The Daisy Picker (26 page)

‘You’re giving me the caravan?’ No, she had to be wrong. This was a joke.

But Angela nodded. ‘It’s yours, Lizzie. I felt that as a full partner you’d need a place to call your own . . . and I thought this might do, for the moment, anyway.
You’ll probably build your own mansion eventually, and you can park this in your back garden as a souvenir.’ Angela put her hands in her pockets and smiled.

‘I can’t take this, Angela.’ Lizzie’s fingers tightened around the key. ‘It’s much too big – you can’t just hand it over . . .’

‘Excuse me,’ Angela said, grinning, ‘I have to correct you there. I
have
just handed it over, and you
are
going to take it.’ She looked down in
amusement at Lizzie’s tightly shut fist. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to get it back now, anyway, even if I wanted to.’

Lizzie was afraid she might burst into tears. She took a breath and held out her arms to Angela. ‘“Thank you” seems such an understatement.’

Angela hugged her back. ‘It’ll do fine. Happy birthday once more.’ Then she stepped away. ‘Now go to bed; I’m terrified you’ll sleep it out tomorrow and
I’ll have to do the breakfasts.’

Lizzie shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to match this for your next birthday, I’m just warning you now.’

Angela laughed and started up the path. ‘Oh, I’ll think of something – I’ve plenty of time.’ She waved a hand in Lizzie’s direction.

Lizzie watched her until she’d gone into the house. Then she took the key and put it in her pocket. She opened the door that was never locked and walked into the caravan. She closed the
door behind her and stood leaning against it, smelling the familiar smell, knowing in the dark where everything was. This was good dark, friendly dark.

A one-bedroom caravan had never been on her list of dream homes. Castles, villas, dormer bungalows with thatched roofs, stone cottages covered in ivy – they’d all featured at one
time or another. When she was thirteen she would have given anything to live on a houseboat. After
Shirley Valentine
all she’d wanted was a flat-roofed, whitewashed little house with
a vivid blue door, on a sunny Greek island.

She used to think horse-drawn caravans were very romantic – but they were just for going off and being romantic in, not for using as your everyday home. What if the horse got sick, or
decided he’d had enough of hauling you around? And as for this kind of caravan – well, she’d never once considered living in one of these; not once. These were for family
holidays, with Mammy bringing her to the toilet across the tarmac in the middle of the night, and Daddy trying to open the tiny window in her tiny bedroom so she’d have enough air to
breathe.

And now she’d just been given one –
Here, Lizzie, have a caravan
– and it was like someone had handed her the keys to Buckingham Palace. She moved through the darkness
to the end of the caravan – her caravan – and opened the big window so she could hear the sea.

Then she just sat in the dark.

‘Are you ready?’ Lizzie shouts up from the hall.

‘Coming.’ Angela’s voice floats down the stairs, and a few minutes later she appears. She’s wearing a pair of baggy sky-blue trousers that Lizzie hasn’t seen before
and a pale-blue top, with a cream cardigan thrown over her shoulders. Angela, a lover of chocolate Hobnobs and sticky toffee pudding, and deeply suspicious of anything that might loosely be
described as exercise, has been a size 8 since she was seventeen.

Lizzie tries hard to hate her, but can’t. ‘Hey, great trousers.’

Angela swaggers down the stairs. ‘Aren’t they? End-of-summer sale; I got a real bargain.’

‘Lovely – and the make-up artist has been at work.’ After very respectable Junior Cert results, Deirdre is in the first term of transition year. Her beautician course has
started, and Angela is a willing guinea pig whenever she’s looking for a face to practise on. After a few weeks of deep cleansing and various masks, Angela’s normally well-behaved skin
looks freshly polished.

‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ she says, looking Lizzie up and down. ‘Are they new?’

Lizzie points to her white cropped trousers – ‘Five euros’ – and flowery top – ‘Four fifty. You’re not the only one who can spot a bargain.’ Every
so often she trawls through Seapoint’s charity shops, and now and again she comes across a gem.

Angela’s mouth drops open. ‘My God, I’m going shopping with you in future; mine seem like daylight robbery now.’ She heads for the kitchen door. ‘Come on,
we’re already fashionably late. Have you the present?’

