The Beach at Doonshean

by Penny Feeny

  What was she supposed to say to this? Was it foolish not to have realised she might set tongues wagging?

  ‘You probably wondered how it came to be there, the plaque, I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Teresa launched in. ‘It was put up by the Farrellys, Patrick and Veronica. They used to own the land, you see. They’ve sold it since to the parish to extend the burial ground. They’re old friends of ours. Ronnie’s a good Catholic. Pat, well to be honest, for a long time he didn’t go to Mass but just now he’s been persuaded again. Illness concentrates the mind.’

  The mobile slipped a little in Julia’s hand, still wet from the tap. She tightened her grip, said again, ‘Yes.’

  There was a long interval. Had Teresa rung off? No; after more throat-clearing she was back. ‘I didn’t know what to do for the best. I’ve been turning it over and over. Will she want to know? Will I say something, will I not…’

  Julia tried to compose herself. The woman was well meaning; she shouldn’t leave her to flounder. ‘I’m afraid that first visit was a total blur for me,’ she said. ‘People were very kind but I couldn’t focus on anything. I don’t remember who anyone was.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave you in ignorance,’ said Teresa. ‘I have to tell you that the Farrelly boys are home for their father’s birthday.’

  The wooden spindles of the chair were digging into Julia’s back. She held herself erect and wondered whether this was a situation she had invited.

  ‘The boys?’

  ‘Tom Farrelly was the little lad your husband rescued.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Julia had observed that there was nothing harder to cope with than the death of a child. The mother’s pain at the loss of her son would have been more profound than Matt’s at the loss of the father he scarcely remembered – though how could pain be evaluated, parcelled up and weighed on scales to show whose was heavier?

  ‘There’s to be a party,’ said Teresa. ‘Celebrating Pat’s recovery also. From the cancer. You should know that I’ve just spoken to Ronnie…’ There was an edge of desperation in her voice. ‘I told her you were here and she feels, in the circumstances, since you are visiting and so forth, that you should be a guest.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ said Julia. ‘But it really isn’t necessary…’

  ‘It’s tomorrow night,’ said Teresa. ‘His actual birthday. The way it goes is this. First the family have their dinner in the hotel and then they join their guests in the function room for a bit of a ceilidh. Music and dancing and so forth. It’s not a formal occasion at all and they would be more than happy to see you. Give it a little thought, why don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ This was unfamiliar territory for Julia. She was usually the person giving patient explanation; the bewildered parents were the ones stunned into monosyllabic response. She had no intention of going to any party and there wasn’t a single thing she could think to say to Teresa except, ‘Goodbye.’

  Which made it all the more ironic that Bel should totter sleepily into the living room with the purple shawl around her shoulders and ask: ‘Whoever were you talking to?’ as if she’d been having a raucous conversation.

  She nestled her phone inside its cover. ‘I had a call from the landlady, that’s all.’ She would explain later, when she’d been able to mull everything over. ‘You look like a character out of Dickens, darling.’

  Bel warmed herself by the fire, then raised her head and spotted the glow of yellow on the draining board. ‘Hey, has someone been bringing you flowers?’

  Julia was glad to steer away from Teresa’s news. ‘Actually they’re for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Who?’ Bel seized the bunch and scrabbled amongst the stems in search of a card. She didn’t find one, but Julia noticed the movements of her left arm were not as fluid as her right.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you’d hurt yourself.’

  ‘Oh… it was nothing. I got my arm trapped in a door, bruised it a bit. I did ask you for painkillers, remember?’

  ‘You said they were for a headache.’

  Bel blushed. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. It wasn’t exactly a lie. It’s just… I feel as if I’m forever having to give an account of myself. And I know you’ve been worrying about me – and I’ve been worrying about you too, which I guess makes us quits – but anyway, I’m fine. There’s no real damage.’ In disappointment, she added, ‘I can’t find a note. Was there any message?’

  ‘I’m to tell you that Kieran was asking after you.’

  ‘Kieran!’ Bel shook her head and laughed. ‘What a tease.’

