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Standing at the train window, he had seemed to change before her eyes. Hidden fragments of his life tumbled out that she strove to piece together. This was the first occasion when she properly understood that parents had previous lives and secrets. Listening to him had reminded her of a boy with his nose pressed against a shop window. Always on the outside, describing the clothes guests wore to dinner back then, the size of the dining room, the musicians who played. All as glimpsed from a kitchen sink, between the swish of a swing door opening and closing as waiters came and went. Now he had decided to return with his wife and daughter in his own private triumph.
Alison could remember the tiny station at Rosslare and the steep hump–backed bridge where the sea suddenly glistened into sight. They had walked the few hundred yards to the hotel, him in front with two heavy suitcases, she and her mother straggling slightly behind. She had felt a nervousness for her father. He seemed out of his depth, striding forward with a frighteningly boyish eagerness. Even at twelve she sensed he was going to be disappointed by the fact that nobody knew him, no one recalled his hands scrubbing pots in scalding water, nobody would understand the momentous nature of his return.
Yet all this she only fully understood years later, when Danny was two and Alison spent a week in Waterford after her father’s funeral, sorting out clothes and personal effects, filling in the gaps of his life through them. He had known poverty in Waterford as a boy and later on in London. Yet he always took whatever work would provide a home for his wife and his two London–born sons. The younger boy was ten before he returned to Waterford to work in the glass factory and the afterthought or mistake occurred that became her. That was a question you didn’t ask your parents back then, even if in adolescence the doubt had tortured her.
Either way all she knew was love, unburdened by the expectations that Peadar seemed to carry from his earliest years. She still remembered hearing her father rise an hour before the rest of them, the bolt being drawn back and his boots on the path disturbing her childhood sleep as he set off for the early shift. Surely he was sick sometimes but she never recalled it. He had simply got on with what had to be done for his children. But that trip to Fitzgerald’s had been for him alone. It was the moment when he could rest among the soft armchairs and know that his life’s main work was done, with one son married, a second finishing his apprenticeship and his only daughter due to be the first member of his family to ever complete secondary school.
She, meanwhile, had been preoccupied with discovering the swimming pool, the crazy golf, the private beach and the food. She had known her first kiss at Fitzgerald’s, sitting on a rock at twilight near the steps up from the beach. Three days of intense expectation with a thirteen–year–old boy from Newry had built up to that moment. The feel of his tongue for the eternity of a second before she turned and ran off, back up the steps into the safety of childhood. How could you explain time to a child? Ten or twenty years that suddenly pass? It was more than a quarter of a century since her first solitary kiss at Fitzgerald’s. How many lifetimes ago did that moment seem? A foreboding crept over her in the car, a melancholic hangover from last night’s dream. What if this was all the future held, a succession of cars carrying her ever–ageing body down to this hotel? Forty soon, then fifty, sixty. She closed her eyes, feeling the car speed forward, unstoppable, on a journey she had no control over.
She opened them again to glance back at her children’s excited faces. They had passed the last roundabout for Wexford town and the N25 for Waterford. These were the final miles, past the turnoff for Kilmore Quay and through Killinick in the wink of an eye. Sheila silently mouthed the words ‘How much longer?’ and suddenly Alison felt like a child herself again. She strained to glimpse the sign for the turn left, which took them down the wide country road with a dozen signs on every bend for hotels and guesthouses and always, the fourth one down, for Fitzgerald’s.
They were here now, a turn left at a garage, a sharp right again and the railway bridge was before them. Soon the first glimpse of the sea. The children craned their necks forward. But it was different for them, not like the solitary time she had come all those years ago. They expected this as a right, year after year, their break at Fitzgerald’s, remarkable and yet routine. They were excited, yet she wanted their excitement to be more. She half resented the fact they were not shouting with joy. She wanted brass bands, she didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted to look out and see her father straining under his suitcases. She wanted to call, ‘We’re here by right now, Dad, year after year.’ She wanted to feel twelve again. She wanted to cry, remembering how she had honestly expected never to see this hotel again except as a woman riddled with cancer.
