by Laura Elliot
A fortnight after her arrival, she received a letter with a New York postmark. She recognised Meg Ruane’s handwriting and laid it to one side until after Emily left for school. Her daughter’s determination to hate everything about her new home was unrelenting. Trabawn was depressing, dismal, disagreeable, desolate, deserted, dead. She had adjusted to her surroundings with a fondness for alliteration and a tendency to shriek with disgust whenever cattle swayed past the gate or the smell of silage drifted on the wind. She made gagging noises when Lorraine tried to explain the workings of the septic tank and had, on three occasions, declared her intentions of ringing Childline. The school bus – which she approached with the reluctance of a death row prisoner facing an electric chair – picked her up at the top of the lane in the mornings. In the evenings she entered the house and flung her school satchel into the farthest corner of the kitchen. Desperate, despairing, dull, diabolical days. Lorraine was the only buttress for her anger and Emily, being young and energetic, never lost an opportunity to butt.
“Why was it necessary to bury me alive when, like, you know, there was the rest of the world to choose from?” The question had become rhetorical by this stage and was uttered on the slightest whim. “Why am I being forced to endure this hellhole when I should be getting on with my real life?”
“This is real life, Emily. It’s different, that’s all. I spent the happiest days of my childhood in Trabawn.” Lorraine tried without success to convince her daughter of the yet-to-be-discovered delights of the small Kerry village. “It’s a wonderful place when you get to know it. Just give it a chance and you’ll love it as much as I did.”
Emily ordered her mother to stop projecting. “Just because you loved living in this dump when you were a kid means nothing – except that you were easily pleased. I hate living here and I hate the way you keep pretending it’s all a great big adventure when it’s the most traumatic experience of our lives. A broken marriage is not an adventure, it’s a tragic failure and I’m the victim. Can’t you make it up with him … just this once? For my sake? Please do it for my sake.”
Her pleas seemed to echo from the mildewed walls. But there was no fairy godmother, not even a sprinkling of fairy dust, to disguise the truth. Reconciliation was not an option and Emily, realising the hopelessness of her request, was growing into a changeling, a defiant, hurting stranger whose world had been kicked apart by the folly of adults.
Meg Ruane had taken a more sympathetic view in her letter, which Lorraine read sitting by the window with a cup of coffee cooling on the ledge.
Dear Lorraine,
I simply had to write and tell you how shocked we were to hear about you and Adrian. Eoin’s mother rang us with the news and passed on your new address. At first I thought she was joking. You seemed so content when we met in New York. I’d no idea anything was wrong. I don’t want to pry – and I’m sure you don’t feel like talking about it right now – so this letter is just to let you know that we’re thinking of you and wishing you the very best for the future.
We’re all keeping well – although the dreadful happenings of 9/11 have cast a terrifying shadow over everyone. New Yorkers are giving the finger to terrorism and there’s a jaunty image out there that we’re all defiantly getting on with life, but, believe me, it’s grim and it will get worse. I’m really looking forward to coming home when Eoin’s sabbatical ends in October. His schedule of lectures and performances takes its toll on our time together. The two younger ones have settled down but Aoife remains determinedly home-sick. She spends her time texting and e-mailing her friends in case they’re allowed forget her existence for an instant.
How’s Emily coping? She and Adrian were so close. We must meet up as soon as I return. If, by chance, you’re back again in New York for another of those crazy workshops, I insist you stay with us. Do keep your chin up, darling. It’s a new beginning and you’re very brave to take that first step. Drop me a line – or an e-mail, if you’re on-line. Aoife is not the only one to pine for home and friends.
Love
Meg
She would write back immediately. Her mind raced with sentences that would sound strong, ruefully brave, even witty, and Meg, in her new York apartment, would marvel at her courage. She stared at the unpacked crates. Somewhere in one of them she would find a writing pad. Tomorrow she would search for it. There was a computer dumped under the stairs. She would set it up, go on-line. Altavista … Google … go, go, go. She folded the letter and placed it on a shelf. She sat by the window and watched the day away.
