This Is How It Ends (12 page)

“Did he happen to mention their surnames?”

“Wouldn’t they all have been Boylans?”

“Sure. But what I really need are their married names. If I knew their married names I could look them up, maybe some of them are still alive.”

“Hardly.”

“It’s possible. At least if I knew their names I would have somewhere to start.”

“I’m not sure it would be a good idea to broach the subject with Hugh again. I’m a bit scared of what he might say.”

Even now, she could hear his voice booming in her ears.

What does that fellow want, raking over the past. I told you that’s what he came for, don’t say I didn’t warn you. The bloody family tree. Firewood, that’s all it’s good for, our family tree.

Bruno didn’t seem to grasp the hopelessness of the situation.

“Maybe I could ask him,” he said cheerfully. “If you don’t want to get involved, I could always ask.”

Maybe if she’d given him a clearer picture of Hugh’s reaction, he wouldn’t have pursued it. She only had herself to blame. Diluting him always, softening him. Smoothing over his ravings.

“Honestly, Bruno, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t know what you’re so concerned about. I can be quite charming when I want to be.”

“Oh, believe me,” said Addie, “it’s not you I’m worried about.”

I
N MANY WAYS
Bruno and Addie are highly incompatible. And never more so than in the mornings.

“Do all American men talk like this?”

He’d been awake since before seven, which meant that she’d been awake since before seven. He’d moved her radio out of the kitchen and into the bedroom and he’d turned on
Morning Ireland
. All the talk was of Colin Powell’s endorsement and Bruno was lapping it up. Every time they read out the headlines he told her to shush. Already they’d heard it three times.

“Shush,” he said as the presenter cued the eight o’clock bulletin.

“I wasn’t the one talking.” She rolled over onto her front and buried her face in the pillow.

“Listen, this is important.”

“The former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell has formally endorsed Barack Obama for president. Speaking on NBC’s
Meet the Press
yesterday, General Powell said that Senator Obama was a ‘transformational figure’ and he criticized his own Republican Party’s use of personal attacks during the campaign. General Powell also said that the choice of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate raised questions about John McCain’s judgment.”

“Yes!” said Bruno, clenching his fists as he said it.

She spoke into the pillow. “That’s exactly what they said at half seven. And seven.”

“I know, I know. I just can’t hear it often enough. This has to be good for us. No way it can’t be good.”

She rolled onto her side.

“Bruno, can I ask you a question? Do all American men talk like this in the mornings?”

“Sure, do Irish men not?”

“Oh, most definitely not,” she said. “Irish men only talk to women when they’re drunk. Never in the morning, not under any circumstances.”

Bruno was taking all this in, his head cocked to the side while he listened.

“The thing is,” said Addie, “about the not talking in the mornings. That’s what I’m used to. I’m finding this morning chat thing a bit weird. I’m not used to talking to anyone before I’ve had my cup of coffee.”

“Well, how about I try not to talk to you until you’ve had your coffee?”

So from then on he started to bring her coffee into the bedroom for her and he would sit there and watch her as she sat up in bed drinking it and then he would ask her if she was finished and she would say yes and he would say great, now we can talk.

“There was me wondering why you’re still single at fifty. Now I know.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Did nobody ever explain to you about personal space?”

He was unperturbed by her question. Impossible to offend.

“Hey. I live in New York. What would I know about personal space?”

“My point exactly. The thing is,” she said gently, “I have a routine. There’s the walk and then there’s the coffee. I don’t speak to anybody until I’ve had the coffee.”

“So we don’t speak on the walk?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You don’t go on the walk.”

“OK,” he said cheerfully. “I don’t go on the walk.”

“You’re not hurt?”

“I’m not hurt.”

And really, he didn’t seem to be. He was remarkably resilient.

ON THE DAYS WHEN
the tide is in, the walk takes Addie along the Strand Road, across the edge of the park, and out onto the Shelley Banks. A beautiful name, the Shelley Banks, the name is much prettier than the place itself.

All it is really is a path, a tatty path snaking along the shoreline. On one side of the path is a low hill. On the other side is the sea. It’s supposed to be a nature reserve, but all Addie can see are weeds. Some wild roses, some seabirds. Occasionally she wonders what kind of birds they are. She keeps meaning to look them up but she never does.

