Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace

by Kate Forster

  Tressa was silent for a while then she pushed play on the car stereo and ‘Stuck on You’ started to play. She turned it up.

  As Dan sang along, he glanced at her and saw tears falling. She was quiet. He reached over and took her hand again, holding it as they drove in silence.

  As they rounded the corner towards Port Lowdy, Tressa screamed, ‘Stop the car.’

  Dan skidded to a halt so fast Richie nearly landed in his lap.

  ‘Wait,’ she said and she jumped from the car as he turned off the engine.

  ‘Stay here,’ he commanded Richie. Tressa was crouching over something on the ground by the road. He leaned down and looked.

  ‘It’s a kitten.’ Such a tiny thing. Barely covered in hair, its eyes were closed and it mewed as it clawed the air around it.

  ‘I think its mother must have moved it and dropped it.’

  ‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘She might come back for it.’

  ‘I don’t think she will – it will die here,’ Tressa said and she carefully picked it up, cupping it in her hands. ‘We have to take it to the vet in Port Lowdy. I have her number in my phone.’

  She was already walking to the car, tenderly holding the small animal.

  Dan opened the door and Tressa got in. ‘Can you put my seatbelt on me?’ she asked.

  He pulled the belt over her and clipped it into the holder. This was the closest he had been to her physically. But her attention was on the kitten. The way she held it so delicately made his heart break a little.

  ‘It’s so small,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps the vet will say there’s no hope.’

  Tressa looked up at him. ‘There is always hope. Some milk – the vet will have the special formula – and we can keep it warm. And love, lots of love – that will help. That’s the thing.’

  Dan felt his heart swell and his eyes sting with tears. Jesus, he hadn’t cried since he was ten and here was this kitten breaking his heart, or was it the words that Tressa spoke?

  He was eight when he was taken from his parents and put into his first foster home. He longed for love. Instead he was moved from carer to carer, some better than others but all lacking the love and all claiming Dan was too angry to stay with them long term.

  Who wouldn’t be angry about being the son of two shite alcoholics and then being shoved from pillar to post?

  ‘Are you driving or what?’ Tressa looked up at him and he snapped out of his thoughts and rushed around to the driver’s side.

  Richie snuffled over Tressa’s shoulder a while but then he put his head out the window once more, more interested in the seagulls in the distance than the tiny dot in her hands. Tressa made a phone call to the vet, the kitten in her lap mewing endlessly.

  ‘She can see us straight away,’ she said to Dan, who pressed the accelerator harder at the urgency in her voice.

  Dan took Richie for a walk and a stretch while Tressa was inside with the vet. When she came out, she was holding a box and a bag and they met at the car.

  ‘It’s about four weeks old, and it will survive, if we care for it,’ she said.

  ‘We? I can’t raise a kitten, I haven’t been properly raised myself. I’m barely housetrained. Richie has better manners than me.’

  Tressa opened the car door and sat inside with the box on her lap. Inside it was a yellow towel and the little cat. Dan drove them back to Mermaid Terrace, and as he parked, Janet came outside to check the mailbox, and waved at them.

  ‘Janet,’ said Tressa. She carried the box over to Janet and set it on the fence.

  Dan watched as Janet leaned over the box and clasped her neck in shock. Her expression was infinitely sad. Tressa waved at him to come over to them, so he slipped on Richie’s lead and smiled at Janet.

  ‘Seen the wee thing then?’

  ‘Janet’s going to look after it for us until it gets stronger,’ said Tressa.

  ‘That’d be grand, Janet – what a lucky little fella Ivan is to have you as his mam.’

  ‘Ivan?’ Tressa and Janet asked at the same time.

  Dan laughed, and spoke the rhyme.

  ‘As I was going to St. Ives,

  I met a man with seven wives,

  Each wife had seven sacks,

  Each sack had seven cats,

  Each cat had seven kits:

  Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

  How many were there going to St. Ives?’

