I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  They’d driven through Dingle on the way to the house. People crowded the narrow streets, calling and waving to one another, and crossing to the other side whenever they felt like it, forcing oncoming cars to stop. There seemed to be an awful lot of bars, most of which had a Guinness sign hanging outside: Tilly caught snatches of lively music as they passed.

  Breda and Paddy lived on the side of a country road that was dotted with other lit-up houses. Their kitchen was cluttered and cosy, with a big open fire in front of which the two cats sprawled, ignoring the humans. The roast-chicken dinner that awaited them had never been so welcome: it had taken all of Tilly’s willpower not to wolf down the slices of succulent breast and gloriously crunchy-on-the-outside roast potatoes and little mound of minted garden peas, and the irresistibly buttery sauce that Breda poured generously over everything.

  I have him well trained, haven’t I? she said, winking at Tilly. When he puts his mind to it, he can dish up a grand dinner.

  Give over, Paddy replied. He was a man of few words, possibly because he’d lost the knack of talking after sharing the past forty years or so with a woman who rarely stopped. He’d been good-looking in his younger days too – you could see that in the still-strong line of his jaw, the sculpted cheekbones, the coffee-brown eyes.

  And there was no mistaking the affection between the couple. Tilly had noted the tender smile he gave his wife when they were reunited at the bus station, the way he’d held the car door open for her, the way he’d settled her in. Love that had lasted, maybe even grown stronger with the years. Tilly wondered if she’d ever know it.

  After dinner Tilly was shown upstairs to a room at the rear of the house. Navy carpet swirled with purples and blues, cream wallpaper splashed with roses, mahogany wardrobe, matching dressing table on which lay a lace cloth, and a giant double bed covered with a crocheted blanket in pale blues and pinks and lemons. Window veiled with heavily patterned netting and framed by burgundy velvet curtains.

  This was the girls’ room, Breda told her, pulling the curtains closed. Áine made the crochet blanket in school when she was twelve. The two of them would fight like cats and dogs by day, and you’d come in at night and they’d be curled around one another in the bed.

  She led Tilly into the bathroom across the landing and turned on the hot tap in the cast-iron bath. I bet you can’t wait to have a proper scrub after all your travels, she said, shaking in a fistful of salts that caused a musky scent to waft around the steamy little room. I’ll put a hot jar into your bed while you’re soaking – and Tilly pictured one of the big mason jars Ma used to store her pickled onions in sitting in the centre of the bed, and thought it a strange way to heat it.

  When Breda had disappeared she dropped her clothes one by one onto the tiled floor and eased her way into the hot bath and lay back. She could hear the soothing gurgle of water through the pipes, and the murmur of Breda and Paddy’s voices in the kitchen directly below. Two people she hadn’t known existed until a few hours ago, two complete strangers who’d opened their home to her and made her welcome.

  She yawned, breathing in the fragrant air. It was becoming an effort to keep her eyes open. Better not stay too long, never do if she drifted off; mortifying if they had to bang on the door to wake her.

  She rippled the water, thinking about all that had happened since she’d waved goodbye to Ma through the taxi window and set off on this journey across the world. So much to think about, good and bad.

  She’d be on Roone now if she hadn’t fallen asleep and missed her connection in London. She might be lying in a bath in her sister’s house instead of here. But then she wouldn’t have met Breda and Paddy, who’d shown her such kindness. Maybe everything really did happen for a reason.

  And after more than forty-eight hours without access to one, the bed when she slid into it ten minutes later was like a gift straight from Heaven. The hot jar turned out to be a regular hot-water bottle, the kind Pa used on chilly nights; her feet had barely made contact with it when she sank – literally dropped straight – into the deepest sleep of her life.

  She didn’t stir till Breda tapped on her door almost twelve hours later and presented her with the first of several cups of tea Tilly was to have before leaving for the pier with Paddy.

  Don’t be long, Breda said, your breakfast is ready below, and the forecast isn’t great so you’ll need to get going for the ferry in a while – and Tilly felt again the stomach-flip of anticipation that every mention or thought of Roone caused. Just hours away now from her destination, nothing more to delay her.

