‘Go on, Granny,’ urged Rosie.
‘Well, she was standing in the wings of the Abbey Theatre, about to perform when she realised she couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. She couldn’t move. She said that her throat was dry and it was as though every word, every thought, every line, had been removed from her brain. She couldn’t do it. And then, in her panic, as she saw her fellow actors on stage, it got worse and she didn’t know what to do. She never set foot on a stage again.’
‘That’s what happened to me,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s kind of how I felt.’
Nora took her hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m telling you.’ She smiled at her. ‘It happens to the best of us. Even Rosaleen. It might explain why she was so… so indulgent of me,’ said Nora, now looking at me. ‘Why she let me follow my dreams, never put limits on me, wanted me to be happy. Never any expectations.’
I nodded, sad to think of Rosaleen now, her dreams and career cut short. ‘She was also just a really lovely person,’ I said. ‘The best, really, wasn’t she?’
‘The very best.’ Nora smiled at me. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I think we need a speech. For Rosaleen. A poem… Rosie?’
‘Okay…’ Rosie thought of something. ‘There’s that Patrick Kavanagh poem. We learned it in school. It always made me think of you two…’ she smiled shyly at us, ‘but this time it’s for Rosaleen. Now I can’t remember all of it but there’s a part that goes… And I think of you walking along a headland of green oats in June, so full of repose, so rich with life… O you are not lying in the wet clay, for it is a harvest evening now and we are piling up the ricks against the moonlight and you smile up at us — eternally.’
We sat there for a moment, memories hanging above our heads like leaves, ready to be picked and cherished.
‘To Rosaleen,’ said Nora eventually. ‘So full of repose, so rich with life.’
‘To Rosaleen…’ we echoed.
From the house, there was a sound, a voice.
‘Jesus Christ!’ The spell had been broken. ‘I think it’s time to go!
And then, one by one, we dropped out of the tree, hysterical with terror and adrenaline. Laughing and shrieking, we ran to the car, scrambling in, screeching out into the main road and sped off.
As she had run from the tree, Nora had managed to pull a small branch with her.
‘I’ll get a cutting of that,’ she said, wrapping the stem in a tissue which she made damp with water from the bottle she had with her. ‘And we’ll all have Rosaleen’s cherry blossom tree in our gardens.’
*
Finally, after asking countless people for directions we eventually found Finty’s field. There, on the edge of a cliff, the roar of the Atlantic Ocean on one side, tufted grasses, dandelions and rabbit holes the other, was a small, battered caravan. It was late afternoon as we parked the car.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Nora, stepping out of the car. ‘I remember this.’ She squinted a bit as she looked around, her back stiff from the journey. Rosie stretched her arms above her head. She was looking better, more like herself, every second. ‘Well, that journey was at least two hours more than I had estimated it would have taken.’
‘It’s not my fault that he lives in the arse end of nowhere,’ I said.
‘But what a beautiful arse end,’ said Nora. ‘What do you think, Rosie?’ She gathered Rosie to her, giving her a hug. ‘Could you live somewhere like this?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Rosie. ‘But it all depends on who I was sharing this arse end with.’
Nora laughed. ‘Exactly.’ She let out a low whistle. ‘Well, are you ready to meet him?’ And then, after a moment, we heard the same low note back.
‘That’s him,’ she grinned, waving to a figure who had emerged from being in the caravan. Finty. Wizened and ancient, chest bare and brown as a berry, waving both arms above his head. ‘That’s him all right,’ she said. ‘The foxy little fella.’ She began climbing over the gate into the field.
‘Mum, be careful!’
But she managed it, swinging her leg over as Rosie and I, shrugging at each other, followed her lead.
‘Hello there!’ Finty’s voice carried on the Atlantic air. ‘Just in time for tea!’
He hadn’t changed in all these years, except maybe got even skinnier, but his eyes were the same, the whites more yellow, matching his tobacco-stained teeth. He didn’t look well, though. There was a jaundiced look to him under his sun-bathed skin.
‘How are you, old girl?’ He hugged Nora tightly.
‘About as well as you, you old bugger.’
I was a lucky recipient of another bear squeeze. ‘Well, if it isn’t young Tabitha,’ he said. ‘Looking more like your beautiful mother every day. And who is this lovely young lady?’
‘Rosie,’ said Nora, proudly. ‘My granddaughter.’
‘Beauty runs in the family,’ he said, bowing so low to Rosie there was a moment when we wondered if he was going to be able to get up again. But he did, with an audible creak in his back. ‘Tea’s on,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘Come in and sit yourselves down.’
‘Finty, we’ll head off in a little while,’ I said. ‘Let you and Nora catch up.’
‘If you’re sure,’ he said. ‘Where’re ye staying tonight?’
‘B&B in Schull,’ I said. ‘We can go there and leave our bags and get something to eat.’
‘Have a cup here first though, won’t you?’ He brought us round to the front of the caravan where there was a tarpaulin pinned to the edge of the roof propped up by a long stick, creating a canopy. And beyond us was the Atlantic Ocean in all its glory, the Fastnet Lighthouse on the horizon. Seabirds circled above us, down below there was a small cove for landing boats, the water glittered and sparkled in the bright white of the sun. For a moment, we stood there mesmerised.
‘My God,’ I said. ‘What a view.’
‘I’d forgotten,’ said Nora, shaking her head. ‘I’d actually forgotten.’
‘Every day, I’m reminded of a greater power than myself,’ said Finty, enjoying our delight as he bustled around filling the kettle from a large water canister. ‘Here I am in this tiny caravan and around me is nature in all its power and majesty. It keeps a man humble, it really does. God knew what he was doing, he really did.’ He set the kettle to boil, wiping some tin mugs out using an old rag, while Rosie and I sat ourselves down on a ramshackle bench which was a long plank on two blocks of wood.
‘You gave up on the tepee, then Finty?’ I said.
‘It fell apart,’ he said, turning to me. ‘It was just a collection of patches in the end and it wasn’t waterproof. And then it collapsed. While I was sleeping. I could have suffocated to death. Which might have been a better way to go than liver failure.’ He sounded his usual cheery self. ‘But I’ve been in this van now for the last ten years or so. Leaks in the winter but, at this time of the year, Buckingham Palace has nothing on it. You sit there, Nora.’ He found a filthy tea towel and wiped a camping stool, but Nora was still soaking up the view and taking over exaggerated breaths of air.
‘Running out of oxygen, Mum?’ I said.
She gave me a look. ‘Not oxygen,’ she said. ‘Ozone. And my eyes feel better here. As though I could see forever. Must be the sea air.’
‘Mum, we have sea air at home. We live on the coast.’
‘Yes, but that’s only the Irish Sea,’ she insisted, disloyally. ‘This is the Atlantic Ocean. It does something to a person does being by the Atlantic.’
‘It does that.’ Finty was handing out mugs.
‘Just breathing it in brings me back to the Peace Camp. Same air you see. It could be twenty years ago. It was only a couple of miles away, wasn’t it?’
‘Three fields that way.’
‘Good times, weren’t they?’
He grinned at her. ‘I’ve got some great memories.’ He tapped his head. ‘They’re all up here.’