  ‘Isn’t he the man you went out with?’

  ‘No Mum, that’s his brother. Tom’s, like, a total idiot, always winding people up. They look quite alike you see and when I first met them I got them muddled because Tom had borrowed Kieran’s jacket.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Julia. ‘How can you be so sure it wasn’t Kieran?’

  ‘Because he wasn’t the one who called for me yesterday. And because he’s gay, I think.’ She cradled the sheaf of tulips and their heads drooped gracefully. ‘Did you ask him in?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. I don’t know what he’s playing at. I suppose these are, like, an apology.’

  ‘For what? Did he trap your arm in the door?’

  ‘He didn’t mean to,’ said Bel quickly. ‘It was an accident. The thing is, it was quite tricky yesterday because Clemmie, his daughter, hadn’t met her grandparents before and then there’s the race issue. I’m not saying his mother’s a racist but it was quite a shock for her. I think my role was to defuse things but I probably made them worse and then we ended with this embarrassing scene when he invited me – and she had to agree – to some kind of get-together tomorrow night. A birthday party and—’

  ‘A birthday party?’

  ‘Yeah. I’d pretty much decided not to go. Only he can be quite persistent, so perhaps this is an… inducement.’

  The chill from the stone floor seeped through the thickly woven rug, through the rubber soles of her deck shoes and crept along Julia’s veins. Flickers and snatches of information coalesced and multiplied in her brain. ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ‘Who? Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Tom what?’

  ‘Oh, Farrelly. Tom Farrelly.’

  Another smattering of rain at the window, the sighing of peat in the hearth; otherwise the silence was thick and dense as fog. Julia had to fight it to speak.

  ‘It is him. How extraordinary. We’ve actually met…’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know how I feel about that.’

  ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’

  Unsteady on her feet, Julia jogged the laptop on the table and its screen sprang back into life. In a continuous loop, the slide show repeated its sequence of shots. Waves swelled and burst into foam, the sun rose and dipped, chains of seaweed glittered like necklaces bedecked with fat jewels, footprints in the sand disappeared from one frame to the next. Neither Bel nor Julia spoke as the images played out in front of them.

  Eventually Julia sat down again. ‘I have just learned from Teresa Hogan,’ she said, ‘that Tom Farrelly was the name of the boy who nearly drowned here thirty years ago.’

  ‘The one Matt’s dad…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he’s the same one I know?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  Bel stepped back, sat in the chair nearest the fire and let the flowers spill across her chest. No longer Little Dorrit, but a dramatic Ophelia. She rubbed her eyes vigorously as if things might look different afterwards. The effect was to turn the whites pink and raw.

  ‘I don’t believe it! You’re kidding me!’

  ‘Bel,’ said Julia quietly. ‘Why would I do that?’

  She looked anguished. ‘He never said anything.’

  ‘Why would he? People don’t generally go around telling
you they almost died.’ (Well, Bel did, but only because it was so recent.)

  ‘Don’t you see how weird this is?’

  ‘Yes of course I do! Though I suppose I must have realised it might be a possibility. Coming across the family, I mean. This is a small place where everyone knows their neighbours. Teresa Hogan especially.’

  But Bel was on a different track. She played with the fringed ends of the shawl, plaiting and twisting the threads. ‘The really freaky thing,’ she said, ‘is that if Matt’s dad…’ (could she not bring herself to say William’s name?) ‘…hadn’t come to Tom’s rescue, then neither of us would be here today. Instead of which we’ve both met each other and…’

  Julia didn’t want to know about the ‘and’. The facts were leaping ahead of her. She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to recapture the brief moment the young man’s hand had touched hers.

  Bel continued to burble. ‘To think that I came across Tom on the boat when he could have been anybody! This has to be more than coincidence, doesn’t it? It must be Fate or something.’

