Mr Lynch’s Holiday

18

His footsteps slowed to a stop. He closed his eyes and saw his mother in the kitchen. The blue dress she wore on Sundays to play the church organ. She would sing as she prepared the dinner. Dermot found the words were still there:

‘Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star,

Guide of the wanderer here below,

Thrown on life’s surge, we claim thy care,

Save us from peril and from woe.’

‘That’s nice.’ He opened his eyes. A woman was standing at her front door. It took him a moment to place her as the Swedish woman.

‘I’m sorry.’ He remained standing in the same spot. ‘I think it was the smell.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Roast lamb. It reminds me of my mother.’

‘Oh. Yes. One minute we are walking along a street, the next we are in another time and place, like we have fallen down a hole.’ She blew smoke from a cigarette. ‘It was lovely to hear someone singing though.’

He shook his head. ‘There’s something wrong with my brain. The things it decides to keep and the things it decides to lose. Like a maniac housekeeper in there.’

She smiled.

‘We’ve not really met in the best circumstances. I’m Inga, hello.’

He held out his hand. ‘Dermot.’

‘So, come in, please, help me eat this lamb.’

He was mortified at the suggestion. ‘Oh. No, no. Thank you, that’s very kind, but no.’ Did she imagine he just lingered around people’s doorways, sniffing the air and waiting for an invitation?

‘Why not? Have you already had lunch?’ Her tone was almost abrupt.

‘Well, no, not yet, I was just heading back for … something.’

‘Is it roast lamb?’

‘I don’t know exactly what … I doubt it.’

‘Well, then, you would be helping me. I have too much. I’ll end up giving half to the cats.’

He found her directness quite unsettling. He had no desire to make conversation with a stranger, he had been looking forward to a little nap, but he saw no way now of refusing without appearing ungracious.

‘Well, in that case, thank you. I wouldn’t want the cats to be getting too fat now.’

The house was sparsely furnished. A wooden-framed sofa, an easy chair, a coffee table covered in books. She brought him a glass of water with a slice of lime floating about in it.

‘Take a seat, please, I won’t be long.’

He did as he was told and tried to look relaxed. Leaning against every wall were paintings in various states of completion. His heart sank. Eamonn had once tried to convince him that a cow cut in half was art. He’d told his son then that if that was art then he was welcome to it. He’d said if that was art, then so was his sock, to which Eamonn had said ‘Exactly’ and Dermot had wondered if his son was half-witted. Cautiously, he cocked his head to one side to look at one of the large canvasses. Some weeds sprouting up from the pavement. Why would anyone want to paint such a thing? He thanked God he could at least see what it was; that was a start.

She walked in and saw him looking.

‘Do you like it?’

He said the only thing he could. ‘You do them well … the weeds. They look like them all right.’

‘Thank you. I suppose I don’t really see them as weeds.’

‘Oh, right.’

He waited to see if she would say what she really did see them as, but instead she said, ‘Come. We’ll eat outside.’

He’d grown used to the sun-drenched terraces of Lomaverde with their unvarying views of the horizon, but Inga’s garden was small and enclosed. Around the perimeter was a high fence, covered in an array of vegetation.

He smiled at the improbability of the place — lush and shaded. It seemed at odds with the woman herself. ‘You have a lovely garden.’ He walked over to some geraniums. ‘You’ve had more luck with these than I have this year.’

‘You enjoy gardening?’

‘I do. When we get the sun, which isn’t so often.’

‘Here it’s the water that’s the problem. I have to remember that it’s a luxury and try to be as sparing as I can.’

Dermot wondered if she was going to start on about recycling and global warming and all the rest of it, she looked like the type who might, but instead she disappeared back into the kitchen and re-emerged with the food. She carried out a large bowl of salad as colourful as her garden, followed by some bread, wine and, last of all, the leg of lamb.

‘Would you like me to carve it?’ It was the wrong thing to say, he knew as soon as he’d said it. The kind of thing Eamonn would jump on him for. Why would a woman need a man to cut the meat? Didn’t they have arms and hands just like him?

She considered the offer, then shrugged and handed him the knife. ‘Why not? It’s nice sometimes to be served by someone else. When you live by yourself there are good things and bad things.’

He nodded. ‘My wife, she always felt the cold. Some years we had the heating on even in summer. I got used to the heat, I suppose, but not the lack of fresh air. That stuffiness — sometimes I couldn’t stand it. God help you if you opened a window though, she hated the draughts, so I’d go outside in the garden for five or ten minutes to fill my lungs. Now I sleep with my windows open and I feel the night air in the room around me and, well … it’s a fine feeling …’ He trailed off. It was the first time he had spoken of Kathleen to this stranger and it sounded like a criticism. ‘I miss her very much though,’ he added too loudly, and wished to God he’d gone straight back to Eamonn’s.

