ii

Eilis had edged past the fridge and the washing machine and the new cooker, all still in their packaging, and was now at the front door. Her mother stood with Martin in the hallway near the kitchen.

‘I'll be there for a day or two, that's all,' Eilis said.

‘And what will I say if people ask me where you are?' her mother asked.

‘Is that what you're worried about?'

‘Yes, it is. I care what people think about me.'

‘Tell them I've gone to Martin's house for a day or two by the sea and that you might join me if the weather holds up.'

‘I wouldn't be caught dead down there.'

‘No need to tell them that.'

Her decision to get away from her mother and Martin was made on the day her mother insisted that she didn't want to hear another word about America.

‘It's day and night. Every time I turn on the television, I hear Americans laughing at something that's not even funny. And there was all that Nixon stuff I hated. And now I have you telling me how great America is and how big everything is there –'

‘I never said that.'

‘And their terrible voices. It's the voices I mind most. And their clothes.'

‘What clothes?'

‘Americans! There was a man from the Villas came home after years in Boston or Philadelphia or some place and he went around the town in tartan trousers and a matching cap.'

Eilis followed Martin when he went upstairs.

‘Is that house of yours in Cush habitable?'

‘For me, it is.'

‘It will be fine for me too,' she said.

—

But the house, when she drove there, had not been cleaned for a long time. The only mattress was stained and the bedclothes were old. And the house itself was closer to the cliff than she imagined, fully exposed to the wind coming in from the sea. It struck her that Martin and her mother would never know if she did not, in fact, stay here. She would, she decided, drive to Wexford and book into one of the hotels and return to her mother's house in a day or two.

In Wexford, she parked her car near the railway station and walked the length of the main street until she came to Lowneys furniture shop. Even as she looked at beds and mattresses with a young assistant following her, she really did not have a definite plan. But the prices were low and it occurred to her that all she would need was a bed, a mattress, an easy chair and a deckchair, and some fresh towels and bedclothes.

When she asked the assistant how quickly they could deliver, he went to find the owner.

‘I know you from Enniscorthy,' the owner said when he appeared. He was wearing a suit and tie. ‘My brother did a line with your sister. Lacey?'

‘That would be a long time ago.'

‘Ah now, we're all young still.'

He asked her when she wanted the delivery.

‘Now. I mean today.'

She hoped she spoke without a trace of an American accent.

‘Every single person from Enniscorthy wants everything today. It must be something in the water up there.'

‘So could it be today?'

‘It could be done this minute.'

‘I'm in Blackwater, actually, in Cush on the cliff.'

‘I have no prejudices.'

‘Will you be able to take the old furniture away?'

‘Are you paying hard cash?'

She nodded.

‘I'll do anything, then.'

He promised to be ready to set out in an hour when his van would follow her car to Cush. She went back along the main street to Shaws where she bought sheets and blankets and pillows and towels. In the women's section, she tried on the cheapest bathing suit she could find and then bought that too. Once she had packed these purchases in her car, she bought some bread and ingredients for a salad.

—

When the new bed was in place and the old one taken away, she set about making it, wishing she had also bought a bedside lamp. It was warm, but if she left the door open flies came in. She unfolded the deckchair on the grass in front of the house. Now she could relax; this was what she had come here for, after all.

In the creamy light of the afternoon, it was peaceful and beautiful, the silence broken only by a tractor in a nearby field, by faint birdsong and by the soft, incessant sound of waves breaking on the strand below. Tonight would be the first time she would ever sleep in a house alone, when there would be no one in the bed with her or in the next room. In all her years with Tony, it was something she had often dreamed about, especially at the beginning of their marriage – slipping away, getting a train or even driving to some town and finding an anonymous hotel to spend two nights away from everyone.

What was strange was how close she had lived to Tony's family and how little she thought about them now. She stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. She hoped there would be fine weather when Rosella and Larry came. Often, there was one stretch of sunny weather in the summer and then it was overcast with rain or drizzle and the vague expectation that the sky might clear towards the end of the day. She wanted them to like the town and think well of her mother and Martin and talk nostalgically when they got home about their time in Ireland, with the idea that this, too, was where they came from, even if it might seem less significant than the Italian world that they had heard about from their grandparents.

