Hope you’re having a wonderful rest and some craic. Does the cottage need much doing to it? Once I’m back on my feet, with my limbs calm and my brain in place, I’d love to come and see it, give you a hand. You may remember, from the early days, that I’m quite good at DIY — before I got into Drink It Yourself. Seem to recall that I did a good job on the loft and the cupboards. I know, self-praise is no praise!
Liv, I’d like to get to know you again.
She places her hands on the solid, scarred surface of the table. His efforts to keep in touch, stay in her life, keep himself in her line of vision arouse her pity. He had done wonderful things in their house when they’d first bought it, sanding, repairing, loving to fix doors and skirting. He was a good carpenter, a fast worker. They had varnished the floors together, homemaking. Then, the beer or wine in the evening had been a reward for hard graft.
Her thoughts drift to Aidan. She has woken frequently during the night, conscious of him, imagining she can hear his breathing, remembering the rough nubs of skin around his nails, the scab on the index finger of his left hand. Nearly twenty years have passed but now it feels like only yesterday when she last held him, was infused with his taste, his scent. She had buried the memory because it was unbearable after he left; now it’s reborn. She thinks of a bulb that’s lain under the earth, storing nutrients and energy, stirring itself, pushing up green shoots.
She looks at the bleak grey ashes of the fire and the faded, empty rug. The daylight striking the dresser is too revealing; she wants the subtle lamplight and the flickering turf flames, the secret warmth of their breath in the dusk. And she wants him, his skin, and the weight of him in her arms. She presses her hands down to ease the longing.
When her phone rings she starts. ‘I was just thinking of you,’ she says. ‘How are you?’
‘Tired, I didn’t sleep much and I had to be up at six. Carmel’s brace was hurting her so I was reading her a story at 3 a.m. Then I was thinking about you so sleep was evasive.’
‘I had broken sleep too. I miss you. Where are you?’
‘In Cork, at a suppliers. An organic wholesaler. Are you busy this afternoon? I could come by about 2.30.’
‘That would be great.’
‘I hope I don’t just fall asleep.’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’
He laughs. ‘Do you remember, on Sundays we used to sleep late and then while I made breakfast you used to run over to the Catholic Church to get the papers from the woman in the foyer.’
‘Holy Harriet! She used to look at me as if she knew I was a lapsed Catholic who’d just fallen out of bed and a man’s arms. I’d look at the pious faces of the congregation filing out and feel so wanton and carefree.’ She stops, suddenly near tears. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘those were blissful times.’
‘Weren’t they?’
‘So, half past two it is then.’
‘I’ll be there.’
She rakes the fire, producing a glow and washes up her breakfast dishes. Those Sunday mornings; they had always spent Saturday night in his flat in Stoke Newington because he worked in a bar on the high street during the evening. She sat, eating peanuts and eking out a glass of wine, talking to him between customers. Those Sundays had been languid, love filled, easy. She had pulled clothes on without showering, running across to the church at the end of midday Mass, conscious of the scent of their lovemaking while handing Holy Harriet the money. They had read the papers over French toast and bacon, calling out snippets to each other, making a second and third pot of coffee. She liked to dip her spoon filled with demerara sugar into black coffee and hold it for him to sip and crunch. In the afternoons they had walked in St James’s, Regents or Hyde Park, heading for an early evening film followed by curry; they agreed that for some reason, a robust curry was a natural full stop to a Sunday, a fitting tribute to the week lived and the week to come. In a cheap Indian restaurant near Warren Street they had eaten from a round platter holding separate dishes of lentils, okra, lamb, cauliflower and potato with huge Nan breads and a cooling yogurt dip.
Sunday had been the hardest day after he left, long and loveless and arid and pointless and tasteless, a day of tears and sighs and beans on toast and lying in bed but not sleeping. Oh Aidan, what did you do? Think of what and who we could have been now.
