by Oliver Sands
Alex from the Boston office held herself confidently and spoke cordially. Already Breeda could sense Oona warming to her. She was one of those alphas that other women would want to please. Breeda fidgeted on her stool and realised she was holding in her stomach.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Alex. We hope Brian’s looking after you.’
‘So far, so good!’
Brian reached past Breeda to hang his jacket on a hook beside Oona’s handbag. ‘So, what’s with the bubbles? What are we celebrating?’
‘It’s Breeda’s birthday, Brian,’ said Oona, throwing him the filthiest of looks. Breeda took a long sip from her glass and stared at some chipped paint on the skirting board.
‘Ah Bree. Many happy returns. You should have said.’
Brian’s heavy hand touched her awkwardly on the shoulder, a needy mongrel deserving a pat. He signaled to the barman for another bottle of bubbles — ‘the good stuff’ — making sure that his colleague heard him. Breeda wanted to check her watch, but Alex-from-the-Boston-office was smiling at her as she tilted the glasses for Brian to fill.
‘Well, I think this deserves a toast.’ That confident voice, that perfect smile.
Brian turned to his colleague, a flash of admiration in his eyes.
‘Yeah, good idea. A toast – to Breeda!’
‘To Breeda!’
As Breeda lifted her glass, she felt a draft come through from the side door. She glanced up at the mirror above the bar to her right to see the reflection of none other than Myra Finch shrugging off her jacket in the doorway, and intently regarding the merry foursome clinking champagne flutes before her. Breeda kept her eye on the mirror as she sipped her drink, savoring the act of observing Myra for a change. The old woman was looking Breeda up and down, no doubt making a mental note of the impropriety of a red dress and high heels so soon after a death in the family. She’d be chomping at the bit to tell all to Nora. But something suddenly changed in the woman’s expression, and she raised a hand to her chest. As Breeda turned to face Myra, a rare and natural lull fell across the loud bar, and when Myra spoke it was at a moment so spectacularly timed that she couldn’t not be heard.
‘Oh, Dear Lord, in Heaven. Breeda and Brian are engaged!’
She gripped the arm of a baffled stranger heading out the door. ‘Did you hear? Breeda’s getting married!’
People in the main bar turned to listen. Breeda opened her mouth, but found no words, and closed it again. Sweat needled the back of her neck and she turned to Brian, but he was shaking his head in confused laughter and was whispering something to Alex-from-the-Boston-office.
‘Did you hear the news?’ Myra continued across the packed barroom, ‘Breeda and Brian are engaged!’
Breeda watched as Myra came towards her with a bony hand thrust out possessively. She felt her face burn the same color as her dress. A crowd of faces now peered around the partition wall at her, and necks craned over the main bar to get a better view. The tall walls of the tight space stretched upwards and the air took on a sudden staleness in Breeda’s nostrils. She wanted to run, but Myra had a vice-like grip on her, and was now tilting Breeda’s hand, splashing champagne onto her dress, as she leaned in for a better view of the ring. Breeda’s mother’s engagement ring.
‘Oh Breeda! I’m thrilled for you.’ Myra was on a roll now. ‘Folks, with all due respect to Breeda here—’, turning to Breeda, ‘Your Aunt Nora and I always said you were fit for the knacker’s yard. “Good for glue!” No offence.’
The crowd of onlookers laughed in agreement. Breeda’s eyes prickled and she stole a glance towards the door, desperate to escape.
‘Myra, we’re not—’ Breeda tried to speak, but her throat was tight and dry, and her words were muffled by the din of the pub.
Someone shouted from the far end of the bar, ‘Speak up, Bree!’ Someone else yelled, ‘Speech! Speech!’
Breeda cleared her throat, and tried again, but it was Brian’s voice she heard. He had a hand raised and had turned to face the excited crowd. Someone from the main bar whistled, and a few lads started a rhythmic chant of ‘Bri-an, Bri-an, Bri-an.’ Breeda looked at the skirting board again. She pulled frantically at the damned ring, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Well, folks. There seems to have been a bit of a misunderstanding.’
