Together Forever by Siân O’Gorman (24)

Just as Rosie and I were sitting in the car, ready to off on our West Cork odyssey, a text from Red.

But I couldn’t because Rosie was with me. She had had her first counselling session the previous day and had walked to school and home again, no bother on her. ‘The counsellor has given me advice about how to deal with a panic attack,’ she had said, carrying her bag to the car parked on the road, as we packed up ready to head off to West Cork. ‘It’s all about staying calm. Not letting your thoughts spiral. Focus on one thing, one object.’

‘That sounds like good advice,’ I said. ‘And you don’t mind leaving Dublin for a night. You’re not worried about six hours in a car with me and Granny?’

‘As long as you talk nicely to each other,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’m glad we’re going. It feels like the right thing to do. And it sounds ridiculous, but it helps that you’re going to be with me. I’m meant to be grown up.’

‘It doesn’t sound ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It sounds normal.’

‘Wait. What?’ she said, in mock surprise. ‘You called me normal?’

‘Oh, out of all of us, you’ve always been the normal one.’

She grinned at me. ‘Normalish,’ she said.

‘That’s all any of us can ask for. Today West Cork, tomorrow the world. All right?’

But just then, out of the corner of my eye, there was a flash of light. I looked behind me and I thought I heard footsteps, someone running away.

‘Hey!’ But he was gone. Was it another photographer, someone trying to capture Clodagh at her low ebb? Hopefully, looking old and haggard and past it.

‘Come on Mum, let’s go.’

And I forgot all about it.

*

Nora, in her usual jubilant mood, talked the whole way down, turning around in the front seat so Rosie didn’t miss a second of the stories from the Mizen Head camp.

‘It was such a great time,’ she went on. ‘We were all so free, it was beautiful, all of us young and idealistic. Now I’m just old and idealistic.’

‘What was the aim of the peace camp?’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve always wondered.’

‘They were just dropouts,’ I answered for her. ‘Desperate to sing songs out of tune and slip around in the mud all day.’

‘The aim, Tabitha,’ Nora said, ‘and you should listen to this, Rosie, dear, the aim was to create a movement, an energy, an idea that life shouldn’t be about living unconsciously, but that that there were other ways of living that didn’t involve the nine to five or the daily commute or the office job. That we could take time out of our lives and create a sense of unity and strength. I’d like to think that we were like the old Celtic people. The pagans. Living in huts and making fires and singing. I taught myself the melodeon and I composed a few songs. I’ll try and remember them now and teach them to you, Rosie...’

‘Please don’t. I beg of you. Please don’t,’ I implored.

Nora ignored me. ‘It was possibly one of the most transformative things I have ever done. I wish we could have lived there permanently, instead of a month here and there.’

‘Why didn’t you, Granny?’ said Rosie.

‘Well, I had little Tabitha,’ she said, ‘and she, Rosie, in case you haven’t noticed, is not cut out for tent life. That was very clear from an early age. She liked everything neat and tidy.’

‘Don’t blame me,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think your free spirit was curtailed too much by me. You practically spent my entire teenage years down there.’

‘I didn’t,’ she insisted. ‘You must be imagining it. As far as I recall, it was a week here and week there.’

When we finally entered the county of Cork, after hours of driving and stops for loo breaks, tea breaks, leg stretching, Nora sat up, like a farmer’s collie and rolled down the window and sniffed the air.

‘Ah, it’s good to be back,’ she said.

‘In Blarney?’ We were driving past the castle at that moment.

‘Cork. The ancestral home. Spent my happiest years of my life here in Cork.’

‘Your happiest years?’

But Nora was too busy, lost in thought, looking out of the window, no doubt remembering magical days of mud and melodeons.

*

It was late afternoon when we pulled into Schull, the village where Rosaleen had grown up. We parked beside the church to stretch our legs and I managed to get enough of a signal to text Clodagh.

I didn’t call Red because I didn’t have time to say everything I wanted to. I’d told Rosie about the baby and it was about time I told Red and I was feeling nervous about it. What would he say? The memory of what he said to me on the bench kept replaying in my mind. He had missed me. He had missed me.

I did text him, though.

And then I deleted the xxxx’s. And then put them back in and pressed send.

Rosie was more mature than me, I thought.

‘That drive wasn’t too bad,’ I said to Rosie and Nora who were perched on an old wall. Rosie was texting as well and Nora was sniffing the air.

