The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay

by Anne Doughty

  I could think of several people who’d not have the slightest compunction about giving me orders, whether I was twenty-one or ninety-one. I might be free of George, but I still had my mother and a regiment of assorted relatives behind her who’d feel just as free to comment on my decisions as she did. But even the thought of the battles that lay ahead could not suppress the bubble of excitement that had floated up to the surface of my mind.

  ‘Maybe I’m being selfish, Mary. Some may be pleased that I’m staying, but others will say I’m selfish.’

  ‘Well, Others will just have to think again, won’t they?’

  I had to smile to myself. Some was Patrick, and Others was George. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the words meant what Mary wanted them to mean. She knew I’d understand.

  Sitting there, peeling potatoes, it was all I could do not to get up and dance around the kitchen singing. Here, where I had come, a stranger in the place, I’d been accepted as the person I really was. It hadn’t happened to me since those far off days of early childhood which had been prompting my waking hours and inhabiting my dreams since the moment I arrived. The longer I could live and work in this place I had come to love, the harder it would be for circumstances to overwhelm me once I was back. However bad things became, I would never forget what it had meant to be accepted. I would never let anyone or anything take that knowledge away from me again.

  Chapter 15

  Whether it was by chance, or whether it was deliberate, I shall never know, but Mary woke me later than usual the next morning. Paddy had already gone to take the Lisara churns to the creamery and Mary was making up the hens’ feed as I sat eating my breakfast. Somewhere in the far distance I heard the echoes of Dicky’s flugelhorn. At the sound of it, my stomach turned over and I put down my egg-spoon.

  ‘Ah, now eat your egg, astore, and don’t worry yourself about him,’ said Mary, coming to the table and pouring another cup of tea for me. ‘He’ll not annoy you, I’m thinkin’, and he’ll be soon gone. I’ll away to the hens and then start on the butter in the dairy.’

  The dairy was as close to the kitchen as anyone could get without actually coming in. Reassured by the firmness in her tone, I took a deep breath and went back to my egg.

  ‘I just hate unpleasantness so much, Mary. I didn’t realise what a nasty side he had till yesterday. He likes to get his own way.’

  ‘Oh he would, he would that. You tell him you’re staying an’ he’ll just have to sit on an egg less.’

  I hadn’t heard that expression for years. It made me laugh and feel better, but my ease was short-lived. The flugelhorn rang out again much closer at hand. Mary picked up the heavy bucket and hurried off. When the horn gave forth again it was directly outside the cottage.

  A wave of fury swept over me as I heard the terrified squawks of the hens gathered by the gate waiting to be fed. Only Dicky Sinclair could be so appallingly rude. I sat where I was, but my hand was trembling as I drank my tea. I had no intention whatever of responding to Dicky’s horn. It sounded again.

  This time I just couldn’t keep still. I went to the window and peered out just as I’d seen Mary do so often. But it was no use. The car was so low slung I couldn’t see it below the hydrangea. I stood on, undecided. I was just about to sit down again when I heard a door bang. George’s head bobbed up above the flourishing pink flowerheads as he got out and walked along the road to the gate. As he’d emerged from the driver’s side, presumably it was he and not Dicky who’d used the horn.

  I sat down hastily only an instant before he appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a discoloured Aran sweater over his previous outfit and he still hadn’t shaved.

  ‘Hallo, George,’ I said as calmly as I could manage. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘I say, aren’t you ready yet? It’s after nine, you know.’

  His tone was half-reproachful, half-teasing, as if he had made up his mind that bygones were bygones and he was magnanimous enough to overlook a few hasty words.

  ‘Where are your things? I’ll put them in the car while you finish off.’

  I continued to munch my piece of wheaten bread in silence. I shall never forget that piece of wheaten. It was the end of the cake and it had caught just a bit too much heat, so it was hard and crusty. Usually Prince benefits from such pieces, but today was not a usual day. I chewed it patiently before I dared swallow. All the time, George watched, waiting for some sign that everything was about to return to normal.

