OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  How dare he come here, disturbing my peace, she thinks; he’d give anything to talk to me but he couldn’t wait to get away again. Back then, when she’d run here for consolation, she’d have given anything to see him at the door. When she heard a car down on the road, she’d look, hoping foolishly that it might be him, that he’d changed his mind, knowing it couldn’t be because he didn’t know where she was. The loss of him had been a physical pain, all the bones in her body aching. In this kitchen she had sobbed as her grandmother stood behind her, rubbing her back and murmuring comfort without knowing why the solace was needed; shush now, shush. How she had yearned for him, willed him to change his mind and come for her and now it is as if time has snarled, dislocating the years and her longing has finally summoned him out of the blue. She laughs, a brief yelp and curls her fingers into fists, digging her nails into her palms.

  She folds the letter firmly, pressing on the creases and puts it in a jug on the dresser. Her skin is salt scored, itching. Suddenly, she is starving. She cuts a wedge of cheese and munches into it as she sets the fire blazing, draws the big pan full of water over the flame and drags the bath from its hook, screeching it across the floor. Then she turns the radio on loudly, filling the kitchen with bluegrass, hoedown music, blotting her thoughts out with the busy banjos and sliding fiddles.

  Late in the evening, she phones Douglas from out in the garden. The air in the kitchen seems secretive and close. The answerphone is on but he rings back within minutes.

  ‘I heard the phone ringing as I got to the door, but I couldn’t find my key. I thought it was probably you.’

  ‘I wondered how things are going, how you are.’

  ‘You mean have I been drinking?’

  ‘Mainly, yes. It is the big subject isn’t it? It’s the main reason why I’m here and you’re there.’ She’s cross with him now, for the distance between them. She pulls a piece of bark off a woody shrub, rolls it roughly in her closed fist.

  ‘Well, since you ask, things have been going OK. That means I haven’t had a drink for six days. I’ve been going to a meeting every night since you left, more or less. And on Friday, I’m booking into a kind of health farm in Hampshire for a month. My mentor suggested it. He asked if I had any support at home and when I said no, he said he thought Hyde House would be a good idea.’

  She bites back a retort to the comment about no support. He always becomes snide when he is on the wagon, the strain is too much. He’s lost the knack of being nice and sober. ‘What happens at the health farm?’

  ‘A combination of medication, detox, exercise, massage, good food and vitamins, counselling. I’ve got the brochure here, it looks very swanky — big swimming pool with Jacuzzi, leafy grounds etc. I expect there might be a rock star or two there drying out.’

  The tomatoes are giving off a feral scent in the dusk.

  ‘You sound optimistic.’

  ‘I am. And I know that it’s crunch time.’ Long pause. She knows what is coming, braces herself. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Liv.’ The acid tone has gone now, replaced by contriteness.

  ‘I know.’ He never seems to recall that she’s heard it all before, that his voice is an echo. Every time he says it, he makes it sound fresh, genuine, and heartfelt. She knows that to him, it is.

  ‘You could try sounding a bit more enthusiastic. I’ve never done anything like this before, this is a big step, you know.’

  ‘Oh, Douglas, you have no idea how much I want you to succeed.’

  ‘Well . . . anyway, how are things with you? What’s happening in the Cork countryside?’

  She splinters bark under her thumbnail, feeling the sharp needle in the tender skin. ‘Not much. I’ve been to see my uncle Owen, been swimming, you know, just relaxing.’ She has done nothing wrong, yet she is feeling treacherous, duplicitous. A man has stood in the kitchen and said that he loves her still. The words are hovering in there, dancing in the lamplight, ready to whisper betrayingly down the phone. ‘So, will you let me know how you’re doing at this Hyde House place?’

  ‘No, that’s the thing, part of the deal is you don’t talk to anyone on the outside. I can write, so I’ll send you letters. You won’t hear from me by phone till I’ve served my time and the sentence is done. So, wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.’

  ‘You know I do. How have you squared it at work?’

  ‘Just said I needed a break. I’ve got a locum in, so they’re not too bothered. It’ll do them good to have to manage without me.’

