To Hell With It

Chapter 49

Chapter Forty-Nine

I had to get a taxi from the airport. It was a people carrier, actually, and I had to share with three other people – a couple that introduced themselves as Rob and Ruth, and a man called Tim.

I couldn’t get Rob and Ruth’s names out of my head. They sounded like some sort of daytime television programme, The Rob and Ruth Show, Wake Up with Rob and Ruth, Today with Rob and Ruth. They talked at me and Tim the entire time, just like TV hosts, except they didn’t ask any questions, and by the time they’d finished I knew their entire life story backwards.

They were having a baby through a surrogate because Ruth is forty and the risks of twins increase with age . They desperately wanted a sister for their little girl named Emily (what were the chances?) who was eleven and it had to be a sister because they preferred girls over boys .

Tim looked as awkward as I felt, and I could tell he wanted Rob and Ruth to shut up as much as I did. He didn’t give much away, he kept his answers short when interrogated by Rob, but he did say he planned on moving from the North Island to the South Island as soon as possible, which made me wonder why.

Tim appeared older than he probably was. His blonde hair was greying ever so slightly around the edges of his ears, and his stubble covered most of his face, but I could still see the sad lines of his mouth underneath.

To distract myself from the fact I was sharing a car with three complete strangers, I tried to work out what was making Tim so sad. A long-lost lover, perhaps? Or maybe he was a man on the run? Or maybe he was ill and fulfilling his dying wish to live on the South Island? It was like what I did in the graveyard with Una when we read the gravestones and imagined their lives gone by, only Tim was still alive.

By the time we got into Wanaka (and it only took nine minutes), I felt like I’d done a long-haul flight and thanked Jesus that I wouldn’t have to listen to or see Rob and bloody Ruth ever again. I felt sad about Tim though and hoped he found what he was looking for. Or maybe he wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe it was just me looking for something?

Tim was dropped off first – he got out in the town and grunted a goodbye to us, although it might have been to the taxi driver, I couldn’t be sure – and I was left with Rob and Ruth, who it seemed had finally run out of things to talk about, thank God.

As soon as Tim was out of sight, I pulled my sanitiser from my back pocket and covered my hands – usually I would hide it, like a dirty secret (or a clean one in my case) but I didn’t care what Rob and Ruth thought of me, seeing as they didn’t care what anyone else thought of them. They didn’t ask me one question about me and I was glad. When they finally got out, I said a reluctant goodbye and silently hoped their surrogate had twin boys.

A moment later, the taxi pulled into a quiet residential street and stopped outside a bright yellow house with black wooden windows. On the gate was a sign with the words, Irish Eyes Lodge .

* * *

I wondered if Niall had done that deliberately, it couldn’t have been a coincidence with the name. The inside was just as bright as the outside, with an open hallway that let the light bounce off the walls. There were some leaflets spread out on a wooden table and a vase of yellow-white lilies that filled the air with vanilla and honey.

‘Hello.’ A woman with short chestnut hair appeared from out of nowhere. ‘Can I help?’

‘Do you have a room available?’ I asked.

‘We most certainly do, just for you?’ she said cheerfully.

‘Yes.’ I nodded.

‘How long are you here?’

‘I don’t actually know,’ I hesitated. ‘I’m meant to be going up Roy’s Peak, is it far?’

‘It’s about a ten-minute drive but you can get a shuttle bus.’ She handed me one of the leaflets with a picture of a couple trekking up a mountain covered in snow. ‘They leave here every half an hour.’

‘Do you know how long it takes to walk up?’ I asked.

‘Anywhere between five to seven hours, so you’ll need to pack some thick socks and blister packs, otherwise you won’t be able to walk by the end,’ she said. ‘And it’s a long way, trust me.’ She grinned.

I hadn’t thought about packing any sort of first aid and had no thick socks on me.

‘Why don’t we book you in for tonight, and if you need to stay longer we can sort it out tomorrow?

‘Thanks.’ I smiled gratefully.

‘Great stuff. You can have Rudbeckia.’ She winked and handed me a key.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your room, first one on the right, Rudbeckia. It’s a New Zealand flower and means Irish Eyes.’ She smiled.

‘Ah, I see.’ I laughed. ‘Very fitting.’

‘I’m Lynne by the way.’ She raised her hand to a wave and not a shake and I let out a breath.

‘Pearl.’

‘Ah, you’re a rare Sheila, aye?’

‘Sorry?’ I said again.