‘Not too bad,’ she agreed, ‘and worth it just to breathe properly. Dublin is too smoky.’ She wrinkled her nose.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘we live by the sea, the air is amazing.’

‘But it’s sweeter down here,’ she said. ‘Honeysuckle and heather and bluebells. It’s like a tonic.’

‘Mum, I think you might be a little too romantic about West Cork. I mean, it’s nice and everything…’ But I looked around and I knew exactly what she meant. A robin hopped onto the ground beside us, looking at us, his head on one side. ‘Who’s ready to go and see Rosaleen’s house?’ I said.

‘Me,’ said Rosie, who jumped to her feet and turned to give Nora a hand. Rosie was looking well again. Smiling and happy. Like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She seemed to be just glad to be here with us, me and Nora.

‘Who were you texting?’ I said.

‘Alice,’ she said. ‘We spoke properly last night…’

‘That’s good news.’

‘We were both crying,’ she said. ‘She said she missed me and she thought I hated her or that she’d done something wrong.’

‘So when are you going to see her and Meg?’

‘Well, they’re in the middle of the exams.’ She pulled a face, as though she had been reminded of her awful reality. ’But I thought about going tomorrow, when we get home…’

‘That’s a plan. Right, next stop, the old house.’

We drove through the village and found the house and once we were out of the car, we stood at the gate, peering in.

‘There’s her cherry tree,’ said Nora, pointing to a low and overgrown beautiful tree in full leaf. ‘It could do with a prune.’

‘I don’t think we can go in,’ said Rosie.

‘I think Granny was thinking we would just march in and demand to be shown round the house,’ I said. ‘Not just have a look at the tree.’

‘That is not a bad idea,’ said Nora. ‘House tour anyone?’

‘Let’s stick with the tree,’ I said.

‘Should we knock on the door and ask to see it?’ said Rosie.

‘I’m sure they would let us,’ I said. ‘What do you think, Mum?’ I looked around. ‘Mum?’

Nora had darted into the garden and was already pulling herself up onto a lower branch of the tree, her legs disappearing into the foliage and showing remarkable agility. But then she never failed to surprise me.

‘Mum!’ I hissed. ‘Come down! You can’t just climb someone’s tree… it’s trespassing!’ Rosie and I looked at each other for a moment and then ran over to her, ducking under the foliage. There she was, sitting on a long flat branch, a beatific smile on her face.

‘What took you so long?’ she said. ‘Rosie, give me your hand.’

But Rosie was already pulling herself up, climbing the lower branch and then sliding herself onto the long and strong branch. She sat herself on the other side of Nora. ‘Mum…’ she looked down at me. ‘Coming?’

‘Oh, all right.’ I managed to get myself up, and sat down beside Nora. ‘We’re going to get shot at,’ I said. ‘Or whatever they do in the countryside. Set the dogs on us.’

‘We’re in West Cork now,’ said Nora. ‘They don’t do that kind of thing. We’ve come home.’ She swung her legs. ‘Well, here we are, Rosaleen’s three little birds. She’d be very happy to see us in her tree. She always said it had healing properties,’ she mused. ‘Do you feel it, Rosie? When I came down here a couple of months after your great-grandmother died, it helped me. It really did. I crawled into it, like we are now, and I just sat here for ages and ages. And when I eventually emerged, I felt utterly and totally at peace.’ Nora, in the middle of us, took my hand as well and I knew she was remembering that time we spent together, after Rosaleen died and after my miscarriage. ‘You should have come with me,’ she said.

‘Maybe I should have,’ I said, after a pause. I felt her hand squeeze mine. Rosaleen’s three little birds, in her cherry tree.

‘People pay money to come and feel like this,’ went on Nora. ‘But there is nothing in the world as healing than sitting on a branch feeling the power of a tree. We must do all we can to save trees. Not cut them down.’ There was no escaping the Battle of the Copse, even here, all the way in West Cork.

‘Mum! They are not going to be cut down! I promise you!’

‘Right.’ She patted my hand, still speaking in her dreamy voice. ‘Just ensure their protection, all right?’ It was as though she was trying to hypnotise me into agreeing. ‘Just enshrine the rights of the trees into school policy, that’s all.’

‘It does sound reasonable,’ said Rosie. ‘Mum?’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ I said.

‘Did you know, Rosie,’ said Nora, satisfied that she had made her point, ‘that your great-grandmother was going to be an actress? That’s why she left this beautiful part of the world, where our roots lie deep below the surface, from where the Thomas tribe hails.’

