The House On Willow Street

by Cathy Kelly

  Cashel marched into the café, tall and brooding in his funeral suit, a formidable presence of wealth, privilege and expensive tailoring. Behind the counter, Brian took a step backward. The big man looked as if someone had done something to upset him and Brian hoped to God that the person who’d done the bad thing wasn’t him.

  “Yes?” he said anxiously.

  The man seemed to focus on him then, dark brows opening up.

  Brian felt a relieved quiver in his legs, the way he used to in school when someone else was in trouble. It wasn’t him, after all. The man in the suit wasn’t angry with him.

  “An espresso,” said Cashel, not sure why he was here at all. He didn’t even want more coffee.

  “You’re here for the funeral,” said Brian, attempting a bit of light chat. His mother, Lorena, who owned the café, said he didn’t do enough conversing with the customers, but it was hard. Brian didn’t have the knack when it came to chatting.

  At the mention of the funeral, the glower came back into the big man’s face.

  “Right, so,” said Brian, and busied himself with the coffee machine.

  Cashel paid for his coffee and sat down at a window seat. The local newspaper had been left, folded incorrectly, on the seat beside him and for want of something to do, he picked it up and scanned it. News was the same the world over, he thought, long fingers flipping through the pages: communities raising money for charity, a politician no longer in power lamenting the state of the country, young athletes beaming for the camera as they posed with medals or a cup . . .

  His fingers stilled as he turned to the back pages.

  Property for sale: Avalon House.

  After the funeral, Tess went back to the shop and opened up. She found that her fingers were shaking as she tried to undo the mortice lock at the bottom of the door.

  “Yoo-hoo,” called Vivienne from next door. “How was it? Is that lovely rich son looking for an older woman to spoil? I can’t promise much in the way of sex, but they’re working on that female Viagra, aren’t they? I could go on a pharmaceutical trial!”

  Vivienne finally arrived at her door, took one look at Tess’s stunned, now-pale face and said: “That bad? Come in and sit down. You can keep the hordes of buyers happy and I’ll get you a strong coffee.”

  She installed Tess in a chair by the till, then locked Something Old and handed the keys to her. “Nobody’s come near us all morning. I doubt that a busload of rich tourists is going to turn up within the next five minutes.”

  Tess was glad she was sitting.

  Vivienne liked mad disco music from the seventies. She played her old CDs on a loop. Any day of the week, you could be sure of hearing “September” or “Disco Inferno” belting out from the shop. There were times when the seashore whooshing “tranquility” soundtrack from the beautician’s upstairs was on extra loud and the disco beat had to compete with the odd whale or dolphin song. Today someone was singing a hit from thirty-odd years ago about how someone could ring their bell anytime, anywhere. In spite of her shock, Tess smiled. It was all wildly suggestive and she thought of how she hated the songs her kids listened to now because they were too racy for Kitty’s ears. It was all a cycle really.

  Would she look back on this day in thirty years, if she was around then, and smile at how upset she’d been?

  Would she ever be able to think of Cashel without wanting to cry and tell him what had really happened?

  No, she didn’t think she would.

  Vivienne meant well, but she wasn’t someone Tess could unburden herself to. Suddenly she was overcome with the desire to talk to Suki.

  It was eight on the East Coast, too early to phone, but she didn’t care. She fished her mobile out of her handbag and dialed.

  Suki was up.

  “I’m sorry for phoning so early,” Tess said. “I had a bad day.”

  “What’s happened, Primrose?” said Suki, using the baby name she’d given her sister.

  Tess was Primrose, and Suki was Fleur. Flower fairies, their father said. They used to laugh at the very idea.

  Tess burst into tears. She had no words left.

  9

  The radio was the recently heartbroken woman’s worst enemy, Mara decided. Yearning love songs made her want to cry; feisty numbers by female singers made her want to take up kickboxing and dropkick Jack into the next century; and talk shows refused to stay away from subjects designed to make her guts tighten.

