Straightening the pot of pansies at the front door Alison sat on the step and opened her post: a telephone bill – double its usual amount from all the calls to Hannah; a final reminder for her last oil fill; a motor tax renewal form. Great, she sighed, pushing back her hair. How on earth am I going to pay even one of them? She had gone out with William for a drink a couple of evenings last week and had treated herself to a new shirt in town on Thursday, hardly extravagance. And of course there was no sign of Eugene’s eighty euro for her article – delivered early again this week. Was it always going to be the same, this barely scraping by, counting out every cent?
She had always hated taking money from Maryanne. Felt useless and awkward every time the woman would slip a note into her bag or pocket with a stern, ‘Not a word now. It’s how Sean would have wanted it.’ And you didn’t argue with Maryanne. At the beginning Alison had decided to treat Maryanne’s ‘gifts’ as a loan. Vowing to pay back every cent once Sean’s body was found and the life assurance came through had helped her to hold on to some small bit of pride. One blue wellington: that had been the sea’s great compromise. One blue wellington thrown up on a beach six miles west.
She’d be glad of one of Maryanne’s handouts now, she sighed, pushing herself up off the step and walking around the house to the back door. She’d have to drive into town to collect her money from Eugene. Damn! She bumped her toe on the corner of the path. Damn!
She banged the back door shut behind her, switched on the kettle and opened the fridge. No milk! She grabbed a glass and, filling it with water at the sink, stared out the kitchen window. The piled pots and nets seemed to glare back at her. That was all Sean left her: a useless collection of pots and nets that most of their money had been sunk into. Their last conversation flashed into her mind. She had followed him out to the back kitchen, pleading with him at first as he pulled on his boots and fishing jumper. ‘Are you out of your mind, Sean? Look at the sky, for Christ’s sake! Look at the stripes on the water!’ He hadn’t answered, just zipped up his coat, tugged on his cap and walked out the door. Alison had followed him out to the van, her voice and her temper rising against the wind. ‘Will you listen to me, Sean? Think of us for a change, think of Hannah. Sean, SEAN!’ The thin, tight line of his mouth had reminded her of a fault line, the pressure behind it mounting. He sat into the driver’s seat, closed the door on her words. ‘Go on, then, you selfish bastard,’ she had shouted in desperate defiance. ‘Go on! You’re not with us anyway, you might as well be gone!’ He had looked at her from somewhere far deeper than his eyes, then turned the key and was gone. Arms hugging her trembling body, Alison had caught Hannah’s eye as the child turned her face from the back bedroom window. In that tiny moment something inside Alison had known that her life was about to change forever.
She turned now from the window, grabbed a pen and paper from her desk and sat at the kitchen table. Her hand moved in a frenzy:
For Quick Sale
Lobster & Shrimp Pots / Salmon Nets
Contact: Alison Delaney, Carniskey. Tel: (051) 785330
She grabbed her keys and drove to the village.
‘Alison, how are you keeping?’ Joan, Carniskey’s shrewd and only shopkeeper, smiled from behind the counter, scanning Alison from head to toe.
‘Fine, thanks. Can you put this in the window, please?’ Alison thrust the note across the counter and looked straight into Joan’s pinched face as she read it.
‘No problem, Alison. There’s a small charge of two euro.’ She reached for the sticky tape. ‘Will that be all?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ Alison’s smile was tight. In her rush out the door she almost knocked Theresa Doyle sideways. ‘Oh, Theresa. Hi! Sorry.’ She smiled widely into Theresa’s disapproving face. Turning the jeep, she headed back out of the village. ‘Damn!’ She had meant to pick up some milk.
Leaving the engine running, she swept back into the shop. As she reached the fridge, she could hear the whispered conversation at the counter. Hand grasping the fridge door, Alison listened.
‘Sure, who’d buy them?’ Theresa was pontificating. ‘A drowned man’s gear? Anyone’d know they’d bring bad luck.’
‘And to think of all the hard work and money poor Sean put into getting them. And there he is now, gone, God rest him, and she selling off the lot.’ Even in a whisper, Joan’s voice had an edge that could cut through stone.
‘I wonder has it anythin’ to do with that new fella she’s been seen with – that hippy type up over the strand?’
‘Don’t you know it has, Tess. May told me she saw them early one morning. Right cosy the two of them were below on the strand.’
‘What is she thinkin’ of, throwin’ herself at an ould fella like that without tuppence to his name?’