Noeleen Donaldson had welcomed her to the lane with home-made gingerbread and two jars of crab-apple jam. Her eyes had darted around the cluttered hall and kitchen, summing up the general air of desolation. They were dark eyes, shrewd and knowing as she offered to help. Politely but firmly Lorraine shook her head and guided the bird-like woman with her chirpy voice to the front door. The thought of a stranger’s hands efficiently unwrapping the contents of her life and assessing them was more than she could tolerate. The older woman had taken the hint and had not visited since. Before she left she pressed a business card into Lorraine’s hand. Her two sons had trades, plumbing and carpentry, they were dab hands at bricklaying and painting too – not to mention the contacts they had in the construction industry. Who could blame them for turning their back on farming, she sighed, what with the backache and documentation and the EU regulations that would strain the tolerance of a saint. If Lorraine wanted anything done to the house – her voice trailed discreetly away as she closed the gate behind her.
Her sons, Con and Brendan, came and cast experienced eyes over the rooms. An expensive job, they agreed, nodding ominously. Dampness had disfigured the walls with mottled purple blotches. Lorraine smelled the mustiness in the air, felt it seeping into her lungs. An expert on damp was coming soon. He would banish the mould and the brothers would paint the walls in vibrant defiant colours: Radical Red, Outrageous Orange, Bravado Blue, Yodelling Yellow, Give-Me-a-New-Life Green. Yes, colours could talk and dampness could be vanquished – but the echo, now there was a problem. The rooms were filled with furniture, even if haphazardly arranged and unused, yet still the echo dogged her footsteps, ricocheted around her, reverberated in the chilling aftermath of shock.
On the beach there were no echoes, only memories. Waves pounded against the rocks, arched towards her like beckoning fingers. At every turn on her path, every bank and hollow, in the humped rock and brooding sand dunes, they waited to leap upon her, clutch her throat, laugh in her ears. They would destroy her, those memories, yet she had fled towards them, battling against her parents’ disapproval, her daughter’s rebellion, her friends’ advice; and, now, alone with the past, she felt herself sinking under their weight. She wondered what it would be like to walk through the sea until there was no sand beneath her feet, only bubbles, light as champagne, floating above her as the drift of the tide filled her senses and dragged her deeper … deeper … into a gentle green oblivion. On such occasions, she held Emily tightly in her mind and concentrated on the tasks that needed doing: a school skirt to be altered, jeans that Emily had dumped on the table with the request, no, the curt demand, that they be washed, the unpacking of the groceries she had bought earlier; trivial but essential tasks that forced her footsteps across the strand and back to the house.
Evening time and the settling dusk brought the bats flitting silently from a cleft in Donaldsons’ barn. They swooped fleetly under the wind-break trees, skimmed around the walls of the old house. At first, she had been frightened by their arrival, imagining their frail fluttering bodies tangled in her hair, their invincible antennae searching for a chink, a tiny crevice in the fortress she had created. But they marked the close of another day and she had grown used to their sudden appearance. When they disappeared into the gloom she knew it was time to heap logs on the fire, light candles, open another bottle of wine. She listened to the clock ticking down the hours towards bedtime. There had to be an easier way to pass th
e time but she had yet to discover it.
The promise of spending a weekend in Dublin with her grandparents silenced Emily’s complaints for a short while. She was their only grandchild and they treasured the close relationship they had with her. Lorraine debated going to Dublin with her but she was still unable to endure the transparent attempts by her parents to tip-toe around her grief. For this reason she had refused to invite them to Trabawn. The house was still uninhabitable, she insisted every time Donna rang, refusing to hear the hurt in her mother’s voice, salving her conscience by looking at the chaos she was accumulating around her.
On Saturday morning she drove Emily to the railway station in Tralee and waved her off. The town was busy, the streets congested with traffic and shoppers. When she was a child, on holidays in Trabawn, a night at the Rose of Tralee Festival had been the highlight of the fortnight, providing the adults and children with an opportunity to dress up and become part of the boisterous crowd that attended the annual beauty contest. Swimsuits and shorts were abandoned for the “Rose” dresses that she and Virginia donned for the occasion. Holding hands, they paraded up and down the thronged streets, admiring themselves in shop windows, imagining themselves on stage, surrounded by envious Roses as they received their crowns and the audience rapturously sang “The Rose of Tralee”. For that night and the days that followed she would refer to Virginia as “London Rose”, while she gloried in the title “Dublin Rose”.
