Page 25 of The Women at Ocean's End

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ she said and she meant it. The vibe she usually got off Keith Duff had always been biting impatience at best. Not once had she felt that he actually saw her as anything more than a gap in a fence that had to be closed permanently at some point.

‘Keith Duff is just one man in probably hundreds working for Parks and Wildlife,’ Constance said airily. ‘You just need a chance to shine, that’s all. Between us we’ll have you well prepared for that interview. Maybe you could ring up Max Toolis and ask him for tips, or what about that McPherson man who visited, maybe he’d…’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t ask Shane.’ Not after that moment on the pier when it felt as if they might be about to kiss. The last thing she wanted was to have him think she was ringing him up as an excuse so he’d ask her out on a date. Nor did she particularly want him to think that she hadn’t the professional confidence to go for an interview without turning to someone who wasn’t even in the job for guidance. Had she been crazy to apply for the job in the first place? Her gut was telling her now she hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it, regardless of how wonderful Constance thought she was or how much she tried to bolster her confidence.

15

July 1957

Dotty

It was in the house in Galway, one evening that summer; it was an evening like any other. Dotty had raced downstairs when her mother called her from the front sitting room in a voice that bordered on an impatient scream.

‘Help your father, will you, there’s a good girl,’ she said distractedly. ‘He’s in the kitchen, sorting out that leaking pipe at last.’ Her mother was hanging wallpaper. All day long she’d been in there, with lengths of paper and paste and climbing up and down on kitchen chairs and then wiping the sheets into place. Now, she was red-faced, exhausted probably. It was her first time doing it and, even though she refused to give in, Dotty knew matching up the intricate pattern was driving her mother to the edge of reason. Earlier in the day, Dotty had been drafted in to help, but quickly her mother had run out of patience and sent her outside, claiming she was only getting under her feet.

‘Come along, Dotty,’ her dad called from beyond the kitchen door. ‘Best leave your mother to it.’ He was wearing an old pullover, so it seemed he too had been enlisted in this vicious midsummer clean that had grown into an overhaul of the downstairs of their house. ‘I’m fixing that leaking pipe your mother has been going on about for the last few days,’ he said,although he hardly needed to tell her, because the contents of the cupboard beneath the sink lay emptied out onto the kitchen floor. ‘Will you go find me a spanner?’ He nodded towards the door beneath the stairs where her mother kept everything they hardly ever used.

Dotty pushed in the door. She hated this cupboard; it was dark here and smelled of the remains of last winter’s turf bags, which everyone knew were full of earwigs and beetles. Gingerly, she began to feel along the shelves for something that might be a spanner. Her fingers traced lightly across each shelf before her, her eyes scrunched up, her breath held, trying not to think about spiders and creepy-crawlies.

‘Dotty, are you coming?’ he called again. ‘I need that spanner now if I ever want to get this job done for your mother.’

She felt beads of sweat race from her palms. She loved her father, she really did, but sometimes she couldn’t push aside the feeling that something was amiss. She’d never felt the back of his hand in punishment, but with his eyes he could undo her in an instant.

‘I’m trying to find it,’ she called back.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ he said and she heard him struggling out from beneath the sink. Next she knew, he was squeezing beside her in the tiny cupboard. Her mother was oblivious to the search for a spanner, completely caught up in matching up the gauzy flower design of the wallpaper across the hall.

‘Isn’t this a tight squeeze?’ Her father’s whisper sounded strange, as if it came from a variation of himself Dotty did not recognise.

Suddenly, Dotty felt herself shoved into the back of the cupboard, as her father behind her pulled the door closed quietly but firmly. Fear and panic gripped her, it was as black as if her eyes were tightly shut. She opened them wide, but there was only a sliver of light from beneath the door. More than that, shesensed a danger in the darkness. Her father pushed up against her, hard and sweating; Dotty thought she would be sick and then he whispered in her ear, ‘shh, it’ll only take a minute.’ He was groping at her dress, fumbling with his own clothes. She was gasping for breath, the air so stale that it was suffocating, she couldn’t breathe.

She tried to scream but found her voice stuck at the back of her throat, panicking she stamped her foot on his, heard him gasp and felt him crumple away from her. In a flash, she slipped out around him, rushing to her mother in the sitting room. The devil himself could not have persuaded her to go back into that hallway again until she heard him take his coat from the rack and shout in through the door that he’dfinish the damn pipe another day, he was going to the pub.

