The Coast Road, page 7
Michael was putting on a bit of a show and a group had gathered around him. They observed him carefully to be able to imitate him later. Michael was a big man who took up all the space around him and had a thick drawling Donegal accent. He was easy to impersonate. He told stories about the time the bus broke down on the way to the All-Ireland final and he ended up watching the match in a pub in Kells. He rehashed his tale about getting heatstroke when he went to Italy for the World Cup. Laughter rang out, backs were slapped, whiskeys slid down easily. Around four in the morning, Donal Mullen said his goodbyes and the men lifted their glasses to him. No sooner was he out the door than they were saying what a cute hoor he was, getting Colette Crowley ensconced in the holiday home. And he could go home now and throw the leg over Colette if he wanted to and leave that skinny bitch of a wife alone. Or indeed he could have them both. He had options now, did Donal Mullen, because that’s what it meant when you had a c-c-c-c-c – no man was sober enough to think of the word ‘concubine’. They all raised a glass to the fair Colette.
Michael was a kind of drunk he seldom was and told himself it would be best to leave. But he remained rooted at the bar. A thought had entered his mind, the thought of Colette Crowley alone in that cottage, and that thought made Michael lonely. He felt like he had run dry of chat, that he might never open his mouth again. He tried to laugh in the right places and find a way to re-enter the conversation but it was all he could do to stay steady and the thought that steadied him was Colette. When the time finally came that they were all thrown out Michael did not walk in the direction of his own house where his mother lay sleeping, but turned right out the door and began to walk along the Shore Road. It was a cloudy night, not too cold for that time of year, and Michael did not even think to pull on his coat until he was walking uphill towards the Coast Road.
The lights from the pier fell away behind him. The fields spreading out in every direction were one unbroken swathe of darkness, like a vast ocean surrounding him. But anyone watching Michael would certainly have said that he looked like a man who knew where he was going. Weaving somewhat, yes, as he made his way up the drive to the cottage, but there was no doubt he had purpose. And when finally he came to the door, he stopped so abruptly that he looked as though he might have gone right through it had he not steadied himself against the frame.
Now that he’d reached his destination he felt more sober than he cared to be. A little bit sick, as was often the case after a rake of drink, even with all that he drank. But usually at these times he was turning and turning in his bed until the drink settled in him, not standing at a woman’s door in the middle of the night. And he didn’t really know why he’d come. He tried to think of a reason, an excuse for why he might have walked the three miles from the town to the cottage in the early hours of the morning, but nothing came to him. He rapped his knuckles on the door three times.
Nothing. He coughed, rapped on the door three times again. There was a noise from inside.
‘Who is it?’ The voice was pitched somewhere between fear and annoyance.
He tried to speak but the words came out garbled. He tried again. ‘It’s me, Colette,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘It’s me, Michael Breslin,’ he said, and that answer seemed ridiculous even to him. ‘Can I talk to you?’
‘Michael, what the hell are you doing up here at this hour of the night?’
He heard the latch click. She opened the door a couple of inches but kept the chain in place. Even in the dark the pale blue of her eyes shone.
‘Can I come in?’ he said.
‘What for, Michael? What the hell do you want?’
And when he failed to come up with an explanation or a timely answer to that, she said, ‘Fuck off home to your mother, Michael – before I call the Guards.’
The door slammed in his face. Michael turned on his heel. The town felt a much greater distance from him now. He took a couple of exploratory steps and then began the long walk home.
* * *
Izzy had agreed to have lunch with Teresa Heffernan in the clubhouse after their game and she was beginning to regret the decision. They’d both played badly, mostly, Izzy believed, because of Teresa’s gossiping. The wind was high, and, determined to be heard, she had shouted continuously as they rounded the course. Bert Harvey had built an extension on his house without planning permission and now the County Council was getting ready to tear it down. Fionnuala Dunleavy’s son had written off the car – driven it straight into a wall. ‘Off his head on drugs,’ Teresa had said. ‘A miracle – not a scratch on him.’ Izzy had begun to think it tactical, this method of distraction. She’d lost four shots on the back nine and Teresa had won, and Izzy was thick with herself. But now, sitting in the crowded clubhouse, staring across a table cluttered with scrunched-up paper serviettes and teapots and little metal baskets filled with half-eaten sandwiches, she was more annoyed that she was still listening to Teresa, whose seemingly inexhaustible stream of chatter had arrived at the subject of Colette Crowley.
