Read The Years That Followed Online
Authors: Catherine Dunne
The Years That Followed (34 page)
EPILOGUE
calista
Extremadura, 2016
Calista is dreaming. All around her, poppies and anemones bloom. Their color is startling against the dark soil, a scarlet shriek against the blankness of the midday sun.
“Imogen,” she calls. She loves the quiet intensity that her daughter brings to all the games she plays. Right now, the girl has built sand castles, and she's pushed tiny Cypriot flags into their crenellations. An entire fortified city lies at her feet. Calista watches as she sails her fleet away, her small hands making the toy boats rise and fall, rise and fall on the sea's invisible swell.
“Imogen?” she calls again.
But Imogen does not turn around. She turns her face away, her gaze directed towards the east.
Calista waits. All at once, the sky darkens. There will be no fair winds for Troy today, she thinks, not any longer. The ground begins to shift now, to feel less firm beneath her feet. At first the undulations are slight: those uneasy mutterings of water. Calista feels something begin to grow inside her again, just as before: the feathered restlessness of a captive bird.
She rests one hand on the place where her heart used to be, before Imogen used it up. She looks at the hand in surprise; she no longer recognizes it. The wrinkled flesh, the knotty blue veins, sluggish rivers and their tributaries. Maroulla's hands. The heavy rings seem to slide over the knuckles, seeking escape.
“Imogen?” she calls.
Now the girl turns around. At last. Calista begins to smile. She reaches out and takes one of her hands. “There you are,” she says. “I knew you'd come to me.”
The flesh is warm in hers. For a moment, Calista is confused. Noâwarmth is not right; Imogen is no longer warm. She snatches back her hand and moves abruptly away. She presses herself against the garden wall, poppies and anemones crushed and bleeding underneath her feet.
*Â *Â *
“Calista,” she hears. “It's me, Rosa. Are you all right?”
Rosa?
The garden disappears, and now Rosa and two uncertain toddlers stand in the shadowy room where Calista sits. She waits as something shuttles back and forth across the loom of her memory. She tries to grasp it, to separate it from the warp and weft of all those other memories that have lately begun to weave the tight tapestry of her life. Ever since her stroke, too many things keep slipping away from her.
Calista looks from one child to the other. The woman Rosa is looking at her kindly. She reaches out one tentative hand towards Calista's shoulder, but she does not touch her. Instead, she speaks. Her voice is gentle and familiar.
“Calista? Can I get you something?”
Rosa.
Rosé with Rosa
. Of course.
Calista struggles to sit up straighter, surprised that she is no longer standing with her back to the garden wall. “Rosa,” she says. “You're welcome. Forgive me, I . . .”
But Rosa waves away her apology.
And then Calista remembers. Memory is an arrow, a sharp, steel broadhead. It brings with it the forgotten knowledge that the little girl is Mercedes; the little boy is Francisco-José. Rosa, Rosa and her grandchildren.
Three pairs of eyes regard Calista now, their expressions grave. Relief floods her. She has managed that much at leastâto retrieve their names, who they are, who their grandmother is.
Calista does not want these children here, but she cannot say that to Rosa. Rosa would not understand, and Calista does not wish her to.
Instead, she extends one arm, a gracious movement that reminds her instantly of MarÃa-Luisa. Her mother's face is still vivid; she thinks about her and Timothy every day. Dead now, of course, along with all the others whom Calista has loved.
She must remember her manners. “Please,” Calista says now, “do sit down. Let us have some tea.”
She sees the way Rosa looks at her. For a moment, Calista has the sense that something has once again begun to escape, just when she thought she had it firmly by the hand.
What is it? Is there no tea? She feels her lower lip begin to tremble. How can she have forgotten to buy tea?
Rosa leans down and lifts up the walking stick that lies on the floor beside Calista's chair. “Don't worry,” she says. “I will look after the tea. Perhaps we will take it on the terrace?”
Calista nods. That's a good idea. The children watch her silently. Before she attempts to stand up, she says to Rosa: “Did you know that even as the old trees are being felled, the birds are building their nests?”
Rosa reaches for Calista's hand and tucks it into the crook of her right arm.
“Yes,” she says. “But it's summer now, and the fledglings have all gone. Before we know it, it will be time for the birds to fly south for the winter.”
Calista walks alongside Rosa as smartly as she can, her walking stick tapping its secret message across the terracotta tiles.
The birds are indeed gone, Calista thinks. And all my nests are empty.
acknowledgments
This book has been in my head for a long time.
It's taken even longer to make its way, finally, onto the page, and certain people have been invaluable in that process. I want to say a sincere thank you to all of them.
To my editor, Trisha Jackson, and the team at Macmillan, particularly Dave Adamson, Mary Chamberlain, Laura Collins, Natasha Harding, Ami Smithson, and Eloise Wood.
Writing the novel was a lovely opportunity to visit Cyprus, where I met Alexia Christodoulou and enjoyed both her company and her encyclopedic knowledge of her native island.
Extremadura was a great adventure, shared by Fergus Murray and Davy and Joan Abernethy. Particular thanks to Davy for all the heroic driving involved, and to Joan and Fergus for their valiant though fruitless efforts to spot the black pigs. . . .
