Chapter 30
PATRICK
Patrick swam in long overarm strokes to the yellow buoy which was tethered fifty yards out to sea.
The water was calm, a gentle lapping, and for a moment he held on to the rope.
Ireland was beautiful, he thought, looking back at the land.
It wasn’t only the natural beauty, the rocks and the seabirds, the lovely old villas with their shell house names or the sea thistles and sea thrifts and the whites and pinks of the valerians which tumbled down off the walls.
It was the way people were with each other.
The group of women who were drying off after their swim, one of them telling a story in a loud voice and making the rest of them squeal with laughter.
Or the two men who were chatting together, their faces serious, and then when Patrick drew close to them, he heard they were discussing Ireland’s chances in qualifying for the Euro football finals.
‘We haven’t a hope in hell,’ one of them was saying.
‘Unless we all start believing in miracles again.’
And then he spotted someone, stepping over the rocks, leaving her bag on the old wooden bench, beyond the laughing women. It was Rosie.
She slipped off her flip-flops and then reached up, pulling off her dress, revealing her swimsuit, and then, folding everything up, she walked to the edge of the sea, her hands shielding her eyes and looking around.
Patrick could hardly breathe. Of all places to meet but in the sea.
Rosie turned as two small children ran up to her, saying something he couldn’t hear.
They too began changing. From behind the buoy, Patrick looked at Rosie.
She was even more beautiful than she had been ten years ago.
Even this morning in her hoodie and pyjamas, she’d looked gorgeous.
And now, in that red one-piece, the sun glinting off her hair, the way she stood…
the shape of her. She was laughing at something one of the children had said and, taking them in either hand, the three of them began stepping carefully down the barnacle-encrusted rocky steps, into the sea.
How could he leave without being caught? He could swim right around the headland, and to the harbour and beach on the other side. Or he could swim the other direction and wade to shore.
She wasn’t going to come in very deep, not with the children, the ones he’d met the night before and had been so sweet and chatty.
They both had their armbands on and were now hanging off the railings.
The little boy was clambering upside down like a monkey, while the little girl had plunged into the sea, screaming as the cold hit her body.
They wouldn’t be in long. Rosie surely had to be back in the hotel and perhaps he could stay here until they left.
He could swim out a bit further. He turned back to look at Rosie again, watching her, as she now left the children behind on the steps, pushing through the water, disappearing under the surface and then reappearing, twisting around to float on her back and see the children.
Their voices carried over to him, as Rosie twirled in the sea, her arms propelling her along, and then lifting herself out of the water, her hair plastered back off her head.
He was transfixed.
‘It’s the nice man!’ The boy was pointing at him. ‘The magic welly man!’
Rosie turned, again shading her eyes. Hers found his, and for a moment the world was still. It was the two of them, no one else, no other sound, nothing. Just them.
And then the moment passed and there was nothing else he could do, except let go of the buoy and wave.
The little girl was waving back. ‘Show us your swimming,’ she called.
He didn’t know what she meant exactly, but he managed to perform a few tricks, the kind that easily impressed children would enjoy.
He pretended to be a shark by swimming on his side, with a poked-out elbow fin.
He then disappeared under the sea, his feet reappearing first. He even managed to perform what he thought could be a kind of porpoise where he shimmied along the surface.
The children clapped and cheered at this one-man synchronised-swimming routine.
Patrick glanced at Rosie and she too was laughing, which was all he cared about, if he was honest. He might never see her again after these two more days and he was struck suddenly by how tragic it was that the one person he wanted to talk to was the person it was hardest to talk to and he was about to leave her all over again, for the second time in his life.
Eventually, he ran out of aquatic tricks and made his way to the steps, where the twins were now getting in the water and dragging him back in.
He floated around in the shallows with the children, chasing them in the water, rising out of the sea like a giant sea creature, the two of them shrieking and hanging off him.
He floated on his back and they held on as though he was a life raft.
Rosie sat on the lower steps, half-submerged by the sea, shielding her eyes from the sun so he couldn’t see her expression.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ she said. ‘You can play by yourselves, can’t you?’
The twins nodded but he didn’t mind because he was enjoying himself.
He hadn’t had such carefree messing around for years.
The twins were charming and polite and it was lovely to be around them, living in the moment, with nothing to gain from life except to squeeze as much joy as possible out of it.
Eventually, Rosie stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said.
‘If you both get dressed really quickly, we might have time for an ice cream.’ She reached out to pull the twins up and they grasped her hands, wet and splashy, laughing, the sun in their eyes, hanging off her, as though their legs had stopped working.
‘Isabelle, Killian, come on! There’s an ice cream at stake! ’ she said.
‘Ice cream and steak?’ said Killian, still twisting around, on the second step, his feet in the clear water.
‘Killian, seriously. We’re not going to have time,’ warned Rosie, and Killian, realising how much danger he was in, quickly stopped and dashed to his clothes, where Isabelle was already wriggling out of her suit and back into her shorts and T-shirt.
Patrick was also getting out and, for a moment, as he ducked behind Rosie, he was acutely aware that under no circumstances should their bodies touch, even the lightest brush, the slightest whisper.
Rosie turned to face Patrick as he pulled himself up using the railings, and standing to his full height, her eyes for a moment flickered over him and then she looked away.
He focused on getting changed back into his shorts and shirt.
When they were all changed, they reconvened beside the bench. ‘Time for a quick ice cream?’ Rosie said, smiling at him.
He found himself nodding, not able to think of anything to say.
So far from the smooth-talking Patrick Power of Boston.
But, actually, it wasn’t because he had so little to say, he actually had so much he wanted to say, he just wasn’t sure he could keep it all in. Luckily, the twins filled the silence.
‘What’s your favourite ice cream?’ Isabelle asked him.
‘Mine’s raspberry riddle,’ said Killian.
‘Mine’s a 99,’ said Isabelle.
‘Ah, old-school,’ approved Patrick, finally able to find his voice.
Was this happening? Was he really about to go for an ice cream with Rosie O’Malley, who he thought he had lost completely, a remnant from another age, someone he had lost so many nights thinking about?
It wasn’t quite real, somehow, but he found himself walking with Rosie and her niece and nephew towards the ice cream van and he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt quite so happy.