Heartstones (7 page)

Chapter Six

Phoebe shivered as she stepped out onto the blustery high street. It felt bitterly cold despite the bright sunlight of the day. Delving into her coat pocket she drew out a dark brown bobble hat. She pulled it down on her aching head and thought of David. He used to tease her when she wore the hat on yard-duty at school:
You look like you’re wearing a tea-cosy!

As she headed down the high street towards the sea she could hear the high-pitched shrieks of children playing in the Carraigmore school playground behind her. A buzzer sounded, the shrieking stopped, and Phoebe imagined the small boys and girls lining up to file back into the building for afternoon lessons. She thought of her own class doing just the same in England. She hoped it wouldn’t be too late to get her job back.

‘Hi, Phoebe,’ a heavily tattooed man shouted from the open window of a van. ‘How’s the hangover today?’

Before Phoebe could even feel surprised that a complete stranger knew her name,
and
that she had a hangover, a middle-aged woman with a tartan shopping bag called out.

‘Beautiful singing, Phoebe. It brought a tear to my eye.’

‘Did you have a good night, Phoebe?’ from an elderly, flat-capped man sitting outside the butchers.

‘Hiya, Phoebe! Enjoying the Irish climate?’

‘Hello, Pheebs, how are you doing?’

‘Nice hat, Phoebe! How’s the head?’

She continued being hailed by people down the length of the street until Phoebe wondered if there had been anyone in Carraigmore who hadn’t been in Fibber Flannigan’s the night before. Though she had little recollection of the evening, she seemed to have made quite an impression. She would definitely leave as soon as possible; she had managed to embarrass herself in front of an entire village.

By the time she reached the end of the high street, Phoebe had decided to forget the boathouse, turn around, get in her car, and drive away, but a gang of young men were suddenly coming towards her. In padded check shirts and dusty boots they looked like builders – they were bound to have been in Fibber’s the night before. Rather than wait to see what they had to say she veered into the Carraigmore Art and Craft Centre.

Inside, Phoebe looked around the vast interior of the converted church. It was very beige; beige mugs and bowls, beige wool, beige linen, beige watercolours on beige walls, a few shamrock-decorated things for tourists. After a quick glance round she headed for the door but found that the young men had taken up residence on a bench outside. They were unwrapping pies, cracking open cans of Coke, lighting cigarettes, and evidently preparing themselves for a lunch break. Phoebe went back inside; at least the woman behind the till didn’t look like she would have been in Fibber Flannigan’s, being small and mousy with a pale brown bowl of hair and a knitted waistcoat the colour of a cow-pat. She was sorting through a pile of greetings cards, pricing each one with a hand-written sticky label and only briefly glanced at Phoebe before returning to her task.

Phoebe moved around the room looking at the shamrock-embroidered handkerchiefs and the tea towels printed with traditional Irish recipes. A flock of toy sheep had been herded into a neat straight line on a shelf. She picked one up and wondered if Amy and Ruben were too old for cuddly toys – probably. Anyway she doubted that Nola would let her children accept any more gifts from their wanton aunt. Phoebe replaced the sheep and fought back threatening tears. She turned around to find herself in front of a display of tweed deerstalkers. If David had been alive she would have bought him one so that they could have both had a funny hat to wear. In the past this would have made her laugh but now a wave of sadness seemed to engulf her, and she moved away from the hats to stare at a shelf of surprisingly beautiful pottery.

The pottery looked out of place amongst the rest of the stock. She wondered who had made it and felt suddenly compelled to touch the blood-red glaze that dripped down the side of a vase. The woman behind the till let out a little cough and Phoebe’s hand sprang away from the vase like a naughty child caught touching a bowl of sweets.

Instead she looked at a display of postcards, gently spinning the rotating stand. She was sure she’d bought the one of a little red-haired girl and donkey when she had been a child, and the view of Carraigmore beach on a busy summer day had a distinctly 1970s feel to it. Phoebe kept spinning, wondering if she should send a card to Nola to let her know she was still alive. No, Phoebe decided firmly, if Nola wanted to know how she was she could get in touch herself.

