Barefoot Over Stones (20 page)

‘It’s enough to make a daughter burst with pride,’ was the last bit of conversation that Ciara managed before she closed her eyes in shame.

Leda was in the kitchen munching on biscuits when Ciara turned up. She had hoped her sister would be asleep and that she would be able to straighten herself up before having to face anyone, but no such luck.

‘Good God, what happened to you? Don’t tell me young Dan had his wicked way with you? I saw you both leaving together looking cosy as anything.’

‘I thought you would still be at the pub with Con, wiping away his tears.’

‘Oh, it never hurts to leave them when they still want more. Besides, Dad was there being obnoxious and looking for drink so I thought it best to get out. Well, are you going to tell me what happened to you then? You look rough as hell.’

Ciara sat down on one of the battered kitchen chairs. She ached all over. Maybe it would help to tell someone, even if that person was Leda. She didn’t think it through before she opened her mouth and told her sister what had happened. Leda couldn’t believe her ears. She barely managed to stifle a grin while her big sister wept uncontrollably.

The last of the patients had been seen at Michaelmas GP practice in Caharoe and Cathy was extremely glad to be going to lock the surgery door. She had found the last few days exhausting and she was delighted that it was Friday and that the weekend beckoned. The week had started on a great note with the news that Alison had got a job teaching in her old secondary school in Caharoe. The contract was for a year only but both Cathy and Richard were hoping that their daughter might impress the board of management enough that if funds were to become available her post might become permanent. They knew that Alison was not convinced that she wanted to stay in Caharoe permanently but they also knew that a good deal of her indecision was due to her relationship with Dan. They were so thoroughly in love with each other that Cathy understood that they would have to be in the same place, knowing through experience that the pull of love would not tolerate anything else. She was working on a plan for that also and she had nearly convinced Richard of its merits.

They had always wanted to take some time off from the surgery, travel a little and rest from the humdrum routine of nearly twenty-five years of running a practice, a relentless schedule that had exhausted them. They were way off wanting to retire fully but desire for a change and a chance to live a little had crept into many conversations since Alison had left for college. Dan was just about to finish his GP training and would be shortly looking for his first post. It seemed thoroughly obvious to Cathy, and increasingly to Richard (although he was slow to agree fully to the plan), that they should offer Dan a post at the practice in Caharoe. His presence would keep Alison near home and Dan could find his feet as a family doctor, benefiting from Richard’s
decades of experience. If it all worked out she hoped maybe Dan and Alison could stay in Caharoe for good. It was at that point in her happy families reverie that Cathy reined in her overactive imagination. Just having Alison at home for another year would be bliss.

She went downstairs, where Richard was ferreting for a corkscrew to open a bottle of white. A glass of wine was just what she felt like. ‘I am totally wiped. Would a Chinese takeout be OK for dinner?’

‘I’ve rung them already. I ordered your favourite. They will deliver around seven.’

‘Thanks, Richard. I just couldn’t face making a dinner tonight,’ Cathy said, accepting a drink gratefully. They clinked glasses and Richard kissed her forehead.

‘For what it’s worth, I think you are right about Dan. He has the makings of a good GP and I think we should give him a chance for our sakes as well as for Alison. Mind you, with his mother dying he may not be in any position to make a decision. I will leave the timing up to you, see when you think is best to mention it.’

‘Well, they are in his uncle’s place in Aughasallagh until Sunday. Alison is coming back here for a few days and Dan is going on to Dublin to sit his last exams. Maybe we will run it by Alison when she comes home in case she hates the idea but I doubt she will. She just wants to be with Dan.’

‘That’s a good idea, love. You know, I was talking to Hugh Lalor today and our friend Con Abernethy’s name came down in conversation. Seems he hasn’t wasted much time since Dan’s mother died in helping himself to some female company. According to Hugh, and his sources are normally fairly reliable, Ciara’s younger sister is back on the scene and a few others are beating a path to the house as well. Would you not think that he could let Mary be dead a decent amount of time before he starts that racket again?’

