Hello from the Gillespies (10 page)

Question led to question. It became a treasure hunt. He never knew what he would find next on the internet. He’d always thought he would have to go to Ireland to learn anything about his ancestors, but it was extraordinary how much he’d been able to unearth from his desk, in the office, on the old, shared computer.

He joined chat rooms, all of them frequented by amateur researchers like himself, everyone expressing frustration at the unpredictability of Irish record keeping. He got in touch with Gillespies all over the world. They started talking about a reunion in Ireland. He offered to coordinate it. Following others’ suggestions, he posted his email address, with a general call for information about two cousins with the surname of Gillespie who’d emigrated to South Australia in the 1880s. Three days later, he had a reply.

He was impressed with the letter. He checked out the company’s equally impressive website. He read the testimonials. There were dozens, all glowing. It did make sense to have someone in Ireland doing the hard graft, visiting the archives, phoning the parochial houses, everything that was too difficult and time-consuming for him to do. It was expensive though. Not just the monthly fee – he was also expected to cover any travelling and accommodation expenses incurred during the research.

But perhaps, just perhaps, his grandparents and his father would approve. They might even forgive him for what he had done to their property.

He filled out the online form. He set up the bank transfers. Two days later, Carol came into his life. Even thinking about her now made him feel better.

Better. Not guilty. Despite what the kids thought, what Angela had asked him, he had nothing to feel guilty about. It wasn’t an affair. Carol was simply a voice on Skype, on email. A scholar, a historian, a trained genealogist. In the past few months, she’d found so much information for him. His great-great-uncle was a political activist. A great-great-grandmother was a poet. Carol had sent him pages of records, old family photographs. When he’d mentioned the idea of staging a reunion, she immediately offered to help.

They’d negotiated an increased monthly rate. Money was still tight. The lump sum from the mining company had paid off the debt, but his wage as a caretaker still had to cover a lot of other costs. After long deliberation, he’d decided it was worth it. He hoped his ancestors would approve. He was in charge of bringing together Gillespies from all over the world, after all. He wanted to do it properly. He couldn’t just rent out a room in an Irish pub and stick up a photocopy of a ship’s log on the wall. Carol had already suggested many good ideas, of tours they could take, ancestral places they could visit.

It was now more than a hobby for Nick. More than a way to fill long, empty hours. He’d discovered a love of history. The research had given him purpose again. A sense of adventure. It seemed incredible that he was even making plans to visit Ireland. To travel overseas for the first time in his life. Not just for the reunion, but on a reconnaissance trip before that. And not on his own.

With Angela.

He’d been planning it for weeks. He hoped she would say yes. He’d decided the best time to ask her was after the twins had arrived home for Christmas. After he’d had the chance to ask Victoria in person if she would stay on and look after Ig and keep an eye on Angela’s station-stay website, manage any bookings and answer any queries.

Of all his kids, Victoria would be the best choice. She shared his love, and Angela’s love, for the land around here. In the days before things went bad, he’d often thought she would be the one to take over from him. There’d even been casual conversations between him and Kevin Lawson, joking about Fred and Victoria getting married one day and combining Errigal and the Lawson property into one mighty one. Until Fred and Victoria had broken up so suddenly and her career had gone in a different direction. Nick had long ago ruled out Genevieve as his successor. She’d made it clear from early on that she wasn’t sticking around. It would never suit Lindy, either. She’d lose interest too quickly, start something but never finish it. And Ig? Despite being the only son and traditional heir, Ig’s interest clearly wasn’t on the land. Computers, yes. Station life, no.

In the meantime, Nick knew he could trust Victoria to take care of things while he and Angela went travelling. They could afford to go for three weeks, he’d decided. Ireland for ten days, and then on to London, her home city. And then to somewhere else in Europe, wherever she wanted to go. Just the two of them.

The trip couldn’t come soon enough. He missed her. He missed what their marriage had been like. He hoped that going away together might help bring them back together. Help her to forgive him for the mess he’d made of the station.

As he turned to look at the map of Ireland on the wall, his email pinged. It was Carol, working all hours as usual. She’d already researched a list of Gillespie places he and Angela could visit.

He was smiling as he wrote his reply.

Angela was in her pottery studio. She’d been there for the past hour, ever since she’d re-read her letter. She wasn’t working. She was hiding.

