Chapter 8 #2
The candle reminded her of the dining room in Chance House the day they’d promised to love one another till death parted them, not realising that death didn’t kill love, and she cried her way through giving him the news that they’d made a child together.
‘I should be happy. I know I should. I wanted your child more than anything, and I know I’ll love it because it’s yours, but I wish so much I wasn’t doing this alone. I wish . . .’
She trailed off miserably. Look at her, talking to a headstone. She’d come in desperation to the last place they’d put him, but she’d been right in thinking he wasn’t there. She couldn’t feel him there. He wasn’t anywhere she could find him.
She swiped a sleeve across her face and looked down at the road.
She saw a red car parked now at the gate, and hoped it wasn’t anyone she knew.
She turned her head to follow the road away from the village, imagining Damien travelling along it on the night of Susan’s party, unaware that his life was nearly over.
The accident had happened just a quarter of a mile beyond the graveyard.
She plodded back down disconsolately, getting all the way to the gate before a figure emerged from the car.
‘I spotted the bike,’ Susan said. ‘I’m on the way back to the school. I had to run home to get my phone, left it behind.’
She’d rung Lydia on the evening of the infant yoga class, and they’d agreed to make it a weekly thing. Now, with everything up in a new heap, Lydia couldn’t plan beyond the next half hour, let alone the next few weeks.
She looked dumbly at Susan, who frowned. ‘Are you OK? It must be tough, coming here.’
‘It’s my first time, since—’ She broke off, fresh tears blurring everything. ‘Susan, I’m pregnant.’ Out it blurted, unplanned, along with the fresh tears that she made no effort to stem. Would she ever run out of tears?
‘Oh God.’ Susan put arms around her. ‘Oh, you poor thing, as if you didn’t have enough to deal with. Oh, Lydia. Here, leave the bike – I’ll get it sorted later. Sit in.’
‘But you have to get back to school.’
‘Another few minutes won’t make a difference. Go on, sit in.’
‘Don’t say it to anyone,’ Lydia begged. ‘You’re the first person I’ve told.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ Susan promised. On the way to Chance House she asked Lydia no questions. Instead, probably in an attempt to distract, she spoke of her aunt Lorraine, who was getting married for the second time, and who had a problem.
‘She’s Dad’s sister, lives an hour away.
She rang him last night in a tizzy – the hotel where they were to have their reception has gone into liquidation, and the wedding’s scheduled for Easter Saturday, only a couple of weeks away.
They’ve probably lost their deposit – well, they might get it back eventually, but they’re not holding their breath.
‘The thing is, they aren’t planning a big do, just family and close friends – it’s second time round for both of them – but they’ll have a job finding another venue. Everything’s booked up so far in advance.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Lydia said. Not really listening, someone else’s wedding plans holding no interest for her. She saw the sun sliding out from behind a cloud, washing the countryside in pale light. The days were getting longer now, the air beginning finally to soften.
The car was warm: Lydia felt her eyelids growing heavy. She tipped her head back and dozed until a bump on the lane jerked her awake.
‘Sorry,’ Susan said, ‘I was trying not to disturb you. You’re shattered. You should go back to bed.’
‘I will.’
She didn’t, fearing a daytime nap would only worsen her already broken nights. She busied herself around the apartment, emptying wastepaper baskets, cleaning windows, stowing glass bottles and jars in a box for recycling.
As she tipped ashes from the previous night’s fire into the metal bin around the back, she saw a ginger cat padding up the garden. She stopped, and so did he, fixing her with an unblinking yellow gaze. His fur was bald in spots.
She fancied his eyes held sadness – had someone he loved died too? They stood regarding one another silently. She’d always had a soft spot for cats, but had never owned one.
‘Hello,’ she ventured quietly. At the sound of her voice he sat, still a safe distance away, and continued to stare fixedly at her.
Maybe he was hungry. She returned to the house and took a bowl from a press and spooned in cold tuna casserole.
When she went out again he’d come as far as the patio, but he darted away when she approached.
She set the bowl down and returned inside, and when she looked through the window he was already eating, wolfing the food into him.
He ate everything, apart from a scatter of peas and carrot chunks, and she watched him cleaning his face before padding away.
She’d fed a hungry cat. It made her feel a tiny bit better.
Her bicycle was returned later. She came on Andrew by chance, propping it by the apartment door as she was coming up from a walk to the end of the garden to smell the sea. Well after six o’clock, and still full daylight.
‘I was going to leave it here,’ he said. ‘Susan thought you might be asleep.’
‘No.’ Her helmet still hung on the handlebars. She wondered what reason his sister had given for Lydia having left the bicycle at the graveyard. ‘Sorry – you’re having to do a lot of running around on my behalf.’
‘It’s no bother,’ he said. ‘I live out this way, about a mile further on.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ She’d presumed a flat above his shop, although he could be a family man for all she knew. She wondered if Susan had told him of the pregnancy. She’d promised not to say it to anyone, but Susan might not be the best secret keeper.
‘Would you like tea?’ It would pass another while, force her out of her thoughts. ‘Unless you’re rushing home.’
‘No, I’m not in any rush,’ so he came in and sat at the table, and she returned the beaker that had been sitting on the worktop since she’d washed it.
‘Sorry – I meant to give it back sooner. The soup was lovely.’
