Aisling Gayle Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,

  characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the

  author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook Published 2012

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  E-mail: [email protected]

  © Geraldine O’Neill 2003

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Typesetting, layout, design, ebook © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781781990827

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Geraldine O’Neill grew up in Cleland, Lanarkshire, Scotland with her four sisters and brother. She attended teacher-training college in Northumberland, and then lived in both Scotland and Stockport, Cheshire for a number of years.

  She moved to Daingean in Co. Offaly, Ireland in 1991, where she teaches in the local National School.

  Geraldine is married to Michael Brosnahan, and they have two grown-up children, Christopher and Clare.

  Aisling Gayle is her second novel.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to give a big thanks to all the staff at Poolbeg, particularly Paula Campbell and Gaye Shortland, for their continued advice and support.

  Thanks to my literary agent, Sugra Zaman, of Watson, Little Ltd., London, for pleasantly chasing up all my queries about the world of bookselling.

  Thanks to Malcolm Ross McDonald for his personal appreciation of my work, and the Offaly Writers’ Group for continued interest in my writing and poetry efforts.

  Special thanks to our great Stockport friends Alison and Michael Murphy, for their constant encouragement in my literary career, and their willing help with organising events from birthday parties to trips to America.

  Thanks to my lovely brother-in-law, Kevin Brosnahan, for his endless support and promotion of my work.

  Thanks to Peter and Kitty Brady for their guidance with the Americanisms in Aisling Gayle.

  Thanks to my old Scottish teaching colleague and my dear friend Margaret Lafferty who encouraged me in the early days when publication seemed a long way off.

  Thanks to all family members and Offaly and Stockport friends who were so supportive of Tara Flynn.

  Thanks to my brother and fellow-writer, Eamonn O’Neill and his lovely, artistic wife, Sarah, without whose wedding in Upstate New York this book would never have been written.

  A special thanks to my mother’s old American penpal, Jean Harper, who in turn introduced Eamonn and Sarah as penpals – which led to the American wedding!

  Thanks to Sarah’s family and all the lovely Americans I met whilst staying at the place that became ‘Lake Savannah’.

  A little word of loving remembrance to Patricia, who would have raced through this book in a day. Also, Garda Evan Lillis who gave his parents, Marie and Michael, so much to be proud of during his young life.

  A final thanks to my beloved Christopher and Clare, more supportive than I could ask for, and who are more precious to me with every passing year.

  This book is lovingly dedicated to

  my old college boyfriend and my Anam Cara,

  Mike Brosnahan

  Come to the edge, he said.

  They said: We are afraid.

  Come to the edge, he said.

  They came. He pushed them . . .

  and they flew.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Chapter 1

  Tullamore, County Offaly

  May 1963

  The morning after her seventh wedding anniversary, Aisling Gayle awoke to the early morning sun shining through the windows, and an empty space in the bed beside her.

  She looked at the bedside clock. Quarter past seven. Quarter past seven on a Monday morning after a weekend away celebrating seven years of marriage. Neither of them needed to be up for another half an hour, and yet he was gone from their bed. He was downstairs and on the phone already.

  Last week, they had sat with some of Oliver’s drama group at a wedding, and a new member had made a funny comment about them approaching the ‘seven-year itch’. Only no one had laughed. There had been a very awkward silence. The rest of the group knew – as Aisling knew – that Oliver had always had the itch.

  He had the itch even before they got married.

  Aisling threw the bedclothes back and padded across the cold linoleum floor, her long blonde hair swinging like two curtains on either side of her face. She opened the door just a few inches. Just enough to hear who he was talking to. Just enough to be sure.

  “Of course,” she could hear Oliver say in a low voice. “You know I do. Why else would I be on the phone to you, at this hour of the morning?”

  Aisling leaned her head against the jamb of the door and closed her eyes. Why elseindeed? she thought. Why else indeed?

  Oliver gave a little cough to clear his throat. The sort of cough he gave when getting agitated. “It was a special occasion . . . what else could I do? It would have looked bad if I hadn’t done something.” Then there was a pause. “Listen,” he said in his smooth Dublin accent, “I’ll have to go. I promise I’ll ring you later. . . same arrangements as usual.”

  Aisling heard the click of the phone, and waited. But Oliver didn’t come back upstairs. She listened and heard him first go into the bathroom, and then a few minutes later into the kitchen, and then she heard the rattle of the tap as he filled the kettle.

