Faces of Fear (24 page)

She stood facing him for a long time and the rain grew steadily heavier. At last she stepped forward, and laid her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him, on the lips.

“You're rare,” he said. “You're very rare.”

She was about to turn away, but she found that she couldn't resist kissing him again, rain-wet lips touching rain-wet lips, scarcely more than a graze, but enough for the nerve-endings in her lips to tingle, and her eyes to close.

She stared directly into his eyes, but it occurred to her that she didn't even know what she was looking for. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she walked back toward the hotel.

During the afternoon the clouds unraveled and the rain cleared away. Sarah went for a walk around the hotel grounds, and out to the islands. She saw two or three other guests, and exchanged “good-days”, but she saw no sign of her father. She began to suspect that Seáth Rider had been deceiving her with all his talk of giving people whatever they wanted, and his ‘fidelity'. Irish blarney, that's all it was.

Just after three o'clock she drove into Kenmare to take a look at the shops. She bought two fine linen tablecloths and a set of silver spoons, and was tempted by a small walnut cabinet, but decided that she had
probably spent enough on her Daniel Marot chairs. At five she was beginning to feel hungry so she went into O'Leary's Restaurant for a half of Guinness and a prawn sandwich. O'Leary's had a bar on one side and a large, airy restaurant on the other, with gilded mirrors on the walls and old-fashioned fans rotating on the ceiling. Sarah was about to go into the bar, which seemed cosier and jollier, when she noticed a man sitting at one of the tables in the restaurant with his back to her. An elderly man, in a green tweed jacket. Beside him on the tabletop lay a pipe and a tobacco-pouch.

She felt a crawling sensation all the way down her back. It couldn't be him, surely. Not here, in this crowded restaurant, in Kenmare.

She thought: no, it can't be him. She had hoped and prayed that Seáth Rider could give her what she wanted, but at the bottom of her heart she hadn't really believed that it was possible. The dead can't come back – not after a whole year anyway.

All the same, she found herself walking across the restaurant, circling around tables until she was standing close behind him. She closed her eyes for a moment. She didn't know what would upset her the most: if it
were
him, or if it
weren't.
But then she reached out and touched his shoulder, and he turned around. And it was.

Neither of them spoke. Her father pushed, back his chair, and stood up, and took her in his arms. For a long, long time the two of them stood in the middle of the restaurant, holding each other, with tears streaming down their faces. A few people looked and a few people smiled, but in Ireland that sort of dearness is never anything to be ashamed of, and that's why they cry when they play their laments.

“My dearest Sarah,” said her father, at last. “How I've missed you, you've no idea.”

“Oh daddy I've missed you too.”

They sat down, and held hands across the red-checkered tablecloth. Sarah couldn't believe how young her father looked, and how fit.
He's dead
, she thought,
and I think he looks fit
! It was like one of those awful Jewish jokes about the husband who died after a holiday in Florida, with all the relatives at the funeral home saying how well he looked. She found herself laughing at her own stupidity, but also with pleasure, just to have him back again.

“How have you been keeping?” her father asked her. “You look different. Your hair's different. How's that idle husband of yours?”

“Ken? We're divorced.”

“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I always rather liked poor old Ken.”

“Daddy,” she said. “I'm so glad to have you back. Mummy won't know what to say, will she, when I bring you back home?”

Her father lowered his eyes. “How is mummy? Did she take it really badly?”

Sarah nodded, with a lump in her throat. “You'll make her so happy, coming back. We can be a family again, with Sunday lunches and walks and everything.”

Her father didn't look up. “I can't do it, Sarah. I can't come back.”

“But you're
alive.
You were dead, but now you're alive. Of course you can come back!”

The woman at the next table gave her the oddest of looks, and then went back to her conversation about making jam.

