Heartstones (17 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Honey followed Phoebe back to the boathouse, happily munching her way through the bag of Katrina’s shortbread as Phoebe got dressed. When Phoebe asked if her father might be worried about where she was, Honey’s tone was pragmatic.

‘He was still drinking whiskey at breakfast time. Now he’ll be asleep.’

Flopping down on the bed she picked up the heart stone that Phoebe had found the night before.

‘Can I have this?’ she asked.

‘No, that was my grandmother’s. It’s too special for me to give away but another day we’ll go looking for heart stones on the beach, I promise.’

Later Phoebe and Honey drove into town in the Morris Minor. Honey pushed a rickety trolley around Carraigmore general store while Phoebe filled it with white sliced bread, Tayto crisps, Galtee cheese, red lemonade, iced caramels, and many other Irish food stuffs whose very labels suddenly transported her back to her childhood holidays. As they queued up beside the checkout she saw that Kimberley Biscuits were on a two-for-one; they’d always been her favourites, she took eight.

‘You eat a lot of rubbish,’ said Honey, peering into the trolley.

Phoebe tried to remember the last time she’d been in a supermarket or cooked a meal or even made herself a sandwich. She was sure she hadn’t bothered shopping since David died, maybe the odd packet of toilet rolls from a garage, a box of tea-bags, but not much else. No wonder all her clothes felt as though they were falling off.

‘The child is right,’ said a large woman standing in front of them in the queue with two packets of Rivita, some Slim a Soup and a Mars bar. ‘You’ve got a terrible diet for such a skinny thing. Tell me your secret, is it exercise? I went to an aerobics class once and I swear I need a double hip-replacement now.’

‘I don’t usually eat like this,’ replied Phoebe, suddenly rather taken aback herself by her grocery choices. ‘I’m usually very healthy.’

The woman looked longingly at the contents of the trolley, ‘Looks like you’ve well and truly fallen off the wagon today. Weight Watchers meets on a Wednesday night if you need them in a few weeks’ time.’

The other shops along the high street were shut, but Phoebe and Honey happily continued their window-shopping of the previous morning until Honey smelled Katrina’s Sunday roast drifting out of the pub and disappeared inside for lunch. Fibber asked Phoebe to join them, calling out from behind the bar, but Phoebe wanted to be back at the boathouse, her new sanctuary.

Once there she unpacked her groceries and stored them in the little gingham-curtained cupboard. Outside it had started to rain; dark clouds scudding in from the Atlantic to obliterate the sun. Phoebe put the light on and sat at the window, watching the changing weather and eating a satisfyingly soggy cheese sandwich.

Her eyes drifted to the pile of diaries. All day she had been resisting the desire to curl up with the next instalment; she longed to know if Anna would meet the young schoolteacher again. And why had Gordon Brennan married her in the first place? Charlotte Brontë simply could not compete.

The starchy sandwich had made her sleepy and, taking a packet of Kimberley biscuits from the cupboard, she climbed on to the bed and picked up the diary she had been reading the night before. Snuggling down between the covers she opened the packet and leant back against the pillows, savouring the gingery taste and the soft marshmallow filling encrusted with crunchy granulated sugar. She put the packet on the bedside table and resolved to have no more that day. Flicking through the leather-bound book she found the page she’d been reading when Theo Casson had so rudely interrupted her. As she started to read her hand reached out and took another biscuit.

December 12th

I feigned a stomach ache and Gordon went to church without me. Mrs Smythe and Della were at Mass.

As I slipped out of the house with Razzle I knew he’d be there, leaning against the black rock sketching, just like he had been before. When he saw me approach he put his sketchbook in his pocket and came to meet me. In silence we started to walk along the sand. As we reached the end of the beach we scrambled up the boulders to the cliff top, Razzle leading the way like a little goat. Michael took my hand to help me up. ‘You have soft hands,’ he said.

We sat down on a slab of rock, Michael lit a cigarette, and we watched the waves.

I didn’t feel the cold wind or mind the drizzle that had started; I could have stayed sitting there like that for ever, hugging my knees, feeling the rough tweed of Michael’s overcoat lightly brushing against my wrist every time he moved.

Eventually I forced myself to stand up; Gordon would be back from church and Mrs Smythe would have Sunday lunch waiting in the dining room.