It’s prime Lola territory, the Shelley Banks. It’s all tall reeds and grasses and rocky places. Lola is in her element out here. She races up the hills and comes bounding back down, her coat full of burrs. She scrambles down the rocks and plunges into the sea. Then she appears in front of Addie again, muddy and bedraggled, her tail whirling wildly with the joy of it all.

Other dogs pass them by, but Lola pays no heed to them. She has no interest in her own kind. She’s like her owner in this.

Of course Addie knows all the other dog owners by sight. She greets them every morning.

There’s the man with the two black Labradors, he has to walk ten miles a day because of his bypass. Another man brings his baby grandchild along with him while he walks the dog. He trawls the baby buggy behind him like a golf cart, he says it’s better for his back that way. There’s the mums in their tracksuits, they talk as they walk, their dogs tumbling along together. There’s a very old lady with eyes as pale as the sky. She sings to her dogs in a sweet low voice. She wears open sandals all year round. She’s Addie’s favorite.

There’s an etiquette among the dog owners, there’s a routine that Addie observes. They acknowledge each other with a nod, they ask after each other’s dogs.

“How’s Rambo this morning?” “How’s Lola?” “Did Rambo get a haircut?” “Oh he did. But Lola’s hair is too nice to cut, you couldn’t be cutting Lola’s hair.” “It’s true, all the ladies admire Lola’s hair.”

They never address each other by name. They speak only through their dogs. They don’t even stop walking, they just toss a few pleasantries back and forth as they pass. No greetings and no good-byes.

It always seems to Addie an ideal way to conduct a relationship.

“WHAT A MORNING.”

“Amazing.”

“Compensation for the summer we’ve had.”

“Let’s just hope it lasts.”

Addie turned in through the entrance to the park. Lola was out in front, pulling on the lead, with Addie leaning back on it like a water-skier.

The whole park was awash with light, like one of those Hare Krishna posters you see on the wall in health food shops. A strange landscape, an otherworldly light, you could almost make out the separate rays spreading out from the sun. From the corner of her eye Addie noticed a dense flock of birds gathered on the grass in the middle of the park. They were sad-looking creatures, their necks an elegant flourish, their bodies strangely bottom-heavy. They were huddled together like immigrants just off the boat. Lola was facing towards them, her whole body poised to charge. Addie wound the lead tighter round her hand and dragged her past them.

The day was unseasonably warm and Addie was getting sticky. She took off her jumper and wrapped it round her waist. Too late, she realized she’d never bothered to put on a bra. Her breasts were clearly visible through her T-shirt, her nipples indecently upright. She unwrapped her jumper again and draped it over her shoulders so the sleeves were hanging down over her chest. They went some way towards preserving her modesty.

A cyclist came along and Lola tumbled across the path in front of him. The cyclist swerved out onto the grass verge to avoid the little dog, only just about regaining his balance as he straightened up. Addie watched it all in slow motion. She called out a pointless rebuke, for the benefit of the cyclist. She was resigned to the fact that Lola was going to take a cyclist down one of these days. It was only a matter of time.

She was finding the walking heavy going this morning. She was dragging herself along. Her back was aching and her pelvis was weighing her down. She felt like she was carrying rocks around in her belly. She set her sights on the bench just up ahead. She would stop there and let Lola run wild while she rested. Already she was feeling guilty about cutting short the walk.

By the time she made it to the bench, she was sagging under the weight of the pain, holding on to her lower back with both hands as if to bear herself up. She sank down onto the bench oh so carefully, supporting her spine like it was a glass column. She closed her eyes and slowly, ever so slowly, she leaned herself forward.

She concentrated on her breathing for a moment, drawing the air in noisily through her nostrils and letting it out slowly again through almost closed lips. She had her teeth clenched the whole time. She felt like a wounded horse. She thought for a moment about how inelegant she must look, but then she told herself there was no one around to see.

The pain scared her, the unholy inconvenience of it. Not now, she told herself, please not now.

“HAVE YOU BEEN
doing anything particularly strenuous recently?” That’s what the massage therapist at the pool had asked her. Addie had been meaning to go for a massage for weeks but she’d been putting it off.

“Have you been getting up to anything out of the ordinary?”

“Well, I’ve been having a lot of sex,” Addie had mumbled. “That’s out of the ordinary for me.”

She was lying on her tummy with her face buried in that face-shaped hole they have in the massage bench. She was talking to the floor.

“Are we talking anything particularly physical?” asked Jessica.

