Finding Alison Read online

  When he had first met Sean at the tail end of December, Tom had been struck by his quiet manner and aloofness. He knew instinctively there was some other story behind this lad who had arrived in Killybegs – off a Spanish vessel, he’d said, that he had worked aboard for the past few years. There was something in the bend of his head at the bar, the habit he had of staring silently into his pint, oblivious to the singing, the dart playing, the general Saturday night commotion around him. And the depth in those eyes, like they were always looking back, searching for something.

  Sean had found work on one of the shrimp boats that operated from the quay and had taken a room with Tom and his wife and young son. It had been a tough winter and they were glad of the few extra bob from his lodgings. Sean was an awkward house guest at first, eating his meals in silence before disappearing again to his room under the eves. Little Daniel had taken an instant liking to him. At just five years old he seemed to sense the loneliness in the stranger. He would stare at him across the table and when Sean would raise his head, Daniel would bestow on him the full width of his gappy grin. He would take books and place them by Sean’s bedroom door. And on the occasions when Sean would sit silently, smoking beside the fire, Daniel would sit on the mat at his feet, quietly leafing through a fishing magazine and pointing out a fish or a boat – ‘She’s a nice one, Sean.’ Or maybe colouring or drawing a picture and offering it to him for his room – ‘This one’s for you, Sean, it’s a big Spanish boat like yours.’ Sean would nod or smile at the child, offer him the odd word. And as the weeks passed Tom watched the child gently tease him from his inner prison. Before January was out the boy had taken to leading Sean down to the pier or up along the cliff tops and, sometimes, craftily, down past the little sweet shop in the village.

  Following a week’s unexplained absence in early February, Sean had returned to the house with a bad viral infection that had confined him to bed for the best part of three weeks. Tom would lay awake at nights and listen to him call out for Alison in his drugged, fitful sleep. Daniel heard it too.

  ‘Will she come soon, Alison?’ The child, eyes wide with curiosity, had looked up at Sean, who sat by the fire, a blanket over his legs. It was Sean’s first week to rise from the bed and Daniel could not get close enough to him. A fitful cough seized Sean and tears ran down his cheeks.

  ‘Time for your bed.’ Ella had gathered the child to take him to his room. ‘Don’t tire Sean out with your questions. He’s not better yet, Daniel. Now, say goodnight.’

  Tom had filled two glasses of whiskey, handed one to Sean and then sat into the armchair on the other side of the open fire. ‘Was she yer wife?’ he had prompted gently. And something had snapped in Sean, causing the walls he had built around him to crumble.

  Through the night, Sean talked and Tom listened, rising only to refuel their glasses or the fire. Sean painted a picture of the beautiful young girl who had given up her family, her home, her whole future to be with him, of the love she had poured on him. He spoke of the black emptiness that would descend on him like a cloud at the end of each summer, wrapping him inside himself. A self he despised for what he was doing to the beautiful young woman he would hear crying quietly to herself at night, beside him in the bed and he not even able to put out an arm in comfort, despite an overwhelming longing to do so. And the child: the little girl with the eyes and smile that mirrored his own. The way she would withdraw sometimes behind her mother when he entered the house. He could see what it was doing to Alison, see how the weight of it bent her head, hunched her shoulders. He’d retreat to the pub, play at being normal and let the drink dull the self-hatred that scalded him.

  He recalled how slowly, ritually, the cloud would lift with each spring, as if the extra light in the long evenings somehow melted it away from him. Then, he would come back to her. And year in, year out, she would welcome him and she would blossom under his light and his love, like the trees and the flowers and the cliff tops all around her.

  Come September, he would see her again, watching for changes in him. Notice how she would keep Hannah out of his way and how Alison herself would soft-step around him, the light being slowly thieved from her face as the evenings shortened.

  ‘So ye left?’ The dawning sunlight stole through the kitchen window, brushing the contours of Sean’s bowed face.

