‘I believe in now, and you and me and this place. God, Aidan, there’s so much I’d like to do with this, my home on the hill. I’ve got a builder coming, Owen recommended him. I want to talk over some possibilities.’
‘Such as?’
‘A bathroom, for starters, maybe the smaller bedroom upstairs. A fitted kitchen and a conservatory so that I can have sun without the wind and rain. Not too much, I want to maintain the simplicity. I’d have to take out a small loan, I could manage that.’
‘You’re definitely keeping the cottage then?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t sure at first but I know now I need it.’
There is a silence. They are both boldly imagining the life they could have in the glen and are unsettled by this prospect within their reach.
He speaks first, his voice shaky. ‘I’m envious of that garden, there’s such potential. I’ve been mapping it out in my head, where I could grow stuff.’
She runs her fingers through the water, splashes her face. ‘We could garden in the early morning, sell at the market, swim in the afternoon, cook, eat and make love at night, then water the crops. A simple life.’
He rolls on to his back, sighs contentedly. The sun is a warm blessing, enveloping them in a fond embrace. ‘In the winter, we could concentrate on buying from the markets and making home produce.’
‘I’d love that; I’m enjoying cooking so much now. You could really branch out.’ She sits up. ‘Listen, I was thinking in bed last night; you could provide recipes featuring the seasonal vegetables you’re selling. Every week, you could give new recipes away with the stuff you sell. Simple, easy to make dishes, no fuss. I bet it would be a real draw; something different.’
He looks at her and sees himself in her eyes; a real person whose labours are significant. ‘Liv,’ he says. ‘Liv.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m full of such energy. I could run a marathon and climb a mountain, sail the seven seas and all before breakfast.’
‘Will you marry me?’ he asks.
She strokes his hair back, rubs a springy grey curl between her fingers, and then pushes firmly back along the top of his head, remembering how he loved to have his head stroked, how it calmed him. His hair smells yeasty, like rising dough. There is a rawness in his eyes and voice that makes her want to shelter him from the rough chafing of the world.
‘You have a wife, Aidan. I have a husband.’
He takes her hands, cups them in his. ‘I know. But will you, when the time is here?’
‘Oh yes. There is no other answer.’
Chapter 9
The builder, Marty Nulty, arrives early, at eight. He is long and thin, with shoulder-length grey hair, small round eyes and a solid expression, as if he would be a hard man to impress. He takes his boots off outside the front door and says he’d shake hands but his are covered in muck. Liv finds this reassuring, and the pencil stuck behind his ear. When she’d got a builder in to rebuild the front wall in London, he’d arrived at night, clothed in spotless denim, smelling of after shave and he’d taken ages over the job.
Marty accepts a cup of tea and she shows him around, explaining her ideas. He taps walls and presses his hand against them, examines window frames and floors.
‘We’d have to run water up, and electricity, of course. You’d need a septic tank dug somewhere out the back.’
‘So it all sounds feasible?’
‘Oh yes. It’s good, the way you want to keep the features. There’s plenty now with more money than sense, building monstrosities that wouldn’t look out of place in Texas, having Jacuzzis and the like. Last year a fella, a cousin of the O’Donovans the other side of Redden’s Cross, had a lovely thatched cottage pulled down and put up a ranch house with a hot tub outside.’
‘Well, just a bathroom with a shower will do me.’
Outside, they walk the garden. The dew is still fresh, beading the dark rhododendron leaves. It’s another cloudless day with a breath of breeze.
‘I’d stop by here sometimes and buy eggs from your grandmother,’ Marty tells her. ‘Her hens laid the best I’ve ever tasted. She said it was the special mash she made for them. She’d never tell me the secret of it. Smarty Nulty, she used to call me, because I was so good at quizzes.’
‘Do you think she’d approve of what I’m planning?’
‘I’d say so. She’d appreciate that you’re not going to go over the top. The tank could go by the side here so it wouldn’t be obtrusive. Then you can have a clear run at your garden. Have you plans for that, too? If you need help, my brother does gardens, he’s in Cork but he travels.’
