At First Sight

by Hannah Sunderland

‘Ned,’ I blubbered. ‘I need your help.’ A fat, cold raindrop fell from the sky and landed with a splat on my knee and in seconds it was pouring.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ His voice took on a worried, fatherly tone and I could hear him stand up in preparation for a classic Ned session of pacing.

  ‘We can’t find him – Charlie. He’s gone and his phone isn’t with him and I’m just really frightened that he’s … that he’s done something.’

  ‘Okay, Nell. Calm down. The mind tends to jump to the worst-case scenario at times like this, but just because you can’t find him, doesn’t mean that he’s … well that he’s …’

  ‘Dead?’ I asked, my vision now completely useless for all the tears and rain obstructing it.

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I don’t know?’ I looked around. At the end of the road I could see the buildings fall away and the open space of the bay open up. ‘Me and Carrick split up to look for him.’

  ‘Okay, well you’re in no fit state to be alone right now. Get yourself back to Carrick and make sure you stay with him.’ My clothes were already soaked, but the fear was keeping me warm.

  ‘But I need to find him,’ I said, pushing myself back up to standing and walking to the end of the street.

  ‘I know and you will, but right now I’m worried about you.’ Something in the sky gave way and all of the rain fell at once.

  I pushed myself up and began running to the end of the street looking for shelter against this unrelenting rain. The moody grey clouds were staining the bay’s waters the same angry colour. I scanned the scene in front of me, my eyes coming to rest on a line of benches looking out at the water. All were empty, except one.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said into the phone, my feet frozen to the ground. ‘I found him.’

  ‘Is he okay, Nell?’

  I didn’t answer, didn’t even hang up. I just ran.

  I weaved my way between parked cars and moving ones, my eyes filled with raindrops and tears that made the whole world swim in front of me. Hard pavement gave way to sodden grass as I made my way to him, my heels sinking into the mud.

  ‘Charlie!’ I called to the stationary figure sat upright on the bench, but my voice barely crested above the din of the rain. ‘Charlie!’

  As I neared the bench, I slowed down, my heart thudding away inside me like it was preparing to be irrevocably broken. Why was he so still, sitting in the downpour like this?

  I edged around and his face finally came into view.

  ‘Charlie?’

  His hand on his knee, the orange sea glass pinched between his fingers, he looked up at me with deep red eyes that held a look of surprise.

  ‘What are yer doin’?’ he asked, his voice dreamlike as if still half stuck in whatever thought he was just consumed by. ‘You’ll freeze to death.’ He stood and walked over to me. I saw him slip the orange glass back into his pocket and I thought of Abi’s last words to me.

  Tell him that he’ll be able to let go of it someday and when he does, I’d like it to be with me. Had the sea glass been what she’d meant? And how could she possibly have said that when I didn’t even know that he’d taken it with him with the intent of putting it on her grave?

  His hands reached up and took my shoulders but I slapped them away.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Charlie?’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘Leaving your phone places and disappearing, when I know that you’ve almost thrown yourself off a building, twice!’ I found myself almost screaming above the splattering of rain upon the ground. The water of the bay around us boiled like mercury, the rain bringing with it a new chill that sank down deep into my bones.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just couldn’t go to the house yet. I needed more time,’ he replied. I could hear how sorry he was from the tone of his voice, but I was still filled with angry panic and the only way of getting rid of it was shouting.

  ‘Well I need to know that you’re not crumpled on a pavement or full of pills in an alleyway somewhere! You know that I love you! You can’t do shit like this to me.’ The words tumbled out of me with little co-operation from my brain.

