The Man on the Cliff

by Janice Macdonald

  “Reason, too,” she agreed. “I feel that there’s nothing I can’t do. I have ideas, thousands of them, and I feel wonderful. I want to make love to the world. Then suddenly it’s all gone, and I’m scared to death. I can’t think. I panic. All I can do is run. And then I return to you.”

  He turned his back to the river, the scenario she had described all too familiar. Moruadh leaned against the metal railings. On the other side of the street, a group of students in blue jeans and anoraks stood beside a newspaper kiosk arguing loudly in German.

  “What will you do now?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know.” Her fingers tightened on the rails. “I can’t have the baby.”

  For a while, neither of them spoke. Then holding hands, they walked across the street to a café. Moruadh sat outside on a green iron chair while he went to order coffee for them both. He brought the drinks out and set them down on the table. He watched her spoon sugar into her coffee.

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “About the baby?”

  “The other thing.” A police wagon screamed down the boulevard. He watched it for a moment, then looked at her. “Your mental state.”

  “I will.” She lowered her head, stirring her coffee.

  “You’ve made the same promise before.”

  “This time I mean it.”

  “So do I, Moruadh. If we’re to have another chance together, you have no other choice. This is it.”

  “BUT OF COURSE, she broke that promise, too.” He sat with his back against the car door, facing Kate. “For a time, things were great. The medicine worked. We were happy. And then she started complaining again that the pills were making her fat. She promised me she’d talk to the doctor, swore she wouldn’t stop taking the medicine.”

  “But she did.”

  “Apparently. Around Christmastime I came home to find candles burning all over the flat. Fifty of them maybe, and they’d obviously been burning for hours. She was gone, her suitcases with her. It was months before I saw her again. She’d lost the baby. A miscarriage, she said. I’d had enough by then and I came back to Ireland.”

  “So it was over for you?”

  “I thought it was. I bought the lighthouse up in Sligo and I was trying to get the photography studio started. One day she just showed up at the studio.”

  “You hadn’t seen her since France?”

  “Hadn’t heard a word from her, which wasn’t unusual. She seemed stable enough, although with Moruadh I could never be sure of anything. I always felt as if I was holding my breath, waiting for another calamity. This time, though, she seemed to have adjusted. She told me she thought her life was finally back on track.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I wanted to. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that she hadn’t got things together.” He shook his head, remembering. “She was caught shoplifting in Galway a couple of times. One night I had a call from the Gardai that she’d broken into a flower shop.”

  He paused, his expression distant. Kate waited for him to go on.

  “She told me that she’d wanted to get my attention,” he finally said.

  She shook her head.

  “It was a nightmare time. I had the sense of her twirling faster and faster and I knew that unless she got help, something awful would happen. But she absolutely refused. Finally, she went back to Paris, but she called me almost every night. I think she may have been seeing Hugh Fitzpatrick again. I gather she was phoning him, too. At one point, she told me that if I didn’t love her anymore, she was going to marry him.”

  Kate nodded. “It sounds as though that hadn’t changed since childhood. Moruadh was always fueling the rivalry between you and Hugh. Pitting you against each other.”

  “We both loved her,” he said. “In our own ways. Neither of us could really claim her.”

  “Although she married you.”

  “Which he’s never forgiven me for. As far as he’s concerned, I stole her from him. When things went bad with us, she turned to him and vented her unhappiness, which I’m sure confirmed his belief that she never really wanted to marry me in the first place.”

  “And he didn’t see the signs of mental illness?”

  “Apparently not, although how she managed to keep it from him, I don’t know. Hysterical phone calls almost daily, begging me to give her another chance. Eventually, I went to Paris again; I had to. I thought I’d try and get her some help, but I got there to find Hugh with her, and Moruadh insisting that she was fine and that I should leave her to lead her own life and stop interfering.”

  “What did you do?”

  “At that point, I’d had it. I felt as though I was drowning. When I got back to Ireland, I wrote her a long letter, told her that unless she got help for herself, I wanted no part of her life. She came back to Ireland, but I didn’t see her. Six weeks later, she was dead. When I went through her papers afterward, I found a letter she’d written to me, dated the day before she died.”

  “The suicide note.”

  “Yes. She apologized for all the trouble she’d brought to my life and said she knew of only one way to rid me of the burden.”

  “To take her own life?”

  He nodded. “They made a preliminary ruling that it was an accident, but then all the talk started, stirred up to a great extent by Hugh’s reporting. By the time the Garda searched the castle, I’d already found the note. It was with her journals in the west tower. When they opened the door and saw only the ledge, they assumed there was nothing there.”

  “And you let them believe that?”

  “It was better that way. No one needed to know.”

  “But didn’t all the rumors bother you? I mean, you could have cleared your name if you’d shown them the note.”

  “I suppose I thought about it a couple of times, but I knew if I did, everything would come out. Moruadh’s emotional problems. The reason she took her life. And that would be the image of her that people would be left with, the one they remembered.”

  “So instead you let them think you’d killed her?”

