Her Name Is Rose (30 page)

“Welcome to Ireland,” she said and smiled at his shirt and his general goose bumps. “Not Hawaii out there.” The talons of the eagle tattooed on his arm were showing beneath his short sleeve.

“This is summer, right?”

“Be lovely in a little while,” she said. “How can I help?”

“I need to rent a car. Get a hotel room. Find a place called Ashwood.” He gave her the slip of paper on which Grace had written Iris's address.

“I see.” She pointed to the car rental desks. “When you're done there, come back to me and I'll sort you out with a room and a map.” She smiled again. The girl was sweet.

When he returned with the rental keys she showed him where Ashwood was on the map. “It's a townland in West Clare,” she said. “Here's the route. It's about an hour. But I'm afraid all the B and Bs nearby are booked solid because of the festival this weekend.” She looked at Hector from across the counter. “I can book you a room at a really nice hotel, though.”

“Festival?”

“There's a jazz festival. It happens every year.”

“What do you know.” And he rembered then Iris had mentioned it.

“Sorry?”

“Jazz … it's my thing.”

“Oh,” she said. “The Lodge so. You'll like it. And they'll take you right away.”

“And the rain?”

“Five more minutes.”

*   *   *

Rain was gone in ten. He could barely keep his eyes open as he drove, but from what he could see it was farming country with cattle and horses and a medley of small green and yellow fields separated by stone walls and some savagely shaped bushes. He'd gone the extra mile and hired a car with SatNav, thank God, because there was barely a street sign to be seen. The SatNav lady spoke with a kind of motherly affect. “At the next crossroads, turn
left
” and “On the next roundabout, take the
second
exit.” She was like the Spirit of Grace commanding him not to screw up and to get there. The landscape got country. Real quick. Talk about rural. It was a strange thing, but the nearer Hector got to the part of the world where Iris lived, the more he wanted her.

The Lodge, as the lovely earringed girl had called it, turned out to be a rather grand five-star hotel perched on the edge of a long stretch of sand dunes. Awesome, but to Hector oddly discomforting. From his room, the Atlantic Ocean stretched endlessly, melting into a leaden sky on the horizon. Rain fell in the distance. He thought about the lovely Julia and how all those years ago he'd first heard the phrase “aggressive Stage 3 breast cancer.” Fuck. He hoped to God he would never hear those words again. He hoped to God that wasn't what Iris was facing. Poor, sweet, gentle Iris. He had to know. He remembered her promise to her husband and now guessed that was why she had wanted to find Hilary. For Rose.

A few hours later, after a nap and some lunch, Hector showed the concierge his map, in case Lady SatNav didn't know the way, and was told it was only fifteen minutes inland. So, at four in the afternoon, Hector Sherr left the coast behind and set out for Ashwood. There was no rain, but he took the road slowly because it was narrow and windy. Low houses were strewn like a bunch of colored marbles in otherwise green fields. He turned right at the bottom of a curving hill when directed, but that was the end of the line as far as SatNav was concerned. She spoke no more.

Without directions now, he drove up the hill before him. Huge bushes with tiny red flowers closed in on the thin road. Grass was growing in the middle. Wild, he thought. He hoped Spirit of Grace knew where she had taken him because he seemed to be disappearing into the thickest greenness he'd ever seen. Even the air he breathed seemed green, and smelled of hay. When he cleared the top of the hill, two horses, a speckled gray and a chestnut mare, nosed over the stone wall. They faced toward the sliver of ocean that crossed the horizon about ten miles back to the west. He stopped the car and got out. The road evened out ahead but there was no house in sight. The horses came toward him. He saw his reflection in the eye of the mare and he thought she spoke to him. He shrugged and got back in the car, feeling giddy.

Another quarter of a mile farther, at a bend in the road, a driveway appeared, huddled between two stone buildings, one with a black door. A blue flowering vinelike plant spilled over a lower building on the other side of the entrance and fell onto an open wooden gate. Several potted plants were lined up against the wall.

This had to be the place. It said Iris all over.