  ‘I’m never surprised by coincidence,’ said Julia. ‘It’s much more common than you imagine, but I don’t believe in Fate.’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ Bel came to stand over her, bent her head down until their cheeks were touching, a single tear (Julia’s) squeezing into a gap below the bone. ‘I’m sorry. Is this really traumatic for you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Julia truthfully. ‘He seemed a pleasant young man. Sensitive. Considerate. It was nice of him to bring you the flowers.’ Bel didn’t respond so she went on, ‘To be honest, it’s hard to know how to react. It happened a long time ago and I’ve managed to work through the grief, but… it’s not just the personal loss one has to deal with. There’s the wasted potential. The waste of a life, I mean. What William could have gone on and achieved.’

  ‘Like a cure for cancer or something?’

  ‘You just cling to the hope that something good will come out of the sacrifice.’

  ‘Oh God, Mum, you make it sound like everyone’s duty-bound to fulfil their potential.’

  ‘Well, yes I suppose… in an ideal world…’

  ‘That’s an awful obligation.’ Bel was biting her lip and still twiddling the ends of the shawl. ‘It doesn’t necessarily work that way. I mean, we can’t all of us live up to expectations.’

  ‘Darling, whatever makes you think I’m getting at you?’ Julia could remember, from her own distant past, when she and her friends had experimented with purloined substances from the chemistry labs and shocked the neighbours, the lament of an older generation: ‘We fought a war for you lot, you know. Good men died.’ And how, with the careless arrogance of youth, they had brushed this reproof aside, the war already an irrelevance.

  Bel said, ‘I wasn’t talking about me.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Nobody special. It’s just… it makes you seem so unforgiving.’

  Julia considered this. ‘I don’t see how anyone who spent twenty years married to Leo Wentworth could be described as unforgiving.’

  Their eyes met and they both laughed. Bel reached to clasp her mother’s hand. ‘It’s okay, I won’t see Tom again. His life’s complicated enough and I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset you…’

  ‘What about the party?’

  ‘I don’t even know why he suggested it. I’m not bothered. I’d rather do something with you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Julia, ‘I’ve been invited too.’

  21

  The Visit

  Ronnie had scarcely slept; her mind was in such turmoil. She had found the child a candy-striped duvet and tucked her into Nuala’s old bed because, however obliging the McCauleys might be, they were not family. Ronnie couldn’t be certain the child was family either – what proof did she have? – but she knew well enough how to conduct herself. Until there was clarity in the matter no one would be able to say she hadn’t been dignified in her behaviour, shown loyalty to her son.

  On Wednesday morning she gave the girl a plentiful breakfast of sausages and bacon rashers. She let her fondle the dog. JP was not usually welcoming of strangers, so it was possible that he scented some Farrelly blood, but Ronnie was wary of making an inference. ‘It’s good that you’re not scared,’ she said. ‘Do you have a dog at home?’

  ‘No,’ said Clemmie with a profound sigh. ‘I want a dog but we haven’t any room and Mummy’s too busy to take him for walks.’

  ‘You poor thing,’ said Ronnie, thinking how dreadful it would be to step out of your house and see nothing but tall buildings and pavements and traffic all around. Her life wasn’t easy but at least she had her own sweet air to breathe. And on a sunny day when the hedgerows were aflame with the scarlet of the fuchsia and the gold of montbretia, the sight never failed to dazzle her.

  Kieran had gone out on some mysterious errand, before helping his brother-in-law with the fencing; Pat was not yet up. While Clemmie and Tom raced around the yard, throwing sticks for JP in the rain, Ronnie answered a call from Teresa Hogan.

  ‘Teresa! I was about to ring you myself.’

  ‘Well I have some news for you,’ said Teresa. ‘You remember I told you about the English doctor who was staying? And how I had an idea she might be your man’s widow? Well, I checked through the press cuttings with Mary and Breda and they agree. There’s no doubt at all now.’

  Ronnie closed her eyes. She had no wish to relive that nightmare period but she could see it unscrolling in her brain like a reel of Technicolor film. She’d been out on the tractor because getting in the silage was a trial at the best of times and you had to seize the dry days when they came. At the sight of her neighbours’ frantic semaphoring, her thoughts had flown at once to Tom. She’d supposed at first he’d been run down: some stupid feckin’ drunken bastard taking the bend wide, on the wrong side of the road, would have ploughed into his skipping legs so the boy rose into the air like an angel, like he was flying.