‘That’s the way it’s gone nowadays, I’m afraid, no respect for themselves – or anyone else. Poor Sean, isn’t he the lucky man that he’s not around to see it?’
‘And she’s the young one packed off to England, I believe. Still, at least she’s not around to witness it, though the same one can be a right little pup too, you know. I heard—’
Joan tapped Theresa on the arm and silenced her mid-sentence. Theresa followed her friend’s slack-jawed stare to where Alison stood, arms folded, before them.
‘Oh, Alison we were just . . . ’ Joan began, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.
Alison glared at them, shook her head and snapped the note from Joan’s hand before walking slowly towards the door and out of the explosive silence.
She sat in the jeep, taking deep breaths to cool the heat of her threatening tears. She was damned if they were going to make her cry. She jerked the jeep out onto the road. Oh, Hannah was right, she seethed as she tore out of the village, past her own house and on towards town. They’re nothing but an insensitive bunch of good-for-nothing dried-up old gossips. What the hell was she still doing in this place? She passed the football pitch and swung onto the main road. She’d go into town, collect her money from Eugene and use the computer in the library next door to place her ad in one of the fishing papers. She turned up the music, drove on at speed and wished from the bottom of her heart that she’d never again have to set foot in Carniskey.
* * *
Hands on her hips, Kathleen turned from the boiling kettle and looked into Alison’s pale, sleep-deprived face. Her blood had boiled in tandem with the kettle as Alison recounted what had passed in the shop the previous day. ‘Alison Delaney, are you telling me that you’d actually take heed of anything they’d have to say? That you’d let them do this to you? Honestly, I thought you had more spunk in you that that!’
‘I don’t mind them having a go at me, blast them, but when they started on Hannah!’ Alison stubbed out her cigarette, her temper rising.
‘I’m sure Hannah could care less! The girl has more sense.’ Kathleen grabbed two mugs from the press. ‘God, if we were all to listen to everything that was said about us we’d never put our heads outside the door.’ She resented that even now she could still feel a slight stab of that old pain of falling prey to the village vultures. She spooned in the coffee, lifted the kettle. And she knew that survival meant forever thickening your skin and holding fast to your own strength, your own worth. ‘Why do you let them get to you? You’re just feeding them, you know.’ She placed the mugs on the table, pulled out a chair to sit.
‘Maybe it gets to me because they’re right,’ Alison sighed, drawing the steaming mug into both hands. ‘Sean worked so hard to get all that stuff, and selling it off, well, maybe it is wrong.’
‘No, Alison. It’s what Sean would have wanted. You know he’d want to provide for you. The best for you and Hannah, that’s all he ever wanted, you know that.’
‘Yeah?’ Her eyes searched Kathleen’s face. ‘Then maybe I asked too much, maybe he’d still be alive if . . . ’
‘Don’t even go there,’ Kathleen cut in, anger sharpening her words. ‘Sean is gone. It was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident. But it happened and there’s nothing you could have done or can do about it. Except kick it in the teeth and get on with your life.’ She grabbed her friend’s hand. ‘You’ve got to leave the past where it belongs, Alison. Believe me, torturing yourself isn’t going to change things. It’s not going to bring him back.’
‘It was the look in his eyes that day.’ She took a deep breath, pushed out the words that had always refused to be voiced. ‘I can’t help thinking sometimes that it wasn’t an – that he knew what he was doing. Knew where he was going . . . I, I really don’t believe it was an accident.’
‘Alison, you don’t know that. You’ll never know. And even if that was the case, then it was Sean’s decision. His decision. For his own reasons. You had no part in it. You’ve got to let it go. Let him go. It’s you and Hannah now, and that has to be your focus if you’re ever going to get past this and get your life back.’ Kathleen felt that old knot of discomfort twist and tighten her insides. Her tongue sought out the groove in her lip. Sean’s death had been no accident. At sea since childhood, he would have known full well that night when he left the harbour at Tra na Baid that he wouldn’t be returning. The great unspoken truth about the mighty Sean Delaney!
She squeezed Alison’s hand and, rising from the table, searched out a tissue from her bag. ‘Come on, dry those eyes before that pretty face turns into a sponge,’ she encouraged, smiling, as she draped an arm around Alison’s shoulder. ‘Life goes on, Alison, hard as it might be. It really is up to you to decide what to make of it.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Alison half-smiled, cursing her weakness as she sensed Kathleen’s withdrawal, her frustration. ‘And you’re right’ – her words caught on an involuntary in-breath. She dried her cheeks with the backs of her hands, patted her nose with the tissue. ‘It is up to me and I can’t let every bit of senseless gossip I hear drag me back there. I won’t.’ She shook her head. Kathleen was right. Sean was gone. Gone. Nothing that Alison or any loose tongue in a shop could say or do would bring him back. She straightened her back and, while everything inside her was grasping at the tail of that new determination she had almost let slip, another truth slipped forward, startling her: she no longer really wanted him back.