She takes the bowl of washing-up water out and throws it over the hedge, wondering if her grandmother had also jettisoned her resentments with the sudsy foam. It’s years since she has cooked properly. Douglas has little interest in meals and she often eats alone, rustling up quick bowls of pasta, grilled meat with vegetables, the kinds of recipes to be found in books called Ten Minute Suppers. There is something about Glenkeen that inspires her to bake; certainly, since she’s arrived her appetite has been insatiable. Is it the air or the water, she wonders, or maybe just the slow tranquillity of life in the glen that makes her want simple, comfort foods? There is, too, the memory of her grandmother standing over the mixing bowl, her floury hands shaping wheaten breads, scones and barm brack which was best eaten warm with butter. As she sifted the fine flour through her fingers she’d be singing, ‘If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake, baked a cake, baked a cake . . .’ She had a special red cotton pinafore for cooking, with a design featuring tiny salt and pepper pots that wrapped around and tied at the side. It is still hanging on a hook by the dresser, worn, with fraying seams.
Liv ties it around herself. It smells of wheat and meat gravy. She stands at the table with the same bowl and in the same posture, her back to the light so that it falls full on the creamy butter and snowy flour. She rubs them together to fine crumbs, adding sultanas, dark crumbling sugar and milk, enjoying the magic of the mix binding together into a golden ball. She can’t find a pastry cutter so she uses a glass to cut rounds from the rolled mixture and lays them on a greased baking tray. She isn’t sure how she knows the recipe for scones, as far as she can remember, she’s never made them before; she can only assume that she absorbed the knowledge while she was watching her grandmother. That’s also how she must know that you need cool hands to make good pastry, even though she’s never tried to.
While she is waiting for them to bake she rings Owen. There is a message on his answerphone instructing callers to ring his mobile.
‘I got your letter,’ she says when he answers. ‘Where are you? There’s lots of noise.’
‘I’m in Dublin. Got a bit of work doing a voiceover in an insurance ad. They wanted a mature, reassuring man.’ He lowers his voice and adopts a steady, comforting tone: “Whatever unexpected turns life takes, we’re here to see you through.” What do you think, would you take out a policy?’
‘Certainly, probably more than one.’
‘And what are you up to? You sound chipper.’
Reeling with love, refreshed with kisses, dizzy with anticipation. ‘I’m making fruit scones, they’re nearly done so I can’t talk for long.’
‘I didn’t think young women went in for that kind of activity these days.’
‘I don’t, usually. This place is inspiring me. I’m working from memory, from watching Nanna.’
‘Oh, she was a great cook, Bridget. Her Christmas cake was to die for and she made the best lamb stew I’ve ever tasted, loaded with onions and pearl barley. So, what did you think to the letter?’
‘I think you should go and see Edith.’
‘You do?’ He sounds pleased and tentative.
‘Absolutely. What’s the worst that can happen? If she tells you to go away, you’re no worse off than you are now, just a bit of fresh bruising. She might be waiting for you to make a move.’
‘She’s never given any sign.’
‘Maybe, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. And she’s never asked you for a divorce, has she?’
‘No, that’s true. How did you know that?’
‘Lucinda told me.’
‘Ah, nothing’s a secret west along there; the walls don’t just have ears,
they have tongues and memories.’
She laughs with him. She wants some of this love that has come flowing to the glen to surge outwards, lap abundantly around other lives. ‘It was all a long time ago, whatever happened. People get snarled in old animosities; sometimes they’d give anything to be freed. I think it’s worth a go, if you care about her.’
‘Well then, I think I will. I’m back tomorrow and I’ll screw my courage to the sticking post.’
‘Good man.’ She opens the oven door and peers in. ‘I’ve got to get my scones out now, let me know how it goes.’
‘I will, so. I’ll make a real effort, smarten up with a new bib and tucker, trim my eyebrows and smooth them with water. And you; you’re not lonely up there in the wild glen, with the ghoulies and the ghosties and things that go bump in the night?’
