“Fire away. I’m in no hurry.”
Grace wants to hug him. With Alan, nothing’s a drama. Being in his company is like being carried along in a gentle stream. Grace makes the call and the news is good. She hangs up smiling. “He’s doing great.”
“Ah, that’s great.” No questions with Alan. No nosiness.
Grace tips her head back in relief. “Wow, look at those stars! I’ve never seen so many.” It seems like a mistake, the most beautiful, magical mistake of nature. “You never see this many in Dublin with all the light pollution.”
“If you really want to see them, we could walk out to the graveyard where the street lights stop.”
She links his arm. “Let’s do that so.”
They lean into each other.
“’Tis like you never left,” he says. “Already.”
“It is.” Not for the first time, Grace wonders what life would have been like if she’d never met Simon, if, instead, she’d met someone like Alan, someone kind. She catches herself sighing.
Alan doesn’t miss it. Neither does he ask.
“I left my marriage.” She gives him that.
He stops walking. “Are you alright?” he asks, like that’s all that matters.
She stares as she realises, he’s right. It is all that matters – as long as “you” is taken as a plural. She smiles. “It’s great to be back, Al. It’s great that I get to start over. And it’s great to be here with you, like this, just hanging out, like the good old days.”
He unlinks his arm, puts it around her and squeezes her to him. And suddenly there’s no need for words.
They stroll out to the graveyard. And she tells him the story of Benji.
“’Tis a miracle,” he says. “A real miracle. You’ve no idea how hard I tried to coax him away from that grave, poor little fella. But you know what? He was waiting for the right person.”
She swallows. He always did understand.
They sit on the graveyard wall, gazing up at nature’s display.
Grace elbows him. “So, what have you been up to?” She means on the romance front.
“Staying out of trouble.”
She looks at him. “What does that even mean?”
He chuckles. “Ah, I’m happy with a small life, Gracie. Some of us aren’t ambitious. Some of us just want to keep things simple.”
“That makes total sense to me.” It’s what she wants now. A smaller life. That’s exactly it.
The breeze picks up. Grace feels it on the back of her neck like the grip of a cold hand.
“Right, Ahern’s let’s be having you,” she says and jumps down from the wall. Alan’s right; it’s as if the years have melted away.
They wander back towards the village, linking arms again.
A car passes, headlights dipping. They wave automatically, as you do in West Cork, even when you’ve no idea who it is.
“The tongues will be wagging now,” Alan says.
“What d’you mean? Don’t they know?”
He shakes his head. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told apart from my parents.”
“But why not?”
He sighs. “Mam and Dad didn’t take it well. They begged me not to tell a soul. So, I never did.”
“Alan! You’ve lived your life in secret!” But, then, who is she to talk?
“It’s grand. I make little trips to Cork, Dublin, even London sometimes for secret get-togethers. My social life is at weekends.”
Most people’s social lives are, when Grace thinks about it. “So, there’s never been a special person?” What is she talking about? Look at how her special person turned out.
“There was one but I would have had to move away.”
She pulls him closer. “Why didn’t you?”
“Mam hasn’t been in the best of health. And I couldn’t do it to her. She’s on her own now. I couldn’t leave her.”
Grace nods. She is not one to judge. She stayed stuck for almost seventeen years. “Let’s get that drink,” she says to the most giving man she has ever met.
“Are you sure?” Alan asks. “What about the tongues?”
Once again, he’s thinking of her.
“Let them wag,” she says with a vengeance.
Jack could put his fist through the wall. First, his mum gets all cosy with this handyman. Then, his father doesn’t deposit his pocket money into his bank account. He’s used to a hundred euro a week. What’s he supposed to do now?