Tony's father, over all the years, had never really learned her name. He had a sense of what it sounded like and he often made brave efforts but failed after the first syllable and thereafter made a grumbling sound. Once Larry discovered this, it became another way to make his mother and sister laugh. He would never imitate his grandfather's growl in front of his father who would not find it funny. But sometimes over dinner if Tony left the room for a moment, Larry would begin to address Eilis as though he were her father-in-law. He would try out several ways to say her name, more preposterous each time, but with his grandfather's voice and his distracted, ponderous expression.

‘If they catch you, they'll kill you, that family of your father's,' Eilis said. ‘Don't ever let your cousins see you doing this.'

One day, a few weeks before she had left for Ireland, Tony's father appeared at the garage. Eilis saw him and Mr Dakessian speaking to each other as though they were involved in a conspiracy. It was all gestures and whispers and Tony's father narrowing his eyes and smiling at Mr Dakessian who followed what he said with close attention.

‘Where is my daughter-in-law?' he asked, coming into the office.

He addressed the question to Mr Dakessian who was following him. He managed to ignore Eilis completely as he directed his attention to Erik who had stood up when the two men came in.

‘I drove down to see how my daughter-in-law is doing. I love all three of my daughters-in-law, but the one that works here is the one with the brains and those brains have been passed on to my granddaughter Rosella. I am sure Larry has them too, but Rosella makes us all proud. And that includes her teachers. And it is my view that she got most of her talent from her Irish mother. And that is the truth.'

Her father-in-law looked at her with so much warmth and admiration that she was tempted to ask him to say her name, to tell everyone in the room what her name was.

She wondered if his volubility had been caused by drinking, but she had never seen him take more than a few glasses of wine. Quickly, she realised that he had come here deliberately and his performance had been worked out in advance. His visit was a message of support. What she did not know was whether it had been inspired by her mother-in-law as a way of flattering her, embracing her, snaring her further in the great family net, or whether Tony's father was speaking on his own behalf, not having consulted anyone on the content of his most effusive outburst.

‘What was that about?' Erik asked when the two older men had left the room.

‘He loves me and he admires me,' Eilis replied.

‘So I can tell, but why?'

‘For the reason he explained.'

‘No, no. He must have another reason.'

When Eilis next managed to be alone with her brother-in-law, she told him about the visit and asked if his mother had sent his father to make clear to Eilis that, even though they were not going to listen to her or take her feelings into account, they did not want her to think she was unappreciated.

‘No, he did it on his own,' Frank said. ‘But only after he summoned all of his sons and gave us a rambling talk about how he was on our side, and always would be, until he wouldn't be.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He said that in his country men support their sons, but he and Mr Dakessian had discussed this and they thought it was right and so he wanted us to know that he supports us. But he and Mr Dakessian had also agreed that sometimes you would have to put a lot of thought into the matter and it isn't as simple as it sounds and sometimes your support might waver. It took him a while to come up with the word "waver". He waved his hands around to give us a sense of what he meant.'

‘And then?'

‘And then he told Enzo he was to stop picking fights with Lena. And Enzo went crazy and asked him if he had anything to say about Tony. My father had not, at any point, even glanced at Tony. He pretended Tony wasn't even in the room.'

‘And what did your mother say?'

‘She doesn't know about it. She was at the chiropodist so she doesn't know the meeting even took place.'

‘And Tony doesn't know you're telling me all this?'

‘That's correct.'

‘It's hardly helpful.'

‘I'm doing my best.'

—

Tony was like a ghost in the house, appearing silently in doorways, never settling anywhere. One evening, when Eilis had a suitcase open on the bed and was busy folding what she planned to pack for Ireland, Tony stood and watched her until she was tempted to ask if she could help him in any way.

His mother, using a cheerful tone, had said several times how glad she was that Eilis would be in Ireland for her own mother's eightieth birthday.

‘She will be delighted to see you. And Rosella and Larry are looking forward to it. Larry says that he is going to come home with an Irish accent so I don't know what we will do then.'

Her hearty laugh made Eilis more determined not to smile.

As she packed, with Tony still observing her, Eilis was still not smiling. When she lifted her suitcase from the bed, Tony rushed over to assist.

‘I can do it on my own, thanks.'

‘You look like you're packing for a long trip.'