He was struggling not to laugh. Breeda stared down at the splotches on her dress and tried to force a grin onto her own face, but her mouth felt on the point of collapse. Why hadn’t she just stayed home?
‘Yes, I’m sorry to say, but Breeda and myself are nothing more than friends. Absolutely nothing more.’ A murmur of disappointment rolled through the bar. ‘But if any woman is ever lucky enough to tie me down, then you’ll all be the first to hear about it.’
At this he gave Alex-from-the-Boston-office a squeeze on the shoulder, and the bar erupted in a cheer. The young woman slapped his hand away, but she did it playfully enough, and when Breeda looked up she could see that Alex-from-the-Boston-office was the sort of woman who’d never settle for a Thursday night curry and a fumble in the back of a Ford Fiesta.
Breeda risked a glance towards the crowd. One hundred faces beamed benevolently at Brian O’Dowd and his glamorous colleague. But when anyone met her own eye they looked slightly panicked, the smiles hanging for a split second, before they dropped their gaze. They were embarrassed for her; a sad, broken woman, trussed up like a Christmas turkey, a fool to be pitied. The entire village, unable to look her in the eye.
And just like that Breeda knew what she had to do.
‘Breeda, what in heavens are you playing at?’
Myra Finch was glaring at her with a furrowed brow of bewildered disappointment. The old woman was shaking her head and looking Breeda up and down, no doubt already embellishing a version of events for Nora Cullen about her delusional joke of a niece.
‘Bree, let’s go.’
Oona was gathering up their bags and jackets, a good friend in rescue mode. Breeda stood, wobbled. The tightness in her chest was now crushing its way up towards her skull. She needed to move. She needed to be alone. There wasn’t much time — the roaring numbness was on its way.
‘I’ll just pop to the loo, Oona. Give me a sec.’
Breeda swallowed down the guilt of the lie. She hoped Oona could forgive her in time, but there was no other way. She had to end it. Breeda smiled at Oona for a fleeting moment and tried to capture her best friend’s pale gaze and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. One final look. Oona deserved better than this. She deserved a proper goodbye.
Breeda set off for the ladies in the direction which avoided the main bar. And when she reached them she kept walking until she came to a small corner door. She exited out onto a cobbled side street, just as her shoulders began to shake and the tears began to trip down her cheeks. She would take the back streets. She wanted no witnesses for what she now must do.
Chapter 5
A crescent moon scythed through the thickening rain clouds and struggled to illuminate the deserted stone pier. The trawlers had gone out and now low waves lapped and chopped at the stone structure, empty pallets and discarded bits of rope peppering its length. Breeda stood in her bare feet. From her hand she dropped her shoes onto a thick coil of greenish rope as the wind picked up around her. Soft drops of cold rain had started to fleck her bare shoulders. She hugged herself against the chill and walked distractedly towards the end of the pier. She looked upwards and wished more than anything for a storm to rise up and smash everything to pieces.
Since leaving the pub the white noise in the back of Breeda’s skull had become louder and more insistent. Her brain felt clamped, her thoughts scrambled, and as she stood at the edge of the pier, she shut her eyes and tried to breathe life into it. For once Breeda was hungry for the blackness, keen to surrender herself fully to it. Her nails dug deep into the flesh of her upper arms as the noise continued to swarm and churn, raging and thundering through her tormented synapses. She sh
ifted the weight from her heels to her toes, her toes to her heels, and rocked rhythmically in the rain. Across the bay, Muckish mountain stood cold and impassive, and she watched a trail of mist streaming slowly down its side. The anxiety and panic and dread which shadowed Breeda — and which had been choking her with an increasingly tight grip since her mother’s passing — had now completely drained her. Well, it was welcome tonight. It could do its worst. Because Breeda Looney had no fight left.
Out of nowhere, Myra Finch’s words reared up and twisted in her gut, demanding to be heard once more:
Fit for the knacker’s yard.
The old woman was right. Nobody in this godforsaken hole was going to miss Breeda. In the murky depths of the black water below her, faces merged and swam before her. Those same people from the pub, witnessing her mortification, unable to look her in the eye.