  ‘Except we were coming back from St Ives, and I didn’t see a man or his seven wives and it’s a female,’ Tressa pointed out.

  ‘Then Ivy is a lucky lassie,’ he said, smiling.

  Janet was so earnest, she looked like she had won the lottery as she picked up the box.

  ‘Ivy it is then,’ said Janet. ‘Leave the milk with me and I will start a chart for feeding. Now off you go. I can’t leave her out here being cold. I need to warm up a wheat bag for her.’

  Janet bustled away inside and Tressa clapped her hands as the door closed.

  ‘You seem happy with yourself,’ said Dan.

  ‘I have been trying to get to Janet to take a new cat in since hers died. She’s always been against it. Now it’s like she’s been waiting for this one all along.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s worth waiting for the right one,’ he said and then glanced sideways at Tressa. Would she think he was being obvious? Tressa didn’t seem to hear as they walked inside the house.

  22

  Penny closed her eyes tightly while a woman brushed makeup on to her face. The process was taking longer than she would have imagined, even if she was meeting the queen. The television crew had booked out the Black Swan. Penny had given them a village tour while Rosemary March looked after the post office and had listened as the crew exclaimed about the quaintness, the atmosphere, the cute pier, and the charming beach. She wasn’t sure a beach could be charming but she took their word for it, since they seemed to know more than her about what made for a good location.

  Penny wanted to wear a new top that Tegan had bought her but the camera man said it didn’t look good on television because of the stripes. Now she had on something else, a blouse that was too tight around her arms and shoulders and made her feel more self-conscious than she already was.

  ‘It will be okay, Mum,’ Tegan said, but Penny wasn’t sure it was going to be okay. She shouldn’t have said yes: everyone would be laughing at her. She would be old Penny Stamp again, stupid silly Miss Crab who got knocked up and had nothing to offer besides postcards of Port Lowdy and some locally made banana chutney.

  A dousing of hairspray finished her off and she was taken into the post office, where they made her pretend to sell stamps to a crew member and then tidy up the shop, which was already tidy, while they filmed her.

  Then finally they were sitting in Penny’s living room, which had been taken over with lights and cables and cameras. They had moved all her furniture around and had taken a mirror off the wall and closed the curtains on one of the windows.

  ‘It’s just for setting up, Mum,’ Tegan told her, standing watching with Primrose in her arms.

  ‘I wish I had said no,’ she whispered to Tegan, or perhaps to the whole room. Was she wearing a mic? She wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea and read Primrose a story and hear about Tegan’s new job at the council in Truro.

  Before either could say any more, the director drew her into the centre of the room and sat her on one of the large armchairs that Dan usually sat in at night.

  People fussed about her with lights and holding things up to her face and then finally, the host came into the room and sat on one of the kitchen chairs they had put in front of her.

  ‘Penny, Mike Sutherland, pleased to meet you,’ he said in his trademark deep voice and he put out his hand for her to shake. It was one thing to hear his voice and see him from her television but to have him in her home was paralysing.

  She tried to speak. Her mouth was opening and shutting like a fish out of water.

  ‘Lost your nerve, Penny?’ He was
jovial. ‘You’d better find it soon. We’re about to shoot.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’ She found her voice at last. ‘I think that this is going to be a boring story and I’ll look stupid. You’re probably wasting your time.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Penny, your story is as interesting as anybody’s, probably more so,’ Mike said soothingly. ‘Now just answer my questions and we will be on our way. Think of it as a nice long chat with an old friend.’

  And so it was. He was so skilled at making Penny feel comfortable, asking about her childhood, asking about her parents, life in the village growing up. He asked question after question until Penny felt herself relaxing and her mind opening up to the past. Memories long since forgotten returned with Mike’s gentle coaxing.

  ‘So tell me about the man you met when you were eighteen,’ Mike asked.

  Penny paused. How could she explain who Paul Murphy was, and what he meant to her?

  She had believed every word he had said and she was the fool – not that she regretted Tegan and now little Primrose. They gave her life some value. At least she could say that it wasn’t all wasted.