She thinks of Aidan’s schemes for the garden, his description of how he would double dig vegetable plots and have espaliers for fruit, apples and pears. On the eiderdown in front of the fire, he’d explained the value of horse muck and how the stables would give it away by the steaming sack full. On a piece of paper, he’d illustrated the twelve months of the year and the labour that would need to be done in each season. It would be hard graft, team work, but satisfying. She’d looked at his roughened fingers, the swift strokes of the pen and blinked to capture the moment, store the image in her memory. She has already composed her letter of resignation to the library in her head. Her explanation to Douglas is harder to formulate, she hears it like a distant train, vibrating faintly. The world has become Aidan; there is no sense or shape to anything now without him.
‘I’ll deal with the house first,’ she says. ‘Get that in shape.’
‘Very wise, one step at a time.’ He takes his pencil from behind his ear and gestures with it. ‘You have a lovely spot here, with the land and the sea behind you.’
‘I know. I’m blessed.’
‘I’ll put a quote together for you, so.’
‘Lovely. Oh, and the well stays untouched, did I say that?’
‘That’s fine. No one in their right mind would touch a well, my father would say, on account of the little people and the mysteries within. I stopped by there on my way up, to ask a special favour. I’ve been suffering with my nerves; my mother has Parkinson’s and I’m pretty frazzled,’ he confides.
She reappraises him. ‘You believe in the powers of the well?’
‘Indeed. I’ve done the circumambulation a number of times. It never fails.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It was your grandmother who got me into it, as a matter of fact. You walk around the well, clockwise, about, oh, a dozen times, whatever feels enough. You say whatever’s bothering you, what you need to resolve. It’s worked for me; whether it’s the power of the well or my own mind I don’t know. I don’t care either; it gets the result. I suppose it’s just another form of prayer, in a way, asking for your intentions to be granted.’
Only by the earth rather than the heavens, she thinks.
When Marty has gone she goes to the well and stands, studying the water. Now she knows what Nanna was doing the night she’d read the letter from or about Owen, when the heart had been put across her and she’d circled the well, unaware that her granddaughter was watching her. But what was her prayer and was it granted? Walking back up the path, gazing at the cottage, she visualizes Marty, her unexpectedly spiritual builder, making her wishes come true.
* * *
There is a longer letter from Douglas this morning, headed Shame List. Kia, he says, has encouraged him to write it. He supposes it’s a kind of confession, a therapeutic naming of his sins. In no particular order, she reads:
Disappearing at the end of dinner at Mandy & Philip’s & being found asleep in the bath. I think we were never invited back.
Going out for postcards in Rome and being escorted back to our hotel room 6 hours later by a kindly bar man.
Vanishing overnight in Nice with that new best friend who stole my credit cards.
Falling down the hotel steps on our wedding anniversary. Failing to turn up for my own brother’s wedding.
Making you miss your grandmother’s funeral.
And many more such incidents which you will recall far better than me. I have liked vanishing, haven’t I? Evasion has been my forte. I realise that this list is of more use to me than you. I can hear the ring of hollow laughter from your end. I suppose I’m asking for forgiveness, like any penitent.
She reads it calmly, knowing that it has come too late. These words would have meant so much last year, the year before. She is far removed from him now, from that life; it’s like reading a letter from a fond acquaintance. The woman who recalls all those occasions is no longer imprisoned by the memories. It’s easy to consider forgiveness now, when she is replete with another touch, another voice, her life suddenly brimming with possibility.
* * *
Aidan stops in briefly in the late afternoon; he has an hour, just, between hurriedly packing up the stall and calling for Carmel. He turned away a few customers to get a head start, jumbling produce together hastily, chucking boxes into the van. Bertie from the cheese stall had called to him, laughing, ‘is the devil riding your coat tails?’
The kitchen is empty. He blinks, coming from the brightness into the shaded room. He sees that Liv has acquired some tall oak shelves where she’s put her books and there’s a new painting of moorland on the wall opposite the dresser. On the table lies the biography of Keith Richards that she’s reading, and a pile of tomatoes and onions. He smiles, breathes. The fire is burning low but intensely and there’s a huge pot of water simmering over it. He hears a radio, identifies Paul Simon. There’s a banging from upstairs.
