The weather was bright – no need for the umbrellas or wellington boots. Packed lunches were prepared already and in waxed paper for those who wanted them. Others had the names of pubs listed.
By ten o’clock, all the guests had left Stone House and Mrs Starr’s niece Orla had arrived to do the bedrooms. A routine had been established. It was as if this holiday had been up and running for years rather than taking its first faltering steps.
Winnie and Lillian had chosen the cliff walk. Four miles with spectacular views, then you would arrive in West Harbour. There they would go to Brady’s Bar. And after lunch, they would catch the bus that left every hour for Stoneybridge.
Winnie looked back longingly at Stone House.
How good it would be to go back and sit with Mrs Starr at the table having further tea and fresh soda bread and talk about the world. Instead, she had hours of competitive banter with Lillian Hennessy. But by the time they got to Brady’s Bar, Winnie felt her shoulder muscles had relaxed. The views had been as spectacular as had been promised. Lillian had been mercifully untalkative.
Now, however, she was back to her opinionated self.
‘It was a pleasant walk, certainly, but not really challenging,’ she pronounced.
‘Beautiful scenery. I could look at that big sky for ever,’ Winnie said.
‘Oh, indeed, but we should go the other way tomorrow, take the route south. There’s much more to see, Mrs Starr said. All those little creeks, inlets; we can look in the caves.’
‘It looked like a trickier route. Let’s see if any of the others have done it first.’ Winnie was cautious.
‘Oh, they’re all sheep. They won’t take on anything adventurous. That’s what we came for, isn’t it, Winnie? One last gesture to fight the elements before we settle into middle age.’
‘You aren’t settling anywhere,’ Winnie said.
‘No, but you are showing dangerous signs of becoming very middle-aged. Where’s your spirit, Winnie? Tomorrow we’ll take a packed lunch and hit the south face of Stoneybridge.’
Winnie smiled as if in agreement. She hadn’t a notion of putting herself at risk because Lillian was playing games. But that could all be dealt with tomorrow morning. In the meantime, she would just put in the time being charming and pleasant and unruffled. The prize was Teddy.
Please, dear, kind God, may he be worth it all.
They went back to Stone House on the bus and the guests were coming back from their excursions. The log fire blazed in the hearth. Everyone was drinking tea and eating scones. It was as if they had always lived this life.
At dinner, Winnie sat across from Freda, who said she was an assistant librarian. Winnie explained that she was a nurse.
‘Do you have an attachment?’ Freda asked.
‘No, I work through an agency; a different hospital every day, really.’
‘I actually meant a love attachment.’
Lillian was listening. ‘We are all a bit past love interests at our age,’ she tinkled.
‘I don’t know . . .’ Freda was thoughtful. ‘I’m not.’
‘Very odd woman, that,’ Lillian said later, in a whisper.
‘I thought she was good fun, I must say,’ Winnie said.
‘As I’ve said before, Winnie, you are totally undemanding. It’s amazing how little you ask from life!’
Winnie’s lips stretched into a smile. ‘That’s me,’ she simpered. ‘As you said, easily pleased.’
All the others were talking about tomorrow’s weather. Storms coming in from the south, Mrs Starr said, great care needed. These creeks and inlets filled up very rapidly; even local people had been fooled by the strength of the winds and tides. Winnie sighed with relief. At least Lillian’s daft plan of behaving like an explorer would be cancelled.
But when they took their packed lunch next morning, Lillian headed straight in the direction that they had been warned against. Winnie paused for an instant. She could refuse to go. But then Lillian was possibly right. Mrs Starr was being overcautious to cover herself.
Winnie could do it. She was thirty-four years of age, for God’s sake. Lillian was fifty-three, at the very least. She had put up with so much already, invested so much time and patience – she wouldn’t check out now.
And at first, it was exhilarating. The spray was salty and the rocks large, dark and menacing. The cries of the wild birds and the pounding of the sea made talking impossible. They strode on together, pausing to look out over the Atlantic and realise that the next land was three thousand miles away in the United States.
Then they found the entrance to Majella’s Cave that Mrs Starr had told them about. It was sheltered there and the wind wasn’t cutting them in half. They sat on a rocky ledge to open the bread and cheese and flask of soup that had been packed for them. Their eyes were stinging, their cheeks were red and whipped by the wind and sea air. They both felt fit and alive and very hungry.
‘I’m glad we battled on and came here,’ Winnie said, ‘it was well worth it.’
‘You didn’t want to really,’ Lillian was triumphant. ‘You thought I was being foolhardy.’
‘Well if I did, I was wrong. It’s good to push yourself a bit.’ As she spoke, Winnie felt a great slosh of water across her face – a wave had come deep into the cave. Oddly, it was not withdrawing out to sea again as they thought it would; rather it was followed by several more waves coming in and splashing around their feet. The two women moved backwards speedily. But still they came, the dark, cold waters, hardly giving any time for the previous wave to recede. Wordlessly, they climbed to an even higher ledge. They would be fine here, well above the water level.
The waves kept coming, and in an attempt to scramble even higher, Lillian kicked the two canvas bags that had held their picnic, their mobile phones and the warm dry socks. They watched as the waves carried the bags out to sea.
