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Imprint Information
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in 2015 by Blackstaff Press
4D Weavers Court
Linfield Road
Belfast BT12 5GH
© Helen Nicholl, 2015
Cover design by Two Associates
All rights reserved
Helen Nicholl has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Produced by Blackstaff Press
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library
EPUB ISBN 978 0 85640 965 3
MOBI ISBN 978 0 85640 966 0
www.blackstaffpress.com
About the author
Helen Nicholl was born and brought up in South Africa. She came to London in 1970 and lived and worked in England and Northern Ireland before moving with her family to Zimbabwe for eighteen years. In 2000 she returned to Belfast where she managed a charity bookshop until she retired in 2015. Happily settled in Holywood, she and her partner keep open house for their extended family and friends, but still travel at every opportunity.
Thanks
Thanks to my family and friends and to the Literary Ladies for their unfailing encouragement and support, but most of all to Kelly McCaughrain, to Cary Meehan, whose Guide to Sacred Ireland sent me travelling in the first place, and to Patsy Horton and all her lovely team at Blackstaff.
Chapter 1
When I first came to Northern Ireland I knew almost nothing about the country, beyond the fact that it was home to Socrates O’Shea, with whom I had fallen deeply in love. I had been warned it was a damp and dangerous place most sensible travellers avoided, but by the time I realised that the greatest danger to my health and wellbeing came not from the so-called Troubles – or indeed the weather, which was unrelentingly cold and wet – but from Socrates himself, it was too late, because I’d gone and married him.
However, on that long-ago night when I first arrived in Belfast, I was barely twenty, and full of the optimism of youth. Even the wail of sirens and the noise of distant explosions seemed just part of the adventure as we sped through the city and out to what I believed to be the relative safety of the O’Sheas, where Mrs O’Shea was hiding in a bend of the stairs and muttering prayers. It wasn’t the sound of bombs going off that worried her: she had seen a photograph that Socrates had taken of me in London, and owing to some quirk of developing, I had turned out rather dark. At the time there were very few foreigners living in Northern Ireland, and Mrs O’Shea had been told I came from Africa, and was alarmed.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, we quickly grew to like each other, and when, soon after our marriage, Socrates and I moved abroad, she took great pride in Socrates’s rapid success. Not many people, she used to say, could boast that they had a son who was so quick to grasp a business opportunity. Unfortunately, this was true – but as so many of the people involved are still alive, and Socrates himself is, as far as I know, still wanted by the police, I shall say no more about those years. Besides, when all is said and done, he is still the father of my four children, and it was with the two youngest that I finally returned to Belfast some years later. By then I had managed to extricate myself from the marriage, my older children had left home and it seemed sensible to bring the twins back to complete their education in a place which they knew from frequent visits, and where they still had some family connections.
Belfast was a very different city from the one that I remembered. Where there had been barricades and checkpoints, there were now pavement cafes and crowds of people going about their normal business. And before long we too had settled into our new lives. Seamus and Nuala were accepted into the sixth form of a college known for its sporting achievements, after an interview in which I am afraid they gave a slightly misleading impression of their own athleticism: drifting lazily down the Zambezi has little in common, after all, with rowing up the Lagan at dawn. And I stopped expecting to hear the call of louries and hoopoes, or the sound of crickets, and resigned myself instead to the sound of traffic, and the cries of gulls in the grey skies overhead.
We rarely heard from Socrates, but when we did it was always from a new address, or country, from which I concluded that he was at least keeping one jump ahead of his creditors. I don’t think any of us worried about him – if ever a man was likely to survive, it was Socrates – but I did worry about the future. So, as soon as the twins were settled at school, I began to look for a job – a search I combined with the pleasure of rediscovering the city on foot. And it was on one of these exploratory days that I stumbled upon the Good Intentions Bookshop.
I had been drifting down Botanic Avenue, past Archibald’s Antiques (which was to play such an unexpected part in my life) when my eye was drawn to the window of a shop further down the road and I found myself peering into the dim cave that was Good Intentions. I saw at once that it was one of the last of its kind: a small, jumbled charity bookshop, stuffed with unlikely treasures, and staffed by what appeared, at first sight, to be amiable lunatics. This first impression was not entirely wrong: over time I came to know the shop well and the volunteers who ran it were notable, even in a city of eccentric characters, for their peculiar charm and for their decided, and frequently opposing, views. But the main reason why I have such a soft spot for the Good Intentions Bookshop is that it was there, several years later, that I first met Albert.
What can I say about Albert? He was very tall and thin and as bald as an egg. It was what I first noticed about him: a gleaming skull bobbing along between the bookshelves. Closer inspection revealed an interesting line in layers of well-worn tweed and corduroy, and very old and expensive-looking shoes. From this I deduced, quite rightly, that the object of my inspection rarely, if ever, bought anything new. From a distance he wasn’t promising, but then he turned and looked me full in the face. My friend Rita – a great authority on men – once stopped me halfway through my list of some new prospect’s sterling qualities: ‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ she said, before cutting straight to the chase as always, ‘but does he make your knees knock?’
