Breeda Looney Steps Forth Read online

  She walked to the kitchen sink and tilted the second envelope towards the window. The large spidery scrawl was smudged in places but was just as distinct as Aunt Nora’s. She could tell it was from George Sheridan, her manager at the wine shop. As Breeda ripped open the envelope she could picture her boss in the stockroom out the back of Cork!, his tongue sticking out and the fat fingers of his left hand doing their best not to smudge the ink. He was a good man, George Sheridan. When Margaret Looney had got sick, Breeda had packed in her project management role at Digitron and moved back home to look after her. It had been George Sheridan who’d suggested she do a few weekly shifts at the wine shop to keep things ticking over. Breeda had begrudgingly accepted at the time, wary of being pulled away from her mother’s care. But in hindsight it had been a godsend. As she’d watched her mother slowly thin and fade, the few hours of distraction each week in the wine shop had kept Breeda relatively sane.

  She looked out the kitchen window and her eyes found the trawlers tied up on the stone pier down below. As she watched the boats bobbing in the glinting water, she bit at her bottom lip. It had been ages since Breeda had last checked her bank account balance – she was scared to look, if truth be told, and she knew she couldn’t delay a return to proper work for much longer. A few shifts in the local wine shop wasn’t going to cut it. She thought of the daily emails she received – the job alerts full of business speak she used to be fluent in. She sighed and leaned forward on the kitchen counter. In her heart she knew what she wanted to do for a living, and it definitely didn’t involve a return to corporate life with its spreadsheets, status reports, and hours in airless meeting rooms.

  Breeda had discussed it with her mother once – her real dream. It was only a modest fantasy, but what Breeda Looney dreamt of was to one day run her own guesthouse. She turned to survey the kitchen and looked at the long, gnarly table in the middle of the room – her own sad chair sitting alone at the end – and imagined it laden with local produce, pots of tea, and homemade breads and jams. She imagined the people who’d stay in the three upstairs rooms, sitting around this very table and sharing their stories, the house alive for once with bustle and newness. Breeda would relish being the host, advising the cyclists on their tour of the Wild Atlantic Way about the secret coves and unspoilt beaches. Or maybe, like her own mother, her guests would be artists, drawn by the ever-changing light, the dramatic skies and the expansive clarity. It seemed like only yesterday Margaret Looney herself had whittled away her afternoons sitting out the back with her easel, meditative and lost in the moment, her oils and watercolors soothing her senses. But then the headaches had started. And then the shadowy X-rays had been passed around consultants, and in a matter of days Breeda had packed up her room in the flat down in Galway to move back in with her mother, and Margaret’s slow decline had begun its fateful course.

  Ginger bumped the back of Breeda’s calves and miaowed up silently.

  ‘Well, hello there, missy. Are you hungry?’

  Breeda bent to scratch the cat under the chin and poured some pellets into the yellow bowl by the back door. She stood for a second and watched the cat wolfing down the food. Recently Breeda had begun to have morbid thoughts, the type involving tripping and bashing her skull on the sharp corner of the kitchen table, or maybe having a massive stroke. In either scenario, she’d end up lying paralyzed for days on the cold kitchen floor, the ravenous cat circling her solitary body, nudging her limbs like a shark at sunset. The cat turned, as if reading Breeda’s mind, and regarded her coolly.

  ‘Ah, Ginge. You wouldn’t eat your poor Mammy, would you?’

  The cat held her gaze a moment longer, then turned back to the remaining kibble.

  Breeda took the two birthday cards into the living room and stopped abruptly at the mantelpiece. It had been four weeks since they’d laid Margaret to rest in the graveyard at Saint Colmcille’s, but the sympathy cards still crowded the mantelpiece. As Breeda stood there with her two measly birthday cards she had to admit to herself that her own mother was more popular dead than Breeda was alive. She thought of the platters and plates she still had to return to helpful neighbors, a job she hadn’t gotten around to yet. And she thought of her mother’s half-empty jar of bitter marmalade at the back of the fridge. She couldn’t throw it out. Not yet.