On her way out there, Ig had called her over to admire his latest cubby. It was very impressive, she told him honestly. He’d arranged all of Lindy’s cardboard boxes, still filled with thread and stuffing, into an elaborate structure. After he’d pointed out all the features, she told him she was just going to do some work on her new sculptures.

‘Do you need a spider check first?’ he asked.

She’d been too distracted to even think about spiders. Thank God he’d remembered. She nodded. In her three decades living out here, she’d grown accustomed to snakes, to kangaroos, to lizards, locusts, mice and rats. But never to the spiders. Especially not the huge, hand-sized spiders that seemed to lie in wait in dark corners just for her. Nick had rescued her from them for years. So had the girls, who had grown up fearless. Lately, it had become Ig’s job. He wasn’t keen on snakes, she knew, but he was very relaxed about spiders.

He opened the blue-painted door of the studio for her, tugging at it three times before it opened. The hinges needed oiling. The climbing red rose bush that grew around it, the one Nick had planted for her on their first wedding anniversary, needed pruning too, she noticed. One more item for her To Do list. She waited in the doorway as Ig fetched the torch she kept inside for just this purpose. He started to shine it around the small shed, which had just enough room for her compact kiln, the pottery wheel, two tall racks of shelves and an old wooden bench. All perfect spider hiding places.

‘You’d better look away,’ Ig said from inside. ‘It’s pretty big. A huntsman, I think.’

She shuddered. A huntsman. Huge, hairy. Not poisonous, but still . . . She moved several metres back, resisting a temptation to go even further. She shut her eyes too, but was still able to picture what she knew Ig was doing in there. Picking up – actually picking up, in his bare hands – a spider. He could have killed it, but as he’d told her solemnly once, it wasn’t the spider’s fault she didn’t like it.

She opened her eyes as he returned, wiping his hands on his shorts.

‘All clear,’ he said. ‘You can go in now.’

‘What would I do without you, Ig?’ she’d said.

He’d given her his shy, sweet smile, then headed back to his cubby, talking to Robbie as he went.

Since then, she had been sitting here, on the bench, rolling the same ball of clay round and around in her hands. She hadn’t even made a start on shaping it into any discernible form. All she’d been doing was fighting an urge to run away. To get into the car and drive as fast as she could away from this mess she had created.

Reason took over. She couldn’t run away. There was too much to do. Party food to make and freeze. The woolshed to decorate. All the party gear had been delivered, the chairs and the trestle tables. She could start unpacking those. Or perhaps she could drive over to Joan’s, get some face-to-face advice. An hour’s journey across dirt roads. No. She had to try something else.

She took five breaths in, five breaths out. Again.

She let her mind drift. She used all the tricks she’d learned over the past months.

Slowly, surely, it began to work.

She wasn’t on a sheep station in outback South Australia on a hot, dusty December day. She hadn’t somehow sent out her innermost secrets to one hundred people around the world. She didn’t have four children in various states of disarray, or a husband who had lost interest in her. She wasn’t about to host two hundred people in a dusty woolshed, all of whom probably hated her and her family. She wasn’t sitting in a small stone shed full of pottery equipment she didn’t know how to use properly, beside shelves of half-finished sculptures that looked like they belonged in a kindergarten. No, that wasn’t her and this wasn’t her life.

She was Angela Richardson. It was mid-morning in London. She’d been up since seven a.m. It was a cold and frosty December day, but her little studio at the end of the garden was warm. Her husband Will had turned on the heater before he left for an early breakfast meeting. Not only that, he’d made a thermos of coffee for her and left it on the shelf beside her kiln. Not just the coffee, but a note too.
Have a great day. I love you, Will xx.
Had there ever been a husband as thoughtful as Will? As loving? As demonstrative?

On her way to the studio, she’d picked up the pile of mail from the mat. One bill that they would have no problem paying, because they had plenty of money. More than they knew what to do with. An invitation from a gallery asking – actually, almost begging – her to consider them for her next ceramics exhibition. And a card from her daughter Lexie. Lexie often put little notes in the post: postcards, photographs of objects or shapes that she thought her mother might find inspirational. Today’s card was no exception. It was a card with a drawing of a robin on the cover, a gloriously bright-red, plump little bird, with a gleam in its black eye, standing jauntily on its matching black legs. Inside Lexie had written just one line:
To add to your collection! Love you, Lexie xxx.

