OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found (7 page)

‘She got this in the flea market in Cork. I bought a boomerang the same day but I lost it soon afterwards in the fields beyond the house; it failed to come back. We went for tea and cake afterwards. I ate my first walnut whip, my first walnut too. The cream on my tongue was like velvet but I didn’t care that much for the walnut, it was fusty tasting. It was my twelfth birthday, my first trip to the city. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’

‘She must have been quite a bit older than you?’

‘Seventeen years. I was an afterthought, my poor mother thought I was the menopause. When she found out she was pregnant she went to see the priest and he told her I was an extra blessing from God.’ He shakes his head, grimacing. ‘I’m not sure any of the family would have agreed with him. Bridget was more like my mother than my sister. This place is yours now.’ He takes out a tobacco pouch and extracts a thin home-made roll-up. ‘Mind if I light up?’

‘No, go ahead. Nanna left me the cottage. It was an unexpected surprise. You don’t mind, do you?’ It suddenly occurs to her that this great-uncle might have come to raise an objection.

He shakes his head, trimming the end of the cigarette of its ginger tobacco shreds before lighting it. ‘God, no.’ He draws in deeply. ‘Not much of an inheritance though; I’d say it would take a fair bit of work to make it sound. Are you going to keep it?’

‘I honestly don’t know yet. I’m still getting used to the idea of it being mine. I’m going to spend a bit of time here, get the feel of the place. It’s so peaceful.’

‘You think so?’ He stands with a hand on the mantelshelf, looking into the fire, pushing a crackling log further in with the heel of his boot.

‘Yes, don’t you?’

‘Well, now. I’d guess that peace is what a person brings to a place as much as anything. Make sure this fire’s damped down before you go out and when you go to bed at night, the draught works well here. D’you know about raking the ashes?’

‘No, what’s that?’

‘If you want the fire to stay in, not have to light it again the next morning, heap a big pile of ash over some hot turf. It’ll stay in and next morning you can put the bellows in under the ashes and apply gently; abracadabra, you’ll have a flame before long.’

She listens carefully and to the laughter that touches his voice. It stirs a memory of blue smoke rings drifting through the window. ‘I remember you now,’ she says. ‘You told me that the blue in blue cheese was made by cheese worms and that when the police put you in custody, it meant you had to stand in a bowl of custard.’

He throws his head back and laughs. ‘What a terrible fellow I was, spinning stories like that to a child.’

‘We were sitting at that table, having boiled eggs. Nanna told you off and warned me I was to take no notice of you. Then she threw the window open and ordered you to lean out with your cigarette.’

‘She was right to tell you to ignore me.’

‘I didn’t eat blue cheese for years because of those worms.’

‘I hope you forgive me now for depriving you.’

‘I’ll think about it. It was very traumatising, you know.’

‘Oh, I can imagine. Now, d’you want a hand emptying this?’ He nudges the tub with his boot.

‘Would you mind? I was wondering how to deal with it. I’d planned to drag it outside.’

‘No need for that. It’s the least I can do after terrorising you in your early life. Open the door for me.’

He picks the tub up by the handles, hefts it outside as she pushes the door back and throws the water in a wide arc over the bushes, then puts the tub upside down on the gravel. ‘There, now.’ He gestures at the heavy sky. ‘We had a grand July this year, but August was a washout. They’re threatening a sudden blast of summer now, so you might still get the benefit. The farmers could do with it, certainly.’

‘I thought I might swim tomorrow,’ she says.

He gives her a look. ‘Jaysus,’ he says, ‘you English are half daft. That sea would chill your bones — it’s the Atlantic, remember. Next parish America.’

She laughs. ‘I’ll give it a go, even so. I used to swim down on the strand when I was little.’

She can recall exactly the gritty, stinging sand particles in the breeze that always blew inshore, the jellyfish that floated in every July and made her run from the sea, frightened that their pale bodies might touch her, the shock of the cold green water against her goose-pimpled legs.

