The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay

by Anne Doughty

  Panic overwhelmed me. It couldn’t possibly be this Saturday, could it? Today was Wednesday. That would leave only two more days. I must have made a mistake, I told myself, as I went through the letter again. There was no mistake. He was planning to come in three days’ time, before I’d even had a full two weeks.

  My face felt hot and cross as I applied fresh lipstick. I examined it in the mirror of my compact and was so shocked by my expression I attempted a tender smile. But I wasn’t in the mood for tender smiles. Yes, I probably had covered most of the material I needed, but that wasn’t the point. This was the part of my work I did best and thought most important and George had reduced it to drawing maps and counting houses.

  I remembered the carefully folded fiver that had arrived in Ben’s letter in case I might need it and the questions he’d gone on to ask about topics I’d only mentioned briefly when we were at the Rosetta. ‘Comparisons are odious,’ my mother would say, but it was hard not to notice that after two years listening to me talk about my work, George hadn’t registered as much as Ben had in just a few weeks.

  I thrust George’s letter into my handbag. Why on earth couldn’t he have asked me when I’d be ready to come back? It was far too risky now to write and tell him not to come, I’d have to ring his mother. A five mile round trip tomorrow morning to the nearest phone, the bookies in Roadford, and an international call at peak rate to the busy income tax office where she worked. Goodness knows how long it would take to get through and how much it would cost when I did.

  ‘Duty done. At your service, ma’am.’

  Patrick was stripping off his jacket and dropping it with his briefcase on the back seat.

  ‘Have you really finished?’

  ‘Yes. But for one quick one over on the coast I thought we could do it on the way home.’

  He opened up the map, ran his finger along the road that cut straight through the hills to the sea, and waited.

  ‘That would be marvellous.’

  I was still feeling desperately agitated and anxious as we set off. The thought of being torn away from Lisara on Saturday was bad enough, but what troubled me even more was why I should still be so angry and upset when I had already made up my mind I wasn’t going.

  It was the Hills of Burren that finally calmed me down. Every geography student has seen slides and film of limestone pavement, Malham Tam, if it’s a British Isles course, Yugoslavia if it’s Mediterranean Lands. I’d seen both, but nothing had prepared me for the sight of these white Hills of Burren, under a cloudless sky with the sea a sparkling blue backdrop.

  Patrick was enjoying himself and his enthusiasm and delight were infectious. He drove slowly and stopped often, sometimes to let me look at the naked rock, fretted and fluted by wind and rain and seamed by great crevasses, sometimes to examine a spring, or a group of plants. At one point, we climbed up a few hundred feet above the road and sat looking back at the green country where we had spent the early part of the day.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ I said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I’m going to wake up and find myself in Belfast. . . in the rain.’

  ‘You don’t exactly seem to relish the prospect.’

  He looked at me steadily and I noticed the fine lines around his eyes and mouth. He had a way of picking up things from what I said and offering them back to me.

  ‘Don’t I? It’s the sun,’ I said lightly. ‘It’s always made me want to go and do impossible things.’

  ‘What sort of impossible things?’

  His voice was gentle, casual almost, but he was watching me carefully.

  ‘I don’t really know. My mother says I never know what I want. I hate to admit it, but there’s a sense in which she’s right. All I seem to be really sure of is what I don’t want.’

  ‘But surely that’s more than halfway there?’

  ‘You know, I never thought of it that way.’ I paused to let his words sink in. ‘At least if I know what I don’t want, I suppose I won’t be trapped by it,’ I continued slowly, ‘even if I haven’t found out what I do want.’

  ‘Trapped?’

  His voice was questioning but at the same time reassuring. I tried to work out what I did mean.

  ‘Do you remember when you told me about your car being a gift? Not what you’d have chosen. Well, the more I look at it, the more I feel I’m surrounded by people who expect me to think what they think, do what they do, enjoy what they enjoy. Mostly, I don’t. And sometimes I’m afraid I’ll give in, because I’m tired of struggling and always being made to feel the odd one out. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Perfect sense.’