  She’d been prepared as she got into the car for the three-hour drive from Galway to Avalon. She had her iPod ready to go in case the radio signal went bonky and she was left alone with her own thoughts for any length of time.

  But the iPod turned out to have been a double-edged sword.

  It transpired that there wasn’t a single album in her collection that didn’t have a Jack-shaped imprint in it.

  The time she’d listened to Adele while driving for a date with Jack the previous summer; a Kings of Leon song she’d heard on the radio one day when they were having lunch in a pub near the office and he’d stroked her knee and she’d felt so happy, so loved. Every note in every song seemed to be tinged with heartbreak.

  She’d switched on the radio instead and found herself hit from another direction by a talk-show discussion about women playing Russian roulette with their fertility.

  “. . . women do not have all the time in the world,” said the voice of doom in the shape of a fertility expert, lamenting the fate of women who turned up at his clinic at the age of forty convinced that a baby was merely a credit-card pin number away.

  Another contributor challenged his assumption that women were deliberately putting off getting pregnant until it was almost too late, pointing out that many were the victims of broken relationships, who’d found themselves left high and dry in their thirties. If they didn’t manage to meet a new man and start baby-making immediately, their fertile years would have slipped away through no fault of their own.

  “Nobody plans for this to happen,” said the contributor fiercely. “Fertility has a sell-by date and life doesn’t always oblige. Women don’t choose to be in this situation . . .”

  Mara listened numbly, powerless to change the station.

  This was her they were talking about. She’d wasted her fertile years on Jack. Worse, she’d let him break her heart so badly, she didn’t think it would ever recover enough to let another man in. What was the half-life of a broken heart? Four years? She’d be thirty-seven, nearly thirty-eight before she could think of looking at another man. If Mr. Fertility was to be believed, she’d have to start planning getting pregnant on the second or third date.

  A crazy dating setting came into her mind: her and The Man, intimate in a restaurant, getting to know each other . . . and right before the waiter came to take their order, she’d drop the clanger:

  “No, I don’t really like red meat. I have a younger brother. Where do you come from in your family? Middle child, interesting. Yes, I’m from Dublin but I lived in Galway for a few years. Tell me, would you like a girl or a boy?”

  A sign above the road promised coffee, beds and bathroom facilities.

  Mara took the exit gratefully and flicked the radio off. If there was a bookshop in the town she was stopping in, she was going to buy a talking book. Anything to stop the music and the radio talk.

  Mara had forgotten how lovely Avalon was, particularly the hill upon which Willow Street sat. The road steepened slowly and then widened out as the houses dwindled. There were more trees up here, the elegant willow trees and many magnolias that bloomed with a scent almost like honey in the early summer, she recalled. Danae had once told her that the trees on the street were cuttings from the magnolias one of the De Paor ancestors had planted on the Avalon House avenue years before.

  The notion that the owner of a big old house would ever give anything away had fascinated: it didn’t fit in with her notion of the Big House people.

  “Avalon House has a gentle soul,” Danae said mystifying
ly.

  What was that all about, Mara wondered.

  “What’s more amazing,” Danae went on, “is that the magnolias grew. These aren’t the best conditions for them. But look, the whole of Willow Street is a magnolia paradise. Magnolias and willow trees everywhere.”

  On a wintry day like today, it seemed as if the trees were curling around the houses, boughs close to windows as if protecting them from the sea winds.

  Mara looked at the big old gates of Avalon House as she turned into Danae’s gravel drive, and was immediately greeted by a flutter of red-and-white wings to her right.

  A congregation of hens had gathered, beaks pressed against the wire of their run in anticipation of a visitor, squawking at the tops of their voices.

  Only Danae would have a posse of attack hens, thought Mara fondly.

  She got out of the car and Lady uncurled herself from the mat at the front door, silver-gray fur shaking with delight at this long-absent visitor.

  The hens, outraged at someone else being greeted and not them, began to ruffle up their feathers to twice their normal size, clucking loudly.

