The Swan Lake Read online

  Eventually she comes to a sign that points to Scariff in one direction and Ennis in the other, and swings the steering wheel to turn left. The track she finds herself on is muddy and full of potholes, and she crawls along, peering out of the window until, with a sigh of relief, she sees a post marked ‘Langford’s’ and turns into a wide driveway to pull up beside a Land Rover.

  The house is old, with a newer extension on one side. Grey stone walls provide footholds for masses of ivy, and a fat ginger cat dozes on the porch. The front door is open, and she slides out of the car and walks stiffly across to knock loudly. The cat stands and stretches, his back impossibly arched, then strolls over to nudge her leg. Astarte stoops to stroke his head, smiling as he purrs loudly and leaps upwards to maintain contact with her hand.

  A voice calls out from the far reaches of the garden, and a moment later a man emerges through a gap in a tall hedge, carrying a bowl of ripe tomatoes under one arm. ‘You must be Astarte,’ he says as he draws closer, his right hand already outstretched to grasp hers and shake it vigorously. His accent is American, with a hint of Irish brogue.

  ‘John Langford?’ she asks incredulously. He looks nothing like the estate agents of her acquaintance in England. His large workman’s hands are dusted lightly with soil, and his wellington boots are encrusted with mud. He wears faded blue jeans and a torn sweater, and his fair hair is long and tousled.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ he tells her, pushing the door open wide, and motioning for her to go inside while he removes his boots and bangs them on the doorstep to shake off the mud. ‘How was your journey?’ Murmuring that it was fine, Astarte is struck by the air of chaotic homeliness. They are in a large, cool kitchen paved with flagstone floors. A pine table, strewn with papers that almost swamp a laptop, dominates the space. Plants are everywhere; covering the sills of three windows, propped up in corners, filling the recesses opposite the door. A range stands against the far wall, and John strides across to lift a kettle that is hissing quietly on the hob, busying himself making tea while Astarte looks around curiously. She walks over to a tall bookshelf and casts her eyes over the mess of books that are piled haphazardly on it. These people have a broad range of interests, she notes. Romance novels nestle beside French philosophers, who casually lean their backs against botany and science books, which in turn prop up texts on complementary therapies. Several photographs perch precariously on top, and one, of John with his arms around a pretty brown haired woman and a young boy, catches her interest. She moves closer to examine it. Their hair flies into their faces as they all grin into the camera, and they look carefree and close.

  John Langford watches Astarte covertly as he pours tea into two mugs. He is an eternal optimist. The sunrise each morning still fills him with a sense of wonder, even on winter days when the sky is the colour of lead and the light creeps downwards in sly shafts, casting reflections in the mist. The first spring blossoms touch his heart, as does the sight of Sebastian the cat sprawled purring by the range while he coaxes the embers back to life each morning. When John met Siobhan, his future wife, his conviction that the world is beautiful and good was confirmed and sustained, further strengthened with the birth of their son Jamie, the pride of his life.

  Now, observing Astarte as she peruses the bookshelf, he feels a sense of bafflement, and wonders what has chased her across the sea to come looking for a place to roost. She is young and attractive, and it seems odd to him that she would choose to cloister herself away in a small community. He has a sense that she is running from something, and John always trusts his hunches. His clients are usually couples with growing families, who hanker to bring their children up in the comparative safety of the countryside; or arty types who want seclusion while they use the landscape as a backdrop for their work. It can be lonely here for incomers. Although the locals are, on the whole, friendly, there is an underlying resentment towards foreigners who come to buy up the land cheaply, only to quickly get bored and move on. And for that he doesn’t blame them. This land has been theirs for countless generations, it’s their heritage and their livelihood, and there is still a constant rash of disputes between farmers about land rights that create rich pickings for lawyers.

  Astarte is aware of John’s gaze. As soon as the prickle of his eyes on her back becomes uncomfortable, she turns and gestures towards the photograph. ‘Is this your family?’ she asks, to fill the space between them. The answer, after all, is obvious.

  ‘Yes,’ John sets the mugs on the table, and gestures for her to sit down. ‘Though my son is sixteen now, and taller than I am.’ Astarte ladles sugar into her mug, warming to his easy smile and casual air, though she deftly fends off questions about why she plans to move here. She is not ready to bare her personal life to a stranger, even a friendly one, and steers the conversation towards him. He talks comfortably and volubly, telling her that his parents were originally from County Clare, and he visited often as a child, then moved here eighteen years ago to set up his business when he fell in love with Siobhan.

  ‘Most people here want to go off to England or America,’ he laughs. ‘There are not a great deal of work opportunities, and the young people race off to the cities as soon as they can. But I’m happy here. Business is good now that visitors from overseas are realising how much healthier the lifestyle is. But it’s a big step to take. Have you thought it through? What will you do for a living?’

  ‘I have some capital,’ Astarte tells him, leaning back so that the bench she is sitting on creaks alarmingly. ‘I’m a Critical Care nurse, but I don’t want to go down that road any more. The idea is to set up a smallholding.’