Peadar turned left and suddenly it was there, on the right, rising up in cream and blue, with tennis courts visible and palm trees in the garden. Every year something changed, every year something new, but still always it was Fitzgerald’s.
The car park on the left was crammed with sleek cars, with one battered old van incongruously among them. Peadar drove in through the cream pillars and found a spot near the grass. He flung his door open, his shoulders stiff from driving, and opened the back door for Danny to jump up into his arms. He threw his son into the air and caught him as Danny raised his fist like he’d scored a goal.
‘Fitzgerald’s,’ Danny said. ‘We’re here, Daddy, we’re here!’
Shane and Sheila clambered out, running to the wall to peer across at it. Their faces were mesmerised. Peadar walked around the car to put his arm around her, then looked down.
‘Hey,’ he asked quietly, ‘why are you crying?’
She looked at him. She remembered her mother dying, her father lost and left behind. She remembered herself as an overlooked child in this hotel, the future she had imagined. She remembered how close that BMW had come to killing them, the coldness of Dr O’Gorman’s hand on her breast. Alison put her arms around him.
‘You big fool,’ she said. ‘I’m crying because I’m happy.’
The welcoming sherry reception was in the foyer at seven o’clock. In the early years Peadar and herself had laughed at it and never attended, but now it seemed an integral part of their holiday. By six–thirty the major unpacking was done and strolling down to the foyer forced her to relax. The boys were asking about it from the time they had taken their first swim at half–four. To them ‘reception’ had the same ring as ‘party’ and a party was still a party even if it only consisted of adults in suits chatting away on the striped sofas.
She knew they would get bored of it within minutes. Once they had clung to her side as Sheila did now, with the colouring book and crayons she would soon tire of and demand to be snuggled up instead on Alison’s knee. The boys waited only to get glasses of orange juice from the bow–tied waiters at the white table beside the dining room windows. Danny drained his glass and called to Shane. Like a shadow, his younger brother followed him down the corridor, ready to turn the slightest occurrence into an adventure.
Alison was happy to let them go, once she could keep an eye on the main doorway. Danny had finally reached an age to explore by himself and she knew how he loved to delve into every corner and alcove of the hotel. There were so many rooms he would have to peek into: the card room that was always empty; the smoking room with its blazing log fire even on summer nights; the TV room where Geraldine and Aoife, the children’s activities co–ordinators, were already screening the first evening’s video. The boys would settle down to watch it shortly, but Danny still insisted on either Peadar or her sitting in an armchair in the corridor. For all his new found toughness, ghosts and dinosaurs frightened him and they would have to be within reach if the film grew too scary.
The babysitter was due at eight. Alison hoped it wouldn’t be one of those teenage girls it was impossible to get a word from. The usual bedtime arguments were still an hour away. For now Sheila was happy colouring and Peadar had fallen into reluctant conversation at the table where the waiters were pouring more sherry. She could tell by the way he held the sherry glasses, poised to flee back to her. The tall man in the suit beside him laughed at what Peadar obviously hoped was a closing remark.
‘Yes, yes,’ she heard the man’s booming voice agree. ‘It’s great to forget the pressures of work and relax. So tell me, what do you do?’
Peadar caught her glance and discreetly threw his eyes to heaven. She knew he was too polite to disentangle himself from the conversation and also that, like a mother with a first child, he would soon begin to talk about the school extension. She didn’t mind. She was enjoying these rare moments alone. Two elderly couples on the sofas beside her were making friends. A waitress bent to offer her a tray of hors d’oeuvres. She finished her first sherry and looked around. Other hotels might have leisure centres and chefs that were equally good, but she had never seen anywhere to match Fitzgerald’s paintings. And they weren’t just the safe landscapes you saw elsewhere. Here paintings accosted you; some stunning, many unfathomable but every one challenging. She had grown to know the names by now: Le Broquy, Crozier, Nora McGuinness, Patrick Collins and fantastical childhood landscapes by Martin Gale that the boys loved to stare at.