Thanks to Luz-Mar González-ArÃas for introducing me to Carolina Amador, in whose company I discovered the many delights of the city of Cáceres and the wild beauty of the entire region. Long may Extremadura remain “undiscovered.”
Novels only become living things when they have readers. In this regard, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Helen Pat Hansen and Carmen Wood, who read many early drafts of this book and whose observations were always informed and intelligent. Thank you both.
To my friends-in-writing, Celia de Fréine and Lia Mills: a huge thank-you for fun, feedback, and encouragement.
And finally, but by no means least, to my tireless agents, Shirley Stewart of the Shirley Stewart Literary Agency, Nicola Barr of Greene and Heaton in London, and Grainne Fox of Fletcher and Company in New York. Couldn't have done it without you.
Touchstone Reading Group Guide
The Years That Followed
It is 1966. Calista is seventeen, beautiful and headstrong. She meets the handsome, much older Alexandros, and in an instant, her whole life changes. Alexandros is exotic, magneticâand rich. He sweeps Calista off her feet. She leaves her safe, affluent Dublin home for a new life in Cyprus alongside her new husband and his family, who treat her with some suspicion.
Meanwhile, Pilar is in Madrid. Desperate to leave the grinding poverty of her life in rural Extremadura, she moves to the capital. There, she meets a man who offers her excitement and opportunity. Petros charms Pilar and she begins to imagine a future for both of them, together, although she knows it's impossible.
Unknown to both women, tragic events are unfolding that will inextricably link their lives in a way that neither could have imagined. These events will change them and their families forever.
Inspired by Greek myth,
The Years That Followed
is a compelling tale of two women, thousands of miles apart, whose lives are thrown into turmoil by the power of loveâand the desire for revenge.
For Discussion
1. Calista and Pilar come from very different backgrounds. The former has grown up with all the comforts of affluence; the latter with all the particular challenges of poverty. In what ways might Calista's wealth have influenced the choices she makes as a young woman? And how has poverty helped to shape Pilar's view of the world?
2. The novel takes the ancient story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as its inspiration. Clytemnestra lived in an age when women's voices were rarely heard in the public sphere. Their individual and collective stories were regarded as unimportant. Her modern counterpart, Calista, imposes a similar kind of silence on herself, regarding the difficulties she has in her relationship with Alexandros, particularly when he turns violent. How is this tradition of female silence dealt with in the novel? Calista begins to find her voice eventually, through her own independent work. How significant is the notion of work and economic independence for both Calista and Pilar?
3. Calista hears, at a distance, about the new movement in California for women's liberation in the 1970s. In what ways is her life different from the life of a twenty-something young woman in 2016?
4. Pilar, on the other hand, knows nothing about the movement for women's liberation. In the novel, she strikes out for her own freedom in many different ways. How does she achieve her goals, and what makes her life so different from Calista's?
5. Maroulla and Petros are both products of their upper-class, privileged existence. In what ways do their behavior help to perpetuate the values of their social class?
6. Alexandros is a violent man and Calista suffers extreme domestic abuse at his hands. What do you understand about the dynamic of domestic violence, as illustrated by their relationship within the novel? Why does Calista feel that she is somehow to blame? What is it that often traps women in such relationships, making them stay much longer than they should?
7. Motherhood is a central theme in the novel: the joy of having children and the grief of losing them. How powerful a motivating force is motherhood in Calista's search for revenge? And what is your view of the other mothers in the novelâspecifically MarÃa-Luisa and Maroulla?
8. The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius said that if one is bent on seeking revenge, then one “must dig two graves.” How do you view this in relation to what becomes of Calista by the end of the novel?
9. Pilar performs the function of the Greek Chorus in this novel. In what ways does the trajectory of her life shed light on the choices made by Calista? In what ways might her life be seen as a commentary on the fate of Calista?
10. Childhood is a formative time, psychologically and emotionally. How would you describe the childhood influences on the characters in the novel, and in what ways are these influences visible in the adults they later become? And what, in your view, will be the fate of Omiros as he steps across the threshold into adulthood?
Photograph © Noel Hillis
CATHERINE DUNNE
is the author of nine novels, including
The Things We Know Now
, which won the seven-hundredth anniversary Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and was short-listed for the Eason Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.
She has also published one work of nonfiction: a social history of Irish immigrants in London called
An Unconsidered People
.
Catherine's novels have been short-listed for, among others, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Italian Booksell- ers' Prize. Her work has been translated into several languages.
She was recently long-listed for the first Laureate for Irish Fiction award.
She lives in Dublin.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Catherine-Dunne
Also by Catherine Dunne
In the Beginning
A Name for Himself
The Walled Garden
Another Kind of Life
Something Like Love
At a Time Like This
Set in Stone
Missing Julia
The Things We Know Now
An Unconsidered People
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Catherine Dunne
Originally published in Great Britain in 2016 by Pan Macmillan
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First Touchstone hardcover edition October 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-3566-8
ISBN 978-1-5011-3567-5 (ebook)