Time Out

by Emma Murray

  As I walk over the steely wavy grass, the figure turns.

  ‘Hi, Saoirse,’ he says, smiling.

  ‘Hi, Ryan,’ I reply. ‘You’re trespassing,’ I add, folding my arms.

  He laughs.

  I don’t.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry I was so off with you earlier,’ he says, holding up his hands in mock defence.

  ‘Yes, you were a right prick,’ I say, determined to show him that I have no intention of being disarmed by his pretty face.

  ‘I have a good reason,’ he says, looking suddenly sad.

  And I crumble because, of all things, I hate to see anyone looking sad.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say softly.

  And he does.

  Five years ago, when he was on a trip with his girlfriend, he got chatting to a local girl called Frances, who worked as a receptionist at the hotel and she just ‘blew him away’.

  ‘I can’t explain it, Saoirse. She was warm and funny, and she had these… like really kind eyes,’ he says, staring out at the horizon. ‘I mean, I had this long-term girlfriend, for God’s sake, and I knew I loved her, but I couldn’t get this other girl out of my head.’

  He turns to me suddenly, his expression agonised. ‘I mean, I couldn’t stop myself, you know?’

  I nod, not because I approve but because I am desperate to hear the rest of the story.

  ‘Anyway, I started getting up early every morning, before my girlfriend woke up, just so I could spend some more time with Frances. By the end of that first week, I knew I had to be with her,’ he says.

  It turned out that Frances was a member of the swimming club and they arranged to meet at the beach at dawn as often as they could.

  ‘So, you know Kitty,’ I say.

  He looks away as he nods.

  ‘Kitty is Frances’ mother,’ Ryan says, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

  Things start to fall into place. No wonder Kitty hates Ryan – messing around with her daughter when his girlfriend was mere minutes away.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like you were doing much swimming,’ I say, crossly. I have no time for men and their supposed ‘urges’.

  He drops his head.

  ‘How long did it last?’ I say.

  ‘Almost two weeks,’ he says. ‘And then myself and my girlfriend packed our bags and went back home to London.’

  Wait a minute. London?

  I must look surprised because he goes on, ‘Yes, at the time, I lived in London. I moved to LA shortly after… ’ and then his voice breaks and I wait for him to recover.

  ‘What happened to Frances, Ryan?’ I ask as gently as I can.

  He takes a deep breath.

  ‘We had agreed to end things between us before I left. Actually, she was the one who called it off. Said it was a holiday romance, and nothing more. I didn’t believe her, but she told me that’s what she wanted. She didn’t want any further contact.’

  He takes a deep breath, as if willing himself to go on.

  ‘But then she knew where I worked, and she emailed me to tell me that she wanted me back – that she would do anything to have me in her life again.’

  ‘So, what did you do?’ I say, fearing the answer.

  ‘I made the biggest mistake of my life,’ he says. ‘I ignored the email.’

  I am really trying not to judge him, but it’s hard. So he comes to a little Irish town with his long-term girlfriend, cheats on her and then heads back to London, and ignores an email from a girl who had clearly been in love with him, and by the sounds of things, him with her.

  ‘You don’t understand, Saoirse. There were other things going on in my life at the time. I had made a decision to stay with my girlfriend, and I couldn’t risk losing her because of Frances.’

  I fold my arms, raise my eyebrows and stare at him.

  ‘But I didn’t ignore the email for long,’ he says, pleadingly. ‘Only for a week or so until I figured out what I was going to do.’

  Ryan tells me that he used that time to break the news to his girlfriend about Frances. Inevitably, she kicked him out of the house. He got on a plane to Ireland to see Frances… and then he pauses once more, taking a few shuddering breaths.

  ‘I go straight to the hotel as soon as I arrive in the afternoon and they tell me she’s left work early,’ he says, his face screwed up in the memory. ‘I spend the rest of the day looking for her, but I can’t find her. I talk to Kitty and Frank on the beach, but nobody has seen her.’

  I don’t like where this is going, and so I close my eyes and focus on my breathing.

