On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (9 page)

The walk took less than fifteen minutes, taking in a stop at the newsagent’s for a packet of Silvermints, the Holy Communion of kissers, as his sisters used to call them. Near the end of the hill he slowed. How would he greet her, he pondered. Throw his arms around her and kiss her? On the lips? Sounded good, but no. Place his arms gently on her shoulders, maybe a light hug? A kiss on the cheek? Offer his hand, hold on to hers as she had done to him when they met? Better wait, see what she does, take his cue from her. After all, though the thought seemed incredible, he’d been in her company just once. Out of their whole lives, all their combined years on earth, they’d shared only fifteen minutes. Intense minutes. And before today he had talked to her by phone just one time, when he sensed the upset and confusion in her, the day she was to meet him at the Horslips Hotel. No, he should play it cool, like the year just gone hadn’t been a year obsessed, of frequent despair, and worse at times. But none of that mattered now. He could hold it together; he always could.

At the village, lower down, the ocean beat a rhythm into the air. He turned into Kells Road, a narrow avenue of people drifting into and out of cafes and small shops, smelling like one great bakery. The warm morning had brought out the Beehive’s green-and-white umbrellas, lined along the footpath. He had six minutes to spare. Each step mattered now, because she was here, somewhere, in this freedom. Somewhere. Face after face auditioned for him, sun-bright faces, passing, standing, sitting.

He scrutinised the three Beehive tables occupied: four young women, shopping bags by their feet, huddled in chatter; two older men behind pints of black stout; two younger men in hiking jackets flanking an attractive blond woman over an opened-out map.

He checked. Only 11.27. Twenty yards beyond the Beehive he turned back, weighing all events within his compass. Not one dark-haired, thirtyish female anywhere. The two hikers, map in hand, were moving off. The blond woman, wearing oversize sunglasses, was seated now, chin resting on her hands. Was she watching him? He caught himself staring, looked away, assumed a casualness of wellbeing. Then his eyes flashed back. She was definitely staring, offering a half-smile. He reciprocated, began moving away. Then he turned. She was on her feet, as though about to signal. Five-six-ish, blond hair clipped back above both ears, long calico dress billowing in the breeze. Not brunette like Lenny. She was moving toward him.

‘Tony,’ she said quietly, as though in full confirmation.

The voice that had never gone away.

She whipped off her sunglasses.

Eyes that could only be hers. Just as he saw her from William’s bench, one year earlier.

‘Tony! I don’t believe it.’

His body stilled. She appeared lit by a thousand candles, fingers probing through the air to touch him.

‘It is you,’ she said, as though verifying. Their arms wrapped each other in a gentle hold that became a firm wordless embrace.

‘How are you?’ he asked. Then leaning away he admired her from her blond crown to her canvas sandals, then back.

‘I want to kiss you,’ she said with no hint of request, eyes already closed.

Their lips touched, brushed apart, and met again and parted, and a moment later engaged more deeply, then broke once again until the waiting was too long and the full kiss consummated, firm and still, drawing attention from passers-by.

As the afternoon pressed on they talked over streams of tea, reminisced in disbelief about the sheer chance of how they had met, and dismissed the episodes of their separate lives since then, their year apart. He wanted to ask why she had let him down at the Horslips Hotel, wanted to tell her of the eternity of waiting for her. And he wanted to know why, on the phone that day, she had sounded disturbed, and hard to understand. For such questions, though, the moment felt wrong. Instead, he listened to her telling that she was not brunette to begin with, but light auburn. And no, she said with anguish, she had received none of his five letters, or his note, whoever was conspiring against her; even so, she would not let that cheat them of this day.

Hour after hour their chatter flowed, long after it was obvious to him that she was deflecting his enquiries. For too long he himself had hid like this, and too often still did, secrets hiding beneath what he showed and told. Better to be ready, she said, to grasp the grandness that comes in rare moments, because real joy seldom visits. He understood, for he knew well stigmata. But here he felt wiser, so he went along with her celebration of the moment, was pulled along, was coloured in by her, by everything about her.

