No Way to Say Goodbye (10 page)

Over lunch they conversed easily. Sam liked Ivan mostly because he was easygoing and not intrusive. The guy was more interested in talking about fish than asking probing questions. He found himself relaxing, although it was obvious that Mary had seen him and was steering clear. The crab salad was to die for and Ivan had gone to great lengths to explain why. “I’m talking about fish too much,” he ended sheepishly.

“You really are, man,” Sam agreed, but he was enjoying himself.

Ivan liked the American too. He wouldn’t have stayed on for a pint with him if he hadn’t.

Mary made herself busy chopping onions in the kitchen so that she could avoid her neighbour. If he hadn’t asked her to recommend a place to eat and if she hadn’t been so dismissive, she wouldn’t have felt the need to hide. Having said that, he had asked and she hadn’t volunteered her own establishment. Seeing as she’d drawn blood, the offer of a free lunch was possibly the least she could do in recompense.
Of all the frigging places
.

Jessie wondered why she was staying in the kitchen. “I chop. You lord it over everyone. What’s changed?” she asked insultingly.

“I’m hiding,” Mary admitted, and Jessie was suddenly interested.

“From who?” she asked, on her way to the door.

“Jessie!” Mary called.

Jessie didn’t even have to open the kitchen door before she copped it. “It’s the American,” she noted triumphantly.

Mary was impressed. “How did you know?” she asked, despite herself.

“Why wouldn’t you hide? He looks like an arse-crack.”

“He’s not,” Mary answered, without thinking.

Jessie’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

She looked at Pierre, who grinned. “Ah,
chérie
, you like him, no?”

“What?” Mary was alarmed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The enemies had converged, nodding at one another, enjoying her moment of torment.

“Arse-crack is a disgusting expression, that’s all I’m saying,” she said, chopping into her eighth red onion.

It was over the third pint that Ivan offered to take Sam out in the boat with him. Sam was enthralled by the idea of fishing so Ivan promised they’d go the next day, adding that as it was Sunday he had to eat with his family so it would have to be late afternoon. Sam could see no problem with that and it would give him time to finish his book. He insisted that his new friend allow him to pay for his meal.

He made his way home, feeling a little dizzy but full and happy. He also felt a little guilty. Drinking three pints was as close as he’d got to oblivion since rehab. He wasn’t an alcoholic so drinking wasn’t entirely against the rules.
But does it make me want to get high? No. Definitely not. OK, this is cool. I’m just a little happy. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.
This was a relief, but he’d have to keep an eye on himself. He wasn’t strong enough yet: he was still on a precipice and the slightest ill wind could knock him off.

7. Past and Present

It was the third time in six months that Penny had been awakened by the smell of her own vomit but, hung-over, she remained unaware of it until she looked into the bathroom mirror and discovered the extent of the previous night’s debauchery.
Oh, sweet God!
Disgusted with herself, she stripped off and got into the shower. The water was pounding against her skull, which felt as fragile as her mother’s ugly fine-bone china. Her legs were shaking under the weight of her surprisingly heavy head. She leaned against the wall and slid down towards the shower tray. She didn’t attempt to stop herself, and sat with her knees under her chin and her hands cupping her head to protect it against the water.

Later she took painkillers with a pint of chilled water and made coffee while two DJs bantered about Madonna and her latest religion. She had three espressos before she opened her emails. She answered some of her editor’s queries and typed a redraft of her lottery story, and by mid-morning her limbs had stopped quivering.

When Mary called, she cried, which she had promised herself she wouldn’t do. She had declined Mary’s offer to come over, telling herself that, like any wounded animal, she needed to be alone. That wasn’t the truth. She hated being alone but she knew she wouldn’t get through the next few days exchanging pleasantries and girl talk. Instead, as soon as she had finished a telephone interview at three, she would open a bottle of vodka. When it was gone she might break out another – and she didn’t need any witnesses. After that, she promised herself, she’d emerge from the haze tomorrow or the next day and everything would be fine.

