‘Hi, can I help you?’
He had a much stronger Irish twang than her dad, who must have lost most of his in the city.
‘Hi,’ she said, the words she had planned on the journey evaporating.
‘Hello there.’ He seemed to hesitate. ‘It’s a bit late in the evening, and the year, to be hiking. Do you have anyone with you?’
He sounded slightly wary, or just cautious. But not hostile.
She shook her head.
‘Well, you’ve missed the last ferry back. I suppose you can stay here, although the spare rooms are closed up. Unless you’re camping?’
Again that hesitant note.
‘I’d like to stay, please … Uncle Harry.’
He came quickly towards her. With a hand that smelled of turf, he tilted her face to the light.
‘Lia?’
She nodded and he grabbed her to him, hugging her as best he could with her rucksack in the way.
‘Good God, Lia, don’t you know your mother is going crazy trying to track you down?’
‘She called you?’
He nodded. ‘This morning. But I didn’t for a minute think you’d come here. But when I saw that hair …’ He touched her hair, a lighter chestnut-brown than his. ‘It’s the same as my mother’s,’ he said, with wonder in his voice.
He fell silent for a few moments, holding her shoulders, gazing at her.
‘Anyway, what the hell are you doing here? Jasmine is beside herself.’ He shook his head and repeated himself. ‘She said you’d come here – I told her I couldn’t see why you would. But here you are.’
‘I … I just needed some space, after ... you know.’
His stern expression softened a little. ‘I do know. I’m fond of space myself.’
His stern expression softened a little. ‘I do know. I’m fond of space myself.’
That’s right, Lia thought. Her dad had said that Harry had been married a long time ago but wasn’t any longer. No kids either. She wondered briefly if he was gay.
‘Will you tell Jasmine I’m here?’ she asked.
‘Of course. I have to. When will I tell her you’ll be home? Now that you’re here, you can stay a week or two if you want. It’d be nice to get to know my only niece.’
He went behind the bar to wash his hands and fill the kettle, before coming back out to her and taking the heavy bag from her shoulders.
‘I’m not going back,’ Lia said.
‘What? Now we don’t want talk like that. What age are you? Fifteen?’
‘Sixteen. And I’ve finished school – I skipped a year and graduated before the summer.’
‘Good for you – but you’re still just a girl. You need to be at home, going to college or something.’
‘I don’t want either of those things. Jasmine wants me to go to college. I’m not ready.’
He looked at her, eyes narrowed slightly. He had the same colour eyes as her too, more hazel than green.
‘She mentioned there might have been a row along those lines,’ he said. ‘Look, how about we figure it out after we feed you? I roasted a nice lump of beef earlier. It’s there if you’re hungry.’
Lia felt the tension leave her. He must have noticed her shoulders relaxing because he suddenly smiled, and it was as if her father was standing in front of her.
‘C’mon now, Lia, everything will be alright. We’ll get it sorted, eh?’
He slung an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into him.
‘First things first. Grub.’
He showed her the kitchen, put together a plate of beef and jacket potatoes with gravy for her, along with a glass of cold milk. With an apology, and an instruction to make herself at home, he hurried back out to his customers.
She emptied the plate. She hadn’t been aware of how hungry she was. Then, feeling nervous at being alone in a stranger’s kitchen, she stacked the crockery in an old dishwasher, its front more smoky-yellow than white.
She looked around. She could see that the small kitchen was used both to supply the pub and for Harry’s personal life. There were cases of soft-drink bottles stacked in the corner, and many books in various stages of being read, judging by the scraps of paper sticking out of them as bookmarks. She looked at one, a thick tome about Russian oligarchs, his place marked with a drinks-company invoice. It seemed that, as tidy as her father had been, his older brother was the opposite. After the perfection of the New York brownstone that she knew as home, she found the room charming – ‘dirty enough to be happy, clean enough to be healthy’. The words echoed in her mind. She had often heard her father say them. Had he in fact been tidy, or was it just Jasmine’s rules and a steady stream of cleaners that had made the brownstone perfect?
Lia felt lost again, and swallowed tears for her father. Was it possible that he had been unhappy all along, only nobody noticed? Why else would he have come back here to do what he had done?
There were old photographs in frames on the dresser, almost lost among books, crockery and more paperwork. She stared at the brothers, arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Carefully, she picked one up. It was no more than a snap and had tilted sideways in the frame. They looked the same, handsome, her father redder of hair and skin, Harry darker and more tanned.
‘We were best friends. I miss him like crazy.’ Harry, having come into the room unnoticed, took the picture from her and touched his brother’s face, frozen in time.
Lia felt her swallowed tears rise and nodded.
‘Me too.’
He put the picture back and took her into his arms. She rested her head against his chest and breathed in a scent that was both familiar and strange, the scent of her father and of an unknown man to whom she was linked by blood and, it seemed, sorrow.