  John takes a biscuit from the plate he has set between them, and studies it thoughtfully before biting into it. ‘Well, you’d be kept busy if you ever decide to go back to it. You know, farmers falling off their tractors and all that sort of thing.’ His laughter is infectious, but she shakes her head firmly. ‘It’s not always an easy life here, Astarte,’ he adds.

  Her expression freezes. The bright blue eyes turn several shades lighter. ‘I’m sure I’ll cope,’ she replies shortly, looking him in the eye. She delves into her bag and pulls out the papers he sent her, laying them on the table before him. ‘These are the ones I want to see,’ she says coolly. ‘Can we go today? I don’t have much time.’

  John looks briefly at them, then picks up the mugs and puts them in the sink. ‘Let’s go now, in that case. I’ll take you in my Land Rover.’

  They walk outside, and Astarte notes that he doesn’t lock the door. When she comments on it, he informs her that few people bother around here. Petty crimes are a rarity. She raises her eyebrows, and thinks of the Yale lock, bolts, and safety chain on her front door in Portsmouth. ‘I think I’m going to like it here,’ she says.

  Chapter Five

  The landscape scrolls past. Astarte relaxes and takes in the rolling green hills, the gullies and hollows, the roads with their hairpin bends that make her feel as if she’s on a rollercoaster. John points out areas of interest, and the advantages and disadvantages of the cottages she’s considering. One has no electricity, but could be modernised fairly easily. The others are ready to move into, and all of them are vacant. There’s no shortage of prospective homes here. When they stop at each property she wanders around, creating images in her mind of how she could turn them into a home. Yet something is missing, though Astarte finds it hard to pinpoint exactly what that is. One has an odd smell, as if it holds bad memories, and she is relieved to step back outside. Another is dark, with a gloomy feel. She wonders whether she’s being too picky – a home is what you make it, after all – but decides to think about them overnight, and John advises her to take her time and make a decision back in Portsmouth. He keeps telling her that it’s a big step to take, and she finds that irritating. She’s tempted to ask him whether he’s in the right line of work. Estate agents are surely supposed to leap at the chance of any sale.

  On the circuitous way back to his house they pass a lake th
at John informs her has a magical reputation. Astarte gasps with pleasure so John pulls up to allow her to admire the view. John gazes across to where two swans drift gently.

  ‘This is a special place,’ he tells her. ‘The locals call it the Swan Lake. That pair of swans over there come here year after year and raise their cygnets. Sometimes there are as many as six grown swans with their young. Swans mate for life, you know.’ John looks mischievously at Astarte, whose eyes are shining. ‘And the lake is reputed to be frequented by fairies. We’re very superstitious around here, Astarte. Never touch whitethorn bushes – they belong to the fairies. A woman who tried to cut down her whitethorn was pricked by it and died of blood poisoning. Don’t build on the western side of a house, or you disturb the fairy pathways and they extract their revenge for it. The Irish fairies are a dark breed altogether, and demand respect.’

  John turns to face her. His tone is serious but he is smiling. Astarte is intrigued but disbelieving.

  ‘I’ll tell you a true story.’ His tone is confiding. ‘There are pike in this lake. Not long ago some farmers parked there late at night to go fishing.’ He points a finger over to their right. ‘The farmers here are strong men, not easily spooked. But they were out of here within five minutes, with their windows wound up so tightly they needed pliers to get them open the next morning.’

  Astarte is as wide-eyed as a child. ‘What happened,’ she asks.

  ‘They said that there was a thud on their roof, as if someone small had jumped down from that tree up there. Then a patter of tiny footsteps above them, and they didn’t wait to find out more. They were off like rockets, home to good Irish whiskey and the comforting arms of their wives. It made for a good tale down the pub, and there’s been no more late-night fishing since.’

  Astarte listens with amusement as her eyes feast on the scene. Tall rushes line the banks, and she glimpses a heron standing elegantly on one leg in the distance. They sit in silence for a while, watching the swans.

  ‘Do you ever have any properties here?’ Astarte asks dreamily, gazing across the lake towards a copse of trees set against the rise of a hill. In the distance is the outline of a taller hill, topped by a tower that reminds her of Glastonbury Tor.

  ‘It really is beautiful.’ She feels odd. Something within her connects to this place, and she can’t even consider being anywhere else. If she has to rent another house in the area until a place here comes up for sale, she’ll do that. Every blade of grass, each bush and tree all have ‘home’ written over them in invisible ink that only Astarte can see.

  John turns in his seat and smiles at her. ‘Not very often. I have one at the moment,’ he says, ‘but it’s in ruins. I’ll show you if you like, but really it’s just a pile of stones. Not the sort of thing you’d be interested in, which is why I didn’t mention it.’

  Astarte stares out across the rushes. She finds it hard to look away. She can’t quite believe that such wild beauty exists. ‘Try me,’ she says. He starts the engine and drives down a bumpy lane filled with potholes, then stops. Astarte takes a deep breath.