  ‘George, I did make the situation clear yesterday.’

  Amazed at how calm I was feeling, I became suddenly aware of myself sitting at the table, continuing with my breakfast as if I were a character in a play. I felt sure there was a script somewhere around to which I could refer in moments of doubt: ‘George moves centre right and stands awkwardly looking at Elizabeth’; ‘Elizabeth continues to eat wheaten bread and drink tea’; ‘Elizabeth speaks quietly but firmly’.

  ‘I’m not coming with you. I’m staying to finish my work.’

  ‘But you must have finished by now. Bill Bates only spent a couple of days down at Larne when he did container services. You’ve been here for weeks. And what about me? How do you think I feel coming all this way to bring you home and then you say you’re not coming?’

  I could have told him that his coming had been entirely his own idea. Including the nice little place in Limerick with our own room. But I thought better of it.

  ‘How much longer do you need anyway?’

  ‘I’m planning to stay another fortnight.’

  ‘A fortnight?’ he exploded, all final traces of amiability blown away. ‘But term begins in another week or so. What about Freshers’ Week?’

  ‘What about it?’

  The dregs of my tea were stone cold and full of leaves, but I continued to drink in tiny sips. Having something to hold helped to keep my hands from trembling.

  ‘But we always do the Jazz Club stand and go to the Freshers’ Hop. You can’t just stay here and let everyone down. What do you expect me to do, if you’re not back?’

  I glanced at my empty cup and suddenly remembered what Mary had said when she’d studied my fortune, ‘Aye, ’tis darkish at the top, but please God, lighter further down.’ She’d said something, too, about a ring and a man I’d turned my back against, but I couldn’t remember what. I removed a large black leaf from the inside rim and pushed my cup and saucer away.

  ‘George, I don’t expect anything. Nothing at all. That is why I returned your ring. I’m sure there are lots of people who would be delighted to go to the Freshers’ Hop with you. But I won’t be going. Nor to Limerick, or Wicklow, or Belfast, or the Jazz Club, or the Hop, or to anything else.’

  ‘You mean it’s over? You’re dropping me. Just like that, after all this time?’

  A shot rang out in the distance and I jumped. My hands were shaking now, so I clasped them in my lap below the table where he couldn’t see them. I was so agitated it didn’t dawn on me until there were several more shots that it wasn’t gunfire. It was Geoffrey. If the Morris managed the hill, he’d be here any minute now.

  George was standing glaring furiously down at me. He was so close I could see a ladder in one of the panels of cable in his sweater and the brown rim of the cigarette burn which had set it going. Well, I wasn’t going to be mending it for him.

  I stood up. ‘Look, George, I’m sorry you’re upset, but there’s no use arguing. I’ve made up my mind. Mary will be back in a minute, she’s just feeding the hens.’

  My voice was full of anxiety and one look at him told me there wasn’t the slightest chance he’d take the hint about Mary, but I had to say something.

  He had no intention whatever of moving and my legs were beginning to shake so I had to sit down again. Then he started to go on at me. I was feeling so shaky I hardly heard the words, but I didn’t need to. The intonation pattern was enough. That tone and rhythm was only too familiar and it always meant the same thing. He may not actually have said ‘afte
r all I’ve done for you’, but the implication was there.

  ‘What’s everyone going to say if I go back without you? All you think of is yourself. . .’

  As his voice rose higher, his face got redder. Then the flugelhorn sounded twice in quick succession and he craned his neck past me to peer out of the window. When he turned back towards me, his face was livid.

  ‘So that’s it, is it? Dicky was right. I should have listened to him last night and not come back here at all. You think I’m a fool, don’t you? Well, we’ll see who’s a fool,’ he added menacingly, as he turned on his heel and walked out.

  Geoffrey stood aside to let him pass. The car door banged, the engine revved loudly and the car roared off.

  ‘I. . . say . . . Elizabeth. . . I’m. . . most terribly . . . sorry. I didn’t mean . . . to butt in . . .’

