Red, you asked if I was happy. I’m not. All that disappointment you had, I had too. But I married Michael because I knew I’d lost you and I wanted a child. I thought that marrying someone so different to you, would help me forget you. I was wrong. I’m sorry for everything but there are reasons. I missed you too. And still do. Tab.
For ages, my finger hovered over the send button, but then, rashly, I pressed it and there was no going back. I gathered up my things, worrying about Rosie and wondering about Red and hoping that wherever Mary was, she was safe.
*
‘I’ve told granny, yes,’ said Rosie.
Really? What did she say to convince you?’
‘She said she was leaving me out of her will if I didn’t go and that I would never get my hands on her teapot shaped like a cottage.’
I laughed. ‘You’ve always loved it.’
‘So, I said yes. I had to.’
‘Good. Because I couldn’t go if you don’t. Are you okay with it?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine. You’ll be there anyway.’
‘That’s what mothers are for. Secret bodyguards. Just hovering around ready to be needed.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sorry that what happened, happened to you. If you know what I mean. I’ve been thinking about it.’
I did. ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘But I had you. Maybe if I hadn’t lost that baby, I wouldn’t have had you exactly the way you are. So I wouldn’t change a thing.’
‘Did you have a name for the baby?’
‘No, it was really early days.’
‘Granny is convinced I need a bit of West Cork magic. Says I’ll come back transformed, that it never fails to work.’
‘That sounds ominous,’ I said. ‘Transformed into what exactly?’
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘But anything would be preferable to me right now. It’s quite romantic though, isn’t it? This man’s dying wish. That’s what Granny said it was, anyway.’
‘You make it sound like Romeo and Juliet or something.’
‘Granny said she wants to bring me to Rosaleen’s house. There’s a tree apparently.’
‘She’s full of it,’ I said. ‘Never gives up, does she?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘She’s an amazing woman.’
‘Amazingly awful,’ I said, making Rosie laugh again which was lovely to see. ‘And you’re happy to subject yourself to a car journey with me and granny?’ She nodded. ‘Listen, I have to warn you, there may be a few cross words, the odd tetchy comment, a side-of-the-road throttling.’
‘Mum, I’ve been dealing with that since the day I was born. The only thing that would surprise me is if there was no side-of-the-road throttling. And it might be fun. A road trip… anything might happen.’
‘Fun? Are you sure that’s the right word?’ It was pretty heartening to see Rosie’s lighter side re-emerge.
‘Okay, then, diverting. Tell me about more Granny and this Finty,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe she used to have a boyfriend.’
‘Finty! Oh God. She was mad about him.’ I said. ‘He was her long-term on-off-on again fling, fancy-man, lover, whatever. They were together I would say for at least ten years and when the peace camp disbanded, he moved to a tepee nearby. She used to go and see him there. But eventually it all kind of fizzled out. So she left the tepee and came home.’
‘Was it really a tepee?’
‘Yes, an actual tepee. I saw photos. It was like the Last of the Mohicans. Finty wrapped in some kind of rug, bare chested and toothless...’
‘Toothless?’ Rosie was loving this story and she was eating up her dinner, I was so relieved and pleased to see. Maybe the West Cork magic was already weaving its spell.
‘Dental hygiene was low on his list of priorities,’ I said. ‘He was more interested in pursuing a… how shall I put this? Pursuing an unconventional life. Anyway, he no longer lives in a tepee because it collapsed one night, nearly suffocating him to death, so now he’s in a caravan.’
‘Why did they split up? I think Finty’s charms ran out in the end. And Nora did say she’d had enough of his particular bodily fragrance. She said it wasn’t so much eau de unwashed man as eau de decaying sheep. I think the passion had well and truly waned.’
She laughed again.
‘He would arrive up to Dublin with only an old sweet wrapper in his pocket. Never any money or anything. But Rosaleen would always give him food. And Finty would hold court and tell stories and then always pretend to offer to do the washing up but at the last moment his back would go or he’d remember that he promised to find something in a book and by the time he found it, everything would have been done. Let’s just say he’s a man who was popular with a certain kind of woman. Hippies, bohemians, free spirits. I saw him in his element down on the Peace Camp that time. He was like a god. Well, one that smelled a little of decayed sheep.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Not Dad’s sort, then,’ she said.
‘No, he’s the kind of man your father would have to wash his hands after meeting. Celia would be clutching her pearls and passing out. And now he wants to see your Granny for one last time.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Just as Rosie and I were sitting in the car, ready to off on our West Cork odyssey, a text from Red.
Call me
But I couldn’t because Rosie was with me. She had had her first counselling session the previous day and had walked to school and home again, no bother on her. ‘The counsellor has given me advice about how to deal with a panic attack,’ she had said, carrying her bag to the car parked on the road, as we packed up ready to head off to West Cork. ‘It’s all about staying calm. Not letting your thoughts spiral. Focus on one thing, one object.’
‘That sounds like good advice,’ I said. ‘And you don’t mind leaving Dublin for a night. You’re not worried about six hours in a car with me and Granny?’
‘As long as you talk nicely to each other,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’m glad we’re going. It feels like the right thing to do. And it sounds ridiculous, but it helps that you’re going to be with me. I’m meant to be grown up.’
‘It doesn’t sound ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It sounds normal.’
‘Wait. What?’ she said, in mock surprise. ‘You called me normal?’
‘Oh, out of all of us, you’ve always been the normal one.’
She grinned at me. ‘Normalish,’ she said.
‘That’s all any of us can ask for. Today West Cork, tomorrow the world. All right?’
But just then, out of the corner of my eye, there was a flash of light. I looked behind me and I thought I heard footsteps, someone running away.
‘Hey!’ But he was gone. Was it another photographer, someone trying to capture Clodagh at her low ebb? Hopefully, looking old and haggard and past it.
‘Come on Mum, let’s go.’
And I forgot all about it.
*
Nora, in her usual jubilant mood, talked the whole way down, turning around in the front seat so Rosie didn’t miss a second of the stories from the Mizen Head camp.
‘It was such a great time,’ she went on. ‘We were all so free, it was beautiful, all of us young and idealistic. Now I’m just old and idealistic.’
‘What was the aim of the peace camp?’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve always wondered.’
‘They were just dropouts,’ I answered for her. ‘Desperate to sing songs out of tune and slip around in the mud all day.’
‘The aim, Tabitha,’ Nora said, ‘and you should listen to this, Rosie, dear, the aim was to create a movement, an energy, an idea that life shouldn’t be about living unconsciously, but that that there were other ways of living that didn’t involve the nine to five or the daily commute or the office job. That we could take time out of our lives and create a sense of unity and strength. I’d like to think that we were like the old Celtic people. The pagans. Living in huts and making fires and singing. I taught myself the melodeon and I composed a few songs. I’ll try and remember them now and teach them to you, Rosie...’