The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(19)

‘Ah, you’re going to Ballycove, are you?’ the old lady who welcomed him asked. She seemed to be a little deaf and if the carpet stairs were worn, it certainly didn’t take the fulsomeness from her welcome. ‘First time in Ireland?’

‘Yes, that is…’ He stopped, because how could he possibly explain? ‘The first time I can remember.’

‘Oh, you’re in for a treat in Ballycove, especially this time of year. Mind you, it can be stormy. You’ll want to bring a good rain jacket, but if you get the weather… well, it’s a little bit of heaven,’ she said before offering him half her own dinner, which was sitting on the stove, because he looked like a boy who needed feeding!

‘You’re very kind,’ he said softly, because he had a feeling she was, ‘but I have to meet someone now and then I’ll be straight into bed for an early start tomorrow.’ He’d seen a greasy café just along the road. It would be good enough for dinner and tomorrow he’d explore the capital before heading west to start on this self-prescribed sabbatical that already seemed to be filling him up with a sort of nervous and unfamiliar optimism.





8


Lucy


Her mother had been over the moon and even if Lucy wasn’t sure about her decision, perhaps that was enough for now. She’d spent the last two days worried sick about Jo and the fact that her mother seemed to be completely oblivious to the reality that she had lost almost two stone in weight and her skin had taken on a grey tone that Lucy recognised even if she didn’t want to.

Dora was happy too. She ran about the beach early the next morning with an abandon that seemed even more excited than ever. Niall had been predictably sullen with the news that they would be staying put for another two weeks. He’d been expecting to head back for Dublin and his games console first thing on Monday morning – to say he was not impressed was putting it mildly. Lucy wasn’t sure how she really felt about filling in for Dr O’Shea for two weeks. The surgery looked as old as the ark and as for poor Elizabeth – well, it was pretty obvious she wouldn’t be a lot of help in terms of any real hands-on input.

Lucy told herself, sternly, none of that mattered. It was only two weeks. She’d be giving the woman a bit of breathing space, doing what she’d been trained to do and maybe getting some idea of what was wrong with her mother. It would give her a chance to sort out the house in Dublin and perhaps make some travel arrangements for the next few months.

Lucy drew in the fresh salty air and looked across the beach towards the butty grey pier. She turned then, a full three-sixty to take in the village at her back. In the distance, she could see Ballycove yawn into life for another day. At the top of the village the sun danced across the blue-grey slates of the remaining Georgian houses at the top of the town. Lucy remembered walking past them as a teenager, even then admiring their grace. It always seemed to Lucy that they were the kind of house she’d love one day to live in. Had they been the prompt that sent her into medicine? Had she always wanted to live in a large Georgian house, with a walled in garden, an Aga and rooms filled with children and dogs? She did want all those things – once. She’d wanted them with Jack, but now, that dream was over and she was, whether she’d have chosen it or not, beginning on a new path.

She sighed, determined that she would see only the silver lining, no matter how hard she had to squint to find it. The world was going to be, she decided now as the crisp sun dazzled her on her approach to the slipway, her oyster. Now, all she had to do was rid her mother of this crazy idea that they were all going to form this Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club. Hah. Saints preserve us, was all she could manage to answer when Jo had pressed her earlier, but they both knew, it was a done deal. She’d traipse down to the cove on the first of May, just to keep her mother happy, even if she’d prefer to do anything but.

*

The surgery looked even more dilapidated in the early morning light. How on earth could a building that had windows facing both east and south be so depressingly dark? Of course, she knew, it wasn’t a question of sunlight, rather it was the overhanging miasma of the man who’d spent a lifetime barking at patients and probably demeaning his wife; that was what lingered in the core of the place. Eric O’Shea had not been a nice man. The words Lucy had uttered yesterday had not been to polish his character; rather they were to soothe his widow. Lucy had a feeling that the whole village felt a release of something close to relief when he’d finally gone. Ballycove was too small a village not to visit your local doctor. There was no guarantee that a practice in the next town would even fit you in. Better the devil you know. The general consensus was that while he may have been a distant and crotchety man, he was a fair doctor and there was no danger of him not looking after his patients as well as the next.

Alice greeted her with the familiar warmth of their shared past. They’d been in secondary school together, and even if they weren’t close friends, they’d liked each other well enough to get along. This morning they greeted each other with genuine warmth as if the years that passed between them had somehow melded them closer rather than further apart.

‘You’ve caused quite the stir,’ she said that first morning when Lucy handed her a cup of instant coffee that she’d made at the tiny sink in the old man’s consulting room. ‘The whole village is buzzing with the news that you’re taking over. They absolutely hated the last one,’ she said, wrinkling her nose as she tasted the coffee. It was cheap and nasty and a new jar was mentally added to Lucy’s shopping list at lunch time. ‘Thea Gilchrist?’ She said the name as if every doctor knew every other doctor in the country. ‘Never mind, a total cow.’ She shook her head, glad to be rid of the woman.