Chapter Sixteen
‘We can take it in turns to sleep and keep watch.’ Sean looks up as I hand him his coffee.
This time I have to step over his legs to get onto the settee.
Not easy with a boiling hot cup of tea. Grace once more fills the gap between our feet and the wall and I pull my feet up underneath me, wrapping my hands around my cup.
We slip back into silence and our own thoughts.
I look out to sea. It seems fairly flat tonight, apart from the waves crashing against the rocks in the distance.
Sean too sits staring out at the bay. I try to think of something to talk about, but my mind is blank.
Part of me is wishing I’d taken the offer of going to bed, but that wouldn’t have been fair.
I’d worked hard for the inspection and I didn’t want it sabotaged by some measly oyster pirate.
The silence goes on but for the occasional lapping of the water, the wind whistling through the poorly fitted window frames, the fire occasionally fizzing, and Grace’s snoring. This could be a long night.
‘I’d put some music on,’ Sean’s obviously feeling my awkwardness, ‘but it’s best we listen out for that car coming back.’
‘Of course, yes,’ I say. He doesn’t take his eyes away from the binoculars.
I try playing I-spy with myself but it doesn’t work.
Then counting seagulls – anything to stop my mind wandering back to home and what Brian and Adrian would be doing now.
Hours pass. The sun finally sets and darkness draws in.
‘Tell you what, how about a drink? Just something to sharpen us up,’ Sean says, standing up. The tiredness is coming in waves. ‘Call it a leaving drink,’ he smiles.
‘OK,’ I say, grateful for the distraction.
‘You hold these.’ He hands me the binoculars like a baton in a relay.
I hold them up to my eyes. There’s just the odd light on the other side of the bay.
He takes a large step over Grace and me.
I lean back against the settee as far as I can.
Perhaps a cup of tea is just what I need.
Suddenly the lights in the room go out. My eyes take time adjusting.
I turn and can just about see Sean by the light switch.
‘Thought it would help us see out.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’ I look back at the dark outside.
The moon is throwing a dim light on the ripples.
It makes me shiver. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be out on the water tonight.
Whoever he is, the oyster pirate, he must be a madman, wild, impetuous.
I look at Sean’s reflection in the window, lit up by the lamp on the work surface.
I’m thinking about the oyster pirate I remind myself, not Sean!
He comes back and hands me a glass with a small amount of golden liquid in the bottom: whiskey.
I take it in surprise. The smell alone makes my eyes smart.
I don’t think I’ve ever drunk whiskey. I know it sounds daft, but I really don’t think I have.
Sean reaches over me again and sits down, taking the binoculars back.
‘At least now we should be able to see any lights,’ he nods out to the dark sea. He turns to me, raises his glass. ‘Slàinte,’ he says, and sips.
‘Do you speak Irish?’ I hold the glass near my mouth. My eyes are still burning from the fumes.
Sean takes another sip and shakes his head.
‘This area hasn’t been Irish-speaking for years.
Besides which I’m a blow-in. My uncle was born and bred here.
But he was married to my aunt, my mother’s sister.
I grew up in Dublin, in a manner of speaking.
’ He takes another sip of his drink and I put the family tree together in my head. He doesn’t elaborate any more.
I blink a lot as I hold the glass to my lips. It would be rude not to try it. I take my first burning sip. I can feel Sean watching me as the liquid fire slides all the way down. I blink even more and then try to speak. It comes out like a croak.
‘So did you always want to be an oyster farmer?’ I cough.
He sips from his glass then shakes his head, ignoring the croak.
‘Not really. I mean, I always loved this place, but I didn’t have any big plans, not really.
’ He doesn’t look as if he’s going to expand.
But then he takes another sip and says, ‘I loved coming here when I was younger. Then, when I was travelling, I spent some time in France, with Nancy’s family, working for her dad.
My uncle and her dad go way back, competing in shucking competitions together. ’
I look at him blankly and he gives a little laugh.
‘Opening oysters,’ he explains. ‘It’s an art form and a sport all in one. There are competitions all over the world. You use a little knife to open them and the winner is the person who can do it the fastest and the neatest.’
‘Ah,’ I say, understanding, sort of. ‘So you and Nancy have known each other a long time?’