  Aisling closed the door and got back into bed. She shivered, even though she had woken several times during the night with the heat. The old familiar feelings of dread and hopelessness began to wash over her again. Though it was not half as bad as it used to be in the early stages of their marriage. She was twenty-nine years old now – no longer the n
aïve young girl who had fallen under Oliver’s spell.

  But still it hurt. It hurt very badly. Especially this morning. Especially after a romantic weekend in a nice hotel in Galway, which she had thought of as a fresh start in their marriage.

  And now this. An early-morning phone call which heralded his latest infidelity. The latest in a long line of affairs. Aisling reached over to her bedside table for her romantic novel – her escape from reality. Her sad escape from a faithless, loveless marriage.

  * * *

  “Good morning, good morning – I heard your alarm go off just as the toast was ready.” Oliver was chirpy and cheerful as he elbowed the bedroom door open, to manoeuvre the breakfast-tray into the room. “Since you’ve become so accustomed to first-class hotel service this weekend, I thought I’d break you into the real world gently.” He gave a little laugh. “But I’m sorry to say we only serve tea and toast in this establishment.”

  He placed the wooden tray with the varnished flowers on the bed beside her and, from the fleeting glance that she gave him, he knew that she was not fooled. Their eyes did not meet very often these days, because he couldn’t bear the accusation that looked straight back at him. At one time those blue eyes had so captivated him that he had gone out and bought her the biggest sapphire engagement ring he could afford. Now, he could barely look into those same eyes.

  “Are you not having anything?” Aisling asked, for something to fill the silence.

  “No, I’ve had a cup of tea. That’ll hold me until I get time at the shop.” He turned to the wardrobe to select a shirt. Although he left everything else in the house where he dropped it, Oliver’s wardrobe was perfectly organised. “I have a commercial traveller coming down from Dublin with a new range of fancy ties and hankies. I’m quite keen, but I’ll have to knock his prices down a good bit. I’ll have to make the poor mouth about business being slow and all that old shite. It’s worse than being on the stage.”

  Aisling took a sip of her tea. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll perform well as always, Oliver,” she said in an even tone. “Sure, aren’t people always telling you that you’re a born actor?”

  “Thank you, m’dear,” he said jovially, slipping the shirt from its hanger and throwing it on the bed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Aisling’s eyes were cold and hard as she watched him take off his dressing-gown, revealing the firm, well-toned body that he was so proud of. As usual, he couldn’t resist a glance at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. An imaginary blemish on his shoulder, which he had to examine carefully, allowed him to draw out the process.

  As she sipped her tea and bit into toast she didn’t taste, Aisling took in his curly black hair – still damp from his bath – and the rest of him down to the curly black hairs on his legs. Apart from being slightly below average height, he was – as the older women would put it – a fine figure of a man.

  And didn’t Oliver Gayle know it.

  After the short pause to admire himself, Oliver checked his watch and then hurriedly threw on his clothes. Another quick look in the mirror as he did up his latest new tie, a dab of cologne – and he was ready.

  “I’m not too sure what time I’ll get in tonight,” he said, rubbing the excess cologne into his hands, “so don’t bother cooking me anything. I’ll get something in town, and it’ll keep me going ’til after rehearsals.”

  There was a pause.

  “So you’re rehearsing again tonight?”

  Oliver made towards the bedroom door. “I don’t know why you’re surprised – didn’t I tell you last week?” He blew a kiss in her direction from the bedroom door. “I’ve got my key, so don’t feel you have to wait up.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  * * *

  Aisling pushed the tray with the unfinished tea and toast over to Oliver’s side of the bed. She swung her legs out of the other side, and then moved to the window. She drew back the curtains and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. She looked out into the large, flower-filled garden, the tending of which – like her romantic novels – gave her an escape from thoughts of her crumbling marriage.

  What a waste, she told herself. What a waste! All those moments – of diverting her thoughts from the lie she was living – had grown into hours. And the hours into days. And the days into months. And it all added up to years of her life – wasted. Wasted on a shallow, hopeless charade of a marriage in which she was trapped.

  For there was no future for her in her marriage with Oliver. And there was no future for her – out of her marriage – in Ireland.

  To think of it hurt. It hurt badly, for she had loved Oliver once. She had loved him very deeply. That’s why she had almost slept with him before they got married, why she had almost allowed herself to get carried away, risking the wrath of both her family and the Church. When she realised what she had done, she used all her powers to coax him into marriage. And a hard job that was.

