by Faith Hogan
‘Oh, yes. Even still, people come into the hotel here and talk about travelling over to Strandhill for the baths there. Good for the…’ she thought for a moment, perhaps there were many health benefits, but she settled on, ‘skin. It’s meant to be good for the skin.’
‘And for clearing you out,’ Archie shouted from the hall, although Kate couldn’t imagine how he’d heard them.
‘Detoxifying?’ Kate supplied. She knew from London that many women were looking to detox; whether it was tea or men, it was all the same. It was still, as Archie said, a process of clearing out.
‘Yes, that’s what one of the women was telling me recently. Of course, some believe that the actual seaweed is good for all sorts, from asthma to eczema, though I’m not sure the doctors would agree.’
‘So, these baths they go to now…’
‘Oh, they’re quite a trek away, but if you want to go, you’re welcome to our little run-around,’ Iris said. ‘Really, though, compared to the bathhouse, well – it has a lot of charm. Did you say you had someone with you?’
‘Yes, I met Rita Delaney and her dog?’ He really was the cutest little terrier. It was hard to imagine how anyone could object to him, but maybe that was the point for Rita. Kate had dealt with too many acrimonious couples to be surprised at how women managed to exact their little pleasures in married life.
‘Ah, yes, her husband wanted to buy the place, of course, they are cut of different cloth those two.’ Iris smiled, touched her soft grey hair, her eyes were vivid green for someone so old, but they held in them the sharpness of one who’s mind was still as nimble as ever.
‘Well, she seems very nice, anyway. We met on the beach and walked across. She found the key so we had a little look inside.’
‘What’s it like now? It’s years since I’ve been down there,’ she sniffed a little, ‘too many memories for me, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s…’ Kate looked out into the ocean opposite. ‘It’s probably the same as it was when you left. Of course, there is no electricity, so it’s a little dark, but everything is there, it’s like…’
‘We just closed the doors on it at the end of the season?’ Iris shook her head. ‘That’s exactly what happened.’
‘You could have leased it, I’m sure you’d have had plenty of takers.’
‘Maybe, but we never felt the right person came along. The last thing we wanted was to see it turned into a… what do they call that place in Coolmara, a surfing shack?’
‘Well, that would be a shame.’ Surfers liked things laid-back and biodegradable and they were not into having afternoon tea from china cups.
‘You’ll go back again?’ Iris did not quite meet her eyes.
‘If you don’t mind?’
‘Spend as much time as you like there, the views are lovely and when the tide is high, on a summer’s evening, it’s quite spectacular.’
‘Do you know, I really was happy there yesterday, it was like…?’
‘A different world?’
‘Hmm.’ Kate thought about it. It was like a different world. ‘I think I could spend my days there, just drinking in the views.’ There was something more pulling her back to the place, but she couldn’t put it into words, so instead she helped Iris clear away the breakfast and then kissed her gently on her cheek before putting on her coat.
She headed out into the crisp sunlight just after eleven walking past the newspapers that Iris kept on the hall table. She hadn’t read a newspaper or heard the news in two days. It was a record of sorts. She ambled towards the pier, forcing herself away from the tall castle, but her feet moved slowly, begrudgingly in the opposite direction, so eventually she gave in and turned north towards the bathhouse. She had planned a little better today, and brought a flask and a couple of buttered fruit scones. Maybe she would take one of the chairs from the back of the tearooms out onto the rock, sit in the cool sunlight with her coffee and scone, and let the place soothe her soul.
An elderly wicker chair, sat among ornate cast-iron dining carvers, proved heavier than it looked, but she hauled it out the front door of the little tearooms. At the back, she wandered about through the various rooms containing a small bakery, kitchen, baths and steam presses. The pale sunlight bathed the south- and east-facing rooms in a buttery glow, so the heavy copper baths and tiles looked dull against the black of the slate floors. Everything about the rooms felt like she had just walked on to the set of a movie. It was as though she was stepping back in history, but somewhere, out of sight, someone would shout time on this fragile space.
