Chapter Three
‘How come she used to be Gary?’ I ask, stroking the gentle dog’s head.
‘She was abandoned, down on the beach. Probably a summer surfing crowd, thought she looked cool. They hadn’t even worked out what sex she was.’ He pushes through the gears and we head off out of town along the coast. Grace lies down, her front legs over my lap, and I’m grateful for the distraction.
‘So what kind of a farm is it?’ I finally think of something sensible to ask.
‘Sorry?’ He looks at me and then back at the road.
He indicates and we veer off up a single-track lane.
The van sways from side to side, much like when I was in the camper van, only this time there’s a Great Dane in the cab too.
Her hair’s whizzing round as the heaters blow warm air at us and it feels like I’m inside a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
‘I mean, are you pigs, cows, arable …?’ All of which I know nothing about, but as it sounds like the job’s going to be office-based, it doesn’t much matter to me. I quite like the idea of looking out on fields of wheat or corn.
My new boss laughs, which is a little unnerving and actually a little irritating too.
‘This is Galway, you know that much, right?’ He looks from me to the road and back at me again.
I nod. He grips the steering wheel and laughs some more.
‘Look around you.’ He waves towards the scenery.
‘It’s nothing but bog land.’ He points to one side of the road. ‘Not much good for anything.’
I’m confused. On the other side of the road there’s nothing but the sea. He gives another little laugh, irritating me some more. His dark curls shake.
‘I’m an oyster farmer. That’s my farm out there.’ He points to the vast expanse of sea. I wonder if he’s joking, but he isn’t, I can tell by his face.
Holy cow! I sink into my seat. Why on earth hadn’t I asked before? What am I going to do now?
The single-track lane comes to an end. There’s a ‘no entry’ sign and the lane turns into an overgrown track.
If I thought the road before was rough, it was nothing in comparison to this.
My soup feels like it’s sloshing around in my stomach and for a moment I’m worried it’s going to come back up again.
Finally we come to a pair of gates to the right of the track and Sean pulls in. There’s another ‘no entry’ sign.
He drives the van down a slope and then yanks on the handbrake, hard.
There’s a large green corrugated shed in front of us, behind that a small white cottage.
To my right is the ruin of a house, or maybe a barn.
It’s an old white stone building with a russet-coloured corrugated roof.
It may once have been thatched. Now it just looks tired and abandoned.
The irony of that isn’t lost on me. And beyond that …
water, lots and lots of water, which is probably as bad as it gets for someone who’s terrified of the stuff.
As I push open the heavy van door and step out, the smell hits me as quickly as the wind.
Salt and seaweed scratch at a memory and give me goosebumps.
The wind slaps me across the cheeks, even harder than before, stinging this time.
It’s like it’s punishing me for being so stupid.
Strands of my hair whip my eyeballs like an unruly mob on the rampage.
Peeling them back I can see Sean picking his way up some higgledypiggledy concrete steps to the cottage behind the big green shed.
I cling to the door, using it as a shield against the weather. This is supposed to be June!
Grace pushes past me, nearly making my knees buckle as she catapults from the van over to the rocks, sniffing for messages. It’s a bit like texting for dogs, I think. She stops and leaves her reply.
I stare out. There’s a stream right in front of me, dodging and tumbling over rocks to the bay beyond it.
The bay itself is surrounded by craggy, rugged hills, their tops shrouded in mist. There’s a stillness and a quiet, apart from the wind and the lapping of the waves, that I’m not used to.
I feel like I’ve fallen off the edge of the map.
There are two orange buoys, one each at the furthest points of the bay, like someone’s marked out their patch.
But apart from that there’s really nothing to see.
No sign of any kind of farming. No big fishing boats or pens.
The only sign of any oyster activity is a huge pile of oyster shells just inside the gate, a mountain of them.
Maybe Sean just likes to eat them, a lot.
