He rubs the kaftan, admires its weft. ‘This is lovely; you looked like a white witch through the window.’
‘Douglas bought it for me in San Sebastian. I always think it looks a bit ecclesiastical.’
‘Douglas is your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘Yes, an exhausted, faded kind of love. Do you love Maeve?’
‘Yes, an apprehensive, guilty kind of love.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes. I must have all down the years but didn’t know until I saw you again, walking away from the shop at Redden’s Cross. It was as if I’d been in a Rip Van Winkle slumber.’
‘When was that, when you saw me?’
‘The day you arrived.’
‘This is hard to believe. My stomach is doing somersaults. It’s a small world here, Eileen O’Donovan being your mother-in-law.’ She is conscious of her insides squeaking and groaning, like an orchestra tuning up.
He moves an ear to her midriff. ‘I can hear it, having its own conversation. My right eyelid twitches these days when I’m nervous. It’s been on overdrive the last weeks.’
She peers. ‘Oh it is, the skin is crinkling! It used to be your right eyebrow, you’d worry it with your fingertip when you were anxious until there was a bald patch at the edge. Before your dissertation had to be in I thought you’d wear it away completely.’
He sighs, relaxed. ‘I’ve no nerves now. I’m where I want to be.’
They are talking quickly, tripping over words, replying hastily. She wonders is it because they have so much to say after so long or because they both know his time is limited, measured? She pushes the thought away. The reality of his being here is almost too much to absorb. She strokes his hair back. It’s still full bodied and strong.
‘When did you get rid of your ’tache?’
‘Oh, years ago, in Cartagena.’
‘You travelled in faraway places for a good while, then?’
‘For several years, then I got a job in Manchester. I met a guy in Bucharest who was starting up a computer company. He offered me work back in England. I found that I had an unexpected aptitude for computer language. You finished your degree?’
He’s always worried that she might not have, could have dropped out after the trauma of his leaving. Just another of the little guilt debts that have kept him awake at night and ambushed him in his dreams.
‘Oh yes. Then went into libraries. I manage one now. Where are you supposed to be tonight?’
‘I remember that about you, the way you slip in the unexpected, incisive question. I’m out checking orders; I do home deliveries, boxes of vegetables.’
‘I tasted your jam. It’s delicious. Did Carmel write the label?’
‘Yes. I make the jam, she readies the jars and sees to the wax discs and the labelling.’
‘She can look very serious.’
‘I know, she was born with a grave expression, as if life was a burden she had to shoulder. Then she had terrible colic as a baby, it went on for months. She used to look so miserable. Sometimes I think the pain leached away some of her capacity for joy.’ He used to walk her up and down for hours as she squirmed and moaned, holding her over his shoulder, rubbing her hot little back. ‘Don’t worry ’bout a thing,’ he’d sing to her, shifting her to the other side when his neck began to ache.
Liv sits up to throw another chunk of turf on the fire. They lie, watching it smoulder and catch flame. She rests her hand on his thigh, claiming him. She feels that he is a glorious reward that she has long awaited.
He feels the heat on his skin and is glad of it. He has goose pimples of pleasure and fear all over his body, little rushes of amazement. This is what he has missed, the way she speaks directly, the strong glint in her eye, her bullshit detector. She had never let him get away with anything until the night he’d told her it was over, and then she’d been too stunned to put up a fight. She’d steadied him; he knew he was prone to flights of fancy and she had been an anchor. A pity he hadn’t understood that back then.
‘Look at your hands,’ she says. ‘They’re rough. Your skin is peeling on the thumb.’
‘I’m always scraping them on boxes.’
She takes his right hand and massages it, working along each finger, pressing the joints. ‘You said something about a breakdown. What happened?’
