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‘You’re just jealous. And I always fry topless,’ said Joe. ‘So I don’t stink after.’
He dished the food out onto two plates and breathed in dramatically.
‘Your mother does not know what she’s missing.’
‘I do,’ said Anna, nodding at Joe’s belly. He slapped it.
‘One day of crunches, it’s gone,’ he said. She made a face. He was right. He had always been in shape.
‘C’mon, honey,’ he said. ‘How am I ever going to compete with a woman who shops in the children’s department?’ She smiled. He pulled a white long-sleeved T-shirt over his head and walked over to the kettle. He took the cafetière down from a shelf beside it, then poured in boiling water and shook it up the sides. When the glass was hot, he threw out the water and tipped four scoops of Kenyan grounds into the bottom. He filled it with water to the edge of the chrome rim. He rinsed the plunger in boiling water and put it on top, twisting it so the opening to the spout was blocked. After four minutes, he plunged gently, watching the grains being pushed slowly to the base of the jug. He rotated the top of the plunger so the grate was lined up with the spout and the coffee would pour. Joe could never watch anyone else make coffee.
‘Your father rang last night,’ said Anna suddenly. Shaun’s eyes widened, but he knew when to stay quiet.
‘Sure he did,’ said Joe, carrying the coffee to the table.
‘He did. He’s getting married.’
Joe stared at her. ‘You’re shitting me.’
‘Watch your language. And I’m serious. How could I make that up? He wants you to go over.’
‘Jesus Christ. Is it Pam?’
‘Of course it’s Pam. You’re dreadful.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t know with that guy.’
‘He’s unbelievable,’ said Shaun.
‘Yup,’ said Joe. ‘Roll in the family so you’ll look normal to your new husband or wife. “See? My kids are here for my wedding. They’re pretty cool. I’m not an axe murderer.”’
‘Well …’
‘Well, nothing.’
‘Uh, Mom,’ said Shaun. ‘I hate to change the subject, but do you have any baby photos of me? I mean, did you bring any to Ireland?’
‘You know, you would think I wouldn’t bother,’ said Anna, ‘but they were so cute I put a few in my diary. Hold on.’
She brought her diary from the bedroom and pulled three photos from an envelope in the back.
‘Look at you,’ she said. She held up the first photo, a two-year-old Shaun in the bath, his face smiling through a halo of foam. Then one of him at four, in camouflage gear, holding a plastic rifle. In the third, he was blowing out five candles on a cake shaped like a beetle.
‘That cake was a nightmare,’ she said. ‘Your father hovering over me the whole time, making sure it was anatomically correct.’
‘That cake was awesome,’ said Shaun. ‘But I’ll go with the GI shot. Cute, but politically incorrect. Like me. The secret bug life might be a bit much.’
‘What’s it for?’ asked Anna.
‘Our school website,’ said Shaun. ‘St Declan’s is actually getting a site. We have this computer teacher, Mr Russell, who was in some massive software firm in the nineties, but burnt out and went into teaching. Anyway, he’s cool. He wants every kid in fifth year to have something posted on the site with a biography. So we all have to bring in photos, kind of like before and afters. From geek to chic.’
Anna laughed. ‘Well, there’s nothing geeky about my little clean-cut army boy,’ she said, looking at the photo. ‘Maybe you could be the chic to geek guy,’ she said, eyeing his jeans.
‘Mom, you don’t know the meaning of geek.’
‘Well, what is it, then? Boys in sloppy jeans with shirts down to their knees?’
‘No. That’s someone cool. A geek is a nerd. Think of Dad.’
She hit him with her diary. Joe laughed. Shaun finished his breakfast, grabbed his school bag and ran.
‘See you at the show tonight,’ he called, and the door slammed behind him.
Anna turned to Joe and pointed at him. ‘Call your father.’
‘OK, I’ll call my fazzer,’ he said. Her English was almost perfect, but ‘ths’ still got the better of her. She gave him a look.
‘You’re so exotic, Annabel,’ he said, lingering on the ‘1’. She gave him another look.
Sam Tallon stood in the service room on the second level of the lighthouse, shaking his head. He was a short man with a doughy chubbiness.