I can’t believe anyone actually lives out here; there’s no shops, no café, no pub, no …
I look around, nothing. To say I feel like a fish out of water is a pretty accurate description.
What do people do out here? How do they make a living?
A rough, rocky footpath leads down to the water and another snakes around the edge of the shore, away from the house where Grace is now slowly investigating more messages and sending more replies.
‘You coming?’ my new boss shouts from the front door of the cottage.
The wind’s blowing his hair around wildly.
I shut the van door with effort. I wonder if I should leave there and then, say I’m not staying, that I’m terrified of water and that I might as well have landed on the moon, it’s all so alien to me.
But where would I go? I’ve got no money, no clothes, no transport.
I pull out my phone from the front pocket of my hoodie.
No phone signal either. Even if I wanted to call someone, I couldn’t.
But I don’t want to. I turn the phone off and shove it back in my pocket. No phone, no Facebook, no emails.
I’ll have to take my chances and stay, just for a while, until I can work out where to go next.
I take a deep breath and make my way unsteadily across to the path leading to the cottage.
The ground’s uneven, on a slope with lots of tiny stones.
I’m still wearing gold mules. I feel ridiculous, cold and very alone.
The cottage is small and white with a grey slate roof.
The paint on the red front door is peeling.
I take a good look at the place that’s to be my home, maybe for the next few months.
Home. I feel a twist of sickness in my stomach as I remember our flat: a modern, purpose-built block.
Not like the room I’d had above Betty’s when I first met Brian.
The flat had all mod cons … not like this place, with its peeling paintwork and pebble-dashed walls.
At home we were right in the town, everything was close by – shops, banks, restaurants and pubs.
I look around me. There’s nothing here. But at least something’s finally working in my favour.
No one’s ever going to find me here, no one at all.
A noise like a fog horn makes me jump,
Eeee awwwww! Eeeeee awwwww! I look out to sea but there’s nothing.
I turn back and look the other way, beyond the cottage to the fields behind it.
Two small donkeys are standing by a stone wall.
One has his head held high and is rolling back his lips, making him look like Mick Jagger.
He’s the source of the noise. I wonder if it’s some kind of battle cry, like a guard dog.
I grip the neck of my hoodie. Beyond the donkeys, or mules, or whatever they are, there’s another field with some kind of wooden hut that’s fenced in.
Another noise shatters the silence. A huge bird is stretching its wings and joining the donkey in its chorus with a loud ‘Honk! Honk!’ The closest I’ve ever come to farm animals was a day trip to the city farm when I was a kid.
Since then it’s been a chicken wrapped in cellophane at Tesco’s checkout.
I hurry on to the cottage door, quickly glancing back at the sea and wondering how on earth I’m going to cope with the fear it fills me with.
I’m desperate to get in out of the wind and to meet Sean’s wife and kids. Getting lost in a family could be just what I need right now. I force a smile, run my hands over my dress and step inside, bracing myself for the fuss that my arrival would inevitably create.
Inside, there’s a dampness in the air. I give a little involuntary shiver. It’s colder than I was expecting. And a lot more quiet.
Sean’s gathering up what appears to be washing hanging on the backs of mismatched chairs. The kitchen table is pushed up against a big window looking out to sea.
‘Sorry. I’m not used to guests.’ He grabs a final T-shirt and adds it to the pile spilling over in his arms.
‘Oops.’ I catch a dark blue woollen jumper before it falls and put it on top of the unruly heap.
He heads to a door at the far end of the room, leaving me to look round the kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-living-room-cum-office, by the looks of the paper pile in the corner.
To say it’s not what I was expecting is an understatement.
There’s a small kitchen area, a red settee and a black pot-bellied stove.
There’s a pile of washing-up in the sink and dog food on the table next to a pile of thick rope.
There’s a guitar and a leaning tower of CDs beside the sofa.
The window looks down the stream to the sea beyond, making it feel as though you’re on board a ship. It’s cold and unwelcoming.