The House On Willow Street (20 page)

The after-funeral teas and coffees were held in the Avalon Hotel, and Cashel found people he didn’t recognize talking to him at every turn.

“Hello, Cashel, I’m sorry for your loss,” they’d say, and he would thank them and wonder who they were.

He’d been gone so long, he knew nobody here.

And there was to be no escape from reminders of Tess, either.

An elderly lady with bifocals and a head of lovely silvery blonde hair hugged him and said she was sure he remembered nobody now, “. . . except the Power girls.”

Unable to listen to any more of this, Cashel shoved his chair back. “I’m sorry, but I need to make some calls,” he said abruptly, and ignoring the startled expressions around the table he got up and left.

The driver he’d hired was outside reading a paper in the car. He looked up in mild alarm to see his client marching out with a face like thunder. Cashel waved him away and walked down the hill, not really knowing where he was going, only that he had to get away. The aroma of freshly ground coffee drifted across from a café on the square that hadn’t been there in his day. Who was he kidding, he thought:
nothing
had been there in his day. Avalon was like a totally different town. Despite Riach and his family being there, Cashel felt as if the last true link to the place was gone. Riach could visit him anytime, anywhere. He’d send the plane for them. The kids would love it. There was no need ever to set foot in this town again.

A wave of grief for his mother swept over him. He hadn’t been there for her. He’d paid for things, naturally, but he hadn’t
been
there, hadn’t been the person she’d call to ask about a fuse box or a shrub that needed to be cut back. Riach had been that person for her. Tess Power had taken all that away from him when she’d rejected him. Tess Power—it was her fault.

Cashel marched into the café, tall and brooding in his funeral suit, a formidable presence of wealth, privilege and expensive tailoring. Behind the counter, Brian took a step backward. The big man looked as if someone had done something to upset him and Brian hoped to God that the person who’d done the bad thing wasn’t him.

“Yes?” he said anxiously.

The man seemed to focus on him then, dark brows opening up.

Brian felt a relieved quiver in his legs, the way he used to in school when someone else was in trouble. It wasn’t him, after all. The man in the suit wasn’t angry with him.

“An espresso,” said Cashel, not sure why he was here at all. He didn’t even want more coffee.

“You’re here for the funeral,” said Brian, attempting a bit of light chat. His mother, Lorena, who owned the café, said he didn’t do enough conversing with the customers, but it was hard. Brian didn’t have the knack when it came to chatting.

At the mention of the funeral, the glower came back into the big man’s face.

“Right, so,” said Brian, and busied himself with the coffee machine.

Cashel paid for his coffee and sat down at a window seat. The local newspaper had been left, folded incorrectly, on the seat beside him and for want of something to do, he picked it up and scanned it. News was the same the world over, he thought, long fingers flipping through the pages: communities raising money for charity, a politician no longer in power lamenting the state of the country, young athletes beaming for the camera as they posed with medals or a cup . . .

His fingers stilled as he turned to the back pages.

Property for sale: Avalon House.

After the funeral, Tess went back to the shop and opened up. She found that her fingers were shaking as she tried to undo the mortice lock at the bottom of the door.

“Yoo-hoo,” called Vivienne from next door. “How was it? Is that lovely rich son looking for an older woman to spoil? I can’t promise much in the way of sex, but they’re working on that female Viagra, aren’t they? I could go on a pharmaceutical trial!”

Vivienne finally arrived at her door, took one look at Tess’s stunned, now-pale face and said: “That bad? Come in and
sit down. You can keep the hordes of buyers happy and I’ll get you a strong coffee.”

She installed Tess in a chair by the till, then locked Something Old and handed the keys to her. “Nobody’s come near us all morning. I doubt that a busload of rich tourists is going to turn up within the next five minutes.”

Tess was glad she was sitting.

Vivienne liked mad disco music from the seventies. She played her old CDs on a loop. Any day of the week, you could be sure of hearing “September” or “Disco Inferno” belting out from the shop. There were times when the seashore whooshing “tranquility” soundtrack from the beautician’s upstairs was on extra loud and the disco beat had to compete with the odd whale or dolphin song. Today someone was singing a hit from thirty-odd years ago about how someone could ring their bell anytime, anywhere. In spite of her shock, Tess smiled. It was all wildly suggestive and she thought of how she hated the songs her kids listened to now because they were too racy for Kitty’s ears. It was all a cycle really.