‘I don't want to forget anything.'

‘I'll miss you when you're gone.'

She looked at him blankly and nodded. She wished she could come up with some remark that would cause him to stop staring at her so sadly. She was about to say that it was only a holiday until she realised that this was not true.

‘I can't imagine the house without you,' he said.

—

Eilis remembered now that Larry, on seeing the quantity of clothes she had packed, had asked her whether they did not have washing machines in Ireland.

If only she had known, she would have told him no, that her mother did not have a washing machine and neither she nor Martin had a fridge. When she went inside Martin's house to make herself a sandwich, the butter had melted. All she could do was leave it there, hope that it would solidify when evening came.

Returning to the deckchair, Eilis could feel a heat emanating from the soil which gave the grass and the clover a pungent smell. Even though she was no longer in direct sunlight, she felt a clamminess in the heat that reminded her of Sundays in the distant past when her father borrowed a car and they would set out for here. It seemed impossible that there could have been five of them in the back of a small car. Rose hated the cold water and could not be induced to join the rest of them when they went for a swim.

The water must be cold now, she thought, but still she went back into the house and changed into her swimsuit and put her dress on again over it. She took a towel and walked across the fields towards the lane where she would find steps down to the strand. Larry would be amused at the idea that she had not even considered the need to lock the door, and she had left the car keys on the table.

The heat coming from the sandy ground brought her back to those Sundays, her father still wearing his suit, her brothers carrying their hurley sticks hoping to find others who might play with them on the strand. The names of the local families – the Furlongs, the Murphys, the Mangans, the Gallaghers – came to her clearly now as if no time had passed at all.

No matter how carefully they cut the steps into the marly soil of the cliff and firmly added railway sleepers, the last section was just loose sand. She had to run down that stretch without any support.

She decided to walk towards Knocknasillogue and Morriscastle, glad that the strand was now in shade. She left her sandals at the bottom of the cliff and walked along the shore in bare feet.

—

On one of the days before she left, Larry began following her around the house, observing her suspiciously, until she asked him if he was waiting to say something.

‘Carlo says that you and Dad are splitting up. But then Aunt Lena found out and she told Uncle Enzo who made me promise to forget what Carlo had said.'

‘Have that branch of the family ever thought of minding their own business?'

‘I promised that I wouldn't tell you.'

‘I am not going to tell anyone that you told me.'

‘So that's it then? No more to be said?'

‘Are you looking forward to seeing Enniscorthy?'

‘You're changing the subject. If I did that, you'd all be against me.'

‘Who is all?'

‘You and Rosella.'

‘Your father and myself are having a difficult time.'

‘I know that. But are you splitting up?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I needed to tell you that I like things the way they are. I like how we are all together and maybe I complain sometimes when you or Rosella criticise me, but I don't mean it. I wouldn't want anything to change.'

She had no idea how to respond. He was watching her closely. It would not do to remain silent or suggest that she was too busy to talk about this now. Clearly, he had been waiting for a moment to find her when she was not too busy.

‘I hope it will be all right,' she said.

‘Do you mean that there won't be any change?'

‘I don't want another woman's baby in my house.'

‘I get that.'

‘And your father knows that and your grandmother knows that.'

‘So what is going to happen?'

‘If I knew, I'd tell you. Honestly.'

‘When will you know?'

She hesitated.

‘I think the baby is going to be born when we are away,' he said.

She nodded.

‘Does that mean that we mightn't ever come back here?'

‘You will always come back here.'

‘But not you?'

She wanted to tell him that he would make a good cop or a good lawyer and they could discuss his future with his uncle Frank, but he was looking at her too earnestly. She would have to take him seriously.

‘It would be better if your grandmother did not get involved.'

‘But what if the man just leaves it here and we're away? How should she react?'

‘I didn't cause any of this.'

‘But you will have to decide what you are going to do.'

‘I haven't decided.'

‘I thought I might get you to say –'

‘What?'

‘Something. One way or the other.'

‘I don't know. That is the honest truth. But you have to remember that I love you and Rosella and so does your father and that will never change.'

She moved to hug him, and he put his arms around her for a moment. But then he turned and, like someone defeated, slowly left the room.