‘Liv?’ he calls.
‘Up here!’
He finds her in the bedroom, standing on a chair, trowel in hand, stripping wallpaper, dressed in her swimming costume. She’s done half the room and she’s covered in grime, her hair dust filled.
‘This is a surprise; as you can see, I’m not dressed for visitors.’
‘You don’t mind? I managed to grab a bit of time. I so much wanted to see you. It’s been two days, seems like two years.’
‘I know. Why do you think I’m up here, scraping and sneezing? Anything to keep occupied.’
She steps down from the chair, kisses him. She smells of glue and brackish water. Her lips are warm and dry and there’s the heat of hard work pulsing from her skin. He feels her biceps.
‘I like a strong woman. Why the swimsuit?’
‘It seemed most practical; I was going to strip off but then I thought someone might call and I’d be the scandal of the town. Or maybe I’d become the latest TV guru: the Naked Decorator.’
He picks her up and swings her round, smudging himself with debris. ‘I love you and your no-nonsense approach to life. When did you decide to do this?’
‘After lunch. I reckon if Marty’s going to start the renovation soon, I might as well do up this bedroom and sleep in the small one in the meantime before he tears it apart for a bathroom. Then there’s one room that’ll be liveable while he does his worst. I’ve excavated four layers of paper; the top and second layers floral, the third geometric and the last brown and green stripes. I had to soak each wall twice, they used glue made to last. I’ll finish tomorrow, I was about to have a bath. Want to join me? You’re all mucky now.’
‘I can’t, really. I have to go for Carmel. I’ve another ten minutes; I’ll help you fill the tub.’
He draws the curtains, drags the tub out and fills it while she rinses her hair off outside. Pausing, he looks at her in the sunlight, head bent, and spray flying. He watches the lean lines of her, her taut calves and grimy feet. When she has finished washing she’ll smooth some moisturiser on her face, nothing else. He is contented with her straightforwardness, her lack of fuss. There is a cool, unruffled quality to her that he finds reassuring; despite whatever travails she’s had in her marriage, she moves in her own composed space.
‘I like the shelves and the painting,’ he tells her as she climbs into the tub and lathers her hands.
‘I got the shelves from that house clearance place on the Cork road. The painting I bought from Lucinda, Owen’s friend; it was in her exhibition. I like its mystery, the way you can read stories into it.’ She lies back in the water. ‘I had another letter from Douglas today.’
‘Oh. How is he?’
‘He says he’s doing well. His body is through the worst of the withdrawal now; the sweats and cravings. He seems positive. They have a strict regime but the rules really help him. There’s nowhere to skulk and hide, which is what alcoholics do best.’ She looks at him, rueful. ‘Ironic, isn’t it, that just as he’s finally doing what I’ve been begging him to do for years, we meet and his efforts seem less crucial to me.’
‘They still are to him, though. He has to do this for himself, surely. He’ll benefit, his life might turn around.’ This is what Aidan needs to believe; he injects optimism into the words.
‘Yes, but I doubt he’d be able to continue with the cure if he could see me here, now, with you. It would probably drive him straight back to the bottle. I reply to him with supportive little comments, saying everything but the truth.’
‘We need to talk about how we’re going to do this, be honest, start the life we want.’
‘I know. We need time for that. More than a furtive hour here and there, looking over our shoulders, drawing the curtains in broad daylight. Your list of lies and excuses must be getting suspiciously long. I don’t want to have to lurk around the square in Bantry, getting a glimpse of you at the stall to keep me going, dodging around in case somebody sees me behaving oddly.’
‘You’ve been doing that?’
‘A couple of times. You have a lovely way of throwing bananas from one hand to another while you chat. When you drink your tea from your flask and gaze into the distance I imagine you’re thinking of me but you’re probably gauging the day’s takings. Sad, isn’t it? I’m like a lovesick teenager, mooning around, and playing truant. It’s no way for a grown-up to be carrying on.’