  She imagines that they will be more than glad to manage without him. He’s only tolerated because it’s a poor, inner city practice that struggles to attract doctors. She is mindful of the Christmas celebration at the practice, the glances from other GPs and the flinty-eyed receptionist as Douglas grew more loquacious and staggered into the notice board. In the end she had lured him out with talk of a takeaway, huddling him into his coat and scarf, manoeuvring his arms as if he was a large, recalcitrant child. She supported him across the icy car park to a waiting taxi, pouring him into the back seat, hoping that no one was looking out of the misted windows. She has no idea how he’s survived this long, breathing mint-coated fumes on to patients. He is practised at keeping all the balls in the air, a soused juggler.

  She has drawn blood under her nail. She rinses it in water from the rain barrel. She feels a tremendous shamefaced relief at the thought that she won’t have to talk to him for a month. Time off for good behaviour, she assures herself; I’ve been doing as long a sentence as him. The air is cooling rapidly and she is glad of the warmth as she steps into the kitchen.

  She found the old gramophone, the one that Owen had spun tall stories about, on a shelf in the back of the tool shed, amongst the spades, rakes and hoes. Beside it was a cardboard box of records. She lifts it on to the kitchen table and opens the lid. There is a fluff covered needle in the heavy round head. She cleans it carefully with a damp cloth and winds the handle tight. The records are the ones she had played many times while her grandmother stirred the fire or sat at the table, peering at the Cork Examiner. They are in their card covers, mottled with damp and spots of mould.

  She looks for and finds her mother’s song, ‘My Blue Heaven.’ There had been a warm night when the back door was open and daddy long legs drifted in, lured by the light. Her parents had danced to the song, holding each other, swaying, then her father stooped and swept Liv up in his arm and they had moved as a threesome, she with an arm around both of their warm necks. Her mother had been to the hairdresser that day and she smelled of soap and some acrid solution. She said a body wave was the only way to keep her hair halfway respectable in Ireland. With her curls, she looked girlish and jolly. ‘Bubbles,’ her father had called his wife, singing as they turned around the floor.

  Just Mollie and me

  And baby makes three

  So happy in my blue heaven

  He nuzzled Liv’s neck with his nose as he sang about baby making three and she laughed as his moustache tickled. Afterwards, it had been bedtime and her father had gone around the house, collecting the daddy long legs, cupping them in his hands and ushering them outside because she screeched if one dangled near her in bed. She watched him, amazed at his bravery, shivering as she imagined their legs brushing against his skin.

  She puts the record on. It hisses, the needle catching for a moment and then the familiar crackle begins. She sings with it, dancing her own dance, her outstretched arms casting shadows on the walls.

  You see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cosy room,

  A little nest that’s nestled

  Where the roses bloom

  Just Mollie and me

  And baby makes three

  So happy in my blue heaven.

  * * *

  On her way to Castlegray, Liv stops at Redden’s Cross to post the small padded bag to Douglas. Eileen O’Donovan weighs it, examining the address.

  ‘A little gift?’ She asks, putting on a pair of glasses to peer at the scales.


  ‘That’s right.’ She pauses. ‘It’s for my husband, a bottle of water from the well at Glenkeen.’

  She has rinsed out moisturiser from a plastic bottle and scooped it through the water. She’s not sure why she’s making the gesture. Maybe it’s just a way of sharing her good fortune, the peace of her days. The clear liquid, she suspects, also holds her own unease.

  Eileen gives her a shrewd glance. ‘Is he sick, then?’

  ‘He hasn’t been that well recently, but he’s on the mend.’

  ‘That’s four euros. For sure, your grandmother always swore by the power of that well water. She’d take it round to sick people. The priests aren’t always keen on it, they think it’s superstitious I suppose, a bit pagan, but plenty of the older people here put their faith in it. There’s plenty of stories of it curing illness. I’ve heard it has a lot of calcium in, or maybe its fluoride, I can’t recall.’

  ‘Well, it was just a thought anyway.’

  ‘Oh, and a lovely one. Your grandmother will be smiling up in heaven.’

  She’s not sure if Nanna will be smiling, knowing that there were mixed motives involved in the packing and posting.

  ‘And you’re not bored up there in the cottage, all alone?’

  ‘No, it’s wonderful to have time to myself.’