In her room, Holly is looking at her bank balance. Where’s her fifty euro? She tosses her phone onto the bed. Then reminds herself of her whole new life. She never imagined it would be this easy. She’s still waiting for it to turn, flip over, fall apart. But it mightn’t! The girl in the mirror has changed. Her head is high, her eyes alive, hopeful, confident. Fifty quid a week is a small price to pay for this new person. She turns in the direction she imagines Dublin to be and flips off her dad. Keep your precious money. There are more important things. Like dogs. And friends. And happiness.
Alan leads the way into Ahern’s. Heads turn and the conversation dips. They find a table in the darkest corner of the pub. Grace grabs the seat with the back to the wall. Alan, still standing, glances at the bar.
“Tell me you’re not still drinking snowballs,” is his way of asking what she’ll have.
She laughs, remembering. “How did I ever?” she asks. “I’ll have a beer. Peroni if they have it. If not, I don’t know, Heineken?”
Alan turns and bumps into Bill Ahern, who has owned the pub for as long as Grace can remember.
“What are ye having?” Bill asks, his paunch straining the buttons on his Hawaiian shirt.
“The usual, Bill, thanks,” Alan says. “And a Peroni for Grace.”
“Grand so,” he says and heads back to the bar.
Alan lifts his eyebrows at Grace as he sits down. “I’ll have to hang out with you more often. I’ve never, in all my days, seen Bill Ahern come out from behind that bar for anyone.”
She puts her hands up. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know why he served us. And would people ever stop staring at us?” she whispers.
He looks around, then leans towards Grace, voice low. “Confirmed bachelor, Alan Wolfe, out with a woman is big news.”
She squints. “D’you want to go?”
“I do not. We’re having our drink and ignoring the lot of them. He lifts a beer mat and starts to tap the table with it.
She smiles. “Wow, you still do that?”
He looks up from the mat and his thoughts. “It seems I do!”
“It is so, so good to see you, Al.” She doesn’t know why she’s getting emotional. Been a long day, she guesses.
“Tell me you’ve had a good life, Gracie,” he says with so much hope.
She wishes she could say she had – for him. She looks down at a knot on the table, a fascinating, intriguing knot. She wants to tell him. He trusted her with his secret all those years ago. And she trusts him now. She’d trust him with anything. But she can’t take that giant step. She can’t convert all that’s happened into words and release the truth of them. She just can’t.
Bill Ahern sets the drinks down. Both Alan and Grace go for their wallets. That’s how it’s always been with them, a race, a fight almost, to pay.
“On the house,” Bill says, looking at Grace. “For what you did for young Matthew in The Cove earlier.”
“Aw, thanks, Bill. That’s very kind but there’s really no need. I was just doing my job.”
“That’s my godson’s life you saved,” he says with a wobble in his voice. “I’ll be forever grateful.” His eyes water, then he turns and hightails it away.
“You never said you saved a life!” Alan says. “Sure, that’s what they’re all looking at. I’ve been sitting with a hero and I didn’t even know it.”
The responsibility of a child’s life shakes her once more. “I was lucky, Al. So many things could have gone wrong.” She mightn’t have been able to find
the right spot to go in. She might have gone in wrong. “I was very, very lucky.” She takes a big gulp of beer.
“No luck about it. Unless you mean that Matthew was lucky you were there. Or that we’re lucky to have you here in Killrowan.” He raises his glass. “To Grace Sullivan! Welcome home, me old segotia.”
Her spirits lift. “Cheers, Big Ears,” she says, like old times.
He laughs and clinks her glass.
She puts down her drink and, though she knows no one can hear, she whispers. “Al, not one patient has come to see me. I’m sitting in there twiddling my thumbs all day. I don’t know how much longer it can go on Dr. O’Malley can’t manage the practice alone. There are just too many patients.”
“They’ll wisen up. They always do.”
She tells him what she overheard Jacinta Creedon say in the supermarket about her notions and her accent.
Alan puts down his drink. “Look. You’re going to get that. Some women will see you as a threat. Gorgeous creature like you rocking into town stealing husbands.”
She laughs. “Stop.”