  ‘That evening, I’m sitting in the hotel lobby, hoping that she’ll turn up for her evening shift, when two policemen come rushing in. I just know there and then something bad has happened to Frances,’ he says, tears falling down his face.

  ‘What did Frances do, Ryan?’ I say, tears filling my own eyes. But in my mind I am asking, What did you make her do?

  ‘She jumped off this cliff, and killed herself,’ he says, bent double now.

  What? This cliff? Where we are both standing?

  I take an involuntary step backwards. I HATE these kinds of tragedies – this is the whole reason I don’t watch the news.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ryan,’ I say, and I really mean it.

  Yes, he fucked up and he made a big mistake, but nobody deserves to go through what he has.

  He straightens up and I give him a little hug. In fairness, even when he’s snotty he’s bloody gorgeous. Realising how inappropriate it is to feel attracted to him, I release him in order to dig out a raggedy tissue and he smiles weakly.

  ‘Is that why you come here every summer?’ I say. ‘To remember Frances?’

  He nods. ‘Yes, every summer for the last five years. I go to her grave and tell her how sorry I am.’

  My whole body is covered in goose bumps. I think of Kitty a few days ago staring out over the cliffs, eyes full of tears and I feel desperately sorry for her.

  I think of Anna and I can’t imagine how horrific it must be to lose a child.

  ‘The worst thing is,’ Ryan begins, trying to catch a sob, ‘Frances told me she had always struggled with depression and had tried to commit suicide before. And I knew that and I still ignored her email.’

  He wipes his eyes impatiently with his sleeve.

  ‘But I came back Saoirse,’ he says, with unbearable pleading in his eyes. ‘I came back to tell her I wanted to be with her, but I was too late. I couldn’t save her.’

  He reaches out with one arm and pulls me to him, and we stay there in a tight embrace for what seems like hours. Eventually, his body stops trembling and I gently push him away.

  There’s only one thing to say.

  ‘Wine,’ I say firmly.

  He gives me a sad smile, and nods.

  As we walk towards the house, Ryan puts his arm around me and I don’t resist. He’s a friend in need, I tell myself. That’s all it is. Then we separate while I pour us each half a bottle of wine into the biggest wine glasses I can find.

  I lead him to the living room and flop down on the couch. Ryan sits down next to me and we clink our glasses together, and sip our wine quietly for a bit.

  ‘You know, you remind me of her,’ he says suddenly. ‘Frances, I mean.’

  I’m not sure what to make of that, so I just raise my eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘You have the same kind eyes,’ he says, reaching out and tracing his fingers over my forehead.

  It is such an intimate gesture that I dare not break it, and we stay there for a bit, just looking at each other as he strokes my forehead. The atmosphere becomes thick and dreamlike, and I see his face – his beautiful face – moving closer and I hold my breath in anticipation. And then the doorbell rings.

  We both jump apart at the loud buzzing sound. I leap off the couch and bang straight into the coffee table, causing the large glasses of wine to wobble dangerously. Ryan puts one hand out to steady the table. The buzzing continues.

  For a moment, I can’t thi
nk straight. The only thought I have right now is to stop the fucking buzzing.

  My legs feel heavy as I walk to the front door. Annoyed now, I fling it open and there, standing on the doorstep, is my mother.

  ‘Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph!’ she says, marching into the hallway and slapping her travel bag on the floor. ‘Don’t you ever look at your phone?’

  As soon as I find my voice, I say, ‘What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be coming until tomorrow!’

  ‘Sure, I texted you, and posted it on the Twitter and the Facebook!’ she says, in a tone that intimates that this whole thing is all my fault. ‘Jesus, you’ll be wanting me to put it on the Instagram next!’

  Before I can say anything in response, Ryan walks into the hallway.

  My mother looks at him and quickly looks back to me with her eyebrows raised.

  I feel my cheeks grow hot. Suddenly I am a teenager trying to explain to my mother why there is ‘a boy’ in my room.

