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

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  ‘Yes. Barbara. She’s a pleasant enough woman and Dad’s content with her. She has quite a few health problems and he likes looking after her.’ She leaves a pause, then says, ‘when I mentioned in Crowley’s that you’d called on me, there was great interest. Mrs O’Donovan’s eyebrows vanished into her hairline.’

  He forks spitting sausages. ‘I can imagine. I hadn’t been to Glenkeen for nearly thirty years. Long time. Now Toby, Toby! Are you going to have a sausage?’

  The dog opens one eye, yawns and turns around before settling back to sleep.

  ‘He’s too well fed.’

  She stands with a bottle of ketchup in her hand, perplexed. ‘Do you mean you didn’t see Nanna in all that time?’

  ‘Ah no, we met up every Christmas Eve in the town for a pot of tea and a chat. You know, neutral territory.’ He shakes the pan, flipping bacon over. He is an extravagant, messy cook. He is frying in butter and spattering grease on the hob. He flips a mushroom high in the air with the wooden spoon and catches it in his mouth. ‘Perfecto. We’re ready to roll now. Have we butter?’

  Questions are jostling on her tongue. ‘We have. I’m starving, I had some blackberries ages ago.’

  He hands her a heaped plate. ‘There now, that’ll put hairs on your chest.’’ He pours strong, dark tea from a teapot with a knitted cosy.

  She tucks in. It is cooked to perfection, the bacon and sausage crisp, the tomatoes browned, the eggs firm but runny. She dips bread into the egg yolk.

  ‘Oh,’ she exults, ‘it’s wonderful. You know, I’ve been for some posh meals in London but this is hard to beat. What is it with men and fry-ups? My husband, Douglas, has to have one every Sunday morning, even in a heatwave.’

  He spears a tomato, holding his fork in the air. ‘It’s slow-burn food, so it keeps you going while you’re out hunting and gathering.’

  ‘And what do you hunt and gather?’

  ‘Not a lot these days. Most of the land here is rented out. I dabble a bit in antiques, buying and selling and I still go up to Dublin occasionally and do some work, radio stuff mostly. But even as an actor, you suffer the invisibility of age, especially as we have such a young population.’

  ‘You’re an actor?’ She puts her fork down and takes a gulp of tea, scalding her tongue.

  ‘Yes, on and off, over the years. More off than on.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘No? Well, I’ve no idea what you do.’

  ‘I’m a librarian.’

  ‘So, we both have careers in the printed word. More tea?’

  She holds her mug out. ‘I know almost nothing about my father’s family. My mother was an only child, adopted, and her parents were dead, so that’s a simple story. But the Callaghans and the Farrells; my father’s hardly ever spoken about them.’

  Owen stirs three spoons of sugar into his tea. ‘I suppose when you emigrate everything changes for you, distance is inevitable. And it works both ways — the people left behind may know very little of the emigrant’s family. I didn’t know you had a husband called Douglas.’

  She curls her fingers around the warm mug. ‘Yes, he’s a GP.’

  ‘And what does he think of your legacy?’

  ‘I’m not sure, yet. Listen, I have to ask; what’s the story about you and Glenkeen? There are lots of hints and allusions. I can remember a letter and Nanna being upset. Why did you meet her on neutral territory, did something happen?’

  He wrinkles his nose at her, waves a dismissive hand. ‘Ah, that’s old history, best left well buried in an unmarked plot. This country’s blight, clinging to what’s past. Move on, that’s my motto.’

  An expert herself at avoiding the tricky interrogator, she understands that she has trespassed, and is embarrassed at her rushed questioning. ‘What have you acted in — any films?’

  ‘Just a couple, bit parts, you know — the traffic warden or the man outside the tube station who says, “that’s OK, guv,” when someone’s trodden on his toe.’

  ‘Oh, so you acted in London?’

  ‘A couple of times. Last time was in the early seventies.’

  ‘Did you stay with us, I can’t remember.’

  ‘No, I was in a B and B in Hammersmith, near the river. I used to watch the rowers in the early morning. I loved the Thames. My landlady was a Jehovah’s Witness, she used to try and convert me over breakfast.’ He nods at her plate. ‘That hardly touched the sides.’