Sheila pulled at her sleeve for attention, holding up a page from her colouring book streaked almost entirely with red crayon. Alison praised it and found her another page to colour. She looked up and a face caught her attention, although she wasn’t sure why. It had a disconcerting familiarity, yet the man it belonged to looked somehow out of place. He leaned down, replying to some remark from a couple in their fifties seated beside the piano player.
She recognised them as the Bennetts. They were childless, Scottish and superb dancers. They came for five nights at Easter and another week in October and entered every competition. Each Thursday night at prizegiving they walked across the dance floor to receive Fitzgerald’s mugs and plates for table tennis, indoor bowls and crazy golf. She wondered what they did with their endless supply of crockery and liked to imagine Mrs Bennett having tantrums, smashing things, while the petite Mr Bennett screamed, ‘No, dear, please, not the table quiz mug!’
Mrs Bennett looked up and waved in recognition. Alison smiled back as both Mr Bennett and the man glanced in her direction. The man’s gaze perturbed her. There was something not right about him, like a photo–fit that didn’t match. His skin seemed younger than his eyes. She couldn’t explain why this bothered her. There were so many faces you saw here year after year. Nobody could expect to remember them all. She looked away, feigning great interest in Sheila’s colouring, yet aware that the man was leaving the Bennetts and walking towards her. He even seemed to slow down as she kept her head buried over her daughter’s colouring book, then he strolled on, past Mr Diekhoff and his son, to wherever he had parked his own wife.
Mr Diekhoff had been coming here from Cologne for twenty–five years, ever since his son, Heinrich, was four. Alison watched the Down’s Syndrome boy sit quietly beside his widowed father. Strictly speaking he wasn’t a boy, but she couldn’t think of him as approaching thirty, no more than she could bear to imagine his life if he outlived his father. Heinrich’s presence here – politely asking women he knew for one dance and perpetually winning the crazy golf competition – was another talisman of her holiday. It was fifteen years since his mother had died, but his father resolutely continued this annual trip to the hotel he had discovered as a young hitchhiker. Alison knew he came for Heinrich’s sake more than his own – although he had his friends among the regulars here. He sensed her glance at him and smiled in greeting. She felt the weight of responsibility in his eyes as Heinrich waved to her cheerfully.
Peadar finally returned with the sherries, having extracted himself from the man’s company. ‘What a bore,’ he said. ‘An RTE producer. You know the type who stop strangers on the street when they can’t find anyone else to argue with.’
She looked around, meaning to ask Peadar if he recognised the stranger, when somebody else caught her attention.
‘The bastard,’ she hissed, making Peadar look at her in surprise. She nodded towards a sofa near the reception desk where a bearded man was smoking and enjoying a whiskey while his teenage daughters sulked over the orange juices before them.
‘Do we know him?’ Peadar asked.
‘He’s the bastard in the BMW who nearly got us killed. Do you not remember the pusses on those two girls gawking out the window?’
The bearded man stared directly back and raised his glass as if in a toast, although Alison couldn’t be sure if he recognised them. She had already risen when Peadar grabbed her arm.
‘Where’re you going?’
‘To throw my sherry over the smug bastard.’
‘Ah, Jaysus, please don’t,’ Peadar cajoled. ‘It will take me half an hour to get you another one if that RTE arsehole spots me going back up to the table.’
‘I’m serious.’
The man seemed to be watching, amused and impervious to what was going on. His daughters had even forgotten to look bored.
‘For God’s sake, Alison, what’s the point? Don’t spoil our holiday. You know you’re like a bag of cats on the first night here anyway.’
