A Handful of Pebbles (12 page)

‘
Helena too.’

‘
What was it about?’

‘
No idea. All I know is Helena is stubborn. Early this morning, she makes several phone calls to her friends with astringent happiness in her voice and now she has gone to Athens for the day to shop with her mama at The Mall.’

‘
Oh.’

‘
It is all fake and bluffing,’ Frona puffs.

‘
Has she cancelled anything? The church, her friends coming?’

‘
What would I know? I am Helana’s favourite when it suits her. But I do not think she will call it off yet.’

‘
Yet?’ Sarah can hear her heart beat in her ears.

‘
Yes, you know, she will flaunt her independence a little, sulk a little, and wait. Wait for Finn to come begging. When he does, she will refuse, he will have to prostrate himself, she will toy with him, he will be on the verge of giving up, and she will snatch him back and they will marry.’

‘
You make it sound like such a game.’ Sarah experiments with a little laugh, her shoulders drop and her frown disappears.

‘
It is a game.’

‘
Not for Finn it’s not.’ Her frown returns.

‘
It is the game of courtship. They are a fine, energetic couple, they come from privileged backgrounds ...’ Frona does not pause as Sarah cringes. ‘And the drama of their courtship should be as splendid as their lives.’

‘
You make it sound so harmless, but Finn is heartbroken,’ Sarah says.

‘
Let us give it a day, maybe two. You’ll see.’ Frona stands, as if indicating the audience is over. ‘But you, you are the last person to worry about Finn and Helena.’ One of her eyebrows raises and Sarah is not sure if she should read more into what was just said. ‘Meanwhile, I don’t think you have met Helena’s baba yet, have you? Come on, let us track him down. He will be in the gym, no doubt.’

‘Jim,’ Frona commands over the music. The man running presses a button and the music stops, his treadmill slows. On seeing Sarah, he pulls the towel from around his neck and wipes his brow. ‘This is Finn’s mama, Sarah.’ The man jumps from the machine. Wiping his hand, he shakes Sarah’s heartily.

‘
Well hello, Mrs Quayle.’

‘
Please call me Sarah.’

‘
And call me Jim.’ He walks over to a water fountain and fills a small paper cup.

‘
I understand Helena and your wife are in Athens.’

‘
Yes, shopping therapy and cooling off, I hope. So like her mother—feisty and stubborn. And like her
Yiayia
.’ He winks at Frona, who hisses through her teeth and waves his dismissal. ‘Finn’s a great guy. Is he okay?"

‘
No. No really, he was so upset.’

‘
Yes well, he will get to know her and then it all won’t seem so traumatic. Her mother did the same to me. I had my heart in my mouth for the first three years of our marriage. Calmed her down having kids. Shall we go upstairs? I’ll have some coffee made.’

Whilst the coffee is brewing
, Sarah is shown up, by a woman who does not look Greek and speaks no English, to a balcony that overlooks the whole area. Alone with such a view, she takes her time to orientate herself, picking out landmarks in the village, tracing roads out into the country. To her right, she easily spots the tree in the centre of the rough land. The ground is laced with tracks that the goats and sheep have eroded with their eager hooves. The trails converge near the top of the hill into a single ribbon that follow a winding track down the back of the slope.

A shiver runs down Sarah
’s spine as she spots a low-lying cottage deeply nestled into the hillside. So planted is it in the soil, little of the whitewashed walls are visible and the roof tiles are so mottled, so variegated that even they blend into the surrounding dried earth. Dots of colour suggest pots of flowers dotted here and there at its base. A rougher roof nearby could be the sheep’s enclosure. She stiffens. A tiny shape emerges from under the roof tiles. Nicolaos! He carries something under his arm. Specks that Sarah has presumed were dried vegetation run to him and she realizes they are chickens. His free hand dips into whatever he is holding in his crooked arm and then draws an arch in front of him. The hens gather more and more as he sows their food. Sarah watches, feeling slightly guilty at her voyeurism but unable to look away. Finally, he takes the container from under his arm and, turning it upside down, bangs the bottom. She faintly hears the sound: dull, without resonance.

A sharper noise of feet on stairs behind her brings her to attention as Jim joins her, showered and changed. The coffee is brought up and Frona follows with a plate of cakes.

‘I made these this morning.’ She offers one to Jim, who accepts, takes a bite, and leaves it on his plate. Sarah tries to do the same, but it is too delicious and soon, it is all gone.