  Breeda turned from the mantelpiece and placed her own two birthday cards on the windowsill. Sensing her mood about to tumble she hurried to the kitchen where her hand found the bottle of Tanqueray on the shelf above the fridge. She turned up the radio, grabbed a glass full of ice and a bottle of tonic and headed upstairs to get ready.

  A few minutes later, with a half glass of gin gently coursing through her veins, Breeda loosened the belt on her dressing gown and sat herself at her mother’s dressing table. She touched her fingers delicately to Margaret’s old perfume bottles and face creams, careful not to disturb them. She picked up the hairbrush and smiled sadly as her index finger traced the bristles. As she ran the brush through her still-damp hair she remembered how Margaret had used it countless times on young Breeda’s scalp: one thousand tangles tugged and tamed, while Breeda had stood in her flameproof nightie, practising French imperatives in front of the fire. She sighed, slow and heavy: she’d been spending too much time in this room recently, like a doe-eyed dog awaiting his master’s return. On the occasions when Breeda would feel the blackness take shape behind her, its dark tendrils gathering and thickening around her ankles, she’d rush to this room and seek urgent refuge in the lingering ghost of Margaret’s scent. Returning the hairbrush to its proper place now, Breeda turned to survey the bedroom. The old cast iron bed still stood covered in the patchwork quilt that Margaret herself had stitched. On the rug, beige slippers still peeped out from under the bed. The wardrobe remained stuffed full of her mother’s clothes, and a dusty hatbox sat half-hidden atop it. Christ, if Aunt Nora walked in and saw the place untouched, she’d have hysterics. She’d banish Breeda to the back step, snap on the marigolds, and have the bed stripped and wardrobe emptied before the kettle had even boiled. Breeda had been finding excuses not to do it, her heart still bruised, her head not able. She would get around to it, soon.

  Right, Bree. Focus.

  From the top drawer she lifted the jewelry box and took out her mother’s pearl earrings. She put them on and turned her face left and right, remembering the first time she’d seen Margaret wearing them. She’d looked like a movie star. Breeda looked at her own reflection again, the grey-green eyes, the gap between her two front teeth. She was her father’s daughter, that was for sure, more Looney than Cullen.

  On the tall chest of drawers near the bedroom door stood a range of framed photographs; Margaret and Breeda down at the pier; Margaret and Nora in London in the mid-seventies; Nora, Margaret and Breeda out for dinner on Breeda’s twenty-first. Other random ones too – bad hair and big shoulders – but not one pixel of Malachy Looney among them.

  Her father had died shortly after Breeda had turned twelve years old. He’d drowned, a twilight swim with one too many drinks in him. A freak current, and just like that – gone. Breeda had quickly learned not to mention her father, not to remember Malachy Looney out loud, or ever to ask anything about the man. Twelve years old and overnight she’d become fluent in the language of avoidance. Warning frowns from Aunt Nora, her mother retiring to her bedroom early, a house heaving under a heavy and loaded silence. Breeda had muddled along, not knowing any better. She had just accepted it – this was how adults dealt with death and loss, behind closed doors, at opposite ends of the house. Every shred of evidence of her father had vanished, any memories too painful for Margaret and too likely to send her off to a dark place. Whatever Breeda’s own needs had been – to understand, to process, to learn the language of mourning – had been held under water and starved of oxygen, until those needs lay silent and still.

  Breeda turned on the stool and took another generous swig of gin. On the far wall hung a cluster of Margaret’s oil paint
ings and watercolors. Canvases and boards – some framed, some not – of local landscapes and seascapes, flowers and birds. Breeda leaned forward for a closer look at the slashes and daubs. As her gaze travelled over the pictures, she found her eyes drawn to the bottom left corner and the one piece not painted by Margaret.

  It had been their wedding present from Aunt Nora – something bequeathed to her from an ancient Bishop up in Dublin who’d been fond of her. An oil painting of a man wading into the sea at Rosses Point in Sligo, all greys and greens, teals and turquoises. Breeda regarded it, attempting an air of detachment, but she found she could never shake the eerie symmetry with her father’s last moments. The man in the painting looked out at her from the brushstrokes, chest-deep in the rolling expanse of wild water. Breeda swirled the cool drink in her hand. It was an odd choice of subject for a wedding present. But Aunt Nora had always prided herself on being an adept collector. It was a Jack Butler Yeats, worth a pretty penny, Nora had enthused. And Margaret had loved it, so Breeda, too, had learned to love it over the years. It was a rare constant in their lives, always around, as far back as Breeda could remember.

