Barefoot Over Stones (33 page)

‘No, what I said was that he is finding it difficult to adjust to the workload after all the relaxation in France, but it’s nothing he can’t get used to, honestly.’

‘Dad is burnt out, Mam. Can’t you see? The place needs a young GP to cope with all the new patients. Dan was even thinking of taking on a junior partner because the patient list had almost doubled in a couple of years. Dad and yourself are struggling and for what?’

Cathy was having difficulty imagining another GP in Michaelmas House. She still thought of the place as home even though she hadn’t lived in it for more than a decade.

‘I don’t think it would be very pleasant for you and Lucy to have tenants on the middle floor. It would break up the house entirely. It’s not a good idea to have strangers sharing your home.’

Alison took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘That’s the other thing. I don’t really want to live in Michaelmas any longer. The big gap that Dan has left there is too painful for me. Without him the place doesn’t feel like home and if I am not happy there I won’t be able to make Lucy happy either. We could lease the place to a GP and his or her family. I have enough money set aside that I can buy another smaller house for myself and Lucy, and in the future you, me and Dad can decide what should be done with Michaelmas in the long run.’

The colour had drained from her mother’s face and Alison was genuinely sorry that she had to upset her parents in order to move on herself.

‘I had no idea that you felt that way about Michaelmas. I somehow thought you would always be there, but with Dan gone things have changed, I know that. Your dad had said to me that maybe you would want to move but I told him he was talking nonsense. I will have to go back with my tail between my legs on that front. It’s not like your father to be so prescient. Maybe living in France has done him the world of good.’ Cathy managed a smile that relieved a little of her daughter’s guilt. The fall of summer darkness was still some way off, but they picked up their pace a little so that they would have negotiated the more dangerous bends of the road while there was still some brightness to light their way.

‘I was thinking of moving a little bit out of town. Everyone in Caharoe has been so good to me but I feel as if I have been stuck in the same place all my life. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but right now it all feels claustrophobic. I want Lucy to keep her friends in school, so only a few miles out. There are houses being built and for sale everywhere so it shouldn’t be that difficult to find something.’

‘Why don’t I get your father to talk to Robert Lalor? He would have you fixed up with a place in no time. He has contacts—’

‘Mam, do you remember what I said? I need to be able to handle things for myself. I know you are trying to help but—’

‘But I am going feet first into what is essentially your own business again. OK, I am getting the message.’

Alison had already decided that she would ask Colm Lifford to help her with the legal elements of the purchase of a house. Dan had been really impressed with him and had told Alison that he was a thoroughly nice and sound sort of a man. Alison had always found the Lalor men a bit creepy so it seemed a good move to change her own private legal affairs to someone who didn’t know her seed, breed and generation inside out. Besides, she had other reasons for wanting to meet Colm Lifford and she was about to test one of them out on her mother, who now seemed
lost in her melancholy thoughts.

‘Do you remember Ciara and Leda Clancy, Mam?’ Alison had not told her parents that Dan had been visiting Leda in Dublin the night he had died. She made up some function that he could have feasibly wanted to attend and left it at that. It seemed pointless to add another layer of heartache to what had already happened and her parents would never have forgiven Con Abernethy for Dan dying while on a mercy mission on his behalf. Alison felt that Con had enough to contend with without taking on the Shepherds’ angry disapproval.

‘Oh, Alison, what a silly question. How could I forget them? I can still remember the day that you and Dan arrived back from Aughasallagh looking so distraught and all because of that little rip who couldn’t keep her hands to herself. I was glad you dealt with her so well, showed her you wouldn’t tolerate that sort of behaviour in a friend. I did think the two of you would make up eventually though. I was a bit sorry that you didn’t.’

In the weeks after Aughasallagh Cathy had reported every time Ciara rang the surgery, but she could never get any positive reaction from her daughter. Alison’s position on Ciara refused to soften even when it became clear that her relationship with Dan would weather the storm. Ciara gave up her attempts to get back in touch when her efforts were continually ignored. Even when they drew up the wedding-invitation list Ciara’s name did not feature and Cathy decided to let the issue lie. Her daughter was quiet but stubborn too.