  She tried to explain about him, but Mike kept asking her questions about being abandoned, and being left vulnerable. ‘You must have been scared?’ he prompted her.

  ‘I was scared,’ she admitted. ‘But – there is a certain thing about growing a person inside you. You become brave; you have to be.’

  ‘And you never heard from Paul after he left you?’

  ‘No, I tried to call the newspaper he worked for but he had left. I suppose I was naive but most girls were at that time and with a lack of confidence, I didn’t ask for more than I thought I was worth.’

  That was something Dan had said to her about her story and she knew he was right. She didn’t think she was worth more than what she received from Paul, or from what she received from the small-minded villagers of twenty years ago.

  Penny glanced at Tegan who smiled at her mother. All of a sudden Penny found her nerve. She felt such pride at all she had achieved in her life. It might be a small life but she had done it alone and it was enough to say she paid her bills on time, and she raised a daughter who had a career and a lovely child who Penny doted on. She kept a post office that was the hub of the village. And she knew so much about everyone in town, yet never told a soul. Who could claim such success and say it wasn’t worth anything?

  ‘I am proud of my life,’ she said to the interviewer. ‘It may not be much to some but I have I built everything myself, alone – and that is something more women should be celebrated for.’

  His smile broadened and deepened, and he nodded. ‘Hashtag Pennypower,’ he said and laughed at his own joke. Penny joined in even though she wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not. Tegan was smiling off camera so presumably it was good.

  After the interview, the plan was for Penny to walk them around Port Lowdy and chat about the village. They’d meet some locals. Penny felt like the Lord Mayor of Port Lowdy without the robes. Finally she was no longer the girl who’d made a mistake but a woman who had risen above it and turned it into a life that worked for her.

  As she showed the television crew around the familiar village, she remembered more than she had in a long time.

  How long had it been since she had walked around the village just for pleasure? Too many years hiding in the post office, the rearranging of the jams and waiting for Tegan to return as her only entertainment.

  Why hadn’t she gone on a holiday, or gone to visit her daughter and granddaughter? She could have hired Rosemary March to care for the post office while she was gone. Rosemary helped over Christmas and did a wonderful job, sorting and serving.

  But it wasn’t too late, she realised, as she chatted to Marcel and Pamela at the pub and waved at the young Frenchman who was working for them. The film crew captured all of it but she had lost her self-consciousness. She could travel to Paris, she had always wanted to go there, or she could even travel to Australia, where Paul Murphy was from. Not that she expected to see him but Australia was as far away as any place she could think of at that moment.

  ‘I love this village,’ she said to the camera. ‘It’s been good to me, but there is a world beyond here, and perhaps I might see it now that I’m a telly star.’ She laughed. The interviewer laughed with her and they walked down the pier, where she saw Dan and Tressa driving by.

  ‘That’s Dan Byrne. He’s a famous journalist from Ireland – even he’s living here now. It seems everyone loves Port Lowdy. Once they visit they never want to leave.’

  ‘Dan Byrne from the Independent Times?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘The very same,’ Penny said proudly.

  ‘Why is he here?’ The interviewer glanced at the woman with the clipboard, who instantly started writing.

  ‘Well, he was fired – that’s common knowledge. He’s running the paper here now. That’s who did the interview, but he put it under Tressa’s name. I don’t think he wants the spotlight on him here.’

  The man laughed, and his laugh made her uneasy. ‘Dan Byrne not wanting the spotlight? I don’t think that’s possible.’

  The woman laughed along with him and she definitely sounded cruel. Penny wondered if she had said too much. The interviewer didn’t say any more about Dan and she was afraid to mention it to him. No point if it was just a chat, she told herself, and took them right down to the end of the pier to see the new boat and tell them how they were planning to name it Lady Penny. Now that was a story.

  23

  ‘I don’t know why I bothered seeing them,’ Tressa said. They had left Janet with Ivy the kitten and they were back inside Mermaid Terrace. She switched on the kettle. ‘Nothing changes.’

