The Beach at Doonshean

by Penny Feeny

  He said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Dan had a swimming lesson. We went back to Emma’s after. I could say the same to you. I mean, you scooted off ages ago to look for that wretched girl – at least, that’s what you said—’

  ‘You could have texted me.’

  ‘You could have texted me.’

  ‘Children,’ said Leo from the doorway. ‘Please.’

  Matt scowled until he moved off and they could hear the creak of the stairs under his tread.

  Danny was bouncing his swimming bag on his back. ‘Can I have an ice cream?’

  Usually his parents would both jump to attention when he made a request, but on this occasion they ignored him. Matt was aware of his son wavering, then crossing the room to the freezer, opening a box of Cornettos and selecting one, half expecting with each advance to be told No! grazing is bad for you. Dan, becoming bolder, dropped the Cornetto wrapper in the bin and sauntered through the gap between his parents, even though he knew well Rachael’s rule about not eating in front of the television. If he expected a veto, none came. Matt watched him go, waited.

  Rachael hadn’t lost her high colour; her eyes seemed magnified and he understood why when a tear spilled down her cheek.

  ‘Rach, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, Matt… I’m sorry, there’s something I should have told you.’

  30

  The Hospital

  The road swooped away from the coast, dipped beneath an arching tunnel of hawthorn, rose to cross the hills to Tralee. This trip had not been on the agenda. Bel and her mother should have been packing up today, dropping off the hire car and taking the ferry home – that was their original plan. But yesterday morning, when Julia had squelched back into the cottage and changed out of her wet clothes and dried her hair, Bel had confronted her.

  ‘We can’t just leave,’ she’d said. ‘Not until we know if Tom and Clemmie are going to be all right. We’ve nothing to get back for and it’s a bank holiday on Monday anyway. I’m sure Teresa will let us stay. She’s no one else coming in. So you must see, Mum, that we can’t run out now.’

  Julia hadn’t argued. She’d been surprisingly meek, shivering so much that Bel had added more peat to the fire and thought briefly how the tables had turned and how she was the person in good health for a change. It didn’t make up for the horror of the accident, but it enabled her to take command while Julia put on an extra cardigan and nursed her mug of tea, staring at the curls of smoke as if they were spelling out messages from another world.

  Julia had drawn the line at going to Tralee herself. ‘Can’t you find someone else to take you, darling?’

  Bel understood completely that her mother would find it hard to visit Tom as a patient, or to refrain from asking the staff technical questions. But it turned out this wasn’t the stumbling block.

  ‘It must seem absurd,’ she’d said, ‘for a doctor to have difficulty entering a hospital. It’s just that particular hospital…’ there came a long pause ‘…was where they took William… Where I had to identify him.’

  ‘Oh God, Mum, I’m so sorry. How stupid of me. I wasn’t thinking.’

  And so it was arranged that Kieran would drive her; he was going himself anyway.

  He picked her up at the top of the track with a sombre expression on his face, and they travelled for several miles in silence. Beyond the car windscreen, clouds danced on the hilltops and everything sparkled – the sun on the ocean, the dew on the clover – but Kieran’s hands were clenched on the wheel and his shoulders were hunched under an invisible weight. It was exactly a week, Bel realised, since she’d travelled down to Kerry with the Farrelly brothers. A different Saturday. A different journey. There’d been some fraught moments, true, but they’d made it more intriguing for her, whetted her appetite. It had been fun. The four of them had laughed a lot. One week on there was nothing to laugh about.

  Against her nature, she was forcing herself not to ask questions – there wouldn’t be answers to half of them anyhow – but she couldn’t keep quiet for the entire journey and after a while she ventured: ‘Will your mother be there?’

  Kieran seemed to be relieved she’d spoken, as if it eased the atmosphere. ‘Probably, yes. She stayed last night with a friend. She was in the habit of it when my dad used to have to go in regularly for treatment.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I’d forgotten that. She’s not going to want to see me though, is she? She must think I’m nothing but a nuisance.’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a shrug that brought his shoulders even higher around his ears. ‘It’s true she sometimes has a problem seeing things in proportion. She’s unlikely to think any girl good enough for our Tom.’