  ‘Oh for sure, I suppose after the big city, it would be a real change, true enough. If you fancy it any time, we have a social evening in the parish hall two Thursdays a month; there’s a bit of poetry reading and singing and such and we have talks. Maybe you could do one for us sometime, about London?’ She franks the parcel and places it on a stack beside her.

  ‘Maybe, I’ll have a think about it.’

  ‘That’s great. You’re getting a good colour, anyway, you have a real country bloom in your cheeks. Your husband won’t recognize you when he sees you.’

  She finds her way to the gallery easily, following Owen’s directions. It is just off the main street in Castlegray, in a tall terraced house painted a washed Mediterranean blue with white geraniums flowing from window boxes. With the high, hot sun, she could be in Italy. Owen’s friend Lucinda is having an exhibition, he’d said and if she wanted to drop by about twelve for a look see they could have a bite of lunch afterwards. Inside the front door there is a small hallway covered in posters, featuring displays of art works; ceramics, jewellery, watercolours, sculptures. A young man directs her upstairs to the second floor when she asks for Lucinda Montgomery’s exhibits. Her footsteps ring on the bare varnished boards as she ascends. All the walls are painted white and the place smells of convents, of lemon polish and soap.

  She hears their voices before she sees them. The second floor has been knocked through into one room with skylights so that light streams in. She has an impression of huge canvases covered in dark, swirling colours. Owen and Lucinda are sitting close together on a window seat at the far end, sipping champagne. The sun makes shimmering haloes around their heads.

  ‘Ah, you made it!’ Owen stands and holds out his hand, introducing her to Lucinda.

  ‘So nice of you to come.’ Lucinda rises. ‘We had a mild rush about an hour ago but it’s gone quiet now. Some bubbly?’

  She accepts a flute of champagne while Owen draws a chair up for her. Lucinda is a tall, light-boned woman about the same age as Owen. She is lean and well-toned, her hair cut in a gentle bob and quietly coloured a pale straw. She has an upper-class English voice, a lazy drawl. She wears a tailored linen suit in pale green, the trousers flaring over navy blue boots and her bony fingers are weighted with huge rings. Owen is dressed in his same Hampstead literary outfit, complemented with a purple bow tie. Liv feels grubby in jeans and jumper. She hadn’t expected to find such classy dressing in a country market town; she hadn’t expected to find a woman like Lucinda. She is glad that she’s washed her hair but conscious of the lingering turf scent in her clothing.

  ‘What do you make of our superb Indian summer?’ Lucinda asks, gesturing at the sun. Her hands are older than her face, wrinkled, with distended veins.

  ‘It’s not what I expected.’

  ‘The mad girl goes swimming,’ Owen tells her.

  ‘And why not?’ Lucinda asks. ‘You used to go all the time, with Edith.’ She nods to Liv. ‘His wife, you know?’

  ‘Did I?’ Owen says vaguely, rolling his champagne between his hands. ‘Ah well, that’s when I was young and easy under the apple bough. More of this lovely stuff.’ He refills the glasses. ‘A toast. To dancing in the dark!’

  Three sips of champagne and Liv is feeling bold. ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit scruffy. I don’t have anything smart to wear with me,’ she says, ‘and everything is impregnated with the smell of turf from the fire.’

  Lucinda and Owen exchange glances and smile.

  ‘But that’s perfect,’ Lucinda tells her. ‘My exhibition is called Ireland’s Spine.’

  ‘Peat bogs,’ Owen nods, taking a deep draught from his glass. ‘Lucinda has been painting peat bogs and turf for a year now. You could be seen as a walking work of art, Liv.’

  ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never been called.’

  ‘Take a look around, then we can lunch, I’m feeling hollow.’ Lucinda sweeps the gallery with an arm.

  They carry on talking while she circles the room. The paintings are in oils and heavily textured. The predominant colours are browns, moss greens and pale purples. There are giant expanses of peat bog, flat and grass-patched under pale cloudy skies; one has a small railway running through it. Some canvases depict ridged sections of sliced turf, gradations of chestnut to cocoa brown. She knows little about painting but she wants to touch them so reckons they must be good. There are no people in the desolate landscapes. Lucinda’s self-containment makes this unsurprising.

  ‘Whereabouts did you go to paint?’ She asks.

  ‘The bog of Allen. I got webbed feet, no Indian summer there.’