‘Don’t; it’s grim and I can’t stay. I don’t want to leave that hanging in the air. There’ll be enough difficulty ahead. Let’s not be grim for five minutes.’
She stretches her arms, nods. ‘You’re right. Will you help me choose a wallpaper for upstairs? I wanted to paint but the plaster’s too bad.’ She grabs his hand. ‘I mean, you’ll be looking at it as much as me, won’t you?’
He kneels by the tub. ‘I will, yes, there’s no doubt about that.’
He has to force himself to go out into the bright, revealing sun, hastening down the glen, fumbling with his keys as he sees how the time has flown again, flitting, gone for ever while his back was turned.
* * *
Liv is trying her hand at a barm brack, love flowing from her fingers into the mixture. Aidan says they’re both going to get fat, that they won’t be able to make it up the glen. She can’t stop baking; it’s such an unusual pleasure to make food as a gift of affection. And the scents of fruits and spices belong in the cottage, nestling into the beams and plaster, breathing back into the air when the fire warms the room.
There is a sharp knock at the door. Wiping her hands down and across her apron she opens it. An oldish, balding man in a black suit, like an undertaker is standing there. He seems vaguely familiar.
‘I believe you’d be Miss Liv Callaghan.’
‘That’s right. And you are?’
‘My name is Magee. My sister, Miss Edith Magee, is down with the car and she’d like a word with you. She can’t come up here, you understand, because of her disablement.’ He has stony eyes, eyes that miss nothing. He’s looking at her apron as if he’s counting every stain. She takes it off and he is already walking away so that she has no time to wash her hands. His arms swing by his sides in a marching step.
A large silver car is parked by the hedge and beside it is the woman she saw at the birthday party, balancing on her sticks. She is formally dressed in a white blouse and black skirt with a string of pearls at her neck. Her hair is subdued again in a tight bun. On her feet she wears stout black l
ace-up shoes. Her eyes, unlike her brothers, are moist today, rheumy under crepe lids but they dart still.
‘This is your one,’ the brother says and he walks away a few yards, studying the hedgerow as if it might reveal a secret to him.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Callaghan,’ Edith Magee says. ‘Thank you for coming down. I didn’t like to take the liberty of driving up and as you can see, I have some difficulty walking.’ Her voice is surprisingly light and reedy with a hint of whistle on sibilants.
‘That’s all right. I’m pleased to meet you. I saw you at the hotel the other evening.’
‘Indeed. Did you enjoy your dance with your uncle?’
‘Yes. He dances well.’
‘Oh, he does. He always did.’
‘And you, did you enjoy your evening?’
‘It was a good entertainment.’ She rebalances her sticks, shifts her right hip. ‘Miss Callaghan, I haven’t come for social chit-chat, I’ll get to the point. I don’t think either of us wants embarrassment. I had a surprising visit from Owen Farrell recently. Your name was mentioned during our brief conversation. He seemed to think that some kind of renewal of our past relationship might be possible. I had the notion that you had encouraged this idea. Perhaps, being young, you have romantic leanings. I advised Owen Farrell that no such possibility existed and that his visit was most unwelcome.’ She makes a little pucker of satisfaction with her lips.
‘I see,’ Liv says, buying time. She can smell the butter on her fingers, feel the dry powder of the flour in the palms of her hands. The afternoon is softly warm, the sun the colour of a ripened pear, but these visitors are unexpected clouds bruising the sky. ‘Owen mentioned that he was thinking of visiting you. I suppose I did encourage him, it seems awful for people not to even speak, to be estranged in such a way. He’s still very fond of you, I know that.’
Edith pulls her shoulders sharply inwards so that they form straight blades. The brother clears his throat and turns a foot sideways, examining the sole of his shoe.
‘Miss Callaghan, your opinion is of no interest to me. I do not know you. I do not know why you should wish to intrude on me in such a fashion. I do not want Owen Farrell visiting me and upsetting my household. I hope I make myself clear on this matter.’ The voice is sharper, louder, the words rushing out, as if a stream has been undammed.
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 15