She broke out into a wry laugh.
“Yeah, Marie told me you had a blast hanging out with them. It’s a good thing I didn’t go, or Laura O’Rourke would have woven together such a story about us in her mind that we would probably even have a couple of kids in secret by the end of the night. I suppose she got your whole life’s story out of you?”
“Almost,” I said. “I held back a little bit.”
“That’s what you think,” she said, chuckling. “So, how can I help now? Need me to rescue you from the hospital?”
“Yes, please. The doctor gave me some pills, and they already want to kick me out of here this afternoon.”
“Okay, give me a couple of hours. The Germans are showering and heading out after breakfast. As soon as they’re gone, I’ll be on my way. Can you survive that long?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. I’ve got to let you go, now. I’ve got an actual customer and the amazing part is I think she actually wants to buy something. See you in a bit, Peter Sparks.”
THE ROAD between Dungloe and Clenhburran was like a rally race course for Judie. We sped along the tortuous and winding forty-mile route in less than fifty minutes, and I thought how ironic it would be to survive a lightning strike only to die the next day in a car accident. We stopped at Andy’s to buy some groceries for dinner and a bottle of wine. (“If you can’t find it at Andy’s, you don’t need it,” their slogan read.) We crossed through town and headed toward the beach.
An old military-access road cuts through a long stretch of meadows, bogs, and rolling hills between Clenhburran and Tremore Beach. About ten miles in, the road veers toward the cliffs, and the only path is an even narrower, treacherous gravel track lined with a stone wall. All manner of wildflowers bloom along its base throughout the year.
As we crested the last hill, the blue vastness of the ocean came into view. The scent of powdery saltpeter that was so common in this part of the countryside mingled with the smells of the livestock, and sometimes, with the smokiness of a far-off wood fire. It’s just then that the small, white Tremore Beach, encrusted between formations of black shale, unfurls before you.
“This is where it happened,” I told Judie as we reached Bill’s Peak.
We stopped and got out of the car, and I began to piece together that night. The tree branch now lay on the side of the road, one end of it singed black. Tire tracks dead-ended at the place where I’d been struck.
“Good old Frank O’Rourke must have found me lying right here. Hell of a shock he must have gotten.”
“I can imagine his wife yelling at him to run you over,” Judie joked.
She hugged me, and we held still, feeling the haunting wind that today would not bring a storm.
“Jesus, Pete, didn’t you ever hear of not standing under a tree during a lightning storm?” she said before leaning in to give me a long, sweet kiss.
That night, Judie cooked stuffed eggplant, and we dined by the fireplace with the bottle of Chilean wine, of which I had only a single glass. She undressed me and traced her fingers over the burns that spanned my body like branches. We made love on the rug and fell asleep in front of the fire.
A headache woke me at midnight. It was a pulsing that seemed to radiate from the very center of my skull. I went for the pills the doctor had given me, which I’d left in my coat pocket. I took them and returned to the living room.
Judie was having another one of her nightmares. I woke her with a hug and soft kisses to keep from startling her. We climbed up to the bedroom. The sheets were cold, and we held each other for warmth. We fell asleep, and I dreamed about Leo and Marie.
In the dream, we were back at the hospital in Dungloe, but I wasn’t the patient this time. It was Leo. He lay in a hospital bed motionless. At some point in the dream, I realized he was dead. The sheet covering him was soaked in blood. His eyes were wide open, and his open mouth was a dark, infinite void.
FIVE
THE STORM’S AFTEREFFECTS lingered a couple of days. But when the sun finally shone, the days were so stupendous most people thought summer had come early.
I spent a few days recovering at home. My body ached, and it felt as if every muscle was exhausted, as if someone had given me a serious beating. And then there was that headache. I took the pills as the doctor ordered, kept the room dark (the light still hurt my eyes), and for hours on end listened to classical music I didn’t know I’d had on my iPod.