‘Well, it’s your funeral, as the magpie said to the worm as he ate him for breakfast. I’d best be on my way, I’ve a dog who needs his evening walk.’ His cigarette has stuck to his bottom lip and he peels it off. ‘If you want to visit, you’re welcome. I’m just at the westerly edge of Castlegray, the house called Lissan. I could make one of my famous fry-ups.’

‘Thanks, I will,’ she says. ‘Oh, before you go, would you take a photo of me, outside? I just wanted to mark this . . . this well, I suppose it’s a kind of homecoming, isn’t it?’

She fetches her phone and he snaps her quickly by a pot of scarlet geraniums. She likes the way he is business-like, no fuss.

‘There,’ he says, handing the phone back. ‘It makes a welcome change from all the sombre photographs of emigrants back down the years; tears and lamentations on the quayside. A great sign of the times, the old country opening up again. Now, I must love you and leave you.’

‘Your hat,’ she says, darting in for it.

He flicks the brim and fits it on his head. ‘I felt for you,’ he says, ‘scratching at your skin. I used to get the hives too, when I was a child, big hot weals that would blister. At night they’d have me demented. I’d be poking them with a stick. My mother would give me sulphur tablets to cool and purify the blood. I still get itchy skin in spring and at the start of winter, I’m a seasonal creature.’

‘Me too,’ she says, ‘little runs of itchiness, there one minute, gone the next.’

‘We must have fiery blood, you and me.’ He glances at her, smiling.

‘Hives are an allergic reaction. You’d be given antihistamines now,’ she tells him.

He takes a final suck of his cigarette and throws the stub into a bank of ferns. ‘That’s too clinical an explanation, too neat by a mile. I prefer the idea of hot blood. See you then, maybe.’

‘Thanks for the help with the tub and the tip about the ashes,’ she calls as he makes his way down the path.

He raises his hat and waggles it without looking back. On the road at the foot of the glen is a bright blue car. Inside, she can just make out a dog, its nose poking through the open window. It leaps up as it sees him approach, paws pressed to the glass. She watches until he’s vanished from sight, remembering how one autumn, hives had come up on the soles of her feet and she’d walked barefoot on corn stalks after the harvest to find some relief. The sharp blades of the stubble had pierced the blisters and freed bright red ribbons of blood. Nanna had made her soak her feet in cold water in which she dissolved potassium permanganate crystals; her skin was stained a pale purple, the colour of ripe plums, for weeks afterwards.

She turns back into the cottage. Fiery blood; what does she know of Owen? Something had happened in the family; that was all she could recall. She remembers that summer when her mother had lost the baby who would have been her brother or sister and she was left with her grandmother; Nanna sitting by the fire, legs akimbo, a lamp by her side, reading a letter, whispering that her tyke of a brother had the heart across her and would live to rue the day. ‘He’ll find he’s treading the sorrowful road after what he’s done.’ She had wanted to see the letter, curious to know who had written it and why Owen would find the road sorrowful but her grandmother had thrown it into the hissing fire and poked it sharply down until it was consumed to grey ash.

In the evening, after she had gone to bed, Liv heard the door closing and watched from the window as her grandmother made her way down to the well in the dusk, her shawl gathered around her shoulders. Bats swung above her head in a criss-cross dance, vague shapes in the half-light and Liv felt anxious at being alone. She got up and quietly followed her grandmother, sensing the tension in her back. Peering from behind the bushes, she had seen Nanna circling the well, round and round in a clockwise direction, her rosary playing through her fingers, whispering her prayers. Suddenly, she missed her parents and darted back to the cottage, running up the stairs and pulling the bedclothes up around her head.

