Chapter 47
Back in Sandycove, Granny Annie and Johnny were in one of the regatta marquees, drinking tea and eating smoked salmon on soda bread with Lucy.
There was no sign of Henry and I thought about texting him to tell him I was back, but thought that would be a little needy.
What was the point anyway? But the thought of leaving this place, leaving this adventure, leaving him and Patch had begun to weigh on me, a slowly seeping dread, as though heartbreak was imminent.
Was it silly to feel so attached to this place and everyone I had met after only a week?
And yet, the thought of not seeing how it all turned out, how Sheila recovered, how the knitting circle continued, the swimming, the sailing…
or seeing Lucy, Jules and Ellie… and most of all, Henry, was awful.
But this was a vacation and they end. And it was time to move on.
‘Want some of this?’ Johnny’s mouth was full as he pushed a slice of smoked salmon on brown bread towards me. ‘It’s divine. Like bread but not bread. It’s like you’re actually eating something and your body is thanking you, like so grateful for this food. It’s a miracle in flour.’
I batted him off, my head was too full to think. I couldn’t see Henry anywhere. There was a distinct possibility that I would go back to Boston without really seeing him again. Was it too much to hope for one last evening in the Harbour Bar?
‘How is Sheila?’ Granny Annie asked.
‘Recovering,’ I said.
‘I’m going to go in later,’ said Granny Annie. ‘Before the party. Mrs DeCourcey is coming. Everyone is.’
‘Henry mentioned it.’
‘Henry?’ Johnny gave me a look. ‘Well, if Henry mentioned it, you have to come.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’ I was filled with a weird mix of looking forward to something and dreading it. It was a kind of goodbye party as well.
Granny Annie looked at her watch. ‘I just have time,’ she said. ‘And then I want to buy something new to wear.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To see Lolly’s grave,’ she said. ‘Lucy, where would I be able to buy flowers? Is there a shop in the village?’
‘I’m going with you,’ I said.
‘Me too.’ Johnny wiped his mouth with his hands.
‘And me,’ said Lucy. ‘And there’s a really nice flower shop on our way.’
‘Do they do roses?’ said Granny Annie. ‘Lolly loved roses. Proper old-fashioned ones. She used to make bouquets from her mother’s garden and sell them in the market. She always smelled of them.’
The four of us set off, through the village, after stopping to buy a huge bouquet of deeply scented Irish roses, and walked past Harbour Bar, which was thronged with people who had drifted up from the regatta. Someone was barbecuing on the street and handing out sausages in buns.
At the end of the village was the church, and Lucy led us around, skirting on a small gravel path to the side.
‘The graveyard’s at the back,’ said Lucy. ‘We used to play up here all the time, we knew all the names from reading them, some really, really old, going back to the 1800s, and then really new ones.’
We walked along a path which skirted along the side of the church, and then there was a gate and beyond it an area which was more grass than graves, a jumble of lopsided headstones, mossy angels, broken lichen-covered slabs, the names etched into the granite now softened with the years.
‘There’s quite a few of my lot buried in here,’ said Lucy, carefully balancing on the edges of the graves, and zigzagging through.
‘Now, everyone wants to be cremated, but back then, you had to be buried here. Big funeral, the whole village at it, prayers and words from the priest, the choir boys singing. Henry was one of them. Had a very nice voice. Used to sing every Christmas, in his high little voice. And then it broke and he refused to sing ever again. His mother still goes on about his lovely singing voice. Right… where is it?’
We had left the headstones and the names behind and there was a space where a hedge had been planted, but it was sparse and half-dead and we were able to step over it.
And here was a place of green rectangles, all overgrown, the grass long, the wild roses tangling themselves through the edges, the nettles rampant, the dandelions in charge.
One grave was perfect: a rectangle of mown grass, a rose planted in the middle, its creamy-yellow buds just visible, and in the ground a circle of violas.
Lucy turned to us. ‘Lolly’s.’
We stood in silence for a little bit and I thought of Lolly DeCourcey who took her own life because someone wouldn’t look after her, and the loneliness she must have felt.
And her poor mother, driven demented. And then I remembered what people had said about her putting a witch’s curse on the family and how she was mad.
She didn’t seem mad to me. Driven mad by life and circumstance, perhaps, but certainly not deranged.
Sometimes life and circumstance did drive you a bit mad.
I noticed that Granny Annie was crying.
Johnny looked at me, almost horrified. ‘OMG,’ he mouthed.
We waited in silence while Granny Annie stood, her shoulders slumped, her heels sinking into the long grass. And then she turned to us, her eyes red.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Lucy.
‘Thank you,’ said Granny Annie. ‘Thank you for saying that.’
I slipped my arm through hers, Johnny on the other side, and we stood, listening to Granny Annie’s breathing as she cried quietly.
This woman who I thought I knew everything about, who had loved me and taught me so much, how to be strong and resilient, how to take life on and how to win, how to fall and get back up again, how never to show fear or failure, how to count your blessings, how to help those who weren’t so blessed, how to show up every day with a smile on your face.
But she’d never shown me how to cry. And sometimes crying was not just important, but essential.
‘I never really understood why she took her own life,’ Granny Annie said, her voice quiet.
‘It never made sense. You get over things, you move on. We could have got through it. If she’d talked to me, relied on me, there was so much we could have done.
I was her best friend. I would have been there.
Except… for her she didn’t see a way out.
She was too blinded by being betrayed by Oliver, their love wasn’t the great one she had thought, and she was going to be shunned by society.
It was a bleak outlook. I understand it now.
’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘It took me a little while.’
Granny Annie had grown in my estimation, something I’d never thought possible, and at this moment in time, I thought of something I used to think as a child: when I grow up I want to be just like Granny Annie. There at Lolly’s grave, I wanted it more than anything.
Johnny melted into her like the eight-year-old he used to be, and she kissed the top of his head. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’
‘Thank you for bringing me.’ He had bent himself double so he could look up at her. ‘Forget Oprah and all her wisdom. I am surrounded by the most amazing women in my family. You, Mom and this one here…’ He poked me hard in the arm.
‘Ow!’ But I grinned back at him. ‘Love you too, Johnny.’
‘Come on,’ said Granny Annie, ‘let’s go and get ready for the party.’