  The ice-cube in her glass cracked. Breeda turned back to the dressing table. As she closed the jewelry box her eye fixed on Margaret’s engagement ring. She had taken it off her mother’s thinning finger just after Christmas. But now as Breeda held it up to the early evening light she realised that she had never actually tried it on herself. She squeezed it over her knuckle, still swollen from the bath, and turned it this way and that in the early evening light. Beside her, on the dressing table, her phone beeped into life.

  Your taxi will be arriving shortly.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’

  Breeda downed the remaining gin and ran to her room, yanking her good red dress out of its plastic cocoon.

  Chapter 4

  Heeley’s Bar was wedged that evening. It was as if the temperate May day had flicked a switch in the brains of the locals, and everyone was in a celebratory mood. Summer – or as good as it got in this small corner of Europe – had arrived. Further around from the busy main barroom was a quieter cozy nook and a couple of snugs. Framed posters of old arts festivals hung on the dark paneled walls and watched over Breeda as she sat at a tall table, waiting on Oona to return from the loo.

  Breeda was grateful her friend hadn’t given up on her. Over the past few weeks Oona had been gently badgering Breeda to come out. But Breeda had made excuse after excuse, not wanting to inflict her maudlin mood on anyone, not least her best friend. But sitting in the pub, amid the amiable din of tipsy chatter, with the sparkling wine working its magic on her, Breeda realised just how much she needed this. She was sick to the back teeth of her own company, and she was sick of feeling sorry for herself too. When she thought of home she could now see there was a cloying scent of death still lingering on in the nooks and crannies of the empty house. She shuffled herself into a more upright position on her stool and stole a sly glance at the Heineken mirror tilted at an angle above the bar. She swept a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then dribbled the remains of the prosecco bottle into their two glasses. It was good to be out, doing what normal people do.

  ‘Same again, Breeda?’ Tom the Yank was looking at her with his eyebrows raised, as he lifted some steaming pint glasses from the dishwasher tray. Breeda pretended to consider it.

  ‘Ah, I suppose we could have another one. Go on then, Tom.’

  As the bar man shoveled some ice into a fresh bucket, Oona’s trademark hooting laugh came through from the main bar. Breeda turned to see her friend steadily making her way back from the ladies, squeezing between the thirsty hoards waiting to be served. To Breeda, Oona Mahon was an inspiration. As well as being her best friend, Oona was a wife to Dougie, a mother to Connor and Eva, and a sought-after couples counsellor. She could achieve more in an hour than Breeda could muster in a week. As Breeda watched her blonde friend appear back around the corner she felt her bones relax and her spirit soften, safe in the world once more. Oona slid onto the bar stool beside her and topped up their glasses from the fresh bottle.

  ‘A toast to you, Miss Looney. An old soul and a true friend. Here’s to having you back in the world, kiddo.’

  ‘Cheers, Oona.’ Breeda chinked her glass against her friend’s. ‘I meant to say it earlier, but thanks for dragging me out. I needed this.’

  Breeda took a generous sip from her glass, but noticed that Oona had barely wet her lips, and was now looking decidedly distracted. Oona set her glass down and directed her pale blue eyes to her hands on the table. She took a deep breath, then looked back up at Breeda.

  ‘The gobshite’s here.’

  Breeda managed to swallow her sparkling wine, then put her glass down, and turned slowly to look over her right shoulder, through the gap, into the main bar behind.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  Brian O’Dowd was stood there, holding court with a few of the lads from five-a-side. Breeda and Brian had been dating for a few months in the lead up to Margaret Looney’s death. Or – as Oona once corrected her – Breeda and Brian had shared a weekly curry every Thursday night, followed by an uncomfortable go at it in the back of his Ford Fiesta. The guy had vanished from Breeda’s life a week before her mother died. Word on the street was that he’d gone to the States on business. Not one word to Breeda though. Not even a text.