  I pressed my eyes closed to get rid of some of the rain and before I could open them again, I was being pulled into his arms. I found myself instantly folding into him, fitting to his form and savouring everything that I had thought lost only a minute earlier. The firmness of him, the strength of his arms that curled me into him, the large scarred and calloused hands that stroked my hair in an attempt to stop me from shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly into my rain-pooled ear. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Please, please don’t go,’ I said as more tears blended in with the rain. I selfishly wanted him to carry on existing because I wanted him, every piece and part of him, even the broken ones. But I wanted him to live for himself too, to not feel this crushing pain every day; to want to become part of the human race again. I wanted him to want his life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I called Carrick, who sounded rather teary on the other end when I told him that I’d found Charlie and that he was very much alive and unharmed, although soaked to the bone. I’d found six missed calls from Ned on my phone when I’d gone back to it. I sent him a text and told him that I’d call him when I was capable of forming complete sentences again, in the meantime reassuring him that both Charlie and I were okay.

  We walked back to the house in a state of emotional and weather-beaten shock. My body had never felt levels of panic quite like it before and even though it had begun to dissipate, it still lingered in my muscles, aching and tingling, hesitant to leave in case it had to spring back at a moment’s notice. I let Charlie lead the way, as I had neither the sense of direction nor the mental capabilities to get us back there, and as the tall house came into view with its white wisteria trailing over the porch, I felt Charlie stiffen beside me. We stood there, looking up at the house that held so many memories for him and I waited, the rain now no more than sheets of moisture, dusting my face.

  There were years of memories here, in this house, in this town. Every corner of it was probably plastered with moments shared with Abigale Murphy and I felt like a terrible person for being jealous of that. I wanted moments and memories of my own and hopefully, in time, they would come. But for now, I had to watch as he relived every one of those memories with Abi. There was no rushing, no time limit on grieving and Charlie was about the only person on this planet whom I could imagine being that patient for.

  ‘You ready?’ I asked, thinking about taking his hand, but holding my own instead.

  ‘No,’ he replied and took a step towards the front door.

  I sat on the end of Kenna’s bed, squeezing my hair between layers of thick maroon towel, as Kenna riffled through a drawer of clothes.

  ‘Most of my good clothes are in London, but I’m sure there’s somethin’ that’s not hideous in here.’ She flung shirts and leggings and dresses across the room like a dog flicking earth with its back paws, the clothes landing in a pile of disarray on the carpet beside the bed. ‘Here,’ she said, emerging from the wardrobe with a black V-neck jumper and some stretchy jeggings. I appreciated the fact that Kenna wasn’t even pretending for a moment that we were the same size. Where she had curves, I had flat edges. Where she was womanly, I was more like a fence post, but the things she picked out fitted me pretty well, if slightly saggy in areas. The deep V of the neckline, which I’m sure made Kenna look like something out of Playboy, made me look like a 1950s schoolboy, just missing the white collar poking out from beneath.

  ‘So, how’s yer singing voice?’ she asked, her eyebrows raising with anticipation.

  ‘Terrible, awful, abominable,’ I said, overstressing the words. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s gettin’ to the drunk portion of the memorial and so there’ll be a speech where Mammy will excuse herself and go and cry in the downstairs toilet and then, when everyone is thoroughly depressed, in we come with a few so
ngs. That is the Irish way.’

  ‘I think I’d be best left out of it. I don’t think anyone needs to be depressed even further and that’s just what will happen if any musical sounds try to escape my throat.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She held a curled finger to her lips and looked away for a moment in thought. ‘Then, how are yer with tambourines?’

  When I re-emerged downstairs, I found the house in a state of disarray that it hadn’t been in when I’d left. The majority of the buffet table had been consumed and now all that was left were empty platters, scattered crumbs and discarded glasses with millimetres of liquid sitting in the bottom. I found Charlie loitering on the periphery of an animated conversation with a group of people around his age. They must have been friends from school who’d only ever known Charlie as Abi’s and Abi as his. Charlie’s smile was crooked and not wholly believable. A crystal cut glass containing one large ice cube and a healthy measure of whisky fell into my view, suspended in front of my face by skinny fingers.

