OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found (23 page)

CHAPTER 1 OF LOST CHILD

Hearts can be broken quickly or slowly, over time. I’ve had friends whose hearts have been gradually splintered, eroded so that the final break is a hushed anguish. Nathan’s heart and mine were broken sharply, at one blow and we turned on each other, separated in our grief.

I sit on the rocks, gazing at the sea, thinking that I should go back and prepare breakfast. I don’t move. I am held by the pale sun and the solitude. The September sea is restless today, grey-green, the waves murmuring. It’s a day for pacing. Spray blows into my face, the salt scratching at my skin. The sky is vast and bleached, the sun high but faint. I had never been to Norfolk before Nathan brought me. When I exclaimed at the expanse of sky he said that he only fully understood what a prison London was when he came here.

That was the day he lay stretched on the sand, arms above his head, his body a long line and said: ‘This is it, I have you and Matt and I want for nothing else.’

This has been nothing like last summer, the season that I will always think of as the summer of fire, when our lives were consumed. There has been little sun and the breeze blowing from the sea is contrary, changing direction, whipping up the sand. Some people despair of it, shaking their heads. I am glad of it, glad of the cooler temperatures and the evening chill and because it keeps the tourists away. It is easier to think when the sky is not a furnace.

I finger the beads in my jeans pocket. My grandfather gave me the mother of pearl rosary when I left Dublin to make a life with Nathan. He must have known that I was a feeble Catholic by then but I’ve been glad of its comfort. It was the rosary that I turned to afterwards in the autumn, solacing myself and praying for Nathan, for all of us as I walked alone through olive groves, fingering the smooth beads. At night I lay with the rosary laced between my fingers. When I woke suddenly before dawn, jolted by a nightmare, reaching for Nathan and finding emptiness, I pressed the cross hard into my palm.

‘Are you sure he’s the one for you, pet?’
my grandfather asked the day I told him I was getting married. ‘Absolutely, he’s the one. We’re meant to be
,’
I replied, love making me so certain. Then, it seemed to me that Nathan and I were in a magic circle, untouchable. Our ordinary lives had been transformed by something like grace, that intangible blessing bestowed by faith. I forgot that ordinary lives can also be transformed by naivety, misfortune, and accident, that once you are in a state of grace, you can fall from it.

I didn’t care where I went last autumn. I ended up on a Greek island because it was the first flight available on that evening after I pleaded with Nathan and he replied in a remote, high voice: ‘nothing you say can make any
difference to me.’ I felt like a wanderer in my own life. I wrote to Nathan care of Connie. On the veranda of a small guesthouse I used a leaking biro on thin blue airmail paper:

I can’t say anything to help, I know that. It’s terrible to love you and yet not be able to help you. I can hardly help myself. I have always believed that love can heal and yet now I find that all my long-held beliefs are ashes. You loved my optimism, but I think that it had never truly been put to the test; I was just lucky enough never to have walked on the shadowed side of the street. Affection and love aren’t enough and especially if they’re not yours to give. They weren’t enough for Elva; how can temporary love ever be enough? I see that now. We were all perhaps foolish, unthinking, but I was the catalyst and that weighs heavy on me.

I love you so much. You are all I hoped for, all I wanted, all I want.

I walked along the cicada-thronged road to post my letter. I was wearing the sarong that Connie had made. It was creased and smelled faintly of marijuana but I hadn’t washed it because the soft cloth held mine and Nathan’s breath and sweat. I fingered the envelope, wondering that a small, fragile square of paper could hold such feverish, anguished words; there should at least be singe marks at the edges.

There is a boat beached down on the rim of the sea. Matt played in it last summer, pretending to be a pirate. I bought him an eye-patch from a joke shop and a garish felt parrot for his shoulder. Nathan would pick out the tune of Captain Pugwash
on a cheap harmonica from the pound shop in Hunstanton. I lay back on the shale, watching them, digging my toes into the heap of sand that Jess and Elva had left when they shaped a huge fort. The boat is holed and uncared for, the wood rotting, another year’s tide and salt damage.

