Finding Alison Page 11

  ‘An inspired guess, check out page seventy-nine.’

  Alison flicked to the nominated page and threw back her head in a throaty laugh. The man at the next table cast a disapproving glance over his glasses. She cupped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wet with mirth. She flicked to a random page, passed the book back across the table. William’s raucous laughter was infectious. The man with the glasses shook out his paper and turned his back slightly. Eyes widened, William drew a finger across his upper lip, his nod directed towards Alison’s mouth. Licking the cappuccino froth from her top lip, Alison felt something fall from her shoulders, felt a light-heartedness, a freedom rise like a forgotten tide inside her.

  Weakened with wet-faced laughter, they left the bookshop and ambled companionably down Michael Street, stopping here and there to listen to the buskers, sample some treats from the stall holders at the French Market. Later, sipping coffee at a street-side table they wild guessed at the outrageous items the shoppers might have in their bags, diagnosed the varied causes of the hurried, anxious looks on their faces.

  Eugene Dalton’s jaw dropped when he saw a radiant Alison arrive with the article. Early. It almost hit the brown carpet of his outdated office when he took in the unlikely companion waiting for her outside the door – and the way she smiled into the older man’s face.

  ‘Let me treat you to dinner.’ William’s hip was feeling the strain of the day’s walking. ‘Anywhere you’d recommend?’

  ‘It’s ages since I’ve eaten out in town. An Beal Bocht, that used to be one of my favourites. Let’s go there. It’s just down here, under the arch,’ she added, aware of William’s limp and the tiredness in his face.

  ‘Lead the way.’

  They headed down the narrow cobbled street, passed under the archway and into the dimly lit restaurant.

  ‘Table for two, please,’ Alison smiled to the young waiter. ‘By the window, if possible.’

  ‘This way, please.’

  The formal black trousers and crisp white shirt looked completely out of place on his young, snake-thin body. His skin was the colour of honey, his long black hair tied in a sleek pony tail. A foreigner, Alison guessed, so young and so far away from home. Like Hannah. A tiny blade of loneliness nicked her chest as she followed the waiter to the window alcove.

  ‘Perfect,’ William grinned.

  ‘I’ll leave you to choose.’ Handing them their menus, the waiter lit the soft red candle in the centre of the table before disappearing behind the bar.

  ‘I haven’t been here in – it must be five years!’ Alison looked around her as she spoke. ‘And the place hasn’t changed one bit,’ she smiled. The wooden floors, old and worn, were patterned by cigarette burns from the pre-smoking-ban era. Old oil lamps, jugs and earthenware hot water jars jostled for space on the picture high shelves along each wall. The intimate, confessional-like booths whispered decades of secrets and sharing, the half-light through the narrow, sharp-peaked windows soothing the bleached table wood.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ William replied. ‘So peaceful. There’s a gothic, almost a spiritual feel about it.’

  Alison smiled inside. He could feel it too.

  ‘I’m starving.’ She opened her menu.

  ‘And what does the lady recommend?’

  They debated the menu, the aroma from the kitchen urging them on.

  ‘Wine?’ William asked, as the waiter took their order.

  ‘I’m driving,’ Alison sighed. ‘But maybe one glass? Red, please.’

  ‘A bottle of your house red, then.’

  ‘I’m exhausted.’ Alison sat back in her seat.

  ‘I’ve really enjoyed today. Your company’s a tonic.’

  ‘You weren’t thinking that last Saturday night.’ She bent her head slightly, her cheeks colouring.

  ‘We all have our bad days. And nights,’ he reassured. ‘That’s what makes us human.’

  Lifting her head, she folded her arms, looked around her again. ‘Me and Sean used to come here a lot when we were first married.’

  ‘You married young?’ William sat forward, tasted the wine and nodded his approval to the waiter before resting his elbows on the table, his arms folded before him.

  ‘I was almost eighteen when Mum died. I’d just started college.’

  ‘What did you study?’

