OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found (12 page)

It is a champagne day, the taste of life fizzing on her tongue.

Then there he is, suddenly, holding a box full of tomatoes. Although it is baking, he is wearing a cloth hat and a body warmer over a T-shirt. His broad forearms strain with the weight of the produce. Heat sweeps her neck.

‘Now,’ Owen says, ‘here’s the man whose spuds we’re going to
eat. Aidan, hallo, how’s your belly off for spots?’

He turns, sees and nods. She looks away at the stall with its heaped produce and mossy green trimming. It looks cool under its blue and cream striped awning. She notices the thought that has gone into it, the way shapes are juxtaposed, bulbous fennel against tapering carrots, still with their feather fronds. She concentrates on the display to
cover her confusion and avoid his eyes. On a side table are jars of jam and marmalade with home-made labels and gingham tops. She reads the labels: blackberry, damson, plum and orange with lemon zest.

‘Hi there,’ he says, resting the tomatoes on a knee.

‘And Carmel, I spy you too,’ says Owen. ‘Should you not be at school? Will I contact the child chaser immediately?’

The girl is sitting on a stool at the side of the stall, eating a red lolly. She grins, pointing. ‘I’ve been to the dentist for a brace.’

‘Ah, I’ll let you off, so. Aidan, this is my great-niece Liv, and she is great too, a woman who likes a fry-up. Liv, this is Carmel, Aidan’s wondrous daughter. Aidan, you know Lucinda?’

‘I do, yes.’ He puts the box down carefully, wipes his hand on his jeans and extends it. ‘Hallo, Liv.’

‘Hallo.’ As their skin touches she knows him again, the feel of him, his texture. ‘I’ve met your daughter already, at Redden’s Cross, with her grandmother.’ The skills for dissemblance learned through the years with Douglas serve her well now; as the jigsaw pieces of Aidan’s family come together she maintains a steady expression.

Owen reaches and takes a tomato, rubbing it on his sleeve and biting in. He wipes spraying seeds from his chin with his cuff. Carmel stares at him, open mouthed, her tongue strawberry red. ‘Mm, the real McCoy,’ he tells Aidan, ‘not those hothouse yokes. We’ve been to Lucinda’s exhibition and now we’re going to the caff. Will you join us?’

‘No, thanks. I can’t just now.’

‘We’re waiting for Mum,’ Carmel says. ‘She’s just getting the messages.’

‘She’s here,’ a woman calls, arriving with two carrier bags. She puts them down, smiling. ‘Isn’t it lovely and warm? Oh Carmel, you shouldn’t be having that lolly after the dentist!’

‘Daddy bought it.’

‘Hmm. Hallo, Owen, Lucinda.’

Owen bows. ‘This is Liv; Liv, meet Maeve, wife of Aidan, mother of Carmel.’

‘Hallo.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Liv smiles and watches as Maeve leans upwards to kiss her husband’s cheek, then tucks her hand under his arm. She looks very young, diminutive, her honey-coloured hair pinned back with a plain barrette, her face scrubbed and open. She reminds Liv of the earnest women at university who belonged to Christian movements and met at guitar strumming house groups to pray and discuss their faith. Like them, she is dressed in a curiously old-fashioned way, in a blouse with lace at the collar and a tartan skirt. On her feet are court shoes with tiny bows.

‘Do you like jam?’ Aidan asks Liv. ‘I made the plum myself. I’ve been told it’s delicious.’

She picks one up, pretends to examine it. ‘Yes. I’ll buy a pot for my breakfast. How much?’

‘Two euros. Do you need a bag?’

‘No, that’s fine.’ His fingers brush hers again as she gives him the money and she blushes, sure that everyone must notice.

To her relief, Owen declares that he must have lunch, his stomach thinks his throat’s been cut. He escorts Liv and Lucinda along the street to a cafe. It is busy but they find a table and order sausage and chips. The tea comes in a huge brown pot and Owen pours, moving the spout energetically up and down so that the liquid froths in the cups.

‘Is Aidan making a living, do you think?’ Lucinda asks Owen.

‘Getting by, I’d say. He puts his all into it. I didn’t know you’d met Maeve before.’

