No Goodbye (10 page)

This new painting is too wet and a bit messy. I forgot to clean my brush since the last time and bits of purple have blobbed in my painting.

Lucy is cross and says that I’m not let bring any more toys in my backpack. She says that I have far too much stuff and takes some things out, but I sneak them back in when she’s not looking.

We’re all going on a holiday with Daddy. I wish Mummy was coming too. It’s a big journey and I hope I don’t get car sick like the time we went to Galway.

This time I’m going to Kerry.

I’m going to see the dolphin.

This painting is for Mummy.

Kerry is almost two hundred miles from Dublin, about as far as you can go because of the Atlantic Ocean. My geography book has lots of information and a map, and in the photos the place looks kind of interesting.

When we slam our front door and get in the car, I hope we’re not slamming the door on our family’s future.

Once we quit the city, Dad relaxes as we move out onto the open road and the motorway. Dad is used to driving on these roads on his own and automatically
switches on the radio for company, forgetting that the four of us are there.

Conor stares out the window. Blink, blink, blink – he’s at that nervous twitching again.

Lucy is telling Grace the story of Fungi, the friendly Kerry dolphin, who lives offshore beyond Dingle. Grace is snuggled up beside her and is yawning already. Any kind of journey and that kid drops off to sleep. Forget the scenery and sights along the way, she just conks out.

The road widens and cuts through the green countryside. Fields and more fields speed by. This year, Dad says, the crops will be good and the farmers will be happy. Dad gives me a big long talk about the state of Irish agriculture and he has a load of statistics at his fingertips. I’m quite impressed.

It begins to drizzle. People say it never stops raining in Kerry. Luckily we have our boots and rain-jackets and Dad’s big golf umbrella.

The car is misting up, the wipers swish back and forth – blink, blink, blink, just like Conor!

Mrs Cooney’s farm guesthouse is just great. It’s about a mile outside Dingle and from the upstairs window you have a clear view of the ocean.

Grace and I have a small, neat room with bunk beds. Dad and the boys are in together. The ceilings are so low that Greg has managed to whack his head twice off the wooden beam on the landing already.

‘Mind your head!’ Dad keeps shouting at him.

There are lots of little steps up and down all over the place, and narrow corridors. It’s like a rabbit warren. Grace and Conor are chasing around, exploring.

Downstairs, there is a lovely waxy smell of polish and the aroma of the roast lamb Mrs Cooney is cooking for our dinner. ‘Something good after your long journey,’ she told us all when we arrived.

It was a long drive, but the minute we saw the coast road, and the Cooneys’ whitewashed house with all its shining windows winking in the sunlight, and the heather-covered hills sheltering the farm and
its buildings, we knew it was worth it.

Dad and Mrs Cooney are old friends, as he has stayed here before, and she made us very welcome when Dad introduced us one by one.

Dad and herself chat away over a cup of tea.

‘Dad! Can we go outside?’ pleads Conor.

‘Okay! But put your boots on,’ Dad warns.

Outside it’s still very damp, but the fresh air helps to wake us up.

The farm is huge. There is a small orchard at the side of the house, and the apple trees are old and wizened. We squash the rotten windfall apples that have been lying for months on the ground, squelching them with our boots. The plum and cherry trees still have dotted clumps of blossom on them. In the late summer there will be raspberries and gooseberries too. I’d like to see it in the summer.

Beside the front door there is a wrought-iron bench, and we all take turns sitting on it. It overlooks the lawn and a straggly path that leads to a goldfish pond, almost completely overgrown with lily pads and pondweed.

Grace almost falls in, bending down to see if there are any goldfish.

We walk through one or two fields, clambering over fences. None of us dares go into the one with all the cows.

‘Dinner!’ calls Dad.

We all want to stay out. ‘Ten more minutes,’ we beg. ‘We want to explore. It’s not dark yet.’

Nothing will make him change his mind. ‘No, kids! Tomorrow’s another day!’

One thing we do know is that our Dad is as stubborn as a donkey, and he hates changing his mind. Anyway, we’re all starving.

The very minute breakfast is over this morning, Dad sets off to do his business calls. ‘Greg is in charge,’ he tells us, ‘and Mrs Cooney is in charge of Greg!’