‘Pearls,’ she said. ‘You don’t see many around, which means you are very rare.’ She winked again.

‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘I suppose I am.’

* * *

It was early evening but the sky was still bright when I decided I would walk into the town. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it on my way in; perhaps because Rob and Ruth were going on so much that I’d not been able to take anything else in. But when I reached the high street, I looked up and saw the biggest mountain staring back at me, towering behind the town like it was watching over it, keeping it safe. Something about it reminded me of Slievenamon, although this mountain was much, much bigger, of course, but just as beautiful and just as spectacular.

People sat outside cafés, enjoying the late afternoon sun like they didn’t have a care in the world. I wondered if that was even possible. To not have a care in the world. I couldn’t imagine it. What would a life be like without OCD? How easy and carefree my world would be.

Perhaps it was the mountain that kept their worries away? Some mystical spell or legend – like Fionn and his fair maidens – that kept them from harm’s way. The urge to be up in the mountain consumed me. To be amongst the jagged rocks, finding my way to the top so that I could stop and look back at how far I had come. But what was the point of coming all this way if I behaved the same way I did at home? What was the point of all Mairéad’s tips and techniques, the buses, the trees, the rivers and rafts, the breathe, relieve, relax exercises? What was the point of it all if I couldn’t conquer at least one thing? Mairéad was always going on to me about mountains – they were brought up in most of our sessions.

Just climb that mountain one step at a time. Be proud of every step up the mountain. Step by step by step by step – the mountain is your guide.

But if I didn’t climb the mountain (metaphorically speaking) would I go back to Drangan the same person? Did I even want to go back the same person?

I looked over at the carefree people, hanging out in cafés without a worry – they could sit down without having to think about who was next to them, or who might have been there before them, or if someone might or might not have sneezed moments before they’d arrived – and I suddenly felt jealous.

Why was sitting outside a café so easy for them but so hard for me? How could I have missed so much of life around me? How could I have let my own beliefs and fears get in my way? Why did I let them?

My frustration spurred me on to join them – not actually sit with them but near them. I picked the first café because it was the quietest, with the fewest tables outside, which meant the fewest people. I studied the chair as discreetly as I could – it was clean (visually, anyway), so I sat down and then poured my sanitiser onto a tissue that I’d purposely brought with me to wipe my glass. I would climb the mountain in stages, I’d told myself.

The waitress came over and I ordered a lemonade and when she was gone I tried to push the thoughts from my mind of what she might have touched before she picked up my drink – coins? The till? Her nose? The butterflies fluttered silently, but wildly, inside my head, where no one knew they were but me.

When she returned, I wiped my glass and did my own hands before drinking my drink like the normal person I so desperately wanted to be. And I would have been fine had I not seen it – there all slimy and yellowy-green – stuck to the inside of my glass where the lemonade had passed over it to my lips and inside my mouth. A bogie.

And I knew it was a bogie because what else could it have been? It must have fallen from her nose somewhere between picking up my glass and filling it with lemonade. Which meant I had tasted someone else’s snot.

No amount of trees, rivers or rafts could have saved me then. The damage had already been done. It was already inside me, somewhere. And so I had a meltdown, right there, outside the café surrounded by the people with no worries and the mountain as my audience.

‘One, two, three, four.’ I breathed in deeply, as slowly as I could. But when I held my breath I forgot to count and so I let out an almighty gasp for air. ‘Fuck. Get off the bus, get off the bus.’ I whispered to myself but all I could see was a bus full of snot and me stuck in the middle like glue. ‘Trees, trees, trees, one, two, three, four.’ I tried again but it wasn’t working. I’m on the river. The snot is on the raft, I’m on the riverbank, I’m watching it float away. It’s gooey, it’s stuck, it’s in my mouth.

‘Fuck off!’ I said loudly. And the couple at the next table looked at me with an expression that could only say that they thought I was a crazy person. And I suppose I was. I was talking to myself, after all, swearing out loud at something they couldn’t see.

I breathed out, slowly, and picked up my phone. I dialled Mairéad’s number and prayed she’d answer.

‘Pearl?’ She sounded concerned before I’d even said anything. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’ve eaten snot.’

‘OK, Pearl, it’s OK.’

‘The trees aren’t working, I can’t get off the bus,’ was all I could manage through my short, sharp breaths.

‘Pearl, just breath, pinched cat’s bottom, remember?’ Mairéad said slowly, as if she was breathing for me through her pinched-cats-bottom-lips. ‘Breathe with me … in for one, two, three, four … hold, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and out for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. That’s it, that’s good. It’s OK, Pearl,’ Mairéad soothed. The actual technique was four-seven-eight but Mairéad knew I’d never get past evil seven so she’d changed it for the greater good.