‘And you believe that?’ Izzy asked.
‘Well, Andrew’s friends with that apprentice he has working in the butcher shop and he told him that he went up there last Friday night and she let him in. And several people saw him heading in that direction after the Reel Inn closed,’ Teresa said. ‘And she certainly has form.’
‘Are you honestly telling me,’ Izzy said, ‘that you believe Michael Breslin went walking up to that cottage in the middle of the night, and Colette let that obese eejit climb up on top of her?’
‘Don’t shoot me,’ Teresa said, her smile collapsing. ‘I’m just telling you what I heard.’
‘Well, it would suit you better than to go around spreading rubbish like that.’
‘Hang on now,’ Teresa said, ‘sure it’s only a bit of craic.’
‘A bit of craic? That poor woman must have been scared out of her wits. Imagine if some fella came banging on your door in the middle of the night?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Teresa said into her cup.
‘Jesus, is there only one person working in this place today? Here,’ Izzy said, ‘try and grab that one’s attention.’ She held out a stack of empty sandwich baskets to the waitress striding past, her ponytail of black curls flapping behind her. ‘Walking away empty-handed every time,’ Izzy said, dropping the baskets back onto the table.
‘Well, of course,’ Teresa said, ‘you know Colette better than I do.’
‘And I know she wouldn’t have anything to do with a gobshite like Michael Breslin. That fellow’s a scourge when he has a drink taken.’
‘Well, right so,’ Teresa said, ‘forget I mentioned it.’
And talk turned to Christmas, and visitors, and Teresa’s brother coming from Australia for the first time in fifteen years, and things to be bought, and cooked, and cleaned, but Izzy found herself unable to think of anything but Colette.
* * *
The dry air in the hall scraped Izzy’s throat. It was too warm for the jumper she’d worn and so she’d discarded it on the chair beside her and now she sat there in a cream satin blouse feeling fussy and overdressed, the material staining at the armpits. She looked across at Colette in her long tartan skirt, with one enormous safety pin that seemed to hold the whole thing together. It looked like an old blanket she’d pulled off the back of a settee. Her legs were crossed and she tapped at the air with her black high-heeled boot, and Izzy could see where the leather came apart from the sole and gaped open like a little mouth.
It was the fifth workshop. Numbers had peaked at eight and reduced again to five. There was still Eithne, and Fionnuala, and Thomas. Helen Flynn, a retired schoolteacher, had joined them in week three but she rarely said a word or made eye contact with anyone. And when she did lower her notebook from her face and peer out at them from her round, rimless spectacles, all she had to contribute was some plaintive offering about how difficult she’d found the homework.
Class, as usual, began with housekeeping.
‘Colette,’ Eithne said, ‘I know I asked last week that the radiators be turned up, but I really feel they’ve reached an unhealthy temperature.’ She was perched on her chair with one bare foot placed on her knee in a kind of half-lotus position, gently rocking back and forth and fanning herself with her notebook. ‘It’s a cold night out there and it’s not good for the human body to go from one extreme to the other.’
‘Your body’s going through extremes because you’re bloody menopausal,’ Fionnuala said.
‘And that’s as it may be, Fionnuala, but this heat is not helping.’
‘Have you been to see your GP?’ Thomas asked.
‘Oh Jesus, I remember when I was going through it,’ Helen said. ‘It was a curse.’
Eithne ignored them and continued to fan herself.
Colette closed her notebook and gave a wan smile. Her eyes appeared to smart, like she’d just woken up and hadn’t yet adjusted to the light. ‘Now, I do apologise for the heat this evening. I went around and I tried to turn the radiators down but they seem to be stuck, so I’ll have to have another word with the caretaker and see what he can do for us for next week.’