Honest to God, this is the best place I ever stayed in. I bet there are ghosts and treasure and secret passages in an old house like this. Grace loves the window-seat in the living room, and she keeps pulling the curtains and hiding there. She thinks because she can’t see us that must mean we can’t see her!

All morning we have to stay inside as it’s lashing
rain outside, and a heavy mist is wrapped around the house so that we can barely see to the road. But by lunchtime it has cleared to a drizzle.

‘That’s what keeps the countryside looking so green,’ Mrs Cooney tells us. ‘Away off with ye now! A good soft rain never did anyone a bit of harm.’

Greg makes us put on our raincoats and boots and pull up our hoods. Mrs Cooney looks at us as if we’re sissy city kids as we set off to explore. Grace is being such a drag that Greg has to pull her along. Dad is whistling by the time he gets back. That’s a good sign. It means that he has done really well.

On Saturday morning the rain has moved off and the sky has cleared and we all want to go into Dingle and see it for ourselves. Dad gives us pocket money so we can buy something.

Dingle is a busy little town, real picture-postcard stuff. Two Germans take a photo of Conor and me looking in the bookshop window. We pretend not to notice their camera. There are lots of cottages and brightly-painted buildings and craftshops. Dad buys us each an ice cream and we eat it as we walk about. We get a bag of doughnuts in the bakery shop for later.

Greg buys a book about Kerry with lots of beautiful colour pictures. In the craftshop there is a round stand with brooches on it. They look beautiful against the black velvet. There’s one of a cat who looks a lot like Max, only thinner, basking in the sun and sitting on a pile of daisies. I buy it for Gran. I want one for myself, but I can’t make up my mind which to choose. There’s an Irish cottage, lots of different cats, a fishing boat, and dolphins – blue, grey, black and white – one of them is kind of smiling and looks like it’s jumping through the waves. That’s the brooch for me. I pin it on my yellow jumper. Grace gets a new bucket and spade, and an inflatable blue ball. Conor is so weird. He wants a kind of dark wooden carving, made from bog oak, of a man leaning against a boat – well, part of one.

‘Are you sure?’ Dad asks, puzzled.

‘Yep!’ says Conor.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer a book or a game?’

‘No, Dad! I like this,’ Conor says, holding it.

Dad ruffles his hair and pays the man in the shop for it. Wouldn’t you know it, Conor’s costs more than everyone else’s.

‘All the shopping done? All the money gone?

Then let’s head for the most beautiful beach in the countryside!’ Dad announces.

The beach
is
beautiful, breathtaking and bleak. A bracing wind that catches my hair and stings my cheeks blows in off the Atlantic. The ocean stretches out in front of us so that it is hard to tell where the blue of the sky ends and the sea starts. The waves roll in, one after another, splashing onto the cool, golden sand. Miles out, the sea is calm and gentle. Bits of rock jut up, and black glistening cormorants dive from them, then reappear in the swell of water that swirls and tosses against the unmoving ruggedness of the rocks.

Dad takes off his jacket, folds it and sits down on the sand.

‘Can we go for a paddle?’ begs Grace, already pulling off her boots and socks.

‘It’s a bit cold yet, Gracie. The water hasn’t had a chance to warm up,’ Dad says.

‘Please! Please, Dad,’ she cajoles.

We all copy her and take off our things and roll up our trouser legs. We should have had the sense to bring a towel with us.

The water is so cold that the second you hit it, you
almost freeze your toes off and stop breathing.

‘OW! OW! OW!’ Conor and Grace are hopping up and down in the water and squealing so loudly you’d think a giant crab had grabbed them by the toes.

‘Greg, what are those islands in the distance called?’ I ask.

‘The Blaskets, I think.’

‘We’ll look at them in your school map when we get back to the car,’ Dad says.

Greg never says a word. The map is in Dublin. I saw it– he left it on his desk, on top of his books, with a big circle drawn around Dingle. Just like I left my diary, half-by-accident and half-on-purpose on my bed, wide open.

‘Daddy! Daddy! Look!’ Grace is screaming and shouting with excitement.

‘I see a dolphin – a
real
dolphin.’

We all stare in the direction she’s pointing.

‘The dolphin! You must see him,’ she insists.