Danny and Shane appeared in the foyer, checking they were still there. Sheila wanted Alison to praise her colouring. Alison sat back angrily, but Peadar was right. He was always bloody right, especially when it came to her losing her temper. And she did find it hard to relax on the first night here, from a cocktail of memory and guilt.
Every year they came here the menu changed but some traditional Fitzgerald recipes remained the same. She remembered her parents uneasily stirring the green nettle and cognac soup that was still served here. And how she herself had half expected to be stung as she raised the soup spoon to her lips. Nettle soup to them was something from the famine, the poorest of the poor boiling weeds for nourishment. They couldn’t have been more shocked if the main course had consisted of the old recipe of potatoes mashed with blood from a cut made in a cow’s leg. As it was, they had been taken aback by the litany of penitent fish dishes even though it wasn’t a Friday.
Her parents had been perpetually ill at ease on that holiday, her mother making the beds each morning and frantically tidying up before the cleaners came in. They had sat in armchairs in the Slaney Room, talking mainly to the staff and just watching other guests pass by. She had only ever seen them this uncomfortable again whenever they were forced to meet Peadar’s parents. They had not fitted in here and neither had she. The other children tolerated her mainly for her novelty value, making her repeat phrases in her Waterford accent. Only the Newry boy had treated her differently, thrown together by them being the only two children not from Dublin.
It perturbed her every time she returned, just how well she fitted in here now, how indistinguishable her children were from the others running in and out of the television room. The same Dublin accents, with hardly a trace of her Waterford or Peadar’s Galway brogue – not that she herself had much of an accent left. Her parents would be proud. Yet this never stopped her from imagining them, perched on a sofa in this foyer, speaking in whispers and not recognising the daughter who had left them behind in trying to meet the expectations of her in–laws.
It was best to get the children ready before the babysitter came. She rose and walked towards the boys, praising her self–control in ignoring the bearded man when he spoke to her.
‘You need to trade in those wheels of yours,’ he joked, like the incident had been amusing. ‘Get something with a bit more vroom in it.’
She stared at him.
‘Maybe that’s what you need yourself.’ He looked puzzled, his daughters moronically staring through her like she wasn’t there. Her accent thickened, reverting back to girlhood. ‘I mean these things are about compensation, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t see how compensation enters into it,’ he said, defensive now, watchful of his wallet. ‘There was no accident, nobody hurt, nothing.’
‘I don’t mean that type of compensation.’ She was aware of Peadar anxiously at her shoulder. ‘I mean the other kind, the need to make up for things. Or as we say in Waterford, the bigger the horsepower the smaller the prick behind the wheel.’
She walked on, aware of the silence behind her, of the girls staring and of Peadar at her shoulder. They got around the corner before Peadar managed to speak.
‘His face,’ he said. ‘You should have seen the gobshite’s face.’ Both started laughing, unable to stop, collapsing onto the nearest sofa, while the boys hovered, convinced their parents were cracking up. Danny’s eight–year–old face was such a picture of mortified respectability that he could have passed for Peadar’s father.
‘Stop it,’ he hissed, ‘you’re embarrassing me.’
Alison pulled him onto her lap, tickling him as he struggled and the others jumped up in a tangle of limbs. Now she felt truly on holidays.
Throughout dinner she knew they were going to make love that night. She kicked off her shoes and played footsie with Peadar, even when Jack Fitzgerald himself stopped to welcome them back. She could feel Peadar’s shoe gently brush her calf, then explore upwards between her bare knees as the owner moved off and the waitress took their order for dessert. During the two days of packing she usually just pecked at snacks, too flustered to feel hungry. This always made their first meal all the more special.
There was never music in the Slaney Room on Sunday nights. Older couples gathered around the piano instead in the French Bar at the far end of the building. Alison and Peadar enjoyed their coffees in the foyer near the open fire. The porter got them drinks and Peadar allowed himself his usual single cigar. The heat from the logs scorched Alison’s legs. Yet she loved the smell of wood–smoke. She would happily have gone back to the room then but they waited a little longer to make it worth the babysitter’s while. They nestled like lovers, her head against his chest, nursing their second drinks until sufficient time had elapsed.