  ‘Here we go,’ Carrick said from beside me, nodding in the direction of Kenna who was walking through the room with authority. ‘Yer gonna need this.’ I took the drink and sipped on the cool, astringent liquid. Carrick copied my action with his own, slightly fuller glass and sighed at the numbing liquid. He’d done a good job of hiding how shaken he’d been, but I could see in his strained eyes that he was kicking himself for losing Charlie in the first place. He was looking rather more dishevelled than he had earlier. His soaked chartreuse jacket had been discarded over the banister and his magenta shirt was now undone to the third button and darkened with rain across the shoulders. His greying hair hung down over his eyes in damp, limp curls as he nervously sipped from his glass again.

  Kenna walked up to just in front of the French doors that opened out into the garden, the inside of the doors speckled with droplets from when they had been hastily closed once the rain had set in. In her hand she held a bodhrán, one of those large drums that you always see in folk bands. She raised the double-ended drumstick as she reached the doors and brought it down hard on the taut skin of the drum.

  The room needed little encouragement to look Kenna’s way. She was like the sun: even when you weren’t looking at her, you were always aware of her presence. The conversation quietened before muting completely and everyone turned themselves around to face her as she set the drum down.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she said, her voice sounding professional and crisp in the crowded room. ‘I thought that I might get a speech in before yer all get too drunk to remember why we’re even here.’ She chuckled and a quiet laugh spread amongst the crowd. She cleared her throat and her smile ebbed a little. ‘Abi wasn’t like me, she didn’t enjoy the spotlight, and so she’d be thoroughly mortified to see all of the fuss we’ve made over her in the last two years. But it warms our family’s heart to see so many people who still hold so much love for my big sister.’ Her voice broke a little. She cleared her throat, sniffed and composed herself.

  I glanced over at Charlie on the other side of the room. His eyes were glassy, his bottom lip pulled into his mouth. I could see him, monitoring his breathing, taking one breath at a time like Carrick had asked him to. I wanted so much to comfort him but he was too far away, separated from me by bodies and bodhráns.

  ‘On this day two years ago, the world lost a kind, funny, accident-prone, short-tempered, good-hearted woman, who had enough love in her heart for every single person in this room and then some. We lost a daughter, a sister, a friend, a wife.’ I looked around the room for Siobhan but couldn’t see her and I guessed that she was exactly where Kenna had said she’d be, sobbing into triple ply in the downstairs WC. Kenna wiped a tear from her eye with the flash of a gel-tipped finger, not leaving it there long enough for it to smudge her thick, cat liner. ‘So, that’s enough of the chatter.’ She looked towards the door as two suited men walked in with trays of small whisky-filled glasses. I was offered one, but I turned it down, seeing as I’d barely touched the one Carrick had already given me.

  ‘Take yerself a drink as I enlist the musical talents of my uncle-in-law and we all raise a parting glass to Abi.’ Carrick upended his glass, gulped down what was left of the whisky, took another one and walked over to the corner of the room, where a standard piano sat against the wall. Kenna followed him and placed a hand on his shoulder as he opened the lid and ran his fingers over the keys. I hadn’t seen Charlie move from where he’d been, but as Carrick pressed down to make the first note, I felt him beside me, his nervous energy almost making the air vibrate around him. The room fell silent as Carrick’s fingers played a sombre melody and Kenna began to sing.

  ‘Of all the money that e’er I had,

  I spent it in good company,

  And of all the harm that e’er I’ve done

  Alas it was to none but me.

  For all I’ve done for want of wit,

  To memory now I can’t recall,

  So, fill to me the parting glass

  Goodnight and joy be with you all.’

  Her voice rang out like a bell in the silence. Delicate and haunting as she sang the words with such emotion that my skin prickled with goose bumps. I felt an instant lump form in my throat and I found myself having to steady my breathing to stave off the tears.

  ‘Of all the comrades that e’er I had,

  They are sorry for my going away,

  And of all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve had,

  They would wish me one more day to stay.

  But since it falls unto my lot,

  That I should rise and you should not,

  I’ll gently rise and softly call,

  Goodnight and joy be with you all.’