  ‘English literature, I was going to be a famous journalist.’ Her smile held a hint of regret.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘When Mum died, a lot of my ambition died with her. And a lot of other stuff too. It was the death of our family in a way.’ She bowed her head, traced her forehead with her middle finger, then, looking up, met his eyes. ‘Claire, my sister – the one in London – she couldn’t handle it. I suppose she felt that when all her love, all her efforts at keeping Mum alive failed, then she had somehow failed too. She blamed herself in some bizarre way. God, was she angry. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone quite so angry. So hurt. It was as if she felt betrayed by everything she believed in. She threw herself into wild parties, drink, sex, anything that helped her forget.’ She stared into her glass for a moment before lifting it to her lips.

  ‘And your dad, was he still alive?’ William prompted.

  ‘Dad was still with us – in a way. He accepted it really well. Quietly. I suppose he had gotten used to the idea long before Mum died. He hadn’t fooled himself like we had. Then he got so caught up in Claire’s problems. I suppose it gave him a focus,’ she shrugged.

  ‘And where did that leave you?’

  ‘Alone, and I suppose kind of unmoored in a way. I couldn’t do the student thing any more. The lectures that I’d devoured before just floated over my head. I began to spend more and more time down here with Sean. Before eighteen months were out, I’d packed in college and moved down for good.’

  The food arrived and Alison seemed glad of the distraction. ‘Looks delicious,’ she commented and, as if by some wordless agreement, they left the conversation and concentrated on their food, their silence punctuated by small talk and laughter.

  * * *

  Sean must have been almost seventeen, Maryanne supposed, by the time the darkness had come to inhabit his whole face. Right from his early teens she had watched it establishing itself, almost imperceptibly at first, in the tightening line of his mouth and then gradually, year by year, inching its way forward, upwards, until it simmered in his eyes like a threatening storm, the weight of that darkness causing him always, in those years, to hold his head at a downward tilt.

  That consuming desire to please his father long folded and stored away, at six foot two Sean now stood head and shoulders above his childhood idol. Tides were turning. Maryanne could almost hear again that brittle cautiousness that had crept into Frank’s words, could see him again now, standing half stooped on the back of the lorry, stacking the lobster pots that Sean hauled up to him with a strength and vigour that could only ever be a memory now for Frank.

  How vividly she could picture Sean’s hands. Their solid span, the dip between thumb and index finger scarred and cracked and hardened by years of salt water and heavy, wet rope; the roughened, reddened knuckles; the deep gouge in the pad of his left index finger where a hook had once embedded itself – those same strong hands that could still rest on Maryanne’s shoulders with the gentleness of an angel’s wings.

  It hadn’t frightened her, Sean’s darkness. What it had done – and she realised this one evening as she looked away from Frank, sitting by the fire, holding the wrist of his right hand in a vice grip in an effort to stem its tremor – what it had done was to somehow transfer itself into the small corner of her heart that still had room for Frank and to cut the light there, turning that space into something resembling one of those old travelling trunks she remembered from childhood: battered, locked, forgotten.

  * * *

  ‘Did you marry straight away after moving?’ They had almost finished their meal and William was anxious to steer the conversation back
to Alison and her bond with Carniskey.

  ‘Oh no, I lived here in town for a couple of years. Worked in the college, on their magazine. They were good years,’ she smiled. ‘We married just after my twenty-first birthday – and yes, Hannah was already on the way.’ She beckoned the waiter. ‘D’you fancy a coffee?’

  ‘No. I’ll stick with this. The advantage of having a reliable chauffer.’ William grinned, refilling his wine glass.

  ‘I moved to Carniskey then.’ Alison rested back in her seat. ‘We bought that little fisherman’s cottage I’m living in now. It was late spring and so beautiful. The whitethorn and the gorse and the sea pinks put on their finest colours to welcome me.’ The memory glowed on her face. ‘Sean was like the king of the place, with the long season stretched out before him. His mood, every move he made mimicked the awakening, the hope all around him. It was all I could have wished for.’ She inched her head forward. ‘Just about the same time that you arrived this year, actually. Did you feel it? The celebration, that sense of hope?’

  ‘That was what made me decide to stop off here,’ William nodded, smiling. ‘Just like you’ve described. Like it’s calling you to join it. Like you’re being drawn here, have a part to play in it all.’