‘Since we were teenagers.’ He takes another sip.
‘I was there just before my uncle got sick. All the other cousins had either moved abroad or had jobs in other areas. I came back to live here with him, and so the farm came to me.’ He sips and so do I.
It burns just the same. I grimace just the same and Sean smiles, just the same.
‘It came at the right time for me. What about you?’ Sean picks up the binoculars and looks out before resting them in his lap and looking back at me.
‘No.’ I twist the glass. I tuck my legs up further, as if curling myself into a sort of ball. ‘I never had any big plans, other than …’
‘What?’ He looks at me with interest.
A tiny little dream bubble pops up and then disappears. I look back into the drink.
‘Just to get through it, I suppose.’
‘That’s a bit pathetic,’ Sean tuts. ‘You must have wanted to do something when you were younger.’
‘No, not really. I liked cooking for people. I liked how it made people feel better.’ Ever since my mum left me weeks before my sixteenth birthday and went to Malta on holiday with her much younger boyfriend and ended up staying, I’d been at Betty’s coffee shop.
I was happy there, I think, tucked away in the kitchen, seeing the empty plates that came back.
‘Did your mum ever cook, or your dad?’ Sean asks, and I shake my head as the hole from the missing piece of jigsaw inside me opens up.
‘Mum didn’t cook. I don’t know if my dad did. I never knew him,’ I surprise myself by saying.
‘Never?’
I shake my head.
‘Did you ever want to find him?’ he asks, interested.
I shake my head again. ‘Wouldn’t know where to start.
She can’t remember anything about it. Not even a Christian name.
Though,’ I start to say, ‘I do wonder. I wonder what life would have been like, you know, wonder who I am.’ I stop suddenly.
‘I think not knowing where you came from can make it harder to understand where you’re going, to know who you are,’ I finish.
‘Sometimes I think it’s better just to worry about where you’re going,’ he says, looking straight at me, and I feel my throat tighten and tears prickle my eyes. I give a little cough to clear it.
‘What about you then?’ I change the subject quickly. ‘What were your big plans?’
‘To play Wembley Arena, obviously!’ He nods to the guitar, making me laugh too.
I suddenly feel very relaxed, like I’m spending the evening with a friend, and a good-looking one at that.
Not that I’m ever going down that route again.
I don’t need a man in my life, but being friends is nice.
I just wish the excitement in my tummy would settle down.
‘So what happened?’ I take a smaller sip this time and it burns less.
He turns with a wicked gleam in his eye. ‘Life.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘And oysters.’
‘I can see that,’ I smile. The whiskey is loosening my tongue.
‘Do you know, when you talk about oysters your whole face lights up. It’s like you can’t help yourself.
I don’t get it, they’re just knobbly shells full of slime really.
I don’t get the excitement.’ One small whiskey and I’m playing amateur psychologist with my boss.
But all the time I’m asking him about his life, he isn’t pushing me to talk about mine.
‘Knobbly shells full of slime!’ he says, outraged but still smiling. ‘I’ll have you know oysters are the food of the gods! In Roman times they paid for them by their weight in gold.’
He nearly knocks the binoculars from his lap. I grab a cushion from between us and hold it against me as I turn to him, interested.
‘Really?’ I’m surprised. ‘I don’t get it. What’s with the whole aphrodisiac thing then?’ My tiredness ebbs away.
‘Well, Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, is supposed to have sprung forth from the sea in an oyster shell and straight away gave birth to Eros. That’s the mythology behind it.
And then of course Casanova was supposed to have eaten twelve dozen oysters at the start of each meal.
’ He stands up, still talking, and goes to fetch the whiskey bottle from the kitchen.
He tops up both glasses. I think about saying no, but I don’t.
The burning sensation is less painful now, more numbing.
Almost pleasant. And I realise I’m enjoying myself. It feels nice just to listen.
‘But the real reason is that oysters are high in zinc, which increases a man’s testosterone, making him fertile.’ He sips his drink and so do I, to cover my blushes. But my mouth seems to have taken on a life of its own.
‘You don’t have any children then?’ I ask.
‘No. You?’ he bats back.
‘No,’ I shake my head.
