‘We get photos from the nurses,’ Carmel informs her, ‘and this year we’re buying them proper toilets and showers.’
Liv gets out her purse. ‘Of course, I’ll take a couple.’
‘The prizes aren’t great, but sure it’s the cause that’s important,’ Eileen O’Donovan says, handing over the tickets. She is standing very close. Liv moves her chair back.
‘First prize is a big basket of my dad’s stuff from his stall,’ Carmel adds. ‘It comes with a lovely red ribbon round it. Last year someone said it was like a work of art, they said it could be in that place in London, that gallery where they had the bricks.’
‘Tate Modern,’ Liv tells her. ‘Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I win it — you never know, I might sell it to an art dealer and make my fortune.’ She folds the tickets, thinking how fortunate it is that Carmel’s huge limpid eyes save her serious face from looking fractious.
Aidan pushes open the pub door and peers in. The warmth bathes his face, misting his glasses. The malty scent of stout washes over him. There was no reply at the shop and Eileen likes a chat with Johneen in the evenings when trade is slow and she gets fidgety. She is a woman with a low boredom threshold. As he looks around, using his fingers like windscreen wipers across his lenses, he sees them across the room; Eileen and Carmel with their backs to him and Liv with head bent, zipping her purse. She is wearing silver ear-rings with inset blue stones that sway as she moves. Her ears are small and neat; she has a habit of tucking her hair behind them before she eats. The breeze catches his shirt, chilling his damp scalp. He backs out, letting the door slam and hurries across the road to his van. Climbing in, he sits, staring through the oily windscreen at the rain and the blurred lights of cars turning at the crossroads. He has parked on this spot hundreds of times but he’s never before noticed that the gate at the side of Crowley’s has a lion’s head on the right-hand post. He thinks how easy it is not to see the obvious.
Leaning forward, he grips the steering wheel, rubbing the clammy, familiar ridges. He says her name in the safety of the cab: Liv. It sounds like a caress. He repeats it, over and over, tapping the wheel, chanting so that she has become a mantra. He knows in that moment, with a sense of delight and desolation, that he has never stopped loving her. He has been travelling and living and marrying and becoming a father and all the time she has been there like a subtle melody that plays through your days without you noticing. And now his love has become a destitute refugee, looking for acceptance, hoping for shelter.
His life seems strange to him, as if he barely inhabits it. His reflection in the windscreen is indistinct. Forgetting his daughter, the homework she will have, the spaghetti he’s supposed to be cooking, he starts the engine and drives aimlessly around the roads. To be moving is not having to think. He’s the man who is supposed to have had his mid-life crisis; certainly, he knows that that’s how Maeve interpreted his change of career. He’d heard segments of the sotto voce phone conversations with her mother, when she thought he wasn’t listening: ‘they say that men have hormone swings too, I read an article about it in Cosmopolitan . . . he says it’s as if he’s driven into a brick wall . . .’
The rain withdraws, slowly and stubbornly, the sky washed and soft. The hedgerows are drenched. He passes the sculpture to the dead of the Civil war and a small Celtic cross at the side of the road, marking where a woman was killed by a runaway tractor in 1947. The van drifts along, guiding itself.
There is a deserted, decaying house a couple of miles on. The man who had lived in it was a bachelor with no relatives. There’s talk that a Dublin family might buy it, if they can get a grant to do it up. He turns in to the track and stops by the barred gate. Pushing his way through the tangle of brambles and dog roses, he walks to the back. Sheep have been here, nibbling the sweet grass down to short tufts, leaving their droppings. He bends double, letting his head hang between his knees, arms dangling so that the sound of blood in his ears will drown out the confusion roaring through his brain. He breathes noisily in and out, great whooshes of air. His diaphragm rises and falls. He thinks back to the yoga he practised in Bombay and tries to concentrate only on that intake and exhalation. Then he sits on a wooden chair that’s been left next to a rusting lawn mower and presses his hands to his thighs to stop them trembling.
