She looks down at her wedding ring, twists it on her finger. ‘How did it start, why? I didn’t know you were that unhappy with me.’
‘I wasn’t, I’m not. Please believe me, it’s nothing to do with you. I knew Liv before, it wasn’t our first meeting.’ He tells her about university, says that they split up.
‘So she was your first love.’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘And you were hers?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. You never mentioned her before, you must have wanted to keep her close.’
‘It was all a long time before we met, that’s all.’
Maeve grasps the knot in her scarf. ‘So, when were you going to tell me?’
‘Soon. It’s been a shock for me . . . ‘
‘For you!’ She stares at him. ‘A shock for poor Aidan. I’ve been walking for an hour before I came home, piecing things together. Your various trips out in the evenings, the sudden need for journeys to Cork, your exhaustion, the way you’ve been pacing round the house looking as if you’ve lost something. And I was a complete fool, worrying about you, thinking you were overdoing it. Overdoing it! That’s a laugh and a half! Are you leaving us, are you planning to leave your family for her?’ Her speech has become more accented, rural; she sounds as if she’s never spent time away from here.
‘I hadn’t made plans. I want to be with Liv, yes. That’s what I want.’
Maeve rises, stumbling from the chair and walks the floor. She places her hands in front of her face, then holds her arms across her body. ‘So let me get this straight; you brought us back here to live because you wanted this life and now you want another one with a woman in a cottage who has a husband in England. Are lives that easily rearranged? I had no idea. It’s your great fear, isn’t it Aidan, that what there is right here and now is it; there’s always something shiny for you, some opportunity just out of your reach. The gloss has rubbed off us and she’s the dazzling one.’
He’s never heard her sound like this; cutting, acerbic. He would have expected tears; he keeps thinking she’ll cry but she remains dry-eyed.
‘It wasn’t anything I intended to happen.’
‘And what kind of slut is she, this Liv woman, to want to break up a marriage, to take a father away from his child?’
‘Don’t. She doesn’t want any of those things, this has happened as unexpectedly for her as well.’
‘Oh, that makes it all right then. Have you told Carmel?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘What do you think that little girl is going to make of it? You’ve already taken her away from one home and friends and now you’re abandoning her.’
‘Look, Maeve . . . ‘
‘No, no, no.’ she shivers. ‘You look, you look and you listen, carefully. You can go now and pack a bag and get out of here. Go on, go along to that woman. I don’t want you here, lying to me, lying to Carmel, playing your little games, shaming me in front of everyone. You’re a weak, selfish man; my mother was right, she always said that you think only about yourself.’
He takes the one opportunity given him. ‘Your mother would have an opinion wouldn’t she, the interfering busybody.’
‘Get out, get out, Aidan.’
He goes slowly upstairs, takes a bag from the landing cupboard, and stuffs clothes in. He has disturbed the cushions that Maeve likes to arrange on the bed during the daytime. They are lilac and pink, matching the curtains, carpet and duvet. In the hardware shop in Bantry he has seen the parchment-coloured paper that Liv would like in the cottage bedroom. He places the cushions back in position and takes his toothbrush and shaving gear from the bathroom. He stops by the living-room door on his way out. A sweet warmth still drifts from the kitchen. Maeve is sitting in the chair, staring into space. He wants to enter the room but can’t; already, he is an interloper.
‘What about Carmel?’ he asks. ‘I’ll need to talk to her.’
‘I’ll tell her. I’ll explain as kindly as I can.’
‘Can’t you hold off a bit, please? Say I’ve had to go on a trip for a couple of days, buy us some time.’
‘I think there’s been plenty enough lies already.’ She turns her head and body away from him.
‘I’ll ring her later, then.’
‘No, leave it till tomorrow.’ She makes a gesture with her hand. He makes to protest, stops, and closes the front door softly behind him. The cream and yellow ice-cream van is still there on the triangle of green, its motor humming. Stefan waves to him, several lollies in one hand as he serves a queue of noisy children. Carmel has picked up a few words of Polish from him to describe her purchases: zimny, lody, wanilia. He waves back, nodding. Stefan arrived from Warsaw at around the same time they moved from Manchester. He has digs in Bantry and sings in the church choir. His landlady, Peggy Murphy, buys from Aidan and has confided that Stefan is too thin, she’s hoping to build him up with her lamb stews and fruit pies. He loves it here, he has told Aidan; he’s making a decent living and hopes to settle permanently, find a wife, buy his own house. The usual, universal aspirations.