‘How long does it take for the tide to change?’ Lillian asked.
‘Six hours, I think,’ Winnie was crisp.
‘They’ll come for us then,’ Lillian said.
‘They don’t know where we are,’ Winnie said.
They didn’t speak any more then. Only the sound of the wind and waves filled Majella’s Cave.
‘I wonder who Majella was?’ Winnie said after a long time.
‘There was a Saint Gerard Majella,’ Lillian said doubtfully. It was the first time that she had ever spoken without a sense of certainty.
‘Very probably,’ Winnie agreed. ‘Let’s hope he had a good record in getting people out of situations, whoever he was.’
‘You agreed to come. You said you were happy we had battled on.’
‘I was. At the time.’
‘Do you pray?’ Lillian asked.
‘No, not much. Do you?’
‘I used to once. Not now.’
There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, so they sat in silence listening to the crashing of the waves and the howling of the wind. There was only one higher ledge, which they might have to climb up on if things got worse.
They were cold and wet and frightened.
And they were of no help to each other.
Winnie wondered would they die here. She thought about Teddy, and how Mrs Starr would have to break the news to him. He would never know that her last hours had been filled with a cold hatred of his mother and with a sense of huge regret that she had allowed herself to be sucked into this idiotic game of pretence which could only end badly. But, truly, who could have known how badly?
She couldn’t see Lillian’s face, but she sensed her shoulders shivering and the chattering of her teeth. She must be frightened too. But it was her bloody fault. Still, however they got there, they were both in it together now.
After an age, she said, ‘It doesn’t really matter one way or another, but why are we here together? In Stoneybridge, I mean. You hated me on sight. But we both love Teddy, that should be a bond, shouldn’t it?’ This was the first time that love for Teddy had ever been
mentioned. Here in Majella’s Cave, as they faced death by drowning or hypothermia. Up to now, Winnie had been treated as some menopausal old fool who was keeping an eye on Teddy for them both.
‘I love Teddy,’ Winnie said loudly. ‘And he loves you, so I tried to get to know you and like you. That’s all.’
‘It hasn’t worked though, has it?’ said Lillian grimly. ‘We got here by accident. I didn’t want to be here with you any more than you wanted to be with me. You found the place, Stone House, you went along with coming here today. And now look at us.’
A silence.
‘Say something, ask something,’ Lillian begged.
‘How old are you, Lillian?’
‘Fifty-five.’
‘You look a lot less.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Why do you pretend that you and I are the same age? You were twenty-one when I was born.’
‘Because I wanted you to go away, to leave Teddy as he was, with me.’
Another silence.
Eventually Winnie spoke. ‘Well, in the end neither of us got him.’
‘Do you think we’re going to get out of here?’ The voice had aged greatly. This was not Lillian of the Certainties.
Some small amount of compassion seeped through to Winnie’s subconscious. She tried to beat it back but it was there.
‘They say you have to be positive and keep active,’ she said, shifting around on the ledge.
‘Active? Here? What can we do to be positive here?’
‘I know that. We can’t move. I suppose we could sing.’
‘Sing, Winnie? Have you lost your marbles?’
‘You did ask.’
‘OK, start then.’
Winnie paused to think. Her mother’s favourite song had been ‘Carrickfergus’.
I wish I had you in Carrickfergus,
Only three miles on from Ballygrand.
I would swim over the deepest ocean
Thinking of days there in Ballygrand . . .
She paused. To her astonishment, Lillian joined in.
But the seas are deep and I can’t swim over,
And neither more have I wings to fly.
I wish I could find me a handy boatman,
Would ferry over my love and I.
Then they both stopped to think about the words they had just sung.
‘There might have been a more inappropriate song if I could have thought of it,’ Winnie apologised.
For the first time, she heard a genuine laugh from Lillian. This was not a tinkle, a put-down or a sneer. She actually found it funny.
‘You could have picked “Cool Clear Water”, I suppose,’ she said eventually.
‘Your call,’ Winnie said.
Lillian sang ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Teddy’s father had sung it to her the night before he was killed on the combine harvester, she said.
Winnie sang ‘Only The Lonely’. She had found the record shortly after her father had married the strange, distant stepmother who made jewellery. Then Lillian sang ‘True Love’, and said that she had always hoped to meet someone again after Teddy’s father had died but never did. She had worked long hours and tried too hard to make them people of importance in Rossmore. There had been no time for love.
Winnie sang ‘St Louis Blues’. She had once won a talent competition by singing it in a pub and the prize had been a leg of lamb.
‘Are we wasting our voices in case we need to call for help?’ Lillian wondered. She asked as if she really wanted to hear what Winnie would say.
‘I don’t think anyone would hear us anyway. Our best hope is to keep positive,’ Winnie suggested. ‘Do you know any Beatles songs?’ So they sang ‘Hey Jude’.
Lillian said that she remembered her mother had said the Beatles were depraved because they had long hair. Winnie said that her stepmother had never known who they were and that even her father was vague about them. It was so hard to have a real conversation with them about anything.
‘Do they know you’re here?’ Lillian asked.
