Barefoot Over Stones (29 page)

Finally Ciara was at the head of the queue. It had taken an hour and fifteen minutes, which seemed all the longer for more than half of it having passed with no communication, barbed or otherwise, from Leda. She slammed the reservation-number page that she had printed off the Ryanair website the night before on to the check-in desk. It wasn’t until she turned back to Leda to produce the second piece of luggage for the hold that she realized her sister had gone.

‘She must be gone to buy a paper or something. Can I check her in and go after her? I will bring her back here to the desk when I find her.’

‘I’m afraid that’s totally impossible. You cannot check in for somebody else. It’s just not the way we operate. I suggest you find your travelling companion and rejoin the queue. Has she got a mobile? Maybe you could try that. You really need to move aside now. The gate closes in forty minutes and we need to process all these people,’ the clerk said as she waved her hand at the queue that snaked its way, two to three people wide, all the way back to the opposite bank of check-in desks.

Ciara gathered her computer printout and her battered trolley case and made her way to the rows of seats in the middle of the departure hall. She couldn’t quite believe what her sister had just done but she knew it was no accident – and if she had been in any doubt there was a text message on her mobile, a beep she had not heard while standing in the queue, confirming that Leda had indeed done a runner.

I know you mean well but I can’t go back. I need space. Sorry you had to pay for flight but at least it was a cheap one, L

Ciara dialled the number, but she already knew her sister would not answer. Leda was sipping a coffee while waiting to board the Gatwick Express. She had turned down the ringer on her phone but she still felt its familiar vibrating pulse against her thigh as it languished unanswered in her coat pocket. She needed a new number. The first thing she would do when she got off the train was to buy a new SIM card. As she had said to Ciara, she needed some space. The platform display announced a train to Victoria leaving in 1 minute 56 seconds. London stretched out wide and promising in front of her. It would do for the moment.

Posters of the great Irish writers lined the walls of the travelator corridor to baggage reclaim at Dublin airport. All grey, nearly all wearing glasses and mostly men, it had to be said. It reminded Ciara of the poster that she and Alison had hung over the mantelpiece in their Ranelagh flat. They had bought it in one of the tourist shops on Nassau Street. It was a perfect fit because it covered the horrible dark patch of smoke that had lingered when they had taken down Jean McDermott’s choice of artwork, a totally bizarre and lurid pink and orange print of a fish eating a girl. They had hidden it behind the sofa in case dumping it counted against their deposit. To tell the truth, they had become used to its kitsch until Dan started to comment on it every time he came in. ‘Ah now, girls, I know you arts students like to show how multi-talented you all are, but displaying your school art project? Have you no shame?’

Ciara was in danger of lapsing into a bout of nostalgia. Her memories of college, of first living away from home and of Dublin were absolutely bound up in her friendship with Alison and the
effect Dan Abernethy had had on both their lives. She had let a few days elapse before she attempted to ring Alison after the night in Aughasallagh. Dan was due back in Dublin for his final exams on the Monday. She rang the Shepherds’ private phone line several times that morning but there was no answer. As a last resort she rang the surgery number and the phone was answered by Cathy Shepherd, whose tone turned decidedly frosty when she realized she was talking to Ciara. Obviously Alison had filled her mother in on what had happened between her and Dan.

‘This is the surgery line, Ciara,’ Cathy said curtly.

‘I know that, Mrs Shepherd, but I have tried the house number and there is no answer. I need to talk to Alison and explain things.’

‘Look, I know Alison is down there but she is very upset and might not want to talk to you. I will tell her you are looking for her but I can’t promise anything. She is very hurt.’

Ciara felt bad enough already and talking to Cathy didn’t make her feel any better. In the following weeks she continued to call the surgery every few days. Cathy insisted she was giving the messages to Alison but none of her calls was returned so Ciara gradually gave up. As a last resort she wrote a letter to Alison, trying to excuse her stupidity and beg her forgiveness, but the letter was returned unopened to the house in Leachlara. Alison had readdressed the letter and the sight of her friend’s handwriting on the envelope was the final act of rejection. Ciara abandoned hope that their friendship could be restored.

