Forty-eight years earlier…
It was one of those interminably hot days – the kind of day that seems to start too early and go on forever. The sun ripped heat through every layer, from blouses to windows to roads. The tarmacadam steamed and shivered its wavy warmth upwards. Sweat stickiness prickled insidiously, under clothes, hats, shoes, and made Tess feel trapped, even by the sea. It blinded, slowed her down so that she couldn’t run and she couldn’t hide. On days like this, her father always went with some of the local men to Ballydiffin bog. They would spend the day cutting fuel for winter, white slaves beneath the Irish summer sun. Not today, though, Tess thought, there would be no Ballydiffin bog today.
Tess stood at the bus station, biding her time in the cool of the darkened platform. That was the thing about buses and trains – everyone was in such a rush, you could sit here forever, putting off what you knew you had to do and no one hardly noticed you at all. Her eyes drew up towards the huge clock that struck out the minutes just a little faster than her watch. She had to go home, she was here to stand next to Nancy, to make it all look right, although, to Tess it clearly wasn’t.
Most houses around here left their doors open, night and day. Her father thought this was a common thing to do and so, there was no barging in on top of her family. They kept themselves separate from their neighbours. Friendly and sociable, but with the kind of self-conscious restraint that comes from a peculiar middle-class snobbery – known mainly to the educated of small towns where history set aside the village master, priest and doctor as a breed apart.
Her mother welcomed her with the usual mix of gladness and inconvenience that was her way. ‘Tess. We thought you’d missed the bus. Come on, it’s almost time to go.’ Her mother hardly looked at her, perhaps she knew of some of the damage being done. It was a funny thing, Tess realised later, Nancy hadn’t said a word. Not a single word had passed between them for the day. Even eye contact seemed to be too much. It was a surreal thing for sisters who were so close before. Of course, there wasn’t much to say. This was an occasion outside the normal rules of family etiquette. Well, it wasn’t every day that your sister married the man you loved.
‘I need to get back to Dublin tonight,’ Tess said, though no one seemed to mind. She had a feeling that for Douglas it would be a relief, one less thing to worry about.
*
Even the swallows seemed sluggish in their flight as they dropped beyond the little church on the morning of Nancy’s wedding. Their mother told Nancy to ‘hurry up’ and that she was ‘beautiful’. Their father wiped unfamiliar moistness from his eyes as he sat beside Nancy in the long bench seat of McNulty’s wedding and funeral car for hire.
Tess moved through the day in a kind of numb state. Doing what was expected of her automatically, she couldn’t participate beyond those outward actions. She felt as if she was dead inside as Nancy glided softly into the life that had slipped like silken thread through Tess’s fingers. For the first time, Nancy was beautiful, a tiny dollish figure in a ruffle of lace, puffed sleeves and her long veil unable to hide the unbridled joy of her eyes. Today, Tess was the taller, sullen version, plainer for the first time in their lives. Her eyes, if anyone looked too closely, gave away the secret her upturned mouth was determined to conceal. It was arranged within weeks. Nancy and Douglas had agreed on a summer wedding. Douglas could hardly wait and so as soon as his exams finished, they were married in the little church in Ballycove. Tess’s parents paid for the wedding lunch and they would have a honeymoon holiday on the Isle of Man. They expected Tess to stand at her sister’s side and Douglas’s cousin, a pale, serious boy with glasses resting on his bony nose unevenly, was best man.
Nancy said the day flew by her as if it were a dream – a dream that she would remember forever. Certainly, her mother cried, but managed to maintain that contented serenity that was the closest her daughters had ever seen to happiness. Tess thought the day would never end. Standing in the church, the satin of her dress clung to her, making her imagine a steady stream of perspiration course down between her shoulder blades. A film of nervous sweat sat upon her upper lip. At least, at the reception, she could slip measures of the whiskey she carried in her bag into the endless cups of tea that would mark out the day ahead. She knew it was her only hope to keep her together for the day. The men made do with resting weary elbows on the long trestle tables, drinking tea from cups bleached white the day before. There were disgruntled snorts, of ‘fine day’, when what they meant, of course, was ‘great day for the land’. Probably, the men would have given half the day up to get a run at making hay or moving cattle about to make the most of the fine weather.