I walk down to the shore, my sandals puffing the sand. Matt scoured this beach for shells to give his mother, filling his bucket, taking them down to the water. He washed them all meticulously, a labour of love, the hem of his smart French shorts dipping in the rock pools. I climb into the boat and sit on the seat, which just holds under my weight. There is the sharp smell of salt water, the smell of love making.

I rock the boat to soothe myself. There are small items of debris drifting in on the tide. I scoop up a shred of seaweed and a crab shell and cradle them in my cupped palms.

I think of Nathan sleeping, his mouth compressed, his hand gripping the pillow. I will leave him for a while longer, safe in the medicated slumber his doctor dispenses in foil packs.

Flotsam and jetsam:
that was how Gary referred to Elva. It applied to us all afterwards.

I am a salvager now. That is my job in this chiller summer. I am a salvager of wrecked lives and I must move carefully, cautiously, reclaiming what I can.

* * *

We met at a party at my cousin Cormac’s house in Dublin. I nearly hadn’t gone, thinking of the lesson plans and marking I had to do but I’d roused myself; it was Saturday, I was entitled to a break. There was a brisk wind blowing in from the sea at Dalkey and I bent my head, feeling it whip my hair. Autumn was my season; I always had a surge of energy when the leaves started to turn.

The party was a crowded, smoky affair, full of Cormac’s business friends and people he’d been at Trinity with. Cormac’s circle were generally hearty types, men who liked practical jokes and women who played sports. He and they were riding high on the booming economy; they talked of shares and global markets. Someone had bought a racehorse and Cormac was doing a deal on being a partner in a leisure centre. I blinked through cigarette fug as he introduced me to a man with thick chestnut hair, the colour of polished conkers.

‘This is May; this is Nathan, one of my compadres. He studied much harder than me at Trinity; he can interpret in six languages.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Italian and Mandarin,’ Nathan said.

‘And he has a smattering of the Gaelic, of course,’ Cormac added.

‘Oh yes, that too,’ Nathan smiled. He looked exhausted, his creased blue eyes heavy. He was one of those tall men who automatically stoop when speaking. I noticed his mouth, his shapely, symmetrical lips. I’ve always believed that features reflect character and I surmised that he might be contained, centred. I also surmised that he might be one of the many compadres that Cormac slept with.

‘I warn you,’ Cormac told Nathan, waving to a newcomer, ‘May’s my favourite cousin, so look after her. She’s the conscience of the family, the only one of us doing anything really worthwhile.’

‘And what would that be?’ Nathan asked.

‘I suppose he means that I teach children with learning problems. I don’t think it’s more worthwhile than other jobs.’ I looked away, concerned that he might find me self-important. People were frequently over impressed when they discovered that I taught, even if it was children who my grandmother insisted on calling ‘sub-normal’.

We talked and he yawned, apologizing; he’d just come back from conferences in Riga and Tokyo, stopping off in Dublin for Cormac’s birthday. He travelled a lot, he explained, the company he worked for in London provided a service for businesses all over the globe.

‘I’ve not slept properly for over a week,’ he groaned, his voice scratchy. ‘Sometimes I feel as if I leave bits of myself all around the world, you know, mislay pieces — like luggage that gets lost on airport conveyor belts.’

‘Or like a trail in the sky, part of the white vapour we see when we look up.’ I liked that idea, that some of a traveller’s atoms would disperse amongst the clouds as he flew back and forth over continents, ploughing the heavens.

He smiled. ‘Something like that. Then there’s the waking up in the morning and not being able to remember where I am.’

‘We all do that,’ I said, ‘but usually after a skinful.’

He made a shape with his hand around my head. ‘Your hair looks as if it’s been spun.’