She wrestled her thoughts back to the present while she waited for her bag. Delving into the past was too painful. As soon as she had got her trolley case from the carousel she headed out to find a bus or a taxi that would take her to Colm’s apartment to meet her nephew. Despite her mounting credit-card debt she opted for the luxury of a taxi, to avoid scrimping for the exact change for a bus. It used to cost fifty-five pence from Nassau Street to the Northbrook Road stop and she would happily walk the last ten minutes, nipping into Spar for a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk and a sliced pan if she was ravenous for supper. As she waited in the taxi rank she wondered how much it cost now.

The upbeat humour of the taxi driver suited her. She could do with a bit of jovial conversation with somebody before she landed on top of Colm and Tom. She would need to muster any charm and warmth she had left after what had happened with Leda that morning. Colm must already think the worst of her because she would be linked in his head with Leda but at least he had told her she was still welcome when she had phoned him to say that Leda had done a runner. Again. He didn’t seem shocked. Perhaps Leda’s behaviour had already exhausted his capacity for surprise.

She marvelled at how different the roads around the airport looked since the last time she had seen them. It was so much more built up; roads were clogged with traffic and everywhere held the fragile promise of unfinished newness. She had heard of the Celtic Tiger of course. Every Irish person she had met in Spain and England felt duty bound to tell her about the miracle of economics that had swept all before it at home. Thinking she had fled unemployment, they were only too keen to tell her now that they were giving jobs away but that you might need three of them to find a house to call your own. Ciara never admitted that she was fleeing something that a job or the celebrated Tiger couldn’t cure. She had heard the phrase so many times that she thought her head might implode if she heard it once more. As it happened, it didn’t, because the taxi man had used it twice before they had even reached the M50, rolling the ‘r’ of Tiger for dramatic effect.

‘So tell me, love, are you here for business or pleasure?’ he enquired as he cruised down the bus lane towards Drumcondra and the older Dublin she hoped she might yet recognize.

‘A bit of both maybe, but mostly pleasure I hope,’ she answered quietly as she gazed out of the window. She couldn’t match the place she was seeing now with the place she had left years
before. Dublin didn’t have this much traffic the last time she was here and there were new apartment blocks everywhere. It seemed as if it had turned into a city of apartment-dwellers, the newest of them her nephew Tom and his father, Colm. ‘Twenty One, The Malt Store, Claddagh Road. It’s off the South Circular,’ she announced to the driver confidently as if she knew exactly where she was going and whom she would find there.

No stone had been left unturned to make Colm’s apartment look like a grotto to healthy and normal family life. This whole procedure was not going to flounder on Iris Lifford’s lack of effort. The place had been vacuumed to within an inch of its life. The sterilizer had sterilized everything she could lay her hands on. Tom was pristine in his green and blue sleepsuit. If he smelt divine of baby lotion and as if he had been bathed just before Nurse Halloran arrived, it was because he had been. Colm did his best not to screw up anything that his mother had neatly arranged because he knew that however co-operative she was being they were very close to the flip side of her industry, which was an outright explosion. That they must avoid at all costs. He had had some photos of Tom developed and he had stuck them into frames that he’d had stashed in the drawer of his desk. He put them in a few visible places around the living room. In the drawer he also found a photo of himself and Leda that Rory had taken of them at the Reilly & Maitland St Patrick’s Day Lunch. It was a day when he had realized that it was entirely possible to spend an unspeakably awful day with a beautiful girl if she decided that there was no real reason to talk to their colleagues or to him. The photo looked convincing enough, because Leda always looked gorgeous no matter what her mood. He could say that now even after all that had happened and all that she had done. Colm himself was smiling too, because just as he was taking the photo Rory had dropped the punchline to a joke he had been telling him piecemeal throughout the otherwise depressing lunch. It was to all intents and purposes a heart-warming photo of a couple in love, a couple expecting their first child, except one of them didn’t know and one of them seemed not to care, either then or now. Colm resisted the urge to tear it to pieces and placed it back in the drawer face down. He would deal with it another day.