Albert turned out to have as mesmerising a pair of eyes as I have ever encountered, and they could have heard my knees knocking in Ballymena.
It was with some difficulty that I dragged my gaze away from his and down to the book he had been examining.
‘The Traveller’s Guide to Ancient County Down,’ I said. ‘What a lucky find!’
‘Do you know it?’ He had a beautiful husky voice.
‘Well no, not really, but it looks fascinating.’
‘Then you must have it.’ He thrust the book into my hands.
‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly! You found it first, Mr …’
‘Albert,’ he said. ‘Albert Morrow. And you are?’
‘Johanna. Johanna van Heerden.’
‘Ah, Johanna …’
We might well have stood there longer, foolishly transfixed, if a head I knew well hadn’t popped out just then from behind a pile of books, and fixed us with a dragon-like stare.
‘You’ve got exactly two minutes before I lock the door,’ it said, ‘so if you are planning on actually buying anything, you had better be quick about it.’
It was Dolores, commander-in-chief of the volunteer army, and a woman who has no truck with pandering to the customer. Albert didn’t argue: he handed over a fiver and ushered me out of the shop. There was another poor hopeful trying to get in, but Dolores simply slammed the door in his face and switched out the lights.
We stood outside, shivering in the sudden cold; then Albert said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d like a cup of coffee, while we argue over who gets custody of the book?’
In the end it stayed with me, because, by the time we parted two hours later, we had agreed to set out on the first of our journeys together. I was to consult The Traveller’s Guide to Ancient County Down and choose our destination. By then it was apparent to me that I was embarking on an altogether more complicated, and possibly hazardous, journey, but I didn’t care: the excitement of planning the trip, and the memory of Albert’s eyes, kept any doubts at bay.
I had also offered to bring a picnic. I am particular about picnics: they must contain cold chicken or sausages, or little poppy seed pies, and there must be a variety of cheese and fruit, and chocolate. Albert, whom I rightly suspected of being an apple and sandwich man, had undertaken to provide the transport, and as his car (unlike his clothes) turned out to be a lot newer and more reliable than mine, it was a happy arrangement all round.
Our goal on that first day was the Legananny Dolmen and the directions were clear: we should take the Newcastle road to Ballynahinch then turn towards Dromara and carry on south through Finnis until we reached the first of several signposts to the dolmen – and so it proved. Albert was overwhelmed.
‘Well done!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a piece of navigation!’
‘I’m only reading the map,’ I said.
‘Not many women can read maps,’ he replied, taking his eyes off the road to gaze at me with admiration, and narrowly missing a hedge.
‘Turn here,’ I said. ‘There should be a place to park just ahead.’
At the time, of course, I didn’t realise that Albert had as little sense of direction as a bubble, but I did feel a degree of pride as we turned up the farm lane and saw, rising before us, a glorious dolmen. The author of The Traveller’s Guide to Ancient County Down, M. Heaney, had described it as ‘most poised and graceful’ and M. Heaney had got it right. Two elegant pillar stones, as tall as Albert, and a shorter end stone supported a great soaring slab of granite. Against the winter sky it was dramatic.
‘Oh Albert!’ I said. ‘My first dolmen!’
I walked around it and under it. I leaned against its ancient sides and stroked the pitted surface of its pillars. And if you think this a somewhat excessive reaction to a pile of old stones, then I can only say that we had nothing like it in Gauteng: as you might be fascinated by the sight of an elephant in the bush, so was I entranced by the alien beauty of the dolmen. It helped, of course, that the day was unusually clear, with a sweeping view of hills and valleys rolling away to the horizon, and that Albert had taken my hand.
From the Legananny Dolmen, a series of turns took us to a junction from which the road winds all the way up to Windy Gap. There we found a small car park, with picnic tables dotted about the hillside, and spectacular views in all directions.
‘According to M. Heaney, that lane will lead us to a little Mass garden,’ I said, pointing to a pathway on the opposite side of the road. ‘Do we have time to investigate before we have our lunch?’
‘I can probably hold out another ten minutes,’ said Albert.
So we followed the lane uphill to a gate, and there, hidden in a dip of the hill and shielded by a circular hedge, was the tiny Mass garden. We spent some moments peering through the gate at the peaceful, secret spot with its rock altar and evidence of careful tending, then we circled back through grazing sheep, and down to our waiting picnic.
At a table above the car park, we sat in the winter sunshine and feasted on miniature pork pies, chicken and salad. We had two types of cheese, and moist, crumbling wheaten bread, and we raised our glasses of crisp white wine (a lot for me, a little for him) as we toasted the success of our first journey, and drank to the next. Then we set down our glasses and looked deep into each other’s eyes …
Another good thing about Windy Gap is that there’s nobody there but sheep.
