January 30 – Friday
Matt watched Tess warily, with eyes that drooped heavily, but hooded suspiciously. She had been putting it off all morning, convinced herself for hours that it was too early to call on the O’Hara’s yet. It was eleven o’clock now and she knew that if she didn’t make a move soon, she could still be here at eleven o’clock tonight. She dragged herself about the flat, tidying things that didn’t need tidying. In the end, she took down the supply of cat food she kept over the sink, placed it in a shopping bag and gathered him up in her arms.
‘There’s no good looking at me like that. I can’t put it off any longer. You belong to the O’Hara’s no amount of dolefulness is going to change that Matt.’ She pressed her cheek into his fur and listened for a moment to the criss-cross patterns of his tiny heart against his breathing and the loud purr that had become an ever-present background noise in her home. God, but she was going to miss him so much. Robyn suggested getting another cat, but Tess knew it wasn’t that simple. She and Matt, well, they simply clicked. It wasn’t just having company around the place. It was about having Matt. He had managed to squeeze himself through the narrow opening so he filled up her empty heart, and now letting him go was much harder than she’d expected. It was some consolation when she picked him up and felt his healthy coat and the insulation that now covered his bones. He had thrived here as much as she had.
She laughed now, ‘You rascal, you’ll probably forget all about me once you go back to your fancy house and posh Mrs O’Hara.’ She bundled him closer and slipped her hand through the carrier bag with his tinned food inside, grabbed her keys and pulled the door behind her. She made her way gingerly up the steps next door. Mrs O’Hara’s house was more austere than Amanda’s. It had the aura of a house that only accepted visitors by invitation. Tess had a feeling that if Mrs O’Hara could get her hands on a butler, she’d never answer the door herself.
It seemed to Tess that the woman had aged tremendously since she’d last set eyes on her. Her skin had that mottled look of too much sun. Her hair, expensively coloured, only added to the jaded look in her eyes, and her lips, dry and cracked, were so light they might have been brighter than the whites in her eyes.
‘Yes, what can I do for you?’ She had a habit of looking down at Tess, even though she was a good four inches shorter. Tess for the life of her couldn’t understand how she managed it.
‘I’m returning your cat. I’ve been taking care of him while you were away.’
‘Oh, I see, the cattery is doing home deliveries now? Well, very good so, but really, there wasn’t any great rush.’ She sniffed and ducked out of sight for a moment before returning with her purse. ‘So, how much did you agree?’
‘Agree?’ Tess looked at her now and felt for a moment like Judas. ‘No, you don’t understand… I…’
‘I understand very well, you were taking care of him while we were gone, how much do I pay you.’
‘Nothing. I hadn’t made any arrangement with you. He was in the garden, you see, I couldn’t leave him there, so between us, we looked after him.’ She nodded back towards the King house just next door.
‘I see, so I owe you both for taking care of him?’ She shook her head, as though she knew she was being ripped off.
‘No, you don’t owe me a penny. I was happy to do it. He’s a gorgeous little fellow, you’re very lucky to have him.’ Tess held him up before her once more. She had to hand him over while she could, couldn’t let this woman see she’d become an emotional namby-pamby. ‘Anyway,’ she said, placing him into Mrs O’Hara’s arms. ‘There’s some cat food there, I fed him already today, but he might like more later or some milk or…’ She stopped. Matt’s eyes pierced her with the fierceness of a child being left at school for the first day. She would have to tear herself away, otherwise there was no telling what she might say or do. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you two to it,’ she said and made her way back down to the flat.
There was a familiar emptiness about the flat when she returned. It reminded her of years ago, when life stretched out ahead a road full of nothingness with no escaping it here in the stillness of these lonely walls. She could go for a walk, get out, maybe when she came back later it wouldn’t seem to be so cavernous. Then she saw the envelope winking at her from the mantle. Damn Kilker, he really was the most infuriating old goat, always thinking he knew what was best for her. She hadn’t left it there. It had been rescued, no doubt by Kilker – twice now from the bin. Third time is a charm, and she reluctantly took it down. She opened it gingerly, as though something might jump out of it at any moment. She wasn’t sure if she was more afraid of Nancy, or the past or herself, and her hands shook as she held the card before her.
It was a print of two young girls playing on a familiar sandy beach, a watercolour, simple and somehow touching. In the distance, she could see Poolbeg and, further out, the gulls dived off towards Wales. On the other side, Nancy had written her phone number, nothing more, the picture was enough to convey a thousand memories without words. The place seemed to be calling to her. What harm would it do to travel out there now? To walk along that stretch of beach she’d played upon in childhood.
Tess needed time and it was something she’d always found walking along the beach in Ballycove. There was no reason to stay in Dublin, not on a day that was winter-dry and bright – when she could just as easily take the train such a short distance and escape the loneliness of the flat.