The boys were asleep in single beds on either side of the double one, with Sheila snuggled down in a third bed near the French doors that opened out onto gardens overlooking the sea. Peadar had his hands under the waistband of her skirt while she was still closing the door on the babysitter. She turned and he picked her up, her legs straddling his waist as he carried her towards the bed. He collapsed on top of her, each shushing the other while simultaneously trying not to laugh. He undid the top of her outfit, his hands gripping her silk slip as if about to tear it off, while her eyes warned him against trying any such thing. He worked it upwards, his hands managing to undo her bra while she kissed him and tugged at his zip.
She wasn’t sure if their noise caused Danny to shift, his legs kicking the blankets off. But pure instinct made her slide out from under Peadar and go to fix the blankets. Peadar raised a hand to silently stop her, yet even as she touched Danny she knew she was crazy not to leave the boy alone. When would she learn to stop meddling until it was necessary to do so? She tucked in the blankets then turned back to Peadar but the mood was already broken. He looked past her to where Danny stirred again. He was not a child you could disturb in his sleep. He was half awake now and half dreaming, sitting up to call for her in distress and yet not realising she was already there. Alison settled him down once more but knew it was no use.
‘Take him out, quickly,’ Peadar hissed, but she hesitated, hoping against hope the boy would settle back asleep. Danny sat up and cried, making the first retching noise in his throat. His eyes were open but she knew that everything seemed like a bad dream for him. Peadar grabbed him and ran, getting his head over the toilet before the vomit came. Danny cried as he retched again, with his whole dinner coming up.
Alison watched from the bathroom door, cursing herself and knowing Peadar was silently cursing her too. Danny’s pyjamas were untouched. There were just a few specks on the tiles and on Peadar’s shoes. Peadar carried him back to bed and tucked him in. The child would sleep peacefully now till morning.
Her clothes were disarrayed, but she knew her semi–nakedness wasn’t arousing any more. It was the mundane nudity of child raising. Her nipples looked flat and worn, but Peadar wasn’t even gazing at her.
‘I might get a last drink,’ he whispered, as though anxious to extricate himself. ‘You read if you like, I’ll only be a few minutes.’
She wanted to stop him, to suggest they try again, but it was too late. She let him go, undressed and turned the lights out. It was wrong to think that Peadar was punishing her. It just wasn’t like ten years ago, when he seemed to develop a permanent erection whenever they were alone. Kids changed you and three kids wore you out. You saw your partner in situations that modesty would once never have allowed. Neither of them had been able for a third child if they were honest – no more than her own parents had been. Let Peadar enjoy his drink, let his tension subside. She found she was still damp. Her fingers touched the spot idly, wondering why his tongue always had such difficulty in locating it.
A noise outside froze her hand. A footstep on gravel beyond the French doors. For a second she thought that maybe it was Peadar, crazily planning to surprise her, to rekindle the spontaneity which had once marked their lovemaking. But he would know the door was locked. It had to be a burglar. But the kids had been racing in and out all afternoon. Was she sure she had remembered to lock the French doors? She wished Peadar was here. She waited for the click of a hand to test the handle but there was just silence as if the footsteps had moved on or she had imagined the whole affair.
She lay curled in the dark. I gave up my happiness to make another person happy, she found herself thinking, to make my family happy. I am who I’ve become because this is who they need me to be. When I got the all–clear I wasn’t even happy for myself. It was them I was thinking of. I couldn’t die because other people needed me. But what do I need? The image returned from last night, a woman swaying under water, her lifeless hands against the glass, waiting to be chanced upon by some diver.
Her body felt old and stale. Her hand was motionless between her thighs. The rich food lay heavily on her stomach while her children’s breathing filled the room. She was on holidays, the treat she had so looked forward to. So why did she feel alone, like she had woken to find she was leading another person’s life inside somebody else’s skin?