“It’s true. I don’t say much but I see everything. And I know what I’m talking about. Anyway, you’ll have made a friend of Jacinta today. That’s for sure.”
Another round of drinks lands down on the table. “From Mick Farrell, up at the bar,” Bill says.
Grace and Alan turn automatically. It’s an older man with an Aran sweater, grey beard and a Guinness moustache, drinking alone. He raises his pint like an ad for Ireland.
Grace lifts hers and mouths a “Thank you” to him.
“I’ll have to carry you out of here,” Alan says. “This is only the start. Wait till it livens up in here.”
“I thought we said one drink.”
“You can’t stop a village now, can you?”
Grace can feel the second hangover of the week already. She thinks of how horrified Simon would be. And smiles.
31
Grace is suffering. Alan was right. Last night, the free drinks kept coming. Until it became a political quagmire. She couldn’t refuse one when she had accepted another from someone else. So, she paced herself, letting the glasses mount up on the table in the hope that people would get the message. They never did.
Now she sneaks downstairs before the alarms have gone off and starts to put on a fry. That is what she needs. That is what everyone needs. It’s Thursday, which means they’ve made it through their first week. Time to celebrate.
She hears a familiar thudding and smiles. She knows it’s Jack before he appears. And she knows that his stomach is driving him. She turns as he appears.
“Are you cooking a fry?”
“Yup! We’re celebrating. A week here today.”
“Wait! Tomorrow’s Friday.”
“Yeah, I know. Count up, though. Friday, Saturday, Sunday….” She counts on her fingers till she gets to Thursday. “Seven days. One week.”
“Cool!” He sits at the table.
“Will you set the table, love?” It’s so important to Grace that Jack won’t be like his dad and think himself above helping out.
He groans but does get up. He is setting a fork on the table when he looks at her sideways. “So, who’s this Alan dude?”
She turns and smiles. “One of my oldest and dearest friends.” She’d like Jack to spend more time around him so he can see that there are good men, gentle men, giving men.
“As long as he stays just friends.” There is a warning tone to his voice.
Grace stares at him. “Jack, Alan is like the brother I never had. I could never see him any other way. We used to climb trees together. Sail boats together. Have snowball fights together. There were three of us. The three musketeers. Me. Yvonne Barry. And Alan.”
“Is he married?”
“No.”
“Tell me he’s gay.”
She could. But that would be breaking Alan’s confidence. And burdening Jack with another secret. So, she looks her son in the eye.
“You asked me to trust you, Jack. And I do. One hundred per cent. Now I’m asking you to trust me when I say that there is no room in my life for a man in the way that you mean. There is room only for friends. Alan Wolfe is the nicest of men, the kindest, most thoughtful. And I want you guys to be surrounded by men like that.” The rest of what she wants to say, she silently wills to her son: “So you know they exist, so you know how to be one, someday.”
“Okay,” he says. He gets to his feet and goes to inspect the fry. “Is it nearly ready?”
She smiles. “Nearly.”
Grace passes a brown paper bag from the Coffee Cove in through the cubby hole to Myra.
“All good traditions should be kept up.”
“Ah, you shouldn’t have.”
Grace squints. Myra’s voice seems incredibly loud today. Everything does. It’s like the whole day is too loud, too bright, too irritating. She wonders if she could have a little nap in her surgery. She can’t imagine anyone would notice.
“I’ll take the repeat prescriptions, Myra thanks. And let me know if Fred Cronin’s results come in.” Surely today, she thinks.
“So, you don’t want me to send in your first patient?” Myra asks.
Hands on the counter, Grace (slowly) leans in. “I have a patient?”
Myra tucks a strand of escaping hair behind her ear. “You have half a waiting room of them.” She beams as she reveals the surprise that she has been holding in. “Here’s your list so far. I printed it out just in case you didn’t believe me but it’ll be up on the computer inside.” She passes it through the cubby hole.