  He had been listening so intently, I was surprised when he said nothing more and just went on looking down into the shadows of a deep crevasse.

  ‘Come over here, there’s something I want to show you.’

  His hand was firm around mine as we knelt on the smooth surface and peered down between the jagged edges of the deep fissure. Growing out of the tiniest scrap of soil imaginable on the rock several feet below us was a small plant with delicate, fernlike leaves.

  ‘But it’s lovely. How on earth does it manage it?’

  ‘Yes, it is a lovely plant. But there’s more to it than that. Down there, it’s out of the wind. Cooler in summer, wanner in winter, and always moister than here on the surface. And that’s only a beginning. That particular plant cannot tolerate lime. Yet here it is in the middle of a desert of limestone. It has picked its spot and it survives, though everything in the local environment round about says it can’t.’

  I nodded and smiled to myself. There was a lot more to his words than an interesting botanical description. He helped me to my feet and we stood side by side, held by the sheer immensity of the scene, two tiny figures in a vast empty space created out of rock and sea and sky. Irresistibly, the thought crept over me that were I with Patrick, wherever I was, I would never again feel the ache of loneliness.

  ‘Just one more call,’ he said, as we got back into the hot car. ‘An old lady who lives down by the beach at Drennan. If we go back by the coast road, you can watch the sun go down on Galway Bay.’

  We had reached the highest point of the extraordinary lunar landscape. Ahead of us, in a triangle bounded by the hills and the horizon, lay a vast expanse of sea still densely blue and shimmering under a sky just beginning to lose its colour. Away to our right curved a long line of beach. Beyond the splash of tiny waves, the wet sand gleamed in the yellowing light. Where the storm beach had been enmeshed in drifting sand, grasses waved in the gentle breeze, vivid shades of green and blue-grey set against the darkened fragments of shattered limestone.

  ‘I’m an absolute idiot,’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve been living on Galway Bay for ten days and the penny hasn’t dropped till now.’

  ‘Not surprising really,’ he replied. ‘You’ve been focused on Lisara. But I’m told some of the tourists really are daft. Apparently they expect to see an arrow on the skyline with a notice saying “Next sunset: today 7.45 pm” like the one near Old Faithful in Yellowstone.’

  I laughed and looked out to where the islands lay on the misty horizon. My mind went back to the first time I had laid eyes on them, the Sunday afternoon of my arrival. I’d become so used to seeing them from Lisara, they looked strangely distant from this different perspective.

  ‘What did you mean when you said distance lends perspective?’ I asked, turning towards him.

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Yes, when you drove me back to Lisara, last Thursday. You stopped to look at the islands and said you often stopped there on the way to Limerick, because the distance lent perspective.’

  ‘Remind me never to get drunk with you around. You’ve too good a memory. Was that only last Thursday?’

  I nodded and waited as he turned right onto the coast road. It was after six o’clock and there was a scatter of traffic around, mostly family cars with beachballs in the back windows and folding prams strapped to their roofracks.

 
; ‘I think I meant that events often seem different when you look back on them from wherever you are now . . . if you see what I mean.’

  I laughed, for the final phrase was mine.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘it’s a pity one couldn’t speed up time now and again, so that you could see how something would appear when. . .’

  I broke off, for the situation ahead looked most awkward. A line of cars were nosing their way out from the field above the beach. One car had stopped and the driver was having an argument with an old woman who was waving and gesticulating angrily. Behind them, other cars were tooting and revving their engines impatiently. To my surprise, I saw that we were signalling to turn left into the field on the deeply rutted sandy track where this angry scene was taking place.

  Suddenly, the old woman spotted us. With a hasty gesture she dismissed the irate driver and waved the line of cars aside so that we could come in. It was a very awkward manoeuvre. Once free of the departing cars, Patrick headed for the sea. He stopped with the bonnet pointing at the horizon where a small fishing boat was perfectly reflected in the calm water. As the last cars disappeared behind us leaving the beach deserted, I saw the old woman come hurrying towards us. Patrick took an envelope from his briefcase and put it in his pocket as we got out together.