MONDAY (#u21fc3899-b67a-54e5-9e7a-039edf0ebe55)
Sheila woke first. Alison could tell by the springs of the small bed and knew that her daughter was content to lie there, self–contained, savouring the wonder of waking in a hotel bedroom. Shane would sleep on, even feigning sleep for a time after he woke, but Danny would be out of bed once his eyes opened. Alison lay on her side, watching her elder son’s sleeping face, knowing that his eyelids would flicker automatically open at half past seven. Every morning the same so that she had stopped using an alarm clock.
She couldn’t tell if Peadar was awake or asleep. It had been late when he returned from the bar and she hadn’t turned over, forcing him to make the first move, if any. She knew that he had lain awake for a long time, with inches of sheet separating their skin. She turned towards him now. His breath was nasally and in a few years’ time he would snore. He looked older in the dawn light, worn out, although she knew that once he woke he would summon the energy to sparkle and make the children laugh. He was a morning person. Perhaps that was one of the contrasts which made their marriage work.
She spooned herself into his back and put an arm around him, her fingers luxuriating along his furry chest, then moving mischievously down to the untidy tangle of hair spilling out from his Y–fronts. He stirred, sleepily, as her fingers lightly brushed against the unsummoned stiffness he sometimes woke with.
‘I’ve told you, McCann,’ he murmured, ‘my wife is getting suspicious.’
It was an established joke between them. ‘Very suspicious,’ she whispered back, gently taking his earlobe between her teeth. Peadar turned towards her and the creak of their bed woke Danny who padded across to snuggle sleepily against her back, his eyes not even fully open. Peadar rolled over to disguise his stiffness as Danny leaned across to hug his father. All three lay in silence, then Peadar turned more fully onto his stomach as Sheila joined them on his side of the bed. Alison smiled, wondering what cold unerotic thoughts he was filtering through his head.
‘The plunge pool,’ she muttered to him.
‘What?’
‘Think of diving into the ice–cold plunge pool.’
Peadar shivered loudly. ‘I was thinking of McCann with Mother Teresa,’ he replied and stared across at Shane still feigning sleep and clutching his Paddington Bear.
‘I’ve an idea,’ he said. ‘Let’s all eat Paddington for breakfast.’
‘You will not.’ Shane uncoiled himself and landed with one spring on their bed. Peadar laughed and soon had the children laughing too, as he invented songs, with no trace of disappointment in his voice at the sexual tension which, just a few moments before, seemed about to spill over between them.
Alison was relieved some years back when Peadar stopped attempting to explain the rules of the Fitzgerald’s golfing scramble competition to her. It combined the complexity of Einstein’s theory of relativity with a propensity for appalling dress sense on the part of more serious disciples. For lesser mortals like Peadar it apparently consisted of three strangers teeing off, almost everybody picking their ball up again, everyone blaming the prevailing weather conditions or their hangovers and promising to buy each other a drink in the hotel bar that night.
However, she knew it kept Peadar happy for a few hours on the Monday morning, after which he was generally content to put his golf clubs away for the remainder of the holiday. The biggest cheer at the prizegiving every Thursday night was for the golfing competition, with scores calculated by a formula, based on points from individual rounds and a percentage of points from the scramble, which seemed better applied to nuclear physics. Alison could spot the men and women who spent whole days trying to better their scores, and evenings huddled at the bar working out minute calculations.
Every year Peadar simply put his name down to make up the numbers for some old couple’s scramble team and steered clear of everything else. Alison told him she didn’t mind if he entered the competition properly by playing a full solo round now that the children were older. But she knew how a sense of duty held him back from abandoning her for so long. His scramble partners this year, the Irwins, came from Northern Ireland. They hailed him at breakfast time, with Peadar jokingly saluting Mr Irwin as ‘captain’ and arranging to meet them on the first tee at eleven o’clock.
