Gloria had marvelled that her brother could like this selfish girl. Feminism meant helping women who were marginalised, and none were so marginalised as those unmarried pregnant women who were treated with callous disrespect by so many in society.
But there was no point discussing this with Bob. He was besotted and Gloria could see why. Lillian was very beautiful. Sex appeal rippled out of her like it was a scent that could be touched. She had that certain something that meant people didn’t notice her selfishness. Instead, people looked at her and bathed in her charisma. Gloria, who’d never been blessed with such a thing, felt a hint of envy towards the younger woman. What would it be like to make men follow her with their eyes?
Sighing, because there was no point dwelling on what was never going to be, Gloria brought her bike right down to the beach to keep it safe. It was a battered old black thing and nobody would ever want to steal it. Still, you could never tell. Whitehaven was a tourist town and people took the maddest things. Only the other day someone had stolen the teapot sign that hung above Mrs Rafferty’s tea shop. Gloria had come upon her standing outside in the street staring up at where the overhanging blue painted metal sign used to hang.
‘Why would they do it?’ said a bewildered Mrs Rafferty. ‘I don’t understand it. Why, in the name of all that is holy, would anyone want a giant teapot? It’s riddled with rust. It’s no use to anyone.’
Gloria suspected it might have something to do with too much drink the night before and people having a wager on what insane things they could steal but said nothing.
‘Do you want me to call into the police station and get the sergeant over?’
‘I suppose,’ said Mrs Rafferty thoughtfully. ‘I might get a guard dog. What do you think?’
Gloria wheeled her bike along the sand. She waved to people, petted the odd dog and looked a bit nervously at a few people who were swimming quite far out. The currents were strong in Whitehaven Bay. Just because it looked calm and beautiful didn’t mean that it was safe.
She’d keep an eye on them. Father always said she had an overdeveloped social conscience.
‘Pot kettle black!’ Gloria liked to say.
The town doctor had no right to be talking about overdeveloped social consciences because Dr Risteard Cooper had dedicated his life to public service.
Finally, she found the right spot. There was a little curve in the beach where there was a handy flat rock which meant she could sit down, fix a portable easel and if she worked quickly enough, could get both the boats and the beautiful midday sun. It was hidden so that nobody could creep in behind her and look at her work unless she wanted them to. She set up quickly and was soon speedily sketching her seascape. An hour later, it was almost done. You had to work fast with watercolours because everything changed so quickly, and long experience of Whitehaven meant that Gloria knew the rain could come down at any minute. Summer showers could come at speed and go again as quickly but they played havoc with watercolour paper.
She was just kneeling down and packing away her paints when a low, deep voice said: ‘I like it.’
Gloria whirled around.
‘Hello,’ she said, taken aback. ‘You crept up on me, Angelo. It is Angelo, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and you’re Gloria, Bob’s sister.’
Gloria coloured. She had no problem talking to people anywhere. But talking to men, or men she found attractive, was very difficult. She knew that she and Bob were reserved. They’d been brought up that way. But Bob had somehow got past this when he’d fallen for Lillian. Or perhaps it had just been that Lillian knew what she wanted and had pushed past that reserve.
Lillian spent a lot of time at the artists’ centre where Angelo was working. The young artists spent a lot of time together, drinking pints in Maguire’s Lounge and Bar, with the female artists scandalising old Mr Maguire by ordering pints of stout instead of just glasses. Gloria had seen Angelo with them.
‘I like your seascape,’ he said now.
‘It’s not great,’ said Gloria self-critically.
‘Perhaps not amazing from the point of view of precision,’ Angelo said, being truthful. ‘But you have captured the sense of the place, the wildness, the beauty and the light. That’s what I love about here. The light. There’s a clarity of the light that comes in from the Atlantic and then, when the clouds move in, I love that lowering darkness it casts over the beach.’
Gloria never knew why but at that moment, she felt as if she was falling in love.
It was ridiculous. She was Gloria Cooper, spinster of this parish, a woman who had lived on earth for thirty-four years without falling for any man and without any man falling for her. She didn’t do this type of thing. But in that moment, she wanted nothing more than for Angelo to sit down beside her on her flat rock, talk to her and touch her face. Perhaps the way Bob touched Lillian’s face.
He might ask her out and ...
‘I was coming to paint, but do you think you might come for a little lunch with me?’ said Angelo, gazing at her. She couldn’t quite place his accent. It was west of Ireland with a hint of something else.
‘Where are you from?’ she asked suddenly, and then was a little shocked at her brazenness. She was behaving differently with this man.
‘I am one quarter Sicilian, which is different from Italy, better,’ said Angelo. ‘My mother’s mother was from Sicily, and she lived with us.’
‘That explains it,’ said Gloria delightedly.
Gloria had never known a summer like it. During the week she went to work in Dublin, working in the college library and sometimes giving extra lessons on art history to college students. At weekends, Angelo came to fetch her in his battered old Volkswagen and they drove down to Whitehaven together. Those trips were magical. They’d have a picnic in a field. Sometimes they’d find a pub along the road when they were nearly home, where Gloria would drink a gin and tonic while Angelo made do with shandy. ‘I can drive,’ she said to him.
‘No, I shall look after you,carissima.’