Breeda shut her eyes against the elements and swallowed down the shame of it all. She could only imagine how fiercely disappointed her poor mother would be, looking down on her tonight. As Breeda stood there, lost and broken, she felt an urgency take hold of her mind. Her memory lurched back through the years, searching for a time when she hadn’t hidden behind her own four walls pretending that everything was perfectly fine; to a time when she didn’t sit on the sidelines while slowly dying from the inside out. She searched her battered brain, because if that Breeda ever existed, then there might just be a glimmer of hope, a breadcrumb to lead her back, to keep her in this world.
She held her breath and stood motionless in the biting wind, waiting. But she knew no trace of hope was coming. Instead a bitter taste of bile arose from her stomach and Breeda forced it back down. She opened her weary eyes. Beyond the pier the cold night stretched out in front of her, unpeopled and colorless. The sea air filled her nostrils, the shadowy darkness of the water continued its rhythmic swell, and for the second time that day, Breeda’s thoughts turned to her father.
She imagined Malachy Looney’s bones, brittle and bleached, and long ago picked off their flesh by countless fish, resting in a watery grave somewhere on the far side of the country. What would her father have thought of her, this awkward lump of a woman? Would he have been able to muster up some semblance of pride in his daughter? Would he have held her, and shushed her, and told her everything would be alright? She felt the engagement ring press into her upper arm, the one thing she had to connect Maggie and Mal, her Mam and Dad. Were they reunited now in some far-off realm? Content and fixed and forever young? She pressed the ring to her lips and allowed herself to believe that yes, yes they were.
Below her the water continued its surge and suck. Breeda watched, entranced. Just a few moments of struggle, she thought, and then utter, permanent peace. She stared up at the blackened sky, as if seeking permission from above. There was no other way. Looking down at the water again she felt fresh tears escape and mix with the spitting rain. As the finality of her decision settled over her, the chaos in her brain seemed to give up its fight, and she stood like a lone survivor in the deathly quiet eye of a storm. Breeda made the sign of the cross on her forehead one last time, then closed her eyes, and stepped forward.
Chapter 6
Nora wound down the window and wriggled her bottom on the cramped backseat of the car. A smell of damp dog hung in the air and she leaned towards the window – ignoring the light rain falling on her face – to inhale some cool night air. It was one of those impractical two-door cars, and now she regretted not getting out when she’d had the chance a moment ago. She struggled her hips a couple of inches into the air and extracted a naked Barbie from the gap between the seats. The doll’s blond hair was matted and at some stage a child had applied clumsy lipstick with a red felt tip. Nora tossed the disheveled Barbie onto the passenger seat in front of her, and then turned her attention to the life-size replica banging Breeda’s front door.
The lanky-limbed blonde shrink seemed to have a penchant for knocking on peoples’ doors at an ungodly hour. Only twenty minutes earlier, Nora had awoken to a racket at her own front door and had opened it to find Oona Mahon and her browbeaten husband stood on her doorstep. No doubt they’d woken up the whole of Nora’s street, and now Nora sighed and pulled her dressing gown tighter across herself. She’d have to conjure up something plausible for the neighbors tomorrow. She touched a hand delicately to the rollers in her hair. Control the narrative – isn’t that what they called it these days?
Nora squinted at her little wristwatch and then looked back at the front of Number One, Bayview Rise. All the curtains were drawn, and no hint of light seeped out from within. It was nearly midnight on a Thursday and Breeda Looney was obviously still out gallivanting somewhere. Nora couldn’t fathom why they were making such a fuss. The girl would turn up when she was good and ready. She dug out her mobile from her bag, ignored the two missed calls from Myra, and scrolled to Breeda’s number. As she pressed it against her ear she heard it ring out and click through to voicemail.
The husband was turning back to the car with a hangdog expression, and now, as he remembered Nora in the backseat, he attempted a friendly grimace in her direction. She’d noticed he’d been slowly retracing his steps, edging closer to the car, obviously keen to get to his bed. Now he stood equidistant between the house and the car, absentmindedly kicking the scuffed toe of his boot into the wet gravel driveway. He checked his watch discreetly but said nothing. It was clear who ruled the roost in that household.
