When Miriam left I took you in my arms and told you about the day I first came to Maoltrán and how the seahorses brought David and me together. You stared at me with those round eyes, as if you could understand every word I said, and I was back there again, eight years ago, driving through the summer heat, heading towards my future.
Maoltrán, in English, means a bare hillock. As I drove through this small country village with its wide main street and the usual assortment of shops, I could see how it had acquired its name. The surrounding countryside is hilly and pastoral, but the grey rocky outline of the Burren is its most distinctive landmark. I’d passed a one-storey school with stencilling on the windows, and high stone steps leading to a Catholic church. I’d sped past lichen-covered tombstones and a small Protestant church, its ancient heritage diminished by the steel frame of an ugly creamery erected next to it. On reaching the new craft centre I searched for a sign that would lead me to Miriam’s Glasshouse. The small compact buildings exuded fresh cement and paint, the sheen of creativity and hope. Miriam had recently moved from a small studio in the back garden of Rockrose to larger custom-built premises and she planned to expand her business. We’d spoken on the phone and I was confident I’d be her marketing manager by the end of the interview.
My job in public relations was a mystery to her. She read a press release I’d written about an age-resistant moisturiser and asked how I could write with such conviction when I knew there was no truth to the claim. She touched her face, the laughter lines deep around her eyes, the pull of middle age against her mouth.
She was right. What I’d written had no substance but I worked in the business of persuasion. I used words to capture the imagination, to trail it towards desire and the ultimate dream of eternal youth.
‘Why would you change your career,’ she asked. ‘You’re at the heart of everything in Dublin. Why bury yourself in a small country village?’
Silence is golden. I’d learned that lesson early, knowing that an inadvertent word from me could spark against the tinderbox of my parents’ marriage.
Her fingers were adorned with rings. Celtic swirls and knots, but no wedding band. Not even a Claddagh. My fingers were bare. The indentation where my engagement ring had rested was a stark reminder that I was planning a new future. I couldn’t stop touching it. Like a tongue to a broken tooth, I would find my thumb rubbing against the white circle, as if, somehow, I could hasten its slow fading.
I held up my ring finger. ‘A man,’ I said. ‘I need a fresh start.’
She noticed the white circle left by my engagement ring and nodded. Richard, the villain. No further explanation was necessary.
Richard was my rebound man. Not a good basis to start a relationship but I needed calm in my life after Edward Carter. I was twenty-eight when we met at a party and we became engaged two years later. Richard was upwardly mobile and ambitious, his career in the financial sector giving him the authority to wear pinstripe suits without looking ridiculous. What can I say about our relationship? It was safe and steady and Richard was an eager lover, who only became impatient when I mentioned babies.
‘Plenty of time when we’re married,’ he’d say, whenever I brought up the subject. But I was anxious for a baby, aware of time marching smartly by. The brief mad spell after my mother’s death, when I’d tumbled so heedlessly and headlong into sex, now seemed like someone else’s shambolic nightmare; but the memory of what followed was indelible.
Without telling Richard, I stopped taking the pill. A year passed, hope fading each month. My gynaecologist advised me to bring him along for tests. Deceit had me by the ankles and, just when I’d plucked up the courage to confess the truth, he arrived home one night with champagne and roses. He’d been offered promotion, along with a three-year transfer to his company’s headquarters in New York. We would move the date for our wedding forward and honeymoon in the Big Apple.
‘No babies,’ he wagged his finger at me and said, ‘New York is no place for children. We’ll start a family after we return to Dublin.’
As we drew up wedding lists, booked our hotel and church, I felt myself closing down. How could I describe it? A tight coiling inwards, mentally moving away from his words, physically from his touch, from everything he planned for our future, until, when it was finally time to walk away, I did so without tears or regret. I moved from his apartment, surprised at how little I had to carry with me.
I did not blame him for hating me. Our wedding plans had been cancelled for no reason that he could understand, apart from the reason I gave him. Incompatibility. As an excuse, incompatibility was vague enough to cover a multitude of reasons, yet serious enough to break the foundations of any relationship.
Miriam offered me the job and, when the interview had ended, she invited me to her house for a meal before I began my journey back to Dublin. I followed her car from the craft centre for about a mile. Ancient walls, ridged as the selvaged edges of a rough-knit jumper, ran over the hills. The Burren lay around me, flat pavement rocks marked by dolmen tombs and fortresses. She slowed after we passed the grey house, where Phyllis Lyons lives with her mother, and took a sharp right-hand turn into a narrow lane. Grass grew along the centre but tyre marks had grooved the edges. A tumbledown cottage was almost hidden by hedgerows and the grassy embankments were aflame with red-hot pokers, poppies, foxgloves and dense pockets of maiden pink. The lane rose sharply until I reached the line of cedar trees sheltering her house. The grey limestone walls blended into the rocky landscape and the name Rockrose had been carved into a gate pillar.
I fell in love with Rockrose as soon as I saw it or perhaps it was David who moved my heart so violently that, for an instant, I needed to possess everything within my gaze. He was dressed in shorts and a singlet, well-worn trainers, a sweatband tied around his forehead. He was playing with a small boy, chasing him around the garden, pretending, with exaggerated gestures, to be unable to catch him.
I parked outside the low drystone perimeter wall binding the front garden and stepped from my car. I watched as he hoisted the boy to his shoulders. David looked so young that day, like a teenager, far too youthful to be a father. I assumed the boy belonged to someone else until Miriam introduced him as her grandson.
Susanne…David lowered the boy and spoke my name slowly, as if anxious to memorise it. His face glistened with perspiration. The faint musky smell of youth oozed from his skin as he took my elbow and directed me into the kitchen.
The long wooden table looked as if it had served generations, as did the six sturdy chairs and the high upright dresser. A sofa was pushed against one wall and the cushions, deep and sagging, provided a trampoline for the boy to bounce upon. The open window looked out into the front garden and a jug of meadow flowers sat on the ledge.
Miriam served beef bourguignon from a large earthenware tureen. David ate heartily, sopping up the sauce with chunks of crusty bread, breaking off pieces and feeding them to his son. By then I had established their relationship. Joey was three years old and David would never be able to deny him: the same dark brown eyes and brown curly hair, the high, broad forehead, the easy grin.
Outside we heard the sharp blast of a horn, repeated three times. It broke like glass into our conversation. Joey jerked his head and looked up at his father. A blue car was parked outside the gate. The driver was female, with long black hair, impatient hands that once again sent out a demanding summons.
‘Time to go, big boy,’ said David. He lifted his son in his arms