By the time we returned to Belfast it was getting dark. I had moved a few miles down the coast after my two youngest children left home, and as we neared the turn-off for my house, the conversation fell away. I worried that Albert’s silence was a sign of some doubt or regret but when we drew up at the gate, he leaped out of the car and insisted on helping to carry the picnic things into the hall. Then he stood on the threshold, dithering.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he began – but a sudden overhead creaking caused him to break off mid-sentence. As he glanced upwards, his expression changed to one of alarm. ‘A man with an enormous moustache is looking over your banisters!’ he hissed.
‘That’s my landlord, Sticky Wicket,’ I replied. ‘He lives upstairs. Go away, Sticky Wicket.’ I had raised my voice but I was looking steadily at Albert as we listened to the sound of retreating footsteps and a door closing overhead.
I spoke more softly: ‘What is it that you don’t suppose, Albert?’
‘Well … that you might perhaps like to ask me in for a coffee, Johanna?’
I smiled. I reached up and grasped his tweed lapels with one hand as I pulled him towards me; with the other I slammed the door shut behind his back.
Dolores would have been proud of me.
Chapter 2
Two days later Albert and I re-emerged, blinking, into winter sunlight. We had found it impossible to part before this, but in the end, the demands of the outside world, and sheer exhaustion, drove us out. Passion, of course, is not considered proper or sensible in the middle-aged, and as my children are constantly on the lookout for signs of dementia (at which point they will whip me into a home faster than you can say ‘feeble-minded’), I shall say no more, except to observe that when love strikes you down, the fire burns just as sweetly whether you are seventeen or seventy.
Now, as Albert climbed into his car and I waved him goodbye, I realised that Sticky Wicket had appeared at my elbow and was also waving.
‘Sound chap,’ he said. ‘Met him yesterday when he was taking out your bin. Likes cricket.’
This was news to me, but I filed it away for future reference. I already knew a great deal about Albert’s tastes and interests, and more importantly, his past. In Albert’s case this was more complicated than most, although in those early days I was unaware of the full extent of these complications.
‘I must say you’re looking jolly well, Johanna.’ Sticky Wicket regarded me with something close to admiration in his bulging eye, and such was my newfound feeling of peace and goodwill to all mankind that I turned and beamed.
‘Thank you, Sticky Wicket,’ I said. Then I went back in to my strangely empty flat.
Fortunately there was no time to brood – it was nine o’clock and I had a job to go to. Three days a week, for the last few years, I had opened the doors of Archibald’s Antiques at ten in the morning and closed them again at four. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I shared the tiny over-stuffed cave that was Archibald’s with a cat called Morris and the occasional customer. Morris was an unrewarding animal but he tolerated my presence; the customers were the usual mixture of bargain-hunters, lost souls and, occasionally, genuine collectors of antiques. The last tended not to stay long.
The Good Intentions Bookshop is not far from Archibald’s Antiques and I was in the habit of calling in there after four o’clock, to browse until it was time to catch my train. On this particular afternoon I arrived to find Dolores attempting to sell an ancient book on tropical diseases to a young man who had unwisely asked for help in finding an African travel guide.
‘You cannot be too careful,’ Dolores was saying. ‘My niece Veronica caught E. coli from kissing a giraffe.’
‘Why was she kissing a giraffe?’ asked a small, anxious-looking woman who was hovering beside the counter.
‘Probably because nothing human would have offered,’ said a voice in my ear, and I turned to see Sybilla standing behind me.
‘Hello, Sybilla,’ I said. ‘How’s Percy?’ Percy was Sybilla’s parrot, an African
Grey to which she was devoted. I had a parrot myself, once upon a time, so it was a mutual interest.
‘Actually, Johanna, I was going to ask you if you’d look after Percy next weekend. I’m going on a walking trip with Dolores and she objects to him coming with us.’
‘Too right,’ said Dolores, whose customer seized this moment of inattention to flee the shop. ‘Filthy things. God knows what you’d catch from them.’
‘Why can’t he stay at home with Roger?’ I asked. Roger was Sybilla’s husband and he rarely went anywhere.
‘Percy doesn’t like Roger.’
‘Who does?’ said Dolores under her breath.
‘I’m so sorry, Sybilla,’ I said, ‘but I’m going away myself next weekend.’
And it was true. Albert and I had already had two telephone conversations since our parting that morning, and in the evening I opened the first of his emails …
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Johanna, my sweet sweet love, I can’t believe that I have found you. It astonishes me how well we get along together. Before I go to sleep I want to tell you that the last two days have been the most wonderful of my life. Can we meet tomorrow for coffee?
Albert
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
My darling Albert – I can hardly believe that I am anyone’s sweet sweet love but I think I must be because I have been lit up all day like an electric sign – I have been giving shocks to anyone who stands too close! Of course we must meet for coffee. Phone me in the morning. Sleep tight, my love,
The Traveller's Guide to Love Page 1