Jim talks about his life in Australia and America. Sarah wonders if the area has some connection with Australia
, as Nicolaos the shepherd is from there too, but she does not mention it. As if reading her thoughts, Jim tells her there are more Greeks in Oz than in Greece itself and laughs. They pass a pleasant half hour before Sarah says she must get back and at this point, Jim asks where her husband is and why he did not come.

‘
He’s taken Finn to some ancient monuments and for coffee, but I am sure you will meet him soon.’

‘
Well, I look forward to it,’ Jim says. ‘He’s a pilot, isn’t he?’ Sarah nods. ‘Best get him on our books then, get him flying one of our jets.’ He chuckles.

Sarah winds her way down the drive
, wondering what sort of family Finn has got himself involved in. It all seems too big somehow; the family, the house, the wealth, and Laurence is going to bristle and grow silent if Jim ever makes a joke like that to his face. She can see it now: his cheek muscle twitching, the scorn visible on his face at his career being reduced to being the possible employee of his soon-to-be in-laws. If it gets to that stage, she could even see Laurence warning Finn off the whole thing just to save his own ego.

Why could Finn not just find a quiet Manx girl and have the wedding in Ballasalla church and honeymoon in the Canaries?

But then, she really does not have room to talk. A rush of memories floods her senses.

Shaking herself from her dark dreams
, Sarah rolled so her legs fell off her single bed and she could lurch to standing. A step took her into the tiny sitting room. The sagging sofa remained empty. Torin’s worn boots were not tucked neatly under the end; his sheets and thread-worn blankets lay folded on the chair as he had left them. The hollowness started in Sarah’s stomach and rose to her throat, tasting of bile. The blood drained from her head, sending her hands flying, gripping the back of a chair to stop her overbalancing. Her legs gave way and, making no struggle to remain standing, she sank to the floor.

Vaguely
, she felt bony knees in her back as Liz pushed past her to get out of their bedroom.

‘
Coffee?’ Liz’s tone was flat.

Sarah could see no point in answering.

Metal spoon tinkled against ceramic and water was poured.

‘
Here.’ Liz sat on the floor next to her, putting a coffee down by her feet. Sarah stared at it blankly.

‘
I’m not going in today,’ she said.

‘
Risky,’ Liz answered, but with little interest.

‘
What’s the point?’ Sarah could feel the tears welling. Surely the crying had to stop sometime? She was drained and wrung dry by all the wailing. No more. She wanted no more. But still the tears came.

Liz got up, and Sarah knew she was going for toilet
paper. It was a system they had developed; if one of them started crying first, the other went for tissue. Liz came back with a tea towel.

‘
We’re out of loo roll until we get paid tomorrow.’ That meant it had been a month. A month and still the pain tore at her insides like a twisting cramp. She looked up into Liz’s blotchy red face, her eyes red-rimmed too, her chin wet. ‘Come on, Sarah. Torin would not have given up, and he wouldn’t want us to, either,’ Liz soothed.

‘
I can’t.’ Sarah put her hand out for her coffee, to touch the warmth, but she did not pick it up. Liz stood, was away a few seconds, and sat down again heavily.

‘
Here.’ Liz unscrewed the top from an unopened half bottle.

‘
Where did you get that? Aren’t we out of money?’ Sarah enquired with little interest.

‘
Don’t ask,’ Liz replied. Sarah knew Liz had resorted to shoplifting, but it was a petty detail in life; she didn’t care.

The amber spirit was enough to encourage Sarah to drink; the promise of the intensity of her feelings being numbed enough to get cup to lip. They had drunk a lot of whiskey in the last month.

‘Steady.’ Liz’s hand touched hers and Sarah slowed her drinking.

‘
I’m still not going in today.’ She stated it flatly. Liz topped her mug up with more whiskey.

‘
Go in half-cut and you’ll make it till lunch. We can go to Bar George for lunch. We’ll get that lecherous old Jeremy bloke to buy us a liquid lunch, and then it’s just a couple of hours till home.’

‘
Liz, I can’t see the point.’ Sarah let her voice wail.

‘
No toilet paper and no whiskey,’ Liz stated. ‘We lose these jobs and it’s back to Country Clare. That wasn’t Torin’s plan.’

Sarah could hear Liz struggling to hold back her own tears.