‘My heart is racing. It feels like it’s going to come out.’

‘It’s not going to come out.’

‘I’m shaking.’

‘You’re in flight or fight mode, it’s OK, it will pass,’ Mairéad said softly. ‘Can you think of something that makes you happy?’

‘My grandmother.’ I caught my breath.

‘That’s lovely, and what is she doing?’

‘She’s picking mushrooms.’

‘Good. And where are you, Pearl?’

‘I’m holding a basket full of twigs for the fire.’

‘Keep yourself there for as long as you need to be. I’m here. I won’t go,’ Mairéad said.

So I stayed with my grandmother and watched her in the field next to her house, the way I used to as a girl: her bottom in the air, her headscarf tied under her chin like a mother hen, as she searched for the mushrooms that brought her so much delight.

‘How are those butterflies doing?’ Mairéad asked a little while later, though I don’t know exactly how much time had passed.

‘They’ve landed.’

‘That’s good. Don’t try and catch them, remember. Just be with them for a bit. What was the trigger?’

‘There was someone’s snot in my drink.’ I tried to hold my grandmother in my mind.

‘In it?’

‘Yes, on the inside of the glass.’

‘Are you sure that’s what it was?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you, Pearl, even if it was?’

‘It’s not about that, Mairéad, it’s the fact it’s gone in me.’

‘Is it still on the glass?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, it’s not gone in you.’

‘The lemonade would have passed over it. I only saw it when I took the slice of lemon off the side after I took a sip.’

‘There was a slice of lemon on the glass?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pearl, do you think that perhaps what you’ve seen is a bit of lemon that’s come loose?’

There was a beat.

‘Think about it logically for a moment, what are the chances of it being from someone’s nose? Don’t you think it’s more likely it is from the lemon?’

‘But it could have fallen from the waitress’s nose if she sneezed.’

‘Do you really think the waitress would have sneezed over your drink?’

Another beat.

‘Look at it, Pearl,’ Mairéad said. ‘Take another look.’

I glanced down at the glass. I could see it there, still stuck to the edge. I peered inside. And what I’d seen as yellowy-green was in fact pale yellow, lemon yellow.

‘Shit,’ I said to myself and to Mairéad.

‘Lemon?’ Mairéad asked.

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I really thought it was…’

‘Don’t worry about it. Don’t give it any more energy. Are you out?’

‘Just at a café.’

‘Well done!’ Mairéad said like a proud parent. ‘Just focus on that.’

‘Thank you,’ I whispered as everything began to calm down inside of me.

‘It’s no problem. Now go and have some fun and I’ll speak to you soon. I’m always here if you need me.’ She sounded sleepy.

‘OK. Thank you again, Mairéad.’

‘Drink your lemonade, Pearl,’ Mairéad said and then she clicked the phoned off and it was only when I glanced down at the time that I realised it was two o’clock in the morning in Ireland.

I put my phone down and that’s when the anger came. It bubbled inside of me like a simmering pot. I looked around at everyone getting on with their lives; how could life appear so easy for them when I had to wake someone up in the early hours to get me through mine? I’d spent my whole bloody life in one place (and it was a lovely place, don’t get me wrong) apart from my week in Bath when my parents took me to England, but I don’t actually remember much of that, because my head was always down counting the lines on the pavement most of the time.

But this wonderful life – it had been going on all around me and I’d not had a clue because I’d been stuck in mine, dealing with imaginary penises, lemon bogies, and death threats from who exactly? Myself?

I was so consumed by my own internal rant that I didn’t notice her at first – the little old lady who had pulled up a chair on the next table along. But then my eyes fell to the blue coat and everything about it was so familiar I almost burst into tears.

‘Bunty?’ I half-shouted across to her.

She turned to face me.

‘Well now, would you believe it!’ she exclaimed (and it was Bunty by the way). Her hair was slightly wilder than I remembered it on the plane, and I don’t know how, but she looked younger too.

‘What are you…?’ I stuttered. ‘I thought you were in Kuala Lumpur?’ The joy of seeing her again made me instantly start crying. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying, well, I do. I’m a bloody mess that’s why.’

‘Oh, my dear girl,’ Bunty said in a tone that was familiar and safe, which was strange given we had only met once, but sometimes people just feel like home, don’t they? And she got up and made her way over, pulling out the chair next to me.

