‘You are. You will always be my friend, when you and I are long married to other people.’
‘It won’t happen, Erika. I’ve looked around. There’s no one out there.’
‘Well, then we will have to look harder. Tell me more about Ireland.’
He told her about the Irish Americans on the Shannon, and about John Paul who had to go back to look after his father. And then he went to bed in the brightly painted guest room. He stayed awake for a long time.
At The Galway next day, Anders and Erika sat and listened while Kevin played the pipes. As he listened, Anders again heard the waves breaking on the wild Atlantic shore and he felt a surge of misery overwhelm him. He suddenly saw his life stretching in front of him in an unending straight line: getting up in the morning, putting on a suit, going to work at the office, coming home to a lonely apartment, going to bed, getting up the following morning . . . Responsibility. Loyalty. Duty. Rules. Expectations. Family tradition. And when the musicians took a break, Anders tried to explain to Erika why he had to stay with his father, but the words weren’t there. He found his sentences trailing away.
‘It’s just that . . .’ he began, then faltered. ‘It’s the family tradition. I mean, if I don’t . . . There are these expectations . . . It’s who I am. And I can do it. I am doing it. I am the next Almkvist. They’re all waiting for me. All my life . . . And in any case, if I’m not that, who am I?’
‘Anders, stop, please. Look, it isn’t that you are in your father’s business that I don’t like. It’s that you hate it and always will. But you won’t do anything else. It’s your decision, not theirs. It’s your life, not theirs. You can do anything with your life. At least think what else you might do. When you find what the something else is, then you will consider leaving.’
She leaned over and stroked his hand. ‘Leave it for now,’ she suggested.
‘Which means leave it for ever,’ he said sadly.
‘No, you’ve gone as far as you can down the road and you always reach the same fork. Maybe something will happen. Something that you will want more than that office. Then when that day comes, you can think about it again.’
He ached to say that he wanted Erika more than he wanted the office, but it was not strictly true. He could not walk away, and they both knew this. They hugged each other before he set out on the long drive home.
His heart was heavy as he played his music in the car. It was only a dream, a holiday memory. It was childish to think it might be another life for him.
The weeks went by, and his father was cold and distant about Anders moving into his own apartment. Fru Karlsson was bristling with resentment. She tried to exact a promise that he would turn up at his father’s every night.
Often he ate alone in his flat, putting a ready meal into the microwave and opening a beer. Back in the big apartment, his father would also be dining alone.
Once a week Anders turned up for dinner, already armed to cope with the resentment and the pressures which would be there to greet him. Either his father or Fru Karlsson would remind him that his room was there and ready should he wish to stay the night. There was heavy sighing about the size and emptiness of the family apartment. His father said how hard it was to know what was going on in the office these days since he himself only went in for three hours a day, and Anders was off enjoying himself every evening and not there to discuss the day’s events.
He often wondered how John Paul was faring in the months since he had seen him. Had life on the farm turned out better than he had feared, or was it worse? Had the sacrifice been worthwhile? John Paul might have regretted the intimate revelations of his reluctance to go and look after his father. He might not relish having it all brought up again.
One evening Anders looked up Stoneybridge, the place where John Paul was going home to live. On his laptop he saw that it was a small, attractive, seaside town that clearly only came to life for the summer months and would be fairly desolate in these winter days. Yet he read that a new venture had begun there; a large place on a cliff called Stone House, offering a winter week on the Atlantic coast with spectacular scenery, good food, walking and wild birds. There would be music in the pubs if guests cared to seek it out. It was a ludicrous idea and he knew it was, but still he went online and booked a week there.
He told his father little about the trip – just a winter week’s holiday. His father, of course, asked nothing, only registered vague disapproval of his sudden decision to go.
And Anders did not tell Erika about the trip. Their last meeting had been a kind of watershed. There was no point in telling her he was going to Ireland again; she wouldn’t come with him. She would just go on about him wasting his life. She couldn’t understand that he simply had no choice in the matter. He didn’t want to have that conversation again.
He flew to Dublin and caught a train to the West.
Chicky Starr met him at the station. She seemed to see nothing odd about a young Swedish accountant flying over to spend time in this deserted place. She complimented him on his excellent English. She said that Scandinavians were wonderful at learning languages. When she had lived in New York, she had been astounded at how new arrivals from Denmark, Sweden and Norway adapted so quickly.
He was relaxed and comfortable long before they arrived at the wonderful old house and he met his fellow guests. The American man was the absolute image of Corry Salinas the actor, even spoke like him too. Anders found himself wondering what on earth Corry Salinas would be doing here. He found himself exchanging glances with the English doctor, who had also spotted the actor. But so what? If the man wanted a rest, a change, he’d be no different from all the other people who had gathered there. No one would bother anyone else.
Over dinner, he found himself in conversation with a nice woman called Freda, who seemed surprised to hear of his interest in music. He’d come to the right place, she said; music was in the very air they breathed in this part of Ireland. She’d be keen to hear some good music herself.
‘You play an instrument yourself,’ she said. It was a statement rather than a question. Anders found he was telling her about the nyckelharpa and about his love of music.