He parked the car at the gate. His heart felt five sizes too big for his chest. It was thumping a big drum rhythm full of ache and regret and hope,
ba-bam ba-bam ba-bam
, drying up his throat.
She's in here.

“Come on now, Hector, keep going, man.” He hopped in over the stone stile and followed the line of potted flowers that led through a gap in a high hedge. A jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, breathtaking garden materialized. He stood a few moments as if in a trance. I've arrived in Emerald City where the blue Iris lives, he thought.

“Um … hello? Can I help you?”

It was a young woman with long brown hair who came out from the house.

“I'm looking for Iris. Iris Bowen?”

The young woman considered the stranger a moment and got up. “She's not here.”

“Is she all right?” He spoke with a little too much urgency and a little too quickly and he knew he'd surprised her.

“Yeeesss. She's fine,” she said cautiously. “Um … does she know you?”

“You must be Rose…” he said then, and walked a little nearer. “I met your mom when she was in Boston last week.”

“O … kay…” Rose paused. “She didn't mention meeting anyone except the lady at the guesthouse.”

“That'd be Grace Hale. Another nice lady … like Iris … I mean, your mother.” He took another step closer and held out his hand. “I'm Hector Sherr.” They shook hands. “It's a real pleasure to meet you, Rose.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Hector shifted his weight, but Rose stood still. “Your mom talked a lot about you. You're a musician, right?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh. Nice … um … was Mum expecting you?”

“Actually, no. It was a sort of a spur of the moment thing. I just wanted to see how she was. I mean—”

“I don't know when she'll be back, but I'll tell her you stopped by.”

“Yes. Please … I'd really like to—”

“Where are you staying?”

She was a tough marker, Hector thought. How could he blame her? A stranger walks into your mother's garden, out of the blue, and starts nosing around. “In a place called Done Beg.”

“Doonbeg.” She smiled. “I'll tell her so.”

“I hear there's a music festival on this weekend?” Still, she didn't say anything. Hector wanted her to say, Yes, there's a festival and we'll be there and I'll bring my mother and we'll all have a nice time. But this girl didn't give anything away. And she wasn't going to. She wasn't going to tell him what he wanted to know: Is Iris all right? Hector, man, he thought, be cool. What if the news wasn't good? She wasn't going to tell him. It was none of his damn business.

“I'll get going then.” But he didn't move. He waited, still hoping Rose would give him some encouragement. “Nice to meet you, Rose,” he said at last, then he turned and walked back along the line of potted plants, through the gap in the high hedge, and out. He got in the car and headed west.

He would return there the next day.

And the day after that.

And all the days after until he saw Iris Bowen again.

*   *   *

The small village of Doonbeg was an unlikely setting for an international music festival and, except for its position so near the sea, it might have gone unnoticed in the calendar of Irish summer festivals. It was a thing the Irish did to counter the often-compromising weather, organize and attend festivals. Every year since the turn of the millennium a group of local people orchestrated the event that brought semiprofessional musicians from all over the world to play. One of their tenets was to make the festival free to all, so volunteers came from all walks of life from the West Clare community to lend support. Tess's husband, Sean, was on the development committee and Tess took tickets for the raffle at the door on Saturday night. For her part, Iris contributed a floral arrangement. The festival was a boon for local hotels and guesthouses that helped sponsor it. Before Luke died he, too, had volunteered, ferrying musicians from the airport and coordinating their accommodations.

*   *   *

The day of the opening concert Iris met Tess for lunch in the garden of the hotel in Ennis. They were lucky to find a bright spell in an otherwise gray day and sat in the sunshine filtering through an old copper beech. Gardeners were trimming the boxwood hedge. She would have preferred to be in her own garden as gardening had a way of helping her work things out—and she did have some things to work out, like the surprising appearance of a young man in her daughter's life, and what was she going to do with herself now that she wasn't going to die—but she was anxious to confide in someone about Hector. Her garden could wait. The more she thought about Hector, the more she believed perhaps she'd been too hasty in her judgment to leave without saying good-bye. He'd been a breath of fresh air and, to be quite honest, she missed the attention. Keeping him a secret made her feel as if she'd done something wrong.