  ‘You don’t paint people?’

  ‘Not there. They don’t belong there, even though they harvest it. There would be bodies though, down below the turf. People have drowned on the bogs, they can be treacherous if you leave the paths. A dog, a greyhound, went missing one day when I was there.’

  ‘Come on,’ Owen says, collecting the glasses. ‘I’m dying for a fag and I can’t smoke in the caff. There’s a great place just near for sausages and chips,’ he tells Liv. ‘I know the woman who makes the bangers and the man who grows and sells the spuds.’ He shepherds them down the stairs, singing, ‘Give us a bash of the bangers and mash me mother used to make.’

  They walk along in the sun, Owen between the two women with his arms linked through theirs. ‘Is there anything to beat being sandwiched between two lovely women in Castlegray on a warm September day?’ he asks rhetorically.

  They turn into the bustle of the main street. It is market day and the sun has enticed a crowd. They pass stalls selling clothes, leather goods, cheeses, jewellery. There are tempting smells of bread and roasting chicken. There’s a hubbub of conversation and a group clustered round an electrical goods stall where the trader is calling, ‘Come on now, ladies and gents, lads and lasses, make me an offer I can’t refuse — just fifteen of these DVD players left!’ Liv feels the warmth of Owen’s arm and is glad to have found this uncle that she hadn’t even known she’d mislaid. Not to know you have lost something and then to discover it must be one of the most amazing experiences, she thinks, an unexpected gift. Being alive is good; the sun on her face, the Atlantic air borne in on the breeze, the toing and froing of the market, the whirl of a fast jig from the accordion player by the music shop. She gulps it all in.

  It is a champagne day, the taste of life fizzing on her tongue.

  Then there he is, suddenly, holding a box full of tomatoes. Although it is baking, he is wearing a cloth hat and a body warmer over a T-shirt. His broad forearms strain with the weight of the produce. Heat sweeps her neck.

  ‘Now,’ Owen says, ‘here’s the man whose spuds we
’re going to eat. Aidan, hallo, how’s your belly off for spots?’

  He turns, sees and nods. She looks away at the stall with its heaped produce and mossy green trimming. It looks cool under its blue and cream striped awning. She notices the thought that has gone into it, the way shapes are juxtaposed, bulbous fennel against tapering carrots, still with their feather fronds. She concentrates on the display to cover her confusion and avoid his eyes. On a side table are jars of jam and marmalade with home-made labels and gingham tops. She reads the labels: blackberry, damson, plum and orange with lemon zest.

  ‘Hi there,’ he says, resting the tomatoes on a knee.

  ‘And Carmel, I spy you too,’ says Owen. ‘Should you not be at school? Will I contact the child chaser immediately?’

  The girl is sitting on a stool at the side of the stall, eating a red lolly. She grins, pointing. ‘I’ve been to the dentist for a brace.’

  ‘Ah, I’ll let you off, so. Aidan, this is my great-niece Liv, and she is great too, a woman who likes a fry-up. Liv, this is Carmel, Aidan’s wondrous daughter. Aidan, you know Lucinda?’

  ‘I do, yes.’ He puts the box down carefully, wipes his hand on his jeans and extends it. ‘Hallo, Liv.’

  ‘Hallo.’ As their skin touches she knows him again, the feel of him, his texture. ‘I’ve met your daughter already, at Redden’s Cross, with her grandmother.’ The skills for dissemblance learned through the years with Douglas serve her well now; as the jigsaw pieces of Aidan’s family come together she maintains a steady expression.

  Owen reaches and takes a tomato, rubbing it on his sleeve and biting in. He wipes spraying seeds from his chin with his cuff. Carmel stares at him, open mouthed, her tongue strawberry red. ‘Mm, the real McCoy,’ he tells Aidan, ‘not those hothouse yokes. We’ve been to Lucinda’s exhibition and now we’re going to the caff. Will you join us?’

  ‘No, thanks. I can’t just now.’

  ‘We’re waiting for Mum,’ Carmel says. ‘She’s just getting the messages.’

  ‘She’s here,’ a woman calls, arriving with two carrier bags. She puts them down, smiling. ‘Isn’t it lovely and warm? Oh Carmel, you shouldn’t be having that lolly after the dentist!’