‘No, not at all lonely. I have plenty to occupy me, keep me busy. I’ll save you a scone.’
* * *
‘You smell wonderful,’ Aidan says, rolling her on top of him. ‘Of warm spices and sugar.’
She sniffs her fingers that smell now of him, too; musky, sweaty. Her hands are supple from the scone mixture. ‘Am I sugar and spice and all things nice?’
‘Hmm. That would make me rats and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’
They have both been sleeping, the brief, satiated sleep that comes after daytime lovemaking. She looks down on him, laying her arms along the length of him. With his head back, in the afternoon light, he looks younger, his skin ironed of cares and creases. His torso is a deep butternut colour from working outside and tending his garden. He has tiny abrasions on his arms from where nature has fought back. There is a toughness that she likes, a sturdiness from physical work. He brings with him a scent of the outdoors, of earth and vegetation.
She runs her tongue along his forearm. A fearful happiness floods her heart. He was her first love and there is a way in which he can be her only love. The knowledge is woven in the densely packed layers that accumulate as life paces on. She pictures Lucinda’s bog paintings, the deep compacted earth that conceals and preserves bones, gold and artefacts, the tokens of human longings.
He has been describing his garden to her; the rows of potatoes, lettuces and onions, the fruit bushes, his plans for hens, his frustration at not having enough land. She can picture it, well-tended, fed, weed free. He had always been methodical, thorough in whatever he did; his flat had been much neater and cleaner than hers.
‘This is the bed my father was born in,’ she tells him. ‘That used to fascinate me when I was a child, that he’d been a baby in this bed.’
‘I thought he didn’t like me when I first met him. He was so quiet. But then, your mother could talk!’
She lies down, her head on his chest. ‘I used to think they were happy, well matched but when my mother died he remarried quickly, to a woman completely different to her; an invalid type. She’s even quieter than him, there’s a kind of hush in their house. In fact it’s more silent than my library.’
‘Maybe he sought someone as different as possible because he couldn’t bear to be reminded of what he’d lost.’ He kisses her forehead, arches his back, and gives a luxurious groan. ‘I’m starving, I could eat for Ireland,’ he says.
He had arrived with champagne but it remained unopened in their hurry to shed their clothes and fall into the welcoming bed. He uncorks it while she fetches warm scones, butter, cheese and jam on a tray and they eat a bed picnic, sitting on top of the eiderdown.
‘My scones, your jam,’ she says, ‘a complimentary mixture.’
He raises his glass: ‘To us, to this amazing, extraordinary coincidence that’s brought us together.’
‘To us and to Nanna, who must have been weaving an unknowing spell.’ She clinks her glass to his. ‘She wouldn’t approve, of course, she’s probably turning in her grave. Actions and unexpected consequences; she wrote a will and here we are.’
He leans on an elbow, touches her knee. ‘Tell me about Douglas.’
She looks at him and then down, picking at the flowers on the eiderdown. ‘I married him the week after I graduated. He was a locum doctor at the student medical centre on campus. I felt so lucky, to have found love again and so quickly. I think Douglas was always drinking but I didn’t notice at first; I didn’t read the signs and then there’s the golden mist of love. Gradually the drinking came to dominate our marriage. He’s tried to give up many times. Now he’s booked into a place where he’ll be helped. He’s hoping it will save our relationship.’
‘And you?’
She rolls her glass against her cheek. ‘I don’t know. I want him to stop drinking but that would still mean I’m married to an alcoholic and I don’t know if I can live that life any more. I don’t know if I still want that to be my identity. Addiction is a hard taskmaster. I know it inside out, it’s my best friend and my worst enemy. It goes to bed with me at night, gets up with me every morning. I’ve read the books, studied the up to date literature on the Internet. The latest theory is based on genetics and I discovered a few years ago that Douglas’s grandfather was a heavy drinker. The subject, the fact of it takes all my energy. It has made me tough in ways that I don’t much like. Since I came here I’ve understood exactly how exhausted I am.’