At night, I went downstairs and turned my attention to the piano. And I mean that in the most literal sense. I’d stroke the surface, feel it, caress it, as if trying to coax a benevolent genie from inside this magical lamp. Good afternoon, Peter. I’m here to grant you three wishes. What’ll it be?
I just have one: to be able to hear the melodies in my head again.
While I showered, while I took a stroll or read a book, they’d come to me. I’d hum them for fear of losing them, rush home, and jot the notes down on staff paper. How many times had I done that? How many beautiful melodies had come to me that way, out of nothingness, out of that magical spring I’d thought inexhaustible? Now look at me: reading other compositions and trying vaguely to plagiarize something. I’d become just another mediocre composer among the thousands and thousands of mediocre composers who spent their entire lives trying to create just a single piece of passable work. The fairy dust had worn off. The magic was gone, and it was never coming back.
Four days after the accident, I woke up with barely any pain except a remote pulsing in the back of my head. Otherwise, I felt good. I had my energy back and decided to take advantage of my mood and do some things around the house. I put on some old work jeans, a flannel shirt, and Timberland boots. I tied my hair back in a ponytail and slipped on a pair of Ray-Bans. Someone might have thought Neil Young was living on a remote beach in Ireland. I sipped a cup of Barry’s Tea while listening to the Kinks sing on Coastal Radio on a tiny transistor radio I’d found in the attic when I moved in, about how fucked up it is to be a celluloid hero. With that, I hopped in the car and headed into town. I hoped to buy some paint, brushes, and sandpaper to fix up the fence, which had taken a beating during a long and harsh winter. Stupid fence. Had I known what it would come to mean in my life, I’d have torn it out that very day.
Just as Leo predicted, the story of me getting struck by lightning had spread through Clenhburran like a spring pollen. At John Durran’s hardware store, I ran into half the town and everyone asked about my health. “You’re alive, Mr. Harper!” “Did you buy a lottery ticket?” “You try putting a lightbulb in your mouth yet?” Durran wouldn’t let me heave the lawn mower into the trunk. He called over his son Eoin, a freckle-faced kid who always had his head in the clouds, and between the two of us, we loaded the mower into my Volvo. “You ought to cover that septic tank drain, or you’re just going to end up hitting it again,” Durran said. “If you like, I can have Eoin swing by one day and take a look at it. Oh, and don’t forget what I told you about the varnish. Give it three solid coats or the bloody salty air will eat right through it before the end of summer.”
I took a stroll through town. New faces started showing up about this time of year. Clenhburran was a small community in winter. But in summertime, it swelled to more than eight hundred.
I came upon Judie at the store, meeting with Marie and a group of women who were organizing the upcoming outdoor movie night in Clenhburran. They were arguing about where to set up the projector and screen.
It all depended on the weather. You had to have a Plan B in case it rained, which it very well might even though we were having the kind of lovely summer everyone had anticipated. The old warehouse down by the port could work as a cover, but that would require switching around a host of other things, they argued.
Laura O’Rourke was there, of course. It was the first time I’d seen her since the night of the accident. She told a dramatic story about how they’d found me lying in the middle of the road, “half dead,” and how she hadn’t
had the courage to get out of the car. “Frank kneeled down, took his pulse, and I only managed to say a prayer for poor Mr. Harper’s soul,” she said, as she held my hand, and her eyes filled with unspilled tears. Then she announced she wanted to ask me a favor in name of the entire organization of moviegoers.
“I think you’re exactly the right person to give the opening address for movie night, Mr. Harper. Will you do it? Perhaps you could play a small piece? Oh, yes! That would be marvelous.”
I thought Judie or Marie would come to my defense, but quite the opposite, they thought it was a fabulous idea.
“Maybe you could accompany a short silent film on the piano,” Judie said, “although I don’t know how we’d get a piano to the port.”
I nodded as if to say, “Ah, too bad, it was a nice thought, but how would I ever get my Steinway to the Clenhburran port?”