  ‘Food always tastes good when someone’s cooked it for you.’

  ‘So how are you faring in your cottage?’

  ‘Fine. I’m sleeping deeply, I haven’t slept so well for years. And I’m finding time to read. Time to just be.’

  ‘Ah yes, company’s good but so is rich solitude.’

  She seizes the timely cue. ‘And you, have you ever married?’

  He lines his cutlery up on his plate, balancing the handles. ‘I married, yes. It didn’t work out. We’ve been apart many years. My wife lives five miles away.’

  ‘And do you see her?’

  ‘No. Or only by accident. Sometimes I see her in the car with her brother, or maybe across the street in Castlegray.’

  He’s looking thoughtful, mellow, so she risks a further question. ‘Did you have children?’

  ‘No. That’s a regret. I haven’t had much talent for loving, though, so maybe it was for the best.’ He rubs his chin and looks at Liv. ‘It’s strange, you know, I miss Edith, my wife, more now than I did after we parted. I never expected to miss her so keenly after so many years.’

  She nods, not knowing what to say. ‘I remembered something else about you last night,’ she tells him. ‘There is a gramophone at the cottage, a wind-up one with a horn and you told me that a man called Charlie lived in there and sang the songs. I used to put sweets down the horn for him in case he was hungry.’

  ‘Just as well I didn’t have children, they’d have turned out head cases.’

  The cooling frying pan gives a sigh and settles on the hob. Toby wakes, licks his coat and pads to Owen, laying his muzzle on his knee.

  ‘Well now, Toby, what do you think of our visitor from over the sea? Isn’t she a breath of fresh air in our male stronghold?’ He holds out a scrap of bacon rind and the dog licks it efficiently from his palm.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Liv says, gathering crumbs from the table and dusting them on to her plate, ‘you could give petrol pump Peadar artichoke tortilla; that would floor him.’

  Owen pats Toby. ‘You see,’ he confides to the dog, ‘she’s a kindred spirit, a fellow voyager on the ship of life.’

  Chapter 6

  The afternoon is hot with a light breeze as she drives back. The car speeds along the roads, the sun glancing through the windows, warming her face. There are drifts of dandelion in the air, white dancing fluff. They look like hope. When she arrives at the cottage she takes her swimming costume from over the fire and makes for the sea. It is a ten minute walk, with a narrow path at the bottom of the second field that leads down steeply to the deep cove. She has seen no one else here. The sand is smooth, no other footprint. The sea is calm, whispering in. Far out, on the horizon, is a tanker. It looks becalmed. She slips into the water, shaking her head at the slight chill, walking until she is up to her waist. The sand shelves away slowly; as she feels the clammy kiss of seaweed on her calves she launches forward and swims out towards the tanker. She floats, wondering where the great vessel is heading. The sun shimmers on the water, creating diamonds in the tips of the waves. From nowhere slides a memory of being in Cyprus with Douglas, falling asleep on a beach after drinking retsina and eating glossy spiced olives. He had to be careful of his pale skin becoming sunburned so they sprawled under a canvas umbrella. Just now, she misses him, wishes she could have that man again, the one who used to make her laugh with stories of eccentric patients, the one who taught her how to do handstands and back flips in the sand and could do uncanny impressions of Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson.

  After a while she g
rows terribly thirsty; Owen had been liberal with the salt and the sea spray on her lips makes her dry. Once out of the sea, she hops over the stile that leads back into the garden, thinking that she will have a glass of water and then a nap. It is warm enough to lie outside. As she passes the tomato bed she sees a man at the back door. He has his back to her and an envelope in his hand. The bright sun is in her eyes and she can just make out his shape, the check plaid of the shirt he wears outside his jeans. She steps to one side, into the shade of a rhododendron and sees the head, drinks in the stance. He is wearing a workman’s boots, high around the ankles. Owen’s fry-up lurches mutinously in her stomach and she swallows. Her tongue is parched.

  ‘Yes?’ she calls, her voice sliding, like an old woman’s.