As we walked back across the cliff I pointed out the rock face where the puffins nest in spring and told him how my father and I once found a little mottled egg at the bottom of the cliff and how Father asked Old John to blow it and had it put into a glass box for me to keep. I wondered if the bailiffs had taken it along with everything else.

When I got back Gordon was already seated at the dining table, slabs of roast beef laid out on a plate in front of him, overcooked and grey.

As Mrs Smythe set a plate in front of me she hissed in my ear, ‘Dr Brennan has been waiting,’ though I can’t believe he waited very long as the vegetable tureens and gravy boat still sent great clouds of steam into the cold room.

Gordon asked if the fresh air had made me feel better and I said it had. He told me I looked damp and suggested a hot bath after lunch. The doorbell rang and Mrs Smythe came in and announced that a young man was in the hall; he’d come off his horse and his wrist was in need of attention. From where I sat I could see the young man waiting, he had a look of George, baby-faced and very blond. I wonder where my brothers are now.

I ran the bath, deep and hot. As I lay back in the water I closed my eyes and thought of Michael’s hair: the way it curled and fell across his beautiful brown eyes, the way that he constantly pushed it back with his long fingers. I longed to see him again, I long to see him now. ‘Next Saturday,’ he said. I will meet him by the black rock next Saturday – how will I bear the wait till then?

December 14th

The Castle is sold. It will not be a hotel or a golf course or pulled down. Fibber Flannigan was nearly right when he told Della a film star wanted to buy it. It is not a film star but a film director – a young Englishman who has been a big success in Hollywood. Della showed me a picture of him in the
Picturegoer
; the accompanying article said he fell in love with Ireland when he made a film in County Clare. They say his new wife will be the next Vivien Leigh.

Della is beside herself with excitement, I think she imagines that Carraigmore will suddenly be filled with glamour.

There is talk of a new roof and a swimming pool. No one knows when they will come to live there. For now I will pretend the Castle is still mine, standing on the cliff-top waiting for me to come home.

December 16th

I saw him today on the High Street, wheeling his bicycle. I was coming out of O’Leary’s shop with orange wool to start a scarf for Della’s Christmas present. He walked past on the other side of the street. I wanted to call his name but I didn’t, and he passed on unaware that I was watching him until he turned and disappeared into the school.

December 18th

The rain lashed down, driven horizontal into my face by a fierce wind. Poor Razzle couldn’t understand why I would take him out in such wild weather and kept trying to shelter against hedges until I had to carry him. Gordon had been called out to a breech birth on the moor and Mrs Smythe had gone to see her crippled sister in Kenmare. Della had a headache so she remained behind in bed. No one knew I’d gone.

Michael was waiting, not at the black rock but at the bottom of the lane. The wind was too loud for him to hear me so I beckoned for him to follow and, retrieving the key from under a stone, opened the door of the boathouse, and led the way upstairs.

At the top we both looked at one another and started to laugh; water streamed down his face and dripped off his upturned collar. I still held a bedraggled Razzle and I knew my hair had come unpinned, long strands sticking, wet, to my face and dripping down my neck to soak my petticoat.

Shivering, we shrugged off our sopping coats and took off our sodden shoes. Michael asked if the stove worked and I said it did and showed him the pile of driftwood I’d collected from along the tide-line. Together we rolled up strips of an old newspaper and laid the fire. Michael tried to light it with matches from his pocket but his box was damp. I found matches that I’d used before and striking one dropped it onto the pile of sticks and paper and closed the wrought-iron door. We both stood in front of the stove, our hands on top, waiting for the warmth to work its way to the surface and thaw out our frozen fingers. Eventually it grew too hot to touch and he pulled an old pile of sacks towards the stove. We had one sack each for us to sit on and Razzle came to lie at my feet, gently steaming as he dried out in the warm air.

Michael offered me a cigarette and I took one, though I haven’t smoked since school. I asked him about his family and he told me that his parents have a farm in Galway, that he is one of six sons and that he has been the only one to go away. I asked him if he’d always wanted to be a teacher and he said all he’d ever wanted was to be a painter; he said it was his passion. He talked about Picasso and Chagall and then took a sketchbook out of his coat pocket and showed me the pictures he’d been doing of the sea; oil pastels in shades of grey and blue, silhouettes of the wind blown trees on the headland, craggy cliffs and crashing waves. Michael turned page after page: seascapes or rocky landscapes mostly, a few studies of fishing boats or gulls. Then he came to a picture of a girl; a girl standing on a rocky outcrop staring out across stormy sea. She had on a red coat and a pea-green hat, a scarf blowing out behind her and her hands thrust deep into her pockets. A little wiry dog sat at her feet.