Dan had kept his word to Alison and until the day he had found out about Colm Lifford knowing Ciara he had not mentioned her name, sticking faithfully to the promise he made the night he thought he might lose her for good. It all felt so over the top to Alison now and she was ashamed of her behaviour. She was ready to admit that she had missed Ciara’s friendship keenly in the months since Dan’s death. Every time her mind had gone back over their early months and years together, Ciara’s presence overwhelmed her memories. It seemed as if she couldn’t picture Dan without seeing also the face of her lost friend.

‘I had no right to banish her for good or make Dan promise never to mention her name again. It all seems so juvenile, looking back. He was upset and they were drunk. They acted foolishly and I made the two of them suffer for over ten years. I can honestly say that I have never had more than two glasses of wine at any one time in my life. How can I know what I would do if I were that drunk and that upset? I shouldn’t have judged them so harshly and I should have trusted what I had with Dan was strong enough to withstand a stupid slip-up and not behaved like a little girl when her favourite toy is snatched from her. I’ve made friends since, plenty of them, through teaching and through my life with Dan, and they have been really brilliant to me, but being with her was how I imagined it would be to have a sister. I should have just been a bit more grown up.’

Alison thought about her closest friend, Ellen, a teacher in the school, who had minded her so well since Dan had died. Calling to the house every day after school, bringing dishes of food that their diminished appetites could not possibly do justice to and ringing her every night around bedtime to make sure she was doing OK. She knew that was real friendship but she couldn’t help being haunted by the way she had cut ties with Ciara, pulling out the tender roots of something that could have been with her for a lifetime.

‘Well, it did seem a little over the top at the time, but you were so certain that I gave up trying to talk you out of it. Have you thought of getting in touch with her since Dan died? People change though, so if you do contact her be prepared for her to be different than you remember. Ten years is a long time.’

‘I really thought she would turn up at Dan’s funeral if she heard – and she must have heard. It was big news in Leachlara and her folks still live there. How silly is that? After cutting her out like a bit of disease I still thought she would come to my rescue. I even wrote her a letter the night of Dan’s funeral, when the house was full downstairs and I thought I couldn’t breathe with all the people around me. I didn’t post it of course because I was too chicken shit to follow through on
it.’

‘You could find out where to get hold of her, couldn’t you? A phone call to the Clancys in Leachlara should get you her address or her phone number.’

‘I don’t think I will have to go as far as that. Dan had a meeting with the new solicitor on Bridge Street a week or so before he died. Turns out he has a son about the same age as Lucy, a bit younger I think, and Leda Clancy is the child’s mother. Leda abandoned the two of them a few days after the child was born, but he is still in touch with Ciara. I can ask him.’

‘I would believe anything about Leda Clancy, I really would. I wonder was she still carrying on with Con while she was letting her child to fend for itself?’

‘Well, she left it with its father. That’s not fending for itself, I guess.’

Cathy took that as a cue from her daughter to stop gossiping about Leda. ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before if it was bothering you?’

‘The truth of it is that I don’t really know if contacting Ciara will do any good, but it’s something I know I must do. Even if she slaps me in the face I have to take that too. It’s part of the whole growing-up thing and I have left it way too late on a lot of fronts. As for leaving Michaelmas, well, don’t you think it’s about time I left home?’ Alison smiled at her mother who had been there for her through everything, who knew every single one of her faults and loved her anyway.

‘Don’t be hard on yourself, love. We all have things we wish we could have done differently. It’s part of being alive. Without the mistakes we would not have experienced anything worthwhile.’

‘Were you always so wise?’ Alison attempted to lighten the atmosphere as they turned the corner of Earl Street on to the square in Caharoe.

‘I will have punctures put in my wisdom now when I tell your father I am taking him across to Lovett’s for a drink. He will be settled in watching the news and he will be like a grumpy old hen, scratching and pecking and not wanting to be moved off her perch. Still, a drink in his hand will come in handy when I tell him everything you have told me tonight.’