  He turns and stands still, cradling the envelope in two hands before him. ‘Hallo, Liv.’

  ‘Aidan.’ She holds on to the damp bundle of costume and towel. Water is trickling from her hair, sending a chill along her neck.

  ‘I’m sorry to give you a shock. I was about to leave you a note.’

  He has grey hairs over his ears. He wears glasses, fashionable dark rectangles. The breeze catches the edge of the envelope, rustling the white paper. A grasshopper clicks nearby.

  She hasn’t felt faint since the age of nine, when she’d keeled over after Mass one Sunday in the churchyard and been sick amongst the daffodils. She’d been worried because she had vomited up the Host — the guilt had invaded her sleep — and the next week in confession, she had informed the priest that she’d sicked up God. He’d reassured her that God would understand that this had not been a deliberate rejection of His body and blood.

  ‘How?’ she asks, and her voice reverberates in her head.

  ‘I live in Castlegray. I saw you at Redden’s Cross.’ He shrugs.

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘Yes. I moved here two years ago.’

  ‘God. I mean, that’s just . . . incredible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m . . . well, let me open the door. I can’t think in this sun.’

  She turns, goes in. The kitchen is shaded, the fire a quiet glow. Her T-shirt and shorts are sticking to her. I must look a fright, she thinks. Her knickers and bra hang there brazenly over the fireplace. She feels panicky. There is a fist now in her stomach, squeezing and turning.

  She falls back on the social nicety her mother would use in such a situation; usually when the priest called and she wasn’t decent. The worst occasion was on an afternoon when her mother had been using a depilatory cream on her legs, a thick pink layer, and Father Dorkan’s broad figure had loomed outside the front door. As he pressed the bell her mother had quickly washed her legs, using the shower head frantically so that it sprayed all over the bathroom floor. The pungent smell of the cosmetic, of decaying roses, filled the house. Father Dorkan had wrinkled his nose and grimaced. His eyes had taken in her mother’s bare legs, the skin inflamed from a rough towelling.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting visitors,’ Liv says now.

  ‘I’m sorry to arrive like this. In a way, I was relieved that you were out. I was going to put this note through the front door.’

  ‘Just as well you didn’t try. The letter box is stuck. The postman leaves stuff inside the shed if I’m not in. Not that there’s much post. I’ve been swimming.’ She fingers her hair, squeezing the ends.

  ‘Is the sea warm enough?’

  ‘Not really, but it’s so inviting and I love to swim, but I hate the chlorinated pools of London.’

  ‘You still live there?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve never moved, since university. I had no travel bug.’ There is a silence. A log shifts in the fire.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’m dying for a hot drink after the cold water.’

  He looks at his watch. A lock of hair dangles over his forehead and he pushes it back impatiently. ‘Thanks; that would be good.’

  She rakes the fire and throws clods of turf on, pulls the kettle over and while it bubbles, takes the tin of tea from the mantelpiece overhead. While she fiddles with the teapot, he moves to the front window and looks out, arms folded across his chest. He blocks the light and while his back is turned she snatches her underwear from the line and shoves it behind a cushion on the settee. God, she thinks, this is like a drawing-room comedy and nothing like a comedy at the same time. She makes the tea clumsily, spilling leaves on to the hearth, splashing hot water over her foot. The shock brings her into herself, calms her.

  They pull two chairs to either side of the fire and sit there drinking their tea. If anyone looked through the window, she realises, they’d think we were Darby and Joan, together for years, indulging in our afternoon ritual. She looks directly at him, returning his gaze.

  ‘I feel sick, as if I’d been punched in the stomach. That’s the second time in my life you’ve made me feel like that; once with a goodbye and now with a hallo.’

  He sits the way he always sat, the way big men do, leaning forward slightly, legs apart and forearms resting on his thighs, balancing his teacup in the air. ‘I can only say that I’m sorry and I am. I was cruel. I’d have understood if you’d refused to let me in, let alone making me a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’d always make you a cup of tea. Of course, you don’t know what I might have slipped in it. You could be sipping with the Lucretia Borgia of county Cork.’