  I took my hands down from my face and looked at him through my streaming eyes. I wanted to say something friendly, but I couldn’t speak. I put my hands to my head which felt as if it would burst.

  ‘What’s wrong . . . Elizabeth . . . c . . . c . . . can I fetch Mary? I say . . . don’t cry.’

  Geoffrey’s stutter was worse than I’d ever heard it before, his appeal full of utter distress. I took the crumpled object he offered me, mopped my face and blew my nose. His hanky smelt of oil.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly, ‘I’m not crying, it’s just my eyes water when I’m upset. I’ll stop in a minute.’

  Looking up at him, his pale face full of concern, I knew I liked Geoffrey far more than I’d ever liked George and yet I’d managed to convince myself I was in love with him.

  ‘You didn’t butt in, Geoffrey, you timed it beautifully. He’d never have gone so quickly if you hadn’t arrived.’

  I leaned my head back to ease my aching neck and put my hands up again to my throbbing head.

  ‘Here, let me help.’

  Before I realised what was happening, Geoffrey had stepped behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders. He pushed his thumbs firmly into the neck muscles and moved them backwards and forwards.

  ‘Ooowww.’

  ‘Sorry, but it will ease in a minute. Lean forward.’

  I was so surprised that I did as I was told. In a few minutes the headache did begin to ease and his thumbs began to work less vigorously. His hands were warm and comforting and under his touch I felt myself relax.

  ‘Is the headache any easier?’

  ‘Yes, it’s not blowing my head off any more.’

  ‘You can lock your neck like this climbing a vertical face,’ he explained. ‘My brother often has trouble with his. If the neck muscles are tight, it can give you an awful head. Lean back again.’

  I did as I was told, closed my eyes and let the weariness and relief sweep over me. Geoffrey said something, but his hands were over my ears so I couldn’t make out what it was. Suddenly, he took his hands away and I opened my eyes. Outside a car was revving impatiently and there in the doorway George stood glaring at us.

  For a moment, as he strode towards us, I thought he was going to strike me, but he merely flung a plastic carrier bag into my lap.

  ‘Your mother thought you might want these for the party,’ he said bitterly, looking from Geoffrey to me and then back again. With a final glare, he turned on his heel, strode across the room and almost collided with Mary in the doorway.

  Ignoring her completely, he looked round and addressed us again, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  ‘Meantime, until you see her again, I do hope you both enjoy the rest of your time together.’

  Mary looked out after him and we heard the Spitfire roar off up the road. ‘Boys a dear, d’ye think they’re gone for good this time?’

  I looked down at the carrier bag on my knee. Its contents were sliding gently down onto the stone floor, my best wool dress, a lace-trimmed slip and a pair of pyjamas my mother had bought in Cleaver’s sale.

  I thought of George’s nice little place in Limerick where nobody knew us, where we would have a room of our own, and of my mother sending me clean pyjamas, red and white striped with a blue rabbit on the pocket.

  ‘Mary, do you think it’s too early for another cup of tea? I didn’t quite get the goodness of that last one.’

  Chapter 16

  With my own plans changing at regular intervals, it wasn’t surprising I’d got confused about Geoffrey’s. As we sat drinking tea with Mary it emerged he wasn’t going to Dingle till tomorrow. Today, he was planning to take photographs of the houses in Lisara and their immediate surroundings.

  ‘Would you think of coming with me, Elizabeth,’ he asked awkwardly. ‘If you could possibly spare the time it really would help. Everybody would know I wasn’t from the Revenue or the Land Commission.’

  ‘Ah shure, go, astore. Go and keep Geoffrey company. Won’t it do you good to go and see your friends and you so nearly gone,’ urged Mary, before I had thought about what I was going to do next. ‘And do you both come about one for a bite of lunch, for Paddy’s at Carey’s and I’m all on my lonesome.’

  So we set off to tramp the lanes and paths of Lisara, on a fresh, sunny morning which blew away all thoughts of the ghastly beginning to the day.