‘Hey, who’s there?’ the roar when it penetrated to the rear of the building almost took her breath. Kate peered about a door to see who the voice belonged to.
‘Hi,’ she said more confidently than she felt. The doorway was filled with the frame of a man who looked as though he’d been running. His breath was a warm blast on the icy air. ‘I’m Kate Hunt; I’m staying with the Hartleys. They said I could look around here.’
‘Did they now?’ He made no move towards or away from her and, for a moment, his presence sent a small shiver of fear through her. She could not make out his face, but they stood opposite each other, he with the advantage of the light at his back. He let out a long sigh. ‘I haven’t been in here since I was a child.’ He moved towards her now, his body relaxing somewhat. ‘Colin Lyons,’ he held out his hand to her. ‘I live just up there,’ he pointed his thumb to the right. She presumed he meant the cottage that overlooked the sea from high above the shaven rock. ‘On the mountain. You’ll have met my sheep along the way. They roam all about here. Sorry if I scared you.’
‘I probably gave you a bit of a fright too,’ it must have given him a start to see the front door open.
‘This place, it hasn’t been open in years. Everyone thought the Hartleys would sell it, when times were good. No chance that’s going to happen now though, is there?’ He was almost enquiring. ‘It would be good though, to see the baths up and running, bring a bit of life to the town.’
‘What about your sheep? Wouldn’t it upset them?’ Kate smiled, couldn’t help it, it was this place.
‘Do them the world of good, I’d say.’ He stood at the counter where someone must have stood for many hours, years earlier. ‘My father used to supply the Hartley’s with the seaweed – back in the day. He reckoned that Robert Hartley was sitting on a gold mine here, if only he’d…’
‘He died young.’
‘Tragically, they say.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a very tragic place, does it?’
‘It doesn’t at the moment, anyway.’ Colin Lyons smiled at her and she felt a small smile quiver on her own lips. He was tall and broad and his dark hair hung in waves about his tanned face. ‘I’d love to see the rest of it,’ he smiled at her now and she knew she was smiling too.
‘Sure,’ she said and she led him through the tearooms and into the large area at the rear where the baths and storage took up most space. ‘I know it’s covered in dust and years of neglect, but you can imagine how charming it must have been.’
‘That must be the flat?’ he said when they came to the narrow spiralling staircase at the furthest end of the corridor.
‘I haven’t been up there, I assumed it was just storage,’ she said.
‘Come on, this is like being a kid again. It’s like exploring,’ he said, taking the steps two at a time.
She followed him up, a little trepidation floating about her stomach. She faltered at the top of the stairs, entering the flat felt like there might be no turning back from this place.
The door was arched, oak and dark brown. It hung low so Colin had to dip down to pass through it. Kate noticed the walls in the entrance were almost two foot thick. It made her wonder what this place had started out as. Colin pulled open the shutters that faced out onto the Atlantic. The rooms stretched for the entire length of the bathhouse. There was a generous living room, a grand affair – more suited to a hotel drawing room. At the one side of this
were similar arched doors to two small bedrooms. At the other end, matching doors led to an antiquated bathroom and a galley kitchen.
‘Opening the windows here would make all the difference,’ Colin wrenched open a living room window. The cool fresh drift was bracing, as though it might wipe out any ghosts that remained.
‘It’s not what I expected,’ Kate said.
‘What had you expected?’
‘I’m not sure; I suppose I expected something much more basic.’
‘Old Robert was quite the ladies’ man, according to my dad; he did a lot of – entertaining.’
‘Well, he certainly did it in style.’
‘It’s unbelievably dry and cosy, isn’t it?’ Colin was running his hand along the wall. ‘You’re not from here, but let me tell you, that’s no small thing. Winters here, well they’re not always as mild as this.’ He picked up a newspaper, yellow, faded and dusty. ‘Not that I’d want to put you off,’ he said setting it down again.