‘And promise you’ll learn to listen to no one but yourself.’ Kathleen’s voice was soft with understanding. ‘You’re the only expert on your life, Alison, on what you want it to be. Nobody else.’
‘I know, I know. And I really do want to have myself sorted when Hannah gets home. I do. And I will.’ The conviction in her own words told Alison she was already part way there.
‘Good for you. So, how is our little London bird?’
‘She’s loving it, absolutely loving it and really, I have you to thank for—’
‘Stop!’ Kathleen held up both hands in protest. ‘The first thing you have to do is learn to take a little bit of credit. You’re doing a wonderful job with Hannah. I know how tough the going can be when you’re doing it all on your own.’
‘How’s Jamie?’
‘Jamie is busy – with summer camps and fishing and friends. Honestly, I hardly see him these days and when I do he’s exhausted.’
‘No more wet beds, then?’
‘All over, thank God, but you know . . . ’ Kathleen paused, widening her eyes in emphasis. ‘I can’t understand this. You know how he adored Rob, right?’
Alison nodded.
‘Thing is, he never even asks about him.’ Her head shook in incredulity. ‘I mean, never. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to disappear out of our lives. Strange, yeah?’
‘Kids have a great way of just getting on with their own thing, don’t they? Sometimes I think we make problems for them, worrying about things that they’re completely oblivious to.’
‘Well, isn’t Jamie a case in point? I mean, it’s quite obvious now that he couldn’t care less whether Rob moves into my bed or up to the moon, and all that worrying I did!’
‘So, are things back on track with Rob then?’
‘We’ll see. This last month’s been a real roller coaster. But being with him again on Saturday night, well, it just felt so natural, so . . . just so right.’ Kathleen’s whole face lit up with the memory.
‘There’s your answer then. Go for it!’ Alison was glad she’d at last seen sense. Poor old Rob was patient, but Kathleen’s will could test a saint.
‘As I said, we’ll see.’
Saturday night had been fantastic, but Kathleen had been gob-smacked when Rob had kissed her goodnight at the door, mumbling some excuse or other about an early start the next morning. Sunday? In all the time she had known him Rob had never left the bed till after twelve on a Sunday. All those flowers and balloons and texts and can’t-wait-to-see-yous and then running off like a frightened schoolboy. Exasperated, Kathleen had nursed a bottle of wine herself that night, Jamie away at a sleep-over and the empty house folding in around her. And with each glass came a new question: had Rob gone off her? Had she left him waiting too long? And then of course the biggie: had he found someone else?
‘What is it?’
‘Men!’ Kathleen put on a wide smile. ‘They must be the strangest species.’ Alison has enough on her plate, Kathleen decided, the chat and advice she had come for could wait. ‘Listen, I’d better go collect Jamie from camp. So, you okay?’
‘I’m fine, honest,’ Alison smiled, and she meant it. ‘Thanks again, you’re the best.’ She linked her arm in Kathleen’s as they walked to the door.
‘So, what exactly is the story with your man up on the cliff?’ Kathleen had a glint in her eye as she opened the front door. ‘May Reilly’ll kill me if I leave her without any gossip.’
‘You’re the secret spy in their camp, aren’t you? You’re a weasel, Kathleen Carroll, a fake!’
‘My cover’s blown!’ Kathleen threw her arms in the air. ‘C’mon, who is he? Give me the sordid details.’
‘There aren’t any, honestly,’ Alison laughed. ‘He’s fifty-four, for Christ’s sake, Kathleen, and hardly an Adonis.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘Dublin, but he’s been wandering around Europe for years.’
‘Oh. Doing what?’
‘You know, I don’t know. I never thought to ask him. He’s just a nice guy, you know, easy to talk to . . . ’
‘Probably a dirty old man who goes around the country seducing vulnerable widows!’ Kathleen’s eyes were wide with mischief.
‘Stop it, Kathleen, he’s not anything like that,’ Alison laughed. ‘Anyway, I haven’t seen him in days. He could have moved on, for all I know. Now, come here,’ she threw her arms around Kathleen, ‘thanks again, you’ve been great.’