  Mara let herself into the run and was instantly surrounded by the gang of fluffy-bloomered girls, some angling inquisitive heads at her, others content to peck happily at her boots.

  “Come in,” said Danae from the back door, “or they’ll peck higher up. They are dreadfully nosy and subject to none of the boundaries of normal hens. They want to come into the house these days.”

  “Which one is my hen? Which one is Mara?”

  “The little red one pulling at your skirt,” said Danae.

  “Hello, henny pennie,” said Mara, picking her namesake up and holding her firmly under her arm.

  The two Maras regarded each other solemnly.

  The avian Mara did not look as if she’d been publicly dumped by a man anytime recently. She looked as if she’d had breakfast, an insect or two, and a few tiny stones. All was right in her world.

  “If you had any advice for me, Mara, what would it be?” the human Mara asked.

  The hen reached out and had an exploratory peck at Mara’s jacket. Then another, a sharper peck this time, which hurt.

  “Ouch. Go for what you want in life and don’t take shit from anybody, is that it?” Mara set her namesake down. “I think your hens have the secret of life all figured out, Danae,” she said, leaving the run to hug her aunt.

  “Who needs a Zen Guide when you could have a Hen Guide,” Danae laughed.

  Even though she’d barely arrived, already it felt comforting and relaxing simply being in Danae’s place. Mara’s possessions were out in the car, but there was no frantic rush to put everything away, no hurry to get the bag unpacked or to work out what everyone wanted for tea. That was how things would have been in Furlong Hill, and it was very restful to be away from the hustle and bustle of her home.

  Danae didn’t even mention Mara’s bags. If Mara had turned up without spare knickers or a toothbrush, Danae wouldn’t blink an eyelid. She’d simply have produced something that would do.

  She’d made an eggplant and goat’s cheese pie earlier and it was heating in the big cream oven, filling the cottage with lovely aromas, while she and Mara sat on iron chairs outside the kitchen window, with the menagerie at their feet, pecking happily. Danae had brought out a couple of rugs to wrap around themselves to ward off the breeze roaring up from the coast, while a pot of tea sat in a hand-knitted tea cozy on a matching iron table. Mara would have quite liked a glass of wine, but Danae didn’t seem to drink. Mara had never questioned this state of affairs, and she wasn’t about to start now. Tea in mismatched hand-thrown pottery mugs was exactly the right thing to drink as they watched the tide sweep inexorably into the horseshoe curve of Avalon Bay and discussed the world.

  “Would you have been happy with him, Mara, do you think?” Danae said tentatively.

  “I was happy . . . I thought I was happy,” Mara amended. “But he didn’t know I wanted to marry him—which is an excuse, really, isn’t it?” She looked down where a hen was sitting on one of her boot-clad feet. It was strangely comforting, and nicely warm into the bargain. She hoped hens didn’t poop sitting down. “I thought he’d know what I wanted,” she said. “I knew all the things he wanted. I knew he wanted to go to Monaco to a Grand Prix more than anything. I’d thought we could do that on our honeymoon. I was thinking ahead,” said Mara sadly. She’d told nobody else about the Grand Prix. It was such an admission of futile love and she felt diminished even by saying it.

  “Love turns the wisest of us into complete idiots,” Danae said. “We think we need love to complete us. And we don’t. Trust me, we don’t.”

  All Mara’s life, Danae had had the knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She’d been the one who told Mara that the beauty inside a person could shine brightly out of them; that mean girls at school might never suffer for their meanness, and wishing for them to suffer was not only pointless but personally painful. All good advice, delivered in a distant and somewhat reserved manner, as if she was making a special effort to say these things to Mara.

  It had never occurred to Mara to wonder how her aunt knew all this stuff; that was simply part of who she was: thoughtful and wise, yet somewhat removed from it all. Choosing to keep her distance. Mara had always assumed that Danae enjoyed her almost monastic life.

  Until that moment.