Lucinda takes a mouthful of tea. ‘God, that’s good. Just the once, at the stall. She was holding on to Aidan that time too. It’s easy to see who the lover is and who’s the loved there.’

The food arrives, sausages laced with French mustard and sea salted chips with little pots of mayonnaise. Liv eats while Owen and Lucinda talk about the gallery and people they know in Cork and Dublin. She watches them, wondering if they are more than friends. Owen has an ease with women, a warmth that any woman would find attractive. She dips her chips in mayonnaise. They are hot, plump and delicious, coating her tongue. Aidan has grown these spuds. She pictures him digging them up, cleaning them, and stacking them in bags, his shoulders moving. He had always been an orderly person; he used to clean her cooking pots, getting rid of all the grime, rejecting her claim that the old charred remains added to the flavour. She fingers her palm where he touched her, his hand warm and roughened. She is replete with champagne and hearty food. A delightful anarchy fills her. Here’s to space and liberty, here’s to spring water and a quiet cottage, here’s to bangers and chips and tea that lines the stomach, she toasts silently, raising her cup.

The hubbub of the cafe recedes to a background hum. She sees him again, standing by the cottage door, half-turned, saying words of love. In her mind’s eye she pictures the first time she ever spotted him, weeks before he was brought round to dinner and officially introduced. She’d never told him about that sighting, had kept it to herself like a tiny, hidden jewel. He was sitting at a table in the university library, taking notes, his index finger holding a vast law book open. He had stopped writing for a moment, rubbed his chin and gazed into the middle distance. What a beautiful head, she’d thought, taking in the dark curls, the line of jaw, the firm mouth under the moustache which was both ridiculous and attractive. He had stroked the moustache absent-mindedly, gently, between two fingers and she’d shivered. It was the first time she had truly felt the shock of desire. Then a girl had come up to him, leaned over him, whispering and she’d turned away, disappointed. And so when he had appeared before her suddenly in her own flat she had been astonished, her hands turning to helpless, flapping objects. Now it takes all her self-control not to flee into the street and cry out to him.

Owen scrapes his chair back and heads to the toilet. Lucinda licks her fingers and declares herself completely stuffed.

‘This is when I unconsciously reach for a cigarette,’ she says. ‘Damn and blast this smoking ban.’

Liv nods although she thinks privately that the ban is a longawaited miracle. ‘Have you known Owen long?’ she asks.

‘For ever, it feels like. Edith is a distant relation of mine, something twice removed. I met him when they were courting.’

‘How come he has that big house?’ Liv asks her. ‘I mean, the Farrells never seemed to have much money, they worked on other people’s farms and my grandmother’s cottage is lovely but basic.’

Lucinda smooths her hair back. ‘Edith gave him that house when they separated. She was left several properties by her mother so one for Owen made no difference.’

‘But I thought he left her? That was generous of her.’

‘She is mad about him, was even after he did the dirty. Maybe it’s a way of keeping him close by.’

‘And what is this dirty that he did?’

‘Oh the usual, an affair.’ Lucinda takes a napkin and wipes a smudge from the toe of a blue boot.

‘And they don’t see each other?’

‘No, except in passing. It’s a just-up-the-road long-distance marriage. They never divorced, you know, even though they married in the Church of Ireland so they could have done.’

‘Why not?’

Lucinda shrugs. ‘The mysteries of other people’s relationships are many and unfathomable. That sounds like a quote but I think I just made it up.’

Liv is suddenly tired. Lucinda’s scent is musky and close. She longs to lie on her plump eiderdown back at the cottage, set the radio to a whisper and close her eyes to the world.

Owen is making his way back to them, greeting various people as he moves past tables. He seems to know everyone, exuding bonhomie.

‘Saturday night,’ Lucinda says. ‘Are you busy?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Come to my nephew’s birthday bash, then. It’s in the hotel, just around the corner.’

‘Well, I’m not sure . . .’

‘What aren’t you sure about?’ Owen is looking down at her, balancing his chair on two legs.

‘I asked Liv to come to Paulie’s birthday. Do come.’ Lucinda nods firmly at her.