‘Anytime, and remember, keep them fuelled with talk – I’m enjoying the break from the spotlight.’ She stepped out through the door. ‘Aha! Speak of an ass!’ Kathleen nodded towards the mouth of the drive and the two dogs bounding down to the gate to welcome William. Alison felt a tiny jump inside her chest.
‘Great guard dogs,’ Kathleen smiled. ‘I’ll go.’ She kissed Alison on the cheek. ‘Don’t want word going out of a threesome!’
‘How are you?’ Alison smiled, standing back from the open door.
‘Good. You not on terms with the beach? Haven’t seen you there for days.’ William stepped into the sunlit hall. He hadn’t been in this part of the house before and his eyes widened in amazement. Not a sign of the sea anywhere. The wooden floors reflected the rich yellow walls. And what walls. All along them was a most beautifully scripted calligraphy in a deep plum ink.
‘Wow, yours?’ William asked, moving past her to read the inscriptions.
‘Yeah, I took a night class, years ago.’
‘And the writings?’
‘Mine too.’ Alison, embarrassed, was glad of the telephone’s ring. ‘I’ll just get that, come on in.’ She hurried past him into the kitchen.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum?’
‘Hannah? Oh, it’s great to hear you. Everything all right?’ She pulled a chair over under the phone.
‘Fantastic, Mum – and you?’
‘Good, I’m good. What are you up to? Are you enjoying it?’
‘Oh, Mum, I love it! Everything’s so fast and alive and so not Carniskey! Claire was so right, you wouldn’t believe all the stuff I’ve learned about the gallery, I love it there!’
‘That’s brilliant, Hannah.’ Alison smiled at the rush in her daughter’s voice, at the hint of London already in her accent. What that girl wouldn’t do to be like her aunt Claire.
‘And you should see the clothes Claire’s bought me, Mum, they’re bang on trend and—’
‘Hannah, you have your own money. Make sure you’re paying your way.’ Alison picked up on the old defensiveness creeping into her voice. She didn’t want to argue with Hannah or lecture her. ‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, sweetheart. I miss you so much – so do Tilly and Tim. They sniff around your bedroom door every morning to check if you’re back.’
‘Aw, give them a hug for me. You should see the gear on the dogs over here, Mum – jumpers, jackets, jewels in their collars, the lot! So, what are you up to?’
‘Busy, actually. I get my women’s column stuff out of the way early every week and I’m working on a couple of stories, I’m really enjoying it.’
‘Looks like you’ll have to send me away more often then.’ Hannah smiled. Mum sounded good. Lighter, more alive or something. Aoife might have been right after all.
‘I didn’t send you away— ’
‘Relax, Mum, just kidding. So, isn’t there something you’ve forgotten to tell me?’ Hannah pressed her lips together to stifle her laughter.
‘What? How do you mean something to— ’
‘I had an email from Aoife, she told me your news.’
‘News? What news are you talking about?’
‘I hear you have a new friend. Male? C’mon, Mum, spill the beans!’
‘That’s utter nonsense! Has Aoife nothing better— ’
‘Come on, Mum, tell me – is he cute?’
‘Hannah, there’s no such thing.’ Alison kept her voice low, aware of William just down the hall. ‘Unless she’s talking about a visitor that I’ve chatted to a few times. Honestly, you can’t breathe around this place!’
‘What’s his name? What’s he like?’
‘William. And he’s over fifty and I have absolutely no interest— ’
‘Why are you whispering, Mum?’ Hannah cut in. ‘Oh, he’s there, isn’t he? I knew it!’
‘No!’
‘Okay, Claire. Coming!’ Hannah called. ‘Gotta go, Mum, I’ll let you get back to your friend. Oh, and remember to smile and take that cross look off your face.’
‘Hannah!’
‘And let your hair loose. It suits you much better. Oh, wait till I tell Claire— ’
‘Hannah, don’t you dare . . . ’
But she was gone. Alison was left holding the phone in her hand, a mixture of puzzlement and amusement playing on her face. Who would have thought that the local grapevine could reach all the way to London! There was nothing like that between her and William. She knew that. He knew that. What they had was more . . . Oh, she couldn’t find a word for it, but it certainly wasn’t romance. But she had to smile at Hannah’s girlish excitement – and her new-found confidence. At the huge contradictions in the little girl who seemed to be turning into a woman overnight. How she missed her. She took a deep breath, replaced the phone and rose from the chair, a great sense of liberation rising with her. It didn’t matter what anyone around here thought. She’d had enough of pretending, of hiding out and hurting. The time had come to start being herself again, to start living.