‘Have you any children?’
‘No, that’s another bit of our life that’s gone adrift. In many ways, Douglas is my child; I have to look out for him, protect him, and pick up the pieces. You see, his big relationship with drink has robbed us of so much, it’s the thief in the night who steals away with your precious things.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes. That’s all I want to say about my marriage, I don’t want to dwell on it. You know,’ she touches his hand with her fingertips, ‘I feel as if I’ve been tunnelling for a long time in a dense gloom and now I’ve finally broken through. Up here in the airy height of the glen, with you, I’m afloat in light.’
He puts the tray on the floor. She moves into the well between his legs and he runs his thumbs down her cheekbones. ‘I think you have more freckles now. They make you look serious, a woman of the world.’ He kisses her face, blowing lightly on her eyelids.
She holds him tight. Sun is spilling into the room, tracing patterns through the lace curtain. The lace, pretty and delicate, reminds her of Maeve. ‘I should be serious,’ she says. ‘This is serious, what we’re doing. Your wife, your child — what about them? We’re heading for trouble, Aidan, you know that, don’t you?’ But at the same time she feels that she deserves him and that this reunion had to happen.
‘Shh. Don’t talk about that now. All I know is that you’re Livof-my-life. That’s what’s important, that’s all that matters.’
She accepts the loving lie, allowing him, his tempered skin, his breath and warmth to become the world.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he says, looking at his watch.
She doesn’t need to see the time; she knows from the movement of the sun, just glancing off the corner of the window, that it’s about five.
‘I could ring Eileen and ask her to keep Carmel for a bit. Maeve’s at an evening class after work.’
‘What will you say?’
‘That it’s a late delivery.’
‘Well . . . you know I don’t want you to go. There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you.’
He makes the call on his phone, speaking of a last-minute order, stating that he’ll be there by seven thirty. Carmel comes on the line and he bends into the mouthpiece, reassuring her that he has apples for chutney. ‘Carmelita,’ he says quietly. She wonders if the child detects the false note in his voice.
They look at each other. He rubs the front of his throat, where the lie has snaked from.
‘Deceit is awful,’ she says. ‘It taints everyone, doesn’t it?’
‘This was meant.’ He reaches for her hand, pulls her close. ‘I’d lie my way to hell and back not to lose you again.’
She feels claimed, wanted. It
’s a long time since she’s felt that way and it’s an exhilarating rush. ‘Now,’ she says. I’ll show you where I get the water, my place of magic.’
Down at the well, lying side by side on their stomachs, they gaze into the depths.
‘Do you remember,’ he says, ‘that caravan we rented near Whitstable? The roof was leaking and we both got food poisoning.’
‘From the pot roast in the pub. We said that it must be love, if you’ve heard the other person groaning on the loo while you were groaning too.’
‘There was a foldaway bed but we never folded it away.’
‘We needed it too often.’
‘You were my world.’
‘And you mine. I’m the man who threw the world away.’
‘But now it’s here. Just us, in this enchanted glen. This well has magical properties, you know.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s to do with the power of place. There’s been a tradition of that in Ireland since prehistoric times. The Celts believed in earthcentred religion, goddess based. Certain places, particularly wells and natural springs are believed to have curative and regenerative powers. You might, for example, look into the water for inspiration or good luck. My grandmother gave it to people to relieve their ailments.’
‘Maybe I should take some to Carmel, her mouth hurts from her brace.’
‘Why not? The magic works in all kinds of ways, allegedly, from bestowing wisdom to sorting out headaches and lack of libido. Maybe it brought you to me. I especially wanted you to be here with me, by this well. When I came to Glenkeen after you told me we were over, my grandmother walked me down here and smoothed the water over my face and my heart. I think she wanted the well to ease the hurt and thoughts of you. I humoured her; I was too despondent to resist and it meant so much to her. But maybe there was healing and magic, it was just longer term; it was your return to me.’
‘Do you believe that?’
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 14