He shakes his head, still smiling.
There are so many questions I should be asking but I’m so grateful I just say, ‘Thank you,’ and, ‘Right away, if that’s OK?’
I should ask the questions, of course. But it’s bed, board and crap pay; exactly what I need right now.
‘Perfect!’ He gathers up his belongings. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ He looks over at the group by the fire. ‘Statler and Waldorf have got nothing on this lot.’ He picks up his battered brown briefcase and does up his wax jacket.
‘Who?’
He laughs.
‘Let’s get you settled in.’ He looks around. ‘No luggage?’
‘Travelling light,’ I reply quickly. Suddenly the memory of running down the cobbled path of the church as fast as my kitten heels would let me, holding my dress up to my knees as my flower tiara slipped from my head, comes crashing back, like something out of a film. Only it wasn’t a film. I remember the horror I felt as everyone looked at me. I had to get away, and sprinted towards the waiting camper van minutes after we’d been pronounced man and wife.
Sean shrugs, seeming to accept my simple explanation, even though the reality is far from simple, and I follow him out of the pub and down to the harbour car park where any last links with my past life have all but disappeared. I stare for a moment at the space where the camper van had been, when I had been Mrs Brian Goodchild.
Now I’m Fi English.
Sean opens the door to a red Transit van and a large sandy-coloured Great Dane jumps out.
‘This is Grace,’ he says as she sniffs around my feet and nudges me with her big black nose. ‘She used to beGary, according to the tag on her collar, but I think Grace suits her much better.’ He whistles and the dog jumps back in the van. I climb in next to her and stretch to pull the heavy door shut. As we drive away from the harbour I feel I’m leaving my past life behind. Like footprints in the sand, very soon there will be no trace Mrs Brian Goodchild ever existed at all.
Chapter Three
‘How come she used to be Gary?’ I ask, stroking the gentle dog’s head.
‘She was abandoned, down on the beach. Probably a summer surfing crowd, thought she looked cool. They hadn’t even worked out what sex she was.’ He pushes through the gears and we head off out of town along the coast. Grace lies down, her front legs over my lap, and I’m grateful for the distraction.
‘So what kind of a farm is it?’ I finally think of something sensible to ask.
‘Sorry?’ He looks at me and then back at the road. He indicates and we veer off up a single-track lane. The van sways from side to side, much like when I was in the camper van, only this time there’s a Great Dane in the cab too. Her hair’s whizzing round as the heaters blow warm air at us and it feels like I’m inside a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
‘I mean, are you pigs, cows, arable …?’ All of which I know nothing about, but as it sounds like the job’s going to be office-based, it doesn’t much matter to me. I quite like the idea of looking out on fields of wheat or corn.
My new boss laughs, which is a little unnerving and actually a little irritating too. ‘This is Galway, you know that much, right?’ He looks from me to the road and back at me again. I nod. He grips the steering wheel and laughs some more. ‘Look around you.’ He waves towards the scenery. ‘It’s nothing but bog land.’ He points to one side of theroad. ‘Not much good for anything.’
I’m confused. On the other side of the road there’s nothing but the sea. He gives another little laugh, irritating me some more. His dark curls shake.
‘I’m an oyster farmer. That’s my farm out there.’ He points to the vast expanse of sea. I wonder if he’s joking, but he isn’t, I can tell by his face.
Holy cow! I sink into my seat. Why on earth hadn’t I asked before? What am I going to do now?
The single-track lane comes to an end. There’s a ‘no entry’ sign and the lane turns into an overgrown track. If I thought the road before was rough, it was nothing in comparison to this. My soup feels like it’s sloshing around in my stomach and for a moment I’m worried it’s going to come back up again. Finally we come to a pair of gates to the right of the track and Sean pulls in. There’s another ‘no entry’ sign.
He drives the van down a slope and then yanks on the handbrake, hard. There’s a large green corrugated shed in front of us, behind that a small white cottage. To my right is the ruin of a house, or maybe a barn. It’s an old white stone building with a russet-coloured corrugated roof. It may once have been thatched. Now it just looks tired and abandoned. The irony of that isn’t lost on me. And beyond that … water, lots and lots of water, which is probably as bad as it gets for someone who’s terrified of the stuff.
As I push open the heavy van door and step out, the smell hits me as quickly as the wind. Salt and seaweed scratch at a memory and give me goosebumps. The wind slaps me across the cheeks, even harder than before, stinging this time. It’s like it’s punishing me for being so stupid. Strands of my hair whip my eyeballs like an unruly mob on the rampage. Peeling them back I can see Sean picking his way up some higgledypiggledy concrete steps to the cottage behind the big green shed. I cling to the door,using it as a shield against the weather. This is supposed to be June!
Grace pushes past me, nearly making my knees buckle as she catapults from the van over to the rocks, sniffing for messages. It’s a bit like texting for dogs, I think. She stops and leaves her reply.
I stare out. There’s a stream right in front of me, dodging and tumbling over rocks to the bay beyond it. The bay itself is surrounded by craggy, rugged hills, their tops shrouded in mist. There’s a stillness and a quiet, apart from the wind and the lapping of the waves, that I’m not used to. I feel like I’ve fallen off the edge of the map.
There are two orange buoys, one each at the furthest points of the bay, like someone’s marked out their patch. But apart from that there’s really nothing to see. No sign of any kind of farming. No big fishing boats or pens. The only sign of any oyster activity is a huge pile of oyster shells just inside the gate, a mountain of them. Maybe Sean just likes to eat them, a lot. I can’t believe anyone actually lives out here; there’s no shops, no café, no pub, no … I look around, nothing. To say I feel like a fish out of water is a pretty accurate description. What do people do out here? How do they make a living?
A rough, rocky footpath leads down to the water and another snakes around the edge of the shore, away from the house where Grace is now slowly investigating more messages and sending more replies.
‘You coming?’ my new boss shouts from the front door of the cottage. The wind’s blowing his hair around wildly. I shut the van door with effort. I wonder if I should leave there and then, say I’m not staying, that I’m terrified of water and that I might as well have landed on the moon, it’s all so alien to me. But where would I go? I’ve got no money, no clothes, no transport. I pull out my phone from the front pocket of my hoodie. No phone signal either. Even if I wanted to call someone, I couldn’t. But I don’t want to. I turn the phone off and shove it back in my pocket. No phone, no Facebook, no emails.