‘I’m just about to put something on for tea, will you join me?’ Alison called down the hall to William.
‘Thanks, I’d love to.’ William stood engrossed in the words before him. Some were just single words, shouting their own message. Others strung together and whispered sentences. Others still stretched to form verses, poems. He was taken aback by their rawness, their questioning, the life that pulsated behind them.
‘Looks great,’ William smiled, taking a seat, ‘I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘Not at all. It’s nice to have some company for a change. That was Hannah on the phone.’ Alison poured two glasses of wine.
‘How’s London treating her? Mmm, this is good,’ he nodded, tasting the scampi.
‘Sounds like she’s having the time of her life,’ Alison nodded. ‘But she’s still managing to keep an eye on me.’ She stole a shy smile across the table. ‘Seems she had an email from a friend in the village – telling her that her mum had a new man!’ Her cheeks pinked.
‘Well,’ William’s smile was slow, disconcerted. ‘Has she? Is that where you’ve been these past few days, entertaining the new mystery man?’ William teased. The little niggle of jealousy caught him by surprise.
‘No,’ Alison laughed. ‘They’re talking about you!’
‘Me? Well, I hope you set the record straight and told her you were just doing your bit for the community, care of the aged and all that?’
‘I tried, but Hannah seems quite taken with the idea. Probably thinks it would be a nice distraction, keep me off her back. And if you want to know, I’ve been holed up here, shielding myself from the speculations of the masses.’ She told William about the shop and the conversation she’d overheard between Theresa and Joan.
‘Looks like we’re causing quite a stir about the place.’ His eyes smiled right through her. ‘But why let it bother you? Why hide away? We enjoy each other’s company. Should it matter what anyone else thinks?’
‘I know, I know, but it’s just that, well, I suppose I’ve lived here so long. Came here as Sean’s girlfriend, then his wife. That’s how I’m seen by everyone. Like I’m not a person in my own right. And I suppose over the years I’ve come to see myself as they see me. As they judge me.’
‘Do any of them try to know you, as yourself?’
‘Kathleen, the girl that was just leaving as you arrived, she’s great. The best. Other than her, I suppose I’ve never really given anyone else a chance. I think I’ve always been afraid that they wouldn’t approve, find I didn’t fit in or something.’
‘That’s a bit unfair on them – and on you. Anyway, why do you feel you need to fit in? Surely there’s room for a little difference, even in a place this size?’ William’s eyes followed her as she lifted the plates to the sink, lit a cigarette and sat again.
‘I suppose it’s the need to belong, isn’t it? When Sean was here, I felt I was part of the place. Being his wife, I belonged here. Now, a lot of the time I feel like an outsider, you know, like the place is not really my home, that I have no right to be here. It’s stupid, I know. But I feel if I act the way they’d like me to, if I’m the person they expect me to be, then I’ll be accepted. And there’s this huge pull inside me. This longing to belong and, at the same time, this fight to be myself. To be true to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
‘Only too well,’ William nodded. ‘I think this hunger that we feel – to fit in, to be approved of, to belong to somebody or some place – it’s what causes most of the pain and confusion in our lives.’ He sipped his wine, his eyes and his thoughts for a moment far away. ‘I wasted a lot of years searching for that.’ He looked into Alison’s eyes. ‘The end of that search is what allows me the freedom that I have now. You see, I don’t believe we belong – not to this world, not to anyone or anywhere in it. And that hunger, that longing we feel, is the cry of the soul. A cry for the home it came from. And the more we try to soothe it with attachments to people, places, cars, houses, money – all the jewels this world offers – then the louder it howls.’
‘So, how do you stop it?’ Alison sat forward, elbows on the table, that same frown of concentration rippling her brow.
‘That’s it, you see. We don’t. At least, that’s my belief. You let yourself feel the hunger, see where it draws you. In that stillness, it loses its shyness and it speaks to you.’ He paused, then asked, ‘What is it that you do, Alison, that allows time and the whole world and all those questions to slip away? When do you lose yourself?’