Stunned, Grace takes it.
“You’re the talk of Killrowan, by the way,” Myra says, like a proud mother.
Grace risks raising her eyebrows. “Maybe I won’t have to go to Mass, after all,” she whispers.
“Oh, that’s non-negotiable,” Myra says without expression.
Grace can’t figure out if this is black humour or basic fact. Well, she has three days to work it out.
She taps the list. “Just give me a few minutes to warm up the computer.” And drink a pint of water.
Grace eases past the waiting room without looking in. She’s not about to tempt fate.
In her surgery, she turns on the computer, looks at the list and smiles.
Leaving the house for school, Jack spies Nicky, the girl from the coffee shop, disappearing into the newsagents. She is seriously cute, like a young Mila Kunis. He got a definite vibe, yesterday. But he was distracted then. Now, there’s nothing in the way – apart from a possible late – which he can handle.
“You go ahead,” he tells Holly. “I’ll catch up.”
She raises an eyebrow, hooches her schoolbag higher and takes off without him.
He saunters across the road and down into the newsagents, where he queues behind Nicky at the checkout and grabs a packet of (banned at school) gum. He watches her take money from her pencil case to pay for her bap.
“Micky Mouse?” he says. “Seriously?”
She turns and instantly blushes. Still, she eyeballs him. “What are you, the Disney police?”
He laughs, loving her spunk. “In my spare time.”
She’s next in line. He has to move fast before she turns and goes. “So, yesterday!” he says, two words that automatically connect them.
Her eyes widen. “I know!”
And, just like that, he’s in.
Grace, grateful for a morning of back-to-back patients, sees a large number of children (who all get a Disney Band-Aid to take home) and an equally large number of sore throats. There’s even a phantom sore throat. Grace is not sure if Dolores Tracy really believes her (non-inflamed) throat to be sore, if she just came for a good gawk at Young Dr. Sullivan or if, perhaps, there is something more sinister worrying her that she is struggling to bring up.
“How are you feeling in general, Dolores?” Grace asks, in case it’s the latter.
The lollipop woman starts to fiddle wi
th the clasp of her pink, furry handbag – encouraging Grace to probe further.
“You know what we should do,” she says gently. “Give you a general check-up, seeing as you’re here. We all look after our cars, giving them the old NCT every year. But we forget ourselves. What do you think?”
Dolores seems to perk up.
Grace starts with the basics, checking her blood pressure, pulse, temperature.
All fine.
“Do you ever check your breasts, Dolores?”
“Indeed I do not,” she says like it’s a crime.
“Well, why don’t I show you how and then you can check yourself once a month.”
“I’m getting hot flushes!” Dolores blurts out, anything to save herself the indignity of a breast check. “And I’m sweating something fierce at night. I have to change all my clothes. More than once. And keep moving around in the bed to escape the wet sheets. It’s awful.”
Grace nods. “Go on.”
“Sometimes, I get so moody I could kill small animals. Or big people. Or any people at all actually. Well, except the kids at school. They’re safe.”
“Dolores, that’s all totally normal.”
“Oh!” Dolores says, surprised. And encouraged.
“Let’s talk through some options.” Grace discusses changes that occur during menopause, including the impact that dropping oestrogen can have on the bones and heart. “Have you ever had a bone scan, Dolores?”
“No.”
“Right. We’ll set one up for you. Any family history of osteoporosis?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
Dolores’s mother died of a heart attack though, so Grace takes blood for cholesterol and general screening. Finally, she prescribes a low-dose HRT patch for Dolores.
“So, you need to apply a new patch every day, anywhere below your waist. Usually anywhere on the bum is fine.”
“I’m normally a very nice person,” she insists, still dwelling on the mood swings.
“Trust me. The menopause can create monsters, Dolores. Hopefully, you’ll see a big improvement with the patch.”
Season of Second Chances: an uplifting novel of moving away and starting over Page 16