  Pulling on clean clothes, she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t texted home since Heathrow, which seemed ages ago: better do it now. Half past ten in the morning here, almost bedtime at home but Ma would still be up.

  Hope all is well, she typed. Will miss you for Christmas, have a lovely day. She imagined them gathering without her around the table on the veranda where they always ate the roast beef Ma cooked on Christmas Day. What did the Irish eat for Christmas? She’d find out tomorrow: another stomach lurch.

  Breakfast was a feast, a dinner plate loaded with fried egg and thick bacon strips and plump sausages, and two tasty little circles, one beige and one so dark brown it was almost black. Pudding, Breda called them, black and white.

  A full Irish breakfast you have there, she said. We have it on Sunday mornings, and on special occasions. The rest of the time it’s porridge, and my own brown bread. Her brown bread was the colour of toasted macaroons, and bore no resemblance, in taste or texture, to any bread Tilly had come across. It was soft inside, with a hard crust and a pleasant nutty flavour. It was also warm.

  I made a bit before you were up, Breda told her. Easiest thing in the world, could do it in my sleep. A mix of brown and white flour, a fist of bran, a splash of buttermilk, a shake of salt and a spoon of bread soda. Every woman in Ireland makes it the same way and every one of them gets a different loaf. If you were staying a bit longer I could teach you.

  Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Out on the farm, Tilly presumed. She wondered, but didn’t like to ask, when he would be taking her to the pier. Now that Roone was so close, she was seized with a desire to be there, to discover finally what reception awaited her on the island.

  We thought you’d better go for the half twelve ferry, Breda eventually said, in case they have to stop early with the weather. The forecast isn’t great for later. Spooning yet another round of loose tea into a pot as she spoke, splashing boiling water on top. Paddy is just gone to check on the sheep. He’ll be back to drive you.

  But then Joan had called, and the apple tart was cut, and they decided the half one ferry would be time enough. And now Tilly and Paddy climbed out of the car and watched the ferry moving further and further away from them. Beyond it, Tilly could make out a faint dark hump of land rising from the line of water at the horizon. ‘Is that Roone?’ she asked Paddy.

  ‘It is, that’s it. ’Tisn’t far … but ’tis different from here.’

  She turned to him. ‘Different?’ A gust snatched her hair and swept it across her face; she pinned it back.

  He shoved his hands into his armpits, gave a toss of his head. ‘Ah, they’re grand, but they have their own ways. You’ll see when you’re there a while.’

  He’d been told what Breda had been told, that Tilly was going to find her sister. He had no idea how long Tilly was planning to stay on Roone, if things worked out.

  The breeze coming off the sea was sharp and bitingly cold, but she’d never breathed anything so clean and pure. She remembered standing at the edge of the Pacific seven years earlier, on the far side of the world. She thought there was something wilder about this ocean, something dangerous and exciting. It flung itself against the pier, it pelted icy drops onto her face: she licked them and tasted salt.

  Paddy nodded in the direction of a grey cabin, slightly bigger than an average garden shed and set a little way back from the pier. A small green Jeep was parked by its door. ‘We
can wait in there,’ he said, ‘out of the cold.’

  ‘You don’t have to wait,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’ He’d done more than enough already.

  He looked doubtful. ‘I’d say Breda would want me to stay, make sure you get off OK.’

  But Tilly sensed he had plenty at home to keep him busy. ‘Give me your number,’ she told him, ‘and if I run into any problem I’ll call you.’

  She wouldn’t call, of course: she had no intention of it. If she had to spend Christmas right there in that cabin she wouldn’t presume on their generosity again. But it wouldn’t come to that. The ferry would return and she’d get on, and finish her journey.

  He scribbled the phone number on the back of a leaflet he found in the car. Handing it over, he still looked unsure. ‘Getting rough now,’ he remarked, looking out to sea.

  ‘Honestly,’ Tilly said, ‘I’ll be fine. Really.’ Hoping to God she was right.

  ‘Nearly forgot,’ he said then. He stuck a hand in his back pocket and it came out with a banknote. ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting it towards Tilly. ‘Breda wanted you to have that, over you being robbed.’