Alison didn’t have to think about it: ‘When I write.’ Her answer was almost a whisper. ‘Then there’s nothing in the world but me and the page. And a beautiful, comforting quiet. I don’t mean when I do Eugene’s stuff, but when I just write, not knowing what’s going to come out on the page. It’s like . . . it’s like I’m a different person. Like the world and all the stuff that goes on in my head stops and I can just . . . ’
‘Be?’ William offered, nodding. ‘And that, I think, is the closest that we’ll ever get to belonging in this world.’ They sat in silence for a moment, each digesting the conversation.
‘So, do you write much?’
‘That’s just it. I never seem to find the time. There’s always something else that needs to be done. And I get so frustrated!’
‘The cry of the soul,’ William smiled. ‘What you’ve written in the hall. They’re beautiful. Raw and real. They have soul.’
‘They’re my frustration walls,’ she laughed. ‘I write there when I’m angry. Or hurt, or lonely. Or just confused. By the time I’m finished I’ve usually worked out whatever it was that was bothering me.’
‘Why don’t you send your work out? You have a real talent.’
‘Oh, don’t think I haven’t tried. Poems, short stories. But they come back time and again with the same old few lines. “Sorry, not successful on this occasion”, or something about it being too dark.’
‘You’re just hitting the wrong market. Ever thought of concentrating on something bigger?’
‘Like a novel?’ she smiled.
‘Ever considered it?’
‘In my dreams.’ Her smile was wistful now. ‘The one dream that has held fast since childhood was having my very own book on the shelf, with my name on the cover. Something that I had given to the world. Something that I could pass on to Hannah.’
‘So?’ William quizzed, ‘what’s holding you up?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I’ll start and won’t finish. Or worse, that I’ll finish and I’ll fail, that no one will want it.’
‘There you go again! Pre-judging your audience before you’ve even written the first word. Don’t think of the audience. Write what’s in your heart. A dream that has lasted all those years surely deserves a chance, yeah?’
Alison nodded. She felt a warmth stir inside her, as if her dream was smiling, having been voiced. ‘Come on,’ she smiled. Rising from the table, she reached and took a picnic basket from the top cupboard.
‘Where are we going?’ He eased himself up from the table.
‘Grab some wine!’ She packed cheese and crackers from the fridge, a fat candle in a round, storm globe. ‘The beach. I’ll just get us some towels to sit on.’ Her words trailed behind her down the hall. William laughed out loud. He loved that almost wildness in her, that spontaneity – the spur of the moment change, those little bursts she could make at life.
They sat at the base of the dunes, the picnic basket between then. ‘To dreams,’ Alison smiled, clinking her glass to his before raising it to her lips. She turned and lay on her stomach, her bare calves and feet in the air. ‘Now, William Hayden, stranger, I want to know about you.’
‘What would you like to know?’ He shifted down on his side, watched the soft glow of the candlelight play on her face.
‘Why you left Dublin? Where you went next. How you survive. Why you’re here – that’ll do for starters.’
‘Okay.’ William’s gaze moved from her face, out across the whispering tide and on out to the horizon. ‘I was twenty,’ he began, ‘an architecture student in Dublin. Bored, hungry for change. I took a summer job in Paris teaching English and at night I indulged my passion. Art. I took an evening class in a little centre near the school. They thought I had talent’ – he smiled at her, his eyes and his voice hinting his humility – ‘encouraged and fostered it. By the end of the summer William Hayden, Architect was dead, replaced by a lover of Art and the French. And I just never went back.’ He sipped his wine, his eyes moving back to the ocean.
‘How long did you stay in Paris?’
‘Five years. Then the rambling began. I’d move from place to place, country to country. I’d get by painting sceneries, private commissions of houses, yachts. Summers I’d do portraits for the tourists.’
‘So, where was home?’
‘Wherever I’d land. Dublin didn’t hold the same meaning as it had. My mother had died in the meantime and my father, well, he was never in the picture.’
‘But Paris – surely after five years . . . ’
‘Paris was nothing to me any more.’ There was a slight harshness to his words that she had never heard before. ‘Not without Helene.’ His sigh was heavy, loaded.
‘Helene?’ Alison prodded, intrigued at the almost-reverence in how he whispered the name.
‘I met her that first summer. She was the model in my life drawing class. And the inspiration for all that followed.’ He paused, sipped his drink, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He could see her now, as clearly as on that first night. Dark hair, cut close to her head, those carved cheeks, the taut golden skin. Full red lips, arched and slightly parted. And the eyes: huge and black and staring, filled with an innocence and vulnerability that gave her a lost, almost endangered look. Apart from the red voile draped across her upper thighs, her long boyish body was uncovered. His hands strained to touch again the satin-soft hollows between her neck and shoulders, the small round breasts. But on that first night his eyes could not be drawn from the haunting in hers, from the secrets he imagined might lie behind them.
