Eventually Winnie spoke. ‘Well, in the end neither of us got him.’
‘Do you think we’re going to get out of here?’ The voice had aged greatly. This was not Lillian of the Certainties.
Some small amount of compassion seeped through to Winnie’s subconscious. She tried to beat it back but it was there.
‘They say you have to be positive and keep active,’ she said, shifting around on the ledge.
‘Active? Here? What can we do to be positive here?’
‘I know that. We can’t move. I suppose we could sing.’
‘Sing, Winnie? Have you lost your marbles?’
‘You did ask.’
‘OK, start then.’
Winnie paused to think. Her mother’s favourite song had been ‘Carrickfergus’.
I wish I had you in Carrickfergus,
Only three miles on from Ballygrand.
I would swim over the deepest ocean
Thinking of days there in Ballygrand . . .
She paused. To her astonishment, Lillian joined in.
But the seas are deep and I can’t swim over,
And neither more have I wings to fly.
I wish I could find me a handy boatman,
Would ferry over my love and I.
Then they both stopped to think about the words they had just sung.
‘There might have been a more inappropriate song if I could have thought of it,’ Winnie apologised.
For the first time, she heard a genuine laugh from Lillian. This was not a tinkle, a put-down or a sneer. She actually found it funny.
‘You could have picked “Cool Clear Water”, I suppose,’ she said eventually.
‘Your call,’ Winnie said.
Lillian sang ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Teddy’s father had sung it to her the night before he was killed on the combine harvester, she said.
Winnie sang ‘Only The Lonely’. She had found the record shortly after her father had married the strange, distant stepmother who made jewellery. Then Lillian sang ‘True Love’, and said that she had always hoped to meet someone again after Teddy’s father had died but never did. She had worked long hours and tried too hard to make them people of importance in Rossmore. There had been no time for love.
Winnie sang ‘St Louis Blues’. She had once won a talent competition by singing it in a pub and the prize had been a leg of lamb.
‘Are we wasting our voices in case we need to call for help?’ Lillian wondered. She asked as if she really wanted to hear what Winnie would say.
‘I don’t think anyone would hear us anyway. Our best hope is to keep positive,’ Winnie suggested. ‘Do you know any Beatles songs?’ So they sang ‘Hey Jude’.
Lillian said that she remembered her mother had said the Beatles were depraved because they had long hair. Winnie said that her stepmother had never known who they were and that even her father was vague about them. It was so hard to have a real conversation with them about anything.
‘Do they know you’re here?’ Lillian asked.
‘Nobody knows we’re here. That’s the problem,’ Winnie sighed.
‘No, I mean in the West of Ireland. Do they know about Teddy?’
‘No. They hardly know any of my friends.’
‘Maybe you should take him to meet them. He said he hadn’t met your folks yet.’
‘Well, you know . . .’ Winnie shrugged as if to make little of it all.
‘He took you to meet me.’
‘Yes, didn’t he?’ The memory of that meeting was still bitter, and Winnie cursed her foolishness trying to take on this mother-in-law from hell, locking horns with her and pretending friendship to win the son. Look where it had ended up. In this cave, waiting for at the worst a slow death by drowning or at the very best rheumatic fever.
‘I wasn’t entirely overjoyed at first,’ Lillian admitted after a pause. ‘Neither were you, but it was you who suggested coming on this holiday.’
‘I did not suggest you come on the holiday. I told you about Stone House and that I wanted to come here with Teddy, that was all. You invited yourself.’
‘He invited me. You went along with it.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Winnie said. There was defeat in her tone.
‘Don’t get all down about it, please. I’m frightened. I liked it better when you were strong. Can you think of any other songs?’
‘No.’ Winnie was mulish.
‘You must know some more songs.’
‘What about “By The Rivers Of Babylon”?’ Winnie offered.
It turned out that Lillian had been at a wedding in St Augustine’s church in Rossmore where the bride and groom had chosen this as one of their wedding hymns, and the Polish priest had thought it must be an old Irish tradition and sang along with it.
Winnie said that one year, when she was working the Christmas shift in a hospital, they had all made a conga line and danced through the wards singing this song to cheer the patients up, and even the sour ward sister had agreed that it worked.
Then Lillian said there was nothing to beat ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, so they sang that. Winnie said she actually preferred Elvis doing ‘Suspicious Minds’, but they only knew one line of that, which was something about being caught in a trap. Still, they sang it over and over until it began to sound hollow.
