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

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  A small black and white cat has appeared along the verge, picking its way behind Edith. It sits near her, blinks and turns, washing its right flank with a darting pink tongue. Liv imagines it is a friendly caller and feels grateful.

  ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been upset,’ she says, sounding calm although her heart is thumping at this rapid, carefully executed ambush. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  Edith rests a stick against the car and holds up a hand, palm forwards. ‘Please, let us just leave it there. What you may or may not have meant is immaterial. Miss Callaghan, you are a recent arrival here; it is best not to meddle in other people’s business. You have no knowledge of the history between Owen Farrell and myself and I regard what has happened as an utter invasion of my privacy. Now, I must bid you good day.’

  She leans on her sticks and moves slowly to the car. The brother steps forward, opening the door. She gives a little groan as she settles herself in, the brother making sure that her sticks are tucked in beside her. He crosses to the driver’s door, opens it and taps the side of his nose with his forefinger at Liv before he gets in.

  As they drive away the cat yawns and stretches, approaching Liv. She puts a hand down to stroke it and it smells the butter, rasps her fingers eagerly with its tongue. She watches its neat head and ears. When it has tasted the last buttery trace it turns abruptly and vanishes through the hedge. Slowly, she walks back up to the cottage, reeling from the antagonism. In the kitchen, she finishes the brack and slides it into the oven, hardly aware of her movements. Her breath is light and shallow. ‘That’s knocked the wind out of his sails,’ her mother used to remark when she got the better of someone and Liv sinks down by the hearth, observing that Edith is not a woman to cross in good or bad weather.

  * * *

  On Saturdays, Aidan has to get up at six. It’s one of the busiest market days and he likes to make sure that everything is looking its best. Always a light sleeper, he wakes just before the alarm and knocks it silent. Maeve slumbers on beside him, on her stomach, her left arm flung sideways. She looks peaceful, far away. Her wedding ring stares at him accusingly. She often refers to the house as their nest but unknown to her, he has flown it. In the past, he has been dubious about the idea that it’s possible to love two people simultaneously, believing it to be an excuse for adultery. Now he knows that it’s true. He knows that he loves Maeve and Liv but its Liv that he wants, it’s Liv who is his harbour, who makes him feel that he is berthed in his skin. He knows too that it’s a love he shouldn’t have allowed but he’s too far in, the current has got him and he doesn’t want to save himself.

  He longs to close his eyes again. His life is being spent on the run, every spare hour dedicated to Liv. All his time and thoughts are focused on when he can conceal his van behind the hedge at the bridge and run up the path in the glen. As he weighs and wraps produce, he is calculating with the change the time he can steal between journeys without raising suspicion at home. The deceit and planning brings its own quick energy but it’s a terse, nervy vigour, one that makes his bones ache.

  When Liv knows he is coming she waits for him at the well and that’s where they make most of their love now, protected in the shade of the hazel tree, cooling each other from the spring. There are bottles of milk and wine staying chilled at the edge, beaded with water. They drink from both and eat her scones and fruit breads and the creamy yellow cheese from a ceramic dish wedged between the bottles. He feeds ravenously, feeling his stomach expand, replenishing his strength; he needs the milk and the food to maintain his energy and his wits. Lying back, he studies the shiny bark and dense foliage of the hazel tree, follows the light dance off the serrated leaves, tracing their deepening autumnal yellow. Reaching out, he tears off a thin strip of bark and tucks it in his pocket, recalling that Liv told him that it purportedly protects from witches and ill deeds. He reckons he needs all the safeguarding he can get, considering the turmoil in his life. Despite his whispering conscience, he feels enchanted, singled out for happiness.

  When he can call in the evening, they eat potatoes baked on the hearth, skins rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and then they dance to the ancient records she has found, swaying to big bands, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. And always, finally, she puts on her favourite record and holds his face, singing to him, ‘so happy in my blue heaven.’