‘Put me off what?’
‘Well, buying the place, of course,’ he said simply, flopping into a deep leather reading chair positioned beside the long-dead fire. ‘You are thinking about it, aren’t you?’
‘I… don’t know.’ Kate realized that, actually, she didn’t know. Maybe this was exactly what she needed, but she was on holiday and people didn’t just go on holidays and buy bathhouses, did they? Then a small voice whispered in her ear, but people do go on holiday and buy wineries, is that any more absurd? She looked across at Colin Lyons, ‘Maybe, I hadn’t really thought about it.’ She sank into the sofa opposite him. ‘But, yes, maybe.’
‘You have a bit of thinking to do; I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, stretching himself out of the chair. He stood for a moment looking out at the sea, chopping blue and white for as far as the eye could see. ‘You really should consider it, that’s if the Hartleys would sell it to you.’ He stood for another moment in silence, and then walked towards the door. ‘It suits you, you know, this place,’ he smiled again, a twitch of lips that was playful, ‘and of course, it’d mean we’d be neighbours.’
After that, it hadn’t taken long. It wasn’t the idea of having Colin Lyons as a neighbour that swung it for her in the end. Kate had lived too long in London not to know that if a man was still single into his late thirties there was bound to be something amiss about him. No, in the end, it was the sea and the thoughts of having to return to a soulless existence in London, and maybe Iris too. Kate had family here, the kind of family she had always craved. Iris was warm and loving and she wanted Kate around – she was everything that Adaline could never be. Kate sat for hours, a small chair pulled into the casement window, letting the sea soothe away pain she had carried for almost a decade. Then, out of nowhere, one of her colleagues sent her a text. Nothing urgent, just hoping she was enjoying her holidays. She was not missing much in London. In a flash, Kate knew that she didn’t want that lonely life anymore. Sure, she was making good money, she had a career people would kill for, but she was adrift. As she looked out into the determined waves, she knew, she’d wasted a decade of her life and all she had for it was a flat and a hefty bank balance. ‘I’ll make them an offer; if they won’t sell, perhaps they’ll lease the place to me,’ she said the words aloud, startled herself with them. She pulled her jacket closer to her, firmed up the shutters on the windows and pulled the door of the bathhouse closed tight behind her. If Iris and Archie said yes, she’d begin immediately.
6
Todd
Todd wasn’t sure that he actually loved Claudia before his heart attack, but that was then. When he thought about it now, they got on well, and she was a fantastic looking girl. She was successful, maybe in her way, more so than he was. She was wealthy and any man would give an elbow to have someone like her on his arm. What harm was there in asking her to hang around for a few days? It’d be good for both of them in terms of the press coverage. He could imagine her now, immaculately turned out, dark glasses in place and fending off the photographers outside the hospital; then, posing with him, looking up at his face adoringly when they discharged him. This could launch her on this side of the Atlantic. She should be thanking him, he was actually handing her the press opportunity of a lifetime. Did he love her? He must love her, hadn’t she stayed around longer than just about anyone else? What was love anyway, sure all those years ago, hadn’t Denny said it was all about timing?
