On Bone Bridge Read online

  When I also missed two appointments with Elaine, she phoned me and I agreed to go and see her, more I think out of concern for her than for myself – she’d sounded so genuinely worried about me when she called.

  When I told her all about the latest development in my life, Elaine’s response was to ask me how that made me feel.

  “How do I feel about the fact that my relationship of fifteen years is over? I feel like absolute shit, that’s how I feel,” I told her. I remember expecting Elaine to be shocked at this but I think she was only surprised. It was the most vigorous expression of emotion she had managed to yank from me over all our sessions.

  “And perhaps it would help to examine the underpinning emotions to what you have just said, Kay – name them individually perhaps?”

  I knew what she meant – she was talking about rage and jealousy and grief and shock and disbelief, the whole can of worms – but in that moment I realised that I felt just one thing when I thought about the entirety of my life with Dominic.

  “The waste,” I said out loud like a revelation, which in a way it was to me. “The awful bloody waste.”

  “Why do you say it was a waste, Kay?” asked Elaine. She leaned slightly forward, real interest on her earnest face.

  “Because it was,” I told her, “and I’ve always known it in my heart. Because always, right from the beginning, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling ...”

  “What was that feeling, Kay?”

  “The feeling that I’m still waiting for my life to begin.”

  I never saw Elaine again. Walking home, I passed an old man sitting on a bench. He was painstakingly peeling an orange and instantly the sharp, bitter-sweet scent of the fruit transported me to our kitchen at home and my mother making marmalade. And in spite of what I had just told Elaine, a feeling of terrible sadness overwhelmed me. Even now, after all that has happened since, I can truly say that I have never felt so sorry for myself in my life as I did in that moment in a London park. I had also never felt so completely alone but that was the moment too when I knew that I was going home.

  Chapter 16

  It did not take me very long to wrap up my life in London and move it back to Dublin. I gave in my notice at work, pleading my father’s health as the reason for my decision. As for my possessions, what I could not take on the plane I packed into two crates which I had collected for shipping on to Dublin. Other than a couple of lamps, some pictures, a silver candelabra I had bought at a jumble sale, a couple of favourite bowls and the miniscule Christmas tree which I refused to leave to the mercy of Dominic, it was mainly clothes and shoes, records, CDs and DVDs. It all only served to reinforce the sense I’d always had that I had been living in Dominic’s home, not ours. The morning I flew home, I watered my collection of plants particularly well, then left one at each door to the other apartments on our floor, all that is, except Matchstick Meg’s. Dominic did not do plants. The keys to his apartment I put in an envelope with his name on the front, which I posted through his new girlfriend’s letterbox in the foyer of the building. I did not trouble to leave a note.

  I moved back into my parents’ home, back into my old bedroom. It felt strange and lonely living there alone but also safe. I picked up a second-hand car but went out only when it was absolutely necessary, to visit the nursing home or to shop. I did not answer the door when Mrs Nugent came knocking and once when she called to me over the hedge as I made a dash for the car I pretended not to hear her. I made a point of visiting my father every day, sometimes going twice in one day. It was, I think, partly in an effort to make up for the times I had not been able to visit him at all – but mostly, if I am honest, because I needed to see him to remind myself that I still belonged to someone because the truth was I was feeling unutterably alone. All my life I had taken it for granted that I had people who loved me; a world in which that was not so was more than I could contemplate.

  The only positive thing about that whole time was that I began writing again; I was not sure why exactly. Out of nowhere the urge struck me and it became my one source of pleasure apart from the times I spent with my father. I considered the possibility that I was one of those people on whom unhappiness acts as a creative charm. But I had been unhappy enough many times during my time in London but had still found myself unable to produce anything I considered worth finishing. It was a long time before I came to understand that it was not a question of happiness or unhappiness, but rather for me a question of place. I should never have gone to London, I had never felt that I fit in there, and so, happy or unhappy, I would never have been able to write anything worth writing there. I was quite simply a home-bird. My father had known it but I’d had to find it out the hard way.

  And so I wrote and went for walks and visited him at the nursing home and then went home and wrote some more and, if I was dissatisfied with my life and completely uncertain about my future, I at least had the satisfaction of knowing that I was in a place where I belonged.

  I was back two weeks when, walking through the town with an unwrapped plunger in my hand, I met Robbie Duff. The kitchen sink was blocked and, in my efforts to unblock it, the wooden handle of the old plunger had snapped.

  This time it was he who noticed me first. My mind was on the renovation work due to start at the house and what an almighty mess that had escalated into, and as a result I did not even see him until he stopped right in front of me and said my name, a little tentatively.