  Trust me, we don’t. Nobody said that without having learned it the hard way, through personal experience. Suddenly, Mara wanted to know how Danae had come by her wisdom.

  She poured another cup of tea to give herself time. Despite their closeness and fondness for each other, she knew so little about Danae’s life. Her dad’s older sister, the calm, kind postmistress who loved her chickens: that was all Mara knew of her aunt.

  “Oh, listen to me—Madam Know-It-All,” Danae said with a light laugh, as if she could read Mara’s thoughts. “Don’t take my advice, Mara, love. Do what you want.”

  She was changing the subject, but it was easier that way.

  “I am going to recover from my broken heart, walk along the beach and write poetry,” Mara said dramatically. “Really bad poetry that I’ll send to Jack. I may throw myself into the sea a few times with misery . . . but it’s a bit cold right now, isn’t it?”

  “Bitterly cold,” agreed Danae. “If you want Jack’s attention, throw yourself into the sea nearer his house, perhaps?”

  Mara sniffed. “Hell will freeze over. I wasted enough time on him. I’m not going to get hypothermia over him.”

  “Good girl,” said her aunt. “At the risk of sounding like a walking cliché, you’re young and there are more fish in the sea.”

  “I am off fish for good. No fish.”

  “I bet your father told you to find a lovely man who’ll adore you,” Danae said, tilting her head to one side as she studied her. Mara burst into laughter.

  “Those were almost his exact words. How come he’s such an innocent and—”

  “—and I’m so bitter and twisted?” asked Danae wryly.

  “No. Well, Dad is innocent,” Mara pointed out. She’d often marveled at the difference between her father and his sister. Morris Wilson was a gentle man who thought well of the world and was assured of his happy place in it. Danae was wise, kind and gentle too, but she lived an almost hermit-like existence in Avalon. This place had always been Mara’s sanctuary when she needed peace and tranquility. Nice for a few days, but not necessarily somewhere you’d want to live. Yet this was how Danae spent her days: alone but for her animals.

  Maybe that was why Mara had felt the urge to flee to Avalon, she mused. Everything happened for a reason and this was the reason.

  10

  Suki sat in the Petersens’ great room in their holiday mansion on the Cape, a glass of Krug in one hand, and wondered why she’d come to the party in the first place. It had been a long time since she’d bothered with these sort of events: parties in huge mansions with waiting s
taff, the finest champagne on tap and exquisite canapés cooked by the finest chefs.

  At least she’d found somewhere to sit—there were rarely enough seats at these affairs and there was nothing worse than standing for hours. Here, in her corner seat, she was signaling taking a break from the party. Here, she could simply watch.

  After the divorce from Kyle, people had continued to invite her to parties because she remained a part of the great Richardson clan, and so far as hosts and hostesses were concerned, even a tenuous connection with Kyle Senior was worthy of a place on the guest list. For their part, the Richardsons hadn’t cast Suki out, because they knew better than to alienate her; the last thing they wanted was a bitter divorcée who’d been privy to life on the inside telling the world all their secrets.

  Back then, Suki had also enjoyed the status of a minor celebrity; a feted author appearing on chat shows and in the press.

  But since she’d hit skid row, there had been no embossed, gilt-edged cards on her mantelpiece inviting her to dinners or elegant parties in the moneyed enclaves in Massachusetts.

  So when she’d bumped into Missy Petersen in the health-food shop in Provincetown, the best one by far in the area, she’d been surprised when Missy had hugged her and said it had been too long.

  “What have you been up to?” Missy said, tucking a strand of glossy, recently blow-dried blonde hair back with a perfectly manicured hand. Her engagement ring, a pink diamond the size of a conker, caught the light.

  “Working on a new book,” Suki said pleasantly.

  She’d always liked Missy: she was genuinely nice, not like some of the rich men’s wives, who viewed all other women as competition.

  “Oh, I don’t know how you do it,” said Missy. “You career women. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to have a career. Charlie says I’d make a good interior designer, though. I have thought of it, you know.”