  ‘That evening I’d thought to end it. I could see the years had begun to break her. I had destroyed her and I couldn’t live to see the child cursed in the same way. But I couldn’t even do that right!’ His head rose with his voice. ‘I’m nothing but a coward – a cruel, selfish coward – and I clung to the life I despised as much as myself.’ He looked into Tom’s eyes and then into the dying fire, a heavy sigh dragging the words from the very vaults of him. ‘When the boat went down and the water gripped me, I fought. I fought and I struggled till the sea saw me for the pathetic fool that I was and flung me in disgust to the rocks.’ Shaking his head, he drew his lips into a thin, tight line, clamped a fist over his mouth, his eyes fixed on the glass in his lap. ‘Two days later,’ he continued, ‘I’d made my way to Fernelagh. Got a job on a Spanish boat that had sheltered there overnight. I stayed with them six months and then put down two years in Scotland, different seasons in different ports. When I couldn’t stand the loneliness any more, I signed up with another Spanish boat and then, well, you know the rest.’ He fell silent then, remembering the look on Alison’s face that evening when he left. Remembering Joe O’Sullivan’s bewilderment as he followed Sean from the rocks across miles of fields. He had told him to go home, to forget Sean Delaney. And when Joe refused and kept following, Sean had flung at him every name and insult that he had guarded him from in their childhood. Roared at him till Joe finally turned and ran back through the fields in the darkness.

  ‘So Alison believes ye’re dead?’

  ‘I am. That night on the rocks, I died to all that I was. There’s no life for me, I know that now. Not without Carniskey, without Alison.’ He lifted his gaze from the fire, looked straight into Tom’s eyes. ‘I’m a dead man, Tom, but even death refuses me.’ He paused, drained his glass. ‘And I can never go back, though every drop of blood that flows through me howls for that place, and for her.’

  After that night Sean never spoke of Alison again. Neither did Tom share with his wife the dark secrets that had been passed to him, though day and night he tossed the story over and over again in his mind, unable to fathom the depths of pain it must have taken to drive a man to cast himself away from all that he knew, all that he loved. The dark torment he had seen in Sean haunted him, fought with another part of him that almost despised this man that could leave his wife, his own child – leave them to struggle with their grief and their lives, down there on their own and him, all that time, alive and so near; it had to take a certain amount of callousness to manage that.

  Every time it threw itself up in his mind, Tom tried to tell himself that it wasn’t his affair, it had nothing to do with him. But it was useless. The fact that it had been spoken, that he had heard it, he couldn’t help feeling a certain guilt, a kind of responsibility, as if he were somehow an accomplice in it all.

  He had seen the advertisement in the June issue of The Skipper. Had passed it to Sean one night after supper while Ella was busy putting the boy to bed. Sean had grabbed it like a gift from the gods. Seen it as a chance to make up to Alison in some small way for the suffering he had stamped into her. Tom didn’t hesitate to assist, eager to lift some of the darkness from the man he had come to know and to like so well, to help him atone to the young widow and child. And to rid himself of their terrible burden.

  * * *

  You wouldn’t have to be a mind reader to know that Kathleen’s patience was just about worn to its last thread. Rob sighed. Kathleen laid it all out there like a great big picture book – with sound.

  He sat back from the table, his hands resting across his middle. What a meal she had cooked for him last night – she had really pulled out all th
e stops: candlelight, soft music – and that dress! Red was definitely her colour. Red for passion, heat, fire. He closed his eyes, called up the tight band hugging her tiny waist, the shimmering material spilling from her hips in an avalanche of temptation. He had wanted Jamie to call out from upstairs a second time just so he could watch her, hand lightly touching the banister as she swung up the stairs, the tiny mole on the exposed V of flesh on her back only momentarily managing to draw his attention upwards.

  She had produced the tickets with dessert: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the grounds of the old Protestant church, Saturday night at dusk.

  ‘Could you get anything more romantic?’ she had gushed, cheeks flushed, her hands finding his across the candle-lit table.

  Her darkening eyes registered his hesitation. She drew her hands back slowly, folding them over the tiny diamante that danced at her cleavage. ‘What is it?’

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid.’ He shifted his gaze from the confusion on her face, straightened his place mat, twirled the stem of the wine glass. ‘I’ve a job to check out in Cork on Saturday evening. I won’t get back here till ten at the earliest.’