  ‘Ah, Mr Patrick, sur, I thought it was you. Shure, you’re welcome.’

  She clutched his hand and looked up at him, her face burnt brown from the sun. She was dressed completely in black but for a faded green velour hat which she wore on the back of her head and a stripy apron with large patch pockets.

  ‘And you’re all well I’m sure, your father and mother and Walter and Moyra and Helen. I say a wee prayer for you every night and you all so good to an old lady.’

  She didn’t appear to have seen me and I wondered if I could slip away behind the car and leave them to their conversation. Patrick had given her the envelope and she was thanking him profusely, catching his arm and calling various blessings upon him.

  ‘Tell your father, I never forget him, nor you neither. . .’

  She broke off and turned to me as if she had just registered my presence.

  ‘Ah miss, I didn’t see you. Shure you’re welcome too. I’m glad to see you back so soon. It will not be long now, miss, shure it won’t and I wish you joy. It’s to be October isn’t it, and that not far away now.’

  I agreed that indeed October was not far away, though what it was that was to be I had no idea. She pressed my hands and muttered to herself. I caught ‘Mr Patrick’ and ‘joy’, but she was talking to herself now in a high-pitched voice which sounded as if she were weeping. Patrick moved towards me and held out his hand.

  ‘Ah shure, go on childer, away for your walk. Isn’t everybody gone home except old Mary Coyle and she wishes you joy. Take your time. I’ll leave the gate for you and lock it later.’

  She stood waiting as we moved to the stile where a path led down to the beach. She waved as I got over and was still waving as we set off across the shingle beyond the grassy sward.

  ‘Do you mind if we walk for a bit? She’ll go away as soon as we’re out of sight,’ Patrick said, without looking at me.

  His face looked old and tired as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if it was the reference to Walter that had upset him. And yet, he had seemed easy enough with her. He’d done what I’d done myself many a time, when I’d nodded to old people who had forgotten the loss of those once known so well to them.

  No, it wasn’t when she spoke of his family that he’d stood rooted to the spot It was when she had turned and spoken to me. ‘It will not be long now and I wish you joy.’ There was only one possible meaning for those words when spoken to a woman with a man at her side.

  We walked in silence along the shore, moving automatically towards the firmer sand left by the receding tide. It was very quiet, only the slight swash from the long ripples on a calm sea and the occasional cry of a gull. I looked studiously out at the islands, wondering whether the stricken look had gone from his face.

  At last, I had to turn to look at him. I found him watching me closely. I dropped my eyes to the wet sand at my feet, studied minutely the pattern of tiny shells left by the tide. They were pink and cream and white.

  ‘I’m sorry. Was it long ago?’

  He smiled his familiar smile and squeezed my hand.

  ‘Six years ago . . . a long, long time ago . . . but it has taken till now to get the right perspective on it.’

  Watching the sun dip lower in the sky, we walked on till we found a smooth-polished tree trunk cast up on a sandy bank. We sat and talked quietly, about the islands and the yellowing light and the way the ripples crossed and recrossed each other on the gently sloping beach. A slight breeze sprang up from the sea as it often does at the end of a hot afternoon. I shivered slightly.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  He put his arm around me and drew me closer so that I could feel the tweed of his jacket on my bare arm and the touch of his cheek on my forehead. We sat in silence, watching the seabirds wheel and dip. I knew what had changed in me: even when you have no idea where you are going, sometimes you have to go to find out.

  I also knew that if I turned to Patrick, he would kiss me. All day, I had been evading the look in his eyes, a look of loneliness and longing. I could evade it once more. And perhaps I should. For there could be no knowing where his longing could lead us. All I had to do was stand up, or bend forward and pick up a shell, any trivial act to take me beyond the shelter of his arms.

