by Oliver Sands
‘You mean she’s still here, in Dunry?’
‘Right over there.’ Mrs O’Hanlon had stood and was pointing to the main road down into town, the one Breeda had driven down only two hours earlier. Breeda stood now too.
‘And who is she?’
‘Oh …’ Rita O’Hanlon chuckled to herself as Coco dropped the slobbery tennis ball at their feet. ‘I think her daughter was in your class. It’s Mrs Sneddon. Mrs Mona Sneddon.’
Chapter 23
Breeda cut the engine and slid off her seatbelt. She had never been this close to the Sneddon house before. As a kid, any time they’d driven past, she’d never failed to look up at it. She’d imagined a grand staircase, maybe a music room, most likely family breakfasts around a swimming pool out back, where a maid would bring freshly squeezed orange juice which no one would ever touch. It had been Southfork Ranch in her impressionable mind. But now, looking at it from the driveway as a weary adult, it was shrunken and tired and past its heyday. Like everything else in this godforsaken place.
Her hand hovered on the latch of the car door, but the thought of moving her body suddenly seemed like too much effort. She was aware of a dull thrum which had started up in her temple, a pulsing swoosh and suck. Everything was moving too fast. She took a deep breath, and stared at the front of the house again, a streak of rust below the overflow pipe, the bruises of moss under the sills.
Had her dad ever been here? Had he and old Mona Sneddon—
But she stopped herself, batting the thought from her mind before it became a visual which she couldn’t unsee.
Breeda slipped her phone from her pocket.
She swiped away the missed calls from Nora and opened her photo gallery. It was in her favorites folder, a copy of a photograph she’d once found in an old yellowing album. A total gem of a picture; not just for the rarity of having a photo of her Mam and Dad together, but because they looked so happy, so vibrant. Her Mam’s thirtieth birthday, the pair of them standing side by side at a tall table, an iced cake in front of them, a knife poised in her mother’s hand. Their eyes clear, their faces glowing, their whole lives ahead of them …or so they thought.
Breeda fingered in closer to their faces. Her dad’s green eyes, just like her own; his ever-so-gappy smile, just like her own. And her heart lifted when she looked at her mother, the slash of red on her lips, the dark eyes with the movie star confidence. Breeda zoomed in closer.
Where had all that confidence gone?
Where did this version of her mother fade to?
Did she know about him and—
The image vanished as the phone shook in Breeda’s hand. Nora’s name flashed up. Breeda rejected the call and yanked the door open. It was no wonder Nora had wanted to scupper Breeda’s – how had she put it – raking up the past? This was exactly what Nora had wanted to keep from her. That her parents’ marriage had been less than perfect, and that Mal Looney was a philandering bastard who should be cut out of their lives like a cancerous growth. Breeda walked to the front door and stood with her finger frozen at Mona Sneddon’s doorbell. She was getting accustomed to hesitating at Sneddon doorsteps recently. She sucked in some air and held it in her lungs. She had no clue as to what she was going to say.
Hi Mrs Sneddon. Is it true you and my Dad used to knock knees?
Up above her a magpie skittered along the guttering, its head a robotic twitch, the black eyes examining the stranger below. Breeda stared back, part of her hoping for advice.
Christ, things are bad when you need a bird to tell you what to do.
The magpie turned, the inky plumage on its wing shimmering cobalt for a fraction of a second. As it hopped further along the gutter, an old rhyme from her childhood played through Breeda’s mind.
One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for death, and four for birth
Five for silver, six for gold
And seven for a secret never to be—
The front door swung open. Breeda jumped back and raised her hand to her heart. Standing in the doorway, an old woman in a tatty cardigan stared back at her – the dark brown eyes unmistakably Sneddon. Behind her a young woman hurried up the hallway, all the while looking at Breeda warily.
‘Who is it, Mrs Sneddon?’ The young woman had finished drying her hands on a tea-towel, and now had a protective arm around Mona Sneddon’s shoulder. Was that an accent Breeda could hear? Polish? Czech?
‘Oh, hello!’ Breeda looked from one woman to the other. ‘My name’s Breeda–’. She held back the surname, not yet ready to surrender it. ‘I was hoping to have a quick word with Mrs Sneddon?’