* * *
The day is set fair, the promised fine weather arriving stealthily during the night. Liv wakes to a clear sky and a bold sun. She throws the bedroom window open and holds her hands out, as if she could catch the drifting sweetness in the air. Isn’t it something, she thinks, to be responsible for nobody but myself, to have to account only for myself? There is a thin mist at sea, hanging lazily on the horizon but this will burn away by mid-morning. The breeze is salted, tangy and the earth, still warm, is taking its final breaths before hunkering down for the winter.
She has a routine going now, the days measured; trips to the well morning and evening frame the hours in between. By the water, she listens carefully to the murmuring and drinks deeply, hoping to imbibe some badly needed wisdom and regeneration.
First thing, she breathes life back into the fire and breakfasts on eggs or bread and blackberries from the garden. Then she washes, kneeling in front of the fire, dipping the flannel into a dish of hot water. Every other morning she washes her hair, rinsing it outside, shaking it dry in the sun. The soft water is making it glossy, taming her natural frizz. When she looks in the mirror she sees someone different; it is as if she has been freshly ironed. The well is working its magic, she thinks. Each morning she hand washes her underwear from the day before and hangs it on the line stretching across the heavy beam above the grate. All her clothes are scented now with peat, as if she spends her time stoking bonfires. She tidies the kitchen and wanders outside, exploring for vegetables and fruit.
For lunch she has bread and cheese, sitting on a chair by the honeysuckle that frames the back door. She washes the food down with creamy milk. The bread is nutty, heavy, the cheese sharp. She likes the solid sensation in her stomach. She reads for a while, then dozes in the sun. When she wakes she goes for a swim and floats, gazing at the unusually blue sky. She is eating bulkier food and more than she’s used to, yet she feels lighter, unburdened. There are times when she finds herself smiling for no reason.
For her evening meal she eats the thick soup she has made in the biggest pot; every day she adds another handful of vegetables and lets it simmer away. She reads again with a lamp at her elbow until her eyes grow tired. She makes cocoa to take to bed and lies in the dark, sipping.
There is a hypnotic quality to this routine. She deliberately leaves her watch in the dresser and judges the hours by her hunger and the light. Her thoughts are abstract and random. At times her mind is almost still. She rarely thinks of Douglas. These hours and days have the rhythm of childhood, a time when the hardest lessons were how to tie your shoe laces and the moon riding the night sky outside your window was undoubtedly made of green cheese. It strikes her that she is living her grandmother’s existence, without the hard work and that this is the true inheritance.
Today is going to be different; she is planning to visit Owen. She props the window open, heads downstairs for coffee and sets off for the well, selecting blackberries on the way. The seeds hide between her teeth and she seeks them with her tongue, crunching them. Kneeling, she drenches her face and listens to the spring’s musings. The shape of her head is reflected back, wavering. She recalls her father kneeling in the same spot, drawing his fingers through the water. She has a notion, like a nerve that twitches involuntarily, inexplicably, that at some point in his life her father lost his energy and confidence. Barbara suits him because he can hide behind the curtain of her ailments. She is also frightened of Ireland and its troubles and this is fine with Liv’s father, who visited Glenkeen even less frequently after his remarriage.
On the way back to the house she picks more blackberries, for Owen. She assumes that a man who can do a fry-up mi
ght stretch to a blackberry tart or crumble. In the middle of the night she had woken and retrieved a whisper of information that Owen married but it didn’t last. She doesn’t know how she came by this information or whether it is true — maybe it had been the cause of her grandmother saying he would travel the sorrowful road or it was in one of the letters that used to arrive from Nanna or from Uncle Brendan who is Father Brendan, running a parish in Saskatchewan. Her father would read aloud from these letters over breakfast, snippets of news about Castlegray, people who had moved away or died, or the successful whist drive that Brendan had recently organised. But there were times when he would stop, shoot a significant glance at her mother and turn the page. Then, once Liv had left the room, she would hear them talking in low voices; spsss spsss, like the noise that came from the tap when her father was replacing a washer. Sometimes she would move near the door and listen but could only ever catch phrases; ‘the waters broke early . . . never another word exchanged . . . they had to send for the doctor . . .’