  Ryan holds out his hand to my mother, introduces himself, and tells her how happy he is to meet her. My mother looks him up and down, gives him her best sniff and says that it’s nice to meet one of Saoirse’s friends – she gives me a disapproving look when she says the word ‘friends’ – and then she drops his hand quickly and walks through to the living room.

  Ryan shrugs, and I mouth a sorry, and he gives me a shy smile. When I walk him to the front door, he thanks me for listening, and then bends down and whispers, ‘Another time,’ before planting a kiss on the corner of my mouth. I watch him as he crunches over the gravel drive towards the path that will take him back to the village. He doesn’t look back.

  I close the front door and jump when I see my mother standing in the hallway, arms folded.

  ‘Who’s that then, Saoirse?’ she says, giving me a hard stare.

  Yes, who is that? I think. Is he a friend or something more? Did he want to kiss me? Did I want to kiss him?

  ‘A friend who needed a shoulder to cry on,’ I say finally, returning her stare.

  ‘What on earth should someone who looks like him have to be worried about? Has he been diagnosed with a serious case of handsome fever?’

  Despite myself, I laugh.

  ‘Ah, so you’ve noticed his looks then?’ I say.

  Her expression is cross for a moment and she says, ‘He’s a bit too pretty, no? Besides, his eyes are too close together – mean with his money.’

  I let that one go and spend the next hour showing her around The Cube (‘It looks better in the photos’), getting her a cup of cocoa (‘Sure, it’s far too late for wine, Saoirse’), before eventually settling her in the spare room (‘This bedroom is awful small’).

  By the time I get to bed I am exhausted but my mind is whirring with everything that Ryan has told me. What would have happened if my mother hadn’t suddenly arrived the way she did? I touch my fingers to the corner of my mouth where he kissed me goodbye, as his parting words echo over and over again.

  ‘Another time.’

  18

  The next day is Thursday and I wake up with my head full of Ryan. When I peep into my mother’s room, she tells me, eyes glued to the screen of her phone, that she is in the middle of a ‘make or break auction’ on ‘the eBay’. I leave her to it and then start feeling guilty that my sixty-nine-year-old mother seems to be working harder than I am, so I pad into the kitchen and pop open my laptop. Writing is always a good distraction and I use it now to still the voice in my head that whispers the promise of ‘another time’.

  I need to write something light to replace the heaviness in my head from being with Ryan and hearing his tragic story.

  For the last couple of days, I have been mulling over the conversation I’d had with Bea about swearing. Bea has challenged me over being brave enough to write the truth, but today I feel brave. I mean, if you think about it; language is everything – the only way we can really be understood. In fact, language is one of the main reasons I love spending time with my Irish friends. You see, everybody understands me here. I can say things like ‘we had great craic’, or ‘Anna’s taken a real stretch,’ or that I’m ‘wrecked’ without the puzzled expressions on the faces of my London pals. Even Bea has to ask me what the hell I’m talking about sometimes. Best of all, everyone here can pronounce my name. Even though I’m still a foreigner who defected to the UK twenty years ago.

  But being in Ireland isn’t just about being understood, it’s also about the freedom of using ‘bad’ language. Everybody swears in Ireland, not necessarily in an aggressive way, but to vent emotion, or add humour or colour to a story. So I write:

  Swearing is cathartic, and, frankly, we should do more of it, especially during those dark times of parenting. And if we let the odd swear word drop in front of our kids, then so be it. Perhaps it’s better that they know the words that will get them in trouble at school rather than picking them up from other kids and using them blindly and ignorantly. Overall, swearing is a good way to let off steam and, let’s face it, there’s nothing like a good sweary rant over a glass of wine in the right company to lift ourselves out of those dark moods.

  Just as I finish typing my final sentence, my mother walks into the kitchen fully dressed.

  ‘What are you doing stuck to your laptop on such a lovely day?’ she says, irritably.

  I don’t bother pointing out that she has been doing the same thing. After a quick shower and change, I take my mother for a brisk walk along the beach. We bump into Kitty, who gives me a warm smile, and I return it by squeezing her arm. I tell my mother I’m off for a swim and leave her chatting with Kitty. I haven’t told her anything about Kitty or Frances, so I’m pretty sure she can’t stick her foot in it.