  ‘What do you think your part is?’ Alison sat forward, excited to find someone who voiced what she so often felt – a sense of something bigger at play, something beyond us, moving us.

  ‘I don’t know yet. And I don’t question it. I’ve learned just to go along with it. To follow my instincts. Everything reveals itself in time.’

  ‘Is that why you move about so much?’

  ‘Partly. And partly because I don’t want to attach myself to any place, to any person in particular.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there is nothing permanent in this life.’ Elbows on the table, he joined his hands, prayer-like, his fingertips touching his lips. ‘Nothing we can hold on to or take with us. Everything is constantly moving, that same cycle of birth and death moving through every life, every relationship, everything.’ He paused, his eyes holding hers. ‘Nothing is ours to keep. Or to own. And I suppose I’ve learned that through the heartache of attaching myself too much, centring my life on someone. Then they’re gone. Heartbreak is a cruel but thorough teacher. It’s taught me just to live each day. No expectations, no regrets. Just each moment.’ He smiled at Alison, at the frown of concentration rippling her brow.

  ‘But is that not very lonely?’

  ‘I spend most of my days alone. But no, I can’t say I’m lonely. And look at the company I have this evening,’ he joked, in an effort to move the conversation away from himself, back to her. ‘So, did you keep your job at the college after you married?’

  ‘I quit shortly after. Sean was my whole world then. Sean and Carniskey. And anyway, Hannah was on the way.’ That smile again, lifting her whole face. ‘We were so excited that autumn, preparing for her.’ And then just as quickly that familiar shadow, beginning in her eyes, stealing her light. ‘I think that was what kept Sean going. Kept him up.’

  ‘Up?’ William raised his brows.

  ‘Yeah, or maybe because of my own preoccupation with Hannah’s arrival I didn’t really notice any change in him that winter. But the following one . . . ’ She fell silent for a moment, busied herself sugaring her coffee. ‘You could read him, you know.’ She stirred the coffee slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Sean. Read him by the sky. By the colours and height of the sea, the length of the day . . . ’

  ‘His mood?’ William prompted.

  ‘Even more than that. His whole being. On the days that the sun shone it was like it shone through him. From him. A calm and open sea and Sean would be up before the birds, moving through the house like a life force.’ Her smile was wistful now, her gaze somewhere far away. ‘October always heralded the changes.’ Her eyes returned to William. ‘The gradual withdrawal. The long solitary walks on the cliff tops. Hours in the shed, mending nets, making pots. Sullen and sulking like a teenager rejected by his first love.’ She looked down, folded and unfolded the paper napkin in her lap. ‘As the weeks and months went on he’d retreat further and further from myself and Hannah, stalking from the room every time she’d cry or look for his attention. Usually before Christmas the long silence would have descended and would last till his lover accepted him back.’

  ‘His lover?’

  ‘That’s how it felt. He couldn’t go out on the sea and he tortured himself watching it. Watching her. Every day either out on the cliffs or along the road between home and Tra na Baid. Driving slowly, stopping, watching, yearning. Then home to us like a dead man – no talk, no emotion. Complete shutdown.’

  ‘How did you cope?’ William hadn’t been prepared for her honesty and openness.

  ‘It’s amazing what you learn to live with,’ she half-smiled. ‘What you get used to. I learned to live around it. Around him. I had Hannah and my writing. I threw myself into them and waited out my time for spring.’ She sighed, her thoughts and her eyes straying away again. William didn’t speak, waited for her to return to him.

  ‘In a lot of ways it was like being back in the days when we’d first met and I’d return to Dublin at the end of the holidays. The heartache and the longing every year. The promise of the following summer. It was as if those teenage years had been a preparation, you know, for what lay ahead?’ William nodded his understanding.

  ‘But nothing could have prepared me to lie beside someone at night, sit down to meals with them, loving them, wanting them, seeing them, but they’re not there.’ Aware of the new, sharper edge that had entered her voice Alison paused and, biting down on her lip, glanced out into the half-light under the archway where a gentle rain polished the patterned stones.

  ‘Did you talk to him about it?’