‘I’m not sure. I started to feel as if I wasn’t me, somehow. There were days, weeks, when I didn’t seem to be breathing. The office was like a jail, somewhere I’d been sentenced to.’ He stops; he’s never told anyone the next part. Liv carries on silently smoothing his hand. ‘Well, there were some allotments I used to see on the way into work every day. They looked so quiet and green; some were a bit overgrown and shady. It struck me that there’d be no spotlight on me in there. I’d worked for a while during my travels in a market garden near Rouen and I knew I had a talent, one that I’d forgotten somewhere along the way, for growing and selling produce. One morning I started driving to the office but I didn’t arrive. I stopped at the allotments and chatted with an old chap who spent all his time there. The rain came on so we sat in his shed. It was a little home from home; two battered old leather armchairs, curtains at the windows, a cupboard with tea, coffee and cups. He had a footstool for when he wanted a snooze. He got out biscuits and made tea. It was the tea that did it really, finally. He took time with it, made it with fresh leaves, on a primus stove. We watched the blue flame and listened to the hiss and the echoing of the rain. He heated the pot with boiling water and we waited for it to brew. It was dark and delicious, no scum in the cup; it had a taste! We dunked our custard creams and they were ambrosial. It struck me that I spent my days staring at a screen, hardly tasting the food and drink I ate from cardboard containers; if anyone had asked me what I’d had for lunch I’d be hard put to remember. We sat and sipped and looked out on his rows of runner beans and I knew I was alive. Back home, I told Maeve I wanted to grow and sell vegetables for a living.’
‘That must have been quite a shock.’
‘She asked me to see the doctor, so I did. I took an antidepressant for a couple of weeks. It made me feel better, as if I was wrapped in a snug jacket, but it didn’t improve the office; I just saw the place through a pleasant haze. So in the end we sold up and moved here. We could get a lot more for our money and Eileen’s a boon in terms of childcare.’
She folds his hand and tucks it between them. ‘Any regrets?’
‘None, except the proximity of my mother-in-law but that’s a price worth paying.’
She laughs. ‘She promotes your produce, especially your spuds. One night I’m going to bake potatoes on the hearth like my grandmother used to. They taste charred, smoky.’
‘This is such a lovely place. It’s simple, clean lines. Unfussy. Can you feel her here, your grandmother?’
‘I can. When I close my eyes I can hear her humming and the switch switch of her brush as she swept the floor. She’d throw the door open and fling the dust into the hedge, saying, ‘good riddance to bad rubbish.’ I’m lucky to have this. It succoured me when I came here, weeping after you said goodbye. It’s where I came to grieve you and it’s where you’ve come back to me. Have you come back to me?’
‘I have no right to, but I have.’
‘Yes.’ She cups his chin. ‘You used to call me Liv-of-my-life. You said that this was it, this was for ever. That was the hardest thing when you told me you were leaving, it was as if all that must have been lies.’
His eyes fill, brimming. ‘I wasn’t lying, the feelings were real. I took fright, I was young and I became terrified by the statements, the promises I’d made. I was callow and stupid and fascinated by myself, convinced that I was entitled to roam the globe. I have no excuse, only that reason.’
‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘Let’s not talk any more about that. You’re here, we’re here now. I remember the feel of you. Your shoulders are heavier, you’re more solid.
’ She holds him to her, relishing his dense sinews, her lost companion in life. Now she wishes she’d gone after him like a camp follower, pursuing him around the world, refusing to be cast off. After all, she hadn’t put up much of a fight, had she? She could have stayed flickering on his radar, waiting to be guided in. As soon as she’d seen Maeve she had known that he’d settled for a woman who was no challenge and had felt disappointed as well as intrigued.
He is Aidan and yet not Aidan; not the skinny youth she had fitted against, who always had to pull his belt to the tightest notch so that his jeans didn’t fall to his hips. She had loved to sleep curled into his back, sniffing the spicy skin of his neck. Now he is bulkier, his eyes crinkled, his jaw wider and she thinks that maybe he too is weighed down by life.
They lie, watching the fire lick and leap, then settle to a steady glow.
‘What do you remember most?’ he asks.
‘The French toast you made for breakfast and the night the bed collapsed; watching our washing go round in that launderette near my place — it seemed so romantic; walking on Parliament Hill Fields. You?’
‘The songs you taught me; the night we stayed out in Holland Park till four in the morning, talking and eating chestnuts; the way your freckles got bolder in the sun.’