  As I am leaving them together, I hear my mother say to Kitty, ‘Saoirse! Going for a swim in the sea! I never thought I’d see the day. Can you credit it, Kitty?’

  I shake my head in annoyance and slow down to hear Kitty’s reply, ‘Well, she’d have been doing more of it if she’d only stayed in Ireland. There’s no sea-swimming in London, Brenda!’

  Then they both tut for a bit.

  I raise my eyes skyward and quicken my pace towards the shore; I have no chance against those kindred spirits.

  As the water reaches my ankles, I allow myself to think about Ryan. I feel both relieved and disappointed when he doesn’t make an appearance, but given my mother’s suspicions from last night, it’s probably better that he isn’t around.

  After my swim, on the walk back to the house, my mother tells me that she’s had a great chat with Kitty. I groan inwardly and wonder what information she has managed to wrangle. Sometimes my mother sees people as wet sponges, just there to be wrung out for every personal confession, admission or secret.

  ‘So, I believe Ryan and Frances had an affair,’ she says a few minutes later, casually, stacking the breakfast things into the dishwasher. ‘The one who committed suicide,’ she adds.

  Despite myself, I am impressed. What took me days to discover, she’s managed to crack in a twenty-minute conversation. Clearly the locals only see me as a ‘foreigner’ but have no problem confiding in my mother.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I say, feigning boredom so she won’t keep going on about it.

  ‘Ah, Frances was always very troubled. Even as a child,’ my mother says sighing, in the manner of someone who has had an intimate relationship with Frances. ‘That’s what Kitty told me,’ she adds, unnecessarily.

  Yes, Kitty your best friend, whom you met just twenty minutes ago, I think bitterly.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was just all about Frances,’ my mother says thoughtfully. ‘There’s something about that Ryan fella that I just don’t like.’

  This is her way of testing my loyalty to Ryan but I don’t fall into her trap and defend him. Instead, I busy myself with the dishes and we clear the rest of the kitchen in tense silence. Afterwards my mother announces that she needs her ‘eBay fix’ and disappears into her bedroom, presumably to flog
more marital cures to unsuspecting punters. Just as I’m wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of the day without cracking, I get a text from Jen asking if my mother and I want to meet her for lunch in McGowan’s. Jen! That’s it! My mother loves Jen – she will save the day!

  I tell my mother that we’re meeting for lunch and she seems as happy as I am to have some sort of distraction. A couple of hours later we set off for McGowan’s on foot, just as it’s starting to drizzle. When I suggest we take the car, my mother looks at me as if I’ve done a particularly appalling fart, and snaps, ‘Sure, it’s barely raining, Saoirse. Have you been out of the country that long?’ And I say nothing lest I get reminded once again of my ‘foreigner’ status.

  When we get to the pub, Jen is already there, looking fabulous as usual in a fitted navy-and-white-striped T-shirt and white skinny jeans. She looks like a really sexy sailor.

  Although I have told my mother explicitly that Jen is happy and healthy despite being jilted, she still greets her with, ‘Left the wedding dress at home, did you?’ which is her idea of a joke. Luckily Jen has known my mother almost as long as I have and she bursts into giggles, and stands up to give my mother a hug.

  ‘Howerya, Brenda?’ she says.

  We order burgers and chips all around, and a bottle of wine to start off with. My mother entertains Jen with all her internet stories, while I sit back and switch off and think about Ryan. Suddenly, the sound of my name brings me back into the room.

  ‘What’s that?’ I say, puzzled.

  Jen laughs and says, ‘Your mother was just filling me in on finding a strange man in your house last night.’

  I tell myself not to react but my body betrays me: a slow flush spreads across my chest and cheeks.

  My mother eyes me and then Jen.

  ‘A good-looking fella, this Ryan, but there’s something off about him,’ she says.

  ‘His eyes are a bit too close together,’ Jen says.

  ‘Mean!’ the pair of them chorus, and then burst into fits of laughter.