‘Perhaps, Colette,’ Thomas said, ‘if I had a look at them there might be—’
‘I think if we get on with our work, Thomas, that should be enough of a distraction. Now, how did we do with the exercise?’
Izzy had struggled with her homework. Since starting the workshop she’d written a few poems and short pieces. She thought them to be among the stronger work in the class, and Colette’s comments reflected that. But this particular challenge required something more from her, and several times she’d sat down at her kitchen table to attempt the task and then abandoned it.
Orla’s comments hadn’t helped. Orla came home from boarding school in Sligo every Friday evening, unless she went off to one of her friends’ houses. It was rare for a weekend to pass without some argument, and often that had to do with Izzy sharing her opinion on Orla’s appearance. She did not want to hurt her daughter’s feelings but she felt that if she said nothing Orla might not realise how fat she was getting. And so her concerns expressed themselves in sideways swipes that she chastised herself for as soon as she’d said them. ‘That pocket money we give you is for stationery, not junk food,’ was how she’d responded when Orla complained that her jeans no longer fitted. Orla had returned to school that Sunday with the avowed promise that she’d never speak to her mother again.
Getting her to think seriously about her future was another challenge, and Izzy loved to threaten her within earshot of James – ‘Do you want to be stuck in this town for the rest of your life married to some eejit?’ She was bright and could do what she wanted, within reason. She probably wouldn’t get the points for medicine or veterinary or any of the really big courses but she could be a solicitor or an accountant or one of those nice, clean jobs.
But where Orla lacked opinions about her career, she was full of chat about everything else. Izzy had hidden her workshop notebook in a drawer in the kitchen but Orla had gone rooting for something and found it.
‘What’s that?’ Orla asked.
‘That’s my homework,’ Izzy had said with a note of forced preciousness in her voice.
‘Your homework? Are you doing another one of those classes? How many is that now? Oil painting, watercolours, yoga, tai chi, knitting—’
‘Ah, will ya mind your own business. It’s my writing workshop, if you must know.’
‘A writing workshop?’
‘Yeah – have you never heard of one of those? You’d want to get a life, Orla.’
Orla laughed. She opened a tiny yoghurt pot and licked the foil lid then began to eat it with the handle of a dessertspoon. There was a little spot of yoghurt on the tip of her nose.
‘What did Daddy say about that?’
‘Oh, he doesn’t mind as long as I don’t write anything about him.’
‘And what do you write about?’
Izzy crossed her arms on her chest and gripped her shoulders. She closed her eyes. ‘We write about nights of wild passion and abandon, when in the first throes of romance we ripped off our clothes and—’
‘Mammy, stop!’
Izzy’s eyes flew open and she flashed a smile at her daughter.
‘Seriously, what do you write about?’ Orla asked.
‘We write about anything and everything. It can be ordinary enough. Thomas Patterson writes love poems to his wife – quite sexy stuff, actually. Fionnuala Dunleavy writes about doing the dishes, when she bothers to write anything. Eithne Lynch writes about auras. Just what you’d expect, I suppose. Colette sets us writing exercises and we have to respond to them.’
‘Colette Crowley?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Crazy Colette Crowley – poet laureate of Ardglas?’
‘Why do you say it like that?’
‘Ah, the state of her – going around in those big wool skirts and Aran sweaters, and the head on her – she looks like she cuts her own hair.’
‘Ah, will you stop – she’s a very attractive woman, Colette – that’s just what those bohemian types are like.’
‘And what kind of homework does she give you?’
Izzy hesitated. ‘Well, this week, she’s asked us to write a eulogy – it can be for ourselves or for a fictional character—’
Orla’s eyes widened as she withdrew the end of the spoon from her mouth.
‘Or if that’s too much of a challenge we have to imagine what would be written on our gravestone.’
‘Fuck off!’ Orla said. She gave each word its own emphasis.
‘Orla, I warned you, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a slap in the mouth.’
‘She’s asked you to write a poem about your own death?’
‘Well, we can respond to it in whatever way we want but—’
‘Jesus, I thought it’d be all writing about flowers and sunsets and my heart is low because I have to make the dinner – that sort of thing!’ She placed the yoghurt pot on the counter. ‘Ugh!’ she said. ‘Housewives sitting around writing poems about their funerals . . . and then you all have to read them to each other?’
