Anna McPartlin - No Way to Say Goodbye

ANNA McPARTLIN

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in Ireland as Apart from the Crowd by Poolbeg Press 2006

This edition published in Penguin Books 2010

Copyright Anna McPartlin, 2006, 2010

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-104534-4

To Mom

I remember the days when the power in your legs and arms had gone, all hope for a bright future was lost and you in a home with your radio playing on.

I remember your face and the smile in your eyes.

I remember your faith and the lesson that hope never dies.

To my godchildren, Conor OShea and Laura Kerins.

For you I wish the best this world has to offer but when the shit hits the fan, and it will, Bannie will be there.

It was a rainy afternoon in south Kerry driving rain reminiscent of the opening credits of a Hollywood action or end-of-the-world movie when, if given to fantasy, one might have expected a muscular, sinewy and scantily dressed male to power through the deluge with a damp and distressed girl in his arms and a gun in his back pocket. What he would do with the girl or the gun, and what the girl and the gun had to do with the rain, would be left up to the imagination of the fantasist. Still, Mary thought, theres nothing like the image of a wet man with a purpose to brighten up an otherwise boring indoor day.

She sat on the window-seat and pulled back the curtains to watch water hit water and slide from the decks of the boats bobbing fiercely by the pier. Mr Monkels, her large yellow Labrador, lay with his head on her lap. He was peeved because rain meant no walk and he loved his walks, even though his advanced years meant that they were little more than a series of rests. Mary smiled at her hefty old friend. Its not the end of the world, Mr Monkels theres always tomorrow.

Mr Monkels was unimpressed. He sighed, and the sigh turned to a grunt, which was followed by the low wheezing that often made Mary wonder whether he had a form of dog asthma. Then again, as his age in dog years was the equivalent to eighty-one in humans, it was a miracle that he could breathe unaided, never mind go for a walk. Mary stroked his left ear, which, although deaf, still retained sensitivity to touch the right, although in perfect working order, had been partly missing since a nasty fishing accident some years before.

Marys father had given her Mr Monkels, and he had been only two months old at the time of the accident, running around the deck of her uncles boat while she had concentrated on taking a black-and-white photo of a dead mackerel. Her cousin Ivan was practising casting. Accidentally and inexplicably the hook had found itself embedded in Mr Monkelss ear. Mr Monkels yelped and Mary raised her head in time to see her puppy sail through the air like a furry missile. Ivan shouted, Jesus on a jet-ski! Watch him go! before the pup plummeted paws first into the water. He rose to the surface quickly, splashing and yelping. Ivan rescued him. Unfortunately, a large part of his ear had become what Ivan would later term a casualty of the sea.

Now she stroked his good ear, smiling at the memory of her puppy wagging his tail despite his near-death experience. She had thought back then that he either possessed Herculean bravery, or was Daffy-Duck stupid, and as it turned out, it was a little of both. She lost herself in his big brown cloudy eyes for a minute or two. His nose was dryer than shed like. She picked up his head and moved it onto a waiting pillow. Mr Monkels moaned a little and briefly she wondered if, in promising him tomorrow, shed led him up the proverbial garden path.

The cottage was old and quaint, well insulated and warm, with a homely smell of log fires and home cooking. This had been her primary reason for buying it. She liked its feel. The kitchen had been refurbished two years ago to Marys taste but in keeping with its old-worldliness. She liked pottery and had indulged herself with lamps, vases, plates and cups.

The walls were painted a deep purple but the colour was only partially visible under the multitude of black-framed photographs that lined them. As a teenager Mary had been consumed by photography, taking workshops after school and saving for a decent camera and darkroom equipment. Initially, she had shown a flair for black-and-white shots, injecting even the most mundane subject with mystique and beauty. In her late teens she had turned to portraits and hounded her friends for their faces and time. It had been her son who had inspired her to use colour, with his jet-black hair, pink cheeks and blue, blue eyes. A boy like Ben just didnt belong in black-and-white.

Marys sitting room was like a gallery, with photos of the objects and people in her life, living and dead, on all sides. Her favourite image, for no particular reason, was of a crystal bowl in front of a window with light streaming through it, but there were others, too, of which she was fond: her father bent forward in deep concentration, his glasses on the tip of his nose and the paper in his hand; her auntie Sheila, apron on, hair pinned back, stirring a stew with a grin on her face that suggested shed just heard a dirty joke; her cousin Ivan, tanned, lean and boyish in shorts and an old fishing cap, casting his line; her old boyfriend Robert, with his shining black hair and smiling eyes, linking arms with Ivan, who was pulling her friend Pennys blonde hair; and Adam, Pennys giant footballer boyfriend, laughing. Mary liked the photo of a black cart laden with freshly cut white lilies because it reminded her of the day that she and Robert, her first and perhaps only love, had gatecrashed a gypsy funeral to get drunk on generosity and free beer. These were only some of the photos she surrounded herself with.

Ben had a wall to himself. It wasnt a shrine but a gallery of her sons laughter, his tears, tantrums, joy and sadness, all captured in twelve eight-by-ten photos that represented the five years of his life.

There were only two bedrooms, but Mary didnt need any more. She lived alone and had done so for five years. She gazed now at her son grasping a wriggling Mr Monkels, and smiled at him, now dead as long as he had lived. He beamed back at her, for ever a five-year-old, and for ever smiling.