Ivan always woke in time for sunrise. In spring and summer he would enjoy it from his veranda, drinking coffee while the birds sang from the branches of the many trees that lined the boundaries of his home. In autumn and winter he would be on his boat when the sun came up. Whatever the season, he would enjoy five hours of good fishing before he headed into town for lunch. Ivan was a creature of habit, so much so that many people had commented they could set their watch by him.

His afternoons he spent at home locked in his study, reading magazines on stocks and commodities or trading shares online. He was never going to be the cause of Donald Trump losing a night’s sleep but he was smart enough to know when to buy and sell. He enjoyed risk but was never seduced by it. Sometimes his judgement let him down but those occasions were rare. Ivan was no mathematician but he was a pretty good economist.

It was curious that he had deviated from his routine, and it was perhaps curiosity that had driven him to do so but, whatever, he had thoroughly enjoyed drinking a few pints with the American. It had been a nice break from the mundane and it was even nicer to be away from his home in the afternoon even if only for a few hours.

Ivan’s large house was a symbol of success to the onlooker but its many empty rooms reminded him of his failure. When he had uttered the words “I will” and “for ever”, he had meant them and, foolishly, he had believed his wife when she had repeated them. Years later when she had come home one night, battling tears to make an announcement, he had been shocked to the core. In the weeks following her desertion he was numb, but at least she and his children, whom she had left with the very night she’d dictated their split, were still in Kenmare.

Originally she had planned a new life for them somewhere in England, which had ignited in Ivan a fierce anger. It was then he considered fighting her for custody. He consulted a solicitor and was told that his rights were secondary to his wife’s. He had argued that she was the adulterer, the home-wrecker, the assassin, that it was she who had killed their family – and there were plenty around him who weren’t shy to point that out. If necessary, they would have stood in a court to swear to it. He argued that he had been a good provider, a good husband, and that he’d never strayed. He had loved his wife and he adored his children. He would never have risked them. He asked why he should lose everything. His solicitor had no answers but, despite this, Ivan was determined to fight for his kids.

Then one day, having witnessed his daughter’s confusion and tears, it dawned on him that this was about his kids, their life and his love of them, not about the woman who had abandoned him. His kids needed her and, despite her failings as a wife, she was a good mother and the prevailing force in their children’s lives. He couldn’t rob them of her as she had robbed him of them. When he had finally admitted to himself that he would lose them, he had quietly fallen apart.

Earlier that morning, alone on his boat, he had found himself reflecting on the day that he had driven his children to the airport and out of his life. He remembered that, following their mother and her lover in the car ahead, they had cried all the way. Neither had wanted to move away from their dad and their friends but he had told them to be brave and to enjoy the adventure and that their home would always be waiting. Everything inside him had threatened to snap but he held on tight to reason and reminded his children that he loved them. He told them to think of England as boarding-school because they would spend all their holidays with him at home. When they walked through the departure gates he had struggled so hard not to cry because a father’s tears could scar a child. Instead he wept all the way home, having to stop the car a number of times because he couldn’t see the road.

For two weeks he hibernated in his soulless home, dressed in an ill-fitting tracksuit, holed up watching daytime TV with the phone in his hand. Then Mary had sorted him out. She had let herself in with his spare key and, ignoring his protests, she had cleaned the pigsty his home had become, then cooked a spicy lamb stew, his favourite of her dishes. He showered and shaved, but only after she’d threatened him with a kitchen knife. He joined her at the freshly laid table, silent and distant, and attempted to eat while she talked to him about all the things he could do with his kids when he saw them.

“Remember when Chris was a baby?” she asked.

“It seems like a lifetime ago.”

“Nah, not so long. You were abroad working for a lot of that.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said, his hands over his ears.

“Did he forget you then?”

“No.”