Would she look back on this day in thirty years, if she was around then, and smile at how upset she’d been?

Would she ever be able to think of Cashel without wanting to cry and tell him what had really happened?

No, she didn’t think she would.

Vivienne meant well, but she wasn’t someone Tess could unburden herself to. Suddenly she was overcome with the desire to talk to Suki.

It was eight on the East Coast, too early to phone, but she didn’t care. She fished her mobile out of her handbag and dialed.

Suki was up.

“I’m sorry for phoning so early,” Tess said. “I had a bad day.”

“What’s happened, Primrose?” said Suki, using the baby name she’d given her sister.

Tess was Primrose, and Suki was Fleur. Flower fairies, their father said. They used to laugh at the very idea.

Tess burst into tears. She had no words left.

T
he radio was the recently heartbroken woman’s worst enemy, Mara decided. Yearning love songs made her want to cry; feisty numbers by female singers made her want to take up kickboxing and dropkick Jack into the next century; and talk shows refused to stay away from subjects designed to make her guts tighten.

She’d been prepared as she got into the car for the three-hour drive from Galway to Avalon. She had her iPod ready to go in case the radio signal went bonky and she was left alone with her own thoughts for any length of time.

But the iPod turned out to have been a double-edged sword.

It transpired that there wasn’t a single album in her collection that didn’t have a Jack-shaped imprint in it.

The time she’d listened to Adele while driving for a date with Jack the previous summer; a Kings of Leon song she’d heard on the radio one day when they were having lunch in a pub near the office and he’d stroked her knee and she’d felt so happy, so loved. Every note in every song seemed to be tinged with heartbreak.

She’d switched on the radio instead and found herself hit from another direction by a talk-show discussion about women playing Russian roulette with their fertility.

“. . . women do not have all the time in the world,” said the voice of doom in the shape of a fertility expert, lamenting the fate of women who turned up at his clinic at the age of forty convinced that a baby was merely a credit-card pin number away.

Another contributor challenged his assumption that women were deliberately putting off getting pregnant until it was almost too late, pointing out that many were the victims of broken relationships, who’d found themselves left high and dry in their thirties. If they didn’t manage to meet a new man and start baby-making immediately, their fertile years would have slipped away through no fault of their own.

“Nobody plans for this to happen,” said the contributor fiercely. “Fertility has a sell-by date and life doesn’t always oblige. Women don’t choose to be in this situation . . .”

Mara listened numbly, powerless to change the station.

This was her they were talking about. She’d wasted her fertile years on Jack. Worse, she’d let him break her heart so badly, she didn’t think it would ever recover enough to let another man in. What was the half-life of a broken heart? Four years? She’d be thirty-seven, nearly thirty-eight before she could think of looking at another man. If Mr. Fertility was to be believed, she’d have to start planning getting pregnant on the second or third date.

A crazy dating setting came into her mind: her and The Man, intimate in a restaurant, getting to know each other . . . and right before the waiter came to take their order, she’d drop the clanger:

“
No, I don’t really like red meat. I have a younger brother. Where do you come from in your family? Middle child,
interesting. Yes, I’m from Dublin but I lived in Galway for a few years. Tell me, would you like a girl or a boy?
”

A sign above the road promised coffee, beds and bathroom facilities.

Mara took the exit gratefully and flicked the radio off. If there was a bookshop in the town she was stopping in, she was going to buy a talking book. Anything to stop the music and the radio talk.

Mara had forgotten how lovely Avalon was, particularly the hill upon which Willow Street sat. The road steepened slowly and then widened out as the houses dwindled. There were more trees up here, the elegant willow trees and many magnolias that bloomed with a scent almost like honey in the early summer, she recalled. Danae had once told her that the trees on the street were cuttings from the magnolias one of the De Paor ancestors had planted on the Avalon House avenue years before.

The notion that the owner of a big old house would ever give anything away had fascinated: it didn’t fit in with her notion of the Big House people.

“Avalon House has a gentle soul,” Danae said mystifyingly.

What was that all about, Mara wondered.

“What’s more amazing,” Danae went on, “is that the magnolias grew. These aren’t the best conditions for them. But look, the whole of Willow Street is a magnolia paradise. Magnolias and willow trees everywhere.”

On a wintry day like today, it seemed as if the trees were curling around the houses, boughs close to windows as if protecting them from the sea winds.