The alcohol burnt a warm path down her throat and the tears turned into heaviness. ‘We need someone like Jeremy to foot all our bills. Then we wouldn’t need to go into that dead-end job.’ Sarah took another gulp.

‘
He fancies you,’ said Liz. ‘I reckon someone like that would marry you with a little encouragement.’ Liz’s statement contorted Sarah’s face into a grimace, her shoulders slumped forward, her chest sunk into itself and her head dropped forward. She looked at the thin ring on her finger, the tiny stone only just visible, remembering the feel of Torin’s fingers as he put it there, that intimate moment. The thought of marrying someone old and lifeless like Jeremy in Torin’s stead was ridiculous. A splutter of sad laughter escaped her, dripping coffee down Torin’s t-shirt, which she had been sleeping in. The drips ran over the plasticised lettering that spelt
Iron Maiden
and soaked into the design below. She rubbed at them.

‘
You marry him.’ Sarah threw the concept back at Liz.

‘
Come on. We need to get going.’

Dressing without being aware of her actions and brushing her hair without looking in the mirror
, Sarah got ready. Liz made second mugs of coffee and laced them even stronger, and the two of them wobbled from the one-bed flat out into the sea air, leaving the smell of damp behind.

They made it till lunchtime although they did very little work. The paint-peeling back room felt more stifling than usual. The computers seemed slower, the number of envelopes piled high.

‘I hate it when they put in several cheques for different accounts. There should be a rule—one envelope for each account they want to pay into,’ someone said at one point when the supervisor left the room and the mood dropped to a level that was more in keeping with how Sarah and Liz felt. After that comment, workmates took more cigarette breaks than usual and others lingered around the coffee pot until Mr Kneale came back in and butt ends were hastily stubbed out and coffee mugs were abandoned, everyone settling at their stations, making a pretence at diligence. At the rate they were paid, very little else could be expected of them. The clock hands inched round to lunchtime and Sarah put her headset on the desk.

‘Think of it as Monopoly. It’s just the first shake of the dice,’ Torin had promised. ‘All we need to do is to save enough to make a bid for a spot to sell burgers on the TT race week and we are made.’ His enthusiasm was infectious. He didn’t work beside Liz and Sarah. The job he had was even worse paid, and hot. He fried up in a roadside burger van. But he had done the maths and he reckoned if he hired the van he worked in and was successful in bidding for a stand during race weeks, they would clear three or four grand profit. ‘And with that, we go to London.’ He had grinned as if London would be all red carpets and easy living.

But now he was gone.

‘
Come on. Bar George.’ Liz pulled at Sarah’s sleeve.

Bar George was busy as usual. Lawyers from the courts spilled over the trestle tables, the menu chalked up in big letters on the end wall, the floor-to-ceiling wine rack behind the counter constantly restocked so it never depleted.

‘There’s Jeremy.’ Liz pushed through the crowds.

Sarah had no mood for the old man. The whiskey had worn off but luckily
, things did not look quite so bleak as they had this morning when she was torn from her dreams. But she felt fragile and Jeremy, she did not need. Her stomach growled and she watched a bespectacled woman stabbing at potato wedges and dipping them in a small pot of house sauce.

‘
Ladies, ladies, ladies, what a pleasure. How are you this fine day?’ Jeremy shook their hands, squeezing and feeling their upper arms with his left hand, inviting them to sit. They squashed onto the benches and people shifted up, apologising, making room. The trestle tables forced interactions with strangers, and it was how they had met Jeremy. There was never enough space.

‘
I was just about to eat. Have you lovely ladies eaten?’ He leered at them. Sarah could not tolerate his fake jolliness and she stiffened her legs to stand and leave. Liz grabbed the bottom of her coat under the table, and Sarah found she could not rise.

‘
You know, we’ve had a hell of a morning. We need food and something a bit stronger, if you know what I mean.’ Liz smiled across at him, looking so like Torin, Sarah’s eyes stung.

‘
Well, be my guests, ladies.’

The next day, Liz shook Sarah awake.

‘
Come on. Money in the bank today,’ she said.

‘
It’s Saturday. Leave me to sleep.’ Sarah turned her back on Liz, pulling over the duvet.

‘
Not only money in the bank but free lunch with the hunky Jeremy at his golf club.’

Sarah groaned.