  She looked again towards William and it was as if the same soft rain had brushed her eyes. ‘It didn’t matter what I said or thought. It was like he was in his world and there was no place there for me. I made the mistake one day of suggesting I go back to work. Things were tight, you know, no money coming in. He spoke then, all right. Ranted and roared about how no one would question his providing and caring for his family. Hannah must have been eight, maybe nine at the time. I remember her crying, running from the room . . . ’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ William’s voice was soft, echoing her pain.

  ‘No, no, never. Not in any physical way. And that outburst was an isolated one. It was the silence that hurt most, the withholding of all communication, all emotion. That hurts in a far deeper way, I think. It was like he was punishing me for the way he felt the sea was punishing him.’

  ‘And you stayed? Didn’t you talk to anyone?’

  ‘What was the point? To the outside world, Sean was his usual self. If somebody called to the house, he’d chat away as normal. Then, as soon as they left, he’d clamp up again. The same in the pub – he’d go quite often, stay late. It was as if he was blaming me, me and Hannah, at least that’s what it felt like. And I suppose I just got used to it over the years.’ Her sigh was heavy. ‘Reasoned that it was a kind of depression, that he had no control over it. That you only hurt those you love, all that kind of stuff. That was my way of making sense of it. And I just lived and hoped for an early and long season when I knew I’d have him back.’ Her right hand had found its way to her wedding ring, twisting it round and round in circles towards her heart. It was a habit she had developed in the early days after Sean was lost, touching it every time she thought of him, spoke of him. It was a habit that had angered her lately and it angered her even more now when she saw William watching her.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ She folded her arms across her chest, challenge lighting her eyes. ‘You think I was stupid, don’t you, that I was weak?’

  ‘Alison, I wouldn’t for a second—’ He sat forward, eyes wide, meeting hers.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you? You didn’t know him. You could never understand the— ’

  ‘I
understand how much you loved him.’

  ‘And he loved me.’ Her words weighed with something much deeper than sadness, she turned her head slowly towards the window. ‘Loved me with a fierceness I know I’ll never find again.’

  William sat back in his seat, fingered the stem of his glass. He knew that fierceness that she talked about, knew the gaping, unfillable emptiness of its loss. ‘And he’s gone three years now?’ His voice, gentle, inviting her back to him.

  ‘Missing three years since October.’ Her hand twisting the wedding ring again as she turned to meet his eyes. ‘His body has never been recovered. And it’s like a continuation of the same theme,’ she sighed, sitting forward as she rubbed the tips of her fingers along the arch of her brows, then rested her chin in her hands. ‘He’s gone but he’s not gone. Just like he was with me but he wasn’t with me. And it just wears me down. Sometimes I feel like I never had him, like I’d always lost him. Yet somehow he’s still there. Oh, I’m making a complete mess of this – it’s hard to explain, sorry, I’ve gone on too long I’m . . . ’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’ William touched a hand to hers. ‘I feel privileged that you could share your thoughts with me. It takes a lot of courage.’

  ‘That’s something I certainly haven’t got.’ She drew her hand away. ‘Just look at me, for heaven’s sake! If I had courage I would have left Carniskey long ago. Got out and got on with making a life for myself and Hannah. But I can’t. I’m stuck. I’ve stuck myself to it. And for what? I can’t even tell myself never mind trying to explain . . . ’ Her eyes burned with frustration. ‘And I can see what it’s doing to me. I know people are right when they say I’m half mad, but I feel powerless to change and . . . and look at you sitting there! I haven’t the first clue who you are or why I’m telling you all this.’ Slow tears fell, almost timidly, from her eyes. She scrunched the napkin tight in her fist. ‘I’m going to the Ladies.’

  William sat back, stared at the slow trickle of rain down the windowpane, the street light tracing its meander with a soft orange glow. He smiled at the beauty of tears, their liberation, their healing. He had never seen Helene cry. But he had seen the dark depths of her tears, dammed behind her eyes. Maybe, if he had understood pain then, he could have helped her release them. Maybe if he hadn’t been so selfish, so wrapped up in his own smug ambition . . .