  He eases from the bed. For a big man, he is light on his feet, treads softly. He has a quick shower, dons his frayed jeans and a T-shirt and pads downstairs, makes a strong coffee and pulls a face when he tastes it. They mostly buy instant now, instead of the fresh roast he prefers. He accepts the sacrifice, one of the costs of the new life he has introduced them to. As he drinks he looks for his wallet and keys. The dominoes he played last night with Carmel while Maeve watched EastEnders are still spilled on the living-room floor. As he sat opposite her on the carpet, cross-legged, he could feel the salt score on his arms from where he had been swimming with Liv. He’d managed to grab some hours in the afternoon on the pretext of seeing his accountant. They’d gone down to the empty strand and floated naked in the sea, fingers linked. He’d felt like a baby in the womb, an aroused baby, all his nerve ends alive, his mind alert, his heart bliss filled. The weight of the waves pushed them against each other, willing them into each other’s arms. Silver speckled fish had leaped in the foam, twisting and falling. He’d reeled home, driving too fast, the van skimming the roads, exhausted, drunk on love and salt spray.

  Carmel had beaten him in all four games, easily. ‘Dad! Where’s your brain gone?’ She’d ruffled his hair, laughing, crowing to her mother that she’d trounced him. Looking at his daughter, he knew with a dragging heart that he couldn’t live without her but neither could he exist now without Liv. Maeve had commented that he looked tired and asked if he was feeling OK; he’d played with his dinner, still full of Liv’s baking, defeated by salmon roulade with lemon and watercress.

  ‘A bit exhausted,’ he’d acknowledged, giving her a faint smile. She’d uncurled from the sofa, brought him a bottle of stout, taking the cap off, holding the glass tilted and pouring it carefully so that it maintained a smooth head. ‘There,’ she’d said, ‘that’ll put some iron in your blood.’

  Carmel had clamoured to have a taste and pulled a face; Yuk! Then they had watched him drink, agreeing that they both hated the stuff and he’d flinched at their indulgent, amused faces, despising himself, barely able to swallow.

  Later, Maeve had come to him in the kitchen while he was making Carmel’s cocoa and asked him if the job was tough at the moment; he seemed tired and his appetite was poor. He’d heard in her voice the anxiety that he might not be making a go of things, that he might have another breakdown. He’d put his arms around her, reassured her that he was just a bit run down, it was a busy time, and not to be a worry wart. He’d felt her tangible relief as her tense limbs relaxed and her shoulders went down, felt that her shape and smell were already becoming strange to him, thought, I’m no good at this, I’m not one of those men who can juggle two women. His chin resting on his wife’s head, he envied Liv her solitary sojourn; she wasn’t being observed, she had no one to answer to and be responsible for.

  He finishes his coffee, takes a croissant from the bread bin to eat en route. The house is silent, the only sound the homely flicker and grumble of the boiler as it kicks in to boost the hot water. He feels like a man who has heard a melancholy tune playing late at night, one of those melodies that tug at your heart and stomach and leave you yearning, regretting what’s gone. It’s not that I’m unhappy, he thinks, it’s not that I was looking for anyone else. If anyone had asked me a month ago, I’d have said I was content. Something happened and I found myself in another place.

  Carmel has stuck a purple and green Post-it note on the latch of the front door: ‘Message to father — dateline Saturday — apples for chutney.’ He takes his pen and scrawls beneath: ‘Yes boss!’

  * * *

  They’ve pulled the ki
tchen blinds down because the sun is too hot to work in. The blinds are yellow, so they are surrounded by a wall of warm gold. Carmel sits on a tall stool and carefully chops dates into small, equal-sized segments while he peels, cores and slices cooking apples. His eyes are already watering from the onions he’s chopped and now his roughened right index finger smarts from the juice. Carmel has cleaned the jars and they are warming in a low oven. They weigh brown sugar and sultanas and mix them with the dates in the wide ceramic bowl with spoons of ground clove and cinnamon.

  ‘It smells like Christmas,’ she says.

  ‘Mmm, Christmas in September, when it’s as hot as July. Maybe we should call this Indian summer chutney.’

  ‘Where does that come from, Indian summer?’

  ‘I don’t know — maybe from the British in India?’

  Carmel gives the dry mixture another turn with the wooden spoon. ‘Hang on a min,’ she says, and disappears.