Certainly, a talent for fry-ups could indicate a bachelor life; when she visits today, she will see for herself. There are bush tomatoes in a plot near the back door and she picks ripe ones, putting these in a carrier bag next to the blackberries.
On her way to Owen’s house, she posts the note she’s written to Douglas. With no internet in the glen, they have agreed they will need to use texts or old-fashioned snail mail. She has enjoyed the odd exercise of putting pen to paper and finds she can be kinder to him on the page.
I’d forgotten how enchanted this place is; the air is sweet and the silence pure. I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. I am swimming in the sea. The forecast Indian summer has arrived and the water is a shock at first, but then warm enough. I’ve had a chance to explore the garden now. I found potatoes and a purplish green bean, spinach, onions and a big bed of tomatoes, the small sweet kind. My very own harvest. I have a big soup/casserole on the go all the time. I’m going to see my great-uncle Owen who has a slightly abstracted air. He’s a bit like a north London intellectual to look at. Some kind of scandal surrounds him from way back, the kind that means your name isn’t mentioned. The cottage is pretty shipshape for now and with Owen’s advice I’ve got the knack of keeping the fire in which saves on labour and firelighters, although sometimes it takes too long to rekindle and I cheat. The place will need some work doing longer term, though. It’s nice to lie in the sun and daydream about it. Reminds me of when we were buying our house and we sat up late at night, doing drawings of how we’d arrange things, have the fireplaces put back, knock through the kitchen and scullery. I never expected our life together to turn out like this. I don’t understand why it has. There are times when I’ve thought that I must have disappointed you in some way; that the drink fills a gap I’ve left.
I want you to succeed at AA. You’re muffled in a cocoon, there’s a dense, impenetrable blanket wrapped around you. If you can imagine a life without a drink then you can have such a life. Please try.
I’m happy here. I’d forgotten the simple trick of being happy. I’m sure we had it once.
Don’t forget to pay the window cleaner.
On the way to Castlegray she passes modern bungalows and cultivated gardens, a place selling tourist goods with a tea shop attached, a building with a plaque saying it had once been a national school and is now a craft centre selling pottery and tweed. Nearing the town, she stops at a garage and asks for Owen Farrell of Lissan. A skinny man with thick glasses is sitting on a camping stool at the side of the petrol pumps, drinking from an enamel mug and reading a newspaper. He nods, telling her to carry on straight for a mile, then right at a T-junction and she’ll find the house up on the left on the corner, a couple of hundred yards past the creamery.
‘It has wrought-iron gates, tall yokes. If you’re going up there, would you fetch his shopping? I’ve it ready inside. It’d save me a trip.’
She says of course and he disappears, returning with a large cardboard box which he places on the back seat of the car.
‘Could you tell him as well for me that Jimmy’ll be up to look at the septic tank Monday week?’ He scratches his head. ‘Would you be the niece from London?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yes, he said there was a young girl over. Well, good luck, now.’
She follows the directions and turns at the junction on to a single track road. She sees the sign for the creamery, with a smiling cow like the one on a French cheese and drives on slowly. The gates are old, tall and open, leading on to a long driveway bordered by trees. His blue car is parked outside the house, a substantial, traditional double-fronted building — handsome, imposing, even. She is surprised, having been expecting a cottage or farmhouse.
She hefts the box from the car and knocks at the front door but there is no reply. When she looks in at the two front windows set on either side of the door the place seems empty. The room on the left is lined with bookshelves and dotted with armchairs, the one on the right holds a large dining table and chairs. She walks around the side of the house, along a narrow path, to the back door. The corners of the box are rubbing her arms. The back door is open. She knocks and waits but there is no response. She pushes against it and walks into a turf-scented, square kitchen which is so full of light, she blinks.