—

Once she had passed Knocknasillogue, she felt a soft breeze. No matter what she did, she thought, she would not be able simply to think about nothing or just be herself on an ordinary day by the sea. At home, Rosella and Larry came in and out of her presence all day, and Tony did too. It did not strike her until now that even when she was alone they were in the shadows close to her. They were still close to her here.

In the days before she left, she was determined that she would get a car to the airport. She did not want Tony to take her. She did not want to hear his apologies or his excuses, but more than anything she did not want to listen as he suggested that he was unsure what would happen when the baby was born. She knew that he was sure, as his mother was sure. They just didn't think it was worth telling her.

When she asked Mr Dakessian if he knew a driver, he offered to take her to the airport himself.

‘Can Tony not drive you? And the old man would give anything to have you in his car, half broken down as it is, and he would probably drive you to any airport you cared to name. And if they can't take you, then I will.'

She was sorry that she had mentioned the possibility of getting a driver to Mr Dakessian. She looked at the board in the supermarket to see if any local drivers had put up a notice, but there was nothing. Having gone through the phone book, she found a few taxi numbers and wrote them down but did not call.

For a week or more her mother-in-law had kept away but two days before she was to travel, Francesca came to the kitchen door.

‘I'll come in just for one second. I know you're busy.'

She put a small package on the kitchen table.

‘This is a little gift for your mother. From one mother to another. It's very small. I know that you have a heavy suitcase.'

Eilis smiled. She could imagine Larry telling his grandmother about the heavy suitcase he had helped his mother carry down the stairs.

‘I'm sure she will be delighted,' Eilis said.

‘Well, that might be putting it a bit strongly.'

Eilis did not ask Francesca to sit down or offer her any refreshment.

‘Rosella and Larry are very excited about going. I hope your mother has plenty of help. It will be tough getting the house ready for visitors.'

If they remained here for the entire evening, Eilis wondered, would every single thing her mother-in-law said sound patronising and overbearing?

She wished she had come up with a definite plan about getting to the airport. It occurred to her that it would be easier if Tony drove her and Larry came with them, but then she realised how much Larry noticed and took in, how he would listen to every remark, seeking out signs of how things were between his parents.

On the night before she was to leave, Tony asked if she needed anything done for her the next day.

‘No, I have everything.'

‘We should leave early so you have plenty of time.'

‘Are you driving me?'

‘Who else would drive you? Or do you not want me to go with you?'

‘You're right. We should go early.'

—

As she walked on, she saw on the strand in the slanting sunlight a boulder made of marl that would dissolve when the tide was high. It had rolled down from the cliff above. She sat and rested against it and looked at the sea. This might be a good place to have a swim.

In her early days with Tony, she had learned not to underestimate how easily sometimes he could see what she was thinking. It was often hard to keep a secret from him. But because he seldom asked her questions, he had a way of pretending that he knew nothing except what she had disclosed.

She was sure he was fully aware that she would have counted backwards from the time the baby was due and realised that it had been conceived the previous November or December. This same period was a special time for herself and Tony. For years, when the children were young, they had continued to make love. But then that had stopped. There was a year when they had hardly had sex at all. And suddenly in the last months of the previous year something had happened between them. It was a surprise to her that they had become so passionate. As soon as she woke some days, she would find Tony moving close to her and they would have sex before their day began.

This had continued until Christmas. She saw those months as a happy time. And then, when she found out about the other woman's pregnancy, it occurred to her that the affair between Tony and this woman must have happened during the same period.

In the car to the airport, they did not speak until she asked Tony to make sure that Larry was home by nine any evening he went out and that he should give a detailed account of where he had been.

‘He is incapable of telling a lie,' she said and then realised that this might sound like an accusation against Tony who, clearly, was unlike his son in this respect.

‘Your mother,' he said, ‘must be looking forward to meeting her grandchildren for the first time.'

This was the sort of remark that his own mother might make to reduce the tension and she saw no reason to respond to it.

What she wanted to say to him, in a voice quiet and firm and controlled, was that if the other woman's baby spent so much as a single night in his mother's house then she, Eilis, would not come back, she would find somewhere else to live and she would take Rosella and Larry with her. She would, effectively, divorce him.

She knew that once it was said, it would change things between them. She had been careful not to say it before. As they edged through traffic, she rehearsed a number of ways of saying it.