  But no: the children were on the beach. Tom had been dipping his net into rock pools, prising the green translucent shrimps from their hiding places when the tide turned and the wind got up. Back in those days, very few of the locals learned how to swim. In fact it was unlikely anyone who knew the habits of the sea would have gone after him. It would have been madness to race across the sand, shed jacket and shoes and plunge into the turbulent water, thinking only to help a child in difficulty. The madness that takes a stranger.

  ‘Sweet Mother of God,’ said Ronnie. ‘Why? Why did she come?’

  ‘Who knows? A pilgrimage into the past? Seeking closure perhaps? I wouldn’t have said a word but for the fact that your Tom is here also. It’s an opportunity for their paths to cross.’

  Ronnie gazed out into the yard. The rain was coming down more heavily but Tom was cavorting in imitation of the dog with a wild grin on his face. A free spirit, she thought fondly. The little girl was giggling and clapping her hands and stamping in puddles.

  ‘Are you saying we should invite her tomorrow night?’ she said. ‘I suppose it will be easier to meet while there’s a gathering.’

  ‘That’s an excellent notion,’ said Teresa. ‘You’d want to be hospitable. Your boys are both such handsome fellows and don’t the women always fall for Tom’s charm?’

  ‘Will you ask her then, on our behalf? It may be better for you to make the introductions.’

  ‘I will, no problem.’

  ‘She won’t turn us down?’ said Ronnie anxiously. ‘Only I tried to thank her at the inquest and she looked straight through me as if I wasn’t there. Or as if she hated me.’

  ‘Sure, she’s a pleasant person,’ said Teresa. ‘She wouldn’t be the sort to bear a grudge after all this time. I’ll get on to it right away. Will I ring you back when I’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Ronnie. ‘I was thinking of calling over to you myself, in about an hour or so. If you’re going to be in?’


  ‘I’ll make a point of it.’

  ‘I have something to show you.’

  Although the prospect of the Englishwoman was a little unnerving, it wasn’t worth dwelling on. Ronnie couldn’t imagine anything that would eclipse the appearance of Clemmie. She stood in the boot room and called for the child to come inside.

  ‘Look at the both of you!’ she exclaimed. ‘All wet and bedraggled. Worse than JP.’

  ‘We was having fun,’ said Clemmie.

  ‘I’ll have to put you in the bath again. We’re going out.’

  She would make her as presentable as she could. She had calculated that there’d be no need to parade her around the neighbours once Teresa had been informed. She wanted their reactions under control before the child was seen at the party and Teresa would be her most efficient conduit. She’d concocted the plan last night. (And run it past Anna and Nuala who agreed, though they hadn’t shown much sympathy. ‘Why are you even surprised?’ they’d said.)

  Clemmie said, ‘Is Daddy coming with us?’

  Tom kicked off his shoes. His shirt was clinging to his chest and, like Clemmie’s, his curls had tightened in the damp. ‘No,’ said Ronnie. ‘He’s staying here with Pat. He doesn’t need to be with us.’

  He cocked an eyebrow. ‘What are you planning?’

  ‘A trip to Teresa’s.’

  ‘Hah! I get you. A conspiracy of the good women of the Dingle peninsula. Head them off at the pass.’

  ‘Tom, you have flung us into this. We have to find a way of handling tomorrow night. Teresa will help out.’

  His anger flared, but she knew it would soon expire, like the striking of a match. ‘It never lets up, the gossip!’

  ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘Kath and Sean were fine.’

  A pair of hippies. ‘They’re nearer your generation than mine. And as it happens we’ve had plenty else to talk about since the money troubles began. Not just yourself.’

  ‘And my grand little girl,’ he said, tickling Clemmie under the armpits until she squealed. To make her squeal even more, he shook his hair like a dog so drops flew about in a rain burst.