Once, when she had been constructing a family tree for a school project, she’d asked her father to go through her grandmother’s side. He had counted off the names: Bridget, Dennis, Fergal, and Oona. She had written them in, then asked what about Owen, wasn’t he the youngest? Her father had pulled at his moustache, tested a wobbly chair, saying it needed mending. She had looked at him, puzzled, pen poised. She had asked again; wasn’t Owen the baby? Her father had nodded, saying he’d better see to that chair before someone took a tumble from it. So she had written in the name, Owen, thinking again of the sorrowful road, imagining it as a thorny country path like the boreen that ran from Nanna’s to the Moran’s farm. The boreen was bumpy, bordered with thistles, nettles and tall fat dandelions. When she walked it with her father he slashed the weeds and branches aside with a blackthorn stick, saying sternly, ‘down, down, false pride, discourses die,’ which was a line from a hymn they sometimes sang on Sundays. She pictured Owen becoming tangled in the brambles as night was falling, without a stick to beat them back, wishing that he hadn’t done the thing that made his road sorrowful.

She decides to go to Crowley’s for supper. She lights a lamp and leaves it in the window to guide her back. Remembering Owen’s advice, she closes the damper on the fire. Taking a torch, she sets off down the glen. The sky is almost dark, retaining just a faint flush of high, pink clouds and the air is sweet. A line of cows is lumbering along the road, calling mournfully, a young boy urging them, brandishing a stick, wobbling in oversized wellingtons. She waves to him and turns to Redden’s Cross.

* * *

Aidan is meant to be doing his monthly accounts. He is in the study, the smallest, north-facing bedroom. The spreadsheet is open on the screen, the computer humming comfortingly. A spattering rain has started, weeping down the window. He shivers; unless the promised Indian summer arrives, they’ll have to turn the heating on soon. The radiator in this room makes a grumbling sound like a low level complaint. He’s bled it but can never find a remedy. It resists him, like the rest of the house. Despite his best efforts, the back door always sticks, the kitchen lino curls up at one edge and the dining table maintains its wobble. He is convinced that the house is built on a slant.

He totals a column. Nearly a year into his new business, he is making a modest income. The truth is, accounts, balance sheets and tax returns don’t interest him much. It’s the bustle and activity of the market that makes his days, the frenetic early morning pace of the traders as they dart around in the dewy street, their shouts and calls, curses and laughter, the flavour of scalding, strong tea and a smoky frankfurter from the mobile cafe when the lorries have been unloaded, the cacophony of sounds from the country and western, traditional Irish and rock music sellers. Often as he grasps his mug with fingerless mittens and shivers with pleasure at the heat and the tart aftertaste of tannin, he thinks; just over a year ago I was staring at a screen in an air-conditioned, sterile office and drinking a coffee I didn’t even register the taste of, eating muffins I wasn’t hungry for. Now I have this keen, vitalising air that hasn’t been breathed by scores of other people and my stomach is desperate to be filled. He loves the way all the market people gradually unpeel, shaking themselves, slapping their arms, shedding layers of clothes as the dawn chill evaporates and the day comes into its own.

But above all, there is the pleasure of setting out the stall. He relishes the shapes and colours of the vegetables and fruit he sells, the cold earthy smell of the carrots, parsnips and celeriac, the slight scent of drains from cauliflower and broccoli, the hot glow of tomatoes and aubergines, the speckled skin of cidery apples. The pale ridges of celery remind him of corduroy. He likes the feel of the produce in his hands, the weight and contours, the ribbed skin of radishes and the rough whiskers of spring onions. The white turnips with the purple blush are coming in now, little cousins of the hefty orange swedes that smell acidic as you cook them, but are sweet on the tongue. You have to be careful with the little, soft-coated tangerines that will be arriving in the coming months, they bruise easily, their skin as tender as Carmel’s. On the stall, they nestle cosily in their tissue wraps, orange and cream winter blossoms. He likes to polish peppers until they gleam and arrange his produce seductively; last October, his range of colourful pumpkins from pale cream through hazelnut, burned terracotta and biscuit brown had brought admiring glances. He had constructed a witch’s profile from pumpkin and turnip slices, with a hooked courgette for a nose. There had been a photo in the local paper for Halloween but it hadn’t shifted much extra produce. He isn’t sure the Irish are ready for pumpkin pie.