When the meal was over, Tess could feel the alcohol begin to make her head spin. These past few days, its effects on her had changed, as though some part inside her was not content with whiskey to conceal her wretchedness. Now, rather than making her feel pleasantly woozy and removed from this emptiness she carried within her, it made her feel as if she was repelling some important part of her she did not yet know.
And of course, she hadn’t sung in weeks now. The exams had been a catastrophe, every one of them, failed spectacularly, and there was no going back, how could she? What was the point? She failed them because her heart was broken. She couldn’t sing with passion when it had been ripped from deep within her. Douglas was gone. Worse, he was gone with the one person she was closest to and, if that wasn’t bad enough, it felt as though they both despised her now. She couldn’t think of them living in Aunt Beatrice’s little cottage – that was just the final betrayal because it made her feel as though she couldn’t go back there now.
‘So they are letting you go,’ her father said after they had finished eating and just as a local fiddler began to stretch out the sounds of his bow across the room. ‘The grand plan has come to nothing,’ he said and, to her surprise, the disappointment in his eyes didn’t feel like a reprimand, rather it felt like melancholy and that was almost worse. She could re-sit her exams, but everything about the college reminded her of Douglas. The disappointment was a physical pain so strong it halted somewhere in her gut, so hard it stole away the urge to sing.
‘It’s okay,’ Tess lied. ‘I’m not happy there anymore so, perhaps it’s for the best.’ Maybe it wasn’t a lie exactly, how could you be happy anywhere when everything felt so wrong.
‘You won’t want to come back here, I suppose,’ he nodded towards the happy couple, as if he knew much more than she had ever said. ‘We thought that once you got to Dublin you’d be the one to take flight, but it turned out to be Nancy who made the most of her year. Ballycove was never enough for you, was it?’
‘No. I’ll stay in Dublin.’ She had made her mind up about that, she just hadn’t expected him to agree. ‘It didn’t fall apart because of Dublin, Father,’ she said, but she suspected that, somehow, he already knew. Not everything, but he noticed the uncomfortable looks that passed between all three of them, as though they were elements that would never work together now.
‘Well, at least Nancy is settled,’ he sighed, half a job completed. ‘Douglas seems happy to step into my shoes in the village school and, God knows, Beatrice’s cottage is giving them a great start.’
‘Yes, it looks like they’re well set up.’
‘I…’ his voice dipped a little further, as if he couldn’t quite make up the words, but then he cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m sure you’ll find your corner too, Tess. You’ve never been happy to settle, but if the year has taught you anything, perhaps it’s that having a dream is one thing, but keeping your eyes open and taking the right opportunities is what gets you what you really want.’
Tess looked at him now, this man who for most of her life seemed to rule their home with little in the way of tenderness. Had she missed all the love that was folded far behind his gruff and fractious exterior? It was too late now to find out, she wouldn’t be coming back to Ballycove, not unless she had to and perhaps he knew that too.
‘You could sign up for the secretarial college for a year, at least it would give you something to fall back on,’ he said quietly. ‘With Nancy here and taken care of, I could still keep up the rent and send a little extra your way, until you’ve found your feet.’ He looked across the floor, Nancy and Douglas stood amid their wedding guests, oblivious to the breaking of Tess’s heart so close. Then, his voice returned to its usual blunt tone, ‘I think, it’s the least we could do, since Beatrice’s cottage has gone the way of Nancy.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ Tess said, and even if she wanted to reach out and embrace him, he was already moving away, back to join the men and complain about the cost of weddings.
By eight o’clock, she was sitting on the bus back to Dublin. There was nothing for her there, apart from a little part-time job she managed to pick up the week before. Still, she had her flat, somewhere she could hide away from all this pain. Yes, she thought as the bus pulled out of Ballycove, this was not home anymore. She belonged in that little flat, buried in the centre of a bustling city that gave her refuge from all this, even if it never gave her love.