“Perhaps it's physically possible, my darling. But I've got another life now, quite different from the life I had
before. I passed from one life into the next; and now I have friends who need me and people who rely on me. I
could
come back, but to tell you the truth…”

He squeezed her hands tight, and his eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Sarah, with all my heart. But the life I spent with you and mummy is over now, and no amount of wishing can bring it back. I
could
come back, but I've been living in a very different place – a place of great affection and complete fulfilment – and I simply don't want to.”

The waitress brought Sarah's sandwich. She pushed it to one side. She couldn't eat anything now if she tried.

“What are you going to do?” she asked her father. “How long are you going to stay here?”

“Just long enough to tell you that I love you; and goodbye. I didn't have the chance to say goodbye before, did I?”

“You can't go,” Sarah begged him. “I've brought you back, daddy. I need you so much; and mummy needs you more.”

He gave her the saddest of smiles. “I'm sorry, darling. I really am. But I have to move on. There's so much waiting for me.”

He stood up, and the sun came through the restaurant window behind him and dazzled her, so that she couldn't see his face. He said, “I love you, Sarah, and I wish you well,” and then he turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving her sitting alone. She saw him pass by the window, more like a reflection than a real person, but then he was gone. She could have run out after him, and begged him to come back; but she knew that it wasn't any use.
I could come back, but I simply don't want to
… and what could be more specific than that?

The waitress came over, all concerned. “Is there something wrong with your sandwich?” she asked.

Sarah shook her head and tried to sound bright. “No. Not at all. There's something wrong with me.”

“Well, don't worry dear, I won't charge you for it if you didn't like it.”

Sarah couldn't speak. Tears flooded out of her eyes, and all she could do was cover her face with her hands and let out a series of deep, muted sobs.

The waitress sat down next to her and put her arm around her. “What's the matter, then? Is it something I can help you with?”

“No,” said Sarah. “Nobody can.”

The waitress held her and shushed her while she sat on her bentwood chair and let out the longest burst of uncontrollable grief since her father had died.

When she returned from Kenmare it was evening and she found Seáth Rider waiting for her in the bar, with a glass of neat vodka in front of him. He looked darker than ever; edgy and dissatisfied.

“Well?” he said. “What's the matter with you?”

She sat down opposite, on a large loudly-upholstered sofa. Sonny Loony the barman came across and asked her what she wanted to drink. “Dry white wine; very cold.”

Sonny gave Seáth Rider a sideways look as if to say, don't you so much as breathe on one hair of this young lady's head, or you'll have me to answer to, Seáth Rider, in return, gave him a black look back.

“You saw your father, is that it?”

“That's it. I went to Kenmare and there he was.”

“So where is he now? As if I didn't know.”

Sarah clamped her hand over her mouth to prevent
herself from sobbing. She looked around the room and willed her eyes not to fill up with tears.

“You knew, didn't you?” she managed to ask him.

“I didn't know for sure. But it's par for the course. You ask a 20-year-old if he wants to be 16 again, and he won't be having it. You ask a 40-year-old if he wants to be 27 again, and he'll say no, even if he's full of envy. Or you ask a 60-year-old if he wants to be 45, and he'll scoff at you. We
progress.
We change. And after we die, there it is, waiting for us, the invisible kingdom, the same the Fianna could visit, full of light and hope and heavenly charms. I warned you, Mrs Bryce, but you didn't listen to what I saying. The dead will never come back to us. They've gone on, the dead, and they've left us behind.”

“I didn't know,” said Sarah, with as much dignity as she could summon up.

“Well now you do. You got what you wanted; but what you wanted didn't want you. It happens all the time, believe me.”

Sonny brought Sarah's wine, and she sipped it gratefully. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was; and hungry, too.

“You'll have dinner with me?” asked Seáth Rider.

“No, thanks. I'm going to have a bath, and wash my hair. I'm going to make an early start tomorrow.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I said, ‘I'm going to make an early start.' I'm going to fly back to London tomorrow.”