  But I did none of those things. I turned towards him, felt his arms close around me and was overwhelmed by a loneliness and a longing of my own.

  Chapter 11

  Tiny puffs of evening cloud were turning to blue and grey as we hurried back along the beach. They began to drift across the orange and gold radiance the westering sun had spread out across the whole width of the horizon. Sunset itself would be spectacular. But we couldn’t stay to watch, nor share the soft hush of the early evening, for Patrick was already late. Back at the hotel, there was the spirit store to unlock, supplies to be checked out for bar and dining room, while in Lisara, Mary and Paddy would be waiting for me, supper ready and long since put in the oven to keep warm.

  Returning by the direct route was so rapid, there was little time for talk.

  ‘I’ll come and find you as soon as I get back,’ he promised, as he pulled in behind a red car drawn up on the verge beside the cottage wall.

  I knew he wanted to take me in his arms again but we’d both seen Michael Flannigan strolling up the road. As he moved closer, his eyes firmly fixed upon us, his goat on its long tether stopped and nibbled in a leisurely way at the roadside grasses.

  We exchanged a wry look, clasped hands below the level of the dashboard and got out together. Moments later Patrick was speeding back across the far ridge.

  ‘Ah shure good, girl, there you are. We was just speaking of you. I said ye’d not be too long.’

  Mary was smiling broadly as she drew me over to the fireside. An elderly man sat in her chair. In his ancient duffle coat and Wellington boots, he looked like many a neighbouring farmer, though he could easily have been a passing tramp. Whoever he was, Mary’s unexpected animation told me he was important to her.

  ‘Isn’t it great now that Professor McDonagh is here for a day or two, Elizabeth, and you so interested in the old stories,’ she said enthusiastically as she introduced us.

  The professor stood up, shook my hand and enquired politely after my own professor at Queen’s whom he said he knew very well professionally but not personally. His eyes were a pale blue, his hair thinning and gingery, his face creased with age and worn by wind and sun. It was his voice I noticed particularly, soft but very pleasing, full of a gentle humour, a voice you could listen to for a long time without growing weary.

  ‘Come on now, it’s time we had our supper,’ said Mary, with unaccustomed firmness. ‘Elizabeth, astore, would you fetch me the
cloth from the bottom of the cupboard?’

  It was a memorable evening, Paddy in great spirits, Mary more talkative than I had ever known her. I was so heartened and encouraged by the happy atmosphere round the fire that I offered some fragments of stories I’d heard as a child. I was amazed at how much I was able to recall. Before he went back to his hotel, Professor McDonagh asked me if I’d like to join Paddy and himself on their visits to the local storytellers. When he said it would be a great help to have an informant from another part of Ireland I was so excited I could hardly believe my luck.

  For the next two days I listened and scribbled as they worked their way round the area, sometimes meeting the storytellers in their homes, sometimes taking them to the local pub. Mary had often sung the praises of the professor and now I could see why: he was a genuinely nice man, thoughtful and kind. He was also very good at making people feel comfortable and getting them to talk freely even with a tape recorder running.

  By the time he left us on Friday night, I’d heard so much and seen so much I wanted to write for a month. But I hadn’t got a month. After my call to George’s mother I knew I had to make a decision about going back, so, when I sat down on Saturday morning to record as much as I could about my time with Professor McDonagh, I began by writing notes to my parents and George to let them know I’d be coming home the following Saturday, by train from Dublin.

  All through that morning I wrote fast, keeping my mind firmly fixed on what I was doing. By lunch time, I felt I had something I could work with once I was back in Belfast. I let myself relax a little and immediately my mind filled with thoughts of Patrick. Since we’d parted so hurriedly outside the cottage, I’d had no time at all to explore what I felt about him. Each evening I would look forward to having that time before I went to sleep, but my eyes closed the moment I climbed into bed. As I put my notebooks away and laid the table for lunch, I longed for the empty countryside, the six-mile walk into town and my first piece of quiet since the soft stillness of the beach at Drennan.