‘Tell me about her,’ Alison hesitated. ‘Helene.’ She tried out the name again, tasting its sacredness.
‘She knew little of her birth.’ He shifted his weight from his hip. ‘She’d been raised in a home, fostered out when she was five. By age ten she had been with three different families and at sixteen she struck out on her own and moved to Paris. She’d been there three years when I met her, surviving on what she’d make from modelling at different art classes.’ He paused again. Alison didn’t speak, anxious to know more, anxious not to break the magic in his eyes and his words. ‘I was captivated by her . . . by everything about her. Within a month I’d persuaded her to move in with me and for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to be complete. To be home.’
‘So what happened – what made you leave Paris?’
‘I went to a gallery opening in London the following September. They’d accepted some of my paintings and it looked like this was going to be my big break. I flew to Dublin for a couple of days when the exhibition finished. I was on a high. My work had been really well received. She must have thought I wasn’t coming back.’
‘She left?’ Alison prompted, after a few moments’ silence.
‘I searched for her for six solid months, eventually tracked her down – or what was left of her—’ He broke off, his voice trembling. Alison took his hand. He cleared his throat, continued. ‘In Montpellier. She was using again, she was destroyed . . . ’
‘I’m so sorry, William, I shouldn’t have . . . ’
‘No. No, it’s okay.’ He squeezed her hand tight, held it fast in his. ‘It’s good to remember. It’s like what you were talking about earlier tonight, about this belonging. Helene had spent her life drifting, surviving, trying to figure out who she was, where she had come from. She thought she’d found some kind of belonging in me. With me. And when she thought I’d left her, she just didn’t want to feel any more.’
‘And you?’
‘I felt I’d failed her. I had. I should have seen – I should have known. I tried everything, arranged rehab. She quit after five days, refused point-blank to see or speak to me after that.’ He shifted, rested his back against a rock, all the time keeping hold of Alison’s hand. His sigh was long and deep. ‘I stuck around for eighteen months, cursing myself, my stupidity. I’d fallen victim to my ego. Thought I was going to be the next big guy. It was all I had talked about and to her it must have seemed all I cared about. It had taken me over. No wonder she felt she’d lost me. Do you mind?’ William reached for Alison’s cigarettes.
‘Oh, I didn’t know you . . . of course, go ahead.’
‘There was never again going to be anyone for me after that. I was never going to cause that pain, suffer that pain again.’ He drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘After eighteen months I bound up my wounds and moved on.’ He exhaled slowly into the still night air, the sound of the surf washing the silence.
Alison took both his hands in hers. ‘Let’s swim,’ she whispered, pulling him upwards. She unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall from her shoulders, stepped out of her jeans and pants and unclasped her bra. She stood before him, her wild red curls lit by the moonlight, tumbling over her breasts. His eyes held hers as he freed himself slowly from his clothes. Hand in hand, they walked slowly towards the water.
The soft wet sand yielded beneath their feet, the bite of the water tensing their naked skin as they followed the moon’s trail, the water rising to their waists. Alison dived into the silent depths, surfaced breathless and smiling a few feet away. He stood watching, mesmerised by the darkened curls clinging to her head, the light of the moon bathing the pale, raw beauty of her face, her neck, her shoulders.
Seeing his chance, Joe O’Sullivan stole from the high dune grass, helped himself to two cigarettes, a lump of cheese and some crackers. He put the wine bottle to his head and drained it before returning again to his watch post.
* * *
Just after midday the following Wednesday, Alison saw the blue lorry negotiating the mouth of the drive. She tapped the screen saver and rose from the computer, her eyes strained and itchy. The clock read ten past twelve. She had worked straight through since returning from the beach at eight thirty that morning. Just one week since she’d started and already she had written almost eighteen thousand words. Something just seemed to have clicked inside her that Tuesday. A belief in herself, in the worth and beauty of the story she would write. The last week had gone by in a flash. She’d hardly stepped outside the house, except to walk the dogs at seven each morning and make a half-hour visit to Maryanne in the afternoons. There had been one frantic evening visit to William to tell him she had started, how alive and full of drive and passion she felt. He had been almost as excited as she was, as she tried to explain how she felt like she was back in those early years again with a real life, with real possibilities, how she had finally broken free of Carniskey without even stepping outside it.