Shrugging aside this dip into childhood, Lorraine drove into a shopping-centre car-park and hurried towards the supermarket. She filled her trolley with basic items, impervious to demonstrators tempting her with cheeses and sauces. On leaving the town, she drove past Blennerville where the sails of the historic windmill whirred busily over Tralee Bay. She should spend a day in Tralee with Emily. They could tour the windmill, ride on the old steam railway line, visit the aqua dome, buy new clothes, have a meal together. By the time she reached Trabawn, she had sunk once again into the familiar lethargy.
Emily rang later in the evening to announce her safe arrival in Dublin. A music gig in Temple Bar with her friends was planned and they were eating afterwards in Thunder Road Café. Lorraine was relieved to hear the lightness in her daughter’s voice, even if it was only a short respite from the resolute air of martyrdom Emily carried on her shoulders. Later, the telephone rang again as Lorraine was uncorking a bottle of wine. Only one person would ring her at this hour of the night. She tensed her arms and waited for the answering machine to switch on.
“Lorraine, pick up the phone. I know you can hear me.” Her husband’s voice faded into background noise. He was ringing from a pub. She could almost smell the perfume in the crowded bar, the vigorous crush of bodies around the counter, the exhaled smoke spiralling as high as the laughter. The noise faded as he moved to a quieter place. “Please talk to me, Lorraine. Emily called to the apartment this evening and created quite a scene. She’s very distressed.”
She lifted the receiver and pressed it against her ear. “Is she with you now?”
“I followed her but she insisted on going off with her friends. They’ll take care of her. We have to meet soon. This is a ludicrous situation. It can’t continue.”
“No. I’ve told you already. I can’t meet you. I’m not ready –”
“But this is not just about us.” Impatiently, he cut across her protests. “Whether you like it or not, we have to sort something out for Emily’s sake.”
“I’ll ring her on her mobile. Thanks for contacting me, Adrian. Goodbye.”
“Don’t hang up, please. You know I’m right. We must work out some kind of routine –”
“That’s up to Emily to decide. I’ll discuss it with her when she returns.”
“You did a cruel thing by removing her from everything that was familiar to her and this is the result.” His breath rasped down the line, judge and jury, accusing. He once had the power to cajole and comfort her, to raise her to heights of pleasure. But as she hung up the phone she felt nothing except an aching regret that tightened like a fist, knuckles digging deep into her chest.
She poured a glass of wine and flung another log on the fire. The glow from the flames reflected ruby splinters off the glass, imbued the kitchen table with a tawny sheen. She liked cottage furniture that had absorbed many lives into its grain and the table, an ancient hunk of wood with scrubbed ridges, bleached of colour and slightly hollowed in the centre, had once belonged to Celia Murphy, the original owner of the house. Lorraine had discovered daffodils among the weeds in the garden and had heaped them in vases around the kitchen. They added to the illusion of comfort and lifted her briefly into a future where she could imagine how everything would look when the house was restored. Small gestures she could manage. Illusions she could create. But nothing drowned the echoes. She sat by the window and stared into the impenetrable darkness of the countryside. Such silence. She breathed into it. The stars shone with a clarity she had never seen in the city but they only made her yearn more fervently for the glare of street lights, the noise of traffic, sirens, burglar alarms, the acceleration of motorbikes passing too close, too fast, the march of footsteps across the Ha’penny Bridge, the loud pealing of bells, the whispering sighs of passion satiated. Her hand was steady as she poured another glass of wine. In the past, on such a night, she would have lifted the phone to Virginia. Perhaps she would have driven to her cousin’s house in Howth and they would have sat on the balcony overlooking Dublin Bay, sharing laughter and confidences, and everything would seem manageable again.