Tea-towel woman squinted out at the car and its Donegal number plate, and then frowned back at the stranger before her.
‘Mrs Sneddon is about to have nap. She – we not expect anyone …’
‘Oh, it’ll only take a minute. I’m a friend of her daughter’s…’ Breeda felt a squirt of hot bile threaten to rise at the lie.
The woman leaned into the silence, her eyes narrowed, a password needed.
‘Dervil. I went to school with Dervil.’
At this the woman’s face softened somewhat.
Mona Sneddon lurched forward, grabbed onto Breeda’s forearm, and started guiding her into the hallway.
‘Dervil’s my daughter. She lives in Australia.’
‘Is that right, Mrs Sneddon?’ Breeda smiled at the home help, who had stood back to let her pass.
‘Five minutes. Then she need rest.’
Breeda nodded a silent thank you in reply.
Mrs Sneddon continued, as she led Breeda into the living room, ‘I’m going to live with Dervil. In Australia.’
The home help shook her head, winked at Breeda, then walked down the hallway to the kitchen out back, mumbling something in her mother tongue. Mona Sneddon coaxed herself and Breeda onto a large pink settee, too many throw cushions, not enough arse space. Breeda nudged a cushion out of the way with her elbow. In the corner a TV showed an advert for incontinence pads. Breeda pointed the remote and muted it and then glanced around the room. The walls wore a silver-patterned wallpaper – all reflective fleur-de-lis and over-busy border – and had redundant nails protruding on either side of the chimney breast. The taken-down pictures stood stacked at an angle against the far wall. One of the pictures was jutting out from the stack and was facing back into the room. It was a framed family photograph. Mr and Mrs Sneddon standing proudly in their Sunday best, a teenage version of Dervil, chesty and older than Breeda had known her, her gangly legs disappearing out of view into the collection of picture frames to her right. And – Breeda cocked her head – a slice of someone else. She squinted and leaned forward for a closer look.
‘I’m going to have my own room.’
Breeda turned back to the old lady, whose hand, mottled with sun damage, was tenderly stroking her arm.
‘And I’ll have all my pictures, and my good chair to sit in, and my knitting.’
‘That sounds lovely, Mrs Sneddon.’
The clatter of a dropped pan lid came through from the kitchen. The old lady’s eyes flicked over to the TV screen.
‘Listen, Mrs Sneddon. My name is Breeda. Breeda Looney …’
The side of Mona Sneddon’s face didn’t twitch. Nothing.
‘I think you maybe knew – know – my father?’
The papery hand continued to stroke Breeda’s sleeve.
‘Mal. Mal Looney.’
The fingers jumped, almost imperceptibly, but Breeda felt it, a speed bump on her denim sleeve. The woman’s brown eyes didn’t leave the television screen.
‘Did you know him, Mona? Mal Looney? I really need to get in touch with him?’
The old woman had closed her eyes now and turned her face slightly towards the window and the mid-afternoon sunlight. A song was humming gently on her lips, and her body swayed, lost in thought. Breeda looked down at her jacket sleeve, the frail fingers stroking once more. She patted Mona’s hand into submission and the humming
stopped. She tried again.
‘Do you know Mal Looney, Mona?’ The words came out louder than Breeda had intended. Mrs Sneddon turned and pulled back her hand. She stared at Breeda with wide eyes.
‘Lemonade! Would you like a glass of lemonade?!’ Mona had shimmied herself off the settee, and now stood beaming proudly at Breeda from the door.
‘Dervil loves lemonade. But we always brush our teeth afterwards!’ She winked at Breeda, then smacked her lips, both coquettish and disturbing for someone in her seventies. She turned and disappeared off to the kitchen.
Breeda allowed her body to sag back into the fussy cushions for a moment, tipped her weary head back, and let her eyes rove the painted ceiling whorls overhead. In the momentary silence she found herself wondering if Dervil’s childhood bedroom was on the other side of that ceiling; if up there was where Dervil had diligently written party invitations to everyone in their class – everyone apart from Breeda. She wondered if young Dervil had lain up there at night, planning Breeda’s demise. And for the first time she pondered if Dervil’s abject loathing of her had been due to a long-ago affair between one Mona Sneddon and one Malachy Looney.