Lia went outside while Harry called Jasmine. She didn’t want to hear her mother’s upset through the phone. It would make her waver in her decision to stay away. She had decisions to make about her next step and where she would go but she wasn’t ready for that yet. Despite the rows, she loved her mom, although they were very different people. Jasmine was tough, cool and glamorous, but Lia had started to see vulnerabilities in her, a fragility either revealed by her husband’s death or created by it. If Lia heard tears in her voice, she might give in to Jasmine’s way of thinking. Fights were easier than sadness.
She sat on a bench at the back of the pub. The moon was rising, a little over half full, and orange. Lia listened to the soft sound of waves at the bottom of the cliff, and to the occasional call of some night bird. Despite her anxiety, she felt her eyelids grow heavy. It had been a long day and she had travelled between her familiar world in the city to one entirely different. She felt drained.
In an effort to wake up, she walked to the end of the garden, the path lit by small ground-level solar lights. Dark as it was, once she was beyond the reach of the pub’s lights, the rising moon was enough to show her the shadowy outline of the big house she had seen earlier. It created a kind of blank dark, deeper than the natural night, like a hole in the sky.
‘Lia?’
She turned quickly and saw Harry framed in the warm light of the pub’s open back door. As she walked towards him she saw that his face looked shadowed and thought the worst.
‘What did she say?’
‘A lot, but she settled down a bit after she got it off her chest. She’s just worried about you.’
‘I know.’
‘She said you could stay for a while though. If it’s OK with me.’
Lia searched his face. His expression was severe.
‘What ... what did you say?’
He came out, letting the door swing shut behind him.
‘The island can be a pretty tough place to live in the winter. There’s almost no one here your age, or close to it. The pub won’t be crazy busy the way it is in the summer, but I’ll have to be here all the time anyway. Rose helps out but only part-time. Rose Tierney. You’ll meet her. There won’t be much for you to do. You might e
nd up being on your own a lot. Plus, we often end up using a generator for power and the phones get knocked out. The TV in the bar is the only one I have and it’s always tuned to sports. I only go across about once a month and the ferry is infrequent once the weather comes in.’
‘That’s a lot of reasons against.’
‘It is. And I have a lot of company during the summer and there’s always the local custom in the winter, but other than work I’ve been used to keeping to myself. There aren’t many women’s touches around here, although Rose slips things in once in a while. I’ve got used to being by myself and I forget to have things nice.’
‘’K.’ Lia sat down on the bench, feeling unexpected tears spring to her eyes.
Harry sat beside her and sighed heavily. He stared at his upturned palms for a second before wiping them on his thighs.
‘But then here you are, looking so much like Will and wanting to know why he …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you deserve to stay for a while. Maybe it’s your right.’
Lia looked up at him. His brow was furrowed.
‘You won’t regret it, I promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll help out and be no trouble.’
‘I hope I won’t regret it. There’s enough of that to be getting on with as it is.’
‘Thank you. Thank you, Uncle Harry.’
‘Oh, just Harry, please. I’m not used to that uncle stuff. And you seem to call your mother by her first name.’
‘OK.’ She smiled. ‘Although with Jasmine it’s because she sometimes wants people to think I’m her sister, not her daughter.’
He laughed and patted her awkwardly on the knee before getting up.
‘Don’t stay out here too long. The night air isn’t good for you. It’s not too cold yet, but it’s still nearly winter.’
She stood too. ‘I’m coming in now. I’m really tired. Bedtime, I guess.’
Smiling, he threw an arm around her and they went in together.
The side door of the Robin’s Rest opened, letting out the smell of the fire and a gale of laughter, followed by Harry’s shout for last orders. Andrew Murphy shut the door behind him and the four men stood in the quiet night. Two lit cigarettes but no one spoke. The night sky was clear, the moon casting shadows. They had no difficulty making their way along the familiar path that led to the cliffs.
Andrew stood on the very edge and stared down into the white-tipped waves gently breaking against the rocks. The calm sea could be seen a long way out, so bright was the sky. He looked back up along the jagged coast of the island, his eyes drawn, as always, to the dark shape of the Hall. His own land cut over and back between the Hall and Dan Wray’s farm.
The Hall towered over everything. The trees had all grown small and bent under the onslaught of the wind which was strangely absent so far this year. The house stood with windows watching seaward and in towards the island. He could just make out the large twin stone birds on the parapets.
He often wondered what sort of people had built the place. Everyone on the island knew what the history books said, but none of the dusty tomes described the nature of people who would build an ugly, frightening block to sit on the edge of the world, often wrapped in the fogs that crept in from the sea. His shoulders tightened. Even when it was hidden from view, it could be felt in the stiffening of hairs on the back of the neck, in the sudden goose bumps that rose as though a spider had run across his flesh. Somebody walked over my grave. It was an expression few on the island used. It felt too close to the truth.
He became aware that someone had spoken. He turned his attention to his companions, still feeling the presence of the house just outside his peripheral vision.