Aidan walks to his van, clutching his bag. It seems unlikely that a marriage can be over so quickly, in the time it takes to buy a cornet or a multi-coloured ice lolly. He looks back at the house; he wouldn’t be surprised if it shuddered and collapsed in front of his eyes.
Chapter 10
Owen has called by on his way to Cork to say that he’s sorry about Edith. He’s brought Liv a handsome oval bone china serving plate as a token, white with tiny pink roses around the edge. It’s nineteenth century, from a little place he knows in Dublin, one of his traders that he ‘wheels and deals’ with. She places it on the dresser, admires its fine beauty, and says she’ll probably be too nervous to use it.
‘Ah, I never thought Edith would go on like that to you; she usually only wages battles with people she knows. I must have rattled her more than I thought, turning up and yarning about my feelings. I disturbed the status quo as ordered by her, I suppose, shifted the ground from under her feet.’ He rolls a cigarette and takes up his usual pose, standing in front of the fire and securing a log in it with his foot. He’s looking a bit worn and weary, she thinks and feels the contrasting satisfaction of her own boosted energies.
‘Is she speaking to you still?’
‘After a fashion. That’s her style; a good old bamey, a bit of a slanging match, then she sweetens up. Don’t take what she said personally, she’s argued with more people around here than the Pope’s had hot dinners. She’s probably forgotten what she said to you by now.’
Sounds tiring, Liv thinks. She can’t imagine why Owen would still be fond of such a waspish woman. Where would the tenderness be?
‘Well, she didn’t get much of a match here anyway, it was more of a monologue.’ In retrospect, she thinks, it was a bit like being visited by the mafia; the godmother attended by the heavy, scowling henchman who softens you up for the punch. ‘So you reckon you still have some hopes with her?’
‘Let’s say I haven’t thrown in the towel completely. I’m playing the long game at the moment, giving her time to mull it all over. Are those Marty’s sketches for the improvements?’
‘Yes, he brought them yesterday; just rough ideas while he costs it out.’
‘So you’re definitely keeping the old place; a holiday hideaway, is it?’
She bends to stir the fire, throw more turf on. ‘For now, yes. You never know,’ she adds lightly, ‘I might take up residence, become a permanent fixture.’
‘Well, that’s amazing! That would be a turn up for the books. Is your husband keen on that idea then — does he fancy doctoring here? I believe the pay’s better.’
‘There are lots of discussions to be had yet.’
‘Very wise. That would be a huge decision, living here after London. The winters are long and wet and there’s not that much call for librarians. I’d love to have you here, we could gallivant to Cork and Dublin and you could maybe come in
on the old antiques with me a bit — it can be quite lucrative with Americans wanting instant family heirlooms. But you’re sensible to consider it from all angles.’
She is dazzled by these possibilities, a hermit crab blinking in the light.
Owen takes reading glasses from his pocket, holds Marty’s plans close up. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I won’t know the old place, it’ll be a transformation.’
‘You like the ideas?’
‘Wonderful, I knew Marty would do the business. As Bridget would have said; it will be as if the golden goose has laid. You’ll be sitting pretty in clover, no doubt about it. Your mother would have loved it. She always said that apart from better weather, all Glenkeen needed was to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. She didn’t go a bundle on rural charm.’
‘She was never that fond of coming here, I gathered that much, even as a child. Before we left London, she’d see loads of films, have her hair done, stock up on novels, cosmetics and cigarettes. It was as if she was preparing for a siege. I heard her say to a neighbour once, “I just pretend it’s a penance for my sins.”’
Owen glances at her. ‘Children notice things you’d never credit, and you were always as bright as a button. Mollie just felt a fish out of water here, but it was important to your father, so she made the best of it.’
‘It was a shame, then, that we all stopped coming, given that my father liked it here, it was his childhood home. And he had a good relationship with his mother.’