She could say, ‘If you take the baby in, I will leave you and I will take the children,' or ‘I mean it when I say that I don't want your mother to take in the baby. Can you promise me that this will not happen?' She rehearsed in her mind a number of other ways of making herself clear but none of them seemed right.

And then she realised what the problem was. Tony had already worked out what she wanted to say and now, as he stared at the road ahead, he was making it impossible for her. He was doing nothing obvious, nothing she could argue with or seek to undermine. It did not show in his face; she could not detect it in his breathing or his way of driving. And yet she was aware that he was creating around himself an aura of vulnerability, or innocence even, that would prevent her from saying anything hard and irrevocable, from making a threat that she could not take back.

It felt like a battle between them until it occurred to her that she was doing battle with herself as well as with him. Rosella and Larry would barely be bothered by the arrival of a baby in their grandmother's house. They would get used to it. But she would not; she was sure she would not.

She wished she could speak clearly to Tony as he drove, let him know once and for all what the consequences would be if he and his mother did not see sense.

But if she spoke, she would lose him. He had already decided what he would do about the baby. Once more, she saw that if she made the threats, she would mean them. And it was that knowledge that was stopping her from speaking. She was not sure she wanted to lose him, not certain either that she wished to bring Rosella and Larry from adolescence to adulthood without everything they had been used to, including their father. Her uncertainty almost made her nauseous as they began the last stretch towards the airport.

She wanted him to drop her at the kerbside, but he insisted that, as they had plenty of time, he would park and accompany her to check-in.

—

She felt something close to anger now as she stared out to sea, watching a line of birds skim over the water. Since she had not threatened Tony in the car, he would have driven back to Lindenhurst feeling that he had achieved something or that he had managed to contain things. In the airport, as she walked towards her gate, she knew that Tony was standing behind her watching. They had already embraced. And that was enough, she thought. He would now be waiting for her to turn once more and wave at him. But she did not turn; she steeled herself not to.

She stood up and stretched, walking down to the shore to test the water. It was too cold. It would be a few weeks before it was warm enough for swimming. Even then, it would be cold. But she remembered also the glow of warmth that came once she was dressed again after a swim. She would, she resolved, try the water now.

Leaving her dress on the sand, she made her way into the sea. Even if she swam for just one minute, it would be enough.

When she was up to her knees in the water, she winced as a wave broke against her and quickly, without a further thought, she swam out. Once she surfaced, she felt she had had enough. It was too cold. She could not wait to return to shore and dry herself off and put her dress back on.

She was hungry, and sorry she had not brought more food. She would have to do with sandwiches made from melted butter and lettuce and tinned salmon, with some tomato and cucumber. She was happy, however, that she had bought the new bed and the mattress and the bedclothes. She dreamed of waking to the sun over the sea and going to the edge of the cliff to witness the early morning.

As she headed back along the strand to Cush, she saw a lone figure in the distance walking towards her. It must be after six o'clock, she thought, and this would be one of the locals taking a stroll. Not many others came here, she knew. Martin had told her he could come down here most days and seldom meet anyone at all. Wexford people went to Curracloe, and Enniscorthy people to Keating's or Morriscastle. The cliffs were too high, Martin said, and people could not easily find the steps down to the strand.

Instead of the glow she expected to feel after her time in the water, she felt cold and realised she should have taken a pullover. She had with her a thick woollen cardigan and she would put that on as soon as she made it back. She felt tired and thought that if she lay down on the new bed she would fall asleep, but she must not do that, it had taken her long enough to regulate her sleep after the flight.

She noticed the man coming towards her stepping aside to avoid a wave. He had been walking too close to the shore. He seemed to be looking directly at her. She hoped he was not someone from Enniscorthy who might recognise her and want to know what she was doing on her own down here.

The man glanced towards her as if he was waiting for her. It struck her that, whoever he was, she should pass him as briskly as she could, greeting him if she had to do that, but appear preoccupied or needing to get back to her car quickly.

Then she saw that it was Jim Farrell. He turned towards her and shook his head with a sense of rueful surprise, as if this encounter after all the years could not be happening. And then the expression on his face changed. He appeared serious, almost worried.

She hardly knew what to do. She would try to say as little as possible.

‘How did you know I was here?' she asked.