Page 4 of Coming Home to Inishbeg Cove

Chapter 3

Penny

Through the living room window, I watched Mam as she disappeared down the path in the direction of the village hall. The sun shone brightly over the cove and the canvas of blue sky was patched with criss-crossing white vapour trails. Lucy was sitting on the floor by my feet playing with the Lego Mam kept in the house for her.

I picked up my phone and checked it once more, but my heart sank further when I saw that Joe hadn’t tried to contact me. I had been hoping I had somehow missed a call or a message from him. Maybe he would offer me an explanation or even an apology. I had been replaying his last words to me over and over in my head: ‘I need space, Penny. I think it’s best if you go away for a while.’ I was trying to make sense of it all but, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t understand why he was doing this.

Joe and I had been married for eight years, and I was used to his moods and behaviours. This wasn’t the first time he had done something like this. He was an artist, with a reputation as one of Ireland’s leading pop culture painters. His work was known for its stark, and sometimes hideous, subjects, and he only used dark, brooding colour palettes. Once he had installed a festering tin of beans in our kitchen. Flies had crawled all over it and it stank, but he had refused to remove it until he had finished painting it.

I’ve never told anybody this before, but when Lucy was only a few weeks old Joe received a commission from a Chinese art collector. He was paid an exorbitant amount – the most he would ever receive for a piece of his art. He had left me alone with our new-born baby and moved into a hotel for a month, claiming he needed to be in the ‘right headspace’ to work.

I know it might sound perverse, but I had to admit that I had once found his strange foibles endearing, where others might not have been so tolerant. His intensity, his passion and the need to put his art above all else were awesome to witness. I guess it was his intense focus that attracted me to him in the first place. When he was in the zone, nothing could pull him out of it – I often wondered, if his studio went on fire while he was creating, would he even notice? He lost all awareness of time and his surroundings. There were even days when he forgot to come home and stayed working in the studio all night. He was like an actor who gets into character for a role by speaking like their character, dressing like them and even eating the same food as them. They immerse themselves so completely that you don’t know where the character begins and the actor ends. That’s what Joe was like: there was no separation between him and his art.

Friends of mine would listen, wide-eyed, whenever I shared snippets of my life with them, so I stopped telling people about our relationship. I never used to envy the mundanity of their lives: the long commutes to nine-to-five office jobs, maybe a shared bottle of wine on a Saturday night the only thing to look forward to. Where was the excitement in that? But lately ... lately, there were times – especially since Lucy had been born – when I yearned for something a bit more ‘normal’, a bit more like the family setting I had grown up with.

Although I would never admit it to anyone, if I was being really honest, for the past few months I had been struggling with Joe’s need to put his art above everything else. It would be nice to not find his side of the bed empty night after night because he was working late in his studio. Or to be able to leave Lucy with him if I needed to go somewhere, without being told that he couldn’t be disturbed even for half an hour. But then I would remind myself that it was all part of the man I loved: I had known when I married him that life with Joe de Paor was never going to be conventional. I had to take the good and the bad, so that’s why I was sure this morning’s outburst was just another part of his creative process. He’d been overwhelmed by the artistic drama in his head.

I leant forward and brushed a stray curl off Lucy’s forehead, then got up and went into the kitchen. I flicked the switch on the kettle and listened as it grumbled to life. Suddenly my phone rang, and I rushed back to the living room, where I had left it on the coffee table. Hurriedly I picked it up but saw Dad’s number on the screen instead of Joe’s.

‘Dad?’ I said, a wave of disappointment flooding through me. ‘Are you having a nice time at the wedding?’

‘It’s lovely, but Penny, your mother just told me you’re down for a visit. Is everything okay?’

‘Of course, Dad,’ I lied.

He paused. ‘Well, it’s just that usually you tell us when you’re coming home…’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed an appointment to visit my own parents!’ I snapped, then regretted it as soon as the words had left my lips. I knew it was childish. Dad was just concerned. Hell, if Lucy turned up on my doorstep out of the blue in thirty years’ time, wouldn’t I be worried too?

‘Now you know that’s not how it is. We love having you, we wish you’d visit more often, if anything ... but it’s just a bit ... unexpected. You would tell us if something was wrong, wouldn’t you, love?’

‘Of course I would, Dad. Sorry, I just thought it would be nice to surprise you both. Now stop worrying.’

‘Okay … well, we won’t stay too late. We’ll be home straight after the meal.’

‘Don’t leave early on my account. I’m fine – just enjoy the day.’

After I had hung up, I sat down at the table, feeling guilt eat me up. Why wasn’t I able to tell them the truth? I knew a large part of me didn’t want them to think badly of Joe. Although they had never said so out loud, I had always known that they didn’t really like him. I used to think it was because of the age difference – Joe was thirteen years older than me. We had met when I was still in college. Back then he had called me his muse, said he couldn’t work without me. We had moved in together after only three weeks. He’d said he couldn’t make art unless I was present – he needed to eat, sleep and breathe me. At the time I couldn’t understand my parents’ concerns, but since I had had Lucy, I guess I could now see why they had been worried. They also never really ‘got’ his art. They couldn’t understand why people would pay thousands for an image of a mouldy tin of beans or a plate of chips with ketchup smeared over them. ‘Where’s the beauty in that?’ they had asked. Mam had once said, ‘There’s no accounting for taste.’ I never did tell Joe that.

I was afraid that if I told them what had happened that morning, I would be proving them right. Besides, I still hoped this was all temporary. If Mam and Dad knew the truth, they’d always hold it against Joe. Even though Joe and I had our problems, I still loved him and couldn’t bear for them to think badly of him. I didn’t want to worry them and risk them disliking him even more, especially after we’d sorted things out and were ready to put our argument behind us. I was sure it was another example of the ‘artist at work’. Knowing Joe, he would wake up tomorrow morning and beg us to drive back to Dublin, saying he couldn’t work without his family. He would realise that this was a moment of madness and he needed Lucy and me at home.