Chapter Ten
I’m armed with a large stick and hen pellets.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with the stick but it’s making me feel braver.
I’ve managed to feed Freddie and Mercury by hanging over the gate to put buckets down with outstretched arms. The hens flew at me to get to their food and I ended up dropping most of it, but they seem happy pecking it off the ground. Now it’s the turn of the geese.
I open the gate to their field. I can hear them stomping around, demanding to be let out.
If I let them out they’ll run at me. I remember their yellow staring eyes from yesterday.
I have my arms wide, my hat pulled down, and I feel like I’m staking out the enemy.
My heart is pounding. What if they all fly at me at once?
They have huge wings and I remember reading somewhere they can break your arm with one beat.
With a huge deep breath I pull back the latch.
Out they rush. I drop the bucket and run.
The gate is in reach but as soon as I stop to open it a goose is going to goose me.
There’s only one thing to do. I focus and then practically throw myself over the gate in a gymnastic move I wasn’t able to master in my school days.
I land in a heap. It makes my aching body cry out in pain, but I’ve cleared the gate.
A goose is eyeballing me, strutting up and down in frustration.
Its wings are still outstretched, its beak open, seeing me off.
I stand up stiffly and stare. It’s not coming beyond the fence. I did it!
I turn back towards the cottage. My body hurts with every step I take, but on the plus side, it’s stopped raining. I try not to look at the sea, as though I’m avoiding eye-contact with it. I find it helps.
As well as the house being empty, the cupboard’s empty too. No tea. I can’t function without tea. I have no idea when Sean will be back, and by the looks of it we can’t start work with the oysters until the tide is out. I’m going to go and track down some tea.
‘Grace!’ I call, and she catapults back into the house, her legs flying in all directions. Her tail knocks over the stack of CDs and a leaning paper pile.
My shoulders, my feet and my back ache with every step. Grace gambols along behind me down the lane, then I put her on the lead and we follow the road, squeezing into the low stone walls when a car passes.
The petrol station is a surprise. Downstairs is a small supermarket and upstairs a range of cheap clothing and outdoor wear in amongst buckets, spades and pony nuts. I gather up some joggers, T-shirts, a hoodie, tennis socks and pants.
‘It’s promised rain,’ says the big-busted woman behind the counter as she rings up my clothes, tea bags and milk.
‘Sorry?’ I ask, pulling out a note from my coat pocket.
‘It’s promised rain,’ she repeats with a smile.
‘Oh yes,’ I reply, realising she’s making polite weather chat.
‘You on holiday?’ She holds out her hand for the note.
‘No, I’m, er, I’m working here.’ I hand over the money.
‘Oh, where?’ She taps the money into the till and it opens.
‘At the oyster farm, with Sean Thornton,’ I reply. Her eyebrows shoot up and she cocks her head to one side.
‘Well, welcome and good luck,’ she says, handing me my change. But her eyebrows haven’t come down to meet the rest of her face yet. ‘I’m Rosie, by the way. Me and my sister Lily run this place. Give us a yell if there’s anything you need. What’s your name?’
‘Fi,’ I say, gathering up my tea and milk.
‘Well, Fi, like I say, if there’s anything you need …’
I look down at my change. The last of my money is going quickly. I skirt round the man in the queue behind me.
‘Hello, Seamus, it’s promised rain,’ she says as she rings in his goods.
‘Aye, it is.’
I know they’re both looking at me.
I step out through the sliding doors and the promised rain hits me horizontally in the face.
I grab Grace’s lead and put my head down.
I’m making my way back out of town when I practically fall over a sign in the road for The Tea Pot Café.
There’s an awning outside the little café that was once red and white.
The need for tea gets the better of me. It’s a long walk home and this way I can avoid a soaking at least once today.
I tie up Grace under the awning and dive in for a quick cuppa while the worst of the rain passes.
The warm café is full of steam and the windows are misted up with condensation.
The steam’s coming from a big silver urn behind the counter.
I feel like the Doctor stepping out of the TARDIS, waiting to discover if he’s landed somewhere hostile or friendly.
There’s a ripple of gossip; it’s practically tangible.
The room’s warm but the atmosphere is frosty.
I shouldn’t have come in, I should have headed straight back to the cottage.
I thought it was going to be like The Coffee House back home.
No one takes a blind bit of notice of each other in there.
‘Is that her?’ someone whispers. I turn to see a chubby woman in a delphinium blue crocheted hat with a large pink and blue flower on the side, a poncho and fingerless gloves, all in matching blue.
She’s knitting. I recognise the woman next to her as Evelyn from the pub.
She has sharp, small features, like a ferret.
She gives me a stern stare and leans into her friend as if I can’t hear her.