Seáth Rider sat up in his seat, bony and dark, his face as pale as a lantern. “Now look here, you made an agreement with me, now didn't you. You promised me fidelity. On your life, you promised me fidelity. So what's all this talk of going back to London?”

Sarah almost laughed. “Fidelity doesn't mean staying in Ireland for the rest of my life!”

“Perhaps not. But it means staying close to me; and since I'm Irish, and choose to live in Ireland, for all of its many faults, this is where you'll be.”

“Don't be absurd. I have to be back in London by lunchtime. I'm having a meeting with Sotheby's.”

Seáth Rider finished his vodka and lifted his glass for another. “Did you not meet your father?”

“Yes I did.”

“So did I not do what I said I was going to do? You had your heart's desire – your chairs, your father.”

“Mr Rider,” Sarah protested, “I'm very grateful for the chairs; but my father's gone back to wherever dead people go back to; and I'm left with nothing at all.”

“You promised me fidelity. I fulfilled my part of the bargain did I not? If your father chose not to stay, well, that was none of my doing, now was it.”

“Mr Rider this is absurd.”

He snatched hold of her hand and held her tight. “Was it absurd when you were standing in the rain begging me to bring your father back? Was it absurd then?”

Sarah stared at him coldly, and after a while he let go of her hand, and sat back. All the same, her heart was beating like the rain on the rooftops.

“I think I'd better go to my room and pack,” she said.

He made a dismissive face, as if she could do whatever she liked, and it would make no difference to him. She left the bar and walked quickly through the lobby. She felt deeply disturbed; not only by what had happened today in the restaurant in Kenmare, but by Seáth Rider's insistence that she keep her promise. She had seen what influence he had, and she was
terrified that he was going to
make
her keep it, no matter what.

As she rushed up the staircase, she almost collided with a man coming down, carrying a traveling bag. She looked up at him, and said, “Sorry!” before she saw who it was. Ken, her ex-husband, his hair longer than it was before, in a crumpled blue-linen, jacket. His broad, Celtic face looked well and tanned, and even his eyebrows had gone blonde.

“
Ken
! What on earth are
you
doing here?”

He flushed. “I'm sorry, Sarah. I was trying to leave without you seeing me.”

“But what are you
doing
here? I thought you were still in France.”

“I was, until last week. Then I decided to do something which I've been wanting to do for a very long time. I came looking for you.”

“You followed me all the way here?”

He looked around. “Listen – is there somewhere we can talk?”

They went upstairs to the hotel library, dedicated to George Bernard Shaw. It was huge and gloomy and completely empty. Sarah sat on one of the sofas and Ken pulled up a chair and sat close to her.

“I saw you in Carhiovean, going into a pub,” said Sarah. “I thought it was – well, I thought it was somebody else. But it
was
you.”

Ken nodded. “I was following you. I wanted to see you, that's all. But then I saw that boyfriend of yours sitting there waiting for you, so I went out the back way.”

“You were following me? Why?”

“It was stupid, I suppose. But I wanted to find out if there was any chance of us getting back together again. I've changed, Sarah. I've been thinking about where we
went wrong, and how much of it was my fault. I've been working and painting and I've really turned myself around.”

“Oh, Ken,” she said, and took hold of his hand.

“That's why I followed you here … to see if we could give it another try. But then I saw you talking to that boyfriend of yours, and I realized that I'd obviously left it too late. I saw you out on the terrace, too, having a bit of a tête-à-tête, and that's when I decided to pack my bag and leave you to it. I still love you, Sarah; I always will. But I'm not going to stand in your way.”

“Ken, why didn't you
try
to talk to me, at least? Seáth Rider isn't my boyfriend! He isn't even my friend! He's just a man I met at the auction. He helped me to buy two Daniel Marot chairs, and we got chatting, but that was all.”

“I saw you kissing him.”

“Well … he promised to do me a favour, that's all; and I was grateful for it.”

“Oh, yes? What kind of favour?”