Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace

by Kate Forster

  ‘That sounds horrendous,’ said Dan. ‘Like something from a Dickens novel.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I rarely get a cold and the cold water wakes me up. My brother and Dad do it. It’s a Buckland thing.’

  ‘I like warm baths and a whisky; that’s a Byrne thing.’

  He kissed her slowly, lingering. ‘And I like being in bed with a girl with curls and paint under her fingernails.’

  ‘Oh?’ asked Tressa. ‘And what else do you like?’

  ‘I like this,’ He kissed her shoulder and moved down to her breasts. ‘And these, I like very much.’

  Tressa giggled as he kissed her stomach.

  ‘You’re gorgeous.’ He looked up at her. The light came through the window and crossed the pillows. A coloured light scattered on the bed and over Tressa’s face. ‘You look like a kaleidoscope.’

  ‘It’s the sun-catcher,’ she said, looking at the window.

  He turned to see a crystal prism hanging on a white satin ribbon, spinning in the sun.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ he said, watching the spinning crystal scattering light.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he heard Tressa say and his stomach flipped with desire.

  He hadn’t felt like this in a long time, he thought as he kissed Tressa passionately. Perhaps he had never felt like this before. He wasn’t sure but it felt like the light had changed since he met Tressa and he didn’t want it to ever go dark again.

  26

  The sound of the phone ringing interrupted Wendy’s meditation and chanting session. She had been diving deep into a spiritual expansion lately and David told her she was falling for snake oil salesmen but it did make her feel better, less anxious; thinking more about life and death, more about little Rosewyn than ever before.

  Maybe it was because she was turning sixty that the memories were coming thick and fast, or maybe it was the meditation, disturbing the mud they had so long lain buried in. Wendy had been told by her family doctor to keep busy, have another baby, life goes on, and not to think about Rosewyn so much, so she had.

  But every moment of Tressa’s life, until she passed seven, the age when Rosewyn had died, Wendy was on edge, waiting for the bruises on the skin, the tiredness, the headaches, which was how Rosewyn’s illness showed itself at the start.

  Tressa passed seven without incident and then ten and onwards but Wendy never stopped worrying about her and then she’d had the breakdown at art school. Wendy had wanted to tell her she understood what it was like, that she had hidden in the broom cupboard at the wake for Rosewyn until David had sent everyone home.

  But she was clumsy with her support for Tressa and clumsy in her love. She was so worried about losing her daughter she had driven her away to Port Lowdy. Wendy never understood why Tressa loved the place so much but if they didn’t go there, Tressa would cry and Wendy hated to see her cry. They could have gone to Spain or France or even Greece but little Port Lowdy was the only place Wendy had seen Tressa truly happy, until she saw her with Daniel Byrne. He was abrasive and rude and rightly or wrongly found her and David wanting as parents. Perhaps they were. If she had her time again she would have been a different mother, more like the one she’d been to Rosewyn before she became sick. Once Wendy had played with her daughter and son, had read them books and put on silly voices and let them be imperfect, and then Rosewyn died and that mothering part of her died along with her.

  The phone rang and she picked it up and answered.

  ‘Wendy? It’s Barbara from St Ives Gallery. I had your daughter in here – we are going to show some of her work. You didn’t tell me she was so special! What a talent.’

  Wendy panicked. Why hadn’t she told Barbara about Tressa’s work? Probably because she would be accused of interfering or told that the gallery wasn’t good enough or was too good. Wendy always got things wrong around Tressa, especially to do with her art.

  ‘Why hasn’t she had a show before?’

  ‘Don’t tell her we know each other,’ Wendy said. ‘She will think I’ve arranged it or something.’

  ‘Of course not, but she had some wonderful pieces. I would like to push her towards a show later in the year.’

  She almost said something to Barbara about Tressa’s only show and its outcome. But she stopped herself. That was the past.

  ‘Can I pop down and see what pieces you have?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Of course. I’m not hanging them until Friday, in time for the tourists, so come and see.’

