I pick up Roxi’s mug and my glass to take them through to the kitchen, but in the early-morning silence I hear a drip, drip,
dripping sound.
‘What the …?’ I ask, looking around me.
Drip drip drip
. There it is again. But where is it coming from?
I follow the sound out into the tiny hall and immediately spy a huge grey damp patch bulging through the plaster above. From
it every now and then tiny droplets of water are plopping
down onto the table beside the front door. The unopened envelopes containing my credit-card bills are doing a great job of
soaking up all the water.
At least you’re good for something
, I think as I watch the ink becoming more and more smudged the wetter they get.
I move underneath the grey bulge so I can take a better look. It’s as if our ceiling has filled itself, for its own amusement,
like a huge grey water balloon. But as tiny bits of plaster begin to join the droplets still dripping from above, I realise
that our ceiling has chosen me as its first target, because suddenly the balloon above me pops and gallons of lukewarm water
begin to cascade down over my head in a strange cocktail of plaster, paint and bubble bath.
‘Roxi!’ I scream at the top of my voice. ‘Get in here, quick!’
And as I stand there, soaking wet, looking up at the new water feature our ceiling has suddenly provided us with, I hear Roxi’s
voice next to me exclaim: ‘Wowie, Darce, you were right about that karma stuff … it doesn’t waste much time, does it?’
‘You want me to get in
that
?’ I peer hesitantly at the little red motorboat bobbing about below me as it patiently awaits its final passenger.
‘Sure, Darcy, it’ll be fine.’ Niall is already sitting down inside the boat wearing a red cagoule and a bright orange life
jacket that completely swamps him.
The other passenger on the boat stares up at me, a bored expression on his face. ‘Look, is she getting in or not?’ he asks,
turning to Niall.
‘Of course she is. Come on, Darcy,’ Niall says encouragingly, beckoning to me. ‘This is the only way of getting across to
the island right now.’
‘It’s just that I remember the boat being bigger when I was a child.’ I hug my life jacket tightly to my chest. ‘This one
seems so tiny. Are you sure it’s safe to take it across there today? Those waves look awfully big.’
The skipper of the boat, who is patiently waiting to untie it
from the harbour, smiles at me kindly. ‘I’ve ferried many a boat across to that island in my time, and this one’s quite safe.
Plus,’ he says looking up at the sky, ‘this’ll be a calm day on the water – especially for January.’
I smile at him, grateful for his words of encouragement. He seems awfully young, though; usually the skippers of these boats
are gnarly old men with brown, wrinkled skin and gappy teeth. Maybe we should have got someone with a bit more experience
to take us across. This guy, while cute-looking with his sandy blond hair and bright blue eyes, looks like he’d know more
about handling a modelling contract than a motorboat. Now that I’ve finally agreed to sail across to this island today, I
at least want to be in a boat with someone who looks as if they know what they’re doing.
Yes: fate, karma, or whatever you want to call it has taken a hand in helping to make my visit to the island today a lot easier
to achieve. The new water feature in our flat turned out to be the result of our upstairs neighbour leaving his bath running
while going back to bed and nodding off to sleep again. So while our landlord is arguing with the workmen over quotes and
prices to get everything patched up, Roxi and I have decided that temporarily vacating our flat is preferable to trying to
avoid glancing upwards and spotting parts of Mr Jenkinson that we really don’t want to see as he wanders about his flat in
just his dressing gown. Roxi is staying in a room over the pub, and I’m kipping on Sophie’s rather uncomfortable sofa. So
my pre-planned weekend spent in a proper bed in an Irish hotel has come as quite a welcome bonus.
‘Right, I’m getting out if she’s not getting in,’ Niall’s boating
companion says, standing up inside the boat so that it rocks enough for Niall to need to hold on to the side.
‘No, don’t do that! I’m coming, really. I just need to change my shoes.’
Reaching down, I pull off my favourite pair of flat pumps and take a pair of UGG boots from my rucksack.
‘Why is she putting on slippers?’ I hear him ask Niall as he sits back down in the boat again.
‘They’re not slippers,’ I call to him. ‘They’re UGG boots, actually. And they’ll keep my feet nice and warm while we’re over
there.’