‘And what do you do for a living?’ she asked.
‘I’m just a boring accountant,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Accountants are no more boring than anyone else,’ she replied, ‘but if your heart is elsewhere, would you not want to follow your destiny?’ As she spoke, her eyes looked into the distance.
‘Ah, no,’ he said wistfully, ‘I know perfectly well where my destiny lies. I will take over from my father very soon and run the business which was his life’s work. And once or twice a week I will go to a tiny club and play music to half a dozen people. And that will be my life.’ And then, as if to take the bleakness out of his words, he smiled and added, ‘But this is my holiday, and I’m going to find the best sessions in the county. Care to join me?’
It was agreed. The very next day they would meet after breakfast and go off in search of the best music to be found.
It was all totally undemanding and he was glad that he had come. When he went to bed and looked out on the crashing waves in the moonlight, he knew he would sleep properly. He would not wake twice, three times during the night, restless and unsure. That alone made it worth coming to this place.
The following morning, Anders asked Chicky Starr about music venues.
She knew of two pubs, both of them known locally for their sessions. One of them did terrific seafood at lunchtimes, if he was interested in sampling the local food.
As they were talking, Freda joined them, ready and eager for the day. The weather looked set fair and, with high spirits, the two set out in the direction of the town, Anders carrying his small rucksack on his back with his maps and guides inside. They passed whitewashed cottages, farmhouses and out-buildings. For a while, the road followed the coastline, and high as they were on the clifftop, the wind and spray stung their faces. Even th
e trees were bent double and stunted by the Atlantic gales. Then the road took them inland so that the sea was out of sight. As they got nearer to the town, the fields disappeared, ploughed up and replaced with new housing, row after row looking eerily empty.
The main street in Stoneybridge was lined with two- and three-storey houses, each one painted a different colour. The pubs were easy to identify, but the two explorers made the little café their first stop. They talked easily, comparing notes on their first impressions of their fellow guests at Stone House.
Freda, Anders noticed, gave little away about her own reasons for coming to Stone House but she had observed everyone else quite closely. The doctor and his wife, she said, shaking her head a little, were very sad – there had been a recent death, she could tell. Quite how she could tell she didn’t say. And that nice nurse – what was her name? Winnie, was it? – was having a dreadful time with her friend Lillian, but it would all be worth it in the end.
They went for lunch into the larger of the pubs: great bowls of steaming, succulent mussels and fresh crusty bread. And then, as if in response to some silent cue, a small, red-faced man sitting in the corner produced a fiddle and started to play. The session had started . . .
At first, musicians outnumbered audience but gradually more people arrived. Most would arrive in the evening, it was explained, but some liked to play in the afternoons and everyone was welcome to join in. The music, at first gentle and haunting, grew faster and faster. At one side of the room, a couple started dancing and Anders himself borrowed a guitar and played a couple of Swedish songs. He taught everyone the words of the songs and they joined in the choruses with great gusto.
He had, he admitted rather shyly, brought a traditional Swedish instrument with him on his holiday and he could bring it in the following day. Only if they’d like him to, of course . . .
Freda looked at him oddly as he returned to their table. ‘Once or twice a week, to an audience of six people?’ she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her over the cheering. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Anders began to feel as if he had lived nowhere else. The American man actually was Corry Salinas, obviously here in hiding and calling himself John. The two women, Winnie and Lillian, were nearly drowned on their second day there and had to be rescued from a cave: Anders had missed all the excitement as he had stayed on in the town for the evening sessions. This time he had taken his nyckelharpa with him and had found himself called upon time and time again to play and sing along. Of John Paul there was no sign, although Anders did move between both pubs.
Eventually, on one of his visits, he asked a craggy-faced man who played the tin whistle did he know a piper from the area called John Paul?
Of course he did. Everyone knew him, very decent lad. Immediately, four other musicians joined in the conversation. They all knew poor John Paul. Stuck up there in Rocky Ridge with his old divil of a father whom no one could please. A discontented man who wished he had taken the emigrant’s ship years back and blamed everyone but himself that he hadn’t.
‘And does John Paul play the uilleann pipes anywhere round here?’
‘He hasn’t been in here in months now,’ one of the men said, shaking his head sadly. ‘A group of us went up for him in a van one day but he said he couldn’t leave the old fellow.’
The following morning, Anders asked Chicky how to get to Rocky Ridge and she packed a lunch for him.
‘I’m sure John Paul would make a meal for you, but just in case he’s not there you’d want to be prepared,’ she said.
It was a longer walk than he had expected, and he was weary when he arrived at the big, untidy farmyard. There seemed to be nobody around. As Anders approached the door some hens ran out clucking, annoyed to be disturbed.
An old man sat at the table trying to read a newspaper with a magnifying glass. A big sheepdog lay at his feet. It looked more like a rug than a dog.
‘I was looking for John Paul . . .’ Anders began.
‘You and half the country are looking for him. He went out of here God knows how many hours ago and no sign of him. I’m his father Matty, by the way, and I haven’t even had my dinner and it’s gone three o’clock.’