  Wendy finished the call and sat on the sofa, thinking about Tressa. It had always been hard with Tressa and she felt intimidated by her daughter, simply because she didn’t need Wendy the way she wanted to be needed.

  Rosewyn had needed her that way. Tressa never did. Wendy loved her dearly but they didn’t have a connection, nothing to keep them close. Caro was more Tressa’s mother than she had ever been; perhaps that’s why she had gone back to Port Lowdy to live. But now Caro was ill, touch and go George said, and for the first time Wendy put aside her insecurity about Caro and wondered what Tressa would do if she lost Caro. Deep down, Wendy knew what Caro had given her daughter. Caro lived wholly and with complete and open joy. She mucked in and was not afraid of what people thought. That was as foreign to Wendy as wearing exercise gear to a social event.

  She stared ahead at the lifeless artworks on the wall and realised how much she hated them. As though in a daze, she walked upstairs.

  Everything felt different as she carried the paintings downstairs. One of dark emerald sea and the light coming from the clouds. Another of the cliffs at Port Lowdy, the beach below with small figures on the sand, seagulls overhead.

  Wendy looked closely at the figures and saw a woman in a pink dress, her hand holding the hand of a little girl in a sunhat, and a man behind them in a deckchair, reading a paper. A boy was to the side, lying on a towel reading a book. Such tiny details she had never noticed before and she picked up her glasses and looked at the sea and she could just make out the figure in the water, under the sea. The outline of a little mermaid, with a name was etched into the scales of her fin: Rosewyn.

  Wendy turned the painting over to read the date it was painted. The year Tressa started art school.

  She looked closely at the other painting of the sea. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for but then she saw it: the outline of the mermaid in the bottom left-hand corner. It was so light she wasn’t sure what it was except for the name again, written on the tail.

  Wendy grabbed her car keys, rushed out of the house, and drove to the gallery. As she pushed open the door, Barbara walked out and smiled.

  ‘Hello, that was quick.’

  ‘Where are they?’ she asked.

  ‘In the back,’ Barbara said and Wendy went into the back area where the art was lined against the walls, on the tables and hanging on the walls.

  ‘Tressa’s are here,’ she said, gesturing.

  There were several small sketches of Port Lowdy and some bigger canvases of the sea.

  Wendy carried them to the table and laid them out and saw a magnifying glass on Barbara’s desk. She moved it over each piece while peering closely.

  There was Rosewyn in the sea again, under the pier, peering through the window of the shop in the sketch of Port Lowdy, her name on the side of the fishing boat and on the name of one of the terrace houses.

  Rosewyn was everywhere in Tressa’s art and Wendy had never seen it before until now.

  Rosewyn had never visited Port Lowdy. That was a place they went to after Tressa was born, so why would she place her there?

  And then she realised: it was she who had taken Rosewyn everywhere with them. She never stopped talking about her because she wanted her to matter, and to mean something to Tressa. Or perhaps she was just afraid of forgetting her over time. But Tressa never did. Wendy felt herself slump. It was though she was winded from the realisation.

  All this even though Tressa had never met her sister, or perhaps Wendy had never let her forget.<
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  Part Two

  27

  Dan and Tressa slipped into a routine that was easy and familiar but still with excitement and passion. For a week they barely left Mermaid Terrace because everything they needed was inside.

  There were moments when Tressa was painting and Dan was lying on the sofa, reading a book, or sitting at her kitchen table, attempting to start the book he had in his head, when he felt contentment and a sense of peace that was foreign to him. It was almost too much to bear, like being tickled until you gasp for the tickler to stop but still wanting them to go on and on forever.

  Dan realised he had been on edge his whole life, waiting for the sword to fall. The next foster family, the next social worker, the next angry policeman when he had run away again. The only time he hadn’t run away was when he was placed at Maureen Dow’s house.

  Lovely Maureen who put a hot water bottle in his bed and taught him how to brush his teeth properly, and who loved Lionel Richie.

