I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  He lifted on their luggage and retrieved the rope and flung it into a corner. He squeezed past them to the controls and turned the little boat around until they were facing out to sea. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘Roone, here we come.’

  He gunned the engine and they puttered away, leaving the pier behind. Tilly gripped the ledge that jutted beneath the cabin’s window and watched the boat cutting through the water, and the hump of the island as it got steadily bigger. After just a few minutes she could make out the green of fields, and pale dots that must surely be houses, and slender strips of beaches where water met land.

  She lifted her gaze and saw the wide blue arc of the sky, barely a cloud interrupting it this Christmas morning. The sun out of sight behind them, but casting a dazzle on the water that was almost too bright to watch. Such a perfect day to arrive: surely that boded well.

  ‘Your first visit to Roone?’ Kieran asked.

  Tilly nodded. She hadn’t mentioned the reason for her trip to anyone last night, just told them she was travelling around.

  ‘It’s a grand little spot,’ he said. ‘They’re friendly enough, the island folk. You’ll enjoy it. You staying at the hotel?’

  ‘Not sure yet,’ she replied, hoping he didn’t ask any more. After an eternity of travelling she was almost there – and the closer they got to the island, the more anxious she was becoming. Her stomach churned even more than it usually did in the mornings these days: she felt jumpy and apprehensive. Her eyes brimmed with sudden nervous tears – she blinked them away before they had a chance to fall.

  She felt an arm going around her waist. ‘It will be fine, believe me,’ Colette said softly into her ear. ‘You have nothing to worry about, I’m certain of it’ – and because she did sound certain, Tilly tried to take comfort from her words. They were far from true, of course – she had so much to worry about – but maybe, hopefully, her sister would help.

  The island was rushing towards them now, beaches and cliffs and rocky outcrops encircling the shoreline, houses and roads and trees and hills clearly visible behind them. Fields with animals and red barns and other outbuildings, cars and Jeeps and tractors parked here and there.

  ‘Damage to Mannings,’ Kieran remarked. ‘Looks like you won’t be staying there, anyway’ – and Tilly saw a badly torn roof on a large two-storey building with an apricot façade that lay a short distance from the pier. Mannings Hotel she read, in fancy black lettering on a big cream sign at its entrance.

  A long metal ladder was propped against the hotel wall, beneath the damaged portion of the roof. A figure in a fluorescent orange jacket was making his way up; a second, similarly clad, stood below holding the ladder.

  Adjacent to the hotel was a church, and a terrace of ten or twelve white cottages beyond it, all with identical dark blue doors and window frames, and other houses after that, set back a bit further from the sea, and separate from one another.

  On the other side of the pier were buildings that looked commercial – shops or galleries of some kind, names painted above windows that she couldn’t make out from this distance – before the road veered left, and out of sight.

  It struck Tilly that all the buildings were on the far side of the road, with nothing to impede the sea view of anyone staying in the hotel, or emerging from the church, or living in any of the houses. Nothing between them and the sea but a road and a low wall that seemed to be constructed of stones piled on top of one another, and strips of sand or pebbles or giant black rocky slabs where water met land.

  ‘The village is in that direction,’ Colette told her, pointing to the bend in the road. ‘It’s just around the corner, but we’re going the other way, past the hotel and the church.’ Tilly wondered if there was a bus service, but saw no sign of a stop – and anyway, what bus would run on Christmas Day?

  The air was different here. It seemed to have a new scent to it, one that reminded her of the crisp smell of just-washed sheets after they’d been left outside to dry. It was as if the whole of the island had decided to do the laundry on Christmas morning. She found herself taking deep gulps of it, almost drinking it in.

  Kieran brought the boat in by the long pier and stopped by a set of stone steps, behind a huddle of bigger boats already moored there. The ferry they’d missed the day before sat apart from the others on the far side of the pier. Roone Crossings it declared, in giant red lettering. No cars on its deck now of course, its engine silent today. They’d got here anyway, without its help.

  She climbed from the boat and went up the steps and stood on Roone for the first time. She was finally here, she’d made it. The journey from Australia had taken nearly four days, twice as long as it should have, but she was here now.