  ‘And you too?’

  ‘I’m not sure she has the same expectations.’

  ‘Well if my mother had never come here,’ she muttered, ‘you can’t deny you’d have been a lot better off.’

  She was surprised when Kieran turned his head – he’d been fixed on the road in front of them until now. ‘I’m glad she did,’ he said.

  ‘For real? After all that’s happened?’

  He was closing on an ambling tractor. He revved and overtook it deftly. A carrion crow lay squashed on the tarmac, one black wing raised stiffly in salute; he sailed over its corpse. ‘We’re in a terrible mess,’ he said. ‘Tom has taken too many chances, too often. All I’m saying is I’m glad I met you. None of this is your fault.’

  This caused a brief flutter of pleasure, then a pang of guilt. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Sure it is.’

  ‘I spoke to my brother,’ she said. ‘The day of the party. He warned me it was a bad idea and I should have listened to him. I made out that Mum was keen, but actually she wasn’t. She was really apprehensive. I had to persuade her to come, that we would all benefit. Except the opposite happened. So you see, it is my fault.’

  ‘We’re adults,’ said Kieran. ‘We can make up our own minds. You can’t be taking the blame for other people behaving badly.’

  Adults perhaps, thought Bel, but it was a child who was caught in the crossfire. ‘So tell me,’ she said, as he swept around a treacherous bend. ‘How is Clemmie doing?’

  She’d already learned that they were keeping the child under observation, but she was afraid the information might be incomplete. She knew that was what Julia did sometimes. There were patients who couldn’t take in everything at once. You had to lead them gently forwards, building up a worst-case scenario. As the brain processed each grim morsel, it was better equipped to take in the next piece of bad news.

  ‘They think she’ll be fine,’ said Kieran. ‘She has nothing broken, no serious injuries. Tom had strapped her in so she was well protected. Shame he didn’t do the same for himself.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt?’

  ‘Feckin’ eejit. At least the airbag worked and cushioned the impact, but it couldn’t prevent the head injury. God knows what he was thinking and I doubt he’ll ever be able to tell us.’

  Bile rose in her gullet. ‘He’ll come out of the coma, won’t he?’

  ‘We hope so, of course. But if and when he does come round he’s not likely to recall a thing, one way or the other. The crash would have taken place in seconds.’

  Bel had had plenty of time recently to ponder the fragility of life, the speed with which it could be put under threat. For weeks she’d been saying to herself: when this is over, when I get back on my feet. Now she wondered whether there wasn’t always going to be some lurking disaster waiting to unfold. Why worry about not having any money or love life or work when it was a major achievement just to stay alive?

  When Kieran finally pulled into the hospital car park and cut the engine he didn’t seem to be able to detach himself from the steering wheel. He leaned across it, taking deep breaths. Tentatively Bel touched his arm. He roused himself and gave her an enigmatic look. ‘Ready then?’

  ‘Yes. I’m ready.’

  ‘You
know they might not let us see him?’

  ‘I’m here for Clemmie too,’ said Bel. ‘Poor little thing. I really ought to get her something.’ They were passing the shop at the entrance and she dived inside. She should have thought of a gift before – although most of the fruit she’d been given during her own convalescence had gone mouldy; the bouquets had withered.

  Kieran waited while she bought a box of Maltesers, but she stumbled on her way out of the shop and he grabbed her elbow to steady her. The bruising was not as painful as it had been, but she couldn’t control a wince. He snatched his hand back and shifted away from her before she could explain the reason. My arm still hurts, was all she’d needed to say, but now it was too late and he was striding ahead. He’d said he was glad that he’d met her, hadn’t he? Which was a lovely thing to hear. And he’d given her flowers. He must think she was so ungrateful. Oh why did she always have to cock things up?

  He noticed she was dawdling and stopped. ‘Having second thoughts?’ he said.