‘Yes, crashed a camper and is now living with Sean Thornton up at Tom’s farm.’
There’s a round of tutting. I’m not ‘living with Sean Thornton’!
I look around at the others shaking their heads.
I recognise some of them from the pub. The one Sean referred to as Frank is there, tucking into a sorry-looking cooked breakfast. And there’s one of the barflies, in the shell suit and baseball cap.
He’s drinking from a mug that looks like it’s been sitting there some time, judging by the dried drips down the side. They both nod in my direction.
John Joe, Evelyn’s husband, leans over and adjusts his hearing aid.
‘Wassat, my love?’ The hearing aid makes a high-pitched whistling noise.
‘Shh,’ Evelyn says in unison with the crocheted woman, who smiles at me and nods and carries on knitting, her eyes on me and her ears on Evelyn.
‘It was never like that in my day,’ John Joe says in a loud voice but with a look that says he thinks he’s whispering.
‘Families and communities stuck together. You didn’t go bringing in outsiders to work for you.
Typical of that young Thornton,’ he tuts.
My cheeks begin to burn and my eyes start to smart.
That familiar feeling of death by embarrassment is creeping round the back of my neck and into the pit of my stomach.
‘In my day this place was the oyster capital of the world, the very best,’ says a man in a wheelchair, waving his hands around expansively.
‘Yes, yes, Grandad,’ Evelyn silences him with flapping hands.
I look around the café. It’s full of bits and pieces and they look to be for sale: ‘a pair of slippers, worn, 50 cents’, the little white label says; ‘a make-up bag, very worn, 50 cents’. There’s even a dressing gown, faded pink velour, hanging on the door into the toilets, 2 euro.
‘Urn’s been playing up.’ A big man appears from behind the counter in a puff of steam and points a thick thumb behind him. He’s got a Marilyn Monroe tattoo on his forearm and a triangular beard. ‘What can I get you?’ He rubs his hands together.
‘Er, tea, to take away please,’ I add, desperate to get out of there.
He turns to the steaming urn and over one shoulder says loudly, ‘So, you’re the new girl they’re all talking about. How do you like things?’
Stunned that I’m the focus of so much unwanted attention, I don’t know whether to nod or shake my head and sort of do both by rolling my head in a circle.
I manage a quick glance over my shoulder to see all eyes staring back at me.
I just need to get out of the gossip coliseum as quickly as possible without being rude.
Suddenly there’s a thump.
‘Ah, feckin’ urn.’ The café owner gives it another thump as it makes a whining, dying sound and the steam disappears.
Looks like my quick exit has just become a slow and painful one.
‘Won’t be a tick. Just need to boil the kettle.
Take a seat.’ He points to the tables covered in wipe-down tablecloths.
I don’t feel I can tell him I really don’t want the tea any more. He’s going to so much effort. There’s a wall of interested faces looking at me as I turn and try to work out where to sit. Seats are shuffled and I’ll have to share a table with someone. Then I spot a lifeline.
‘Could I use the internet?’ I point to the computer at a table in the corner.
‘Help yourself. It’s a euro for half an hour. It’s all gobbledygook to me but work away, work away,’ he says, dropping tea bags into a stainless steel pot.
‘Thanks.’ I put my head down and slide in behind the computer, which is now acting like a screen between me and the rest of the café.
I skulk down as low as I can in the chair.
I don’t even know what I am going to do on it.
It’s not like I’m going to update my Facebook status with ‘Having a crackin’ time in Galway.
Rain, rain, rain’. I’m avoiding Facebook and emails, I remind myself. I don’t want anyone to know where I am.
I look up the weather forecast back home.
Sunny with some cloud. Then I Google some jobs pages but don’t know where to put as a location.
My fingers hover over the keys. I can’t help myself.
I type in my password and find my fingers instinctively leading me to Brian’s Facebook page, just to see how he’s doing.
I look over the top of the computer. The interrogation committee are still waiting. I take a deep breath and click on Brian’s profile.
Everything seems as it always did. He still likes Status Quo and The Coffee House. He’s still in Cardiff. He still works at Western Radio FM. Then I spot it. My eyeballs start to burn with humiliation and anger. I feel faint, lightheaded. The words swirl on the page in front of me.
‘In a relationship with …’
Hot angry tears feel like acid rain as they slide down my face.
I feel like writing on his wall, ‘I’m so glad you’re happy!
You’ve ruined my life!’ But I won’t. I’m too ashamed.
He has it all and I have nothing, absolutely nothing.
Not for the first time in my life my mooring has been cut and the rope is flapping around and I’m drifting directionless.
I read it and reread it.
‘In a relationship with … Adrian Polsey!’ it says.
Our best man! a voice shouts in my head as I bite the corner of my sleeve. I think we can safely say Brian has moved on.