“Well, it wouldn’t have to be a ‘real’ piano, would it, Pete?” Marie said. “It could be an electric one. We could rent one for the event. I think it’s a brilliant idea, Judie.”
The women all clapped at once, and I could do nothing more than smile and nod and hope something went awry with their plan. I said goodbye to the ladies, and drove back to the beach with my Volvo loaded with supplies. I lowered the windows and filled my lungs with that unique mix of fresh earth and salty sea air.
My house was set up on a small promontory at the foot of the beach. It was a relatively modern two-story home (built in the seventies) with a slate roof and a wide wooden deck built right into the dunes, with stairs that led down to the beach. It was the stairs that did it for me. It’s something I’d wanted since I was a boy (maybe I’d seen it somewhere?), and when my real estate agent, Imogen Fitzgerald, told me “the house has a set of stairs that leads right out to the sand,” it was as if a light went on in my head. “Yes! That sounds exactly like what I’m looking for. When can we see it?”
We first came to see it in October 2009, when the sky was steel-gray and filled with strange, enormous clouds. The house shimmered like an open treasure chest in the sand. It was painted white and surrounded by a lush lawn and a cute white picket fence enclosed the property. It faced the ocean and a two-mile-long beach wedged between black cliffs. I almost said “Yes,” without setting foot inside.
It was said that Tremore Beach was in the windiest area, and that’s why no one built homes here. I’d also heard some say the ground was far too sandy, and the beach eroded several inches a year, which would explain the cracks along several of my walls, and why the floor of the downstairs bathroom was slanted.
“Think we could squeeze a piano in there?”
Imogen, my good friend who was looking out for me, tried to play devil’s advocate.
“This isn’t Amsterdam or even Dublin, Peter. There’s spotty telephone reception out here, problems with the plumbing and electrical service. The house needs tons of work. You have grass to mow, a septic tank to maintain . . . not to mention the solitude. You’re ten miles from a little town that itself is in the middle of nowhere. You’ll have to drive everywhere. However, the next house over is occupied year-round, so that’s a plus . . . .”
I said I’d take it as I stood in the living room, looking out that huge window, imagining placing a Steinway & Sons right in front of it. In spring and summer, I’d be able to play with all the windows open to an audience of one: the sea.
“Are you sure about this, Peter? You’d be all alone out here, just you and your piano. Some nights, it’ll be just you and the howl of the wind.”
A deafening wind that would drown out the sound of the music, of a ringing telephone, even of my desperate screams if I ever needed to call for help.
“I’m sure,” I said, finally.
I WAS IN THE BACKYARD with all the supplies I’d bought at Durran’s to begin painting the fence when I noticed Leo running up the shore. He saw me, too, waved, and headed toward my house.
Tremore Beach was close to two miles long, shielded on each side by huge, black rock formations, so that Leo actually could run several laps on the beach. He called it “basic training.” I remember one morning I was seated at the piano when I saw him strip his clothes off at the water’s edge. It was February and although it had been a mild morning, the ocean was icy with semi-frozen bergs. Leo Kogan jumped buck naked into the platinum waves of the Atlantic, and I nearly leaped up to call the police, thinking he was trying to end it all.
“Are you kidding? It’s great for the circulation! You should try it sometime,” he told me a few days later when we bumped into each other on the road to town.
It was that kind of thing that made me wonder whether Leo and Marie were either eccentric or just crazy when I first met them. They didn’t look to have children, nor any kind of a job, and they seemed to be enjoying a fantastic quality of life. And even though they were older, they were in enviable shape. I thought they might be retired millionaires, but their humble home was evidence to the contrary.
One day, about two weeks after I’d moved in, they showed up at my door with a basket of sweets and a bottle of wine. “Welcome, neighbor!” they said, and quickly made themselves at home. I admit at first I was a little cold with them. I’d come here to find solace and to focus on my work, and I was worried these chatty neighbors were going to make a habit of showing up at my door every morning. It turned out to be quite the opposite. My first month was full of problems. The boiler stopped working, and the house got so cold I spent several nights huddled in front of the fireplace, covered in quilts and blankets. While I waited for the rental agency to send a repairman, Leo offered to take a look. He inspected the electrical panel and offered me his gasoline generator.