‘They might keep you warm, but I doubt they’ll keep you dry,’ the passenger mutters, shaking his head. ‘Have you any idea
of the terrain over on that island?’
‘Look … Miss?’ the boatman interrupts us.
‘Darcy. Just call me Darcy, please.’
‘Conor,’ he says by way of introduction, as a set of perfect white teeth now appear, matching the rest of his faultless façade.
‘Look, Darcy, why don’t the two gentlemen do what they’re supposed to do and actually act like gentlemen by helping you down
into the boat, and then we can be on our way? We need to catch the tide. You don’t want to get stranded over on the island
if the weather takes a turn for the worse, now do you?’
That’s the last thing I want to happen. Gingerly, I take a step down into the boat and my two fellow passengers help steady
me while I get my sea legs.
As I pull on my life jacket (which you’d think they’d do in at least one other colour than bright orange), Conor expertly
unties the boat, hops aboard and we set sail for the island.
Nervously, I sit opposite Niall and the other chap he has brought with him on the hard wooden benches that line the sides
of the boat. When I’d been introduced to him earlier, Dermot O’Connell – Niall’s builder friend – had informed me in no uncertain
terms that he’d rather be referred to as a ‘project manager’. Surreptitiously I eye him, sitting huddled beneath his waterproof
coat and life jacket that he can barely get done up. Not because he’s overweight, far from it: Dermot’s more what you would
call
solid
. Muscle probably accrued from years of working on building sites, if what Niall’s told me is anything to go by. At first
glance I’d assumed he was fairly old, too – well, middle-aged, at least. But now, on closer inspection, I decide he’s probably
somewhere in his mid-thirties. It’s his general demeanour that prematurely ages him, I decide; that and his jet-black hair
that’s just starting to go grey around the edges.
‘Niall here tells me you might be the new owner of the island, Darcy,’ Conor calls from the front of the boat as he expertly
steers it out to sea.
I glare at Niall. ‘Possibly,’ I call back up the boat. ‘Nothing’s really been decide yet.’
‘She’s a beautiful island. Do you know what you might want to do with her?’
‘Not really, no … like I said, nothing’s definite yet. That’s kind of why I’m going over there today, to take a look.’
‘Ah, well, she’s not in her prime in January,’ Conor continues as he steers the boat in the direction of the island. ‘Now,
if you were here in the springtime when the snowdrops first bloom across the valley, or in summer, when the sun sets beyond
the hills in deep, blood-crimson red. Or even in
autumn, when the leaves on the trees turn more shades of brown than––’
‘But she’s not, is she?’ Dermot interrupts. ‘She’s here today, so she’s got to look at the island as it is now, not in some
sort of poet’s dreamland.’
‘So you’d be a practical man?’ Conor asks, turning back briefly to look at Dermot. ‘And an English one, too.’
‘I am a practical man, yes.’ From under the peak of his baseball cap Dermot’s dark brown eyes watch Conor without expression.
‘And proud of it. But I don’t see that being English has anything to do with it. And for your information I’m half Irish,
actually, on my father’s side.’
I stare at Dermot.That explains his name,but lack of accent.
‘Practical men don’t see the colours, the landscape, the poetry of the land,’ Conor continues unperturbed. ‘They see buildings
and cables and ways to improve.’
‘And what’s wrong with—’
‘Look, guys,’ I interrupt before this goes any further. I’d much rather Conor just concentrated on his driving.
Do you drive a boat? Or is it steer, or some other nautical term I don’t know?
‘I’m simply going over today to scatter my aunt Molly’s ashes and to take a look at the island she lived on as a child. Any
other decisions I have to make about the island’s future, or my own, will be made after I’ve done that, OK?’
‘Fine by me,’ Dermot shrugs, pulling the peak of his baseball cap further down over his eyes. He folds his arms and returns
to his study of the sea.
Conor turns around to wink at me. ‘Fair play, Darcy, you obviously know your own mind. I’ll just do my job and get you safely
across to see Tara.’
‘Tara? Who’s Tara?’ I ask in confusion. ‘Niall, I thought you said the island was uninhabited?’
Niall shrugs and holds out his hands.
‘That it is,’ Conor calls from the helm of the boat again. ‘Tara is what us locals call her. Glentara is the island’s proper
name, and Tara is like a nickname.’
‘Oh, right, so no one actually lives there?’