‘Look.’ Liz sat on the bed. ‘Do you really think Torin would lay down and hibernate if something had happened to one of us, or do you think it would have pushed him even harder to go out there and take the biggest bite out of life he could? Life can be over in a flash, Sarah, we know that. So let’s live every day to the fullest.’

Sarah could not find any words. To be joyful would be like forgetting him
. It was too soon.

‘
I woke in the night again,’ Liz said, stroking Sarah’s duvet-padded shoulder. ‘I woke and it came all of a rush. Torin lived like he knew he was going to die young. He sucked the meat out of every day, he lived each hour to the fullest, he abhorred people who didn’t. So it came to me that to honour Torin, we should live life like we will die tomorrow, squeeze everything we can from every opportunity, live like he did, and then if we die tomorrow, we can meet him in heaven with no shame.’

Sarah stayed silent.

‘To stay weeping and hiding under the duvet is everything he hated.’

Sarah uncurled and turned her face to see Liz
’s and was taken aback at the tears on Liz’s cheeks when the words had sounded so positive. ‘We can still cry, Sarah, but that does not stop us taking every opportunity and using it to our advantage. Douglas and the Isle of Man were not the end of Torin’s rainbow, you know, so they should not be the end of ours.’

The speech was enough to get Sarah up, suitably dressed and made up for lunch at the golf club. They had never been before. It was members only, expensive, an old boy
’s network where you had to be invited to join if you were a man. Women could join much more easily: a monthly payment was enough.

The taxi dropped them and the driver took a tenth of their weekly wage with a wink. Sarah pulled at the hem of her short tartan skirt.

‘Still, if we get lunch for that, it’s cheap,’ Liz said to Sarah, referring to the money the driver stuffed in his leather pouch, turning the moment to the positive, just as Torin would have.

The foyer of the golf club was intimidating, with modern chandeliers, thick carpets and girls just a few years older than them in waistcoats offering
with educated voices to take their jackets. Sarah and Liz opted to keep their coats on and were shown to a bar room to wait for Jeremy, who one girl seemed to know but had not seen yet that day. She checked back at reception and returned to say he was not on the green and could she get them a drink whilst they waited?

‘
Just water please,’ Sarah said. The girl reminded her of the academic kids back in school, the sort of person with whom she had little in common.

‘
Why water?’ Liz whispered.

‘
Because if Jeremy does not show up, we will be left with the bill, and my guess is the prices will be pretty steep.’ She looked at the oil paintings on the wall and the tartan carpet that clashed with her skirt. The place was dark even though it was the middle of the day, with green-shaded brass table lamps glowing in various corners. The only other customers were two serious-looking men in sharp suits quietly chatting in tall-backed armed chairs by a blazing fireplace at the far end of the bar.

They waited forty minutes. Jeremy didn
’t turn up.

‘
Come on, let’s have one drink and we’ll go,’ Liz said.

‘
We can’t even afford a taxi back, so I suggest no drink and we get walking.’ Sarah stood to leave.

‘
Excuse me, but may I buy you a drink?’ One of the suited men from the high-back chairs appeared beside them. ‘My cousin and I were just thinking about a spot of lunch but having tired of each other’s company, we wondered if you ladies would rescue us by joining us? Add a little spice to the pot; what do you say?’

Liz need no further persuading, and four gin and tonics were assembled on a tray and taken to the table.

‘Laurence this is ... I am sorry, my dear. I didn’t catch your name?’

‘
Liz, Liz Donohue.’

‘
Liz Donohue,’ the man repeated, ‘and her friend, er sorry, my dear. Do tell me your name?’

‘
Sarah Kelly.’

‘
And Sarah Kelly. Ladies, this is Laurence and I am Neville.’ Laurence stood politely and invited them to sit down.

The gin made a fast impact on an empty stomach and Sarah felt her world shift to a surreal plane.

‘
Just turned nineteen you say? Er Tom, another round please.’

After another gin
, they moved to the dining room, Sarah and Liz on unsteady feet.

Neville was doing most of the talking and mostly addressing Sarah. He seemed slightly older than his cousin and his cuff links were gold whereas Laurence
’s were enamel. Liz mentioned this when the two of them went to the powder room for a quick debriefing before the food arrived.

‘
Oh look. Individual towels,’ Liz squeaked and used two to dry her hands, dropping them in a wicker basket. A woman sat beside a table of perfumes. ‘Are these testers?’ Liz asked.