  ‘Bree, do you want to leave? The restaurant’s booked for eight o’clock. We could see if they can squeeze us in a little early?’

  Breeda looked back at Oona. If truth be told she did want to leave, but there was no way that waste of skin was going to chase her out of her own local. It was her first night out in a month. She picked up a beermat and proceeded to tear at its ages.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine here, Oona,’ said Breeda, keeping her eyes on the coaster. ‘Seriously, I’m fine.’

  ‘As in Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional?’

  Breeda flicked a torn piece of the beer mat at Oona. ‘You’re not at work now, love. Take the evening off.’

  ‘Fair enough. But don’t waste a second thought on that fool. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.’

  Breeda took a hefty swig of bubbles from her glass, feeling an urgent need to be drunk. She stared at the shredded coaster in front of her and tried to ignore the tightness in her chest. How could she explain it to Oona? After all, she was happily-ever-aftering with Dougie, and had two great kids and a fulfilling life. Hooked up and settled down, Oona was just like everyone else in this whole damn village. She had purpose. She helped people. She changed lives. It had recently dawned on Breeda that without her mother to care for her life had lost its meaning. She was rudderless, each featureless day a carbon copy of the one that had gone before. And worse were the nights. Breeda would often find herself waking in a cold panic and giving her mind over to a turmoil of worries. Hateful as it was to admit to herself, the loneliness was slowly dragging her down. She knew she was drowning. And the worst part was she didn’t know how to stop herself. She watched a drop of condensation run down the side of her glass. There was a world out there which scared her shitless; a new frontier of instant judgements, swipes left, dick pics and fakery. And she wanted no part of it. She was prepared for a life devoid of caresses. She would get used to the meals for one with the cat pressed against her thigh on the sofa. She’d make do with the radio constantly on to drown out the silence permeating her every day. Breeda felt the numbing effect of the alcohol and she leaned forward to top up her glass. She glanced discreetly back over her right shoulder, but Brian was gone.

  ‘Howya Breeda. Hello Oona.’

  Breeda’s stomach spasmed. Brian O’Dowd was looking down at her, all loose tie and permanent stubble. A tang of stale cigarette smoke slithered up Breeda’s nostrils as he stood smiling shamelessly at her, oblivious to the daggers Oona was shooting his way.

  ‘Brian.’ Breeda forced a smile in his direction. ‘You’re back?’

  ‘Yeah.
I was over in the States. They’re training me up for a new role. Exciting times ahead …’

  As he whittled on about his hopes for an upcoming promotion, Breeda felt her eyes glaze over. She nodded her head, a dashboard dog on a potholed road, and wondered to herself what she’d ever seen in this clueless man-child. To think that it was only a couple of months ago she’d been planning to ask him to move in with her after her mother died. Margaret Looney had never liked him — the woman had sense. Breeda glanced at his hands and remembered those fat fingers and their clumsy gropes. She tried not to picture his heavy wet tongue and its insistent explorations of her face and body. Her gut churned as the memories came back. And now, as his voice droned on, it occurred to Breeda that the arrogant feck hadn’t even asked after her mother. Did he even know she’d died? Breeda’s eyes settled on the little patch of exposed neck between his shadowy band of stubble and a sprout of chest hair. She wondered how it would feel to deliver a swift punch to his voice box and then watch him clutch, wild-eyed, at his broken throat. But instead she nodded, then looked at her own hand as it tightened slightly on her wineglass.

  ‘Breeda?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Did we lose you?’ Brian was waving his hand in front of her face. When Breeda looked up she saw that a well-dressed brunette had appeared at Brian’s side with two drinks. She was smiling at Breeda and Oona with perfect teeth and now held one of the drinks towards Brian. Breeda knew it was a JD and Coke. One cube of ice. Just how he liked it.

  ‘Thanks, Alex.’ Brian took a slug of his drink. ‘Let me introduce you. This is Breeda and Oona,’ then turning back to the brunette. ‘And this is Alex. From the Boston office. She’s come over to check up on us, isn’t that right?’ Brian winked at his colleague.

  ‘Nice to meet you both. And it’s so good to be here. I’ve been trying to get over to Ireland for ages to do a little digging into the old family tree …’