  They would sing his greatest hits while cooking a roast after church on Sunday, and when they washed the windows once a month in the autumn. That year he had the only enjoyable Christmas he’d ever had. Maureen gave him a typewriter she’d found at a charity shop in Rathmines. It came with a stack of paper and a new ribbon and he spent the holidays typing letters to the editors of the papers, letters to local council, and to the Minister of State for Children where he wrote a detailed report on every foster parent who had been shite.

  It was a comprehensive list and he remembered when Maureen read the letter, she cried and then told him he was a brave soul who would change the world.

  But how could he change the world living in Port Lowdy?

  He felt more at home at Mermaid Terrace than he had felt anywhere. Even Maureen’s house. He thought about his flat in Dublin, with the sharp architectural edges and white tiles and metal staircase. Why had he been so upset about letting it go when he could be held in the soft curves of this house, with the sound of the gulls outside and Tressa humming along to Lionel Richie as she made them a niçoise salad for lunch before she went back to her studio to paint?

  Then Tressa would come downstairs, paint on her hands, wearing her flannel shirt, and she would sit on his lap and kiss him until they couldn’t catch their breath and they would spend the afternoon in bed until the sun set and he wondered why they would ever need to leave Mermaid Terrace.

  The next edition of the paper was looming and they walked Richie to the office, where they saw Remi and Marcel having coffee outside in the beer garden of the pub, which was yet to open.

  ‘Morning,’ called Dan, wondering what they were in deep conversation about. He’d been planning to catch up with Remi, and then Tressa and him had happened and everything had been put on hold, including the paper.

  As they walked up the hill to the office, Penny came rushing by. ‘My TV show is on tonight – don’t forget,’ she called as she bustled down the street.

  Tressa and Dan exchanged a look. ‘Her TV show? Is she flippin’ Kirsty Wark now?’

  ‘Don’t be mean – she’s proud of it.’ Tressa smiled and he kissed her for reminding him to be nice.

  Tressa made him want to be a nicer person, or maybe he was always a nice person with a defensive shield from so many years of being on alert. Foster care will do that to you, a social worker had once told him. Always having to look out for the next thing he might have done wrong or the next smack to the back of the head from an angry adult made a person ready to fight against anyone and for anything.

  But Tressa soothed him with words, kisses, her laughter when he was so far up on his high horse she asked him if he needed a ladder to get down. One morning, after he’d been reading the paper aloud and expressing outrage about a current politician, she had said to him: You can still be cross about the state of the world without having to be cross at everyone else around you.

  And he realised that, in fact, he was angry with the world – not just for the state of it but also for allowing a small child into the homes of strangers who abused him, a boy no one cared about until Maureen.

  It was as though she knew his pain, because she saw it in her own life. They shared stories, little snapshots of each other’s lives.

  Dan told Tressa about being unfairly punished for stealing money from the church when he was nine. ‘I was whacked with a wooden spoon by the woman who was supposed to be caring for me. I refused to say I’d stolen the feckin’ money because I hadn’t stolen it. The priest had blamed me because I was hanging around the vestry as I wanted some of the chocolate I knew he had in his desk and the money was gone. I’m pretty sure it was Allan Mullen who took it but I got the blame because I was the poor foster boy.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Tressa had said. ‘I hate that you were blamed.’

  ‘It’s easy to blame things on the poor because they have less to fight back with. And they’re tired. Tired of being blamed for everything wrong with the world.’

  They walked along the beach in the mornings, sharing stories and watching Richie chase the seagulls. One morning, Tressa told him about being a disappointment because she wasn’t a reincarnation of Rosewyn. ‘I think they wished I was her. It’s not the same as being blamed for stealing something and being beaten for a crime you didn’t commit but it hurt not to be seen by them for who I am. They only see me for what they want me to be, so I’m a failure in their eyes.’

  Dan held her hand as they wandered.