And now next door’s light had come on. Nora peered through the drizzle to see the front door open and the Feeley man come out in a dressing gown and wellies. He came to stand with an umbrella over the blonde shrink and both of them were staring at the front of the house as if that alone could make Breeda appear from thin air. Nora cocked an ear to try to catch their words but could only hear a low mumble. The Feeley man’s excitable black Labrador had escaped from the open front door and bounded about their legs. At least someone was enjoying being out at this unholy hour. The blonde said something to the farmer, and then turned moodily towards the car.
At last, thought Nora.
The digital clock on the dashboard flicked over to 00:00. If she got to bed in the next twenty minutes she might still manage seven hours sleep. Not ideal. And she’d make sure to let Breeda know about it during their lunch at the golf club. As the Mahon couple climbed back into their messy car, Nora cast a glance back at the house. She’d already noticed a large patch of mildew on the driveway near the front door, and now she could see that the ridge of tiles on the roof needed to be re-pointed. It was a decent sized house, too big for Breeda. Nora thought of the uninterrupted views of the sea and the mountains from her late sister’s bedroom window. And then she found herself wondering how much the house would fetch in the current market.
The bedraggled blonde turned and rubbed an overfamiliar hand on Nora’s knee.
‘Don’t worry, Nora. I’m sure she’ll turn up shortly. You know Breeda.’
The Mahon woman turned back to click in her seatbelt, and Nora smoothed her dressing gown back over her now-damp knee. She shuffled in the cramped seat again, comfort eluding her, and tried to console herself with thoughts of her awaiting bed. As the car slowly reversed back along the driveway, the headlights caught the mizzle and wavered over the front of the deserted house. The car reached the cattle grid with a jolt, and the sudden violence startled Nora as her hand came to her heart. And as the reversing car continued to swing around onto the road, the headlights abandoned the front of the house and Nora couldn’t help but remember the promise she’d made to her dying sister. She found herself mouthing the start of a silent Hail Mary as she rubbed at the little crucifix at her neck.
Chapter 7
Breeda sat in darkness on the middle stair and waited until the sound of the car had faded, just leaving behind the insistent thrum of the rain outside. Her hand plucked at a tuft of carpet on the stair. She couldn’t face anyone. Oona would have turned on all the lights, and her pale blue eyes would have dr
illed into Breeda and made her talk about things she didn’t want to talk about – didn’t know how to talk about. A phone call and an apology in the morning would smooth things over. But for now Breeda listened to the rain on the roof, and rubbed distractedly at the raw skin on her bare ring finger. What on earth must Mad Paddy Byrne think of her?
She thought back to the stone pier. The man must have been watching her from the shadows, must have read her thoughts. Breeda hadn’t heard him stepping up behind her, but he’d grabbed her by the shoulders as she’d stepped forward to meet the sea. Her heart had jumped in her chest, before she’d turned and broken down in his arms, choking and snottering over the poor man’s tatty jacket. He’d made her put that same jacket on as he’d walked her home, respecting her silence, and allowing her to calm her breathing. Mad Paddy Byrne of no fixed abode: a man on the outskirts of society who would do odd jobs for a hot meal. He had saved her life.
At Breeda’s front door he’d searched her face for some sign — an unspoken pact — that she’d not do anything stupid. She’d nodded, and as he’d turned to walk off into the night she had watched his retreating back and swallowed down her shame. Here was someone dealt a bad hand in life, someone with something to complain about. Breeda had pulled urgently at the engagement ring, still clinging like a limpet to her wet finger, and chased after him.
‘Paddy, Paddy – would you take this?’
She’d held her hand out but looked at the ground, unable to meet his eye.
‘As a thank you … for …’
He’d looked down at what she was holding, then back at her face, a frown of confusion settling onto his weathered brow. Breeda had forced herself to look him in the eye.
‘It’s no use to me … maybe you could sell it?’
He’d softly closed her hand back over the ring, smiled, and given her a wink, before shuffling off with a hand raised in farewell.