She gave the display a final spin and was just about to turn away when she noticed the postcard. Unlike the others it was a painting, powerful brush strokes depicting a dark and angry sea, thick streaks of grey and swirling blues, white waves crashing onto a thin strip of umber sand. A single smudge of red suggested a figure walking on the beach, battling against the stormy weather, all alone in the full force of nature’s elements. Something about the image appealed to Phoebe. She picked it up, drawn to the wildness of the ocean and the determination of the lonely figure. She couldn’t decide if the image signified hope or some kind of hopeless despair. She turned it over,
W.M. Flynn, Carraigmore, 1994
.

‘Can I help you?’ The voice made Phoebe jump.

She looked up to find the mousy woman hovering beside her.

‘Just looking, thank you,’ Phoebe craned forward to glance through a window to see if the builders were still sitting on the bench. They were. She peered intently at the postcard so that she didn’t have to make conversation with the mouse.

‘One of Ireland’s greatest landscape painters,’ the mouse said over her shoulder. ‘Do you know his work?’ Phoebe moved to put the postcard back but something changed her mind.

‘No,’ she said.

‘He manages to imbue each simple brush stroke with such force and energy; I find his paintings quite invigorating.’ The mouse leant forward to touch the card and gave a little shiver.

‘I’ll take it,’ Phoebe held out the card towards the woman who beckoned to her to follow her to the till. After she had taken Phoebe’s money and slowly and carefully recorded the sale in an exercise book and written out a receipt, the mouse placed the card in a candy-striped paper bag and handed it to Phoebe.

‘May I ask what brings you to Carraigmore?’

I used to come here to visit my grandmother when I was a child. I wanted to see the village again and find my grandmother’s house.’

‘Have you found it?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Phoebe. ‘She lived down by the beach, in the boathouse.’

‘Do you mean the pottery studio?’

‘Yes, that’s right. She was a potter.’

‘Anna Brennan!’ The mouse gasped and her little pink fingers flew to her chest in excitement. ‘You’re Anna Brennan’s granddaughter?’ Phoebe nodded (as much as her residual hangover would allow.) ‘Oh, I adore her pots, I’d love to own one but I think they’re rather out of my price range now.’

‘Did you know her?’

‘I’m a recent blow-in from Dublin so I’m afraid I didn’t, but I’d very much have liked to. She was such a talented potter, wonderfully fluid forms and lovely celadon glazes. How exciting to meet you. Are you a potter too?’

Phoebe shook her head.

‘I have a picture of her work here,’ the mouse scuttled away and returned with a large book – 
Irish Studio Pottery
. ‘It was printed to go with an exhibition at a Dublin museum many years ago.’ With some difficulty, owing to the book’s size and weight, the little woman began flicking through the pages.

‘Here we are,’ she said holding up a double-page spread in front of Phoebe’s face. Phoebe took a step back and saw a photograph of eight cylindrical lidded jars of varying heights and sea green shades, each one inscribed with swirling linear decorations. ‘Just look at that depth of colour she achieved,’ the woman said. ‘The subtle changes from duck egg to turquoise, and then look at that deep green, and the quality of line in that incised decoration,’ the woman paused and took a breath before almost whispering, ‘exquisite.’

Phoebe thought they were beautiful but she liked the little pot she had better; it had
love from Granny
on the bottom and it had been filled with sherbet pips. Nola had dropped her own pot on Boxing Day, trying to winkle out the last pip from the bottom with a pencil. Phoebe could still see the green shards lying on the quarry tile floor, Nola hadn’t cared; she had a New Year’s Eve party to go to and a bottle of Pomagne cider to smuggle out of the house. Phoebe wondered what had happened to the collection of her grandmother’s ceramics that had lined the kitchen’s dresser shelves: the wide blue fruit bowl on the table, the vase her mother used to fill with tulips in the spring. Where did all that pottery go?

‘And, of course, it was in Nigeria that she met the great English potter Michael Cardew.’ Phoebe hadn’t realised that the mousy woman was still talking; she forced herself to look interested. ‘She worked with him in his famous pottery in Abuja and he taught her a huge amount, got her throwing and interested in shape and form, but it was when she came back here that she developed these lovely glazes and really began to make a name for herself in Ireland.’ The woman touched Phoebe’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, I’m waffling on, I’m sure you know all this already.’ Phoebe didn’t know any of it; she knew her grandmother had made pots but nothing of why, where, or how she started or how well known she might have been. ‘It was a tragedy that she died the way she did.’

Phoebe nodded and looked away.

Through a huge arched window she could see the backs of the builders retreating down the hill.

‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘I want to leave Carraigmore before it gets dark and I haven’t been down to the beach yet.’

‘So soon?’ the little woman sighed. ‘Why don’t you stay around longer? I’m sure there are lots of people in town who remember your grandmother and would love to meet you.’

‘No, I think I’ve been here long enough.

The woman peered at Phoebe through a straw-like fringe and patted her arm again.

‘If you’re embarrassed about last night, don’t be,’ she said gently. Phoebe could feel her face reddening. ‘We were all well away after that victory for Carraigmore. Your singing was lovely, but if you feel badly about the mess you made of young Tommy Gibson’s bodhrán we have a very fine collection of traditional Celtic drums for sale.’

Chapter Seven

The road narrowed as it dipped towards the sea. Phoebe soon found herself walking down the winding lane that led towards the beach. Memories swept over her with every step; she could hear Nola running ahead shouting ‘Come on, last one in is a loser,’ and her father behind them, grappling with the body boards, calling, ‘Say hello to Granny first.’

Her mother would have been beside him, one hand in his, the other carrying a basket filled with crisps and biscuits from the general store, contributions to the lunch of soup and bread her grandmother would have made in her ancient Baby Belling cooker.

Phoebe had to consciously prepare herself for the fact that her grandmother wouldn’t be there as she turned the corner. She wouldn’t be standing outside the boathouse in her denim smock; she wouldn’t be wearing her yellow hat or waving a clay-covered hand. The boathouse might not be there either, and if it was it would surely look very different from the romantic little building that Phoebe remembered.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath – a few more steps around the corner and she’d be there.
One, two, three.
She opened her eyes and there it was, right in front of her. Not crumbling, not falling down or ramshackle but neat and white with pale blue paint on the doors and windows and a weed-free brick path leading to the door. Terracotta plant pots were grouped around the walls; daffodil shoots poking up through rich, dark soil. Phoebe could remember the apple tree her grandmother had planted and the pebbly stream that trickled through the garden on to the beach; how many hours had Phoebe spent sitting beside that stream as a child, floating buttercup petals down it or poking at caddis flies in their knobbly cocoons?

Everything looked immaculate; no one would ever think it had been unused and neglected for over sixteen years. As she approached Phoebe wondered if someone could be living there. Maybe no one realised that it actually belonged to Phoebe and Nola. Phoebe stopped a few yards away from the boathouse door, reluctant to go too near as though she might be intruding. Instead she looked out across the beach.

A long stretch of empty sand glittered in the afternoon sun, and the mountains of the opposite peninsula looked like pyramids against the sky. Phoebe could see white breakers crashing against distant cliffs and up above her a sea gull wheeled and cried out in the wind.

The tide was far out, exposing a large black rock sitting on the beach like a monolith. It looked almost artificial, as if someone had placed it there: an ancient, man-made monument paying homage to the waves.

The stream cut its way across the sand, widening as it approached the sea, rivulets fanning out like veins before being integrated with the foaming water. Phoebe remembered building dams across the stream to make paddling pools. As a child she’d made sandcastles, collected shells, flown kites, and played cricket on the beach but had never stopped to think how beautiful it was.

Something caught Phoebe’s eye. A movement beside the rock, something quick and darting; too fast to focus on, in an instant it had vanished.

Phoebe turned away and walked towards the boathouse, feeling certain that someone must be using it. She felt slightly indignant, had it been made into a holiday home?

The front of the building had two huge sliding wooden doors running across its width, left over from the times when boats would have been stored inside. Phoebe stood on tip toes and peered through a window in one of the doors, expecting to see a neatly arranged living room or modern kitchen where the boats and then her grandmother’s studio would once have been. Instead she saw her grandmother’s large gas kiln, still standing, top heavy on its thin metal legs in one corner. In front of it a long wood workbench looked dusty with pale grey smears, a large yellow sponge still in the middle of the bench as if a cleaning job had been interrupted. An old tin can holding pottery tools sat on one side of the bench, a stack of books on the other, while underneath it bags of clay were wrapped in clear plastic, neatly piled up like building blocks. Phoebe craned her neck, trying to see more through the glass. She could just see the edge of her grandmother’s potter’s wheel and Phoebe remembered how, on fine days, her grandmother liked to open up the doors and throw her pots with the sea and beach and mountains spread out in front of her, pausing every now and then to gaze at the view.