  “Kay, is it Kay? Kay Kelly?”

  His hair was darker than I remembered with strands running it through it of silver and old gold, his face was brown, not so much sun as weather-tanned, and his eyes were as blue as I remembered them but now when he smiled the skin around them crinkled into a tracery of tiny lines.

  “Robbie,” I said, “Robbie Duff.”

  He hugged me then, really hugged me as though he was genuinely pleased to see me.

  “You look great,” he said, “really great.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. I was fairly certain that I looked anything but great. I have always been one of those people who eat when they are happy and stuff themselves when miserable and I had put on at least a stone in the past month.

  “Well, I do, so take my word for it,” said Robbie. “It really is great to see you. Are you still living around here or are you just visiting?”

  “I just moved back recently from London,” I told him and before he could ask anything further I said quickly, “But what has you back here?”

  “I live here now,” said Robbie.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Really? Where?”

  “I bought back the family home a few months ago,” said Robbie. “It needed some work done but it’s ready now. I moved in a fortnight ago.”

  I was stunned. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “I heard that it had been sold but I had no idea. So you’re actually planning to live there permanently?”

  “That’s my plan,” said Robbie and I noticed again his use of the first person singular. “Well, at least as much as my work allows. I have to be away a fair bit lecturing but, yes, that’s the plan, it’s always been the plan. And, to be honest, it’s not like I could afford to keep another place going. Everything I have went into buying back the old place. Dad’s will made it possible – he died three years ago. Well, that and the recession – I’d never have been able to afford it even a few years ago.”

  I liked him more than ever for that admission. “I’m sorry about your father,” I said, “but I’m very happy for you about the house. I remember you told me once that you would buy it back some day and now you have.”

  “Would that be the same time you lectured me about calling you little Kay Kelly? As I recall it, you gave me a good telling-off.”

  “Yes, well, I was sixteen and I had no manners, what can I say?” As I said it, I was thinking of that day when he had kissed me at our front gate. Which made me rush to change the subject without really thinking about what I was saying. “An
d your mother, will she move back in too or are you, is there ...” I stopped just as quickly, realising that if I went on I could rightly be suspected of fishing to find out if he was married or not. But of course he was married, why wouldn’t he be married? Though he had used that first person singular …

  “My mother died,” said Robbie, “just over a month ago.”

  “Oh no, I’m really sorry to hear that,” I said. “Had she been ill?”

  “Well, she had heart problems and other issues too, but to be honest it came as a surprise, even to her doctor. She died in her sleep.”

  He asked after my parents then and I told him about my mother’s death and about my father’s accident.

  He said then, very gently, “Then you’ve been having a tough time, Kay.”

  “No more than you,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. “But I hope that Violet-May and Rosemary-June are well?”

  “Honestly? They’ve both been better. I’m sorry to say Violet-May has left her husband and come back from the States, chasing after some English actor she’s fallen for. She was talking divorce but I get the impression this guy has cooled it now she’s actually left Calvin. As for Rosemary, she lost her husband in a car crash.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Poor Rosemary-June! Does she have any children?”

  “Two, a little girl of three and a boy of almost eighteen months. Actually they’re all arriving back this evening, the two girls and the kids. Violet-May’s been staying with Rosemary since she got back from the States and I’ve managed to talk them both into spending a month here at the house with me.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. Me, he had said me, not us. “Especially for Rosemary-June – she’ll be surrounded by family.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Robbie. “But it’s hard to know what to do for the best sometimes, isn’t it?”

  I watched as he took a swipe at his hair. I thought he seemed distracted, uncertain even, and it made me wonder if he was thinking about the memories the house might stir for both his sisters, the memories that were already stirring in my own mind.

  But then his face lightened. “You’ll have to come over and see them, Kay, and the house too of course. In fact, why not come now?”

  “What – right now?”

  “Yes, why not? Unless you have somewhere else to be of course?”

  “No, at least not until later this evening when I go to visit my father.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Robbie. “The car’s just over there, or are you driving yourself?”

  “No, I walked.”

  “To buy a plunger, I take it?”

  And I looked down with something like wonder at what I held in my hand. I had completely forgotten the plunger.

  There are only two details I can recall about the Duff house that day. The rhododendrons were running riot and the front door had been painted royal blue instead of the yellow I remembered. Aside from that, all my other recollections of that visit are of the emotions and sensations it evoked in me. Even the smart new blue paint of the front door brought me back to that first time when I had stood on the step and knocked and Mr Duff had welcomed me inside.