Inga pulled off a chunk of bread. ‘Is she dead or did she leave you?’

It was certainly a contrast to the small talk at Jean and David’s. ‘She’s dead.’

She nodded. ‘Was that recent?’

‘About seven months ago, but she’d not been well for years.’

‘I’m sorry. That must have been very hard.’ She paused. ‘My husband, he didn’t die, so I don’t have that grief. We divorced eighteen months ago now. Each day without him has been …’ she paused, searching for the right word ‘… a joy.’ He looked up at her sharply and she held his gaze for a moment before breaking into a wide grin. ‘I’m sorry, you look so shocked.’

‘No, no, not at all …’

‘You are, I’m sorry. Forgive me, I get out of the habit of talking to people and then I get it all wrong.’

He shrugged. ‘I get it wrong often enough, my son would tell you that.’

‘Sons and daughters like nothing better than telling their parents off.’ She laughed. ‘And the incredible thing is that they know absolutely nothing.’

Dermot smiled. ‘So, you’re from Sweden?’

‘My accent gives me away.’

He shook his head. ‘No. I heard an accent, but I didn’t know where it was from.’ He hesitated. ‘If I don’t recognize an accent I tend to assume the person’s from Luxembourg. I don’t know why.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I’ve never been to Luxembourg.’ He had no idea why he was making such admissions. He sounded like the village idiot.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from Luxembourg.’

Dermot nodded. ‘I don’t suppose I have either.’

She laughed. ‘And you, your accent is Irish?’

‘Ah, now you’re showing off.’

‘OK, I confess, I’m cheating. I wouldn’t really be able to tell the accent. I can hear it’s not English, but it could be Scottish or — what’s the other one?’

‘Welsh?’

‘Scouse. But I know your name is Irish, so I took an educated guess.’

‘Like Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Oh, please, I hope I’m not like him. I never thought he was a nice man. Always so unpleasant to Dr Watson.’

Dermot was surprised. ‘Was that not because Dr Watson was an idiot?’

She laughed. ‘Poor Dr Watson. I always wanted him to solve the case, just to show Sherlock Holmes that you didn’t have to be rude and grumpy to be clever, but he always let me down.’

‘You were backing the wrong horse there.’

‘That’s the story of my life.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Do you mind?’

He shook his head and she looked at him. ‘So, from Ireland and you live in England. We’re both immigrants, then.’

Dermot frowned. ‘I suppose so. I don’t tend to think of myself as that.’

‘Oh? You no longer consider yourself Irish?’

‘No, I do, I do, of course, but I don’t really think of myself as an immigrant any more. It seems a long time ago.’

‘You don’t miss Ireland?’

He thought for a moment. ‘I miss all kinds of things, but I’m not sure I’d ever find them by moving back. I know people who’ve made a big to-do about going back home, the prodigal returning, and the next thing you know you bump into them round the corner.’

‘It doesn’t work?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s like … they’ve held this idea of Ireland in their head for forty years, you know, the place they sing about in all the songs. They get there and it’s not the place they left, of course it’s not, it never was, and they’re not the people they were.’

She nodded. ‘I don’t miss Sweden.’

‘Did you not like it there?’

‘There are things about it I love, but also a lot of not so happy memories. It felt good to begin again somewhere new.’

‘A fresh start.’

She smiled. ‘When I first came here, my paintings were very simple, very clean. A sunset. The distant horizon. A white house against a blue sky. That’s all I wanted to paint.’

‘But not now?’

‘No. Not now.’

‘Now you like painting … wild plants.’

She laughed. ‘Weeds. It’s OK. We can call them that.’

‘You like painting weeds.’

‘Not just weeds. All kinds of things. The bits of Lomaverde that were not in the brochures. The weeds. The cats. The puddles by cracked pipes. The things that living places have. The things that cannot be designed.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not very artistic. I see those things and I want to fix them, to tidy them up.’

‘Of course. That’s normal. Most times I do too.’

‘That’s a relief. I was beginning to feel bad about pulling up the dandelions.’

She smiled at him. ‘Why feel bad? We pull them up, we concrete over them, but soon they are there again. They always break through.’

He took a sip of the wine she had poured for him. He had never been one for wine, but the taste was softer than he remembered.

‘They do,’ he said. ‘There’s something to be said for resilience.’