  ‘I am a bit… yeah.’ He was giving her a let-out. And there was no denying an association of dread. Like school. Like the dentist. Like that very scary little aeroplane in which she’d flown from Khartoum.

  ‘You don’t have to come. No one will think the worse of you.’

  ‘I’m fine. I mean, grand. I’m coming.’

  Tom lay like a creature in an experiment, connected to drips, tubes and monitors. His left leg was in plaster under a protective scaffold. A patch of curls had been shorn so fluid could be drained to reduce the swelling in his brain. He presented a grotesque figure, yet his face was serene. His lips parted slightly as he breathed (on his own, which was a good sign). His eyes were closed. The fine bones of jaw, cheek and brow, the shape of nose and mouth were undamaged. He could have been a beautifully chiselled effigy.

  But his spark of wickedness wasn’t visible any more: the devilish light behind the eyes, which made people do things they’d probably regret later. Had that been the main attraction? Had that been what she’d seen in him – an invitation to go off the rails?

  ‘He thought he could get out of anything,’ she said. ‘When we were stuck on top of the haystack he bragged he had nine lives.’

  ‘He has a temper on him,’ said Kieran. ‘And he’d had too much to drink. He knew perfectly well he shouldn’t have got in the car. There are laws here just as in the UK, even if we may not be so good at enforcing them. Don’t you be making excuses for him.’

  She guessed that Kieran had a temper himself and was reining it in. She could feel the tension building beside her, his whole body stiffening. He was gripping the end of the bed, with its clipboard of indecipherable notes and charts. ‘As you see,’ he said. ‘I’m finding it awfully hard to forgive him.’

  ‘It doesn’t stop the two of you being close though, does it?’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘And that’s another twist of the knife.’

  Neither of them made a move to sit down, although chairs were available. Bel wished she could speak to Tom, but she didn’t think the sound of her voice would be familiar enough to have any effect. And what could she say? Apologise over and over again: I’m sorry. We should never have come. I didn’t know my mother was going to erupt like that or I would have kept her away from you. I’m sorry… so sorry…

  Kieran said, ‘Will we stay, do you think, or will we go and find Clemmie? We can come back here later. You never know when there might be news and I get the feeling this is troubling you.’

  She nodded mutely.

  ‘I’ll take you to Clemmie,’ he went on. ‘Then I’m going to look for my mother. You have my number now so you can text me if you need me, okay?’

  He left her at the entrance to the children’s ward – off for a smoke, she suspected. Her own craving for cigarettes had dwindled practically to nothing. Perhaps there could be some good results from bad experiences; surely Tom would never drink and drive again?

  The ward was bright, busy and colourful but she picked Clemmie out right away. She was perched on her high bedstead, the only child fully dressed. A nurse was with her, listening and laughing as Clemmie chattered, intent on the tale she was telling.

  The nurse said, ‘A visitor for you.’ And then, slightly puzzled. ‘You’re not her mum, are you?’

  Bel was disconcerted. She’d supposed that the status of parenthood changed a person in some way, gave them an indefinable aura of maturity. She knew, realistically, this was nonsense – but she still couldn’t believe anyone would imagine her fit to be in charge of another human being; her or Tom Farrelly.

  ‘Bel!’ crowed Clemmie, holding out her arms for a hug.

  ‘I’ve brought you some Maltesers.’ She passed them over and said, a little awkwardly to the nurse, ‘I’m a friend of the family. How is she?’

  Clemmie rattled the box with satisfaction and then rolled up her sleeve to show a discoloured area of her smooth dark skin. ‘I’ve a bruise just like you! And on my legs too.’

  ‘She had mild concussion,’ said the nurse, ‘which is why we’ve been keeping her under observation. But the doctor has said she can be discharged now, so we’re waiting for her mother.’

  ‘Do you mean her grandmother?’

  ‘We understood her mother was coming to collect her and take her home.’

  Bel saw a small suitcase was standing next to the bed. ‘To England?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ The nurse patted Clemmie’s braids and blew her a kiss. ‘See you later cherub.’

