Barefoot Over Stones Page 2

  ‘It’s a fry they were wanting not a cremation,’ she said in a low-enough whisper, giving Alison an encouraging nudge of her elbow. Rose delivered the toast to the counter in front of Dan with a mug of steaming coffee as Alison finally plucked the bread from the pan. ‘Oh, you haven’t met my new girl, have you, Dan?’ she said, giving Alison an animated wink. Alison turned her flushed face to meet the gleam of piercing green eyes as Rose introduced them. ‘Dan Abernethy, meet Alison. Alison Shepherd.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jean McDermott was dragging a dustbin to the front gate when Alison arrived home from the Daisy May. It was a run-of-the-mill household task apart from the clatter of glass bottles betraying the drunken secrets within. ‘Ah, there you are, Mary. Cold, isn’t it?’

  It was pointless correcting her. Alison and Ciara had tried, in the first few days, to get her to call them by their real names but were now convinced that Jean had let the flat to them in a drunken stupor and probably thought that she had just one tenant, a nice wee girl called Mary, quite possibly from Dungloe.

  In the hallway Alison found Ciara fiddling with the electricity meter. ‘Keep watch there for our esteemed landlady, will you, Alison? This could save us a bloody fortune.’ Alison looked on as Ciara inserted a fifty-pence piece and deftly wound the meter until the coin was just about to drop and then quickly wound it back again. Each rotation brought the gauge up higher and when the meter was up to the maximum Ciara wound all the way and let the coin click into the box. ‘Electricity for the week for a very reasonable fifty pence!’ Ciara was chuffed with herself.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ asked a genuinely impressed Alison.

  ‘Oh, I have my sources and this particular one is a total honey from Waterford.’

  Although Ciara had only been in college for a matter of months, she already seemed to know every haunt and was never short of someone with whom to strike up a conversation. They were the same age but Alison couldn’t help feeling that Ciara belonged to the crowd that seemed to have been running around places like Trinity and UCD since they could toddle. By comparison Alison was definitely relegated to the novice hurdles. She felt genuinely lucky to have hooked up with Ciara. She hoped that if she hid how gormless and out of her depth she always felt she could somehow pull off this whole college thing by observing closely the skills that seemed to serve her flatmate so well.

  Alison had noticed Ciara in the first week of term. Well, to be more precise, she had noticed her clothes. How could you not? In a bland sea of jeans and sweatshirts she certainly stood out. Sailing up and down the interminable corridors of the history department, she was a spectacular foil to the muted decor. Her unruly auburn hair was the crowning glory for a seemingly endless array of prim Victorian blouses, shawls and floor-skimming skirts. Months later Alison would experience first hand where Ciara found all her clothes when she was taken on a whistle-stop tour of the charity shops around Rathmines and Camden Street. It would never have occurred to Alison that normal people might shop for clothes in charity shops. The Shepherds donated lots of old clothes to the St Vincent de Paul but Alison thought it was strictly for the poor and the very hard-up. She wasn’t so sure about the smell either. Ciara swore to her that every item was laundered before being put on sale but why then did all the shops smell like a packed and sweaty number 13A bus on a wet Monday evening? Whatever her reservations about their source, Alison would never tire of looking at Ciara modelling her latest finds. Ciara’s look was pure theatre and Alison found her sense of glamour utterly captivating. In the early weeks of term they shared some tutorials and when she first heard Ciara speak Alison was genuinely surprised to hear a country accent fairly similar to her own. Kerry, she guessed, or maybe Tipperary. Somehow Ciara looked more exotic than Alison had imagined anyone from the country could manage to be.

  Before one tutorial Ciara announced to the assembled group that she was moving out of the place she had rented on Leeson Street. ‘I took on a family of squatting mice and I am ashamed to say they have beaten me. The little shaggers are popping out of everywhere. Anyone know of a room going? Preferably a vermin-free zone!’

  ‘I need to move out of my place,’ Alison piped up to her own astonishment. ‘Maybe we could find a place for two? My folks fixed me up with a nightmare landlady,’ she said as coolly as she could while her insides churned. Before Alison had time to change her mind, Ciara fell on her offer enthusiastically.