‘Now Liv, you must loosen those foreign English corsets,’ Owen says, winking. ‘No ceremony here and no strangers. It’ll be great fun. The mustn’t-miss hooley of the season!’

‘All right, then.’ She smiles. ‘How can I refuse?’

‘Spoken like a true Irishwoman!’ Owen spins his chair and sits astride, facing the back.

She likes the description, likes to think that she can pass as one of the indigenous tribes. And why not? Half of her belongs here, half of her genes were shaped through centuries in the glen. Maybe, after all, there is a rare, unlooked-for chance of another life, another way of being.

Chapter 7

She reads a letter from Douglas as she rakes the fire, waiting for it to spring to life. She loves the sharp rattle of the poker, its wakeup call. She imagines Douglas in a bright, airy room, sitting at a desk with a small vase of flowers in front of a window, looking on to broad manicured lawns.

My dearest, my very own Livvie,

I arrived yesterday morning, hungover, having spent the previous evening on my last hurrah. I came in the door with a throbbing head but a hopeful heart. The place is a country house style hotel in beautiful gardens. Looks and smells like a cross between a convent and a spa. My personal counsellor while I’m here is Kia. She’s from Tasmania and she’s, like, you know, cheery and her voice goes UP at the end of every sentence. She asked me, if I could wake up tomorrow and not be an alcoholic, how would I feel and what would my world look like? I said that I’d feel as if a stone had been taken from around my neck, that the world would be in colours again instead of a misty grey and that my wife would love me again and I would be able to love her in the way she deserves. She nodded. I suppose she’s heard the like many times.

I’m in a group of eight and we’ve agreed the rules of our journey. I can’t tell you those, they’re confidential. I’ve had a sauna and a swim and I’ve drunk pints of water and fruit juice. I’m wobbly now and scratchy without the prospect of a drink for the evening so I’m going to go and have a walk and read. I’ve missed reading, it will be nice for the words to stay on the page and not blur. I’ve brought novels and poetry, that book you got me last Christmas. I wasn’t much company for the festive season, was I?

I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve given you. I don’t deserve you but I will, I will. Write and tell me what you’re doing. I picture you sitting cross-legged in the glen, eating in your slightly abstracted fashion, a mug of tea at your side, playing with your fringe as you bend over a book. What’s the news on your uncle Owen — did you find out the back story, is he a rapscallion of the worst order? I do hope so.

Kia agrees that it will be hard to let the colour flood in again; that misty grey is so pleasant. I put my most worrying question to one of the therapists here; what am I going to do with my life if I’m not drinking? He said; how about starting with loving your wife?

I do love you and I’m sober and I’m going to stay that way.

Douglas

She runs her hands through her hair, lifts and lowers her shoulders. The letter tires her, her spirits sliding. She recalls the feathers of dandelion fluttering around the car and wants to hope for the best but is frightened of hoping. Hope is tricky, slippery; it’s a door opening and then slamming in your face. The time at Hyde House will be tough for him, but easy compared to the day to day battle waiting on the outside. Well, she thinks, at least he’s safe, he’ll be having healthy meals and he can’t come to any harm for a couple of weeks. She blows on the fire, rakes it again and banks it with two big clods of turf.

* * *

Carmel is doing her homework, sitting cross-legged on the living-room floor, her tongue poking between her lips. Her pencil case has spilled open, rulers, rubbers and her twin pencil sharpener in the shape of the owl and the pussycat lying by her side. Her Russian hamster, Boris, races on his wheel inside the small plastic palace that houses him, a complicated three storey affair with transparent tubes, layers of sawdust, toys, feeding tray and drinking bottle. The cat ignores the hamster, knowing its home is impregnable and brushes insinuatingly around Carmel’s legs, trying to distract her. Finally it gives up as she shakes her pigtails and nestles beside her elbow.

Maeve has finished her regular evening phone call to her mother, when they tell each other about the minutiae of their days. ‘Indeed, indeed,’ Maeve echoes soothingly as her mother relays some real or imagined slight. Now she is reading a magazine, sitting in an armchair with her feet on a stool. She rubs one foot on top of the other when she relaxes, creating a faint scratching not unlike the hamster when it gnaws on cardboard. Her favourite Robbie Williams song is playing. She produced a particularly strange supper called Pork Carnival, another Martha recipe featuring pork and walnuts with pasta and an under taste Aidan couldn’t identify.