And later in bed when she’d relayed this conversation to James, in a tone of mock affront, he’d only laughed. When she’d put out the light, he’d turned to her and slid his hand over her stomach and said, ‘Shall we do what poets do?’ in a silly sing-song voice. She’d roared with laughter and rolled over on top of him.
Sitting in that airless hall now, with her blouse sticking to her, and Thomas Patterson reading a story about finding a tombstone with his name engraved on it, she could see why her daughter thought her to be ridiculous. It was an exercise in vanity, the whole thing – the clever, sophisticated lady had told her she was interesting and so she’d kept doing her homework, showing up, performing. Until the day Colette had stood in her sitting room, listening to her showing off about her ornaments and her golf trophies and Izzy had felt herself to be empty and exposed and not up to the task. Still, she could not relinquish this new version of herself Colette had presented her with, so she was back to make another attempt, to prove to a woman she barely knew that she had been right in bestowing her praise and favour upon her.
‘I’ll have to stop you there, Thomas.’ Colette held up her hand and smiled at him. ‘We have to keep it to no more than ten minutes for everyone or else we’ll run out of time.’
Thomas muttered something and folded over the pages he’d been reading from.
‘Now,’ Colette said, ‘does anyone have any initial thoughts on Thomas’s piece?’
Izzy had been so bored she’d stopped listening after a couple of minutes. ‘I mean, it was very descriptive,’ she said. ‘The bit about the crow leading him to the gravestone and landing on it was very—’
‘It’d scare the life out of you,’ Helen said, shooting Thomas a look of disgust.
‘Well, Helen,’ Colette said, ‘fiction is a safe way to explore the darker reaches of the mind. It reminded me a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe – the sense of foreboding, the imagery, the classic set-up of a man faced with his own mortality.’
‘The classic set-up that’s like a hundred other things I’ve read before,’ Fionnuala said.
‘Now, Fionnuala,’ Colette said, ‘could you frame that differently?’
Thomas was staring at Fionnuala.
‘Well, it’s always the same thing in these horror stories, isn’t it – man sees a ghost of himself, man thinks he’s alive but he’s dead, man glimpses his own death . . .’
‘Yes,’ Colette said, ‘we’ve discussed this before – the use of archetypes – the limited number of stories that are available to us and how it’s up to us to make something original out of the components we’ve been given—’
‘And if I’d been allowed to finish, you’d have seen that this story goes in a very different direction to what you’re expecting,’ Thomas said.
‘The date of his death is written on the gravestone, it’s a date in the future, and he ends up dying on that date,’ Fionnuala said.
‘Well, I didn’t see that coming,’ Helen said.
Thomas tossed his pages onto the table. ‘And where is the groundbreaking, original work of fiction you’ve written, Fionnuala?’ Thomas asked.
‘I haven’t had a minute’s peace all week. I have two teenagers at home and if one of them’s not slamming every door in the house then the other needs driving to football training. I have no time to be sitting around writing stories.’
‘I’ve said it every week,’ Colette said, ‘you don’t have to present work to attend – you’re always welcome here, but I would ask that you keep your comments as constructive and respectful as possible. Now, let’s move on.’
Eithne Lynch read her poem ‘Life After Death’ about the ‘multiple selves’ within her, and the number of times she’d been reincarnated and the number of times she’d be reincarnated again. She was a ‘vessel’ for these different lives and would finally ‘take refuge in her own womb’. Nobody really knew what to say about that. Fionnuala moved around in her seat a lot, pulling at the hem of her jumper. Then Helen read her poem ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’, about the great turmoil that resulted from her death. The rain poured, the wind howled, animals cowered – generally nature was all askew. But despite the great impact her death had, no one showed up at her funeral. It was typical of the kind of thing she wrote, and after Colette had offered feedback and she had asked if the rest of the group had anything to add, Fionnuala, no longer able to stay silent, told Helen that she needed to go home to her husband and have a good ride. Even Helen laughed at that.