Could Lexie get any sweeter? Angela doubted it. She had told Lexie two months ago that she was thinking about using robins, her favourite birds, as the theme for her next collection. She’d loved them since she was a child. Their curiosity. Their territorial natures. The way she only needed to step outside and pull up a single weed and one would appear, as much to keep an eye on her as to look out for a worm. She especially loved robins in December and January, when the garden was so bleak. Sometimes it would make her feel sad to look out from her studio and see the flowerbeds dormant, the old oak tree bare, the roses that were so glorious in the summer now just branches in the grey light. But then, in the corner of her vision, a flash of movement, a splash of colour. A robin! She’d watch it for as long as it was there, loving the darting, bobbing movements, the little pecks at the food she had left on the bird table for it, and most of all, loving the life and colour it brought into the garden.

At that moment, Angela’s mobile rang. It was Suzy, the manager of the gift shop in Islington’s Camden Passage, just three streets away.

‘Angela, how are you? Look, darling, this is beyond cheeky of me, but I’m ringing to ask, do you have anything up your sleeve gift-wise this year? I was expecting a delivery of clay angels, lovely little things, but they’re stuck in transit in Antwerp, of all places. Won’t get here until mid-January. Fat lot of good they’ll be to me then. But I thought, angel, Angela, maybe you’ve had a burst of inspiration and have exactly what I need? You remember those bells you made a few years ago? The little ones? You don’t have any of those left, do you? Or anything Christmassy at all? My loyal and rich customers will be arriving any day now, arms outstretched, credit cards ready, and I can’t bear to think they might leave empty-handed and me empty-tilled.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Angela said, confidently, clearly. ‘But not bells.’

‘No? What?’

‘Robins,’ she said. ‘I’m making robins this year. A simple design. Clay base colour, with a burst of red glaze on the chest. I can have a sample to you tomorrow.’ She hadn’t even made one yet, but she already knew it would be a success.

‘I love robins! Everyone loves robins! You’re a genius! I don’t even need to see them. I’ll order as many as you can make.’

Angela started work as soon as she hung up. It was as if her fingers already knew what they were doing. She moulded the little round body, the delicate head. She used wire for the spindly legs. She had plenty of that in the garden shed. The clay was light, the whole object would be light too, perfect to hang on a tree or to rest on a windowsill . . .

By seven p.m. she had a dozen made. She was around at Suzy’s early the next morning. Suzy
loved
them. They were
divine
, she said. They had such
personality
. Such
charm
. How quickly could she make more?

‘Angela Richardson, you are incredible,’ Will said that night, raising a glass over the set table, the rich spicy smell of the beef casserole he’d cooked filling their warm kitchen. ‘May I propose a toast to you and your robins.’

‘To robins,’ Angela said, laughing, clinking her glass against his.

‘Who’s Robyn?’

Angela opened her eyes. Lindy stood in the doorway, holding her cushion cover.

‘I thought Ig was bad enough, talking to Robbie all the time. Now you’re at it. Who’s Robyn? Robbie’s sister?’

‘Not Robyn. Robin. As in the bird.’

‘You were talking to a bird? It’s worse than I thought.’ She held out the cover. ‘Look, Mum, two words down, one to go.’

‘Beautiful, Lindy. Well done.’

‘You hardly looked at it. Does it matter that the W is a bit wobbly?’

‘Of course not. We don’t have robins in Australia, Lindy, did you know that?’

‘What?’

‘There aren’t any robins in Australia. The early settlers tried to introduce them, and then scientists more recently, but it’s never worked. The climate’s wrong for them. The robins that people call robins here aren’t actually real robins. They’re from a different bird family altogether.’

‘Really? That’s amazing.’ Ig appeared beside her. Lindy gave him a look, raising her eyebrows. ‘Mum’s talking about birds, Ig. You like birds, don’t you? I’ll leave you both to it.’ She left.

Ig came in and sat on the bench beside her. ‘What birds, Mum?’

‘Robins, Ig. They were my favourite birds when I was growing up in England. Do you know the ones I mean? The little ones with the bright-red breasts?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘I think I’ve seen them in films.’

‘I used to really love them. When I was a little kid, like you. We always had them in our garden.’

‘Do you still miss them?’

She nodded. ‘I thought I didn’t but I really do.’

‘Do you want me to go and get some paper and draw you one? You’d have to tell me what to draw but I could try.’

She didn’t know who was more shocked, herself or Ig, when her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

‘I’d love that, Ig. Thank you.’