‘We’re heading home, Andy,’ said Evan.
‘See you tomorrow,’ said Jim.
He nodded. They left, patting his shoulder as they went by.
Brendan remained.
‘You OK, Andrew?’ he asked.
‘Sure I am,’ Andrew said curtly. ‘What makes you ask?’
‘I just thought you seemed …’
‘Seemed what?’
‘Nothing. Night.’
‘Goodnight, Brendan.’
He stared after Brendan. Usually he tolerated his attentions, which had been constant over the years. Felt sorry for him. Tonight he was short on patience.
He stood still and looked out to sea. This was the very spot where Harry and Will Crowe used to sit as boys, dangling their legs over the grassy edge into the world of air, sea and rocks. Not twins but born in the same year, different but alike. They hung around with Andrew and the others but were closer to each other than to anyone else.
Andrew’s wife Kitty wasn’t an islander, but a cousin of one – she had come to visit, met him and never went home. Will had gone travelling and shocked everyone by marrying and staying abroad. Harry most of all. Despite being the publican and a man people looked up to, once Will left there was a sort of distance in Harry, as if his brother had taken some part of him away. He was the only one without a wife or children. Apart from Brendan of course who had never had any interest in women. Harry used to enjoy a woman’s company, during the summer at least, but these last years he had kept to himself.
And now, Will’s daughter was here, the closest blood relative Harry had, looking for her own answers, staying in the pub. Not a summer person but not a full-blood islander either. If she was her mother’s daughter, from what he remembered of the woman the one time they met, two weeks would be enough for her. But if she was a Crowe through and through? He didn’t know.
There were no other children on the island. The small school stood empty.
All of the summer people had gone back to their lives and the small row of pastel-coloured houses on the outskirts of the village stood in cold silence.
During the summer, the days on the island seemed to last forever. The nights were a brief few hours where the dark never reached full penetration. The stars out here were clearer than anywhere he had ever seen them. On a night like this, a waxing moon made the world a bright monochrome.
He realised he was closer to the edge, staring down into the dark drop to the sea. Trying to answer silent questions. The waves below muttered against the sharp rocks. Answers didn’t come.
And neither did the storms. The official start of winter was a couple of weeks away. There hadn’t been a sight of the heavy storm clouds that were every year drawn to the island, to spend themselves in wildness and abandon before they reached the mainland to drop a few sprinkles of reviving rain.
Andrew turned away from the cliff edge and stared at the shadow of the house. He thought he saw some movement above the stone birds, almost as though some other night hunter had come to rest on one of their granite heads. He squinted to see better, but it was much too far away. Primitive nerves that lived at the base of his brain made him turn and head back to the Robin’s Rest. Kitty would be along in the truck – the only vehicle on the island – to collect him any minute. She had gone to spend the evening with a friend in the village and would collect him on the way back.
Rose glared at him when he came back inside, shutting out the night. She wanted people to go home, not come back in. He wasn’t alone though. There was the usual crew of customers who liked to stay as late as they could. Out here on the island, there was no one to enforce the law of closing times except Harry. Rose was great and knew how to give as good as she got, but the boys wouldn’t shift for her. She grudgingly gave him a Captain Morgan and orange to finish the night and he half listened to the quiet chat of the stragglers.
Harry came back into the snug and laid his hands wide apart on the counter. One of the more sober lads gave his mate a dig.
‘Just going now, Harry, no bother.’
And there was no bother. They drained their glasses and were off.
Rose replaced the glare with a smile, stacked the last glasses in the dishwasher and was out the door two minutes after the last customers. Andrew raised a hand in farewell to Harry an
d blessed himself quickly as he passed the big window that faced the Hall.
Kitty was waiting, half asleep. She said hello and set off the minute he settled in the passenger seat. As always, she pressed harder on the accelerator as she passed the Hall, never acknowledging the habit.
Andrew looked out the side window as they passed between the Hall and the last farm before their own – Dan Wray’s house. There was a light on upstairs. Probably Ed, reading or brooding. The boy didn’t want the farm. He didn’t really want to stay on the island. Andrew could see it in him. In a way, Ed reminded him of Will. There was something unsettled in him. The island needed Ed but Andrew wanted the land that would become Ed’s when Dan finally drank himself to death. It was a knotty problem, but one he had to put aside while Dan refused to sell to him. He was ready if he ever changed his mind though. Or if he dropped dead and Ed wanted rid of the farm.
Kitty braked sharply on the gravel outside their house, stalling the truck. The pain of the fibromyalgia made her tired and grumpy. Inside, her eyes closing, she went straight to bed, and disappeared into an exhausted sleep. The night before she had barely slept at all with the pain.
Andrew dropped his clothes on a chair and drew the curtains against the night. His thoughts were dark and, with his wife in a dead sleep that was no comfort to him, he drew the covers over his head like a child, finally drifting to sleep and into a nightmare.
Two
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … but the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom.
Daughter of the Storm Page 2