‘Memory lane is an enticing place but not necessarily pleasant. I always come back to that bloody restaurant and the inane music and the gap-toothed waiter who kept smiling nervously while I was crying.’
He takes her hand, kisses it. ‘We can erase that memory together, if you want to. Memories don’t have to be static, they can alter like everything in life alters. That’s the only truth, isn’t it? That everything changes?’
‘Yes, that’s what keeps us sane.’
‘I’m going to have to go soon.’
‘Just when we’re warm and the lamps are lit. Yes, I know.’
‘Can I come again?’
‘I’d like that.’ She pulls him close. ‘There’s so much I want to tell you, I feel as if I’ve been storing it up. I have missed you. I pretended I didn’t because I had to. It’s true that everything changes but some things stay the same.’
He holds her tight. ‘You haven’t told me if you love me,’ he says into her hair, the tart taste of panic in his throat.
She moves back, tracing a finger around his lips. ‘I do, Aidan. Indeed I do. And to love you here — to love you here — well, it means everything.’
He stands, raising her with him. ‘I’ll ring you, then.’
‘Ring me and we’ll have hearth-baked spuds, Glenkeen style.’ She writes down her number for him and stands at the door, holding a lamp up to light him down the glen, watching as he slowly blends into the deepening evening. The sky is an intense blue, a sickle moon dangling lightly amongst scattered stars. Life is good, she thinks, ambushed by the novelty of the idea.
* * *
Chapter three of Long Ears has been finished. The little donkey had been taken by the tinkers and the chase was on. Aidan lies on Carmel’s bed as she arranges her soft toys to her satisfaction inside the duvet. She is wearing the pink nightie covered in bunches of cherries that he bought her in Dublin last month. His eyes are heavy, his limbs aching with joy; he would love to sleep and hug his joy tight. Maeve is running a freesia-scented bath and pattering quietly between their bedroom and the bathroom.
‘What would you do if someone snatched me away, like the tinkers took Long Ears?’ Carmel asks buttoning a teddy bear’s waistcoat.
‘Nobody’s going to snatch you away.’
‘But if they did, what would you do?’
‘I’d find you and bring you home, of course.’
‘How would you find me?’
‘I’d follow the trail of liquorice allsorts that you’d left, eating them as I went. That Teddy has a saucy glint in his eye, I hope he behaves and doesn’t cause trouble with the others.’
Carmel sniggers. ‘It’s Boris whose naughty, he tried to get out of the cage earlier.’
‘He’s probably been listening to the “Freedom for Russian Hamsters” broadcast on Radio Moscow. Maybe all the Russian hamsters in Ireland are going to break out and set sail on a stolen ship all the way across the seas to their motherland. Boris is probably their leader, he has a haughty air.’
‘What’s haughty?’
‘Proud, a bit stuck-up.’
‘Like Jacinta Rees?’
Jacinta had attended the same school in Manchester. ‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t miss her at all!’
‘But you do miss some people?’
‘Yes, Sonia and Elizabeth. And I miss my uniform and the swimming pool.’
They had sent Carmel to a small private school in their leafy city suburb, one that cost a fortune. The pupils wore a purple and cream uniform. Every morning he would drop her off, sporting her boater hat with purple ribbon. She’d sobbed when they had told her they were moving, and wet the bed for a fortnight. The memory of that always makes him wretched.
‘You’ve made new friends now, though. And the horses up the road, you’re loving learning to ride, aren’t you? And Granny Eileen worships the ground you tread on, she thinks you’re the cat’s pyjamas, the icing on the cake, the jam in her sandwich, the silver lining in every cloud — and the greatest child genius of all time.’
Carmel laughs. ‘Don’t be daft.’
He tucks her fine, fragrant hair behind her ears. ‘Someone has to be daft round here, and I think I have the best qualifications. Time for sleep now, my eyes are almost closing.’
‘When are we making the chutney?’
‘Soon, one Saturday soon.’
‘And we’ll call it after me?’
‘We will; Carmel’s Chutney. It’ll sell like hot cakes.’