‘No one but old Eamon.’
‘Eamon?’
‘He’s been on the island for years; he’s like part of the landscape, is Eamon – you’ll never get him off.’
‘I believe he’s a sort of caretaker,’ Niall explains. ‘I think your aunt paid him to look after the island.’
Conor laughs. ‘I’d like to have seen her try and get him away from it.’
We’re getting closer to land now, so I lean back against the sides of the boat to get a better view of the approaching island.
As always, the wind has been playing havoc with my hair since before we left the shore. I’d been sensible enough to tie it
back in a band before leaving the harbour, but even so I still have stray bits flying all around my face as I try to take
a closer look at the place I’m expected to call home for the next year.
At first sight, it’s much larger than I thought it would be – the internet said 1,100 acres – though I’m not really sure how
big an acre actually is. And as we sail still closer, I have to admit the island does look quite pretty, silently watching
us approach in our little red boat. I can see crumbling buildings dotted up on the side of one of the hills, and as we near
land and I can begin to appreciate all the varied colours of the island’s
landscape, I’m suddenly reminded of an Irish country song, ‘Forty Shades of Green’ my aunt used to play on the old record
player in her house.
As we pull into a makeshift harbour, and I watch Conor leap effortlessly off the boat clutching a rope, something weird stirs
inside me. It’s almost like another memory, but I don’t know what it is I’m trying to remember.
‘So how long will you be wanting on the island?’ Conor asks, tying the rope securely to a rickety-looking wooden platform.
I’m about to say that half an hour will give me time enough to scatter Molly’s ashes, when I hear Niall say two hours.
Two whole hours!
The trip over in the boat was cold enough, but at least I’d had the life jacket on to keep me a bit warmer. Now as I unzip
that and leave it behind in the boat, the wind that is blowing in off the sea is biting right into me. I could do with a nice
caramel macchiato to warm me up. But I doubt they’d have much call for a Starbucks around here.
‘You’ll be a bit warmer once you get away from the water,’ Conor says, reading my mind. ‘That wind’s coming in right off the
sea just now. The sun will be out in about fifteen minutes – she’ll soon warm you up.’
I look up at the sky, but I can see only dense grey cloud. No hopeful breaks appear in it at all to suggest that there might
be some sunshine up there to warm us up at any time today, let alone in the next quarter of an hour.
I zip my Nike puffa jacket all the way to the top, wishing now I’d worn my Burberry earmuffs, or even that fake-fur hat I
can never find an occasion to wear.
Conor appears to be the only one of the boat party not
feeling the cold. As he unzips his life jacket he remains in his jeans, boots and thick Aran sweater. ‘I’ll meet you back
here at about one o’clock, then?’ he says, glancing at his watch.
‘Cheers, Conor,’ Niall replies. ‘That’ll be grand.’
‘So this is it?’ Dermot slowly turns around as I watch Conor disappear over a hill, a fishing rod slung over his shoulder.
‘Where do you want to start, Darcy?’
‘I’m not sure … what about this way?’ It all looks the same to me at the moment. After I’d talked myself into visiting the
island, I’d got my hopes up that once I arrived I’d completely fall in love with the place, know exactly why Molly wanted
me to come here and never want to leave. But now I’m here, it’s just all a bit green, cold and kind of lonely-looking. I point
vaguely in the opposite direction to the one in which Conor has departed, and we set off along a rocky path together looking
a bit like Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man as we wind our way along Glentara’s own equivalent to the Yellow Brick Road.
I certainly feel as conspicuous as Dorothy, with short, mousy-haired Niall on one side of me, and six-foot, dark-haired Dermot
on the other. Talk about chalk and cheese: you couldn’t get two more different men. And as we follow the paths around the
island, it’s not unlike being in a fairy tale, with wild animals jumping out at us whichever way we turn. Huge, dark birds
appear out of the sky as if from nowhere. They’re not like the little sparrows and the occasional robin I come across when
I put out breadcrumbs on our window ledge in London, that flutter away in fright at the mere sight of a human. Oh, no – these
are huge great noisy things that swoop
down on us from the cliffs, not seeming to care in the least that we’re guests on their island.
‘What on earth was
that
?’ I ask, jumping in fright when something shoots across our path into the undergrowth.