*
When she was young, she would come out here, walk the beach for miles, with only the waves, the call of the gulls and the horizon to take her attention. She would glance up at the little cottage and wave at Aunt Beatrice; the memory filled her with even more loneliness. Tess tried to ignore it but the windows glinted down at her in the occasional flash of sun that penetrated the overhanging greyness; it stood prouder, pulling her attention away from the emptiness of her heart. The cottage was beckoning to her, somehow she felt compelled to go and get a closer look.
It was the oddest thing. She’d never felt anything like this draw before. She was moving towards the house, knowing that each step could bring her nearer to the kind of closure she’d have scoffed at not so long ago. To be – God forbid when she thought of it (at sixty-six years of age) – but to finally be on the verge of making peace. Was she losing herself in the process of becoming the person she wanted to be? Would it be such a bad thing?
Once she decided, she felt herself grow lighter, no longer trudging through the heavy sand, she moved quickly, spritely. On the narrow road, once she’d left the beach, she smoothed down her windblown hair, fixed her coat and scarf and then grabbed a posy of yellow flowers from the verge. She wasn’t sure why she took them, but they seemed as if they needed to be picked. They meant something, far beyond being so much a part of this place, long before she came here and long after she would leave. She ran her fingers across the tiny petals, remembered picking up similar flowers when she and Nancy played here many years ago. It seemed they had been more plentiful then, like summer days and the smell of seaweed and the unmissable shrill tinkle of the ice cream van that passed by each day. On her walk, Tess did not question that she was doing the right thing. She didn’t give herself time to think, she just kept moving. She had travelled here on the train, to Ballycove – the place it all began and had ended so long ago.
Tess pushed open the small wooden gate and her heart pounded, she put it down to nerves. She stopped for a moment, looked back towards the road; thanks to the foliage and the dip in the hill, it remained secluded. She stood for a moment, looking at her Aunt Beatrice’s little cottage. It hadn’t changed, not really. They’d re-roofed it, done a little painting, put in new windows, but the structure remained the same. Tess almost imagined that her aunt might be inside, watching the waves far below, waiting for her solider to return.
With that she felt herself stagger and stopped short next to a woody rhododendron, catching her breath for a second. Her ears throbbed in ribbed tension, matching beat for beat the pounding of her heart. Rising up from deep in her stomach, she felt that nauseating feeling, as though she was being crushed and soon, she knew, she would struggle to breathe. Seeping from every pore of this house, she could feel the past surrounding her. It was too familiar, bringing her back to times first of great joy and then despair from which she thought she’d never recover. She could not stay here. She could not let those feelings overwhelm her now.
It’s a panic attack, she tried to keep sight of it, a panic attack, it will pass. She leaned against the gate, prepared to double over, the waves beneath her echoed out the hammering of her heart, so she felt like it might explode in her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, conscious that Nancy could be inside and watching and that only made her panic more.
‘I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t belong here now…’ Tess breathed the words on the salty air. With that, she hurled herself from the gate, pulled it open and the view down to the sea halted her, just for a second. It was overwhelming. She had always loved it, but now, it seemed to open like a raging beast before her and it felt as if she might tumble into its belly, losing everything she thought she knew. She had to leave here – maybe there was no going back, what was done, was done.
She stumbled away, back towards the safety of the village and on the air, she could have sworn she heard Nancy’s voice call her back, but Tess didn’t stop. Surely now, it was too late to pull back any connection from their shattered past.
*
Later, Tess waited until it was dark before she set off to walk around Swift Square. She half expected to find Matt loitering about the porch as he’d been doing weeks earlier, but he was nowhere to be seen. Of course, he would be tucked up in the lap of luxury and probably not giving her a second thought now and that just depressed Tess even more. Things had certainly changed, now she missed him like crazy – she was turning into a silly sentimental old fool and there was nothing she could do about it. All the stern talking in the world couldn’t hold her back from the loneliness that reached around her in that flat without him.
She was halfway round the square when she saw Amanda King. Something inside her flipped. For too long, she had allowed herself to wallow and let bitterness drive her into an existence of contempt and loneliness. Amanda with her untidy life, her candid honesty and her olive branch had claimed Tess from the abyss of loneliness that was her lot. In the last few weeks something had changed, they had shared a drink and loosened confidences, shared a house and allied over their love of the Square, and Tess knew it was now or never.
Tess couldn’t fight it if she tried, her legs stopped moving until she turned around and then she was walking round the Square in the opposite direction. Walking clockwise as she’d always thought she’d never do. She was walking alongside Amanda King, both of them smiling silently like idiots, and it felt as though it was the most natural thing in the world – although she couldn’t figure why.