  He knows what she’s gone to do. He takes the heavy jam making pan from the cupboard and puts the chopped apples and onions in, adding a bottle of dark malt vinegar. Now the kitchen smells like Christmas crossed with a chip shop. He sets the pan on the cooker and turns the ring on. He stares into the mixture. He sees Liv sitting by the fire, taking potatoes from the hearth, exclaiming at the crispy skins. She loves simple, unfussy food that you can shove over the flame and forget about while you read a book or dig the garden; casseroles in a pot, left to simmer and thicken, chunky soups that taste earthy. In the cottage, his taste buds have been reinvigorated, his lungs fill with easy air.

  Carmel dances back with her iPad, standing by him with her toes pointed out. She is wearing immaculate pink shorts and a yellow top with bees buzzing across it. Her clothes never look dirty; even when she’s been riding, her jodhpurs are fresh looking. He wonders suddenly if she has fun. When he was little, he was always covered in mud and bruises.

  ‘An Indian summer,’ she tells him, ‘is probably a saying that can be traced back to the traditional period when Native Americans would harvest their crops.’

  ‘So really, it should be Native American summer.’

  ‘Maybe. There are other explanations.’ She reads more laboriously, her finger following the words. ‘For example, “Indian summer” can apply to anything that blooms late or unexpectedly, a renaissance that comes out of the blue. What’s renaissance mean?’

  He can hardly speak. He stirs the apple and onion mixture. The fumes from the heating vinegar make his nose run, camouflage unexpected tears. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Oh, Carmelita, it means . . . a new beginning, a new start of some kind.’

  ‘Like when we moved here?’

  ‘Yes, Like when we moved here. Now, this has boiled, I think we’re ready for the other ingredients.’

  He brings the pan to the work surface, cautioning her to be careful as they add the dates, sultanas and spices. Then she moves her stool over to the cooker and they take turns stirring the thickening mixture, watching it turn a dark brown as it simmers gently with tiny volcanic eruptions.

  ‘Gloop shloop. Gloop shloop,’ Carmel laughs.

  The kitchen is suffused with a sour sweet scent. Carmel shrieks as a wasp finds its way through the window and floats across the cooker. ‘Make it go away!’ she flaps, ducking her head, her stool wobbling.

  He fetches a tea towel and catches the wasp in its folds, dropping it outside the back door.

  ‘You should be on the stage, with those dramatics; Carmelita, the Bantry diva!’

  ‘I might be on the stage,’ she grins at him. ‘The Christmas play auditions are in a couple of weeks; The Wind in The Willows. I’ve been practising with Annie Ryan.’

  ‘Indeed? What’s all this?’

  ‘Look.’ She climbs down from the stool and takes up a pose in the middle of the floor, singing in her high, fluting voice about the pleasure of being in a boat on the river. He looks on, amazed. He had no idea that she could sing like this; she looks older, knowing, her movements controlled. When she finishes he claps. She looks flushed and thrilled. Sweat is dripping down his back from the heat of the day and the cooker.

  ‘Brilliant! RADA must be beckoning; I’ll be an old man who sits in the cinema watching his daughter up on the screen. Now in the meantime, there’s a matter of some chutney here and I think it’s just about ready.’

  He scoops up a teaspoon and they taste the mixture, considering, looking at each other.

  ‘It’s good,’ Carmel pronounces. She has a shred of apple caught in her brace.

  ‘Mmm, treacly, dark and sharp with a hint of tar!’

  They snigger. Carmel takes the glass jars from the oven and they spoon the thickened mixture in. It’s a good batch, fifteen jars. When they are all full he carefully places the waxed paper rounds on the tops and tightens the lids in place. He passes the jars one at a time to his daughter who peels off her sticky labels and fixes them: Carmel’s Chutney. Date & Apple.

  ‘That’s a job well done,’ she says and she stands with her hands on hips, the way Maeve does when she’s examining a dish she’s prepared and is satisfied with the outcome.