The dog is asleep in a basket by the range and Owen is sitting at the kitchen table by the window with his back to her. He has earphones on and is reading a book. She moves across the stone flagged floor and he looks up as her shadow falls on the book.
‘I didn’t know petrol pump Peadar had taken on new help,’ he says, removing the earphones.
‘Yes, his rates are impressive and he referred to me as a girl. He said to tell you that Jimmy will be here to look at the septic tank on Monday week.’ She puts the box on the table.
‘Typical, putting things on the long finger.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The long finger; putting something off, postponing things, mañana; the curse and blessing of this country.’ He tilts his chair back, closing his book with his nicotine-stained fingers. ‘So you came and you got directions from Peadar?’
‘Yes, and I brought you blackberries and tomatoes from Glenkeen.’ She looks at the book. It is the story of Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect. She’d read it several years back, when Douglas was on a more rigorous than usual bender and she’d wanted complete distraction. She knows the detailed framework of her life, the hows, whys and whens in terms of Douglas’s liquid intake. Owen sees her glance.
‘Herr Speer,’ he says. ‘I think the woman writing about him fell in love with him.’
She nods. ‘When I read that book I understood for the first time how charismatic Hitler was, I appreciated what drew people to him. Before that, I’d only ever seen him as a demon or a strutting fool.’
He looks at her with approval. Today he is wearing a green waistcoat and brown corduroy trousers. With his glasses perched halfway down his nose and his wild shock of hair, he looks as if he is about to give a poetry reading in Hampstead. He picks up a cushiony plastic tube, like one of those executive stress toys, and works it with his left hand, squeezing and relaxing.
‘It’s a fascinating story, but I have to listen to Verdi while I read it, to balance the taint of it all, the flavour of corruption. Take the weight off your feet.’ He gestures at a chair.
She sits, pushing the box further along the table. He draws it towards him and peers in. ‘Ah yes, the usual gourmet fare; soups, pilchards, sausages. Oh, and some surprise tinned artichokes. You know, I don’t really need the delivery any more. It was handy a couple of years back one winter when I had terrible bronchitis and was as weak as water. Now I can’t bear to cancel because Peadar always puts in something unexpected to see will I say anything. Last time it was dried bananas, the time before that, coconut milk.’
‘And do you — say anything?’
‘No, that’s the joy of the game. But one day when Peadar drops in, you
see, I’ll make him an artichoke sandwich or put coconut milk in his tea and he won’t know what it is but he won’t be able to ask and then we’ll be square. You have to make your own amusements in the countryside.’
The dog gives a loud snore and twitches noisily.
‘That’s not much of a guard dog,’ Liv says. ‘I could have been a burglar.’
‘Toby? Sure, he’s nearly as old as his master and half deaf.’ He turns in his chair. ‘Toby! Toby! Cats, the place is awash with cats! See?’ he says, as the dog sleeps on. ‘A hopeless article. Now, I usually have brunch around noon. Will you join me?’
‘A famous fry-up?’
‘That’s it. One of those inside you, you won’t need much for the rest of the day.’
While he juggles bacon, sausages, eggs, white pudding, potato bread and tomatoes in a vast cast-iron frying pan, she follows his instructions and lays the table. His cupboards are wide and deep and smell of allspice. He burrows for bread in Peadar’s box and saws slices, holding the loaf against his chest and cutting towards himself.
‘You look very like your mother,’ he says, dropping the slices roughly on a plate.
She puts the salt and pepper cruets on the table. ‘Mrs O’Donovan at Redden’s Cross said I look like my dad.’
He snorts. ‘What would that old biddy know?’ He mimics her. ‘Oh, for sure, aren’t you terrible like your daddy?’
Liv giggles. ‘Why does she talk like that?’
‘She went off to America a while back, came back with startlingly white teeth, a new hairdo and that “for sure” affectation. You have your mother’s expression — and the freckles. How long has Mollie been gone now?’
‘Seven years, nearly. I miss her every day. She was so lively, a buzz came into a room with her.’
‘I remember. She had the gift of making laughter. And your father remarried?’
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 8