‘That’s not a dolphin, pet,’ Dad reasons. ‘Fungi swims much further out than this. You have to go out in a boat to see him.’

‘But I
see
him. He’s jumping in the waves,’ Grace
says determinedly.

‘I think that’s just a bit of rock sticking up out of the seabed,’ Dad tells her gently.

Before any of us can stop her, she lurches forward and wades in up to her waist. Greg manages to grab hold of her before she goes any further or falls under.

She’s soaking. Her tracksuit bottoms are sodden, so we just pull them off her, leaving her top and knickers on. Her skin is blue and covered in goosepimples. Dad picks up his jacket, shakes the sand off it, and wraps it around her to keep her warm till we get back to the farm.

Usually Grace would be crying her head off by now when something like this happens, but today she clings to Dad, saying smugly: ‘I did see a dolphin. I saw a dolphin!’

Grace is wild with excitement, talking about the dolphin. Of course none of them believe her. I saw it too – well, I’m almost sure I did. It was watching us. I could sense it.

Only a few more hours and we’ll have to leave Dingle and go back to Dublin. I wish we could stay here for ever and ever. Dad is in good humour. He must have sold lots of products and filled his order book. He gave me extra money for my present. For my ‘thinking man’.

The beach here is nice, but I think that I prefer Brittas Bay. One thing is certain, the sea here is freezing. It’s lonesome here no matter how beautiful it is. We’re the only kids on the strand.

If I turn my back to the ocean and look, all I can see is the golden sand with bits of brown stringy seaweed, and sharp grey rocks, then field after green field, all drawn out with low stone walls and scraggy hawthorn hedges. That’s what it would look like if I was a fisherman out bobbing on the sea, fixing my nets … or a big ocean fish, silver blue, jumping in the sea spray.

The ocean, the fields, the hills – I wish they could be mine forever. No more school, no more
homework, no more living in a sad house. Dad is staring out to sea, maybe he’s wishing the very same thing.

‘Conor! Grace!’ A voice catches on the wind. Someone is calling us.

‘Greg! Lucy! Conor! Grace!’

I turn towards the sound. A grey gull screeches through the sky. My eyes skim the distance. I know the voice, her face is nervous. The brown hair is shorter. She stands with her arms thrown wide open.

‘MUM!’

I run first. The others turn, curious, and realising what’s happening begin to follow. I’m the fastest runner in the world, even if it is on heavy sand and slightly uphill.

‘Oh, my Conor!’ She closes her arms around me, and hugs me close to her, till one by one the others crush in on top of us.

‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry for leaving you all!’ The way she says it we know that she means it.

Dad walks over slowly to join us and stops in front of Mum. Neither of them says a word. He just takes her hand.

‘I saw a dolphin today, Mummy, I really did!’ Grace
announces.

Mum lifts her up, ignoring how wet and sandy she is, and nuzzles her hair.

‘I saw a dolphin too, pet, your dolphin, the one with the purple spots.’

‘My painting,’ nods Grace.

‘I got the letter …’

My face goes red.

‘… and I guessed then that I needed to follow the trail.’

‘The trail?’ asks Dad, confused.

‘Yes, Chris, the painting, the letter, the diary, the maps … the trail that led me all the way to here, where I am meant to be!’

‘We have to go back home today, Vanessa,’ Dad tells her.

She lets her eyes roam around, taking it all in, makes a disappointed face and gives a little frown.

I want Dad to say something.

‘By plane, by train, by bus, by taxi, I’ve come a long way to find this place, Chris, to find you all,’ she says. Her voice is tired. She wants to stay here.

Dad avoids her eyes and kicks at the sand. ‘We have to get back home,’ he insists stubbornly.

I know what he is telling her.

‘One more night, Chris,’ she pleads. ‘Till tomorrow! Then we’ll start all over again.’

‘Please, Dad! Please! Please! PLEASE!’ we all chorus.

He looks at each of us, and at her, making his mind up. ‘Till tomorrow, then! One more night in Mrs Cooney’s. And tomorrow we go back home – and start over again,’ he agrees.

We shout and scream and roar, frightening the gulls with our happiness, and chase each other along the sand and in and out of the waves, while Mum and Dad watch us.

Tomorrow we start the long journey back home.