  Bel sat down, processing the information. Clemmie’s mother. Well, naturally she would come. What parent wouldn’t rush to their child’s bedside after an accident? She’d’ve cut short her holiday, or maybe she was back home and waiting for her daughter to be returned. Clemmie had been so much part of Bel’s visit, so much a part of Tom, that she hadn’t given any thought to the woman who’d actually brought her up. She couldn’t decide how she felt about meeting her – although she had to admit she was insanely curious.

  ‘Will you draw me a picture, Bel?’

  It was good to have a diversion. She pulled out a fresh sketchbook. ‘Right then. Why don’t I draw you being a heroine? Would you like that?’

  The little girl nodded solemnly. ‘Because my daddy did a bad thing.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘He took me away from the party and I didn’t want to go. It’s not fair.’

  So that rankled more than the car crash? Bel said, ‘And you’ve been very brave, haven’t you? It must have been ever so scary, that accident.’

  ‘The car was stuck in a ditch!’

  ‘You poor lamb.’

  ‘Will you draw it in the ditch?’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want me to do?’ Mightn’t this be a tad traumatic? She wished Julia were around so she could consult her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Clemmie, as emphatic as ever. ‘Proper stuck. My daddy was stuck too and he couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t open the door. But I didn’t want to walk in the road anyway because it was wet and I hadn’t got my shoes on.’

  Bel was sketching the two waving feet she’d seen leaving the party, but now they were behind the car window. She tried to stop her fingers shaking as she shaded in the socks. Maybe she could treat this as therapy. Maybe she could give Clemmie a positive story with a happy ending.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘I have to draw the person from the other car who sees you waving and calls the ambulance for you. Who was that?’

  Clemmie dug her fingers into the weave of the cotton coverlet, ruminating. ‘A man in a hat,’ she said at length.

  ‘What sort of a hat shall I give him?’ She didn’t want to be too literal in case Clemmie became upset. She recalled a guest at the party who’d worn a yellow waistcoat with shiny buttons. ‘Shall I make him a leprechaun?’

  ‘What’s a leprechaun?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, did no one tell you? Ireland’s full of them. Helpful little people. A bit like Santa’s elves, only all year
round. You must have seen some toy ones in the shops. They bring you luck, like four-leaf clover. So you were very lucky indeed to be rescued by a leprechaun. I’ve got no crayons with me so you have to imagine his hat is green and he has bandy legs, like this…’

  ‘And a mobile phone.’

  ‘Sure. Right. He’d have to be able to call the ambulance for your daddy, wouldn’t he?’ She began to sketch an outsize phone in the little man’s hand.

  ‘He looks like a dwarf,’ said Clemmie. ‘Like Dopey or Sneezy.’

  ‘Well then, we must give him a name. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Matey.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good. Matey it is.’

  She held her pencil more firmly. Kieran had told her how the other vehicle, quite unscathed, had stopped to investigate. It contained a group of Americans on a golf tour; they’d hired a local caddy to drive them and he had raised the alarm at once. Luckily, although trapped in a terrifying situation with an unconscious father, Clemmie hadn’t had time to become lonely or frightened. The delay had not been in getting the casualties to hospital so much as alerting the next-of-kin to the accident.

  Because the two of them were bending their heads so close together over the drawing, they didn’t notice the arrival of another person. The ward was noisy in any case: the clang of metal trolleys, the high querulous voices of sick children, the hum of DVDs playing.

  Bel raised her eyes before Clemmie did, to see a statuesque woman, an ebony goddess with sleek hair and chandelier earrings, wearing high heels, orange jeans and a purple jacket (colours she favoured herself). The goddess ignored her totally.

  ‘Clementine,’ she said in a husky voice.

  Clemmie bolted upright, bolted into her mother’s arms. Bel’s sketchpad fell onto the floor and her pencil rolled after it. Scrabbling to pick them up, she understood why the child was so self-assured.

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman asked, when she had finished covering her daughter’s face with kisses.

  ‘She’s Bel,’ said Clemmie.

  ‘I’m a friend of the family.’