  “How many people really believe that? There’s the gossip, but that’s part of life in a village, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer. It was something she would definitely take up with him later. “So what was your relationship based on? Did you really love her, or was it just…I don’t know, an overdeveloped sense of responsibility? She needed someone to take care of her and you took on the job?”

  He smiled. “You do like to get directly to the point.”

  “But Niall…it sounds like a nightmare. She ran around on you, made your life hell, and you’re still covering for her.” She took a breath before she went on. “You loved her, though? You must have. No one could be that self-sacrificing.”

  “Of course I loved her, Kate. I always have. I also recognized that life was very difficult for her. Painful a lot of the time. She held up as much as she could, but with me she didn’t have to keep up the pretense. She’d always been a part of my life and her ups and downs were just…” He shrugged. “Just Moruadh.”

  “Part of the package, huh?”

  “She was a lot like Irish weather—changeable from hour to hour. And I loved her, despite it all. Everyone did. You’ve no doubt picked that up in your interviews. Cragg’s Head was proud of her. The local girl becomes a star. I’m sure most people wondered why she married me in the first place.”

  “For your money,” Kate said.

  He gave a wry laugh. “I suppose that’s the perception. Little do they know. Actually, my father had the perfect candidate. The daughter of a family who really had money. He thought me selfish and ungrateful for refusing to cooperate, but I couldn’t get past this one small problem. I didn’t love her.”

  Kate leaned her head against the back of the seat, thinking about what he’d told her. Thinking about Moruadh. About love and loss and loneliness. And tell the world that I died for love. God, it was so damn senseless. A woman s
urrounded by people who loved her, but so lonely and desperate she took her own life. She hadn’t died for love, she’d died despite it.

  “Hey.” Niall tapped her shoulder. “Come back.”

  “I was just trying to fit all the pieces together.”

  “Moruadh was mentally ill, Kate. Her reality was distorted. There’s no logic or reason to what she did. Between the bouts of illness our life together was fine. We were happy. It just didn’t last. And you can’t sum it all up in a tidy little sentence. It won’t work that way.” After a moment, he put his arm around her shoulder, pulled her toward him. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “You won’t shrink, I promise.”

  “A walk where?”

  “The bogs.”

  “Bogs?”

  “They’re an interesting part of Irish history. A bit dangerous if you don’t know them. Lots of strange characters out there. Madmen. Lunatics. Don’t worry though, I’ll protect you.”

  “You’ll protect me?” She grinned. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing wrong with irony. It’s my favorite emotion.”

  “Irony isn’t really an emotion,” Kate said. “It’s a literary device.”

  “If you’re Irish,” Niall said, “irony’s an emotion.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “ALMOST EERIE, isn’t it?” Niall said softly, his collar up against the cool damp air. “Twelve thousand years of Irish history beneath our feet. From the bog to glacier to lake to fen and then to bog.” He leaned over the railing of a small wooden platform, peered down at the pool of dark water. “At least I think that’s the way it went,” he said with a grin. “When I was a boy, I was warned not to go near these things because they have no bottom.”

  Kate shot him a sideways glance. “And did you listen?”

  “Not at all.” He laughed. “I’d spend hours out here by myself, flinging stones into the water. The bogs have always fascinated me. Irish folklore is full of tales about them. Odd creatures that inhabit them, strangers being led astray by eerie lights coming off them.”

  She looked around, awed by the silence and isolation. Whatever way she turned, for as far as she could see, lay bogs. Light brown, like a blanket draped over the land. No sign of civilization anywhere. Not a house in sight, not a single vehicle on the narrow road that ran down the middle of the vast boglands. No sound but the faint hush of the wind.

  Mist, soft as cobwebs, brushed against her face. Wraithlike drifts of it hovered over the small black pools of water, shrouded Niall’s head and shoulders. They might have been the only two people in the world.

  Her hair blowing around her face, she watched as he climbed down a couple of steps cut into the turf bank.

  “There’s a quality to the bog that preserves things. Before electricity, people put their butter in wooden boxes and buried them in the bogs to keep it fresh. They’ve pulled up dogs and animals, even a body or two, all perfectly preserved.”

  “That’s a reassuring thought,” she said, and then it occurred to her that he might read something she hadn’t intended into the remark. “I mean, if you’d done something you wanted to hide.” She felt her face color. “What I mean…”

  Niall laughed.

  “You think it’s funny, huh?” She followed him off the platform, and they set out across the desolate landscape. “Watching me trip all over myself not to offend you.”

  “I do.” He caught her hand, guiding her across a piece of marshy ground. “Careful, you need to watch where you walk. There are deep water holes with a little bit of plant material over them. You step on one, thinking its safe, and the next thing—”

  “You’re in deeper than you thought?” she suggested.

  “Well above your head if you’re not careful,” he added, keeping her hand in his.

  She grinned.

  “Listen, Kate,” he said a moment later. “You don’t have to edit what you say. I hardly think you’d be walking out here with me if you were afraid.”

  Impulsively, she pressed his arm to her side, watched their legs and feet as they walked. Her jeans were several shades lighter than his. His Wellingtons, her own battered hiking boots. Ankles, knees, thighs. His arm around her shoulders now, hers around his waist. Bodies bumping. Smiles and stolen glances as they tramped across the misty boglands, fine rain in their faces, the drift of turf smoke from distant chimneys hovering in the air.