Ciara had said that she would turn up about an hour before the appointment and Colm secretly hoped that his mother would make herself scarce so that they could put on a convincing act of young parents struggling with, but ultimately managing, the difficulties of being new parents. It was not as if he was breaking the law wanting to raise his own child but he did feel that he needed the nurse to think that all was well so that she would sign off on the Leda Clancy file and be happy to see a happy and healthy Tom for the remainder of his vaccinations. The initial meeting with Ciara had been uneasy because Colm had been beset with worry that she would have plans for Tom that involved more time with the Clancy family, or that she would want to take Tom to Leda. As far as he was concerned Leda could be with Tom if she would agree to move back into the apartment, but his son was not going anywhere out of his sight. He was deeply relieved that Ciara, who professed herself devoid of anything one might mistake for maternal instinct, had no notion of playing happy Clancy families. She wanted the best for Tom and she wanted to meet Colm herself to see what he was made of, but her role in Tom’s life was going to be that of a devoted aunty – if that was OK with Colm.

‘God yeah, it is. I have to say I am relieved.’ His sharp exhalation of breath gave Ciara some idea of how worried he had been about meeting her. ‘I am not at all sure that your parents know of their grandchild’s existence. In fact I am almost certain that they don’t, as they didn’t visit the hospital or even telephone while Leda was staying with me. If it’s all right with you I would like to keep things that way for the moment – just until I feel I have Tom totally settled and on an even keel.’

Ciara knew he was worried that even if Leda didn’t want Tom her parents might, so she let him know that the Leachlara contingent would not descend on him.

‘Listen, Colm, I wouldn’t leave my pet cat, if I had one, with my folks for the weekend. They would mean well but it wouldn’t be a good idea so I think we will keep Tom to ourselves for the moment. Besides, the last thing Leda needs is the whole of Leachlara discussing her baby in the pubs. Dad is out there most nights and he cannot hold water.’

‘She was never that keen on going home or talking about it. I never pushed the issue because I didn’t want to be crowding her and anyway our relationship didn’t last long enough for us to get down to the nitty gritty of finding out about each other’s families. She only ever talked to Mam after Tom was born and she had left at that stage so they didn’t exactly hit it off. Tell me to mind my own business, but did she fall out with your folks or what? I know families can be hard. Believe me.’

Ciara took a deep breath. She could just be evasive but that wasn’t really fair, was it? She could give Colm the sketch of the truth without revealing details. It might go some way to explaining the way that Leda had behaved, although Ciara would be the first to admit that nothing could excuse her latest trick. ‘When Leda was younger she had a relationship with a man from Leachlara who was much older than her, forty years older than her actually. He was married and she thought she was in love with him. Maybe she was. He was just a scumbag who took advantage of the fact that Leda was innocent and unhappy at home.’

Ciara made it sound like a distant memory. There was no way she was going to admit that Leda might still be involved with Con Abernethy and that it could well explain her strange behaviour about her pregnancy and her son’s birth. It was good to be honest but only to the point that served one’s purpose best.

‘And your parents naturally enough did not approve, I presume.’ Colm thought he was beginning to understand Leda’s evasiveness about home.

‘Not quite as simple as that, I am afraid. The man was, still is in fact, prominent and well known, and so it was let go much further and longer than it should have been. He was a drinking mate of Dad’s and Dad chose not to pull his friend up about his involvement with his daughter. Mam is not the best at seeing what’s in front of her nose so nothing helpful came from there either. I tried to keep her away from him but she always went to him behind my back because presumably he made promises that she never learned he wouldn’t keep. I gave up in the end because life threw its own crap my way and, as they do say, the best thing about banging your head off a brick wall is that it feels fantastic when you stop. Pretty pathetic, but there you have it. Anyway, I reckon it has properly screwed up Leda so she doesn’t know how to recognize or appreciate decency and kindness. I could tell you who this man is but I’m not sure what good it would do.’