  Geoffrey was surprisingly easy with the people we met. Although he still said very little, the way he listened did encourage people to talk. I told him he made me think of Professor McDonagh, that he had the same directness of manner and the gentleness.

  ‘You know, Geoffrey, the first night we went to the pub with the storytellers I called him “Professor McDonagh” and he just passed me over a glass of orange and said “Sure Frank will do very nicely.”’

  Geoffrey seemed pleased. He was looking forward to their meeting. Then he began to talk about McDonagh’s work. He really did know a lot about it and as he talked I could see why he found it all so exciting.

  By the time we came back to Mary, hungry for lunch and full of news we’d carefully collected for her, I had promised Geoffrey copies of the stories in my notebooks and he’d offered to get me photocopies of some of the work he had already done. We had also managed to photograph half the houses in Lisara while carrying on our conversation.

  I hadn’t realised what a skilled photographer Geoffrey was. When he produced an elderly Leica with interchangeable lenses I watched carefully, only having a fixed lens camera myself, but it was not until late in the afternoon I finally plucked up my courage and asked him if I might have a look.

  ‘Try it,’ he said, as he handed it across.

  George had had a new camera for his twenty-first and every time I touched it, he lectured me on how it worked, behaved as if I were about to drop it, and retrieved it at the first possible opportunity. Geoffrey didn’t say a word as I screwed in the first of the long lenses.

  ‘Goodness. It does make a difference, doesn’t it? I thought long lenses were only for photographing things you couldn’t get near to.’

  I framed a distant view with waving grasses in a nearby hedgebank, then filled the frame with a handful of wild-flowers.

  ‘Take any pictures you want, please. I’ve got lots of free film. My brother-in-law’s a professional, he keeps me overdate stuff. It’s almost always all right. He does my printing too, so I can easily send you anything you want.

  I sat down on a stone wall, swung the barrel of the lens out to sea and focused on the islands lying quiet in the warm sun of early afternoon.

  ‘So you have a sister as well as a brother?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s older than me. Married with twin boys. I was the third child, you see, the sticking-plaster child.’

  ‘What d’you mean, the sticking-plaster child?’

  ‘The one who holds a failing marriage together.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘No.’

  I couldn’t think what to say. So many things fell into place. I had learnt more about him in the last five minutes than in the last five days.

  He found what he was looking for and passed it
across to me. ‘Here, try this. You might prefer the wide angle.’

  I changed lenses and looked again. The islands were totally different now, spread across the horizon. Much more sea in relation to island. Interesting, but not right at all. Not the way I had come to know them since that wonderful moment when they appeared beyond the window of Michael Feely’s taxi.

  ‘What age were you when it broke up?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Was it awful for you?’

  ‘No, not the break-up. It was before that, the rows, the endless rows. I thought it was my fault. Apparently children do think that, but I only found out years later.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it sad? There must be so many things people only find out years later, when the harm’s been done.’

  I was thinking of George and when I looked back at him it was obvious he knew that perfectly well.

  ‘Were you planning to marry him?’

  I nodded sheepishly. Already the whole affair seemed remote, something long past, a totally ridiculous aberration, like believing in Santa Claus after you’ve grown up.

  ‘Yes, next year, after graduation. With all the other student Happy-ever-afters.’

  ‘But what about your post-graduate studies? Had you been able to organise that to fit in with his work?’

  ‘It had never entered my head,’ I blurted out.

  ‘But you must carry on what you’re doing, Elizabeth. You enjoy it so much, and you’re so good in the field. Why ever haven’t you thought about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Money, I suppose. My family aren’t well off. They’ll be glad when I’m off their hands.’

  ‘But there are scholarships, and grants. That’s how I manage. I get nothing from my parents. My sister and brother-in-law are very kind, I stay with them often, but with the boys at school they have no money either. I’ve had to do it myself. And you’re very practical. You could manage if you wanted to.’

  I swung the lens towards him. Taken unawares, he laughed as I pressed the shutter. I hoped the picture would print as I had seen it, one of those moments when Geoffrey looked happy, and a moment I too was unlikely to forget.