It was only after Peadar had left and she brought the children for their morning swim, that she realised Danny was now too big to be taken into the ladies’ changing room. She had to ask an attendant to stay in the gents’ locker room with him, and even then she was uneasy, not recognising him from any previous year.
She got Sheila and Shane changed quickly and brought them out to where Danny waited impatiently at the poolside. The attendant smiled and walked away to fix the pile of towels, making Alison feel guilty for harbouring suspicions about him.
There were two full–size pools, a kiddies’ one sloping to a depth of five feet and an eight–foot adult one nearly always empty. The sauna and steam rooms were hidden behind statues up steps beside the adult pool, with a plunge pool between them. Out on the terrace, once you braved the sea breeze and occasional rain, was an outdoor Canadian hot tub whose powerful jets of water made the indoor jacuzzi almost tepid by comparison.
Alison knew she would have to give these pleasures a miss this morning to keep an eye on the children. The boys dived straight into the kiddies’ pool. Sheila ran to the steps and waded in. Alison followed slowly, shivering and warning them to let her lower her body into the cold water in her own time. Either her bathing costume had shrunk or else her bottom was getting bigger. She needed to discreetly adjust it under the water. The kiddies’ pool was packed. She looked around, wondering if the boys would make friends this year and might Sheila be left out of things.
Parents took turns minding children while their partners lazed in the steam room or raced outdoors in their bare feet to chance the Canadian hot tub. Danny was a natural swimmer, although Shane stubbornly insisted on wearing one armband. Alison mainly played with Sheila, letting the boys invent chasing games of their own. Somebody switched the fountain on and a thin sheet of water spilled down as children splashed excitedly underneath it. She saw the man who had spoken to the Bennetts last night, just for a second among hordes of parents and children at the pool edge. Then Danny popped up before her, splashing water and looking for a chase. She swam after him in mock rage while Shane joined the pursuit and, from the corner of her eye, Alison noticed Sheila playing with a girl her own age. A powerful water jet burst into life, spraying out a current in the far corner of the pool. She caught Danny who wriggled free and threw himself headlong into the turbulent spray.
Alison turned as Shane followed his brother, knowing the jet would keep the boys busy. That man was watching her again, this time from the Jacuzzi overlooking the children’s pool. He had obviously left his own brood to be attended by his wife. Instinctively she knew he had been watching for a long time, but he didn’t look away, even when she stared back. Instead he nodded slightly. Maybe their families had shared a holiday here before but that didn’t give him the right to blatantly eyeball her. She thought about how her bathing costume had shrunk and wondered had he seen her enter the pool. Sheila swam towards her. Alison made a great fuss of picking her daughter up, annoyed at him and furious at herself for feeling vaguely flattered. But it was a while since any man had gazed at her like that.
When Alison allowed herself to gaze back after five minutes the man had left the Jacuzzi. She glanced around the pool, wondered which mother was his wife and whether she knew that her husband stared at strangers.
Someone was calling her name. She recognised the wild brood of kids jumping into the water before she saw Joan, a woman from Dundalk who had shared this same week as them for the last three years. Alison smiled, recalling Joan’s raucous laugh and how she loved to stay up half the night, gathering other women around her to tell blue jokes.
If they lived near each other in Dublin, then Alison suspected that Joan was the sort of woman she would spend her life avoiding. But here on holidays it was good to have a laugh, without knowing that everything you said would be spun out as exaggerated gossip in the local park. Alison’s two sisters–in–law in Waterford had the same small–town look, getting drunk together at Joe Dolan concerts one night, falling out with each other the next. But at least they were there for one another, even though increasingly distant towards Alison every time she went back to Waterford.
Joan dived in, shivering with the sudden cold. She swam towards Alison, happily complaining in her usual torrent of words: ‘Is your Peadar beating the bushes on the golf course for lost balls like my Joey? I keep telling him, “Joey, you can’t piss in a straight line never mind hit a golf ball.” Joey’s version of course management is not falling into a lake and drowning himself.’
