi-drowning off Brighton, it was another piece of a bizarre jigsaw.
The pub door opens, letting in a gasp of rain and a turf-scented breeze. Mrs O’Donovan and Carmel run in, laughing and shaking themselves.
‘Johneen, can you change a couple of notes for me?’ Mrs O’Donovan asks the barman. ‘Lord God, I just had my hair done today and the wind’s after playing merry hell with it.’ She peers in the wide, engraved mirror over the bar that advertises whiskey and reshapes her fringe.
The barman pings the till open, one-handed, and pulls out notes. He holds the twenties that Eileen O’Donovan has given him up to the light, turning them this way and that, pretending that they might be fakes, winking at Carmel. Liv guesses that this is a regular routine. ‘Ah, you’re always a glamour queen to me, Eileen, aren’t you the rose of Redden’s Cross.’
Carmel sniggers and her grandmother gives the barman a knowing look. ‘Never mind your old palaver, Johneen Crowley.’ But she has her head to one side, appreciating her reflection.
When the transaction is complete, she looks around and sees Liv across the room. She gives a little wave and moves over, Carmel alongside. ‘And how are you going up there?’ she asks: ‘Getting along all right?’
‘Fine, thank you. I’ve been cleaning all day so I thought I’d treat myself to a meal. The food’s lovely.’
Mrs O’Donovan scans her plate. ‘Oh, for sure. I’ll tell my son-in-law. He provides Johneen with all his fruit and veg. You couldn’t get fresher.’
Carmel is pulling her grandmother’s sleeve. ‘Gran, maybe the lady will know.’
‘Know what, pet?’
‘About the general knowledge questions, especially the book one. Do you know about books?’ Carmel asks Liv, tracing a line of moisture on the table top.
‘I should, I’m a librarian,’ Liv answers.
‘Ah now, don’t be bothering Miss Callaghan, she’s trying to eat her dinner,’ Mrs O’Donovan says, propping a hip against a chair and folding her arms across her chest. She is wearing an identical trouser and shirt outfit today, but in a lime green. There is something about the cut and quality of the material that make Liv think she buys her clothes from catalogues. Her own mother had been a catalogue fiend; bulky parcels had constantly arrived and been despatched from the house. She had maintained that there was nothing like trying things on in the comfort of your own home and would make Liv and her father sit while she paraded different dresses and suits for their inspection.
‘That’s OK, I’ve nearly finished eating anyway. And call me Liv, please. What’s the question, Carmel?’
‘It’s in my homework. Who wrote The Call of The Wild?’
‘Jack London.’
Carmel beams. ‘Wow that was quick. You should be on University Challenge!’
‘You’re welcome. What’s the other question?’
‘We got some of it; it’s what are the seven wonders of the ancient world? We got The Hanging Gardens and the Pyramids but then we were stumped.’
Liv laughs. ‘My mother used to say that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World that I ever got to school on time. Now, let’s think.’ She ticks them off on her fingers. ‘The Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Zeus, the Temple of Artemis, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Lighthouse at Alexandria. That makes the seven with your two.’
‘Thanks, that’s great, isn’t it, Gran?’
‘Oh yes,’ Eileen O’Donovan says brusquely, ‘the wonders of education for those lucky enough to have the advantage.’
Liv blinks. Is she supposed to apologize for knowing? ‘My pleasure,’ she says and because of that remark she adds, ‘Any other answers you don’t know?’
‘No, that’s the lot. Are you in a big library?’
‘Pretty big, it serves a London borough.’
‘Do you get to read a lot?’
‘Not as much as I’d like. I’m hoping to catch up on some books while I’m here.’
‘Oh, for sure
and you should have the peace and quiet anyhow, up there alone, not a soul to bother you,’ Mrs O’Donovan says.
‘I hope so. I had my first visitor today though, my uncle.’
Mrs O’Donovan straightens up, her pencilled eyebrows arching high with surprise. ‘Would that be Owen Farrell?’
‘That’s right. It’s ages since I saw him.’
Mrs O’Donovan nods. ‘It’s a long time since he’s been to Glenkeen, that’s for certain. Did you hear that, Johneen?’ She called to the barman. ‘Owen Farrell was up at Glenkeen today.’
The barman scratches his nose with a tea towel. ‘Ah well, it’s not a no-go area these days, I suppose. Times change, and isn’t it just as well that they do.’
The television blares the evening news and several customers hurry in, calling greetings. The pub is suddenly busy and humming. An old man throws another lump of turf on the fire, creating a shower of sparks that glint scarlet in the mirror behind Johneen.
‘We must go, Carmel’s daddy will be here soon but can I interest you in a raffle ticket?’ Eileen O’Donovan reaches into her shoulder bag. ‘It’s for a health centre in West Africa, I run it every year, and they’re only a pound each.’
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 7