‘So did Mollie, you know. She and Bridget had the measure of each other in many ways. But now, well, if she saw these plans, I’d say Mollie would be here in a flash. Even the weather has improved, and there’s a wealth of new shops — she’d not have a dull moment.’
She’s explaining the conservatory design to him when Aidan shoots past the window, knocks urgently on the door. He’s out of breath, pale and holding a red sports bag.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he blurts.
There’s perspiration on his forehead and she can smell the sharp whiff of anxiety.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Owen is here, looking at the plans with me. He brought me a lovely plate, come in and see it.’
‘Well, Aidan,’ Owen greets him, putting Marty’s sketches down. ‘Good to see you. How’s your vegetable kingdom?’
‘Fine, thanks, fine.’ He catches his breath, holds his side. ‘I’ve a stitch, sorry.’
‘Now, I didn’t know until a pub quiz a few months ago, that a stitch is caused by your organs putting pressure on your diaphragm,’ Owen tells them. ‘Marty knew, of course, he’s a demon with the answers. And that reminds me, Liv, would you like to join our quiz team, once a month in the Drift Net, just out the road from Redden’s Cross?’
‘I’ll think it over,’ she says, aware of Aidan’s laboured breathing and the bag that has a slip of striped shirt sticking through the zip.
‘Good.’ Owen looks at them carefully, his wild eyebrows meeting. He buttons his jacket, pulls down his shirt cuffs. ‘Well, so, I’ll be away, I must be in Cork for an early supper. I’m promised prawns and pears in chocolate and the roads can be busy on a Saturday evening.’
She bolts the door after him, something she has never done. The bolt sticks and she has to tug so that it shoots into place with a heavy groan. A pain shoots through her wrist. She turns, guessing what she is about to hear. ‘What is it?’
‘Maeve knows. Pat Noonan saw us swimming yesterday and told her mother. She threw me out.’
She holds on to the bolt, hands behind her. ‘I’m sorry, that was my stupidity. I should have thought — Pat mentioned one day that he knew I swam down at the cove. I’d forgotten it. I’ve met so many people recently and so much has been happening. I should have been more careful.’
He shakes his head. ‘Someone, sometime, was going to see us, unless we stayed inside and grew pale in the half-light.’
He’s still gripping the bag with both hands; she eases it from him, puts it on the floor.
‘Sit down. My God, this is sudden.’
He slumps into a chair. She crouches down by him, holds his knee, the thin denim covered in a cloth patch stitched by his wife. He smells vinegary.
‘Did you have chips for lunch?’
‘Hmm? No, no. I made chutney with Carmel.’ It already seems another life, another era, stirring the thickening mixture while his daughter balanced on one skinny leg beside him, fingering her brace.
‘Does she know?’
‘No, she was at the stables when Maeve came back.’
‘And Maeve, how was she?’
‘Cold, very cold and angry. She told me to get out. I was honest, at last, after I’d been found out. I said I wanted to be with you. So she told me to come here. I drove around for a while. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. I imagined I might just keep on driving, on and on until I ran out of road. You know, like one of those people you read about; they turn up in a place and no one knows why, or who they are. I think I stopped in a couple of places, I can’t really remember.’ He covers her hand. ‘Well, it had to happen, I suppose, that someone would notice. We’d been living on luck, hadn’t we?’
‘Yes. This place seems so safe; a sanctuary away from the world. There was never going to be an easy way to do it.’
‘I wanted time with Carmel, that’s the worst bit.’ He shudders. ‘Have you anything to drink? I could do with a courage booster. Any whiskey?’
‘Just red wine, I think, in the cupboard.’ She’d bought it planning a chicken casserole for a special supper when he could get away, thinking of the onions and carrots and chopped garlic, with dense white bread to dip in the juices. Now they can have as many suppers as they want.
She fumbles with the corkscrew and hands it to him but he’s no better; it takes him several attempts to open the wine. They drink, taking strength.
‘Here’s to us,’ he says. ‘I don’t think there’ll be anyone else wishing us well.’
‘Here’s to us.’ A toast doesn’t seem right, though. She’s thinking of Maeve and the child. And there is Douglas. It’s all too rapid, she can’t think straight.
He looks at her, sees that her eyes are dazed. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I know this is unexpected. I don’t have to stay here. I could go to a bed and breakfast. What I mean is, I don’t want you to be hurried into anything because of what’s happened.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Be here, with you.’