But still. She wanted someone to know there had been sparks. That there was some life left in her. Just when she was about to tell her friend, Tess's phoned buzzed. She read the text: Boys to be collected from football training, then I have to get to the community center. She sighed and, as she stood, she asked, “What were you going to say?”

“Oh, nothing. Tell you later.” Iris waved a hand and smiled and Tess dashed away. Iris sat a while longer in the garden.

*   *   *

Now, shortly after four, Iris arrived back home with groceries. She could hear music playing when she stepped from the car. She paused, listening, stilled by the rising melody that leapt up above the trills of the fiddle. It was “Over the Rainbow.” So Rose
is
going to play at the concert, she thought. With Conor. She was glad because her daughter's account of the stroppy Mr. Ballantyne made her wonder if she should suggest Rose take a break from her studies in London. Maybe she would be better off back home in Ireland. Take one of those gap years and travel. Or something. Rose had never had a job, maybe she'd like that. They'd put down two very demanding years and now that Iris had been given the all clear, now that her architectural distortion was just some calcification, maybe the two of them should travel. But it was all conjecture. There was someone new in Rose's life now. And for a moment Iris was happy-sad thinking about it, the way only mothers know.

More petals dropped from the clematis, leaving behind feathery heads with silver threads. The summer was already transitioning toward autumn. She stood listening a few moments longer before entering the house.

“Hey, Mum!” Rose laid down her violin. “Nice lunch?”

“Yes. Lovely. I stayed until the rain threatened.” Iris put her shopping on the counter. “The piece sounds really great. I can't wait to hear your duet.”

“Rose Bowen is an actual star,” Conor said. “Festival crowd won't know what hit them when this classy violinist starts playing jazz—with the fiddler from Kinvara, Conor Flynn.”

Rose smiled and Iris began to unpack. “So … Mum?” Rose glanced to Conor and then back at her mother. “Do you know someone named Hector?”

Iris froze. She turned to Rose and stared but said nothing.

“Wasn't that the name I told you, Conor?” said Rose, keeping her eyes on her mother.

“Tall guy, you said, and friendly, American. Hawaiian shirt.”

“Hector?” was all Iris could manage.

“He said he met you in Boston,” Rose said.

Iris looked away and continued unpacking. She couldn't believe it. Hector? Here? It made no sense. Hector? She lined up the sugar and raisins and buttermilk and tomato sauce. Incongruous and mad, and yet … she turned away her blushing face.

“Mum?”

“What?”

“Tell me.”

“I can't. Not … I can't. No. I'm too busy now. I have to … I have to post on my blog. And I promised Tess I'd make an arrangement for tonight.” She opened the refrigerator and stood, shielded behind the door.

“He seemed pretty nice,” Rose finally said. “Maybe a bit loopy, but in a nice way.”

“Shouldn't you be practicing?”

“Details, Mum.”

“No. Go. Not now, Rose.”

Rose shrugged and led Conor to the sunroom, but she threw her mother one over-the-shoulder glance. Rose had caught her smiling.

“I'll tell you later,” Iris said. “Okay?”

“Sure. Can't wait.”

Soon Rose and Conor were playing and Iris was left to think. What? Hector? How had he got here? How had he found her? Hector? It was as if a Californian poppy had unexpectedly appeared in her flower border. What did he want? It was mad, just mad.

She escaped outside to finish making the centerpiece. Tons of lady's mantle bloomed along the path. Somewhat wildly, Iris clipped a large bunch and dropped it in her basket. She gathered a few love-in-a-mist seed heads and two fat hosta leaves, then began to arrange them with cosmos in a black watering can she had chosen as a container. She needed more color and hesitantly snipped her two last red poppies from the border in front of the sunroom.

Inside the shed her hands were shaking as she made final adjustments. What the … Hector? Here in Ashwood? Had he seen her garden? Talked with Rose? She tried to concentrate on the arrangement, but the flowers kept falling sideways. She placed a long red rose in the center and the arrangement held.