A muffled argument came through from the kitchen. The home help was attempting to soothe Mona, but Mona seemed to have switched into truculent toddler mode and wouldn’t be appeased. Drawers were being tugged and slammed. Cupboard doors were banging. Footsteps hurried down the hallway and Breeda pushed herself up off the cushions. The living room door opened, and the home help stood looking harried.
‘Sorry, you have to go. Too excited. Too excited.’
Breeda hopped to her feet just as something glass smashed out the back.
‘Of course. I’m so sorry. I hope—’
The woman shook her head, the front door already opened for the unplanned guest. ‘Not your fault. Just too much excited.’
‘OK, I’m sorry.’ Breeda stood outside on the doorstep as the woman rushed back down the hallway towards Mona and her mayhem. In the dull light, at the back of the house, Breeda could just make out Mona, shaking a book by its spine, a cat throttling a sparrow. Breeda took a final glance at the old woman, then pulled the front door quietly, and turned with a sigh.
She stood with her hand on the car door and turned to survey the houses and streets of Dunry town down below her, one last time. Across the valley she could see the convent grounds where Rita O’Hanlon had sat with her only an hour ago and given her a surge of hope. Breeda sighed. A dismal realization was distilling in the atmosphere above her. She closed her eyes, and gave into it, letting it slowly condense and enfold her. There was nothing more to be done. It was time to go home and get on with whatever semblance of life she had left.
Climbing into the car, her bones suddenly heavy, Breeda felt drugged by the stifling air inside, stale and fuggy from the afternoon sun. She started the engine and lowered her window, her tyres crackling on the gravel driveway as she pulled away. If the roads were clear she should be home by six-thirty, in plenty of time for a glass of wine and a cuddle with Ginger on the back step. But then – like a punch to her gut – Breeda remembered she had no home. No more sundowners on the back step, no more eye rolls at Finbarr’s clattering on the roof, no more view of the bay and the pier and majestic Muckish mountain in the distance. Nora’s box room awaited.
Something in the rear-view mirror caught her eye. Breeda braked and stuck her head out the window. Mona Sneddon was chasing the car, her stick-thin legs driving her forward with wild abandon. Trailing behind Mona, the frazzled home help was calling her back, and struggling to keep up. Breeda unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to open the car door, but in the side mirror she saw Mona’s approaching face, agitated, flushed and crazy-eyed. The woman had her arm aloft and was shouting something after the car. Had Breeda upset her? Breeda leaned away from the open window, too late to close it, and prepared herself for an incoming slap.
‘M.L.!’
Breeda cracked open an eye. Mona stood there panting, a strand of grey hair wet on her forehead. She was thrusting something through the open window at Breeda, nodding excitedly for her to take it.
‘M.L.!’, she repeated, a wheeze coming up from her lungs.
Breeda took a postcard from Mona’s scrawny hand. She squinted at the writing on the back.
In the top corner was an address - Hartland Road, Camden, London – and a phone number. As the home help reached them, out of breath too, Breeda read on.
Dear M.
New place is decent. Hope to be here for a while.
Come visit me soon?
M.L. xx
Breeda flipped the postcard. A landscape of buildings she knew by sight, but not by name. A view she’d probably seen on telly once. She turned the card again.
A view over London from Primrose Hill.
Breeda made a frantic rummage in her handbag for the folded envelope from the birthday card. She held it and the postcard side-by-side, her hands trembling. The handwriting was a perfect match. Breeda’s vision blurred and when she pulled her eyes away she found Mona Sneddon looking back at her, as pleased as punch.
‘M L?’
A fat tear escaped Breeda’s eye, as she grabbed the old lady’s hand and rubbed its papery mottles in gratitude.
‘M L, Mona,’ she nodded. ‘M L.’
Chapter 24
The tide had ebbed far out, and the rippled sand it left behind shone warm and golden under Breeda’s bare feet. She hadn’t meant to come here. She hadn’t even thought of the place. But after leaving Mona Sneddon’s, Breeda had found herself heading south, instead of northwest back to Carrickross. And she had kept driving, until she saw signs with a place name she’d not seen in decades.