Later, he probed again, cautiously, into her life. Again she brushed it aside. Why, he could not guess. He needed to know her. And the questions would not go away. What fear was in the hidden part of her, her life beyond this here and now? To him, she seemed at times like a teenager shielding a dysfunctional other life. This woman who, as Paddy had told it, had survived war, and all that that suggested. Or maybe none of that was true, just story. Not that any of it mattered, for he was already won by her mystique, her promise. Even her secrets. His curiosity could wait. They had saved all this out of fifteen minutes of thrill and conflict and a year of nothingness. Each had defeated something, no doubt very different things, to make it to this moment.

He moved closer to her. She was real, touchable, near enough to count her eyelashes, which he played with doing until he found himself hypnotised in the blue of her eyes. His heart had come alive, he felt, after adolescent despair and nine years of brutality in American prisons; his sign was truly rising once again in this new existence he had sworn to.

‘I could stay here forever, couldn’t you?’ she said.

His attention went to her hands cradled within his own. Was that it, he wondered, what she meant, love? Could it be?

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Stay here?’ He lifted a strand of hair from her brow, let his touch linger on her forehead. ‘Forever? Why not.’

‘You believe in ideas like spirit? And feelings that never die?’

‘Moving in that direction.’

‘Or is it that we merely invent to make glorious mysteries plausible?’

‘Bright mind. Sceptical soul.’

‘I have a soul? You sure? If you believe that, I want to know what it’s like. What do you see in me? Apart from my being bright or sceptical.’

‘Blue eyes. Maybe blue soul.’ He smiled awkwardly.

‘I’m serious, Tony. Look at me. Who am I? What do you see? Tell me. Tell me.’

‘Who are you?’ His eyes broke from hers. ‘On the outside, a very attractive woman, which you know. On the inside, the same. Bit mysterious too. What do you think?’

‘Hardly. First, physical beauty is an accident of genes, has no meaning. Second, everyone has secrets, even you. Zero marks.’ Amid shared amusement she drew his face closer and kissed him. ‘Want me to tell you what I see inside Tony MacNeill?’

He suggested ordering another pot of tea instead. She pressed for his compliance and won it, then drew back in regard of him. ‘Denim shirt, jeans, climbing boots, brown-red hair, smart, resilient, big fire burning inside, doesn’t trust, been betrayed, made a big mistake or two. Yes?’

‘No comment,’ he said, hoping it was over.

‘Nothing is permanent, Tony,’ she said. ‘Today’s truth is tomorrow’s lie. Everything goes on changing. Not even the past can be trusted, history of any kind.’

‘Wouldn’t go that far. We direct our own lives. Some parts of what we are are always changing, but some parts – ’

‘But even so, even if we do direct our own lives, it’s still in a random universe. That’s my point. Look at how we met – accident! Fate is not a matchmaker; it didn’t bring you and me to that station to meet each other. Things just happen. Good or bad, all change comes out of chaos. Control is a construct, a philosophical illusion. If we had control, we’d all change our inner worlds.’

‘We can change what we decide to change. Most things. Takes time and belief. Most people never try hard enough to get what they say they want.’

‘You sound like a counsellor,’ she said with a touch of angst.

He smiled dismissively.

‘Things that happened years ago; tell me, who can change those?’

‘Day comes we decide. We say this or that is not going to haunt us any longer. We leave the past behind. Why look back, even to good times? Life is this very minute.’

Lenny reclined in silence. Then it struck him, their exchanges had an intensity that comes only out of personal pain, and neither was trying to hide that fact.

‘Sounds fine, in theory,’ she said flatly. ‘When all the good times are in the past, what do you do then? Tell me.’

His mind juggled how he might avoid her fervour. Clearly, she had contemplated these questions. The irony was that he had long shared her perspective, but he dared not tell her so. And despite alluding to her happiness being in the past, she hadn’t once in their hours together mentioned her own past. But his best escape, for now, he decided, was retreat.

‘The one thing I’m sure of, absolutely certain of, is that I must, immediately, if I am to defeat an accident of genes, go to the bathroom.’ He hobbled away clownishly, moving only from the knees down, then turned to her. ‘I’ll have all the theories figured out by the time I get back.’

On his return he found her reflective. She took his hand and studied it: palms, back and fingers. The sense of her he had already absorbed set him on alert. Whatever was on her mind now was about to find voice.