  Kieran accompanied them the length of the pier, their cases bumping along behind him. After twenty minutes or so on the sea, after accustoming herself to the rhythm of the water, the ground felt oddly solid now to Tilly: she found herself anticipating a tilt that never came, a dip that was no longer there.

  ‘Ah no,’ Colette said, ‘that looks like Nell’s little boat’ – and Tilly saw a mess of shattered yellow timber that was strewn along the pebbled beach to the right of the pier. ‘Oh dear, what a shame.’

  Nothing left intact but the curved tail of it, Ju in blue lettering all that was still legible at the broken-off edge. Tilly wondered what had come next – Julie? Judy? Weren’t boats usually given female names?

  When they reached the road she looked back. The mainland was reduced now to a ragged dark frill above the water, as insignificant as Roone had been when she’d looked out at it from her attic window a few hours earlier.

  ‘How will you go from here?’ Kieran asked, and Colette told him they could walk, it wasn’t far.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘You’ve been more than kind.’

  ‘No bother, happy to help.’ He shook their hands, wished them a happy Christmas and retraced his steps to the boat, and they watched as he turned it around and headed back.

  Once the sound of his engine had faded, all they heard was the soft rumble of the sea, and the calls of the gulls that flew above it. Despite her jangling nerves Tilly stared at the water, hypnotised by its rhythmic roll and fall. Would she ever get tired of looking at it?

  ‘Now,’ Colette said, ‘we have a short walk, about twenty minutes. Good job the day is dry.’

  They set off, pulling their cases behind them. The road was quiet; in the few minutes since their arrival no car had driven past, not so much as a single bicycle had appeared. Christmas Day: everyone at home with their families.

  Tilly felt another nervous leap inside her. I’m walking to my sister’s house, she thought. In twenty minutes I’ll be there. Every footfall sounded unnaturally loud, their suitcase wheels thundering over the ground like a herd of stampeding buffalo. They walked past the hotel and the church, and were just approaching the terrace of white cottages, in front of which the path they were on seemed to peter out, when Tilly heard a car approaching from behind. She glanced around to see it pulling up beside them.

  A window was rolled down. ‘Ye look like ye could do with a lift,’ the middle-aged woman in the passenger seat said. ‘Did ye just come over?’

  ‘We did,’ Colette told them. ‘Kieran McHugh from Kilmally brought us across.’

  ‘Ah yes, Kieran has the petrol pumps.’ By now the male driver had got out and was opening the boot. ‘His brother Joe is married to Vinnie’s sister-in-law,’ the woman went on. ‘We know them well. So ye were stranded yesterday, were ye?’

  ‘We were. We stayed in a pub in Kilmally.’

  ‘O’Loughlin’s, that would be, Cormac and Bernard. Their cousin Frank is here.’ The man was silently loading their cases into the boot. ‘And where are ye headed now?’

  ‘James and Nell Baker’s house – you probably know it.’

  ‘Of course I do. Sure everyone on the island knows Nell. We all go to her for the haircuts.’

  ‘We know James as well,’ the man remark
ed, slamming the boot closed.

  ‘You do anyway,’ the woman shot back. ‘Never out of Fitz’s pub, that fellow,’ she said to the others, but her voice was good-humoured. ‘Hop in, ladies, throw those wellingtons onto the floor.’ She waved a hand at the pair on the back seat.

  They slid in, moving the boots out of the way.

  ‘So who have we here now?’ the woman asked, craning in her seat to examine them as they set off. Like Paddy, neither of them wore seatbelts.

  ‘I’m James’s mother,’ Colette replied, ‘down from Dublin, and this is a friend of the family, just visiting from Australia.’ The lie came out so smoothly that Tilly almost believed it herself.

  ‘I’m Avril and this is Vinnie. We live on the high road, just down from the lighthouse.’

  Tilly only half listened to the conversation as she looked out the window at the passing trees and houses and fields, at the cattle and sheep and barns and sheds. My sister knows all this, she thought. This is her home ground, this is where she lives. She probably travels this road every day.