  ‘Jesus, that would be great, Alison! But I have to warn you I’m on a bit of a tight budget. Forty quid a week max.’

  Dr Fitzgerald bustled through the room carrying a pile of paperwork. Alison spent the tutorial somewhat panic-stricken at the thought of telling her parents what she had just agreed. But by the end of an hour on Cromwell and the massacre in Drogheda, of which she had only heard a scant word or two, she had decided that sharing a flat with Ciara was the answer to all her prayers. She would find a way to break the news at home. She told herself firmly that they would understand. Get it first and tell them later. Alison surprised herself with her talent for deceit when she spoke to her parents from Bea Duggan’s front hallway that night. No news. No news at all. Everything fine here.

  A few copies of the Evening Herald and some visits to truly appalling flats later had brought them to Jean McDermott’s doorstep. And here she was now, waddling back from the gate, a little unsteady on her feet. She eyed Ciara and Alison suspiciously as they stood in the small shared hallway. Her eyes squinted at them as if startled by their presence. After what seemed an eternity she spoke: ‘Make sure to put on the Chubb lock, Mary.’ Then she disappeared, with the swish of rancid plastic raincoat, into the downstairs flat.

  ‘Mad as a fucking March hare,’ Ciara said rather too loudly as they climbed the staircase. ‘Come on, wee Mary, you have an essay to write on the bleeding Crusades and I have an essay belonging to you to creatively paraphrase.’

  Alison smiled. Today was a good day. Not even an essay on the Crusades was going to spoil tonight. His name ran around her head. In her mind she heard Rose say it again. Dan Abernethy. Suddenly the Daisy May, her comfort blanket, had become the most exotic place in Dublin. Two days to her next shift and Alison thought it was quite possible she might burst in anticipation.

  Her mood was somewhat punctured by the filthy state of the kitchen and living room. Dirty dishes rose in a tower from the sink and clothes lay strewn everywhere. Alison loved her newfound freedom with Ciara but someone was going to have to take the place in hand. Her mam and dad were bound to come and see the place she had decided was better than their original choice of Bea Duggan’s house. They would have a freak attack if they saw it as it was now.

  Even the most rudimentary skills of housekeeping escaped Ciara’s attention. She really did appear oblivious as she swept from room to room. When she had found herself in the flat in Leeson Street at the beginning of term she waited until every item of crockery had been used and had pitched its tent in the kitchen sink. Then she extracted the least soiled items: a water tumbler or a plate that had held yesterday’s toast, which could easily put in a second day’s service without so much as a glance at running water. After one week she had deleted Weetabix from her mental shopping list. Having never soaked a cereal bowl after eating from it she deemed it a food that conspired to glue itself to her bowls and render them out of action. Cornflakes were definitely better, less like wallpaper paste after a day and a half. After two weeks there were fumes coming from the sink, which made Ciara think she might have to clear it soon. But in the name of God how? In her waking hours her mother Aggie maintained her stance at the kitchen sink at home in Leachlara looking out at the cattle grazing in the fields. Neither Ciara nor her brother or sister ever offered to do the washing-up, as her mother seemed to enjoy being lost in contemplation of the world beyond her windows. Ciara’s lack of experience was telling in the smelly realm of her Leeson Street flat.

  The water in the tap was never more than lukewarm. She had no
sponge: she had flung the one that was in the sink when she arrived into the bin. The smell of it had reminded her of a dead mouse that she had had a whiff of in another flat to let in Rathmines. Washing-up or no washing-up, it had to go. After one enquiring visit too many by her slimy landlord she had decided to tell him to shove the flat up his arse, or words to that effect. She’d taken a sly satisfaction in leaving him a sink full of dirty dishes and maybe inconveniencing his next letting somewhat. She’d sworn that next time she would find a place to live herself and keep her father from hooking her up with another of the Leachlara mafia with their swathes of property in Dublin.