‘Well, I’m Anders and I brought a picnic with me, so we might as well have that,’ Anders said, and opened the waxed paper in the little bag that Chicky had packed.
He got two plates and divided the cold chicken, cheese and chutney. He made a pot of tea and they sat and ate it as normally as if it was quite commonplace for John Paul’s father to be served a meal by a passing Swedish tourist.
They talked about farming and how it had changed over the years, about the recession and how all the townhouses that the uppity O’Haras had built were standing empty like a ghost estate because people had been greedy and thought that the Celtic Tiger would last for ever. He spoke about his other children, who had done well for themselves abroad. He said that Shep the dog was blind now and useless but would always have a home.
He wanted to know about farming in Sweden, and Anders answered as best he could but said that he wished he could tell him more. He was really a city boy at heart.
‘And what brings you to this place, if you are a city boy?’ Matty wanted to know.
Anders explained how he had met John Paul on the bus tour.
‘He loved that old bus, dead-end job, in and out of shebeens the whole time, happy as a bird on a bush. Even thought of setting up his own shebeen, but he thought better of it and decided to row in here to try to get the last few shillings out of this place,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval.
Anders felt his gorge rising in anger. This was the thanks that the old man was giving for his son’s sacrifice. Could life be any more unfair?
In a reasoned way he tried to explain that perhaps John Paul had wanted to help his father.
‘You don’t want to buy the place here, by any chance?’ Matty peered at him through half-closed eyes.
‘No, indeed, are you selling?’
‘Oh, if only we could. I’d be out of it by this evening.’
‘And where would you go, Matty?’
‘I’d go into St Joseph’s. It’s a sort of a home in the town. I’d have people calling in to see me there, and company. I wouldn’t be stuck up here on Rocky Ridge with John Paul working all the hours God sends, and for what? For next to nothing.’
‘Did you tell him this?’
‘I can’t. He thinks there’s a living in the place. He did nothing for himself in life but he’s got a good heart, and he deserves a crack at making the place work. I couldn’t go and sell it over his head.’
Anders sat there silently for a while. Matty was a man who was used to silences. Shep snored on. Maybe life was full of these misunderstandings.
John Paul was out there on mountain tops dealing with things he hated, his father was yearning to live in a nice warm, safe place where people could call in to him and his dinner would be served at one o’clock every day. They each thought the other was desperate to keep the farm going.
Could it be the same situation in Sweden?
Did Anders’ father wish that he could hand the firm over to others, release his son from a life which he did not enjoy? Was this only wishful thinking? A false parallel?
Problems don’t solve themselves neatly like that, due to a set of coincidences. Problems are solved by making decisions. Erika had always said that, and he had thought she was being doctrinaire. But it was true. Deciding not to change anything was a decision in itself. He hadn’t fully understood this before.
The light went from the sky and Shep stirred in his dreams. Anders made more tea and found them some biscuits. Matty told him about Chicky marrying this man who was killed in a car crash in New York, and how he had left her money to come home and buy the Sheedy place. Matty said Chicky was a real survivor; she didn’t expect anyone to fight her battles for her. Many a man had shown an interest in her, but she was fair and square with all of them. She was he
r own woman, she told them.
But you never knew what the Lord had planned for you. Maybe some nice American man might come for a holiday and sweep her off her feet again. Was there anyone among the guests that looked suitable?
Anders thought not. There was a pleasant American there, all right, but he hadn’t seen any sign of a romance.
‘Oh, is that Corry Salinas? I heard he was staying there,’ Matty said.
‘You did?’
‘Yes, he was trying to keep it a secret but everyone here recognised him. Frank Hanratty was only telling some daft story that he came into the golf club to buy Frank a drink because he saw his pink van outside the door. Frank had better take a hold of himself.’
Just then they heard the van arrive and John Paul ran into the house.
‘Da, the cattle had got through a fence up in the top field. They were wandering all over the road. Dr Dai was trying to get them back into the field through the gap with one of his golf clubs. He was worse than myself. And by the time we got someone to fix the fence—’ He broke off when he saw Anders. His big face lit up with pleasure.
‘Anders Almkvist! You came to see us!’ he said, delighted. ‘Da, this is my friend . . .’
‘Don’t I know all about him. We’ve had a long chat waiting for you to get back, and I know all about why the Swedes are better off with their krone than the euro,’ Matty said.
John Paul looked on, open-mouthed.
‘And he brought me my dinner as well,’ his father pronounced. The final accolade. Anders got another mug and poured out tea for John Paul.
There was no rush. There would be plenty of time to explain everything.
John Paul drove Anders back to Stone House. ‘Imagine you coming back here and up to Rocky Ridge to see me!’ he said.
‘I was hoping to hear you playing in one of the local pubs, but they say you work too hard. You’re too tired.’
‘I was hoping that you had come to tell me that you’d left that office of yours,’ John Paul said.
‘No. Not just yet.’
‘But you might . . .?’ John Paul looked pleased for his friend. ‘So miracles do happen.’