  “Did it need a lot of work?” I said. “The house?”

  “A lot of painting, certainly,” said Robbie, “but structurally it was all still sound.”

  “And all that lovely furniture, what happened to that when you moved?”

  “That was all shipped to England lock, stock and barrel when the house was sold. A fair bit of it has come back now though.”

  There was a quiet satisfaction in Robbie’s voice which was impossible to miss.

  “Do you want to go in and have a look around inside now?” he said. “Or would you rather walk around the garden first? I have to admit there’s been little or no work done on the outside yet – the shrubbery is completely overgrown, especially up close to the house. But all in good time.”

  “Walk, please,” I said and we set off on a tour of the grounds, covering almost every part of it and in every corner memories big or small were triggered. Perhaps it was the same for Robbie because he was very quiet but that suited me fine.

  At one point he said, “I’ve been trying to find Prince’s grave. I have a feeling it was somewhere round here but I can’t remember where exactly.”

  “You shouldn’t have thrown away the cross,” I said.

  “No, I shouldn’t,” he said, turning to me with a rueful smile. “You know, I seem to remember I was quite rude to you that day.”

  “I was being a nuisance,” I said. The fact that he had remembered I was there at all that day was not only surprising but gratifying.

  “Not a nuisance,” said Robbie. “You were being what you always were – kind little Kay Kelly. You know you’re different every time I see you? You’re like some sort of creature that sheds its skin every few years.”

  “You do know you’ve effectively just called me a reptile?” I said.

  Robbie laughed. “Not quite what I had intended,” he said.

  “I forgive you,” I said. “But what do you expect? You first met me when I was ten, and again when I was sixteen. I’m thirty-nine now – of course I’m different every time you see me.”

  “I didn’t mean the way you look,” said Robbie.

  He didn’t say what he had meant.

  “Yes, well, losing people will do that,” I said.

  “Has there been a lot of loss, Kay?” he said. “And do you mind my asking?”

  “No, I don’t mind.” The way he phrased the question reminded me of his father, that gentle old-world courtesy at which it was hard to take offence.

  “My mother you know about, and there was a long-term relationship that came to an abrupt end – not a marriage, we were never married.”

  I did not mention that other loss but I was thinking about it.

  He watched me thoughtfully before saying gently, “You’re right, Kay, losing the people we love does change us.”

  It was then, looking into his eyes, that for the first time in a long while, Alexander Duff’s small face came into my mind. I saw him clearly, the plump feverish cheeks with a red moon on each, the fine blonde hair and long fair eyelashes. A sense of loss and grief descended on me, so strong I had to turn away pretending to inspect something in a nearby flower bed, for fear Robbie would see it.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave seeing the house for another day,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Robbie. “Are you alright, Kay? Can I get you something, some water or a coffee or something?”

  “No, I’m fine thanks. I just need to go home.”

  “Then I’ll drop you there?”

  “You don’t have to, I’m fine to walk.”

  “I insist,” said Robbie. “I’m assuming home is where it used to be?”

  I nodded. Yes, I was thinking, I’m right back where I began and with nothing to show for it: no husband, no child, no book, not much of anything at all really. My mood took a further nosedive and perhaps Robbie sensed it because as we drove home he tried to keep things light.

  “Do you still have an interest in writing?” he asked.

  It pleased and surprised me that he remembered that about me, but then I had to tell him about my first little foray into publishing and my miserable failures since. He, however, did not appear to see it that way and urged me not to give up.

  “Actually,” I admitted, “I have been writing again, but only since I came back to Ireland. I’ve started on a new book.”

  “But that’s wonderful, really wonderful. Maybe you needed to come home to find your voice again. I find it hard to even try to visualise you in a London setting. But now you’ve come home you need to be what you were obviously meant to be – be a writer, Kay!”

  We had pulled up outside my front gate by then and, while I was fumbling with my seatbelt, Robbie got out of the car and I realised that he was planning to open my door for me. I remember thinking with a pleased li
ttle shock: he’s looking out for me, the way he’s looking out for his sisters, because we are women. And I thought I recognised it for what it was: chivalry, out of date and un-politically correct, but as natural to Robbie Duff as it had been to his father before him. There was nothing disrespectful or patronising about it – the opposite in fact – and it made me like him all the more. But I was already pushing open the door myself by the time he got there. He held it open though as I stepped out and walked with me to the gate. I wondered if he was expecting to be asked in and the thought came to me that somewhere the ghosts of my ten and sixteen-year-old selves were probably hugging themselves with delight. But I realised that I did not want him to come in just then. Just then I wanted to be alone.