The bottle was empty, the glass smeared. Her breath shortened. Her skin shivered. As loneliness gave way to all-consuming grief, Lorraine Cheevers began to weep. Her crying echoed, unheard, throughout the empty house.
CHAPTER FIVE
Brahms Ward
10 p.m.
Don’t look so lost, Killian. I’m here beside you. The moon is tossing high in the sky and the wind would slice the nose from your face. You’re warm and safe here. Snug as a bug in a rug. I dreamt about you again last night. A wonderful dream, filled with colour and movement, but silent, as if sleep had granted me this one concession. I was standing on the Great South Wall and you, light as a feather and aged about six, were perched on my shoulders. A red lighthouse winked and warned at the foot of the pier and we were flanked by the Dublin Mountains, the curve of Sandymount strand and the Bull Wall jutting like a crude finger into the sea. How strong I felt standing there, the tide lapping the rocks below. A Saturday father again and you were mine for the allotted time span.
Do you remember our walks on the pier? How long ago it seems now. We trained our binoculars on the ferries as they sailed back and forth across the bay. We made up stories about the passengers: spies, pirates and gangsters, monsters, ghouls and werewolves too. You’d a taste for the bizarre, my son. A chip off the old block, some would say. When it was time to return to your other world, you sometimes cried as I drove away from the docklands; a dead place in those days, filled with derelict warehouses and empty wasted sites. How short those hours seemed then, hard-fought and won. But it was real time. Our time. Not stolen from dreams.
I’m going to slip away. It’s late now and I’ve an outline to finish before tomorrow. The writing’s not going well, I’m afraid. No inspiration. How Harriet would snort if she knew. She doesn’t believe in writer’s block. “Let your fingers do the thinking and your mind will catch up,” she always says. “It hates being left out of the action.”
So, it’s black coffee and a long night. I’m working on the problems between Gary and his father. Can’t sort it out, Killian. They spar with each other, old bull, young buck, but their dialogue has no life. It’s fake, contrived mush. I’ve always found fathers to be tricky characters to handle. I never knew my own father, not on Saturdays or any other day. So there you have it, Killian. No role model. It’s not an excuse for failing you – or for bad dialogue. Just a fact of life.
Father … Our Father … heaven … fathe
r … daddy … Saturday Daddy … cakes … pocket … daddy come home …
CHAPTER SIX
The Donaldson brothers started work on the studio, converting the old stable where Celia Murphy once stabled her donkeys and, in a time before then, her father kept his two plough horses. With their sturdy bodies and strong, ruddy faces, the brothers were so alike that Lorraine had difficulty distinguishing one from the other. They sang in harmony as they worked. Garth Brooks fans. Although they harmonised surprisingly well they stopped self-consciously whenever she entered the studio. Their taste in music drove Emily to despair. Discordant, desperate, dreary, dreadful dirge. What had been an amused tolerance for country music had swelled to a passionate hatred. Every hammer blow they made was a reminder that her young life was changing inexorably.
One evening, while unpacking a crate that had been blocking the landing, she discovered an old photograph album of Lorraine’s. Listlessly, she turned the pages that chronicled her mother’s childhood holidays. Lorraine discovered her sitting cross-legged beside the crate, the album open on her knees. She knelt down beside her and stared at the photograph of two small girls sitting on a dry-stone wall, bare legs dangling, their swimsuits clinging to their tanned, skinny bodies. Virginia’s straight black hair swung over her cheeks. Her eyes peered from under a long fringe. She was thin and leggy, her stomach almost concave in a red bikini. She held a dead crab which, seconds before the camera clicked, she had pressed against Lorraine’s face. Lorraine, in an identical bikini, looked startled, as if she was trying desperately to hold her balance on the wall. A pair of donkeys grazed in the background and the old two-storey house looked exactly the same as now: dingy grey pebble-dashed walls, a hall door in the centre with a window on either side. Three windows on the top floor, two large and a small one in the centre, offered a distant view of the ocean. Celia Murphy stood in her doorway, her hand raised in a wave as if she was personally greeting the camera.