Breeda raised a hand to her brow and looked out beyond the shoreline. A thin grey cloud hung on the distant horizon and she played with the notion it was the coastline of England. She lifted Mona Sneddon’s postcard to her face and inhaled the slightly musky scent. Mal Looney was across there somewhere and his only child was going to find him and make things right.
She closed her eyes for a second, a smile playing over her face, as she pictured her younger self, sitting proudly atop her Dad’s shoulders.
‘Who’s the apple of my eye?’ he’d shout up to her, as they’d strolled this very beach.
‘I am!’ she’d squeal, knowing what was coming.
‘Who?’
‘Me! Breeda Looney!’
She’d pummel his chest playfully with the back of her bare sandy feet until he’d bite a chunk out of an imaginary apple, and then toss it up to her to take a bite too. Young Breeda had felt invincible up there on Mal Looney’s shoulders, queen of the world, safe and loved.
She turned and strolled slowly back in the direction of her car. The beach was hers this afternoon, utterly deserted but for a few hunkering seagulls which grumbled out of her way as she cut through them. Scanning the grassy dunes off to her right she wondered if the caravan park still existed back there on the other side. She thought of the little yellow caravan they’d owned back in the day, the thick brown stripe around the middle, so very seventies. It had been simple and basic, a perfect little getaway for school holidays and long summers. There was never a need to go abroad – not that you’d ever get Mal Looney on a plane — flying was an accident waiting to happen, he’d always said. Breeda took in a deep lungful of air and let the memories wash over her. Near the caravan had been the toilet block where a seven-year-old Breeda had got stuck in the cubicle with the stiff bolt. Too timid to bang on the door she’d instead waited quietly until her dad had come searching for her hours later. And further along there’d been the old amusements with the breakneck waltzer and the penny arcade. And the red-roofed sweetie shop where Breeda and the wee girl from the caravan two doors up (Maura? Moira?) would blow their winnings from the one-armed bandits on white chocolate mice and sherbet dips.
Those few summers Breeda and her parents had come here had allowed her to run free, to be a bog-standard kid. The
ir modest little caravan and this sweeping beach were only an hour south of Dunry now, but back then – before the motorway was built – it had seemed to take most of a day to get here. She remembered the feeling of excitement building in the car as they got closer until Breeda would squeal and clap at the sight of the little red roof of the sweetie shop. But then, all of a sudden, those visits to the beach had come to an abrupt end.
Breeda reached her car and turned to regard the strand one last time. This place, just like Dunry, had long ago been swept under a rug by her mother and Nora. After Mal had died, when they’d started afresh on the other side of the country in Carrickross, both places – Dunry and the strand – had been shoehorned clumsily into Breeda’s past and labelled taboo. But now, looking at the golden sand stretching out in front of her, Breeda felt a futile sense of yearning. She was hungry for an alternate past, the one from which she hadn’t been unfairly wrenched, the one where she hadn’t been lied to, the one where she hadn’t been denied her father.
Her mother never spoke of the incident, and back then young Breeda had known better than to ask her. She’d pieced it together, nonetheless. In the cold, sleety, post-Christmas days, following Mal’s death, Breeda had overheard the odd snippet from neighbors. The rumors that he’d had a few drinks, that he’d been spotted wading into the bitterly cold waters at last light, that the car had been left unlocked at the top of this very strand, his licence discarded on the driver’s seat.
She could feel a hardness setting into her face now, a belligerent little fist pounding in her ribcage. An anger was inside her, dormant no longer, and she was going to coax its flames and let its roar guide her forward. She thought of Nora’s dramatic seething, back at the graveyard. Pathetic, in hindsight. Nora’s anger was fake, built on a crumbling bedrock of concerns for reputation and worries about tittle-tattle from behind twitching net curtains. This anger that Breeda was feeling, here and now, was different – it was justified. A man had been forced into exile for a dalliance with a local woman, and a young girl had been denied her father. Someone was going to have to pay for this.