‘My God, this brings back memories,’ he said. ‘The keeper would be sitting at this desk, filling out his reports …’ He stopped and pointed. ‘You’ll have to get a scraper to the paint on the treads of that ladder.’ Sam was Anna’s restoration expert, a former engineer with the Commissioners of Irish Lights. He was sixty-eight years old and she had just made him walk up a narrow spiral staircase.
‘Right,’ he said and grabbed on, heaving himself up the rungs of a second ladder, then pushing through a cast-iron trap door into the lantern house. His laugh echoed down to her. When she climbed up, he let out a whistle.
‘You’ve got a job on your hands here.’
‘I thought so,’ said Anna, looking around at the cracked, rusty walls.
‘You’ll have to strip that right back,’ said Sam. ‘There’s layers and layers of enamel there. It’ll be rock hard.’
At the centre of the room was a pedestal holding a vat of mercury that supported the five-ton weight of the lighthouse lens. Only its base could be seen from the lantern house – most of it filled the gallery above. Sam checked the gauge at the side of the vat.
‘Well, the mercury level has dropped a small bit. So the rollers underneath the lens are probably taking a little more weight than they’re supposed to. But it’s not a big problem, especially if the light’s not going to be on all the time.’
‘I’m just hoping I’ll be able to light it at all.’
‘Ah, you should be fine,’ said Sam. ‘I’d say they’ll make you agree to light it only at a certain time and to have the beam travel inland.’
Anna held her breath as Sam studied the base of the lens, checking the clockwork mechanism that rotated it.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sam eventually. ‘I think it’s all right. After nearly forty years. We’ll need to get the weights moving, but I think you’re in luck.’
‘Thank God,’ said Anna.
‘A mantle, like the wick of a candle, burns inside that,’ he said, back to the lens. ‘If you didn’t have a mantle, there’d be no light. And it’s only a little silk thing you could fit in your pocket.’ He chuckled. ‘Anyway, the prisms in the lens refract the light, the lens rotates and there you have your lovely lighthouse beam.’ Sam climbed the ladder inside the lens, breaking cobwebs as he went.
‘It’s filthy,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to get at this later, probably after you strip the walls. And you’ll need to get your hands on some new mantles, by the way – 55mm.’
They moved back down through the lighthouse and out through the old doors.
‘You’ll need to replace them too,’ said Sam.
‘They’re on their way,’ said Anna. He was impressed.
‘Now, what I’ll do,’ said Sam, ‘is clean the rollers and check the pressure in the kerosene pumps. I’ll leave you to clean the lens and the brass.’ He smiled.
‘OK,’ said Anna.
‘Then we can give it a run-through, see if it’s all still in working order,’ said Sam.
‘Maybe not right away,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know when’s a good time.’
‘No problem at all.’
The last ripples of conversation died and the audience turned to the stage. Haunting music filled the room. Katie Lawson stepped forward and began to sing. Shaun smiled. Here was his beautiful girlfriend, stunning the audience into silence with the sweetest voice he’d ever heard. She had changed his life. He had come to Ireland reluctantly, miserably, desperately missing baseball, cable, twenty-four-hour everything. And then came Katie. On the first day in his new school, she was all he saw. She was bent forward on her desk, slapping it with her fist, bursting with her contagious, singsong laugh. Then she sat back, pushing her dark hair off her face and wiping tears from her eyes. Shaun’s heart flipped as he walked towards her. She had the cutest smile and it lit up her whole face. She was all natural: glowing skin, fresh cheeks, sparkling brown eyes. Once they locked onto his, he was gone.
Katie left the stage to sit beside him, her head bowed, embarrassed by the applause.
‘Wow,’ Shaun whispered to her. ‘You were amazing. You blew everyone away.’
Katie blushed. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Shut up,’ said Shaun. ‘You rocked.’
Ali Danaher, Katie’s best friend, came next, with a poem she had written herself. Shaun was smiling before she even started because he knew it would be black and heavy, like her clothes and her eye shadow. Ali had dry bottle-blond hair and if she pulled her sleeves up too high, skinny razor marks on her arms – for effect. She never admitted she came from a happy comfortable home, because her art would suffer. She finished the poem solemnly:
‘… rotten core
Seeping through, finally breaking the ivory surface
A tarnished history
No longer hidden, too late to hide.’