  ‘On a Saturday? But you can change it, surely?’

  ‘’Fraid not, Kath. You know how lean things are at the moment. If I’m not there, ten more will jump in ahead of me.’

  ‘But you’re the boss, Rob. Surely you can send someone else.’ There was no disguising her impatience now.

  ‘I can’t, it’s a big job and I don’t want to risk losing it. I know the guy and he’ll expect me to turn up in person. I’m sorry, if it was any other night.’

  That was when the clattering began, the stacking of dishes, cutlery.

  ‘But I can pick you up after,’ he offered, rising to help.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rob, I can’t go on my own! It’ll be all couples and I’d look like a right spare – leave that, please!’

  The dishwasher door seemed to require an extra hard bang. ‘Listen, I’m tired,’ she turned, hands gripping the worktop behind her. And she did look tired, worn out, deflated. The whoosh of water into the dishwasher filled the silence.

  ‘I’ll call you.’ He kissed the cheek her turned face offered, kneaded her bare shoulder. ‘Say goodnight to Jamie for me.’

  He sat up to the table now, sighed. He hoped the text he had sent her when he got home, and the two today, would be enough to hold her to her promise to meet him later on Saturday night. He picked up his pen, drew a line through the last item on his list.

  * * *

  ‘William!’ Alison’s heart swelled when she saw his legs stretched on the camper doorstep. A niggling disquiet had bothered her since she’d returned again yesterday to find the camper still locked and empty. She had walked on out to the cliff top and sat in the evening sun, a sense of another ending, another stone of loss dropping inside her. She had known that he wouldn’t be around forever, he had made that more than clear when he had spoken about not attaching himself to any one place, any one person. Maybe she had called on him too often, had become too close for his liking. But surely he wouldn’t have left without at least saying goodbye. She had gone home then and thrown herself into her writing, only permitting him to enter her head again when she fell in to bed, exhausted. And he had refused to leave. Even when she had finally managed to fall asleep he had walked towards her on the wet sand, calling her name over the roar of the waves. She had woken with his voice still in her head and an uneasiness that gnawed at her until she grabbed her keys and swept down the drive and on up towards Tra na Leon. A huge smile wreathed her face as she hurried along the path towards him.

  ‘William? Oh Jesus, William, what’s happened?’ She was on her knees beside him. He sat on the step, his back against the jamb of the door. His face was grey, the lips tinged blue, his eyes sunken in their black sockets. Dried blood caked his nose and lip and streaked his shirt.

  ‘Alison . . . good. I tried to get up, fell . . . ’ His breathing was laboured, his words weak and heavy with effort.

  ‘Right, the doctor – can you stand?’ His damp forehead burned under her trembling touch. ‘Come on, put your arm around my shoulder. Good. That’s it.’ She prayed that the hint of authority would mask the panic in her voice. Rising slowly to his feet, William howled in pain as his left leg took his weight.

  ‘Okay, William, put your weight on me, that’s it. Easy, easy.’ She sat him into the jeep, fastened the seatbelt around him and eased down the dirt track, conscious of every bump. She picked up speed on the main road to town and in a record fifteen minutes mounted the footpath outside the doctor’s surgery.

  * * *

  ‘I know I can’t insist,’ the doctor sighed, ‘but a hospital environment would be best.’ Removing the blood pressure cuff from William’s arm, he moved around behind him to listen to his chest. ‘Your immune system will be very low at this stage, you’re extremely susceptible to all that’s out there. Take a deep breath.’ He listened in silence. ‘And out. And again.’ He draped the stethoscope around his neck, passed William his shirt. ‘You’ve got a particularly nasty chest infection. I’ll prescribe an antibiotic and a steroid for the next ten days, then you’ll need to see your consultant in Dublin. In the meantime we’ll need to increase your pain medication—’

  ‘No, honestly, what I’m on is fine. I just haven’t been able to take it the last couple of days, it’ll settle again once I get back on course.’

  ‘Well, I’ll write you the script, you’ll have it if you feel you need it. I really do think you should consider a bed at the hospital, just for the next few days till the worst of this is over.’