During an attempt at Otis Redding’s ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’, they both noticed that the level of the water had gone down. They hardly dared to say it in case yet another huge wave would crash in. But when it was clear that the tide had turned, and their throats were raw from singing and the salt spray, they reached out their hands to each other. Cold, wet and trembling, they just held on for a few seconds. Words would have destroyed the fragile hope and shaky peace they had managed to reach.
Now it was a matter of waiting.
Mrs Starr called Rigger when it was obvious that two of her guests had gone missing. He rounded up a search party, including Chicky’s brothers-in-law.
‘I warned them against the south cliffs, so you can be sure that’s where they went,’ she said in a clipped voice. Rigger asked her if there were any specific places she had told them about and when Chicky thought about it, it was clear what had happened. She had seen the challenge in Lillian Hennessy’s face as she had dismissed the weather warnings the previous night. And she had noticed how Lillian left without any hint of her direction that morning.
The men said they would go towards Majella’s Cave and phone her as soon as they had any news.
Before she heard from them, however, there was a call from Teddy Hennessy, who said he was Lillian’s son and phoning from England. He apologised for interrupting her but said he couldn’t reach his mother or Winnie by mobile phone. They must have switched them off.
Chicky Starr was professional and guarded. No point in alerting him to any possible danger until she had proof that there was a real need to be worried. She took his number carefully.
‘They’ve gone walking over the cliff paths and should be back soon, Mr Hennessy.’
‘And they’re having a good time?’ He sounded anxious to hear it was all going well.
‘Yes; I’m sorry they’re not here to tell you themselves. They’ll be upset to have missed you.’
‘I got a text from Winnie last night. She said the place was wonderful.’
‘I’m pleased they are satisfied with it all.’ Mrs Starr felt a lump in her throat. ‘It’s good to see old friends enjoy themselves . . .’ Please God may she not have to talk to this man in an entirely different way in a few hours’ time.
‘Lillian’s my mother, as I said. This holiday was their way to get to know each other properly, you see. It’s great to know it’s working so well.’
He sounded hopeful and enthusiastic. How could she tell him that his hard, brittle mother had not been getting on at all well with Winnie, who turned out to be his girlfriend? The relationship had not even been acknowledged. How would history have to be rewritten if the worst had happened?
She stood with her hand at her throat until Orla tugged at her sleeve asking whether the meal should be served now or not. She pulled herself together and got the guests seated. They were all anxious to hear news of the missing women and an unsettled air hung over the table.
‘They’re all right, you know,’ said Freda suddenly, ‘they’re fine. You mustn’t worry. They’ll be cold and hungry, but they’ll be all right.’ She said it with great confidence, but it seemed like everything was in slow motion until the telephone rang.
They were safe. The search party were bringing them first to Dr Dai’s house but there seemed to be nothing worse than cold and shock. Without giving any hint of her relief, Chicky Starr told the other guests that Winnie and Lillian had been caught by the tide and would need hot baths but that everyone was to start dinner without them.
When they came in the door, white-faced and wrapped in rugs and blankets, everyone cheered.
Lillian made very light of it all.
‘Now you’ve all seen me without my make-up, I’ll never recover from this!’ she laughed.
‘Were you trapped by the tide?’ Freda was anxious to know what had happened.
‘Yes, but we knew the tide would have to go out again,’ Winnie said. She was trembling but there was going to be no drama.
‘Weren’t you very frightened?’ The English doctor and his wife were concerned.
‘No, not really. Winnie was great. She sang all the time to keep our spirits up. She does a very mean “St Louis Blues”, by the way. She might give us a recital one night.’
‘Only if you do “Heartbreak Hotel”,’ Winnie said.
Mrs Starr interrupted. ‘Your son rang, Lillian, from England. I said you’d call him when you got back.’
‘Let’s have a bath first,’ Lillian said.
‘Did you actually tell him that—’ Winnie began.
‘I told him you’d been delayed, that’s all.’
They looked at her gratefully.
Lillian looked thoughtful. ‘Winnie, why don’t you call him? He’s your fellow. It’s you that he wanted to talk to anyway. Tell him I’ll talk another time.’ And she headed towards her bath.
Only Chicky Starr and Freda O’Donovan saw any significance in that remark. They both realised that some great shift had taken place during the long hours waiting for a high Atlantic tide to change. It wouldn’t all be sunshine or an easy road ahead, but it wasn’t only the weather that looked a lot calmer and less troubled than it had that morning.