  ‘It is the same – sort of. Being blamed for something you’re not or didn’t do. It wears you down. I think that’s why I went into journalism. Trying to right wrongs through the media.’

  Tressa squeezed his hand. ‘And you have changed people’s lives, even here. Look at Penny. It’s amazing how you’ve helped her.’

  Richie was paddling in the water, bobbing his head up and down, trying to get the tennis ball that Dan had thrown for him.

  Tressa paused. ‘I need to apologise to you for being difficult about that story on Penny and me saying it wasn’t worth publishing. I was wrong.’

  Dan pulled her into a hug. ‘Thank you, Tressie, you’re a sweetheart but I went over your head anyway, which wasn’t very respectful, so I’m sorry for being an eejit. I’m trying to learn how to be less defensive. It’s as normal to me as is breathing.’

  Tressa kissed him. ‘You can lower the defences now. I’m not planning on blaming you for anything other than stealing the covers at night.’

  *

  ‘Earth to Dan,’ he heard Tressa say and he looked up at her holding two cups of tea and smiling. ‘George rang. Caro is refusing chemo. I am going to call her later. She’s being so pig-headed about this whole thing. She’s convinced she’s dying.’

  ‘Maybe she is,’ said Dan.

  ‘The doctors said they can treat it. It’s like she doesn’t want to fight.’

  Dan shook his head. ‘I don’t understand the fighting cancer thing. It’s a stupid analogy. It’s not a game to be won or lost. It’s a shitty illness that ravages the body.’

  He thought about his final days with Maureen before he was moved to the next foster home. She was rail-thin and coughing until she couldn’t catch her breath, but she still insisted on ironing his school shirts.

  ‘If someone “loses the battle”, that implies blame that they didn’t fight hard enough. But cancer is a random cluster of cells and there are no rules. It’s not a military campaign.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I am going to tell Caro that and claim all of that thinking as my own.’

  Dan laughed. ‘What’s mine is yours, darling.’

  ‘We’d better get this edition to bed,’ Tressa said.

  ‘I would rather take you to bed,’ he said and he saw her blush. He liked making her blush; it was so sexy when she gave that little sigh after he kissed her.

  ‘Come here,’ he said.

  ‘No, we have to do the paper,’ she said and put the tea down on the desk.

  ‘I’d rath
er do you,’ he said grumpily as he opened his computer.

  Tressa looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Finish your work and you can have your way with me.’

  Dan pretended to type furiously and Tressa burst out laughing. This was his third favourite thing about her after the little sigh and the way she called out his name when they were in bed.

  They worked the day, buoyed by the energy of each other and there were moments when Dan thought this could be the life he wanted. Then, when he wrote a small article on the new line painting on the esplanade and the traffic changes expected, he remembered that staying at The Port Lowdy Occurrence wasn’t sustainable. It was Tressa who sustained him right now.

  ‘Shall we get something from the pub for dinner and watch the show at home?’ she asked.

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Dan, as he typed.

  ‘Did you get a picture of Lady Penny, the new boat?’ he asked, searching through the files.

  ‘Ah, shit sticks. Better pop down to the pier and take it now,’ said Tressa, standing up and picking up her camera bag.

  ‘Want me to come with you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, won’t be long. Give me an hour at most,’ she said and as she leaned over and kissed him, he pulled her onto his lap.

  ‘Don’t fall in love with a handsome sailor,’ he murmured in her ear.

  ‘How can I when I spend my days and nights with an Irish muckraker?’ she said.

  ‘Go take photos before I become too invested in you being here,’ he said and Tressa laughed and walked to the door.

  ‘Oh hey, Remi,’ she said. ‘You after me or Dan?’

  ‘Dan,’ he said and he walked into the office.

  Tressa waved at them and Dan gestured at the seat opposite.

  Remi looked tired and drawn and Dan knew it was more than working chef’s hours.

  ‘You all right?’ Dan was never a fan of small talk and he had the feeling Remi needed an ear.