  The words hit me like hailstones, each perfectly fitting word falling harder than the last. I wiped my eyes with the palm of my hand and looked to Charlie who was watching Kenna with glistening eyes, his teeth clenched. I let my hand fall to my side, my fingers finding his and feeling a tight squeeze in return.

  I hadn’t understood it completely before, the magnitude of the grief he felt, but after running through the streets of Westport with the panic of losing Charlie thick in my throat, I think that now was the closest I’d ever been to understanding it.

  Kenna raised her glass into the air and everyone, except Carrick, whose fingers were still playing the melody, copied her. ‘To Abigale Murphy,’ she said, before closing her eyes and singing the final sorrowful line.

  ‘Goodnight and joy be with you all.’

  ‘To Abi,’ the room spoke as a whole.

  ‘To Abi,’ I said, my voice wavering slightly as I raised my glass to my lips.

  ‘Abi,’ Charlie said and drank down his drink in one.

  There was a moment of quiet, where the final of Carrick’s notes reverberated through the room, and the air hung thick with a collective grief.

  ‘Right,’ Kenna said, wiping her eyes and putting on a smile. ‘I’m gonna need some more band members if we’re gonna make this a memorial worth coming to. Nell, I got yer tambourine right here.’ My stomach fell down onto the floor as I pulled in my head like a tortoise and attempted to hide. I knew she’d mentioned it, but I didn’t remember agreeing. ‘I see yer there, Nell,’ she said, holding out the tambourine. ‘And don’t think yer got away from it that easily, Charlie Stone.’ Her eyes snapped to Charlie. ‘Get yer arse up here.’

  ‘We’d better go,’ Charlie said with a sigh. ‘She won’t give up till we do.’

  He gave my hand a little tug and we both walked up to join her. I thought that he’d let go and allow my hand to fall when we emerged from the crowd, but he didn’t; he held on until he reached for a guitar beside the piano.

  I took the tambourine from Kenna as our audience gave us an encouraging clap. Carrick stood up, disappearing for a moment before returning with a fiddle in hand. What was with all the hidden talents here? What the hell were this family, The Corrs?

  ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing. What song are
we even playing?’ I whispered to Kenna as I was hit by an overwhelming sense of stage fright.

  ‘Ah, just bang the thing. Yer can’t go wrong,’ she said, retaking up her bodhrán and taking a deep breath.

  ‘The old favourite?’ Charlie asked, a glimmer of something that looked like excitement in his eyes.

  ‘Yer know it. Yer all ready?’ she asked but didn’t wait for an answer. She rolled her wrist, clutching the small drumstick in hand, and beat three times on the skin as Carrick raised the fiddle to his shoulder. They all watched each other. I panicked and started banging the tambourine against my thigh. At first it sounded clunky and out of time, but as I began to recognise the tune as that of ‘Galway Girl’ by Steve Earle, I found myself falling into step with the others. The tempo lent itself to someone who had no idea what they were doing with a tambourine and before too long I was contemplating leaving my job and going on the road with the three of them. I could see myself as a folk musician; Kenna not so much.

  She sang and with every word and every strum of Charlie’s guitar, I felt a sliver of my sadness ebb away. I looked up at Charlie and found a smile on his face. He looked so at home with that guitar in his hands, his calloused fingertips once again coming into use to defend against the biting strings.

  I tapped the tambourine on my leg until my skin sang with mild pain and the room of mourners turned to smiles. Charlie met my eye and his grin pulled wide. A laugh escaped my lips and I thought back to what Carrick had said when he first tried to convince me to come on this trip and I couldn’t help but wholeheartedly agree: the Irish really did know how to do a send-off.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I woke up to the sound of seagulls calling and it instilled me with the excitement of childhood holidays to the seaside. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling as my swollen eyes adjusted to the light of a new morning. After the spontaneous forming of our new band, the evening had descended into music, drinking and dancing, and even Siobhan had seemed to enjoy herself a little once Kenna had found her and pulled her out of the downstairs loo.