  He tidies the kitchen while Carmel heads off to the stables with Annie Ryan and her mother. He puts the jars on a tray and places them in the larder to cool. Amidst the warm disorder they have just created, he feels content, slack limbed. Things will work out, he thinks, we’ll find a way of sorting this. He knows that Carmel will get on well with Liv, once the initial hurt is over; already, he has considered how Liv’s influence will be good for her, encourage her to be less finicky in her ways.

  As he rubs sticky traces of chutney he ponders Liv’s account of her unpleasant visitors. He’s seen Edith Magee about the place, a sharp looking little woman who looks as if she’d harbour a grudge or two. He’s heard that the brother drives a hard bargain with the logs he sells from their woodland. He advised Liv to keep well out of the business from now on, tell Owen what happened and leave him to it.

  He hears the front door open and Maeve come in, the jingle of her keys as she puts them on the hall stand.

  ‘Hallo!’ he calls. ‘Welcome to chutney mansions!’

  There’s no reply. He gives the table a final wipe and goes into the hallway. Maeve’s bag is on the floor, a couple of magazines rolled inside, telling him that she’s been at her mother’s. He looks in the living-room. She is sitting in her chair, hands in her lap. She’s wearing a skirt and shirt in bands of navy and white, with a striped scarf in those colours around her neck.

  ‘You look nautical today,’ he says. ‘Have you been shopping? We finished the chutney, we made loads.’

  She looks up at him. She is pale and without lipstick. She never goes out without her lipstick. ‘Is Carmel out riding?’ she asks quietly.

  ‘Yes. Are you OK?’

  ‘OK? Not really.’

  He squats down by her chair. ‘What’s up?’

  She moves back into the chair, away from him. Her eyes are tired, with that strained look they have when she gets a migraine. She puts her hands on the chair arms, sits up rigid. ‘I wondered, Aidan, if there’s anything you want to tell me?’

  He smiles foolishly. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  He believes he has kept the two worlds successfully apart, doesn’t see the collision coming. ‘Yes. What’s wrong?’

  She presses her lips together, shakes her head at him, her look steady and distant. He knows then, in that gesture, his heart gripping. There’s a long moment’s silence. The ice-cream van jingles outside, stopping at the dusty patch of green on the corner. Greensleeves plays tinnily in the stillness. The tune means that it’s Stefan’s van today; he usually has the weekends around here. Doors slam and voices call as children wheedle money from their parents. If Carmel were at home, she’d be heading over for a vanilla ice with sticky caramel sauce.

  ‘That’s a very apt tune, isn’t it?’ Maeve says. ‘The lyrics just suit this situation. I
t is a bit wrong and discourteous, isn’t it, to swim naked with another woman? Would you say so, Aidan? Would you not agree with me on that point?’

  He gets up slowly, stands behind a chair opposite her, holds onto the back. There’s a white noise inside his head, a mocking, sneering buzz: what did you expect, did you think you were going to get away with it?

  ‘Let’s see,’ she says, her knuckles bony on the wooden rests. ‘Yesterday, around five o’clock. Oh yes, you phoned and said you had to see your accountant. I fetched Carmel and we made a tasty salmon dinner. I’d gone out especially in my lunch hour for the fish, hurried my sandwich down; fresh Atlantic salmon, none of your farmed rubbish. Now I understand why you didn’t have much stomach for it. Swimming would make you hungry, after all. I expect you had an early tea.’

  His tongue is closing off his throat. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Pat Noonan saw you down at the cove. He has lobster pots nearby. He informed my mother this morning. She told me. Probably most of Pat’s post round know by now. That’s nice. You must have felt very safe, out in the sea there, you must have thought I was a real eejit.’

  ‘God, Maeve, I never meant it to be like this . . .’

  ‘To be found out, d’you mean? No, I don’t suppose you did.’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  She raises her hands, brings them down sharply, a hard slap against the wood. He flinches.

  ‘I don’t care what you mean. How long, how long have you been seeing her?’

  ‘Not that long.’

  ‘So were you both having a good laugh at me that day on the market?’

  ‘No, nothing had started then.’ Although even that is a lie. Everything is a lie and now Maeve knows it. He sees the dark knowledge in her face, in the wretched hollowing beneath her eyes.