The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay Read online

  ‘So Patrick took over from Walter?’

  ‘He did, and a great job he’s made of it, so I hear tell. Anyways, his sisters finished their schooling in Dublin and went for a year in Switzerland forby, and one of them’s married in England to some big man in the government there. In the Parliament, I think, but I don’t know the right way of it. He’s very high up, for shure. And the other sister married a man who trained horses. They run the hotel and shop and have horses as well. They’re back and forth to Dublin and you’d see them in the papers regular with winners. It must be in the whole family.’

  She poured two cups of tea and handed me one.

  ‘Where’s Paddy, Mary? If he’s up on the far field he’ll be soaked by now.’

  ‘Ah, never fear. He’s gone to Doolin for the pension and I’m thinking he’s met somebody in Considine’s.’

  I hoped that Mary would go on talking, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts as she sat looking into the fire. ‘Patrick Delargy is a rich man now, Elizabeth,’ she said with an air of finality and sadness. ‘All he needs is a wife and shure who would he marry here and him an educated man?’

  She certainly had a point. In his position, he couldn’t just marry anyone, nor could there be many suitable single women of his age around. It must be very lonely to be so old and not have anyone to go home to. I remembered the way he had asked me about Tolstoy and I wondered who he could talk to about Tolstoy in Lisdoonvarna. Then it struck me that I had never talked to anyone about Tolstoy either. At home, no one ever reads anything but newspapers. George reads The Economist because that’s his subject and Alistair Maclean for relaxation. Good escapism, he always says. And don’t we all need some low literature to keep our minds off things.

  ‘That tea was marvellous, Mary. Can I help myself to another cup? What about you? Are you ready yet?’

  To my surprise and delight, Mary held out her cup and let me refill it. All week, she had been pouring my tea and serving Paddy and me at the table, while eating her own meal by the fire. She had waited on others all her life. Now, at last, she’d let me do something for her. It delighted me, for I knew such a gesture could have only one meaning. As far as Mary was concerned, I was no longer a stranger in the place.

  We finished our tea in silence. My legs were beginning to throb gently after the long walk and the standing in the shops. Mary had been on her feet all day too, feeding hens and calves, baking bread, separating milk and making butter. We were both reluctant to move.

  Finally, Mary got to her feet, her hand to her low back in a familiar gesture. ‘Have you writing to do today, Elizabeth?’

  ‘I have, Mary, but I’ll wait till we light the lamp. I’ll help you with the supper first.’

  Outside the cottage a van stopped. Mary moved quickly to the middle of the floor. ‘I wonder who that is. Bad luck to that hyderange, for I can’t see a thing these days.’

  The van started up again and continued on up the hill. The fumes drifted through the open door. They were followed by the scrape of boots on the flagstones. A moment later, Paddy appeared.

  He had shaved off the stubble which had graced his chin at lunch and was wearing his best suit of brown corduroy with the pink and mauve tie that had so amazed me on my arrival. His face looked as if it had been polished, the cheeks fresh and pink, his eyes even brighter than usual. From the top of his cap, perched on his shiny forehead, to the toes of his well-polished boots, he looked trim, collected and totally in command of himself.

  Such a small man, I thought, as he raised his hand in the doorway. Small and compact and full of a compelling sense of life that related not at all to the lines on his face, the remaining wisps of white hair, or the gnarled fingers, thickened with age. How can a man be old and yet so full of life? Paddy would never be old.

  He hung his cap on the hook behind the door, grinned at us cheerfully and walked into the room with only the slightest trace of a sway. He smiled again, a sideways smile directed mostly at Mary. It was like the look on a child’s face, when it knows it has been naughty, but expects to be let off with a caution.

  Mary said nothing, but I could see she was amused. We waited.

  ‘God bless all here,’ he said heartily. ‘I’m sorry, Mary, that I was unavoidably detained. I met some Yankees from Australia.’

  Chapter 4

  It isn’t Paddy who has the hangover this morning, I thought to myself, as I sat munching wheaten bread at breakfast next day. He had been in such sparkling form the previous evening that we had sat by the fire till midnight. He’d told me stories from every part of his life, moving back and forth across the Atlantic and the decades of his seventy-odd years with equal ease and a fluency that had me spellbound.