  ‘No, doctor, thanks. If I go in there, I know it will be the start of the end. And I’m not ready. Not just yet.’

  * * *

  Kathleen eased the brush through Maryanne’s hair, folding the curls at the base of her neck around its soft bristles. ‘Bet you wouldn’t put up with that nonsense, Maryanne.’ She half-smiled, reaching for the hair clip on the bedside locker, ‘And neither will I for too much longer. Him and his texts. Talk is cheap, that’s what I say. Words are easy, it’s actions that count. Am I right?’ She fixed the clip above Maryanne’s right ear and moved to her left side. ‘And I was so looking forward to it,’ she sighed. ‘I could see it all: the stage lit by the stars . . . and there’ll be a full moon too on Saturday night. A nice bottle of wine and the feel of the grass cooling between my bare toes.’ She halted the brush in mid stroke. ‘Would you believe him, Maryanne – about Cork, I mean?’ Something had niggled Kathleen about the way Rob had avoided her eye when he came up with the whole Cork excuse. Why would he be meeting someone late on a Saturday evening of all times? No, something wasn’t right. It just didn’t fit. And the way he had hightailed it out of the place – no such thing as even staying overnight, never mind the whole moving-in business that had started all this nonsense.

  Rob had had a change of heart, she was almost certain of it, and the sooner she admitted it to herself the better. ‘He wants to go somewhere quiet on Saturday night, somewhere we can talk.’ She continued the brush strokes, slow and gentle. ‘That can only mean one thing, right. But Rob being Rob, he just can’t come out with it.’ She opened the second hair clip with her teeth before settling it in the soft curls behind Maryanne’s left ear. ‘Well, I’ll make it easy for him, won’t I, Maryanne? No point in dragging it out any longer. If he wants out, then best let him go. And I’ll survive, sure don’t us women always?’ She reached for the hand mirror. ‘There. All done, take a look.’ She smiled, squeezing Maryanne’s shoulder as she fought to hold back her tears.

  * * *

  William sat in the passenger seat and watched Alison skip across the road and into the chemist. Her movement was much more fluid, so much lighter than that of the girl he had seen on the beach that first morning at Carniskey. He closed his eyes. The jab the doctor had given him was beginning to take effect and he could feel a comfortable heaviness settling into his whole body. The s
un through the window warmed his face. Within minutes, he was sleeping soundly.

  ‘You okay?’ Alison opened the door and slipped the shopping bags onto the back seat. William was in a deep sleep, his face relaxed, mouth slightly open. She drove towards home, the barking of the dogs stirring him when they reached the house.

  ‘Alison, I’m sorry, must have dozed off. Sorry for all the trouble . . . ’

  ‘Nonsense, no trouble at all. Now, you wait there while I take in the shopping and then I’ll help you in.’

  ‘I’d rather go straight on, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Straight on?’ Alison began pulling the bags from the back seat. ‘I’ll have the spare room ready in five minutes. You’re staying here for the weekend at least, I don’t want another fright like this morning.’

  ‘But . . . ’

  ‘No buts. I’m not listening to nonsense. You’re sick. You need a proper bed. Proper food. And don’t worry, I’ll leave you to yourself. Now, sit tight while I take this lot into the hall. Get down, Tim!’ And she was gone. William sighed a smile.

  He sank into the cool cotton sheets and stretched his full length in the double bed. It was one of the few luxuries he missed, especially when the pain caused his leg to cramp and his movement was so restricted on the narrow camper bed. Alison had pulled the curtains and ordered him to sleep. He was glad of her kindness, of her insistence. And the way she had of making nothing of his imposition. He would really miss her, he thought, drifting into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  Alison rushed to answer the telephone before it disturbed William.

  ‘Hello?’ She smiled, breathless, into the receiver, knowing it would be Hannah.

  ‘Alison? Hello, Tom O’Donnell here . . . I bought that gear from you on Wednesday?’

  ‘Oh, Tom, how are you?’ Alison’s heart skipped and fell. She knew it had been too good to be true. He had thought it over and changed his mind, realised he’d overpaid.