Joan aimed a palmful of water at her eldest son who threatened to swim too near.
‘Would you look at Jason there and him so sick last night we had to eat in our room. I saw Peadar at the bar when I finally got down but you were tucked away out of sight. He must have shagged you out, you know these schoolmasters and their big sticks. Here, off you go and have a sauna while I’ll keep an eye on your three.’
Alison went to protest but Joan raised a mock fist.
‘Away with you.’ She turned towards Danny who had swum over, recognising her and knowing a chase was on the cards. ‘Look at the size of you, Danny! They must be stretching you each night to make sure you make the right height for the cops. Come here till I squash you back to your proper size!’
Alison clambered out, listening to his mock screams and grateful for a few moments’ peace. Neither Shane nor Sheila noticed her slip away. She stood over the adult pool, knowing the water there was even colder. That man still hadn’t relieved his wife of her childminding duties. Alison saw him emerge from the sauna and stand beside the plunge pool. She never got down into it herself, despite Peadar’s protestations that a sauna was useless without icy water afterwards to close over the pores. But even Peadar himself always climbed down gingerly, shivering as she teased him. Alison watched the man, with his back to her, as he looked into the freezing water, then suddenly let his body fall with a splash. She shuddered, and panicked when there seemed no sign of his head reappearing. The plunge pool was seven foot deep, with a ladder going only half way down.
She looked around but nobody else was paying any attention. She had taken a step towards the plunge pool when his head resurfaced, spraying out drops of water as he shook his hair like a drenched dog. He turned, catching sight of her and nodded again. Alison found herself looking away as if caught spying. She dived into the adult pool, shivering but then enjoying its childfree waters. She swam towards the deep end, as far as possible from his eyes. She couldn’t be sure if her sense of still being watched was instinct or paranoia.
Alison swam lengths until her arms ached, then discreetly checked that the children weren’t missing her. A young mother held a crying baby in the crowded pool, glaring angrily towards the sauna, obviously waiting for her overdue husband. Alison smiled, imagining the reception that awaited him. Joan spied her and waved her away again. She checked the clock, allowing herself ten minutes before getting the kids changed for lunch.
The teenage Dublin girls had just arrived in bikinis and dived in unison into the adult pool. They climbed out again to repeat the exercise, in case any man present had missed it. Their father was heading into the sauna with the RTE executive who had cornered Peadar last night. She imagined them ladling more water onto the hot coals, anxious to outdo each other in the macho stakes as they discussed horsepower, horse–trading and horse shit.
She chose the steam room instead which was empty or at first appeared to be. She stretched out on the upper tier of hot tiles, adjusting her bathing costume, and stared up at the slow drip–drip of water converging and falling from the corners of tiles in the curved roof. It took several moments for her eyes to adjust to the steam and for the blurred outline of a man sitting against the far wall to register. She knew without being able to distinguish any features that it was him. Alison cursed herself for picking the steam room, then became angry. She had often shared this space with men before without it costing her a thought. If he was a voyeur that was his problem not hers. Besides he couldn’t get more steamed up than he was already. Alison lay back, closed her eyes and decided to ignore him.
‘They say five minutes in here earns you five years off purgatory.’ His voice broke the silence, as if he knew she had only now become aware of him. Alison made a non–committal noise, hoping to discourage him. But he laughed instead, wryly and familiarly. ‘We could have used some of this heat, stuck out at night in that mobile library in Skerries.’
Alison lay perfectly still. Mentally she checked her bathing costume, the state of her hair, a half dozen inconsequential things as she tried to place his voice. She felt naked, stripped of her anonymity. It was twenty years since she had briefly worked in the mobile libraries. She opened her eyes and tried to peer across through the steam.
‘Do I know you?’ she asked.
‘A different time, Ali, a different world.’