  He had such a gift with words. Everything he said was put in a simple, direct way but out of that simplicity he built something much more complex. The atmosphere he created was so very potent that as I listened to his stories, some happy, some sad, some cautionary, I felt sure I was experiencing something quite beyond the actual events he was recounting. It came to me that Paddy’s stories were like parables for in them he had concentrated the wisdom of a long life lived with passion and humanity. I had gone to bed, my head full of Paddy’s stories, and spent a dream-haunted night reliving stories of my own.

  ‘God bless all here.’

  The dark-caped figure of Paddy the Postman stood in the doorway, a hand half-raised in greeting. I’d been so far away that I had neither seen the bob of his cap above the hydrangea, nor heard the scrape of handlebars as he leaned his ancient, regulation bicycle against the wall of the dairy.

  ‘God bless you, Paddy. Sit down and rest yourself, till I get you a drop of tea.’

  He sat down, his cape dripping gently from a sudden shower. ‘Ah, miss, I have a handful for you today,’ he said. He counted out three letters for me.

  ‘Well, what’s news in the world today?’

  Paddy O’Dara put down his blue enamel mug. He’d persevered with the delft cup and saucer for two days after my arrival until Mary had absentmindedly taken the mug from the dresser. He clutched it thankfully and the cup and saucer did not reappear.

  ‘Good news. Mary-at-the-foot-of-the-hill has a wee boy and all well. Seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Ah, thanks be to God,’ said Mary, crossing herself. ‘I’ll go down and see the poor crater after a while.’

  ‘There’s Yankees arrived at John Carey Thatched House and his brother’s over from Kilshanny. There’ll be a big party tonight, I’m thinking. Flannigan’s lorry was there delivering crates of porter.’

  Paddy finished his tea at a gulp and stood up. ‘God bless you, Mary, that was good, but I must be like the beggar man, drink and go, for I’ve a packet for Flaherty’s beyond the Four Crosses.’

  ‘Ah, ’tis a good way that, Paddy, and mostly uphill,’ Mary nodded.

  ‘And we’re not getting any younger,’ said Paddy ruefully, as he settled his mailbag on his shoulder and put his cap on.

  ‘Good luck till ye.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  I began to stack the cups and plates at one end of the table, but Mary stopped me.

  ‘Sure leave them, astore. Aren’t you going over to Ballyvore. And I’ve not much to do today.’

  It was highly unlikely that Mary had not much to do. I had seldom seen her finish her daily round before supper. But I sensed that often she was glad to be alone, with me out pacing the fields and Paddy working on the land or in the haggard.

  ‘Will I need my wellingtons, do you think, Paddy?’

  ‘Ah no, it won’t be that wet. The path is rough, but it doesn’t flood and the wind’s been drying between the showers.’

  I collected my plastic folder of field maps, put the letters in my pocket and zipped up my jacket. ‘I’ll be back by one, Mary, is that all right?’

  ‘As right as rain, astore.’

  ‘Mind yourself, Elizabeth,’ Paddy warned severely, ‘Ballyvore is full of old bachelors and wouldn’t th
ey just like me to make a match for them with a nice, slim, young girl like yourself.’ He laughed as he stumped off to the garden to dig potatoes.

  Slim. I smiled to myself as I set off up the road. No one had called me slim before. After my ‘skinny’ phase in early childhood, I had begun to put on weight when I was about eight years old. Despite the removal of all sweets, chocolate and cake from my life and my mother’s continuous nagging not to eat this or that, or anything I put my hand out for, it was my late teens before I suddenly shed the flabby layers that had made my late childhood and teens so miserable. For years now, I had shut out the memory of those unhappy times. The teasing at primary school was bad enough, but what happened at grammar school was even worse. The games mistress made me run round and round the gym every morning before prayers. Remedials, she called it. My face would prickle with heat, I’d get a stitch in my side, and afterwards I couldn’t find my place in my Songs of Praise, because my hands were shaking and sticky with perspiration. Those days were long gone. Thank Heaven.