  He drinks and pulls a face. ‘Ah yes,’ he nods, ‘bitter almonds.’ He puts the cup down on the grate, touches the bellows. ‘This is a lovely cottage. I like the way it stands high in the glen. It gives you the feeling that you can breathe.’

  ‘It beats London at the moment, that’s for certain. This is where I came when you dumped me. I stayed for a week, holed up, licking my wounds. Isn’t it strange that you should appear here, of all the places we could have met?’ She wants to lash him with hurtful words; she never had a chance before. She’s shocked at herself, that so much rancour could have survived the years and spill from her tongue, unbidden. There are things it’s better not to know about yourself, better not to trawl the deep-shelved caverns of your own enmity.

  He winces, shaking his head.

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘Castlegray. That’s where I live and work.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I sell fruit and vegetables.’

  ‘And do you enjoy that?’

  ‘Yes. I had — well, a kind of breakdown a couple of years ago, I was in a bad way. I had to change my life.’

  ‘Did your past catch up with you?’ Now she winces at herself. ‘I’m sorry, that’s a nasty thing to have said. I’m in shock, seeing you like this. I can just about hold the cup steady.’

  ‘I know. I only appear a bit steadier because I’ve had a week’s head start, time to think. It’s all right, you haven’t said anything I don’t deserve. You’ve not said anything I haven’t said to myself, many times.’

  They both sip their tea in a kind of truce.

  ‘And you, Liv, how has your life been?’

  ‘Eventful, not always as I’d imagined it. I find that I’m happy here. I sleep and I don’t recall dreaming. In London, my sleep rampages with busy, technicolour dreams. I wake up stunned some mornings, it can take me half the day to straighten my head. Here I’m pacing myself, taking my time, and breathing. I’d forgotten how to breathe.’

  He looks at her, nods, a peaceable glance. She thinks, he understands what I’m saying. How come it’s so easy to talk to him after all this time?

  ‘Where did you go, Aidan, when you left London?’

  ‘More like where I didn’t go! India, South America, Australia and lots of other places.’

  ‘I used to think that maybe one day I’d get a postcard, a phone call. You never thought of getting in touch?’

  He sighs, shifting his shoulders. ‘I thought of it, of course. But I reckoned it wouldn’t be fair on you. What would I have said? Life changes shape. I liked to think that you were better off without
me.’ He gulps the last of his tea, glances at his watch again.

  ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she says, making her voice chilly. ‘You seem anxious about the time.’

  ‘I do have to go now, I have to fetch my daughter. I called on impulse. I didn’t know at all if it was the right thing and I didn’t mean to stay.’ He rises and takes his van keys from his pocket, jingling them by his side.

  She stays sitting, keeping by the fire’s warmth, protected by her own hearth.

  ‘I’d like to leave you the letter anyway,’ he says. ‘I wrote at least half a dozen that I threw away, like some awkward teenager. My mobile phone number is in it. If you want to get in touch with me, I’d like to see you again. But I’ll understand if you don’t. I thought I ought to warn you that I’m around because we’d bump into each other eventually.’ He walks to the door, opens the latch and stands half-turned, looking down. ‘Since I saw you last week, I haven’t stopped thinking of you and how I treated you. I still love you, for what it’s worth.’

  She listens to his footsteps growing fainter. She pours herself another cup of tea and stirs the fire. She sits for a long time, until the sun has moved away and the tea dregs in her cup are completely cold. Leaning forward, she takes the poker and writes her name in the ashes at the front of the fire, as she had in childhood.

  The letter is on the dresser, her name on the envelope in his neat, precise writing. When they first met he wrote to her every day on cream vellum notepaper, a thick, top quality brand that absorbed the ink, securing it. His outpourings of affection had bathed her in love. She still has all that correspondence tucked in a box in the loft at home. She reaches for this letter, written on plain white paper, a functional note, and takes it to the window.

  Dear Liv,

  I’ve made a number of attempts at writing. I’ve found out that you’re staying here. I live nearby. It’s a long story. I’d like to see you. I’m married, with a daughter.

  My number is below.

  I wouldn’t just like to see you, I’d give anything to see you, talk to you.

  Aidan