“Lord no,” said Addie. She could feel the blood pooling under her skin. Her eyes were bulging. “He’s nearly fifty,” she said, in an effort to clarify things.

The masseuse was applying gentle pressure to the small of Addie’s back. With the flat of her hand, she was feeling her way along.

“Nothing would surprise me,” she said cheerily.

She pressed and she prodded but she couldn’t really find anything wrong, nothing that would explain the pain.

“Watch your posture,” she said. “Keep the shoulders well back. And do those exercises I showed you. I think they’ll help.”

And Addie nodded obligingly. Already she knew that she wouldn’t do the exercises.

“Whatever you do, don’t stop having sex. It’s good for you!”

Was it possible to be more embarrassed? I’ll never be able to face her again, thought Addie.

But she didn’t really mind.

She was so happy.

SHE WAS SMILING
now, just remembering it.

The pain was receding, it was only the aura of it that was left, a blurry residue. When the pain went away, the fear went with it. It couldn’t be anything too serious if it went away again like that. It couldn’t be anything to worry about. It was all part and parcel of being a woman, that was Addie’s theory.

She got to her feet. She crossed the path and peered down onto the rocks but there was no sign of Lola.

She stood there and looked out across the bay. On a clear day like this you could pick out the houses along the Strand Road one by one, like a row of neat teeth. Even from here, Hugh’s house looked discolored and decayed. It made Addie sad to see it.

There was a time when that house had seemed to Addie a magical place to live. It had seemed to her as fine and grand a house as there could be. She had believed herself the luckiest girl in the world to live there.

The house was full of antiques. Hugh loved antiques. He was always browsing through auction catalogs, turning down the corner of the page when he spotted something he was interested in. After the auction there would be numbers scribbled in blue biro next to the lot.

“Poor Hugh,” said Auntie Maura once. “Not an iota of taste.”

Maura always took a poor view of Hugh. “All that rubbish he buys, it’s all completely worthless. The dealers must see him coming. But don’t tell him I said that, for God’s sake. It keeps him busy.”

She’s not really their aunt, Maura. She was their mother’s best friend, her bridesmaid. She’s Della’s godmother. In practice she plays godmother to them both.

“The fairy godmother,” says Hugh with a snort. He was the one who coined the phrase, and he never ceases to be amused by it. Now the girls even call her that to her face.

“Cranky old lesbian,” says Hugh. “That sharp tongue on her, sure no man would have her.”

After their mother died, Hugh used to bring the girls with him on his antiques trail. On Sunday mornings, when everyone else was at Mass, the three of them would troop down Francis Street, going into one poky shop after another. Addie can still remember the sweet smell of furniture wax, how your eyes strained to adjust to the darkness inside after the bright light of the street. She remembers the sharp pain in your shin when you tripped over something in a cluttered basement.

The memory of it made her heart hurt. How Hugh had tried to make that house a home, how he had tried to involve Addie and Della in the homemaking.

Those were happy times, the three of them together. They bought old glass-fronted chemist’s cabinets that Addie and Della filled with shells and stones they found on the beach. They bought rolltop desks with cubbyholes and secret compartments, a globe that opened up to reveal a drinks cabinet. A stuffed mouse in a sealed glass dome.

But the thing Addie loved most of all, the thing she set her heart on as soon as she spotted it, was a giant wooden mermaid. Addie fell in love with that mermaid. The minute she saw it she just had to have it.

“She came from the prow of a ship,” said the man in the shop. Which made Addie love her all the more. Already she was imagining the mermaid looking down at her from the wall of her bedroom.

“She’s far too big,” said Hugh. “Sure where would we put her?”

“In my room,” said Addie, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We’d put her up on the wall in my room.”

They were both craning their heads to look up at her.

“She’s a monster,” said Hugh. “She’d pull all the plasterwork down off the wall.”

But there was no talking Addie out of it. She was dead set on acquiring that mermaid.

“Let’s sleep on it,” he had said, in an effort to put her off.

She had tried bargaining with him. She pleaded and cajoled. She sulked and she begged. She kept it up for days, until eventually he relented. But when they went back for the mermaid she was gone, somebody else had bought her. Addie never let Hugh forget it.

Poor Hugh, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him now. He was marooned in that big old house, stranded among all those curious treasures. He was a curio himself now, the old boy. A human anachronism, sitting there fossilizing in the window while the rest of the world carried on without him.