‘And that’s what I want. There’s a relief, in a way, that it’s been brought out. We need to stay close now, be united. There are going to be slings and arrows.’
He unlaces his boots, kicks them off. ‘I could sleep for a week. I don’t know what’s keeping my eyes open. It’s just as well this cottage stands high in the glen. We’ll be able to see our enemies coming, prepare our ammunition.’
‘Have you anyone in particular in mind?’
‘Eileen, for sure.’
They laugh, exchanging guilty glances.
He frowns, pushes his glasses up his forehead. ‘I think Owen guessed.’
‘I’m sure he did. It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? In fact . . .’
She goes to the door, draws back the bolt, and throws it wide. The sun is fading, casting a farewell blush on the glen. The heaviness of the day dwindles with it, making way for the light fingers of dusk. The evening is tranquil for now, until the birds start their busy twilight rituals, calling, flitting from tree to tree.
‘There,’ she says. ‘No more secrets. That’s something to toast.’ She looks at him, sees his weariness, wants to cover him with a soft blanket and sing him to sleep.
He pours more wine. He pulls her on to his lap and they sit by the purring fire’s leaping shadows, holding each other, looking through the door at the honeyed light spilling on the world outside.
In the night they lie close, nesting on a mattress in the small bedroom; the main one is still in a state of peeling chaos, await
ing the wallpaper that has arrived and is stacked in rolls. They’ve dragged in a wardrobe, hung up the few clothes he’s brought beside hers. His shaving kit is on the washstand. A chair acts as a bedside table. They bump into each other whenever they move and smile at their jostling and squeezing. The room looks like a rough drawing, a preparatory work. He says it reminds him of her bedsit when they first met, when she also had a mattress on the floor. There’s an exhilaration in the disorder; they could be eighteen and twenty-one again, swapping stories about lectures, scribbling essay notes, cutting coupons from the papers for cut-price meals and cinema tickets.
By the candlelight, they create animal shapes on the wall, rabbits, deer, flapping birds, rearing horses and elephants. With joined fingers they make a deep winged eagle, gliding swiftly across the shadow-pocked wall. They talk themselves hoarse, spreading out the real, here and now life they will start building; repairing the cottage, planning the business, preparing the garden. They decide they’ll need another room, a study that can also serve as a guest room when Carmel stays. It could be added at the back and maybe another toilet. Marty will have to be consulted again, drawings reviewed. Herbs, she says suddenly, clapping her hands together; she loves them, is good at growing them — she’d like eventually to make them a feature of the stall. He’ll have to see a solicitor as soon as possible, get things sorted with Maeve. They agree that he should sign the house over to her, no question about that. It’s a great relief now, they tell each other that they can be honest and move on. Brimming with plans, excited by their own boldness, they sink back and discover all over again how well they fit, how together, with a hand here, a caress there, skin kissing skin, they make sense of the world’s mayhem.
In the small hours, Aidan wakes and is confused for a moment, looking for his alarm clock. Then he feels the satin of Liv’s thigh, looks down at her angular shoulders. He weaves his fingers through her hair, breathes in deeply of her scents of turf and sea. The silence is deep and astonishing. In the house in Castlegray, there is always some sound — a distant car alarm, a foraging cat, a sleepless neighbour. He thinks of his daughter, lying amongst her soft toys. He hopes her brace isn’t hurting. He’d promised her the next chapter of Long Ears. As he stares into the darkness his mobile chirps a message. He sits bolt upright. Liv sleeps on. He reaches for his jeans, slides the mobile from his pocket and opens his text inbox. The message is from Carmel, glowing greenly at him: Daddy, come home. He lies back, the mobile held to his chest. He doesn’t care what Maeve says, he’ll see her soon, and he has a right to see her, explain to her. He puts his hand on Liv’s waist for reassurance. He recalls what she used to say to him when he was agonizing over his looming study deadlines: ‘All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ She sighs and murmurs in her sleep, shifts on to her side, facing away from him. He pulls his lumpy pillow under his neck, trying to find a comfortable spot and nestles into her back, fitting his knee into the crook of hers.
OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Page 17