He has washed up, dried and put everything away. He then wiped down all the kitchen surfaces, bleached the dishcloth, emptied the waste and compost bins and descaled the kettle. Anything to keep moving. Now the muscles in his legs are twitching, the ache that his mother used to call growing pains. He paces up and down with the dustpan in his hand, staring out of the kitchen window. It is westerly facing, laced with late sun. Their corner plot has the biggest garden in the row but it still isn’t anything near spacious enough for him to grow everything he wants in order to abandon the wholesalers, achieve a totally organic stall; spuds take up a lot of room and aren’t much of an earner but he can’t give up on them, they’re too popular. The back of Liv’s cottage faces the same way and he imagines that she might be standing now, looking out on the last of the orange light. The pictures in his mind are vivid; she has the turquoise scarf around her neck that she’d been wearing earlier in the day, a glass of wine in her hand. She is squinting slightly, her eyes light sensitive. Her freckles are paler before dusk, waning with the day.

The evening is fine and clear and full of promise but the house holds him in a tight clench. He sees that a new item has appeared on the kitchen wall, a pale blue ceramic plaque bordered with forget-me-nots and a motif in curling script saying
A Round Tuit.
Stepping closer he sees the small print;
this is to remind me that one day I’ll get around to it!!
It must have arrived in the parcel from Philadelphia this morning. Another bit of twee American clutter. He drifts into the living-room and straightens a picture, fiddles needlessly with a curtain rail. Just being able to stretch is a relief.

‘Daddy, you’re in my light,’ Carmel says crossly.

‘Sorry.’

Maeve looks at him, smiles her sweet smile and mouths a kiss. She’s reading something about a TV personality. How has he ended up married to a woman who devours magazines about obscure celebrities?

‘You’re restless tonight, sweetheart,’ she says.

‘Am I? Must be the weather.’

‘It’s odd, isn’t it, to have this heat all of a sudden? We had to put two fans on in the office today, it was so close. I envied you being outside.’

‘You were adding to global warming, using all that electricity,’ Carmel admonishes her.

‘Was I? What could I have done instead?’

Carmel thinks. ‘Put something cool on your neck, a damp flannel or some ice maybe.’

‘But I can’t type and answer the phone with ice on my neck, sweetheart. I don’t think Mr Riordan would appreciate damp marks on his court reports.’

‘It’s what Mrs Driscoll tells us to do when we get too hot. What do you think, Daddy?’

‘Hmm? I think an ice pack’s a good idea. But you still have to run a freezer for that so you’re damned whichever way, I’d say.’

‘It’s your generation that’s costing us the earth, with that kind of attitude,’ Carmel moralizes.

Maeve gazes adoringly at her daughter, always impressed by her precocious statements about the world.

‘Well, Carmelita, when you give up your iPad and your computer, I’ll take your criticism more seriously,’ Aidan tells her. ‘In the meantime, I’ve still got some energy left, despite the heat. I think I’ll pop out for a while.’

‘Oh, where?’ Maeve tucks her finger behind a page.

‘There’s a few orders I need to check on. Business is picking up, you’ll be pleased to hear. No rest for the wicked!’ He forces the bravura into his voice. ‘I won’t be long.’ The first lie, he thinks; I believe it’s supposed to be the easiest.

‘Can I come?’ Carmel looks up.

He knows the brace is necessary and Maeve has been right to insist on it but he hates the savage look of it, the way it resembles some torture implement. He squats down and straightens a constricting bow on a pigtail. He loves to free her hair at night and brush it so that static tingles. They pretend that she is being electrified, that they’ll be able to power the house off her. She puts a hand up automatically, as she always does, to pull his earlobe.

‘No, Carmelita, you finish your homework and talk to Boris. I’ll be quicker on my own.’

‘Will you be back to read me a story?’

‘I will. What are we having?’

‘I’ve started
Long Ears.
I’m on chapter three.’