Shaun and Katie cheered over the parents’ polite applause. Ed Danaher rolled his eyes at his wife, but was the last one to stop clapping.
When it was over, Shaun took Katie’s hand and guided her through the hall.
Joe kissed Anna goodbye and left with Ed for Danaher’s. She turned away, still smiling, and saw Petey Grant, the school caretaker, loping towards her. Petey had sallow skin and dark brown hair cut tight before it started to curl. Under thick eyebrows, his almond-shaped eyes were a soft blue and rarely made contact with anyone else’s. When he spoke, he leaned to one side, holding his big hands in front of him, moving his slender fingers in and out as if he was about to catch or pass a basketball.
‘Hello, Mrs Lucchesi. Nice to see you tonight. Did you enjoy the performance? I thought it was excellent. Katie is a lovely singer. She’s also a pretty girl. I heard her practising the other day.’ He blushed. ‘Is Mr Lucchesi here? I wouldn’t mind dropping into his workshop tomorrow, if that’s OK? Is he doing anything tomorrow? I have a day off. I wouldn’t mind helping him on that table he’s making.’
Petey liked to reveal every thought that came into his head. He’d had learning difficulties since he was a child and the kids in school were split between those who gave him a hard time and those who defended him fiercely. Anna adored him. He was polite, enthusiastic, sensitive and charmingly innocent for a twenty-five-year-old. From early on, Petey had found a friend in Joe and someone who shared his interest in lighthouses. Although, for Petey, it was his specialist subject and the only thing he would talk about if he could get away with it. When Joe was working on furniture for the house, Petey would come in, lean back against the worktop and talk for hours about the history of Irish lighthouses.
‘You’re welcome at the house any time, Petey,’ said Anna.
‘Thanks very much, Mrs Lucchesi. That would be great.’
He hesitated, never knowing quite when a conversation was over.
The keys to Seascapes were heavy in Shaun’s pocket. His job was to mow the lawns and carry out repairs at the holiday homes, but now it was September and most of the houses were vacant. His plan was to slip away with Katie to one of them later that night. She had told her mother she was going to his house, he had told his he was going to hers. Martha Lawson was a tough woman to get around, but she trusted her daughter.
‘There seems to be a bit of a mix-up about tonight,’ said Martha as she approached the pair. ‘I was just talking to Mrs Lucchesi and she says you’re coming to our house.’
Shit, thought Shaun.
‘I thought we were watching Aliens tonight,’ said Katie.
‘No,’ said Shaun. ‘Playstation at my house.’
‘Well, I’m leaving now, so I’ll give you a lift,’ said Martha.
‘Shit,’ Katie mouthed at Shaun.
Anna stayed for another two hours, tidying up after the performance with some of the other ‘sucker moms’ as Joe called them. It was midnight by the time she left. She walked along by the church, lost in her thoughts.
‘Well, if it isn’t the beautiful Anna.’ The tone was all wrong.
She held her breath, then turned around. She was stunned at how John Miller now looked. The glazed eyes, the mottled red face and the unsteady legs she could put down to drunkenness, but everything else came as a shock: his hair, greying and greasy, his skin, puffy, his shirt straining across his stomach. He swayed in front of her.
‘I know I look like shit,’ he said, his arms outstretched.
‘No, you don’t,’ Anna said quietly. ‘Not at all.’
‘Fuck off! You’re French. You’re fucking perfect.’
She didn’t know what to say.
‘So, it’s Anna Lucheesy now or so I’ve heard. Very nice.’
‘Lu-caze-y,’ she said, trying to smile.
‘So, you married your cop then? Lucky guy. Lucky, lucky guy.’ He grinned. ‘Any chance of a fuck?’
‘Jesus Christ, John!’ she said, looking around. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That I want a fuck.’
‘And where is your wife?’
‘Still in Australia. Kicked me out. Hah! Can you fucking believe it? I’m back here living with Mother. Psycho up on the hill. About to take over managing the orchard. The one thing I swore I’d never do.’
‘I’m sorry, John.’ She turned to walk away.
‘You’re a great girl. A gorgeous girl,’ he called after her.
She kept walking. Her hands were shaking, her face burning.