‘It was the wind,’ I said, ‘that easterly wind off the sea. My mother would say I look like the wreck of the Hesperus.’

He was tapping with his fingers on the side of his glass. I listened for a moment.

‘“Paper Moon”,’ I said.

He nodded. He tapped again.

‘“Eleanor Rigby”. You made it harder.’

‘Of course, I’d hardly make it simpler.’ He looked into his glass, then at me. ‘Are you married?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Ever been married?’

‘No. You?’

‘Yes, and divorced. I’ve a three-year-old son who lives with me in London.’

‘Oh; I thought you might be gay, as you know Cormac.’

‘Well I could be, even so, I suppose, but I’m not. So that sorts out that agenda. Unless you are?’

‘No.’

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his long fingers and I startled myself by imagining his touch on my skin. The window behind me was open, letting in the tangy October evening. A chill snaked along the back of my neck but I was glad of it because the house was too warm, thick with the heat of bodies and shouted conversation. There were a few fallen, yellowing leaves stuck to the glass, I could see them from the corner of my eye. I could smell a bonfire, even though I knew that there wasn’t one lit and I realized that my senses were playing tricks, summoning memories of other seasons. I tilted my head, believing that the room was holding its breath. There was an oval mirror on the wall opposite and when I glanced in it and saw our reflected image, our other selves, it was as if I had lived this moment before.

‘I play the saxophone,’ he was saying. ‘I’m playing next weekend in London. Will you come over and listen?’

‘I will, yes.’ I liked the way he came to the point, his directness.

He nodded. ‘That’s good, good.’ He drained his drink, throwing his head back. ‘I’m done in,’ he said, ‘you’re the only thing keeping me on my feet.’

I looked at him, the fading light falling on his face and the wine glass and cocktail olive in my hands seemed things of beauty.

* * *

I said that I would marry Nathan the night I heard him play for the first time, in a smoky basement off Frith Street. There was a stillness about him that invaded my thoughts; in repose, he could look almost severe. When he did his solos he closed his eyes, leaning into his instrument, his shoulders concentrated, as if this was when his energy was released. The sight of him moved me, my breathing tightened. I knew in that moment that I loved him and I thought that if I never felt this again, it would last me until my sight failed and my bones grew brittle. He played
April in Paris, Take Five, Fly Me To The Moon
and
She Moved through the Fair.
I listened to the rich tone, the notes that caught like gasps, seeming to echo my own yearning. Watching him, I knew that he had gone into a world of his own, somewhere where he was unreachable and I both envied and admired his withdrawal. I talked to people, trying to hear and be heard above the music and conversation. There were a couple who were teachers like myself and I discussed the differences between the Irish and English education systems; I didn’t say so, but it seemed to me that the Irish valued education more. Looking up from refreshing my wine, I saw that Nathan had returned from wherever he had been and was watching me. I raised my glass to him, aware of his focus.

It was a mild night and we walked back from the tube through the dark streets to his flat, saying little, our steps rhyming. He carried his saxophone, swinging the black case. I was conscious of a shift in the world, as if a veil had been pulled back, as if I had never been quite conscious of my own feet on the ground before. He took my hand and tucked it in his pocket. It seemed to me then that love was simple and fluid, like the stream that flowed by my grandfather’s house.

His garden flat was untidy, strewn with toys and plates with toast crusts on. It smelled of herbs and a fruit I couldn’t pinpoint. Later, I discovered that it was pomegranate, which his son Matt devoured, spooning the tiny seeds as he roamed the rooms. I banged my ankle on a bicycle in the hallway and he bent to look at it, putting one hand firmly on the bone. His touch was sure, almost impersonal.

‘No damage done,’ he said, looking up at me with his weary jet lag eyes.

In his bedroom he kissed my neck. ‘You look like the Spanish lady, with your long dress and your black hair and your combs,’ he told me. ‘As in the song. You know the song?’

‘I do, my grandmother used to sing it:

As I went down to Dublin city