‘Thanks. I appreciate you doing the referee bit. Dad and I have always needed you in the middle to translate.’

‘Hurry up before he falls asleep at the fire, because then there will be no moving him.’

Cathy Shepherd watched as her daughter turned the key in the door of Michaelmas. She didn’t look at the plaque on the wall that had marked this place as her home. She knew only too well that staring sadness down never made it a shred easier to bear.

It took almost six weeks of fussing and packing and incessant reconsidering of their decision before Cathy and Richard Shepherd finally made it to the ferry port in Ringaskiddy to bring them back to France. Richard had booked flights for Alison and Lucy into Poitiers airport for two months later, feeling he could only relax in France if he knew when exactly to the minute and the hour he would see his daughter and granddaughter again. He was sad that the next time he and Cathy would come home, most likely at Christmas, they would not be staying in Michaelmas, but he knew that they could not tie Alison to a house that she had decided she couldn’t settle in any more. Not after all that had happened. It would be a bit rich to be churlish about her leaving when he and Cathy had already decided that a little run-down villa outside Saumur was an infinitely
more attractive prospect for them. Pursuit of the sun had driven them further south to find a permanent base and the châteaux of the Loire had completed the seduction. Missing being a doctor was not an issue. He wasn’t quite sure when he had reached the patient-overload stage but he had found it hard to listen intently or sincerely as yet another tale of woe was set out before him. Since Dan’s death he had felt like an alien in a world of his own making. The new computer system that his son-in-law had put in to modernize the place (only moments, it would seem, after he had left for France) was a devil to negotiate and the simple act of writing a prescription had turned into a palaver that threatened to undo him every time. Out of a list of possible prescription drugs he had on occasion selected the wrong one and was lucky enough that the staff at Esther Quinn’s chemist shop were sharp and knew their customers and their attendant ailments well. He had interviewed a number of GPs who were interested in leasing the house and practice at Michaelmas and had settled on a husband and wife team, Helen and Michael Dowling, GPs of six years’ experience in a Dublin practice, who wanted to move with their young family back to their native Munster. They seemed warm, enthusiastic and keen; the traits that Richard Shepherd felt had lately deserted him. He thought of them as two safe pairs of hands and that was what the practice and Caharoe needed. They agreed on an initial three-year lease, time enough, Richard hoped, for Alison and Lucy to be settled in their new house and willing to make permanent the leaving of Michaelmas.

‘I think you are going to like this one, Alison, and I say that while bearing in mind how cruelly you have dismissed some of the properties I have already shown you.’

There was an air of mischief in Colm Lifford’s voice, and she knew she had been a little bit cutting about one house in particular that he had given her the keys of to look around. He had a pretty good relationship with Sean O’Connor, an auctioneer a few doors up from him on Bridge Street, and he had been able to secure private viewings for Alison of houses up for sale around Caharoe.

‘You’re not still smarting over that monstrosity with pillars that you showed me out on the Mountainacre Road, are you?’ Alison chipped.

‘I would say “monstrosity” is a touch strong but how was I to know that you had a thing against pillars?’

‘I don’t have a thing against real pillars that are fundamental to the construction of a house but I do hate the ones that look as if they have been purloined from a child’s Lego set to be tacked on and spray painted, in this case a brutal shade of peach.’

‘OK, I get the message. No pillars, ever again. Do you want to hear about this dinky little house that has just come up for sale? I think our search might be over.’

‘Whereabouts is it?’

‘Well, if you and Lucy fancy a bit of a mystery tour with myself and Tom on Saturday morning I will get the keys from Sean O’Connor and take you up there.’

‘That sounds like a brilliant idea. I think it’s really important for Lucy to see the houses we might move to but to be honest I think she is losing the will to live watching me go in and out of rooms as if all will be revealed by one more open door. She would love to have Tom there to mess around with and I would like to have your opinion on the place too.’