Lizzie holds up the package. After much thought, they decided that the one thing Dominic simply couldn’t leave Ireland without was a book of modern Irish poetry, sprinkled with paintings
from the National Gallery.

At the door Angela turns back and shouts up the stairs, ‘Dee, we’re off. Don’t wait up.’ Deirdre’s voice floats back down over a Norah Jones CD – for once she
seems to be staying indoors on a Sunday night. On their way through the kitchen, Lizzie grabs her maroon shawl from the back of a chair and Angela picks up the bag with the two wine bottles
that’s sitting on the draining board.

Outside they check the sky. It looks like Dominic is going to be lucky. October is turning out to be the best month of the year – the days are still fairly long, and mostly warm and
pleasant, with just the odd shower. Nights are mild with no hint of frost, and windows stay open till late.

Angela sniffs the evening air. ‘Perfect barbecue weather.’

As they reach Dominic’s little house, they hear music and voices from the back. The light is just beginning to fade.

‘Sounds like a few ahead of us,’ Angela says. ‘Hope we beat Pete to it.’

Dominic’s garden, like Angela’s, backs onto the beach. Unlike hers, though, his has no boundary wall or fence – the lawn where he always perches his easel simply disappears
into the pebbles. Lizzie wonders how he keeps the tourists from picnicking on the grass in the summer.

There are four garden tables on the lawn, with various mix-and-match chairs around them. Each table has a different-coloured glass lantern with a candle. A canvas hammock is slung between two
palm trees to the left of the tables; Lizzie can just imagine Pete swinging lazily there on warm afternoons. In a corner of the flagged patio there’s a trestle table holding bottles and
glasses and salads in bowls, and dotted with more little lanterns in orange and blue and red glass. Something soft and jazzy wafts from an open window. A few rugs are tossed onto the grass just
before the beach begins.

There are about a dozen people already there, sitting around the tables or sprawled on the rugs; a few of them spot Lizzie and Angela and wave. The smell of roasting meat drifts across to them
from the barbecue; Dominic, on duty with his fork, gestures them over. Angela sniffs hungrily. ‘Mmm – food.’ She puts the bottles of wine on the table, and they go over to
Dominic.

He’s turning chicken joints and steaks and sausages, and brushing them with a reddish-brown liquid that makes them sizzle. There are several potato-shaped tinfoil bundles sitting on a
hotplate at the side. Angela looks down approvingly. ‘Dominic, any time you’re stuck for a few bob, come on over and I’ll put you to work in my kitchen.’

He laughs. ‘It’s your marinade that’s made the difference – I’m afraid my only skill is brushing it on.’ He gestures towards the table. ‘Please help
yourselves to drinks; the next batch of food is almost ready.’

Angela goes to pour wine and Lizzie looks around. ‘Are you expecting many more?’

Dominic considers, checking around the garden. ‘Three or four at the most, I’d say. Your young American hasn’t arrived yet.’ He dips his brush into the bowl again and
daubs marinade generously over the meat.

My young American. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that the way it sounded to me. And he’s not mine, anyway – not yet. The jury’s still out on that one.

Angela arrives back with two glasses of red wine and hands one to Lizzie. ‘Now pass me that fork,’ she tells Dominic, ‘and go and get yourself a drink and chat to people for a
while. It’s your party.’

He holds on to the fork. ‘And you’re here to enjoy yourself, not to work – this is your one night off in the week.’

But she insists – ‘Look, the truth is I don’t think anyone can do it right only myself. Take ten minutes, anyway’ – and Dominic gives in and goes to talk to an
older couple Lizzie knows to see. She takes her glass of wine and wanders down the garden.

And there he is, sitting at a table with Big Maggie and Brian from the newsagent’s. Lizzie waves over at them and keeps walking, down to Rory and Aisling from the laundrette, sprawled on a
rug at the bottom of the garden.

