As Brian Morton stood on his balcony in Carrick, Hanna sat in the gloaming on a pile of fallen stones. The goats were grazing on either side of her and the exposed rafters above the stone walls that enclosed her future were like bared teeth against the sky. A single star winked and was lost in drifting cloud. Then the clouds lifted and a curtain of stars appeared above the ocean. It was clear that, despite what he’d said, Fury had been to the house in the last week. Much of the half-buried rubbish had disappeared and the goats were grazing on new patches in the scrubby, rutted field.
Earlier, she had stood on the threshold of the house looking in at an empty shell. Directly opposite the front door, fresh planks boarded up what used to be the entry to the extension. With the slates and the sagging ceiling removed, the rooms were brighter. And there was a new smell, no longer musty, more like the dankness of a cave. Fury must have removed everything in the house that had been rotting: the door with its shrunken planks and rusty hinges was gone; so were the piled-up boxes of junk and the broken bits of furniture. Only Maggie’s tall wooden dresser remained in its alcove by the fireplace, the cobwebs washed away by rain.
Crossing the room, Hanna had opened the dresser. Inside, the old cups and glasses were still on the dirty shelves. One glass, with straight sides and a heavy base, had been the measuring cup for the buttermilk that Maggie had used to make soda bread. The rim was uneven and the glass had a green tinge. Hanna lifted it down. It had been more than forty years since she had touched it, yet she remembered its weight in her hand. She had taken it with her when she walked down the field to the goats.
Now, sitting on the stones with the glass in her hand, she wondered if she’d lost the will to continue to struggle with Fury O’Shea. Maybe Brian Morton was right, and, for the time being, the house belonged to Fury, not to her. And right now she found herself moved by other, older emotions.
She had been twenty-one when she lost her baby in London. Ridiculous that the memory should come back to her now as she sat on a fallen wall with the stars shining over Maggie’s house and the ocean pounding the cliff so far below. It had happened on a Monday in Malcolm’s flat near Sloane Square, when she had been puttering about in her dressing gown trying to control her morning sickness after a breakfast of toast and weak tea. Joni Mitchell was singing “Chelsea Morning” on the stereo and Malcolm had left for work. The bay windows were open and the door leading out to the balcony was ajar. The long sheer curtains hung motionless, filtering the shafts of sunlight that fell across the wooden floor.
It had been over a week since Hanna did anything more than putter or lie on the sofa reading and she had told herself that today she would complete at least one practical task. The dress she had worn on her wedding day was still in the wardrobe in its plastic cover waiting to be taken to the dry cleaner’s. It was a cream shift, gathered into a yoke in front, with seed pearls sewn around the neckline and the scalloped, calf-length hem. Wandering through from the living room to the bedroom, she opened the wardrobe and reached up to lift out the dress. The slight dragging cramp she had woken up with that morning became a sharp, stabbing pain. She dropped the dress and clutched her stomach, hearing herself cry out. Then, terrified by a sudden rush of liquid, she was stumbling across the living room towards the bathroom.
Now, over thirty years later, Hanna’s fingers clenched on the glass in her hands. She could still see the shafts of sunlight falling across the living-room floor and remember the sound of Joni Mitchell’s voice heard through her own tears as she crouched doubled over on the toilet. The bathroom door was open, and, with her head on her knees, she was aware of the sounds of the city beyond the windows of the flat. Eventually she had made it to the phone, called her doctor’s number, and obeyed the instruction to phone for a cab to take her round to the clinic. After a few brisk questions, the receptionist’s voice on the end of the line had been kind. She was to take her time, there was no rush. If her husband was on his way she could wait till he arrived. But Malcolm was in court and those were the days before cell phones. “Okay. Well, take it easy and get here when you can.” With the telephone in her hand, Hanna had realized what she was being told. It was too late to do anything; her baby was gone.
Hours later, as she lay in bed in the flat and Malcolm made tea in the kitchen, Hanna had felt nothing. The sun still poured in like butterscotch but everything around her seemed to be a million miles away. Malcolm brought her the tea with tears streaming down his face. The next day he’d phoned Louisa with the news and Hanna phoned home, too. It was Mary who picked up the phone. Longing to speak to her dad but knowing it would be unkind to bypass her mother, Hanna told her curtly what had happened. Mary’s response when she heard the news was immediate.
“Ah, child dear, come home or I’ll come over for you.”
Her voice had broken, and, moments later, Tom was on the line. He, too, had urged Hanna to come home but, half in tears, she’d refused him. Even in the following weeks when it had seemed to her that her marriage had been a mistake, she had never thought of leaving London. If she and Malcolm had called it quits, her plan had been to return to her studies. Instead he had convinced her that the perfect life was still attainable; she would find their beautiful house and one day there’d be another baby. And she did find it. And then there was Jasmine, the flowerlike baby who had lived and thrived and grown up to be Jazz, the scrappy teenager who was now a woman about to embrace life. And even if Malcolm had lied and cheated and turned their marriage into a sham, he was still the only one who could share Hanna’s grief about the miscarriage. For years he had remembered the date of it and, saying nothing, had brought her flowers, not picked from his mother’s garden but bought from a flower seller on a corner near Sloane Square whose stall had once been a bright landmark seen from the window of their flat. That was one of the memories that had twisted Hanna’s stomach when she’d first discovered Malcolm’s affair with Tessa. Now, sitting high above the ocean, for no reason that she could fathom she found that it hurt her less.