16

Heather

Heather looked around her mother’s house and couldn’t help but feel that now she had almost emptied it, the emotion was not one of satisfaction or even loneliness, but rather disappointment. Perhaps she had expected to feel too much. The reality was, Heather had spent years of her life mourning the loss of her mother into the depths of a spirit bottle; her actual passing was almost an anti-climax by comparison. Dotty had slipped away from her years ago. Oh, they spoke once a week on the phone. Heather rang her, every Thursday evening at seven thirty. A perfunctory five minutes of enquiring after each other’s lives, which always felt as if it was an intrusion into her mother’s bland routine of soap operas, game shows and constant vodka top-ups. Strangely now, her death felt as if someone had only closed the door long after she had left the room.

Maybe, back on Pin Hill Island, Heather thought she might feel more – she wanted to feel more, she wanted to feel something, because at the moment, all she felt was numb.

There was very little left in the house now. Just the fitted kitchen and appliances and a small box of keepsakes that she had put aside because she knew they should mean something, but she really wasn’t sure what she should do with them. She had kept all of her mother’s copies of Maggie Macken’s books. Those, she had packed up carefully and placed with her other belongings that she’d committed to long-term storage whenthey’d sold the flat. The tote bag now in her arms contained little things that reminded her only of her mother. There was the funny little wooden box for Constance, she’d left that on the hall table, she mustn’t forget that, she reminded herself now. Perhaps Constance could tell her more about it when she gave it to her, maybe she’d have a key. Heather had searched the house looking for it and she was convinced now: it was not here. She kept out a few pieces of jewellery and an almost empty bottle of her mother’s favourite perfume, the aroma of which brought Heather right back to her childhood. She didn’t suppose her mother had worn it in thirty years, and yet, somehow, it evoked happier times when it had seemed as if they were just like every other family who lived along their little road. After all that, there was quite a bit to carry, the box, her bag, her coat over her arm because the day was warmer than expected. Just before she left the house, she placed her door key on the bottom step of the stairs. Somehow, perhaps overtaken by unexpected nostalgia, she completely forgot about the ornate letter box her mother had wanted her to take to Constance. And there was no going back for it then, even if she did remember it.

Once outside, she looked up, as she pulled out the front door. The estate agent had already hung a ‘For Sale’ sign. This house had been in the Banks family for many years, her father’s aunt had owned it, once, but it was time to let it go.

*

The click of her seat belt on the half-empty plane to Knock airport felt almost like a punctuation mark. Despite the early-morning sleepiness of the other passengers Heather couldn’t help but feel that this was not the end of a sentence, but ratherthe start of a new paragraph. She couldn’t dare to hope it might even be the opening of a new chapter.

She hadn’t been in Ireland since she was a child and her memory had been one of a long ferry journey, followed by a succession of buses, trains and finally a fishing boat ride to the island; all of which probably added up on both ways to being as long as the holiday itself. Looking back, she supposed it was as much a pilgrimage as a holiday to her mother. It was a sweet filling to the otherwise dreary sandwich of life that was busy streets, red-brick houses and buses that always ran late. Strange to think of her mother going back there now, to be buried in that little graveyard on the side of a hill, because really, so far as Heather knew, all in all, Dotty had only spent a handful of years on the island. Teenage years too, a time when she had felt the place was far too small to contain her dreams. She’d left just after finishing school for bright lights that dazzled more from afar. Showbiz had given her a sum total of two chorus line parts in a decade before she’d married and settled in that little house in Fulham. Sometimes Heather wondered, would her mother have been as well off staying on the island, would she have been any happier? In hindsight, it was mainly pride that kept her from moving back after the divorce. Couldn’t face the disapproval, that’s what she’d said once, and it had seemed so odd to think that her mother had ever cared what anyone thought of her.

This time round, the flight took just over an hour. From there, it was a bus ride to the coast, albeit via the scenic route. Heather had a feeling that they stopped by every little village along the way to pick up and drop travellers who for the most part were pensioners making what they could of their free travel pass.

It was pleasant, being driven along, eavesdropping on the conversations around her and drinking in a landscape that felt a million miles from London. Here, it was green fields that ran as far as the eye could see, cut through with wonky wallsbuilt of stone and held together by wildflowers and weeds. In the distance thick clouds lounged on military green and grey mountains with the promise that beyond them the sea lay, vast and waiting.

Ballycove. She remembered it well from when she was last here and now it seemed as if it had somehow been held in a time warp. Everything was smaller, fresher, a gleam of modernity catching the light from under the squatting cottages and the tall Georgian houses on the hill. There were obviously new roofs, solar panels and wind turbines off in the distance, but at the same time, there was a feeling of familiarity about the place that she couldn’t quite quantify.

‘Ye’ll have to wait for the next tide, I’m afraid,’ an old man bent over knotted nets on the quay told her.

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