  Alison now handed Ciara a list of cleaning materials that she had compiled as a means of opening the awkward conversation. Ciara didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Alison was eyeing her so seriously that she knew she had to respond, with sincerity if possible. The list was half a refill page long: toilet cleaner, Jif, bleach, fabric softener and washing powder. It went on and on. God, they might as well go to Dunnes and do a trolley dash through the cleaning products aisle.

  ‘Do you think maybe this is a bit over the top, Alison? Maybe we could start small and build it up over the year?’

  ‘That’s kind of a basic kit that any house would need, Ciara. I asked my mam to help me with it at the weekend.’

  ‘Right, I suppose if you think we need it. My budget is a bit tight so we will have to buy it over a few weeks if that’s all right.’

  ‘Well, Mam sorted me out with a few extra bob when I was at home so I can just get it all this week and you can get me back whenever you have it. Mam tried her best to buy the stuff in Caharoe at the weekend. I had a hard job stopping her until I reminded her that I couldn’t carry it all the way back here on my own. Besides, I told her that you would probably want to come with me to get it.’

  ‘If you want me to, yeah, I suppose I could, but I wouldn’t know what most of these things were if they came up and slapped me on the face.’ Ciara was doing her best to show interest but she was failing miserably. ‘I mean, forgive my ignorance, but what in the fuck is bicarbonate of soda?’

  ‘It’s for baking really but Mam says it’s great for stain removal and would be handy for soaking dishcloths and dusters.’

  ‘A few hundred packets of it might sort out this vomit-inducing swirl we like to call a carpet,’ Ciara said, hoping that humour might lighten the atmosphere a little. Alison looked at the dreary browns and yellows patched together with indeterminate stains. It looked a bit like the compost heap that rotted and heaved at the back of the garden at Michaelmas.

  ‘It is shockingly bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Woeful, Alison, woeful, but sure we will just have to make the most of it.’

  Alison motioned to the corner of the room, which they rather grandly referred to as the kitchen. In reality it was a counter top masking a grim line of yellow melamine units. ‘Would a cup of tea and a biscuit help, do you think?’

  ‘Jesus, I thought you’d never ask. My head is fucking wrecked from Toilet Duck and Mr Sheen. Whatever happened to a sink full of hot water and where the hell was I when life got so bloody complicated?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Jesus Christ, that fucking hurts.’ Hurtling towards the shrill ring of the phone in the hallway, Alison had stubbed her toe on the saddle of her bedroom door. She had been in a deep sleep, dreaming of Dan Abernethy, but the persistent ringing had forced her to rouse herself and abandon his delicious face at the counter of the Daisy May. She fumbled for the landing switch. When she finally reached it the light flickered for a second and gave a little tinkle before the bulb blew. Still the phone kept ringing and still there was not a sign of life from Ciara’s room. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it!’ Alison said a touch savagely as she hobbled past Ciara’s door on the way down the stairs.

  ‘Is that you, Ciara?’ a girl’s voice whispered urgently when Alison picked up the receiver.

  ‘No, this is Ciara’s flatmate, Alison. I’ll get her for you now. Who will I say is looking for her?’

  ‘This is Leda.’ Ciara’s sister’s voice was barely audible and Alison felt instinctively that she was in some sort of trouble. A loud knock on Ciara’s door brought no response. Eventually, after much hammering, a dishevelled Ciara in outrageously loud pink satin pyjamas emerged looking viciously sulky.

  ‘Someone better be on fire. That’s all I am saying. What fucking time is it anyway?’

  ‘About three, I think. It’s Leda. She seems a bit upset.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the shagging night. I’m a bit upset myself.’

  The pink apparition disappeared down the stairs and Alison rolled back into her still mercifully warm bed to resume an imaginary romance with Dan. She fell asleep to the lull of conversation from the hallway.

  A short note in Ciara’s handwriting had been left tagged to the kettle next morning when Alison got up to make breakfast. ‘Have to sort something out at home so getting the seven o’clock from Busáras. Will be back Sunday night, sorry about the weekend, Ciara x.’