‘But she stopped acting, didn’t she?’ I added, ‘when she went to work as a front of house manager.’

‘Yes, but she was brilliant… she could act. Everyone said so…’

‘So what happened? Why did she stop?’ I had always thought it was because she lost interest, somehow, her passion waned and she had Nora to look after. ‘Rosaleen never told me.’

‘She had stage fright,’ explained Nora. ‘It was her great tragedy. She never recovered. Her life’s dream taken away from her. But there was no way she could get back on that stage. I was very young when it happened, only one or two, I forget now, but she told me. It always makes me sad when I think of it, someone not achieving their dream.’ Nora paused dramatically, and looked at us both in turn, enjoying immensely telling us the story of her mother, drawing it out.

‘Go on, Granny,’ urged Rosie.

‘Well, she was standing in the wings of the Abbey Theatre, about to perform when she realised she couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. She couldn’t move. She said that her throat was dry and it was as though every word, every thought, every line, had been removed from her brain. She couldn’t do it. And then, in her panic, as she saw her fellow actors on stage, it got worse and she didn’t know what to do. She never set foot on a stage again.’

‘That’s what happened to me,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s kind of how I felt.’

Nora took her hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m telling you.’ She smiled at her. ‘It happens to the best of us. Even Rosaleen. It might explain why she was so… so indulgent of me,’ said Nora, now looking at me. ‘Why she let me follow my dreams, never put limits on me, wanted me to be happy. Never any expectations.’

I nodded, sad to think of Rosaleen now, her dreams and career cut short. ‘She was also just a really lovely person,’ I said. ‘The best, really, wasn’t she?’

‘The very best.’ Nora smiled at me. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I think we need a speech. For Rosaleen. A poem… Rosie?’

‘Okay…’ Rosie thought of something. ‘There’s that Patrick Kavanagh poem. We learned it in school. It always made me think of you two…’ she smiled shyly at us, ‘but this time it’s for Rosaleen. Now I can’t remember all of it but there’s a part that goes… And I think of you walking along a headland of green oats in June, so full of repose, so rich with life… O you are not lying in the wet clay, for it is a harvest evening now and we are piling up the ricks against the moonlight and you smile up at us — eternally.’

We sat there for a moment, memories hanging above our heads like leaves, ready to be picked and cherished.

‘To Rosaleen,’ said Nora eventually. ‘So full of repose, so rich with life.’

‘To Rosaleen…’ we echoed.

From the house, there was a sound, a voice.

‘Jesus Christ!’ The spell had been broken. ‘I think it’s time to go!

And then, one by one, we dropped out of the tree, hysterical with terror and adrenaline. Laughing and shrieking, we ran to the car, scrambling in, screeching out into the main road and sped off.

As she had run from the tree, Nora had managed to pull a small branch with her.

‘I’ll get a cutting of that,’ she said, wrapping the stem in a tissue which she made damp with water from the bottle she had with her. ‘And we’ll all have Rosaleen’s cherry blossom tree in our gardens.’

*

Finally, after asking countless people for directions we eventually found Finty’s field. There, on the edge of a cliff, the roar of the Atlantic Ocean on one side, tufted grasses, dandelions and rabbit holes the other, was a small, battered caravan. It was late afternoon as we parked the car.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Nora, stepping out of the car. ‘I remember this.’ She squinted a bit as she looked around, her back stiff from the journey. Rosie stretched her arms above her head. She was looking better, more like herself, every second. ‘Well, that journey was at least two hours more than I had estimated it would have taken.’

‘It’s not my fault that he lives in the arse end of nowhere,’ I said.

‘But what a beautiful arse end,’ said Nora. ‘What do you think, Rosie?’ She gathered Rosie to her, giving her a hug. ‘Could you live somewhere like this?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Rosie. ‘But it all depends on who I was sharing this arse end with.’

Nora laughed. ‘Exactly.’ She let out a low whistle. ‘Well, are you ready to meet him?’ And then, after a moment, we heard the same low note back.

‘That’s him,’ she grinned, waving to a figure who had emerged from being in the caravan. Finty. Wizened and ancient, chest bare and brown as a berry, waving both arms above his head. ‘That’s him all right,’ she said. ‘The foxy little fella.’ She began climbing over the gate into the field.

‘Mum, be careful!’

