‘I can see why you’ve stayed here.’ She wondered if she were in his position whether she would ever want to leave. No, she decided, she would never leave this place for the bustle and clamour of London.
‘What?’ he asked her and she realised he’d been watching her.
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Go on, a penny for them.’
‘They’re not even worth that,’ she said softly. ‘But, well, I was thinking of you here and something struck me.’
‘I’m almost sorry I asked now,’ he said, but his smile was easy and his voice gentle.
‘No, it’s not about you; it’s actually thrown up something I hadn’t thought of.’
‘Right, now I’m interested.’
‘It’s just, I’ve had this thing in the back of my mind, where I assumed that when I took time out of work in the hospital that I’d travel. See the world? You know, I never really got much of a chance before; I was in college and then we settled into jobs and there was a mortgage and…’
‘We?’
‘Oh, sorry, my husband and I…’ She paused for a moment. ‘But since the divorce, well, that’s bothered me. You know, the idea that life is passing me by and there’s so much more that I’d hoped to have done by now.’
‘Ah, far-off fields and all that jazz?’
‘Maybe.’ She smiled then, sipped some more of her drink. She could feel it making her woozy, but it was a pleasant, happy feeling. It was almost as if she had sunk into a cradle and a gentle loving hand was lulling her into a lovely feeling of repose. ‘But then, I thought of you and…’ She laughed. ‘Why would anyone want to leave here? What on earth could be better than here?’ She shook her head at the realisation. ‘I mean, you said it yourself, even the people, there’s just decency about everything and it…’ She nodded towards the meal they’d just shared.
‘It rubs off on you?’
‘Yes, I think that’s it. It infects you so you’re a part of it, without actually meaning to be and soon, you’ve been weaved into the middle of things and there are… relationships.’ She nodded towards Dora. ‘You know, since I’ve come here, I’ve probably met three-quarters of the whole local population and all I’ve met with is kindness and a warm welcome.’
‘That’s it.’ Dan shook his head. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to put words on.’
‘For your book?’
‘No, not so much, more for my parents and my friends in London. They want me back over in London again. This…’ He waved his hands about the room. ‘This was only meant to be temporary, to get me through… I just needed…’ He shook his head. The smile that had faded earlier when they’d stood on the threshold of this conversation didn’t disappear this time. ‘I needed to breathe, I needed to think, I suppose and now… I feel as if I’ve drowned in oxygen and there’s no going back to that life.’ He was smiling broadly, sitting just next to her on the old fender, his empty glass on the floor at his feet.
‘I love it here,’ she said softly and she felt, for a moment, as if she glimpsed a chink in the life that she had always believed would unfurl before her. That life had been snatched away when Melinda Power had sauntered in and caught Jack’s eye two years earlier. And maybe, she had needed until now to see that there were other ways forward, or maybe she needed to be sitting here, with the wind howling down the chimney and the fire dancing in the grate. It felt as if something had clicked into place and it wasn’t something she could quite put her finger on, but it was the feeling of coming home, what it meant to really come home, and maybe that was as much as she needed for now.
19
Dan
It was the stark beauty of the place –that was what had caught Dan unawares. It was the biting cold of the rain and the fulsome warmth of the people. It was the fact that the more the one seemed to shroud the land around his cottage; the other enveloped him when he wandered into the village. And he wandered into the village every evening now. Sometimes, he had to remind himself that he’d only been here a couple of weeks, because everything about the place and the people had a habit of convincing you that you’d been here much longer, maybe even that you belonged here.
At this point, he figured he’d walked almost every inch of the beach. There were miles of it. Soft golden sand, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Dan never imagined that the coastline of the west of Ireland would be like this. Rather, in his imagination, he’d have considered the grey cliff face, choppy waves, chewing into jagged rocks; perhaps he’d expected the rattle of old pirate ships and the rush of mountain dew running through the ditches as well, but none of this could have captured the reality of staying in the little cottage.