‘Well, you know I don’t think an awful lot of Con Abernethy. I know the Lalors say he is lovely but, honestly, have you ever heard the pair of them say a bad word about someone who has influence, power or rakes of money? Sure Rena made excuses for him having a teenage girlfriend when I quizzed her about what Ciara had said about him. Apparently it was his wife’s entire fault for being difficult. He ticks all the Lalor boxes but not any of mine. I really don’t know where Dan was got at all because Mary
was
a bit of an old boot and Dan is so nice and thoughtful and treats Alison like a queen. She was lucky to meet him.’

‘Well, I think he was the lucky one actually. Sure our Alison is the best in the world!’

‘You are a big old softie, Richard.’

‘Ah, sure I know but where is the harm in that? She’s my daughter and I’ll never stop looking out for her.’

Dan was struggling with revising for his last set of exams. His mother was dead barely a month and he just couldn’t seem to get his head round anything. At his mother’s funeral he had met his uncle Jack, who had offered him his cottage near a beach in Kerry for studying or for holidays. Dan had thanked him but he had no intention of taking up the offer. The flat in Dublin was where he intended to do the last of his preparation, close to the libraries for last-minute dashes, close to friends for support and, crucially, a couple of miles from Alison who had decided to stay on in her own flat for a couple of weeks after her own exams to keep him company until his were finished. That had been the plan until he and Ciara had stupidly messed around in the kitchen in Leachlara. His head had been silently imploding with pressure every day since. He was sure Alison would notice the change in him soon but that was probably his own guilty conscience. Alison was as she always was, it was he who couldn’t see past the possibility that Ciara would tell Alison what had happened and that she might assume him guilty because he hadn’t had the guts to confess to a stupid drunken mistake.

Ciara had got herself a summer job as a tour guide in Trinity and so there seemed no possibility
that she would just go off for the summer and leave them alone. Any time they had met Dan had made an effort to act normally but when Alison was busy or popped out of the room to get something Dan found himself on the receiving end of Ciara’s derisory smirks. She was enjoying torturing him, loving the fact that with one word to Alison she could rattle their world. He thought about talking to her but realized that it was Alison he should speak to and that he couldn’t face right now. Uncle Jack’s cottage in Aughasallagh for a week or ten days occurred to him then as a useful stopgap. He would ring his uncle and tell him to leave the key at Daly’s pub for him. He would persuade Alison to come with him. They could take the train to Leachlara and pick up his mother’s car from the house. It had been one of a few specific bequests to him along with her beloved silverware and nearly thirty thousand pounds, secreted from a very surprised Con, in a bank account in Thurles. From there it would be two hours’ drive at most to Aughasallagh. He would lose a full day’s studying in the process but it was better than failing the exams and that was what would happen if he stayed in Dublin waiting for Ciara to open her mouth. The cottage would be quiet enough to do some worthwhile study and Alison could be with him and away from Ciara until he had finished his exams. Then he could talk to her. He would make her understand that the sight of his father with Leda the night of his mother’s funeral coupled with too much drink had made him do something stupid, but that it really didn’t mean a thing. It was just a kiss and a drunken fumble, he told himself when doubt swelled from the pit of his stomach and threatened to strangle his ability to breathe. He hoped that all the years they had spent together would count for something against a stupid slip-up – even if his slip-up involved Alison’s closest friend.

The cottage in Aughasallagh was in tiptop shape and that at least gave Alison some slight comfort, because she had been looking forward to a couple of relaxing weeks in Dublin before she had to start looking seriously for a teaching post. There had been the offer of a temporary job in her old school in Caharoe and she would decide shortly if she should take it or not. She knew by her parents’ behaviour on the phone when they opened the letter and told her the news that they were gasping for her to accept the job, but she had another couple of days to work it all out. Besides, a lot would depend on where Dan would end up and he was in no mood for discussing life beyond the exams at the moment.