  She backed away from it. ‘No, I couldn’t take it, you’ve been more than—’

  ‘You have to,’ he insisted, reaching for her hand and pressing the money into it. ‘She’ll have my guts for garters if I come home with it. Take it, you might be glad of it.’

  ‘Give me your address then,’ she said ‘so I can send it back to you when I get home’ – but already he was turning for the car, raising a hand in farewell.

  ‘Safe journey now, and a happy Christmas to you if we don’t see you.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she called. ‘Happy Christmas,’ waving until he was out of sight. She unfolded the note and saw that it was twenty euro. Their kindness brought tears to her eyes.

  She tucked the money into the inner pocket of her bag and wheeled her case across to the cabin, and pushed open the door. A youngish woman with long auburn hair sat behind a desk at the far end. Jacket, scarf, hat. Book held in hands that emerged from some kind of knitted cuffs. A fan heater humming at her feet.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said to Tilly, lowering the book. ‘Do close the door, keep in the little heat I have.’ Her accent was strange; elements of it similar to Breda and Paddy’s but a twang that had been missing from theirs. ‘You want to go to Roone.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘You just missed the half one ferry.’

  ‘I know – I saw it going. But I’ll wait for the next.’

  The woman lifted a hand, doubt on her face. ‘Let’s hope there is one: it’s getting wild out there. Leo will let us know.’

  ‘Leo?’ She thought of the star sign. Were Irish ferry schedules dictated by a celestial lion?

  ‘The ferryman. He’ll give me a shout if it gets too bad.’

  This sounded ominous. Through the window Tilly could see the water tossing about, as if some giant hand was swishing it around, like Breda had done to the bathwater last night to dissolve the salts she’d thrown in. It was getting stormier out there, that much was clear.

  But today was Christmas Eve. Her skin tightened with anxiety. She began to wish she’d hung on to Paddy. ‘What happens if there isn’t another ferry?’

  A grimace. ‘Then I’m afraid you’re stuck on this side. There’s no other way to Roone, unless you have a private jet.’

  ‘And tomorrow? Christmas Day?’

  ‘Nothing. No ferry again until the twenty-sixth.’

  The twenty-sixth, two days away. Two nights to spend still in transit. Tilly cast another look out the window. ‘How bad does it have to get?’

  ‘Not much worse than this, to be honest.’ She nodded at Tilly’s suitcase. ‘Have you come far?’

  ‘Australia.’

  She whistled. ‘Long, long way. You got people on Roone?’

  Tilly hesitated. ‘Yes, I have some family there.’

  Should she keep telling people about the sister she had yet to meet, or would it be better to keep the information to herself in case it all went horribly wrong?

  ‘If you don’t get over today, what then? Do you have any other contacts here, on this side?’

  ‘Not really … Well, I have a phone number of a couple in Dingle, but I only met them yesterday, and they let me stay in their house last night, and I wouldn’t want to bother them again …’

  How awful was it to have come so far, to be so close to her final destination and maybe not get there after all? She thought of the man in Heathrow who had promised to look after her things, and felt a hot rush of anger. It was all his fault; he’d messed it all up.

  If she hadn’t met him she’d have stayed awake and got her coach to Stansted, she’d be on Roone now. And even if Roone didn’t work out and her sister didn’t want to know, she’d still have money; with funds she’d be able somehow to manage. It would be miserable, of course, to have to spend Christmas alone in a foreign country, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

  Now everything was different. With just a few euro to her name – eighty now, with Paddy’s twenty – the story was very different. How long could you live as a tourist on eighty euro?

  ‘There is a village,’ the woman told her, ‘about half a mile up the road. It’s called Kilmally.’

  ‘I saw it.’ They’d passed through, Paddy hardly slowing his pace. A single street, a scatter of houses, a shop or two, petrol pumps.

  ‘There’s a pub there, they have accommodation, and as far as I know it’s open all year round. You could stay there if you were stuck.’