‘What happened?’ he finally asks, as if giving me the opportunity to tell him how I ended up there.
‘Life,’ I reply flatly. No matter how much whiskey I’ve had, that piece of my life is still firmly locked away. ‘And a dislike of oysters,’ and we both laugh.
‘Life can be like that.’
I really hope he’s not going to ask me anything else.
We lapse into silence again before Sean pipes up, ‘Did you know that oysters have two hearts?’ Steering us both into safer waters.
‘And they change sex every year.’ He leans back and kicks off his boots, waking Grace, who lifts her head just for a second before flopping contentedly back to sleep.
‘The native oysters reproduce during the summer months and change sex every time they do so.’
‘Really?’ I find myself screwing up my nose.
‘Yup,’ he confirms and stretches out his legs, putting his feet on the window sill. ‘They can be father and mother to two separate litters in the same year.’
‘Ewww!’ I can’t help but grimace again and he gives a friendly laugh back.
‘Good job you’re off then and I’m not relying on you to sell my oysters.’ He sips. This is the most relaxed I’ve seen him on dry land. He intermittently picks up the binoculars from his lap and looks out.
‘So what will happen when I go? You’ll need help still. Will Nancy move here eventually?’
Sean splutters into his drink, coughing and laughing.
When he clears his airways he says, ‘No, Nancy will never come and live here. Nancy hates it here. Nancy and I have …’ He thinks about things for a while, ‘… a good partnership. I grow oysters, she sells oysters, and in the meantime we … enjoy each other’s company. It works for both of us.’
‘Oh, I thought—’
‘Like I say, it works for both of us. It’s a working partnership and not half as painful as true love.
We’re friends, our families are friends, we get each other.
’ He looks straight out to sea and that tells me all I need to know.
It’s funny, now I’m about to leave I start to realise Sean is almost human.
The sea is pitch black now. The living room is only lit by the flickering glow from the fire behind us.
The moon has come up silver, big and bright, casting a light across the water.
It suddenly looks very beautiful and calm.
Stars appear all around the moon. They are brilliantly bright, twinkling, and make the sky seem deeper than I’ve ever seen; a blanket of stars that I want to travel through, get lost in.
‘Now you see why I love this place so much,’ Sean says softly next to me, and I nod, not taking my eyes off the sky, feeling like a child enjoying the turning on of the town’s Christmas lights.
‘See that, that’s the Great Bear,’ he points, and I see him hesitate, wondering if I know this stuff. But I don’t. I look at the pattern of stars he’s pointing at. ‘And there, the Little Bear.’ I keep looking where he’s pointing.
‘There!’ he suddenly shouts excitedly, making me spill some of my drink, as a burst of stars arc across the sky.
‘Was that …’
He nods, his eyes wide with excitement.
‘I’ve never seen a shooting star!’
‘You have now … make a wish,’ he says. I dry my hands on my trousers and do as he says, not feeling ridiculous. I close my eyes and wish that life could always be like this, uncomplicated.
He tops up the glasses again and we both sit back, our feet on the window sill, making up our own silly shapes in the stars. The cushions that were between us have fallen on the floor and Grace is using them as a pillow.
‘That one’s a unicorn,’ I say, pointing, ‘with a wand.’
‘A unicorn, more like a set of drums,’ he argues, and points again. I lean in to look where he’s pointing.
‘I can’t see it,’ I say, right up against his arm.
‘There,’ he points again and laughs and turns to me.
Our faces are up close and for a moment the laughter stops, time seems to stand still and our eyes lock together.
I can feel his breath and my stomach flips over and back again.
Grace nudges my legs and I fall back to my side of the settee and stare straight out at the stars.
Did I just imagine it or could we have kissed if I’d wanted to?
‘I have never seen anything so beautiful,’ I say, focusing my attention back on the night sky. ‘I didn’t get it before. All that rain and no real green fields. But I think I get it now.’
‘Get what?’ He takes a sip of whiskey.
‘Why people talk about Galway Bay. Write songs about it, you know. I won’t forget this …’
We carry on, lost in our thoughts and pointing out silly star patterns, eventually leaning shoulder to shoulder, without realising it, as the early hours of the morning set in and sleep finally comes to both of us.