  Dan showed her the painting and sketchbooks that the gallery hadn’t taken. ‘Do you want these upstairs?’

  Tressa nodded, opening the back door for Richie to head outside into the small yard.

  Peace filled her heart as she leaned against the doorframe and watched him sniff and potter about the little garden. The simple fact of being home in Mermaid Terrace soothed her after seeing her parents. As a child all she had wanted was a space away from everyone. Now her house was a place far away from her mother’s judgements and her father’s disappointment.

  ‘Your mother is a lot to take in,’ said Dan as he sat at the table. ‘She’s very pretentious.’

  ‘She is, isn’t she?’ said Tressa, feeling validated that Dan had seen that part of Wendy.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Yes! But she seems really insecure, and your dad seems like he can’t say anything that doesn’t align with her views or goals.’

  Tressa thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know about insecure. She’s always been super confident, always having an opinion on everything.’

  He shrugged. ‘Classic insecure behaviour. I should know, I do it all the time.’

  Tressa stared at him, and then laughed. ‘You’re the least insecure person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘It has taken enormous practice to cover it up. Deep down I’m always waiting to be found out.’

  ‘Found out about what?’

  ‘Anything and everything.’ He laughed.

  Tressa brought the teacups to the table. ‘Why did you let them think we were seeing each other?’ This had surprised her. She had thought about it a lot on the drive home. His comment was not serious, but she couldn’t help thinking about it. God, what if they were together and he spent the night with her and they made coffee in the morning and eggs, and kissed as the toast was browning. She’d never realised until now she wanted something like that.

  ‘To give them something to talk about,’ he said, ‘to keep your mother entertained, to create a diversion.’

  ‘I won’t hear the end of it now.’ Tressa sighed. She was surprised by her own feeling of disappointment.

  Richie wandered back in and flopped under the table and Tressa felt his head on her feet. Ginger Pickles leapt down fro
m the top of the fridge and came circling Dan’s legs. ‘Our animals have changed loyalties, it seems,’ said Tressa. ‘And Ginger isn’t even bothered by Richie. I’m really surprised.’

  ‘Simplicity and complexity need each other,’ he said and Tressa looked under the table, where Ginger sat looking at Richie, who had his eyes closed peacefully.

  ‘I think we know who is what.’ She laughed.

  ‘They can take it in turns,’ said Dan. ‘But they know they have each other’s back when the world feels a little too intense.’

  Tressa smiled at him. There was a tension in the air and she liked it. A fizz of something delicious. The pause between them felt like a decision – or perhaps that was only from her. He looked so handsome at her table and she wondered what it would be like to sit on his lap and kiss him until they couldn’t catch their breath.

  Tressa pulled herself from her fantasy and tried to keep the conversation polite.

  ‘Thank you for coming to my parents’ today, and thank you for supporting me. Even if they don’t get it, it mattered that you did and that you tried. It was kind. You’re a good friend.’

  Dan seemed to turn red at her words, and he shrugged. ‘My pleasure. I am glad the gallery worked out – that’s the most important thing, not your parents.’

  They sat a while in silence. She needed to move, otherwise she would kiss him and then it would be more awkward than it had been between them. She could already imagine the gentle rebuff and the excuses about working together and him not staying and so on. But she didn’t want his promises, she wanted to kiss him.

  ‘Want to go for a walk?’ she said, too brightly. ‘Stretch the legs and take Richie? We can go along the cliffs and I can show you France if the sun is out.’

  ‘Really?’ Dan pushed his chair back noisily, making Ginger Pickles bolt back to her perch on the refrigerator.

  Tressa laughed. ‘No, but it did get you off your bum, so come on, let’s walk off the car trip.’

  ‘Okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he said and Tressa blushed and laughed. She felt better but she didn’t know why. Usually a trip to see her parents would have her in a funk for days but Dan was right: the important part of the day was the gallery. Somehow today she finally felt like a real artist.