  As they walked, she would think of something he’d told her about Moruadh and start to examine it in more detail. Treating Moruadh’s mental illness as a shameful secret did her a disservice, Kate wanted to argue. Better to try to explore it through the article and maybe help others. But sensing Niall’s reluctance to say more, she said nothing.

  Besides, at least for one afternoon, she wanted nothing more than to just be with him. Something had changed between them, a door had opened. All afternoon, they’d swapped stories about themselves. Little things he’d told her whetted her appetite for more. She wanted to know everything. Nothing was too small or insignificant. Did he sleep on his back? As a child, had he had chicken pox, measles? What was he like in the morning? Did he dream? Take vitamins? Brush his teeth from right to left, or the other way around?

  She’d fought the feeling, ridiculed it, denied it. Then gave up. Might as well acknowledge it. She was, as Annie would put it, over the moon about Niall Maguire. Just to be with him, to listen to his voice, to watch his face. She couldn’t think ahead. Even tomorrow was too far off. If this walk could be encapsulated, years from now she would take it out and remember exactly how perfectly happy she’d been.

  The mist gave way to light rain, and they kept on walking. With one hand, Niall reached for the hood of her jacket and pulled it up over her head. She turned to grin at him and he stopped abruptly, took the edges of the hood in both hands and kissed her on the mouth. Moments later, laughing, they resumed their walk.

  “A day of uncertain weather,” Niall said with a look at the sky.

  “Uncertain?” Kate hooted. “What the hell is uncertain about it? All it’s done is rain. Not only that but it’s damn cold.”

  “Ah, a bit of a soft day is all. But then you’re a California girl, accustomed to blue skies and sunlit beaches. “This—” he caught the fabric of her parka “—might be all right for California, but you need something a lot sturdier to keep out Irish weather.”

  “In a couple of days, I’ll be back in eighty-degree sunshine.” She felt a hollowness in her stomach. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

  “You’ll be glad to get back?”

  “Sure.” She took a deep breath. “Although I have to admit, the bogs would be a good place to visit if you’re feeling melancholy. You could walk and weep and revel in your misery. Very lugubrious. In California, you sort of feel perverse being miserable in all the sunshine.”

  “Do you spend a lot of time walking and weeping?”

  “Nah. I’m deliriously happy.”

  He shot her a glance.

  “What?”

  “You’re not, are you?”

  “Not what?”

  “Deliriously happy.”

  “Who is?”

  “Maybe you need a change.” His arm tightened around her as he guided her around a puddle of still, black water. “If California sunshine makes you melancholy, perhaps you need a place where the winds howl and the sky is always weeping.”

  “Ireland?” She felt her heart pound.

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Too unpredictable. Ever since I’ve been here, I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen.”

  “Riding down the wrong side of the road, you mean. Falling into fairy rings?”

  “That, too.”

  “But that’s a good thing. I hate sameness. Hate it when things get too predictable.”

  “Women, too?”

  “I’ve never known a predictable woman.”

  She grinned. Tried not to specula
te about all the unpredictable women he might have known.

  “By contrast,” she said, “I like having order. Predictability is good. I want to know what to expect.”

  “Deadly dull.”

  “Not at all. It’s the devil you know. That’s one reason I want the staff job at Modern World. Freelance life is just too uncertain. At home, I have certain routines. I get up at six-thirty, check my e-mail. Run five miles. Eat half a bagel with nonfat cream cheese.”

  He laughed. “Is the rest of the day just as exciting?”

  “Yep. I’d describe it, but you might fall asleep.”

  “And that’s really the way you like it?”

  “Yep.” Did it really sound as desolate to him as it did to her? She tried again. “It’s like being with people I know versus being with strangers. I know what to expect from my friends, I know how they’re going to respond in a given situation. There’s a certainty and stability, and I need that.”

  “Maybe you only think you need it.” He looked at her. “I’ve lugged a load of…mental baggage around for years. Maybe we all have. Ideas and beliefs that always seemed so important. They’ve shaped us, made us who we are and then one day we realize that we’ve outgrown them. In fact, maybe they’re dragging us down.”

  “So dump them?” Kate asked. “Is that what you’re saying? Find something new to believe in?”

  “Maybe that’s the only way to move on.”

  She thought about her life in Santa Monica. Contrasted it with the past week in Ireland. Could she honestly say she was happier in Santa Monica? No. But Santa Monica was reality. She knew its warts and imperfections. Ireland was an illusion. Nothing felt quite real or dependable. The misty rain and green hills and sudden rainbows. Walking across deserted boglands with a tall gray-eyed man’s arm around her shoulders. It was all beautiful and magical but almost dreamlike. As soon as she reached out her hand, it would vanish. The best she could do was enjoy the moment.

  But then she looked up at Niall and felt such a wave of tenderness that she wondered if, against all odds, the impossible had finally happened. Had she ever, ever felt like this before? Ever felt this dreamy yearning that only one person in the whole world could satisfy? Her body literally ached for him.