  ‘Ah, ’twas shocking, that storm. Trees down all over the place – and the phones gone, and the power out too, since last night – and ye saw the damage to the hotel roof, did ye? Poor Henry had to go around this morning farming out his guests. They can’t keep them until it’s repaired – Health and Safety wouldn’t allow it – and he had nearly a full house. He does a good three-day package over the Christmas, always gets a lot. We’re just after visiting my cousin Sinéad – she’s taken two into her B&B for him. Here we are now.’

  They drew up in front of a whitewashed bungalow with a gleaming red front door onto which a Christmas wreath had been pinned. ‘Now so,’ the man said, lifting the luggage from the boot. ‘Happy Christmas to ye, they’ll be glad to see ye.’

  They stood by the roadside as the couple drove off. Tilly regarded the white house that was full of people she didn’t know. There was a large red candle in one of the windows, and two cars parked in the driveway, presumably belonging to Colette’s son and his wife. She looked to right and left of the house, searching for her destination.

  ‘It’s that one,’ Colette said, pointing right. They’d just driven past it. Tilly saw a field, and beyond it a big old stone house set back slightly from the road. A sign at the gate read Walter’s Place B&B.

  ‘That’s it,’ Colette said. ‘That’s where your sister lives.’

  ‘I didn’t know she had a B&B,’ she replied. Trying to spin out time, now that there was no more travelling to do. Trying to gather her courage for what was ahead.

  ‘Want me to come with you?’

  Tilly took in a shaking breath, let it out. Took in another. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll be OK on my own.’

  ‘You will.’ Colette hugged her. ‘Go on: the quicker you do it, the better. And come and see me when you can. I’ll be here for a few days at least. I’ll be dying to know how you get on.’

  ‘Don’t tell the others,’ Tilly said, ‘if you don’t mind. Not yet, not until I see how things go.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Colette promised. ‘Not a word. This story is yours to tell.’

  ‘Thank you so much, for everything.’

  ‘Go. Best of luck. See you soon.’

  Tilly walked off, pulling her case behind her. Her legs felt unsteady, like when she’d stepped onto the boat. Halfway to the other house she suddenly remembered that she was still wearing Colette’s green scarf: she looked back, but the road was empty. She’d return it later.

  She passed the field: its five-bar gate was wide open. She glanced in and saw a Jeep with a trailer attached to it parked beside a small white van that had something – a fruit basket – painted on its side. The drone of machinery – a drill? a chainsaw? – came from somewhere behind them.

  And then she was there. She was in front of the stone house. As she stood by the small gate a chattering group of children – two curly-headed girls wearing long dresses, two older boys in matching red football jerseys – emerged onto the road from Colette’s son’s house, followed by a woman with a baby in her arms, and a dog that trotted along beside her.

  Tilly stood and watched as they turned en masse into the field she’d just passed, nobody looking in her direction at all. They disappeared behind the vehicles, presumably making for the back entrance of the very house she was headed for.

  Was the woman Colette’s daughter-in-law, dropping in for Christmas with her children? Or could she be Tilly’s sister, just back from a call to her neighbours? Tilly stood uncertainly for another several seconds, and then she opened the little gate and walked up the path, pulling her case behind her. She stood before the big wooden door – no wreath hanging here – and wiped her damp palms on her jacket.

  She took another deep breath. She pressed the bell. Inside, a dog started barking. She had the urge to turn and run.

  The door was flung open by an irritated-looking silver-haired and deeply tanned man wearing a grey suit and very shiny black shoes. ‘About time!’ he barked – and abruptly, his expression darkened further.

  ‘That’s not my suitcase!’ he yelled. ‘Can’t you goddamn people get anything right around here?’

  And as quickly as he’d opened it, he slammed the door in Tilly’s face.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t fuss – I’m perfectly alright. I got a dizzy spell, that’s all. It only lasted a second or two.’

