Page 26 of The Women at Ocean's End

It was too early in the season for the regular ferry trips across and Constance had organised for one of the local fishermen to meet her and bring her over.

‘You can go for a wander round, if you want. There’s plenty to do in the village, a nice bookshop and, of course, the hotel is open, if you fancy lunch,’ Finbar Lavin told her, when he pulled up to the pier just after her. He looked as if he’d spent his life at sea, his face was fresh, washed clean by the salty winds, and his eyes were as clear as a summer’s day. If it was possible to make your mind up completely about someone, Heather thought she liked him, she would feel safe in a boat in the very worst of waters with him.

‘Thanks, I’ll do that. When will we be ready to go…?’ She was conscious the man didn’t need to be out on the water as darkness drew in, better to make the journey earlier than later.

‘About two hours, I have a little business to attend to first, plenty of time for you to get a bit of grub to keep you going.’ Finbar smiled at her and raised his hand before turning back tohis boat. He was scrubbing down the deck, clearing away any waste from his early morning catch.

It was pleasant to wander about the village. Heather took him at his word and dropped into the local bookshop, where she picked up another of the Maggie Macken books that she had assumed would be impossible to find.

‘Ah yes, I think the previous owner, he had boxfuls of those novels stored everywhere,’ the woman at the counter said. ‘It seems every housewife in the village devoured them, over and over, but then they’re of an age.’ She was American and far more elegant than Heather remembered anyone being in Ballycove. ‘Joy Blackwood.’

Heather introduced herself and they chatted for almost half an hour. She had a feeling that if she came here very many times, she and Joy would surely become firm friends.

The trip across to the island was colder than she remembered from her last visits. In the little fishing boat, about halfway across the bay, Finbar placed a huge oilskin jacket over her shoulders. Her teeth had begun to chatter and they’d laughed when she’d tried to convince him that she was hardly cold at all.

When they reached the island, a girl dressed in a coat that surely belonged to her granny introduced herself as the official welcoming committee, Ros Stokes.

‘Well, when I say committee,’ she smiled then, ‘Constance sent me, to make sure you made it back okay.’

‘You can’t mean to tell me you expect Heather to walk from here.’ Finbar shook his head as if there was no way he was having that. ‘Come on, the pair of ye,’ he said and he hoisted Heather’s bags across the back seat of an ancient jeep that smelled of a combination of sea air and dog hair. Heather had a feeling that the dominant aroma would always depend on whether the windows were opened or closed.

‘Constance is so looking forward to seeing you.’ Ros leaned forward so she could chat to Heather as they bumped along the uneven roads.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing her too. It’s strange, but I hadn’t thought about this place in years and then with my mother…’ Heather said and she wondered if perhaps she should have made it her business to visit the old woman before this. Until that moment, the notion had never entered her head; after all, Constance had been her mother’s friend – until she wasn’t any more. With Dotty, even reaching out to her could be enough to cause a rift that could go on for months between them. ‘These last few days, I’ve felt as if Ocean’s End is drawing me back.’ And she glanced back towards the largest of her cases, the one she’d packed her mother’s ashes in. Perhaps she’d needed to get out of London more than she realised. This journey felt as if it was inching her heart open wider with every mile she travelled. ‘I’mreallylooking forward to seeing her too,’ she said again and she smiled because she really was. ‘I worshipped her when I was a kid, she was such a force of kindness.’

‘Join the club,’ Finbar said. ‘Every kid on the island adored Constance, for all the years she taught at the local school, you won’t hear one bad word about her.’

‘She’s, ahem…’ Ros bit her lip, perhaps trying to pick out the right words.

‘Not as young as I remember her?’

‘Well, yes, probably and the house – Ocean’s End – it’s…’

‘I adored it as a child. It was so different to where we lived in London.’ It wasn’t just the house; it was Constance more than anything. It was having bedtime stories and hot chocolate in the little tent they’d made in the garden from old sheets hung across a broken fence.

‘If it’s a while since you’ve visited, it’s probably not quite what you remember,’ Finbar said softly. He’d turned off the engine,waiting while a farmer herded what felt like an unending line of sheep before them from a field on one side of the road to a similar field on the other side.

‘Constance showed me a photograph of you both when you were last here, the house was in the background and, well…’ Ros wavered. Heather assumed she was trying to pick her words tactfully. ‘She’s on her own, you see, there’s no-one to help with the upkeep. A place like that takes quite an amount of maintenance to keep it standing. I don’t suppose that there’s the money to do much either so the house has fallen into…’

‘Disrepair?’ Heather smiled. It was kind of Ros to prepare her for the worst, but she knew that too much time had passed for things to be as she remembered them. Hadn’t she had the biggest reminder of that with her own mother passing away and having just had to empty out their little house in London?

‘Well, that’s a kind way of putting it, but I suppose, if I tell you that there was a crow’s nest being built in one of the bedrooms upstairs at one point, it might give you a better idea of what to expect.’

‘Oh, poor Constance,’ Heather said and she immediately felt guilty. It was one thing to have accepted that there was little she could offer her own mother beyond the practicalities of keeping the roof over her head and some sort of comfort around her, but she knew, in her heart, all Constance would have asked for was an occasional phone call and she would have offered a listening ear and so much more in return. ‘I should have kept in touch,’ she said quietly now.

‘I think she would have liked that, but it’s never too late to start,’ Ros said.

‘Okay, we’re off again.’ Finbar pushed the gear stick forward and turned over the engine. They barrelled along the road and soon he flicked on the indicator and the jeep turned down into the familiar avenue leading up to Ocean’s End.

Heather watched as the house peeked over the land, revealing itself inch by inch as the jeep rumbled closer. The chimney stacks, when they were visible, looked somehow more shrunken than they had before. Heather remembered them as huge gleaming white beacons against blue skies. Today they were little more than ashy squats, the blackest one puffing smoke towards a gloomy sky. The house, as it emerged from the overrun garden, had not so much lost its lustre as fallen into the sort of shabby neglect that made you suspect it had been abandoned years ago.

‘Come on, she’ll have the kettle boiled a thousand times over waiting for us.’ Ros giggled as she flung open the doors and reached in to take out Heather’s bags.

‘Oh, Constance.’ It was all Heather could manage. She was still sitting in the front of the jeep, hardly able to pull herself onto the path, so broken was her heart at seeing what the place had fallen into. She waited for all of a minute until the front door pushed open and the familiar shape of Constance Macken emerged from the darkness beyond.

‘You’re here.’ The old woman stood a moment, smiling towards the jeep.

‘Constance.’ It was hardly a word, but when Heather breathed it, it felt as if every fibre in her being somehow relaxed. ‘Constance.’

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