After a while Angela joins them with plates of steak and salad; and ten minutes after that Pete arrives with his guitar, and they wave him down to them. They eat with their fingers –
Angela forgot the cutlery, and they can’t be bothered to go up and get some – and listen to Dusty Springfield and James Taylor and Enya drifting out from the open window, trying to
compete with the wash of the waves on the pebbles.

The sky goes from blue to navy, and one by one the stars blink on. Pete brings up the empty plates and arrives back with a bottle of wine, and Angela takes a lantern from an empty table, and
Rory and Aisling head home to their teenage babysitter.

When they’ve gone, Pete pours the wine. ‘Hey, good spot, you guys; thanks for fixin’ me up here.’ He puts the bottle carefully down on the grass and stretches out on the
blanket, one arm behind his head, eyes closed.

Angela winks at Lizzie. ‘Would you say, now, there’s good karma here, Pete?’ Her voice sounds pure and innocent.

He doesn’t turn his head – doesn’t even open his eyes – but a lazy, slow smile spreads across his face. ‘Hey, lady, I’m on to you. I ain’t gonna rise to
your teasin’.’

But after a minute he says, ‘Yeah, excellent karma.’

Angela smiles over in his direction, sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs, and then turns and looks out at the blackness of the sea again.

Lizzie glances down at Pete. Funny, the way things work out; who’d have thought, a couple of weeks ago, that he’d be getting ready to move into Dominic’s house?

It was Angela’s idea. She asked Pete out of the blue one day – he dropped by now and again for coffee – if he was any good at painting.

He nodded. ‘Sure – I can paint. You got a job that needs doin’?’

‘We were thinking of getting the front of the restaurant done. It could do with a fresh coat; I’m sick of that whitewash. And you’re finishing up soon at Harris’s,
aren’t you?’

Pete nodded. ‘Week or so.’ He looked from Lizzie to Angela. ‘You guys wouldn’t be kiddin’ me, would you?’

‘No – this time we’re quite serious,’ Angela smiled. ‘But you’d have to be dirt cheap, and highly skilled.’

‘Hey – you’d pay me too?’ Pete looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Gee – yeah, sure, I’d be interested. But I’d need a place to stay; I’ll be
homeless when Donal throws me out.’

‘Yes, I figured you would,’ said Angela, ‘and I was going to suggest you stay here – I usually have at least one free room at this time of year – but then I had a
much better idea.’

Lizzie wondered a little nervously what was coming; she hoped to God Angela wasn’t about to suggest that Pete move into the caravan.

She wasn’t. ‘I asked Dominic if he’d like a house-sitter while he’s away.’ Angela looked enquiringly at Lizzie. ‘What do you think?’

‘Hey, that’s a great idea.’ It made perfect sense to Lizzie – Dominic’s house would be an ideal base for Pete. ‘What did he say when you asked him?’

Angela turned to Pete. ‘Dominic is a friend of ours who’s moving to the States, funnily enough, for a couple of months. He has a lovely little house just down the road, practically
on the beach.’ She turned back to Lizzie. ‘He said that’s fine – he’d like the house to be occupied. As long as we can vouch for Pete, that’s good enough for
him.’ She looked sternly back at Pete. ‘You’d have to be on your best behaviour, mind. No skinny-dipping at midnight, or wild American parties – unless we’re
invited.’

The thought of having to behave didn’t seem to bother Pete in the least. ‘No problem – that sounds great.’ He was probably delighted at the prospect of having somewhere
to live for a decent length of time – not to mention somewhere with a front door that worked, and a roof with no holes.

The following day they brought him around to meet Dominic, and the deal was struck. Pete would move in after Dominic left, and maintain the house and generally keep it tidy until he got
back.

And now Dominic is all packed up and leaving tomorrow afternoon, and Pete will move in two days after that, when he’s finally finished at Donal Harris’s. He’ll paint the
outside of The Kitchen and tidy up the garden – replace the battered fence at the bottom, finally – and do any other jobs they find for him; and then he’ll look around Merway for
more work.

And he’ll be close enough for Lizzie to meet him often, probably every day, even when he finishes working at The Kitchen. She looks down at him again, still lying with his eyes closed.
Wonder what would happen if I leant over and kissed him? Wonder would anyone sitting at a table notice?