Everything looked just as Phoebe remembered. If it hadn’t been for the freshly painted walls and woodwork and the neatly planted bulbs Phoebe would have thought it hadn’t been touched since the day her grandmother left to visit her son and his family in England.

Phoebe walked around down the little path to the side entrance and tried the door, assuming it would be locked. Instead it opened easily. She paused and called
Hello
 – no answer. She called twice more and stepped over the threshold into the silent room. A surge of hot, dry, dusty air engulfed her. Phoebe moved towards the source of the heat, it was coming from the kiln. She recognised its contented hum, as a little girl she’d often fallen asleep to the sound as it drifted through the floorboards above. A digital display on the wall showed that it was heating up, already nine hundred degrees inside its thickly insulated walls. What could be in it? Who had turned it on?

Phoebe looked around. On a windowsill a chipped brown jug was filled with catkins, beside it a straight row of jam jars neatly labelled: copper, cobalt, rutile, manganese.

Phoebe saw a tower of plastic containers in one corner. She read their scrawled labels and recognised her grandmother’s handwriting:
Green Glaze, Deep Turquoise, Marine Blue
.

Walking over to the workbench Phoebe touched the sponge. It was wet; a thin stream of muddy water seeped out of it and dripped onto the painted concrete floor. She looked down and noticed the dusty footprints. They led to a flight of steep wooden stairs; Phoebe hesitated at the bottom, called out
Hello
once more, and started to climb.

The air was hotter upstairs and thicker, it made Phoebe want to cough. At the top she stopped and scanned the room, half expecting to find someone there. It looked empty. She stepped up from the top step onto a wooden boarded floor. She started; something had moved, there was a figure standing in front of her, as still as she was and staring straight at her, Phoebe took a step backwards and the figure stepped back too. With relief Phoebe realised it was her own figure reflected in an overly large mirror on the opposite wall, its ornately carved frame looked much too grand for the simple surroundings.

Looking around her everything looked very much as Phoebe remembered, though smaller. The single wrought-iron bed covered with a faded patchwork quilt, the bedside table, the red and white rag rug on the floor, the chest of drawers and next to that a Lloyd Loom chair. The floral-covered armchair was still beside the window overlooking the sea, and in one corner the Baby Belling sat on top of a makeshift workbench, a gingham curtain screening off a cupboard underneath it. Next to the workbench was a white enamel sink and an ancient immersion boiler that had provided water for washing and cooking. A small pot-bellied stove squatted in the facing corner, the wicker basket beside it still half-filled with logs and kindling. It had been a simple home for Anna Brennan but after twenty-five years living in a corrugated-tin hut in Africa she always claimed that it was all she needed. By the time she had come back to Carraigmore her priorities lay with clay and glaze and having enough space to have her wheel and kiln, rather than with the material trappings of a conventional home.

Phoebe smiled when she saw Anna’s yellow straw hat hanging from a row of pegs on the wall; it hung alongside brightly coloured coats and shawls, and Phoebe recognised her grandmother’s potter’s smock. She pulled open a drawer in the chest of drawers and the smell of L’Air du Temps hit her like a punch from the past. The drawer was full of neatly folded silk scarves and jumpers, the drawer beneath a medley of shirts and skirts. Phoebe closed the drawers and looked around her, nothing had been touched. It was as though the room were quietly waiting for her grandmother to come home from her trip, neat and tidy just as Anna must have left it on the fateful day she left for England. Phoebe ran her finger along the top of the chest of drawers, expecting to leave a trail in years of accumulated dust but there was no dust, her finger left no mark at all. She walked over to the window and touched the sill, again no dust. But there were digestive biscuits; they spilled out across the windowsill from a crumpled, nearly empty packet. A little pile of biscuit crumbs had been carefully pushed into a pointed tower beside an opened can of 7Up. Phoebe picked up the can and shook it slightly; its remaining contents gave a gentle fizz.

As she put it back down she noticed an open book lying face-down on the seat of the armchair and a selection of coloured pastel crayons strewn across the faded upholstery. Phoebe picked up the book, admiring its dark green leather binding and the embossed gold pattern down the spine. She turned it over to where it had been left open; on one side a lined and yellowing page was covered in neatly, looping writing and on the other someone had drawn a picture, obliterating the words. Colours filled the page: a long line of pale grey and then deep blue, and then a row of smudged purple, another line of hazy blue, a small round yellow sun at the top and an intensely coloured large black dome in the middle of the scene. It looked like a child’s drawing – a child’s drawing of Carraigmore beach. Phoebe thought it was beautiful, despite its simplicity it had surprising depth and perspective. She looked out of the window: the view looked just the same as the picture, the tide far out, the bright sun straight ahead – as though it had only just been finished, capturing that very moment in time.