  In all fairness to him, Oliver had warned her. He had told her that he didn’t know if he could live his life with one woman. And he told her that few women could live with his restlessness. But Aisling didn’t hear his warnings, because she was convinced that she could change him.

  She wanted him, and she got him. But on Oliver’s terms.

  At the time it had all seemed worth it. Aisling was positive that when they were married, and had started their family, he would settle down. But she was wrong on both counts. So far, there were no signs of a family, and there was no sign of Oliver settling down at all. She knew now that she would never have the life with him that she had dreamed of. But what else was there to do?

  Of course she could leave him. Leave him and their sham of a marriage. How many times had she gone over the scene in her head, telling Oliver that she was leaving him, and then – the impossible part – telling her parents? How could she? How could she? It would kill her mother. Maggie Kearney couldn’t take any more local gossip about the family.

  There had always been the jokes and sneering remarks about Charles – Aisling’s older brother. Just because he didn’t operate the same way as the other local fellows, and wasn’t remotely on their wavelength – or at times, anyone else’s – even in the family. But mainly because he preferred to keep company with the characters in his books than sit and have a pint with another man. And because he was thirty-one years old, and as yet had never been seen in the company of a woman.

  And then there was the real cause for gossip. Aisling’s younger sister, Pauline, had been brought back home from England three years ago. Unmarried and with a baby daughter. Maggie had never been the same since.

  The whole family had never been the same since.

  They had picked themselves up and dusted themselves down, but the fact was they were now marked in the eyes of the townspeople. They had joined the ranks of the fallen. Maggie’s well-to-do farming background, and Declan’s grocery shop on the outskirts of Tullamore town no longer gave them immunity from the gossips. Even the fact that Maggie had a brother who was a priest and Declan had two sisters who were nuns, cut them no sway with the Catholic moral majority. Nothing the Kearneys now did would lift them back into that comfortable, privileged little niche they had enjoyed.

  Not even the fact that Mr and Mrs Kearney were planning a trip to America in the summer would impress their customers. They would forever be haunted by veiled – and not-so veiled – references to Pauline’s situation on a regular basis.

  Three years of getting their own back with little digs was nothing to customers who felt they had been overcharged by the Kearneys for the last twenty years – customers who didn’t care or understand about overheads in running a business.

  “And how is poor Pauline and the babby getting on?” Maggie would hear each and every day from women clutching loaves of bread and bags of cooking-apples. Their kindly smiles would never hide the dark reminder behind the words. Poor Pauline and the babby.

  Maggie heard that question so often that she often w
oke up in the night saying it to herself.

  And it wasn’t just Maggie and Declan and Pauline who suffered from the fallout of Pauline’s indiscretion. Even if Aisling was a teacher and living in a fine big farmhouse with modern furniture and a bathroom and running water, she still had a loose sister with an illegitimate child.

  And though Aisling could rise above it, being younger and more open to the modern ways of the world, and Declan – being a man – could shake his head and say, ‘What’s done is done, there’s no good in looking back, you have to look forward,’ Maggie was bowed over by the shame of it all. There was no consolation in any words about ‘what’s done is done’ for her.

  What Pauline allowed to be done to her should never have been done at all.

  Aisling knew this only too well. And knew what it all meant for her. One daughter who had brought shame on the family was enough. To have another daughter home with a failed marriage would be just too, too much.

  So Aisling plodded on. Her vague, ‘if the worst comes to the worst’ plan of one day just disappearing to England to live with Pauline had been well and truly smashed when her sister and baby returned home. Aisling had no means of escape – and daily was becoming as good an actor as Oliver was in his local, amateur dramas.

  A tide of sorrow rose up in her now, and she closed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. There was no time for crying or feeling sorry for herself. She had to get dressed and get ready for school.

  Eventually, when the tears had dried, Aisling opened her eyes to stare out over the garden. Out over the trees, and out to the fields which surrounded their house. Then, her gaze shifted down into the garden again. A movement on the path caught her attention. She looked closer now, and recognised a small bird. It was a goldcrest – a tiny, yellowy-green thing. It was hopping aimlessly. First in one direction, and then another.

  Without realising it, Aisling smiled. It was a young bird, obviously learning to fly. She watched intently as it hopped a few inches into the air, wings flapping, only to descend again back to the ground.