She had been taken aback when he had suggested the trip but he seemed set on it and, to be honest, his form was so shaky since his mother had died that she was willing to go along with anything if she thought she would get the old Dan back. Her parents had advised her that Dan would need a lot of support: grieving for a dead parent on top of the extreme pressure of final exams was potentially too much to bear. She was willing to do everything possible for him and that included hiding out in the wilds of Kerry with no company except a doddery radio, a stack of books that she congratulated herself for packing and a chain-smoking boyfriend who was so lost in his own thoughts that he talked only infrequently and rarely sounded at all like he used to. She had mentioned it to Ciara only to be given a rough fob-off. ‘For God’s sake, his mother has just croaked it. Cut the boy some slack.’ Ciara’s reluctant ceasefire on Dan that had started in the last while looked set to continue and that at least was a good thing. The two of them getting on as well as they did would have looked like a miracle to her in the first few months after they had met. If that could happen, anything was possible, she thought.

Dan discovered that anything was indeed possible when an early morning doorbell ring at the cottage found him staring at Ciara on the front doorstep. Her hair was tousled by the boisterous sea wind and she wore a bright blue T-shirt under a pair of incredibly worn and baggy dungarees. She carried a small knapsack on her back with a jacket rolled up in the straps at its base. She had hitched here, must have, he reasoned, because there was no such thing as public transport in this or any other rural corner of the county. Ciara smiled at Dan but he could not return the favour. She sensed rage and exasperation from him. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand as
he always did when he was utterly flummoxed.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Ciara? How dare you follow us and how in the name of God did you find us?’

‘Calm down, Dan. You’ll have a heart attack and, seeing as you are the doctor and I’m forbidden to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on you, it might be better if you didn’t. I came to see Alison. You know, my best friend. Your girlfriend – remember?’

‘Who told you where to find us?’

‘Well, I have to say I have never given your father the credit he deserves for being an outstanding public representative. One phone call was all it took to get the address out of him. He was in such a hurry to get me off the phone, to attend to other constituents no doubt, that I didn’t get a chance to thank him properly.’ Ciara was enjoying Dan’s discomfort and she paused a while to take in all its glory before brushing past him and heading down the hallway to find Alison listening to bloody Radio 1 again. She, at least, was ecstatic to see her. Dan’s guilty conscience was obviously preventing him from being much in the way of company at the moment.

Ciara wasn’t quite sure why she had to come to Aughasallagh, but she had been compelled to do so. She wasn’t sure if it was just to see Alison or to tell her friend the truth of what had happened the night of Mary Abernethy’s funeral and take the consequences, whatever they might be. Ciara was reluctant to admit to herself that at some level she wanted to see Dan more than she wanted to see Alison. That fact was proving difficult to get her head around and all the way from Dublin, hitching lifts and making conversations with strangers she would not ordinarily give the time of day to, she tried not to think too much about what she had wanted to happen with Dan and how he had rejected her.

She was in no hurry to get back to Dublin because she had packed in the tour-guide job in Trinity. She was absolutely not cut out to deal with tourists. They were all so shagging happy, thinking Ireland was the dearest, sweetest country, all looking for a long-lost great-granny whom their forbears had said goodbye to at the open fire where she sat stirring a pot of stew or pummelling a lump of brown soda dough into submission. She couldn’t be satisfying their need for nostalgia or telling them with a straight face that of course their tour-bus driver was right, there were still a few leprechauns left if you knew where to look. She had more or less decided to head to France or Spain, maybe to teach English, a short course, so she could be out of Dublin, for a while anyway but maybe for good. There was no way she was heading back to Leachlara. That house seemed to shrink any time she went back there, with her parents still living the same excuse for a life. Her father was only happy when he was drunk and her mother was never happy at all but not driven enough to raise so much as a protesting murmur. Her brother was gone now as well. St Con had set him up as an apprentice with a building firm in Galway and the whiff of freedom had seduced him. She couldn’t spend any more time in Dublin looking at Dan and Alison either, their closeness mocking all her failures with men. She had made a move on Dan because she had begun to find him incredibly attractive but maybe also to prove to herself that no one was perfect, Dan and Alison included, and that not even they had it all. Space between herself and Alison after years in each other’s pockets would be no bad thing anyway. She convinced herself that she would have arrived at this conclusion even if she had never touched or wanted to touch Dan. Still, there was no harm in one last long visit, a week together before she hightailed somewhere, anywhere that Dan Abernethy was just a memory, and a new life could begin.