‘Don’t be daft, it’s chutney, not cakes!’
‘I know, I’m a dimwit. Night night.’
Maeve has left the bathroom door open, an indication that she wants him to wash her back. Standing, he is suddenly drained, light-headed. He pauses outside the door for a moment, then goes in. She is lying up to her neck in bubbles, hair pinned up in a twist. On her face is a green mask, a cucumber cleanser. She looks like a woman in an advertisement for soap or maybe chocolate.
‘Has she settled?’
‘Yep, she’s fine.’ He takes up the sponge, rubs soap on. Maeve sits forward, her plump, soft shoulders traced with foam.
He washes her back slowly, with the circular movements she likes, across the birthmark shaped like Malta. Sometimes, when they are making love, she asks if she is his little malteser and he feels a quiver of discomfiture. She likes endearments, calling him her tall giraffe, her rowan tree and sometimes Brad because, she maintains, he has a slow, sexy smile like Brad Pitt’s. He knows he disappoints her by not reciprocating with similar sweet nothings. He feels the sponge glide. Everything he is doing now seems fraudulent.
‘Did you sort out the deliveries OK?’ She has closed her eyes, is smoothing her arms.
‘Yes, no problems.’
‘It’s a lovely night, aren’t we lucky after all with the weather?’
‘Very. Even if Carmel thinks we’re ruining the planet single handed.’
‘I gave her a pain killer after supper, just in case the brace hurts during the night.’
‘Good. She seems OK with it. Kids adjust quickly.’
‘I remember when I had to wear an eye patch once for a couple of weeks, it seemed in no time at all I’d always had it. In fact, it made me quite a celebrity.’ She opens her eyes. ‘That’s great. Sweetheart, thanks.’ She lifts her mouth for a kiss.
He bends, closing his eyes now, the flames of Liv’s fire tracing under his lids, a flickering memory, and a steady glow. ‘We’ve settled in OK here, haven’t we?’ he asks, leaning back on his heels.
‘Yes, I think so. It takes a while.’
‘And Carmel, too. I know it was hard for her.’
Maeve touches his nose with a soap bubble. ‘Go on, yo
u know you’re her idol, she’d have gone to Timbuktu if you’d wanted. She’s fine, Aidan, children are adaptable.’
He’s both reassured and ill at ease. ‘You enjoy your soak. I’ll just go down and lock up.’
‘Oh, could you make Carmel’s sandwich? I don’t know where the time went tonight.’
In the kitchen he slices wheaten bread, butters it lightly and lays thin slices of chicken and tomato in neat rows. He tears some basil leaves from a pot on the windowsill and sprinkles them on, then closes the sandwich and slices diagonally. Carmel says it tastes different, better, with a diagonal cut. He places the sandwich in her purple lunch box with a banana and a raspberry yogurt and stacks it in the fridge. As he closes the door he pauses and reaches again for the box, hiding two squares of dark orange chocolate under the sandwich. He pours himself a small slug of whiskey and goes into the hallway to listen. There’s no sound of running water yet. He goes back to the kitchen, closing the door firmly, turning the light off so that he can monitor the beam spilling into the garden from the bathroom. He slips his phone from his pocket and dials. The smoky aroma from his glass calms him and he sips, glad of the tang of the spirit.
‘Hallo.’ She sounds tense.
‘I just wanted to say goodnight.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes. I wish I was still there.’
‘Me too. I’m drinking cocoa and toasting bread at the fire.’
‘I’ve some whiskey. It might help me sleep. I love you.’
‘I love you. Why did we part?’
‘Don’t. I wish . . . oh, you know. I was wondering . . . Douglas — why is he not here with you?’
‘He’s drying out in a clinic.’
‘Ah. He has a drink problem?’
‘Yes, which means we both do. Let’s not talk about it on the phone. You’d better go. I thought I’d say it before you do this time.’
‘Do I detect a hint of tartness?’
‘Me? I’m full of sweet content right now.’
‘What I told you earlier, about the day I sat in the allotment, you’re the only person I’ve said that to. I’d have felt stupid saying it to anyone else.’
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 12