  But slim. I could hardly think of myself as slim. Certainly not compared with Adrienne. Perhaps Adrienne was a bit too slim. George said she had a marvellous figure but he preferred his women cuddly, like me. He said he was glad I wasn’t sylphlike. Often, when we were lying together on the sofa in his mother’s sitting room, or on a rug on some beach or hillside, he would put his head in my lap and say that I was built for comfort. But Paddy thought I was slim.

  I turned to look back at Lisara and to study the new perspective from the high point I had reached on the long curving slope of the road. Funny how people see you differently. George. Paddy. My mother. Mary. It made me wonder how you could ever tell what the truth really was when people offered you so many different versions of yourself.

  Just over a mile from the cottage I came to a weather-beaten signpost. It didn’t say anything for the arms had long ago dropped off, but the track which led away to my left was clearly used. It was rough, but some of the bigger holes had been filled with stones. Apart from that, there wasn’t much other sign of life about. No houses were visible either behind or before me. The hedge boundaries were overgrown and the fields were full of rushes. The trackway to my right that led down to the cliffs was identifiable only by the parallel stone walls. Its whole length was filled with the luxuriant growth of grass and bramble.

  The bank below the signpost was smooth and mossy. I sat on my plastic-covered maps and took out my letters. I fingered the two from George in anticipation and laughed at myself as I put them to one side. I always save the nicest things till last. Adrienne always says you can tell a great deal about a personality from that simple observation, but whenever I ask her to explain exactly what you can tell, she never does.

  My mother’s letter was a single large sheet. It had been written hastily in blue biro on the strange-smelling, pink paper she had been using for years, a line that hadn’t sold in the shop. ‘Dear Elizabeth,’ I read,

  Dad and I were glad to get your letter and hear that you had found somewhere to stay. It sounds reasonable considering but be careful of a damp bed. You can’t be too careful in these places. Things are much as usual. We are very busy in the shop. It’s amazing how trade keeps up especially cigarettes. Dad had to go to the Cash and Carry twice last week. Everyone has money these days especially (the Other Side). I don’t know how they do it what with the big families and what they have to pay the church. Of course they have the big family allowances and the national assistance. The house at the end of St Judes the one with the orange lilies has been sold to one of them. One of our customers says the church puts up the money for them. They’re getting in everywhere round here.

  I paused. Even the irony of the Other Side having bought the house with the orange lilies failed to raise a smile. My mother puts on paper exactly what she thinks. Given how I feel about most of what she thinks, it was hardly surprising I’d find a letter upsetting. I just hadn’t been prepared for it. Listening to what she said, evening after evening, I had learnt to filter out the things that upset me, but seeing them written down in tangible blue biro was another matter. I couldn’t filter out the words and what they meant. She’d even written ‘the Other Side’ in brackets, like a stage direction, to remind me of the customary lowering of the voice.

  Mary and Paddy were ‘the Other Side’. So was Patrick Delargy, a man who had talked to me as a friend and driven me home to save me a walk and a wetting. Just by being here in Lisara, I was doing something neither of them could accept. There would be no talk of my visit when I went back, no interest in anything I’d done. My father would put the event out of mind, as he always did with anything uncomfortable. My mother would wear that tight, thin-lipped look of hers, if I were foolish enough to mention the visit myself.

  Once, long ago, I had made the mistake of suggesting that some Catholics might be quite nice people. I have never forgotten the look she gave me.

  ‘Don’t ever let anyone hear you say a thing like that,’ she warned me, two bright spots of colour flaming on her cheeks.

  My father had actually lowered his newspaper, a rare thing for him to do. ‘Indeed, Elizabeth,’ he said, in a tone intended to sound both conciliatory and wise, ‘that’s all very well, but when all’s said and done, you know, you can’t trust one of them.’

  I never raised the subject again, or expressed any further opinion, but I did wonder what strange power it was that produced such hatred and fear.

  I shivered in the chill wind and turned back to the rest of the letter.