‘I love, really love, how you think,’ she said, ‘about the past, what it can do to you if you let it. The present is what matters, and the future. I’m learning that. Slowly.’ Her fingers pressed along his jaw, then across his lips, as if authenticating his carnal actuality. ‘I’m thrilled you’re here,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’

On the approach of evening they left the Beehive, strolled hand in hand through the buzz of Market Street, down to the ocean, where at the end of the steps they sat staring out to the restless water, sharing each other’s warmth, and talking hardly at all.

In time, the sun slipped down, colouring their world with its warm light. Then soon the air took on a chill, sending them back to the comfort of the Beehive. There, Lenny’s interest caused him to tell of milestones from his fourteen years growing up in Dublin and what America had given to and taken from the MacNeills. He hoped she would reciprocate.

He told of Kate, his eldest sister, Dr Kate MacAnna now, her bravery and perseverance, who had built her own dreams. He spoke little of sisters Pat and Violet, or of his mother, now living contentedly in Florida. And as to why at twenty-eight he had not been seduced into marriage and a mortgage, he responded only with a shrug.

Then his probing of Lenny’s past met with the same resistance of earlier. That story, she insisted, were it ever to be told, was for some other day, not worth the price of present time. It was an entirely forgettable past anyway, she said: dead people, old fantasies, immature hopes, nothing of value, a past of no consequence to this moment, drinking merlot by a fire. Yes, she said, his philosophy was sound; that was clear now, the holy present, the only existence, no looking back necessary.

Even more passionately now his mind jumped between fascination with Lenny Quin and thoughts of what this turn in his life portended. Her warmth, her intelligence, her rebel individuality, all gave healing to his long-aching psyche, much as her sensuality tormented his deprived senses. Her mind was not unlike his own, he thought. Yet neither the wealth that refined her nor the poverty that characterised him affected their potential together, a life, perhaps, that lay beyond either of them separately. Hers too was a survivor’s mind, rich in the cleverness that comes of failing; he could sense that in her.

What price had she paid? He knew too little to even imagine. What he saw clearly, though, was that in Lenny Quin there lived a particular dimension, a bloom almost touchable, the mystique of those who are unconquerable, who survive because there is no better option. Was he closer now to knowing this woman who had appeared in the nowhere he inhabited? He thought so, and the feeling carried fear. Could he trust in this world, her world? Survive where fast hands and guts counted for little? Would all this unmask him? The dream could end tomorrow, in a week, all hope vanish. But even as he struggled with his thoughts, his fascination with this woman carried him off on great adventures, into a new land.

With these thoughts came a feeling of wholeness, unlike anything he had known, a realm of wonders unseeable in their singled parts for they existed only as inseparables, like a hillside of flowers dancing. He had screamed so long for life; now he wondered if the inciter of his emptiness had finally been subdued.

‘You’re miles away,’ she said. ‘What are you thinking?’

Only his glance acknowledged her.

She pressed a double kiss to his cheek. ‘We’re the last ones here,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘What now?’

He foraged for a response. Then she smiled a smile he’d never met, a smile that required no prior acquaintance.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

‘Think so,’ he said, and tried to manage the friction in his brain.

5

1964

Aranroe Farmlands

In the grey of dusk it was an immature wail that stilled him. His senses shot to the house. Then a second cry. The garden fork dropped. He bounded over the potato greens, through the half-open door, took the stairs in leaps. The bedroom door fell away before his soil-encrusted hands. In the bed her tiny face hid behind clutched blankets.

‘Leonora, Princess, what is it? Another bad dream, was it?’ His arms wrapped around her. ‘It’s alright, it’s alright. Only a dream, Princess, that’s all. Uncle Leo is here now, everything’s going to be grand.’ Back and forth he rocked her, to no avail. ‘That big monster you told me was chasing you, he’s not real, there’s no real monsters, only in stories. Everything’s grand now, you’re grand now.’

‘I want mama,’ the child sobbed. ‘Mama, mama.’

‘
A ghrá mo croi,
mama’ll be home tomorrow. Uncle Leo’s going down to the big hospital in Galway and he’s bringing her home to you. You can come with me; would you like that? And Aunt Peggy. We’ll all go down together in the big bus, will we? And we’ll buy choc ices; how does that sound?’