  ‘Yes …’

  She was assuming that Tilly had the money to pay for it, because nobody travels from Australia to Ireland in the middle of winter without enough money to get by. Tilly had no idea how much an overnight stay cost in Ireland: presumably a pub would be cheaper than a hotel, but she still doubted that she had enough to pay for two nights anywhere.

  Outside, conditions continued to worsen, the waves crashing in earnest now against the pier wall. It was looking more and more likely that Tilly would be stuck on this side of the sea. In a while the phone on the woman’s desk would ring and it would be Leo telling her to go home, that the ferry had stopped running for the day.

  She’d have to phone Paddy, she was left with no choice. She hated the thought of having to impose on him and Breda again – and this time she’d be barging into their Christmas. They mightn’t even be staying at home for it: they might have been invited to one of their children’s houses. Or they might be hosting; everyone might be coming to them for Christmas dinner. How could Tilly expect them to make room for her?

  They would, though. Knowing the kind of people they were, she was fairly sure they’d come to her rescue for a second time. She just hated having to ask them.

  ‘You may as well take a seat,’ the woman said. ‘Would you like some tea?’ She indicated a large flask sitting on a shelf behind her. ‘I also have cookies.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  At least she wasn’t hungry – and she’d drunk enough tea in the last few hours to keep her hydrated until at least the following day. She sat on the wooden bench that ran the short length of the cabin and studied the array of posters that were displayed on the wall that faced her. Blasket Island Cruises, Dingle Peninsula Walking Holidays, Ring of Kerry Coach Tours. Not too many people taking a cruise to the Blasket Islands or walking around the Dingle Peninsula today.

  She turned back to her companion. Might as well make conversation, as long as they’d been thrown together. Might help the time pass.

  ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’

  The woman’s face broke into a wide gap-toothed smile. ‘I’m not Irish, I’m Dutch.’

  ‘Oh – but your English is so fluent.’

  ‘We learn it in school, and most of our TV shows are UK or American imports, with subtitles, so we hear it all the time. I am Isa,’ she added, ‘short for Isabella.’ She made it sound like Ee-sah.
r />   ‘I’m Tilly, short for Matilda. Have you been living here long?’

  ‘I came fifteen years ago. I was travelling around Europe with my boyfriend, and this was our last stop. We had planned to stay a week.’ She laughed. ‘When the week was over he went home.’

  ‘And you stayed here alone?’

  She shrugged. ‘We were heading that way anyway – the few weeks’ travelling together made up my mind.’ Another smile. ‘And soon after that I met an Irishman, a farmer. We’re married now – we’ve been married for nearly ten years. We have two boys.’

  ‘Wow …’

  She’d come for a week, and never gone home. Her life was here now, her family, her work. Her children were Irish. Tilly remembered the uncertainty she’d felt when she was booking her flights to come here, wondering if she was doing the right thing, unable to see an alternative. Still tormented with heartache after John Smith’s abrupt disappearance, still filled with the new, terrible fear that had gripped her in its aftermath.

  Isa had come here and stayed. She’d made a new life here. It was possible.

  ‘Another one,’ Isa said then – and mixed with the wailing of the wind Tilly heard the slam of a car door outside, and the hard clack of heels on stone. The door swung open, bringing a gust with it that swept up pages on Isa’s desk. A woman entered, or was whooshed in, dark hair tousled, handbag clamped under her arm.

  She had to lean against the door to close it, shutting out the elements. ‘Lord, such weather,’ she said, running fingers through her hair as she approached Isa’s desk. ‘I hope the ferry is still operating.’

  She was older – maybe sixty, maybe more – and elegant, with boots encasing slender legs, a pale grey coat that looked expensive, a scarf in rusty oranges with the sheen and fall of silk that trailed from her hand.

  ‘I’m waiting to hear,’ Isa told her. ‘This young lady –’ indicating Tilly with a tilt of her fingers ‘– is also trying to get across. She’s travelled all the way from Australia to spend Christmas on Roone.’

  ‘Goodness,’ the woman said, turning to regard Tilly. ‘Let’s hope you get there. I thought Dublin was a long way to come, but it’s nothing in comparison.’