‘You’re not a mess, you’re just you that’s all.’

‘Well, if me is what I am then me is a mess.’ I sniffed and Bunty chuckled.

‘And a beautiful Irish mess you are then,’ she concluded.

‘What are you doing here? What about the festival and your sister?’

‘Ah, the festival was only for two days and my sister was boring me, so…’ She shrugged and I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘There’s only so much conversation an old woman can have with her dead sister, and besides, talking about Omanu Beach with you got the old girl twitching. I wanted to come back and I had hoped I’d see you again. I don’t think I got around to telling you about my time in Wanaka did I? Oh I had many a night out here. Had to come back and relive it at least one more time.’ She winked.

‘I went to Omanu Beach,’ I said. ‘I found the car park you told me about and swam in the sea.’

‘I was hoping you would, did you give it a kiss from me?’

‘I did.’

‘Ah, I’m delighted.’ Bunty beamed. ‘So why the tears? Did you not meet your man?’

I shook my head.

‘He’s engaged.’ I sighed. ‘But that’s not why I’m upset,’ I added, because I didn’t want Bunty for one minute to think I’d cry over Jack.

‘He’s a fool is what he is.’ Bunty reached out and took my hand. ‘A fool and nothing more.’

I didn’t pull my hand away. Not because I didn’t want to because I’m ashamed to say that I did, but because I didn’t want to offend Bunty. I glanced down at her hand. Her crooked fingers looked like twigs and I wondered if she might be as old as the broccoli trees. The lines and creases were spread across her skin like roots embedded forever, each one telling a story I would never know. I imagined her young and free, swimming naked and dancing around a campfire at night by her van, not a care in the world. No counting, no cleaning, no obsessive thoughts.

‘I don’t know how to stop my mind sometimes,’ I said, and I didn’t worry how it sounded or what Bunty would think because somehow I knew she’d understand.

‘Ah that’s easy, dear,’ Bunty said.

‘How?’

‘You just say oh to hell with it! Works every time.’

‘To hell with it?’

‘That’s right, dear. Send it to hell, whatever it is.’ She chuckled. ‘I used to say that a lot when my husband was alive and annoying me. It was quite effective.’

‘Sometimes I just feel so trapped, I don’t know how to set myself free.’

‘My dear Pearl.’ Bunty squeezed my hand. ‘You always have been.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, confused.

‘Free.’ She smiled. ‘You’ve always been free.’

And her words hung in the air between us, lingering long enough for me to want to grab them and never let them go.

* * *

We sat together at our table for the rest of the evening. Bunty told me more about her life in Ireland, how as a girl she used to creep out of her bedroom window and run along the streets of Dublin in her nightie and bare feet just to feel alive. How her father caught her once and scolded her so hard she had a sore bottom for a whole day afterwards, but it only made her more determined to do it again. How she’d left home the minute she could because she was so desperate to see the world, how she worked as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy family, who took her with them every time they went abroad and how grateful to them she was for showing her the world and giving her her travelling feet.

And I told Bunty about my OCD, about Mairéad and how she’d been helping me, how I never left the village, until now. But Bunty didn’t make me feel silly. She didn’t make me feel ridiculous.

By the time we had finished talking, the sky had turned from blue to black, and I promised Bunty that I would keep in touch and visit her in Dublin the moment I could.

‘You take care of yourself now.’ She smiled as we said goodbye. ‘No more tears, get out there and see it all – and remember to hell with it!’

‘I will,’ I said, and I was crying again. What was with all the crying?

We swapped numbers (landlines because Bunty didn’t have a mobile) and waved each other goodbye because her accommodation was in town and mine was the other way. And I watched her walk off the same way I did at the airport, only this time I didn’t feel sad because I knew I would see Bunty again.

When I turned to leave, I glanced down at the candle that had been lit at our table. When I was a girl, I used to wait for the wax to melt down the sides so that I could peel it off while it was still warm and squeeze it until it went cold and hard and all the bits would crumble onto the carpet. I did it all the time. My mum would get mad because she couldn’t get it out and my dad would stick up for me with a wink. I liked the way my hands felt afterwards, all smooth and tingly from the heat. That was before my OCD, when life was simple and easy. When life was like a café.

I watched the flame dance; it flickered gently in the evening breeze to the hum of life all around me. I thought of Bunty’s words of wisdom – that I had always been free – then I reached across, closed my eyes and dipped my finger into the hot wax, to remind myself of who I still was.