But she managed it, swinging her leg over as Rosie and I, shrugging at each other, followed her lead.

‘Hello there!’ Finty’s voice carried on the Atlantic air. ‘Just in time for tea!’

He hadn’t changed in all these years, except maybe got even skinnier, but his eyes were the same, the whites more yellow, matching his tobacco-stained teeth. He didn’t look well, though. There was a jaundiced look to him under his sun-bathed skin.

‘How are you, old girl?’ He hugged Nora tightly.

‘About as well as you, you old bugger.’

I was a lucky recipient of another bear squeeze. ‘Well, if it isn’t young Tabitha,’ he said. ‘Looking more like your beautiful mother every day. And who is this lovely young lady?’

‘Rosie,’ said Nora, proudly. ‘My granddaughter.’

‘Beauty runs in the family,’ he said, bowing so low to Rosie there was a moment when we wondered if he was going to be able to get up again. But he did, with an audible creak in his back. ‘Tea’s on,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘Come in and sit yourselves down.’

‘Finty, we’ll head off in a little while,’ I said. ‘Let you and Nora catch up.’

‘If you’re sure,’ he said. ‘Where’re ye staying tonight?’

‘B&B in Schull,’ I said. ‘We can go there and leave our bags and get something to eat.’

‘Have a cup here first though, won’t you?’ He brought us round to the front of the caravan where there was a tarpaulin pinned to the edge of the roof propped up by a long stick, creating a canopy. And beyond us was the Atlantic Ocean in all its glory, the Fastnet Lighthouse on the horizon. Seabirds circled above us, down below there was a small cove for landing boats, the water glittered and sparkled in the bright white of the sun. For a moment, we stood there mesmerised.

‘My God,’ I said. ‘What a view.’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Nora, shaking her head. ‘I’d actually forgotten.’

‘Every day, I’m reminded of a greater power than myself,’ said Finty, enjoying our delight as he bustled around filling the kettle from a large water canister. ‘Here I am in this tiny caravan and around me is nature in all its power and majesty. It keeps a man humble, it really does. God knew what he was doing, he really did.’ He set the kettle to boil, wiping some tin mugs out using an old rag, while Rosie and I sat ourselves down on a ramshackle bench which was a long plank on two blocks of wood.

‘You gave up on the tepee, then Finty?’ I said.

‘It fell apart,’ he said, turning to me. ‘It was just a collection of patches in the end and it wasn’t waterproof. And then it collapsed. While I was sleeping. I could have suffocated to death. Which might have been a better way to go than liver failure.’ He sounded his usual cheery self. ‘But I’ve been in this van now for the last ten years or so. Leaks in the winter but, at this time of the year, Buckingham Palace has nothing on it. You sit there, Nora.’ He found a filthy tea towel and wiped a camping stool, but Nora was still soaking up the view and taking over exaggerated breaths of air.

‘Running out of oxygen, Mum?’ I said.

She gave me a look. ‘Not oxygen,’ she said. ‘Ozone. And my eyes feel better here. As though I could see forever. Must be the sea air.’

‘Mum, we have sea air at home. We live on the coast.’

‘Yes, but that’s only the Irish Sea,’ she insisted, disloyally. ‘This is the Atlantic Ocean. It does something to a person does being by the Atlantic.’

‘It does that.’ Finty was handing out mugs.

‘Just breathing it in brings me back to the Peace Camp. Same air you see. It could be twenty years ago. It was only a couple of miles away, wasn’t it?’

‘Three fields that way.’

‘Good times, weren’t they?’

He grinned at her. ‘I’ve got some great memories.’ He tapped his head. ‘They’re all up here.’

‘How’s the health, Finty?’ I said.

‘Not good, Tabitha. I used to go all over the world, I did. India. Australia. I sailed the North-West passage. Been everywhere. But a few things have gone now. Important things. Heart not good. Lungs on the poor side. Liver is packing up. Got a good doctor up in Cork, though. He’s about fifteen years old. But a brain like he’s lived a very long time.’

‘We’re all getting old, Finty.’ Nora had moved her stool closer to him.

‘Not you, Nora. You’re just the same. Haven’t aged a bit.’

‘I’m getting creaky and my eyes are going.’

‘No, you’ve got years left. I’ve got a few years on you. Still swimming?’

‘Every day. You?’