He seizes his keys and leaves the house before he can change his mind. He revs the van and drives, heading for the glen. He stops a mile or so away and gets out. He hesitates, a hand on the door. All is silent, as if in that split second, the world is hesitating with him, breath held for his decision. There are risks you have to take to prove you’re alive. He starts to run, slowly at first, gathering speed until he has settled into a steady pounding. The thud of his feet matches the beat of his heart and the chant in his head: Liv, Liv, Liv. He feels an unaccustomed flow of energy as his muscles warm. The light is gentle now, the sky scuffed with palest pink shreds of cloud. The perfumes of the evening wash over him, soft and insistent. Closing his eyes momentarily, he raises his arms and believes that with the next step he might launch off and fly. He runs his hand over a wild honeysuckle as he passes, releasing its fragrance and tears a branch off. He swerves into the glen and breathes deep on the steep slope to the front door.

Through the darkening window he can see her dancing, arms held out, moving in the lamplight. The shadows she creates on the walls follow her like obedient servants. She is clothed in a loose, dark kaftan and her skin is pale against the fabric. The lush strains of an orchestra drift on the air. He stands, watching as she circles, dips, and sways from side to side. A spark hisses from the fire and she rubs it with her foot, making the motion part of the dance. He rests his forehead against the windowpane, swallows. The paint of the frame is scored, rough against his skin and beaded with evening dew. He rolls his head from side to side with her glides, knowing that he is about to leap into the void, glad of the solidity of the wood and the chipped, uneven gloss.

He raises a hand and taps loudly. Liv looks up and stops, hands dropping, then clasping before her. Now she resembles a priestess, the celebrator of some ancient rite. She moves slowly to the window and puts a hand up to his, spreading her fingers, matching the shape of his outstretched palm. For a long moment they stay, unmoving. Then she opens the door and looks at him.

‘I’m here, Liv. It took me a long time, but I’m here.’

She reaches out for him. All he hears is ‘yes.’

* * *

They lie before the fire on an eiderdown, turned towards each other, the branch of honeysuckle tucked between them. He strokes her arm from shoulder to wrist and back again, loving the wiriness of her, the angular line of her jaw. Her kaftan is bunched under her head. The fabric is soft, springy, a mixture of dark and lighter greens. He is guilt free, soaring, and intoxicated by the ferny scent of her skin and the downy texture of her freckles.

He rubs the kaftan, admires its weft. ‘This is lovely; you looked like a white witch through the window.’

‘Douglas bought it for me in San Sebastian. I always think it looks a bit ecclesiastical.’

‘Douglas is your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘Yes, an exhausted, faded kind of love. Do you love Maeve?’

‘Yes, an apprehensive, guilty kind of love.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes. I must have all down the years but didn’t know until I saw you again, walking away from the shop at Redden’s Cross. It was as if I’d been in a Rip Van Winkle slumber.’

‘When was that, when you saw me?’

‘The day you arrived.’

‘This is hard to believe. My stomach is doing somersaults. It’s a small world here, Eileen O’Donovan being your mother-in-law.’ She is conscious of her insides squeaking and groaning, like an orchestra tuning up.

He moves an ear to her midriff. ‘I can hear it, having its own conversation. My right eyelid twitches these days when I’m nervous. It’s been on overdrive the last weeks.’

She peers. ‘Oh it is, the skin is crinkling! It used to be your right eyebrow, you’d worry it with your fingertip when you were anxious until there was a bald patch at the edge. Before your dissertation had to be in I thought you’d wear it away completely.’

He sighs, relaxed. ‘I’ve no nerves now. I’m where I want to be.’

They are talking quickly, tripping over words, replying hastily. She wonders is it because they have so much to say after so long or because they both know his time is limited, measured? She pushes the thought away. The reality of his being here is almost too much to absorb. She strokes his hair back. It’s still full bodied and strong.

‘When did you get rid of your ’tache?’

‘Oh, years ago, in Cartagena.’

‘You travelled in faraway places for a good while, then?’

‘For several years, then I got a job in Manchester. I met a guy in Bucharest who was starting up a computer company. He offered me work back in England. I found that I had an unexpected aptitude for computer language. You finished your degree?’