  Dr Jack inflated the blood-pressure cuff that was wrapped around Gladys’s arm. ‘With all due respect, Mrs Connolly, you were unconscious when Laura found you—’

  ‘I came round. She told you I came round right away.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that, but we still need to find out what caused you to collapse. I see your blood pressure is quite high, which probably had something to do with it—’

  ‘My blood pressure is high? First I’ve heard of it. It’s always fine when my own doctor checks it.’

  He deflated the cuff and removed it. ‘Well, it’s definitely high now, and I’d be much happier to admit you to hospital as soon as—’

  ‘Hospital? On Christmas Day? Nonsense, I won’t hear of it.’

  ‘Mrs Connolly,’ he persisted, ‘you may have had a mini-stroke. It’s not uncommon in women of a certain age—’

  Bad mistake. Poor man had no way of knowing what any mention of age did to Gladys.

  ‘Mini-stroke? I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous! How dare you insinuate that I’m old enough to have a stroke!’

  ‘Actually, Mrs Connolly, strokes can happen at any age – and I’m only saying it might be that. It could also be your heart—’

  ‘My heart? Rubbish – my heart is perfectly sound. Gavin, tell him.’

  ‘Mam, maybe you should listen to what Dr Jack—’

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake.’ She folded her arms crossly and glared at the doctor. ‘I’m telling you now I haven’t a notion of letting anyone cart me off to a Kerry hospital. I’ll make an appointment to see my own man when I get home, if that’ll keep you quiet.’

  The doctor snapped his bag closed. ‘Well, I can’t force you—’

  ‘You certainly can not.’

  ‘—but I’m telling you now that I’d be happier to see you being properly checked out—’

  ‘Which I will be, in Dublin.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He withdrew a pad from inside his jacket. ‘In the meantime I’m going to prescribe some pills for your blood pressure, which I would urge you to start taking as soon as possible, and I would also recommend that you stay in bed for the rest of today at least.’

  He wrote. Gladys watched silently, mouth pursed. Laura wanted badly to shake her. She was like a misbehaving child, refusing to listen to reason. Had it even occurred to her that Gavin had had to leave the other men sorting the chaos outside while he’d driven to Dr Jack’s house to summon him on Christmas Day?

  Did she for one second consider thanking anyone for looking after her, or acknowledging that they had more than enough on t
heir plates as it was, like a quartet of children who were mourning the sudden wipe-out of their animal friends, and the arrival of an unexpected and very agitated house guest?

  Hotelier Henry Manning’s timing could not have been worse – or better, depending on the way you looked at it. After managing to get a somewhat revived Gladys back to bed, Laura had sped downstairs to find Henry and another man having been admitted to the hall by the boys, and surrounded by children in various stages of distress.

  Stay here with Mr Manning, Laura had ordered everyone, not even saying hello to the poor man – ‘Emergency’ was what she said – and barely registering his companion before rushing off to find Gavin and tell him his mother needed the doctor.

  Chaos. Small wonder Mr Rachmaninov, or whatever his name was, was put out. By the time Gavin had gone for Dr Jack and Laura had ushered the visitors and children into the kitchen, Poppy was demanding to be fed in the only way she knew how.

  And while Laura was preparing a bottle of formula and spooning instant coffee into mugs, and Henry was apologising for landing in on top of them, and explaining that he wouldn’t be bothering her only he was in dire straits, what with the hotel roof being damaged in the storm, and he knew she was officially closed but could he prevail on her to take in just one guest, it would only be for a couple of nights, while all this was going on Charlie trotted in from the scullery with his latest toy in his mouth – Gavin’s doll, which Poppy had duly rejected in favour of Rabbity – and dropped it right onto the shiny shoe of Mr Whatever, who kicked it off with as much enthusiasm as if it had been radioactive material, and hissed something to Henry that included the phrases can’t possibly expect and must be some place more suitable.

  And Henry whispered something back to him, which Laura couldn’t hear at all, and they carried on in agitated undertones for some time, as Laura made coffee and found milk and sugar and cooled formula and assured the children that all the animals had gone straight up to Heaven – Santa had probably delivered them himself on his sleigh – and pretended to be wholly unaware of the other conversation.