As he drifted off to sleep, he thought of the long journey, from a filthy corner on the Shankhill Road to Wembley Stadium in London. That had been the pinnacle, for him and the lads – playing Wembley when the kids at home were still standing in the dole queue. Maybe it was all the sweeter with where he had come from. His family were poor, hardworking, if they got a chance, but it seemed unlikely to anyone in his street that they’d live anything but lives of poverty. His dad died a couple of years back, but Todd made sure he was looked after. Pickled liver killed him in the end; Todd could put a lot of the bad stuff down to that. He managed to get them both looked after. The best money could buy – that is what they said in the leaflet for Four Oaks, and it cost too. It was worth it, he hadn’t made it to his father’s funeral. It upset his mum at the time, but he figured she understood. What would it have been anyway, but a week on the beer and a row at the finish? He was smashed in a hotel room in Korea of all places, but he paid for everything, only the best for his mum. His mum. He went home for her funeral. A two day affair that made the newspapers, probably a good thing, if it had not he wouldn’t remember being there. He’d been blotto for the whole thing. He bawled like a baby at her grave, the rain pelting down upon the gathered white-faced group. His mother oblivious in her coffin, they filled in the grave while he looked on, heavy stones and clumps of damp soil thudding unmercifully off the oak. When he flew out of Belfast that day, he knew he was finished with the place. Even now, a decade later, he refused to play there with the band. It was the past, and he did not want to go back there again. He did his duty, more than his share when you thought about the rest of them. He had paid his dues. Now it just left a feeling of emptiness and sure wasn’t that to be expected?
God, but he hated hospitals; he hated the germs and the smell of disinfectant that reminded him that they were still lingering about the place. He hated the noise too, that didn’t wake him, but didn’t let him sleep properly either. It was after five the next morning when his eyes flickered open reluctantly. It seemed everything was brighter in the states than at home. Well, you don’t get much grimmer than Belfast. Here, it was either very bright, or never quite pitch black. He missed that. He missed the black of night in Ireland. It seemed to him that he had not seen a night sky, not properly in nearly thirty years. Suddenly, it was all he wanted to do, to sit beneath the stars and hear the wind on the waves. Maybe have a mug of good old-fashioned builder’s tea – there must have been some truth in what that old quack had said.
‘You’ll find yourself re-evaluating everything,’ she looked over narrow glasses that seemed to float delicately in the middle of her generous features.
‘I have a feeling there’s some things I’ll never like,’ he said as he drank down the glass of prune juice they gave him.
‘Like they say, some things are an acquired taste.’ She wrinkled her nose and he suspected she was an opera lover. ‘Anyway, don’t be too surprised if you find yourself hankering after things you’d long forgotten.’ She smiled at him, ‘you’re lucky to be here Mr Riggs, I suggest you go back to your life and make the very most of it.’
The first thing he noticed was the smell of coffee. Good old fashioned American Joe, he loved the stuff, always had. It drifted along the corridors in front of Denny and when his manager planted two paper beakers of the strongest stuff he could find in front of Todd, he actually thought he might throw up. Was this what she meant by re-evaluating?
‘Jesus, take that stuff away, what are you trying to do, kill me?’
‘They didn’t say anything about coffee,’ De
nny poured the offending liquid down the sink. ‘No, I’m pretty sure that they said fags and booze and of course, any recreational drugs you might dabble in, but no – coffee is still good.’ He plopped into the chair that had become his own in this bizarre little world they were sharing. He dug deep inside his leather jacket, pulled out his phone. He always had it switched on, always had it near. Family was everything to Denny and he spoke to his wife a dozen times a day, more when he was on tour.
‘You sound like an old woman,’ Todd felt a prickle of resentment flash through him; suddenly he did not want to be here. He wanted to be up and walking about the place. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ he inched towards the side of the bed, immediately fell back down, his head spinning hostilely. ‘Bloody hell, that’s some stuff to knock you out.’
‘You can’t just decide you’re getting out of bed, mate. It doesn’t work like that here. Do they even know you’re awake, have you had a bite to eat?’
‘Call some of them; tell them I want to get out of here.’ Todd searched about the bed for a call button, found it and pressed it hard and long. His reward was a nurse who might have been older than his mother and four times the size of her.
‘Now Sir, you know that I can’t discharge you without a doctor takin a look see, make sure you’re fine.’ She masterfully tucked him in to the bed. ‘Doctor will be doing rounds in about an hour. You wanna get outta here? You better start eatin some breakfast, start gettin your strength back.’ Five minutes later, she arrived back with a breakfast tray and a smile. ‘You English guys, all skin and bone.’ She tutted as she made her way back to the nurses’ station.