‘Nobody knows we’re here. That’s the problem,’ Winnie sighed.
‘No, I mean in the West of Ireland. Do they know about Teddy?’
‘No. They hardly know any of my friends.’
‘Maybe you should take him to meet them. He said he hadn’t met your folks yet.’
‘Well, you know . . .’ Winnie shrugged as if to make little of it all.
‘He took you to meet me.’
‘Yes, didn’t he?’ The memory of that meeting was still bitter, and Winnie cursed her foolishness trying to take on this mother-in-law from hell, locking horns with her and pretending friendship to win the son. Look where it had ended up. In this cave, waiting for at the worst a slow death by drowning or at the very best rheumatic fever.
‘I wasn’t entirely overjoyed at first,’ Lillian admitted after a pause. ‘Neither were you, but it was you who suggested coming on this holiday.’
‘I did not suggest you come on the holiday. I told you about Stone House and that I wanted to come here with Teddy, that was all. You invited yourself.’
‘He invited me. You went along with it.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Winnie said. There was defeat in her tone.
‘Don’t get all down about it, please. I’m frightened. I liked it better when you were strong. Can you think of any other songs?’
‘No.’ Winnie was mulish.
‘You must know some more songs.’
‘What about “By The Rivers Of Babylon”?’ Winnie offered.
It turned out that Lillian had been at a wedding in St Augustine’s church in Rossmore where the bride and groom had chosen this as one of their wedding hymns, and the Polish priest had thought it must be an old Irish tradition and sang along with it.
Winnie said that one year, when she was working the Christmas shift in a hospital, they had all made a conga line and danced through the wards singing this song to cheer the patients up, and even the sour ward sister had agreed that it worked.
Then Lillian said there was nothing to beat ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, so they sang that. Winnie said she actually preferred Elvis doing ‘Suspicious Minds’, but they only knew one line of that, which was something about being caught in a trap. Still, they sang it over and over until it began to sound hollow.
During an attempt at Otis Redding’s ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’, they both noticed that the level of the water had gone down. They hardly dared to say it in case yet another huge wave would crash in. But when it was clear that the tide had turned, and their throats were raw from singing and the salt spray, they reached out their hands to each other. Cold, wet and trembling, they just held on for a few seconds. Words would have destroyed the fragile hope and shaky peace they had managed to reach.
Now it was a matter of waiting.
Mrs Starr called Rigger when it was obvious that two of her guests had gone missing. He rounded up a search party, including Chicky’s brothers-in-law.
‘I warned them against the south cliffs, so you can be sure that’s where they went,’ she said in a clipped voice. Rigger asked her if there were any specific places she had told them about and when Chicky thought about it, it was clear what had happened. She had seen the challenge in Lillian Hennessy’s face as she had dismissed the weather warnings the previous night. And she had noticed how Lillian left without any hint of her direction that morning.
The men said they would go towards Majella’s Cave and phone her as soon as they had any news.
Before she heard from them, however, there was a call from Teddy Hennessy, who said he was Lillian’s son and phoning from England. He apologised for interrupting her but said he couldn’t reach his mother or Winnie by mobile phone. They must have switched them off.
Chicky Starr was professional and guarded. No point in alerting him to any possible danger until she had proof that there was a real need to be worried. She took his number carefully.
‘They’ve gone walkin
g over the cliff paths and should be back soon, Mr Hennessy.’
‘And they’re having a good time?’ He sounded anxious to hear it was all going well.
‘Yes; I’m sorry they’re not here to tell you themselves. They’ll be upset to have missed you.’
‘I got a text from Winnie last night. She said the place was wonderful.’
‘I’m pleased they are satisfied with it all.’ Mrs Starr felt a lump in her throat. ‘It’s good to see old friends enjoy themselves . . .’ Please God may she not have to talk to this man in an entirely different way in a few hours’ time.
‘Lillian’s my mother, as I said. This holiday was their way to get to know each other properly, you see. It’s great to know it’s working so well.’
He sounded hopeful and enthusiastic. How could she tell him that his hard, brittle mother had not been getting on at all well with Winnie, who turned out to be his girlfriend? The relationship had not even been acknowledged. How would history have to be rewritten if the worst had happened?
She stood with her hand at her throat until Orla tugged at her sleeve asking whether the meal should be served now or not. She pulled herself together and got the guests seated. They were all anxious to hear news of the missing women and an unsettled air hung over the table.
‘They’re all right, you know,’ said Freda suddenly, ‘they’re fine. You mustn’t worry. They’ll be cold and hungry, but they’ll be all right.’ She said it with great confidence, but it seemed like everything was in slow motion until the telephone rang.
They were safe. The search party were bringing them first to Dr Dai’s house but there seemed to be nothing worse than cold and shock. Without giving any hint of her relief, Chicky Starr told the other guests that Winnie and Lillian had been caught by the tide and would need hot baths but that everyone was to start dinner without them.
When they came in the door, white-faced and wrapped in rugs and blankets, everyone cheered.
Lillian made very light of it all.
‘Now you’ve all seen me without my make-up, I’ll never recover from this!’ she laughed.
‘Were you trapped by the tide?’ Freda was anxious to know what had happened.