He gave the same small eyebrow lift she’d noticed another time. ‘Handy way to eat vegetables – for those of us who prefer our meat.’
She told him of the ginger cat she’d encountered earlier who’d left his vegetables behind when she’d fed him.
‘That’s cats for you,’ he said, ‘pure carnivores. I get two strays that show up at the back door of the shop most days.’
‘Do you feed them?’
‘I throw them out a few scraps. I hate to see an animal hungry.’
‘Me too.’
The radio was on, like it always was. ‘I like a bit of classical,’ he remarked. ‘I like all music really. How about you?’
‘At the moment, just classical,’ she said, and didn’t elaborate. ‘Do you play any instrument?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘play might be a bit of an exaggeration, but Susan gave me a ukulele for my birthday a few years ago, and I tried to teach myself some tunes from YouTube videos. I’m very bad.’
‘I bet you’re better than you say.’
He smiled, shook his head. ‘Ask Susan. She’ll back me up.’
He told her of the teenage assistant he’d taken on part-time in the shop a few months ago.
‘Left school early, broke Susan’s heart when he was in primary.
His mother asked could I find a use for him, so I gave him a three-month trial, and he’s turned out to be a decent lad, quick learner and great with the customers.
He just wasn’t one for the schoolbooks.’
He was surprisingly talkative. She suspected he was making an effort for her. ‘I wasn’t one for the schoolbooks either. My parents weren’t impressed when I told them I wanted to be a yoga teacher.’
‘How did you get into it? The yoga.’
‘I was thirteen, on holidays in Madeira with my parents. The hotel we stayed in offered free classes. Right from the start, I loved it.’
‘Is that why you’re vegetarian?’
She shook her head. ‘They weren’t connected. Giving up meat was a gradual thing, a few years later. The idea of eating animals just became more and more off-putting . . . No offence,’ she added, and he assured her none had been taken.
He didn’t put milk or sugar in his tea. He ate three of the custard creams she put out. The eyebrow thing, she decided, was a sign that he wasn’t serious. She liked his smile. It wasn’t like Damien’s, which had lit up his entire face. Andrew’s was gentler, with a warm, quiet feel to it.
‘The photos you took,’ she said, as he was getting up to leave, feeling that she should make some mention, conscious of the passage of time, and knowing he’d been paid nothing. ‘I’m not sure . . .’
‘No rush,’ he said. ‘They’ll keep.’
She was glad she’d asked him in. He was easy to talk to.
In bed that night she found herself swinging again between disbelief and sorrow, her mind and heart still struggling to come to terms with the pregnancy. She didn’t think she’d fully processed it, couldn’t yet take in how it would change her future.
She remembered with a lurch of dismay the drinks she’d had at Susan’s party, and the wine she’d unknowingly drunk since then, with Brona and alone. Too late for regrets: all she could do now was hope no harm had been done.
She was glad she hadn’t filled the doctor’s sleeping tablet prescription – they couldn’t be good in pregnancy – but the iron tablets she was still taking that her father had prescribed should be OK, shouldn’t they? She knew so little.
She had to tell people. Tomorrow morning she would visit Brendan and Kathleen, and afterwards she would call in to Marian and Tom, and in the afternoon she would take the train to Dublin to break the news to her parents, and spend the night.
It would be good if this development brought herself and Kathleen closer together.
She doubted that they’d ever be close, like Kathleen and Marian seemed to be, but she was fond of Brendan, and for his sake she wanted to be on cordial terms with his wife.
Maybe a second grandchild would soften her heartbreak a little, particularly when it was Damien’s child.
And after telling everyone, what then? But even as she asked the question, she knew what the answer must be.
She would go back to her original plan of returning to Dublin as soon as the work on the house was finished. She would need help with the baby, so she would move in with her parents until Chance House was sold and she could get her own place.
She knew they’d be delighted with the news of her pregnancy, and thrilled to be giving their grandchild a home for as long as it was needed. And Lydia would remind herself every day how lucky she was to have them.
She would have to find an apartment on the ground floor, or at least one with a reliable lift, so she didn’t have to climb stairs with a baby and a buggy. And what about the bike? Would she ever get to use it again, once the baby arrived?
Her friends who were already mothers would be a big help. They could recommend crèches and babysitters, and child-friendly places to go for coffee, if she ever felt like drinking coffee again.
She’d talk it all over with her parents tomorrow, see what they had to say.
She planned to take the three o’clock train to Dublin, so she’d have to get the two o’clock bus from the village.
She’d cycle in from Chance House and leave her bike overnight behind Father Phil’s house.
She hadn’t asked him if she could, but she knew he wouldn’t mind.
Andrew was right: it was awkward without a car here.
If she’d been staying long enough to sell Chance House she might have looked for driving lessons.
Susan or Marian would be bound to know someone.
It wouldn’t surprise her if the lollipop man at the school was a driving instructor in his spare time.
Outside the window she heard, for the first time in a while, the quiet hoot of the long-eared owl that lived somewhere in the trees.
Damien had told her what species it was.
She’d never once heard an owl in Dublin, which had amused him no end.
He’d called her a city slicker: she’d told him it was better than being a country bumpkin.
She closed her eyes and roamed back into her memories, hands resting lightly on her abdomen.