I got used to seeing them daily. It wasn’t hard to do in that secluded place. Either I’d see Leo running along the beach in the mornings or our cars would cross paths as we headed into town. I didn’t have to live in that secluded outpost for more than a month to realize just how important it is to have someone nearby. During the winter months, all the beach areas were semi-deserted. And since Tremore Beach was one of the more remote spots, Leo and Marie were the only souls for miles around. It’s not that I’m scared or paranoid, but given the remoteness of that place, it suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea to be friendly with my neighbors.
One day, about a month and a half after my arrival, I bumped into them at Fagan’s, and we immediately sat together. It was one of those wonderful, interminable talks over too many drinks, and Marie had to drive Leo and me home. At their house, we polished off a bottle of Jameson and sang and laughed until I passed out on their couch. I guess that was the night we officially became friends and earned the right to pop in at one another’s house whenever we liked.
“Need an extra hand with a paintbrush, neighbor?” Leo panted, running in from the beach.
“Hey, wouldn’t hurt,” I said. Though John Durran had given me a few pointers for fixing up and painting my fence, I knew Leo was handier than me. “I’ll pay you in beer.”
“Deal. Lend me a dry T-shirt, will you? I’m melting with the heat out here.”
First we had to sand down the whole fence, and you had to be careful about it or the paint wouldn’t adhere. He cut me a piece of sandpaper and told me to start left of the gate and he would handle everything to the right. I counted about forty picket slats and figured if we moved at a steady pace, we might finish by nightfall. Clearly I was dreaming.
As the sun turned orange and began melting into the sea, I’d only gotten through three slats. Leo, on the other hand, had sanded eight. Eight! In four hours of work! All of a sudden, mowing the lawn seemed less of an arduous task. I told Leo that was enough for today and offered him a cold one.
The surf was calm, and a warm breeze swept over us. The horizon was a canvas for wide brushstrokes in orange, red, blue, and black. I pulled a couple chairs into the yard, and brought out four bottles of Trappistes Rochefort 6 I’d bought three weeks ago from a Derry craft beer store that specialized in
Belgians. We leaned back, our feet on the soft grass, and clinked bottles while watching the sunset. The doctor had said no alcohol, but what the hell? One day wasn’t going to kill me. Besides, those pills weren’t doing a damn thing for the pulsing in my head. Maybe a stiff drink would help them along.
The first Rochefort (at 8 percent alcohol by volume) got us in the mood to talk about everything. Leo had a lot of stories about hotels. He’d spent the majority of his life in them, all over the world. Las Vegas, Acapulco, Bangkok, Tokyo . . . the list stretched into the dozens. Just when you thought you’d heard every story, he came up with a new one. “Ugh, this pudding reminds me of the slop I had once in Shanghai,” or “I only ever cried over losing a car once, and it was the day I left Buenos Aires.”
He’d held a job that was as retro as it was romantic: “Hotel detective,” a position that only existed at the larger hotels nowadays. Most hotels outsourced the work to private security firms that barely passed muster. But the “grand hotels,” he said, still staffed their own security team.
You couldn’t get enough of his stories, and he always seemed to have a new one you hadn’t heard.
We polished off the other bottles of Rochefort as the sun disappeared beneath the sea. Leo said he should probably get going before Marie came over and chased him home with a broom. But before he left, he looked at me with a devilish gleam in his eye. “So since I’m drunk and technically it’s your fault, mind if I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” I said, laughing, “since it’s my fault.”
“How are things between you and Judie? Still ‘friends with benefits’?”
“Yeah. Well . . . yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“But, when are you going to make it, you know . . . official?”
I finished rubbing my eyes and smiled at him. It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned Judie and how back in his day, when you were interested in a woman, you didn’t waste any time . . .
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Page 4