‘When did you do it?’ I asked.

‘The day your dog ate my crayon. It was a good job he ate it after I’d done the picture.’ He smiled at me. ‘You were standing at the far end of the beach looking out to sea, so bright against the winter sky,’ he paused. ‘You looked sad.’

I was aware that our faces had become very close and I thought that he would kiss me but instead he stood up and put the book back in his pocket.

After that we talked until the light began to fade, and we put our damp coats back on and eased our feet into clammy shoes. We walked back up the lane together, Michael pushing his bike and Razzle jumping up at its wheels all the way. When we reached the village he asked if we should meet again next Saturday. I asked him if he remembered where the key was in case he got there first, and he said, ʻYesʼ and disappeared into the gloomy drizzle.

Small snatches of our conversation come back to me as I write this. He told me that when he was young he’d tamed a raven and taught it how to swear in Irish.

His mother wanted him to be a priest.

I think of my own mother and smile at how disapproving she would be.

December 21st

He was waiting when I got there; already upstairs, the stove lit, a little kettle singing on the top. He brought two enamel mugs out of a canvas bag along with a jar of milk, a paper twist of sugar, a spoon, and a small packet of tea. We said little and I watched him spoon the tea straight into the kettle for lack of a teapot. ‘I should have brought a strainer’, he said.

I said, ‘I don’t mind leaves.

He smiled at me, ‘Shall we tell our fortunes when we’ve finished?’

He gave me a bar of Fry’s Chocolate to eat and laughed when I dipped it in my tea. He asked if that what they’d taught me to do at my fancy school.

When we’d finished our tea he took my mug out of my hands and peered into the bottom. He told me the leaves said I would meet a tall, dark handsome stranger and visit the Isle of Man. Then he peered in again and said it wasn’t the Isle of Man after all, it was just a bit of melted chocolate. He laughed and I said, ‘You have freckles,’ and suddenly my hand was on his cheek.

‘And you have a husband,’ he said, and then he took my hand and held it while we sat in silence staring at the stove as though we could actually see the flames inside its cast iron casing.

He told me he’s going home for Christmas; he won’t be back till after the New Year.

New Year seems much too long, I feel as though we’ll be different people in 1949.

He asked if he could write to me, but I thought of the letters that Mrs Smythe brought in to breakfast on a lacquered tray each morning. She would check the postmark and wonder who would write to me from Galway, she would ask Gordon who I knew there. I asked him not to write.

It was the shortest day – I couldn’t stay that long.

‘Shall we meet here when I come back?’ he asked.

I thought of Gordon and the house that smells of antiseptic, mealtime after mealtime and every morning Mrs Smythe with that gold and crimson tray of envelopes – was this was how my life would be for ever? How could I say “No”?

As we were stepping out of the door three boys ran down the lane in front of us, we both ducked back into the shadows like guilty thieves though we had done no wrong. We stood beside the upturned boats and waited for their shouts and whooping cries to fade.

‘You’d better walk home on your own,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait and come up in a little while.’ Then he wished me Happy Christmas and slipped something small and heavy into the pocket of my scarlet coat. I went to take it out but Michael caught my hand and stopped me.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Look later when you’re alone.’ And then he leaned towards me and kissed my mouth. I can still feel it now, the pressure of his lips on mine – very gentle, very soft. The first time I have ever been kissed like that.

When I got back Gordon came out of his study and asked if I had had a pleasant walk, I nodded and started to climb the stairs. He asked if I were not taking off my coat. ‘I’m cold,’ I told him, and now he’s worried I have caught the influenza that’s started in the village and has insisted that I have my supper in bed. He will be sure that I am ill when Mrs Smythe tells him the supper tray has been left untouched. I am not ill but I certainly don’t feel like I have ever felt before; I may take off into the air at any minute, fly around the room and out the window into the night. I am only kept on the ground by the gift he gave me. It weighs me down: a little pebble, black and smooth, shot through with glittering quartz and shaped by sea and weather into the most perfect heart.