She went out through the back door and around the house just as the lorry pulled to a halt at the top of the drive. A tall man with wiry black curls hopped down from the cab, lifting a small boy down to the ground behind him. He took a few long strides towards Alison, the little blond child keeping up behind. He wiped his big hand on the seat of his jeans and offered it to Alison.
‘Tom O’Donnell, I rang about yer ad in The Skipper?’ The Donegal lilt lent him a real gentleness. ‘This is wee Daniel.’ He motioned with his head to the child behind.
‘Oh, Tom, hi. I wasn’t expecting you till Friday.’ Alison took his hand.
‘Och, with the weather so broken we thought we’d make use of the day. Mind, ye have it good down here,’ he remarked, looking out towards the bay.
‘This has been our best week.’ Alison couldn’t understand why she felt so awkward in his presence. Was it his size? The black curls and familiar fishing gait reminding her of Sean? ‘The stuff’s round here, if you’d like to take a look.’ She led him around the side of the house. The little boy screamed as the two dogs rushed towards him, knocking him onto the ground.
‘Tilly! Tim! Oh, I am sorry. It’s okay, Daniel. They won’t hurt you, they’re just excited to see you.’
‘See, Dan, they’re just lookin’ to play with ye.’ Tom straightened the little boy. ‘He’s well used to it,’ he smiled. ‘He’s got two of his own at home.’
‘I’ll leave you to look at this lot, come inside when you’re ready and I’ll put on some tea, ye must be hungry after the journey.’ She disappeared in the back door.
Ten minutes later Tom knocked on the open back door. Alison turned to find him leaning against the jamb.
‘I’ll give ye five grand for the lot.’
‘But— ’
‘I can give ye cash, shift the lot today?’
‘I didn’t, well— ’
‘It’s a fair deal, and the most I’m prepared to offer,’ Tom cut in. ‘As I said, cash in hand.’
Alison nodded, open-mouthed.
‘Have we a deal, then?’ Tom stuck out his big hand again.
‘A deal,’ she managed to mutter, shaking his hand.
‘Great, I’ll start shifting it then, we’ve a long drive home.’ He was gone before she could say any more. She sat down slowly on the chair. Five thousand? Had she heard him right? If he’d said three, she’d have been more than thrilled. Would have settled for two and a half, with the bind she was in. A huge smile creased her face. Five thousand euro! She’d never dreamed of having that amount of money. She could paint the house outside, fix the leak in the back kitchen roof – maybe even have a holiday with Hannah! Best of all, now she would have the time and peace of mind to write without the constant panic of where the next bob was coming from. Life was turning. At last things were on the up. She could feel it in every cell of her body. Joe O’Sullivan, she thought, rising up frantically. Some of Sean’s gear would have to be left for Joe. She rushed outside. ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ she called to Tom’s back. She moved to where he was sorting the pots. Tom smiled to himself.
By three o’clock they had shifted the lot, had eaten their fill of sandwiches and cake, and Alison stood at the top of the drive waving them off. She wondered why she’d had such an odd feeling around him at first; he was such a lovely man, gentle, shy and yet chatty, and so interested in herself and Hannah, their life in Carniskey. She hadn’t mentioned that the nets and pots had belonged to a man lost at sea, mindful of Joan and Theresa’s ‘bad luck’ theory and fearful it might make him change his mind. Five thousand euro? She still couldn’t believe it.
She walked back around the side of the house. The garden seemed huge without Sean’s gear strewn all over it. Huge and empty. She sat down on the grass. So this was it then, Sean was finally gone. The uncovered grass was dead and yellowed from its years in the darkness. But here and there, she noticed, a green tuft peeped its head. There’s still life, still hope, it seemed to whisper to a tearful Alison. And she knew it was right. She would make a rockery, she decided. Here, just outside the kitchen window. She would use the stones and shells from the kitchen and fill it in with wild plants to remember Sean, to remember their love.
* * *
Tom O’Donnell pressed the call button on his mobile phone. It was answered on the first ring.
‘Well?’
‘It’s done.’ Tom spoke quietly. ‘I’ve got the gear, paid over the five like ye said.’
‘And Alison? How was she?’
Tom sighed at the loneliness and desperation in Sean Delaney’s voice. ‘She’s fine, Sean, she’s happy. I’ll talk to ye when I get back.’
He replaced the phone in its holder.
‘It’s a queer old world, Dan,’ he sighed, stroking the sleeping child’s hair.