“No,” she agreed. “He used to sit on the doorstep waiting for you to come home.” She smiled at the memory. “You’re their dad. You’re the one they love. So miss them while they’re out of sight but remember it’s not for ever. You’ll see them again.”

Suddenly he was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not the same as losing Ben.”

“This isn’t about me,” she said. “Not everything that happens has to be measured against losing Ben. You have a right to your pain. I just want to make sure it doesn’t swallow you up.”

He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “What would I do without you, cousin?” he asked.

“What would I do without
you
, cousin?” she responded.

“Life goes on.”

“And the only choice we have is how we want to live it,” she replied.

At first Ivan’s kids had groused and griped about their new life. They bashed their friends, school, teachers and their mother. They turned grumbling into an art form. Ivan would spend hours on the phone attending to their complaints. Their problems were not so different from the ones they’d left behind, and with time they made new friends and became accustomed to their environment. Intermittently he’d receive some positive information about an outing or something that had happened at school. They had settled in, and Kent was not as far away as he’d first thought. Kerry airport was only half an hour down the road and there were cheap flights to three London airports every day of the week. The journey took less than an hour. When he worked out that it would actually take them longer to travel home to Kerry from Dublin than it would from Kent, he felt a lot better.

And just when he’d relaxed his kids stopped talking to him. No more whingeing and whining, no more bitching and moaning. No more stories of friends or outings or anything. Their conversations became stilted, and again he worried that he was losing them, but something in the back of his mind told him it might be worse than that…

After his few pints with the American he didn’t feel like going home so he returned to his boat. The evening sky contained a hint of purple and the weather was mild so he located a beer in the fridge and sat on deck sipping it and watching the dark waters as the Waterboys sang “Fisherman’s Blues” from an old CD player he’d fitted in the cabin. Ivan liked to think he’d inspired the song as he’d met the lads a few times when they’d played in Kenmare.

So, while the rest of the world busied itself, he sat in contemplation. He was glad to see that the previous morning’s cloud had passed and that his cousin was in a lighter humour. He had realized the date and its significance, which was why he’d checked in on her the previous morning, but he would never have mentioned it. Being there for her was enough – and she always made a lovely breakfast. Her reaction to Sam had struck him as odd. Mary was not inclined to fluster. Then again she often behaved peculiarly around the time of Ben’s anniversary. To be fair, the American seemed like a really nice fella and he looked forward to introducing the city boy to the sea.

*

It was just after seven when Mary made her way into the Horseshoe bar. Adam was sitting at a table picking at a bowl of mussels and sipping a pint. The bar waitress saluted her and made some joke about her being the competition. Adam stood and they hugged.

“You’ve had some week.” Mary wasn’t one for beating around the bush.

“I’ve had better.” Adam was a bush-beater.

“So, you’re really leaving?”

“Yeah – you know I wouldn’t put Penn through it if I wasn’t.”

Mary raised her eyebrows. “You’ve put her through everything else.”

Adam conceded that she had made a good point. He loved Penny too much to cause her pain intentionally but pain caused, whether intentional or not, is still pain. It was such a pity he didn’t love his wife.

“You’re in a pretty terrible fix,” she added.

“I am,” he agreed, “but it’s no different from the fix I’ve been in for years.”

“It is. You won’t have Penny,” Mary said, and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Cork is only sixty miles away,” Mary said, trying to compensate for her previous comment.

“Cork is a lifetime away,” he said.

Mary ordered a gin and tonic and he ordered another pint. Then he explained how his wife had worked out that he was having an affair and how she had threatened to take his kids to the Netherlands and how he had to make it work. He had no choice: he’d witnessed what losing his kids had done to Ivan. Mary squeezed his hand: given the choice, she would have traded anything or anyone for her own child. People wasted so much time seeking out the love of their lives in the shape of a partner, when the truth was that for most the real loves of their lives were their children – and everyone else was dispensable. Once, when Ben was still a toddler, she had used this theory to explain her lethargy in seeking companionship and now, years later, Adam and Penny were proving it had legs.