  Clare Roberts that you were at school with has got engaged to Clive Robinson the shop. They are going to live in Helen’s Bay. Clive has got a big job with the Co-op and they have bought a lovely bungalow with an L-shaped lounge. Her mother says it is the last word. She is very pleased I was speaking to her on Monday. She also told me Mary Dalzell as was had a lovely baby boy born on her birthday. What a coincidence. They are calling it William John after the grandfather.

  That was the trouble with the shop. It meant my mother heard all the news. All the girls I went to school with, married and having babies, or leaving their babies with their mothers to take ‘wee, part-time jobs’ so they could buy the velvet curtains for the L-shaped lounges, or clothes for their Spanish package holidays. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I sometimes thought the only time my mother ever looked at me was when she talked about my contemporaries. It seemed as if she were waiting for me to say something. But whatever it might be, I’d never managed to say it. Her face went hard and disapproving, no matter what comment I made.

  A graduation photograph on the piano in the seldom-used sitting room over the shop and a married daughter in a lovely bungalow in Helen’s Bay. Was that the future she wanted for me?

  The single page of the letter was flapping in the stiff breeze and my fingers were numb with cold.

  Dad has started to do up your room. He thought it was a good chance. Uncle Jamsey got us the paper from his work 30% off. It is a nice big green leaf with gold on white. Dad says it will dirty awful easy but you only have a year to do. He has only the woodwork left. You said white but he thought it would look a bit bare so he got a nice cheerful yellow at the cash and carry. I have no news at all from the country so will close now. Mum.

  I suddenly began to feel very depressed. At first I thought it was the green and gold wallpaper, which sounded hideous. Then I wondered what they’d done with my precious maps and postcards that I’d been able to sellotape all over the walls, because the paper was brown with age and long overdue for stripping. My mother was quite capable of throwing the whole lot out.

  No, it was something deeper than wallpaper and the lack of respect for my possessions. It was L-shaped lounges and babies called after their grandfathers. That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t know what I did want but it certainly wasn’t that. Just thinking about my mother’s news of the girls I’d been at school with made me feel afraid. Perhaps such things could happen to me too. Just like one of tho
se road accidents you couldn’t possibly predict, where people get killed or injured, because they happened to be where they were at a particular moment.

  I stuffed my mother’s letter back in my pocket and started to open the first of George’s. At that moment, the wind caught me. I looked up and saw the islands had already disappeared beneath the approaching squall. The grey, choppy sea had white caps and the first spots of rain fell chill on my cheeks. I put the letter away, stepped back onto the road, pulled up my hood and tied it awkwardly in place with my numb fingers.

  A few minutes later, the squall hit me as I walked up the track to Ballyvore. Hail peppered my back and legs, bounced off the loose stones at my feet and drifted into the tangled grasses below the low stone walls. I bent my head forward and walked as fast as I could. I’d had a good look round and I knew there was no shelter anywhere. The only thing to do was keep going.

  After the squally morning, the day improved steadily. By late afternoon the sky was a brilliant blue. Up on the floor of the quarry where I’d been collecting rock samples, I had to take off my jacket and then my sweater. When I opened the neck of my blouse and turned up my sleeves, I decided it was time to have a rest. I spread my jacket on one of the smooth surfaces at the foot of a layered rock face, stuck my rolled-up sweater behind my shoulders and leaned back in the blissful warmth. I thought about George.

  In all the romantic novels, this would be the moment when he would come striding up the track. He would have come home unexpectedly, borrowed a car and driven down to find me. Now he would be in sight, looking everywhere, calling my name. But this wasn’t a romantic novel. George and I hadn’t seen each other since he’d gone off to England to his vacation job in the middle of June. I had wanted to go with him but the factory he’d found had no accommodation for women. That’s why I’d ended up at the Rosetta.

  Earlier in the summer I’d thought a lot about our reunion. Whenever things got bad at home or when I felt especially lonely, before I started my job, I’d let myself daydream. Particularly, I thought of his arms around me. Not of kissing him or of our limited lovemaking, but simply of being held, of being safe in his arms, of feeling warm and secure.