  Waves of panic washed over Alison. She and Ciara had decided to stay in Dublin for the weekend to go to the cinema, visit the National Gallery and generally act like first-year students delighted to be away from home. It had been Ciara’s idea. In fairness, nearly everything was. Alison had broken the news to her mother at the bus stop in Caharoe the Sunday night before.

  ‘Ciara and I are thinking of staying in Dublin this weekend, Mam – you know, to get a few of the long essays started. Is that all right? I’ll be home the following Friday.’

  Cathy Shepherd hesitated and Alison knew her mother was steeling herself to say the right thing. Her dearest wish was that going to college would make Alison grow in confidence and even though the thought of her only child being away for two whole weeks made her fit to faint she pulled herself together.

  ‘Of course, love. You’ll be careful, won’t you? You will need extra money.’ Cathy started to delve in her cavernous handbag and produced a carefully folded twenty-pound note from a zipped pocket. ‘Ring if you think you are going to run out and I’ll send you some more in the post.’

  ‘I’ll be grand, Mam, honestly. I have wages from the Daisy May coming to me on Friday so I won’t be short.’

  Watching her mother watching her was driving Alison mad and ever closer to tears. Trying to pretend to be brave was hard on the nerves and the last thing she wanted to do was start getting weepy in front of her mother, who was looking decidedly shaky herself. God, how she wished the bus driver would actually let them on the bus instead of leaving them to stand there in the freezing November cold. Eventually the bus did pull away from the pavement and Alison breathed a sigh of relief. Two buses and a train journey and she would be back in the flat in Ranelagh and in Ciara’s uplifting company. She had Rose and her shifts in the Daisy May. Her college work was hard but not by any means beyond her. Thanks to her dad’s GP practice there was enough money for all her college needs, so she didn’t feel short of anything. She was on talking terms with a good few people in her class, owing in no small measure to Ciara, who had the knack for chat and in whose company Alison tried mostly to stay. Somehow if Alison could join up the scattered dots of her Dublin existence she might manage to have a life outside Caharoe.

  Faced a few days later with Ciara’s note, Alison momentarily thought about phoning home with the change of plan. Her mother would be delighted. She was halfway down the stairs when she pulled herself back from the safety net into which she was about to plunge headlong. ‘Come on, Alison, don’t be such a chicken,’ she chided herself. How hard could it be? It was Wednesday. Four nights and Ciara would be back to the flat. In the meantime she could actually catch up on study. There was no law against going to see a film on your own, was there? The time would fly by if she kept herself busy. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she tutored herself, with only a shard of confidence, before quickly retreating up the stairs.

  Cathy Shepherd had stood on the Main St
reet in Caharoe until the bus carrying Alison back to Dublin disappeared from her view. Only then did she start the short walk to Michaelmas House on the edge of the town square. Her woollen coat was buttoned up right to the collar to protect against the bitter wind and maybe also against a rising loneliness that threatened to engulf her.

  Michaelmas was one of a quartet of grand houses standing like imposing sentry keepers around the green in Caharoe. It had been their home for twenty years and Cathy thoroughly loved it. The grand navy front door with its glistening brass fittings reminded her of the week of their wedding when she had lovingly painted it, covering her hands with specks of gloss paint that were murder to clean off.

  When Richard had first shown her the house out of which he operated his fledgling GP practice she had been shocked by its near-derelict state. The waiting room and surgery, which Richard had allegedly decorated, were the only rooms that were remotely habitable. Even that was a pretty impossible stretch of the imagination. Richard slept on a couch in a room at the back of the house with at least three layers of bedding to defeat the cold. It was there, in that spartan room, that they had first wrapped up in the delicious warmth of each other’s bodies under a sea of shabby quilts. It was there also, one evening a few months after they had first met, that Richard had asked her to marry him and live with him in Caharoe.

  ‘Here? In this dive?’ Cathy had asked in mock incredulity. It was worth it to see his face but the look of total joy on her face told him the only answer he wanted to hear. ‘Yes, I will marry you, Richard, but this place needs a serious shake-up. I love you but you live in a hovel.’

  ‘It’s not great, is it?’ Richard had said, looking at the wall opposite them from where the hideous flock wallpaper hung precariously, planning its path of descent.