Phoebe glanced at the writing on the facing page.

September 21st, 1948.
She looked back at the picture. She felt sure it hadn’t been done as long ago as that. Going back to the text she started to read.

I saw him walking on the beach again today. I watched him from the upstairs window of the boathouse, through a little circle that I’ve rubbed in the dirt. He walks with such purpose on the sand, his dark hair blowing in the wind, his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. I watch him and he watches the sea – we are both transfixed.

I wonder is it wrong to find a man beautiful rather than handsome? I am sure it is not, but I do know that it must be wrong to find a man beautiful on the day your father has been buried.

Something made Phoebe’s eyes jerk up from the page. A noise, a noise outside. She peered out of the window but could see nothing. She shuddered, suddenly feeling trapped in the stifling upstairs room. She wanted to get outside into the cold air.

Hurrying down the wooden stairs she stopped abruptly at the bottom and stared – she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed them before. Rows and rows of pots lined long shelves beside the door. There were so many – mostly bowls but there were also jugs and jars, and vases as big and round as bowling balls. All were unfired, with the marks of the thrower’s fingers still visible on the clay. They looked like a grey army lined up for battle. Phoebe reached out and touched a vase, it felt damp and soft; her fingertip left a faintly swirling print, she tried to rub it away but made it worse – the mark became a dent and then a hole.

There was a scuffling noise outside. Heart thumping she flung open the door and looked out. A shadow flashed across the path ahead of her. Blinking in the bright outdoor light she heard footsteps on the paving stones and caught a flash of something pale. Feeling braver she ran towards the slipway in time to see a small figure running across the beach. Phoebe followed across the sand and nearly caught up with the little girl just as she reached the big black rock.

‘Honey!’ she shouted as the child started to scramble upwards over the barnacle-encrusted stone, ‘Honey, stop! I only want to talk to you, I just want to ask you about the boathouse.’ Honey looked down at her from above; perched on all fours, hair blowing wild in the wind, she looked like a little animal. Her anxious eyes glanced towards the cliffs as if searching for something or someone. She looked trapped.

‘It’s all right,’ called Phoebe. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone you’re not at school.’ Honey sat down on a high ledge and pursed her lips. ‘Did you do the drawing?’ continued Phoebe from below. ‘It’s lovely; it looks just like the beach.’

Honey’s face twisted and she looked like she was going to cry. ‘It’s rubbish!’ she shouted back.

‘No it’s not,’ Phoebe started to climb the rock towards her, trying to find a foothold in between the shallow pools and clumps of seaweed. ‘It’s not rubbish at all.’

‘Yes it is. I can’t draw – I’m too messy and Mr O’Brian told me I’m the worst colourer-inner he’s ever had in his class!’

When Phoebe reached her she saw the tears beginning to slide down Honey’s face. The little girl quickly wiped them away with her sleeve but more were flowing. Phoebe sat down a few inches from her. Honey covered her face with her hands.

‘Your colouring looks great to me,’ said Phoebe gently.

‘No it’s not,’ Honey’s muffled voice replied. ‘It’s bad. Just like my writing and my reading. I can’t do it and Mr O’Brian says I’m stupid and rubbish and naughty and he hates me – and I hate him and his boring old school.’

‘Does Mr O’Brian really say those things to you?’

Honey didn’t answer for a while but then said, ‘No, but I got nought out of ten for my spelling test this morning and he said
Not nought again, Honey!
and everybody laughed.’

‘And you ran away from school?’

‘Yes, I climbed over the wall at lunch time but my dad mustn’t know.’ Honey lifted up her face and looked imploringly into Phoebe’s eyes. ‘Please don’t tell my dad or Grandma or Uncle Fibber or Katrina. I don’t want them to be cross.’

Phoebe smiled at Honey.

‘Maybe you should talk to your dad if you’re not happy at school. He could have a chat with Mr O’Brian.’

‘No!’ Honey sounded vehement.