‘You always were hardier than me,’ he grinned. ‘I might go for a dip in the summer. When it’s calm, but for some reason I’ve lost a bit of the foolhardiness I used to have. And now I’m a bit spooked. Deep water is one thing I can’t do anymore.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s funny the things that leave you, isn’t it, when you’re getting on?’

‘I still swim but I can’t do people,’ said Nora, which was news to me. ‘I have to go shopping in the morning. I can’t face buses and cinemas and supermarkets. Everything has to be small-scale.’

He nodded, as though understanding entirely. ‘Goleen is as far as I go these days. Except for when I have to be in the big smoke for my treatment. There’s a little minibus that collects all of the ailing West Corkonians and brings us up. There’s a few cancers on the bus, two strokes and there’s me with my liver failure. We’re quite the school trip. But before we go, I have to take a deep breath of this air here. Enough to keep me going all the way up, the day in the hospital and then the journey home.’

Rosie and I left them to it, they were reminiscing about the various exploits they’d experienced together, mainly, as far as we could tell, run-ins with police. They barely looked up from their riveting – to them at least - conversation about protesting in the age of social media and Rosie and I went off to the village of Schull to find our B&B.

*

Starving, we first found a café on the hill in the town overlooking the harbour below, which had three little tables outside.

‘Still no signal, Mum,’ said Rosie. She’d been checking her phone every ten minutes, waving it around.

We popped our heads inside the door of the cafe. ‘Are you open?’

‘You’re in luck,’ said a woman behind the counter. ‘We’re open until 7 p.m. What are you looking for?’

‘A sandwich?’

‘What about crab?’ she said. ‘Caught this morning. Sit yourselves down, now, and I’ll bring everything out.’

In the evening sun, we sat beside each other. ‘How’re you doing?’ I asked.

‘Fine,’ said Rosie. She was checking her phone for signal.

‘I know I keep asking,’ I said. ‘About how you’re feeling.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said, putting her phone down on the table beside her. ‘But I’m not doing badly. Now I know what hanging in there means. It means just being able to be somewhere, the best you can, for as long as you can.’

‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ I said. ‘Thank you. These look delicious.’ The sandwiches had arrived.

‘There you are. Let me know if you need anything.’

‘We will.’

‘Down from Dublin are ye?’

‘That’s right,’ we nodded.

‘How were the roads?’

‘Grand… clear enough. It’s just nice to be back in West Cork.’

‘Spent much time here have ye?’

‘A little bit,’ I said. ‘My grandmother was from here.’

‘Was she now? What was her name?’

‘Rosaleen. Rosaleen Thomas.’

The woman gasped. ‘Well, well, well. I used to know. Rosie Thomas. She was a friend of my older sister. Went to school together. We lived outside of the town and had to take the bus in every day.’

‘Really? What was she like?’

‘I’ve never seen someone so pretty in my entire life. She had her hair just so, even back then. Used to wrap it in papers overnight. She went to Dublin, as far as I knew, but none of us heard anything else from her, not after her parents passed on. She always said she wanted to act, be in films, and whenever I went to the cinema in Bantry I’d stay to the end of the credits, just wondering if I’d see her name.’

‘She didn’t make it to Hollywood.’

‘Now, that’s a shame. She should have done. Beautiful she was. With the personality to match. Actually…’ She was studying Rosie. ‘You’ve got the look of her. Same shaped face, eyes. If you hadn’t told me who you were I would have sworn it was Rosaleen Thomas, back to see us. Ah!’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Too big for West Cork, she was. Now, we’ve all sorts down here. Actors, producers. We’ve more festivals and arty goings-on than you can shake a stick at. But then, the only thing we had going on was either fish or farming. And Rosaleen didn’t want either. She was that talented, she was. She used to make up dances when we were waiting for the bus. And act out scenes. Shakespeare was her favourite.’

‘She used to do that for me, too.’

‘How is she? Is she still with us?’

‘She died. A long time ago. She was only sixty-two.’ Ten years younger than Nora I thought. ‘Cancer. If it was today, they probably would have been able to help her.’ I refused to let the words get stuck in my throat like they always did.

‘Well, weren’t you lucky to have her all the same? Now, there’s the paper, just in. Evening edition, if you would like to have a look. More scandal. The usual gossip.’

‘Do you have WI-FI here?’ said Rosie.

‘We’re meant to,’ said the woman. ‘They say we have it. But it’s never materialised. If indeed such a thing can materialise. Patchy at best.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ said Rosie, resigned to life in the sticks and waving her phone around.