  The garden is surrounded by a boundary of elder trees, and has been neglected for so long that it has reverted to its natural state. A ruined cottage sits forlornly to one side. Its stone walls are crumbling in parts, and the ugly corrugated iron roof is partially rusted away. Beside it is a tangled mess that would once have been a kitchen garden, where sage, chamomile, rosemary, thyme, and mint battle wildly with each other for supremacy, losing the fight to brambles and weeds. Beyond that is a tumbledown hut that John informs her houses a well. An orchard of apple, plum, pear, and cherry trees spreads from the centre of the land towards two ancient oak trees in the far corner. The place has a peaceful air, as though it has no need of human company, and Astarte is entranced. With a rising sense of excitement she urges John to take her inside the ruin, ignoring the quizzical looks he’s casting in her direction.

  They walk towards the cottage through long grass studded with wild flowers. By the time they reach it their shoes and jeans are sodden, but Astarte hardly notices. She bounds inside, made easily accessible because of the jagged gaps once filled by doors and windows, and looks around in wonder. The cottage is very old, at least three hundred years, so John tells her. Generations have been born here, brought up families, breathed their last breath here. Despite its tumbledown state, there is a warm feeling about this place. It has been loved.

  The interior consists of one very large room, with an inglenook fireplace at one end. Some ancient ironmongery and a hook hanging above it indicate that a pot was once suspended there. The chimney-breast above it is blackened with smoke from countless cooking fires. Puffs of dust fly up from the dirt floor as she wanders around, but much of the stonework that remains standing is good. Astarte looks up. The beams that provide the framework for the roof are cut from the trunks of oak trees, sliced lengthways with the bark still intact, and above those are laid strips of peat turf that would have originally been an underlay for a thatched roof. Odd scraps of thatch can be seen in the corners, dark with age. Despite the disrepair and the air of nonchalant neglect, a cool breeze carries the scent of herbs and flowers through the open spaces, tinged with the fragrance of fresh water.

  She walks across to a space that would once have been a window, rests her hands on the uneven stones, and looks out. The view makes her exclaim with delight. A gap between the trees reveals the lake, with the landscape rising impressively behind it, and there is a clear view of the strange hill with the tower. As Astarte watches, the swans suddenly take to the air. Their powerful wings create a humming sound as they fly low over the cottage. Astarte has a strange sensation that she has entered a fairy tale or a dream, one that she has no desire to wake from. She cranes her neck out of the window, jumping as John touches her arm.

  ‘Don’t lean too hard,’ he says, drawing her back. ‘The sill could collapse.’

  Astarte looks down. The stones, carefully fitted together so that not a crack shows, appear solid to her, but she takes her hands off the sill and dusts them down on her jeans.

  ‘I love this place,’ she says, beaming as she turns to face him. ‘This is the one I want to buy.’ John bursts out laughing, then stops short as he realises she is serious.

  ‘It’s in a lovely spot, but it’s a mammoth project,’ he tells her. ‘It wouldn’t be habitable for months. Think what you’re letting yourself in for!’

  ‘That’s fine. I can live in a van in the meantime. I’ve had plenty of experience of roughing it.’ Astarte turns around in a circle on the spot, her mind working fast, creating images, planning, seeing a vision of the place it could become, with hard work and loving attention. ‘You must know some builders,’ she says reasonably.

  John sighs. ‘I’ll introduce you to one if you insist. But I think you’d be taking on more than you realise. It needs to be shored up, rebuilt. A new roof, new floor. Doors, windows, internal walls, plumbing, electricity, a cesspit. It would take a lot of time, work, and expense. You’re looking at the place through rose-tinted glasses, Astarte.’

  ‘Isn’t it your job to sell me a house, John? I want this one. I have the money and the time. You should be telling me that I can create my very own version of Utopia instead of trying to put me off.’

  John sighs. ‘I see my job as that of a matchmaker, finding the right house for the right person. I’ve known people buy places like these only to give up and move on when they realise what they’ve taken on. And that upsets the balance of what’s really a very close-knit community here. It unsettles everyone.’

  Astarte smiles and walks out of the cottage, towards his Land Rover. ‘This is the right place and I’m the right person. Now, take me to your builder,’ she says firmly. John throws his arms up in defeat and follows Astarte back to his Land Rover.

  As they drive away, a stocky figure steps out from behind an elder tree in the corner of the garden. He stands watching as the Land Rover vanishes around the corner, then spits sidew
ays into the grass.

  Chapter Six

  Mairie Hennessy settles herself into the ancient rocking chair by the range, both inherited from her long-dead parents, rolls a thin cigarette, and pours an inch of whiskey into a glass for her medicinal late-morning tipple. Dr O’Riley once told her it did the heart good, though the poor man takes too much of his own medicine. Raising the glass towards the sun that shines through the kitchen window, she swirls the liquid gently, savouring its golden colour, then takes a large sip and sighs contentedly. Sinead, her great-niece, will be late back today, and Mairie ruminates on how to bring the girl further out of the shell that closed around her so early in her young life. Sinead, a quiet fifteen-year-old with a surprising talent for being swift on her feet, gets a vicarious thrill from the old lady’s feisty attitude, and Mairie hopes that eventually it will rub off on the girl. Hiding from the world does you no good, she knows. You have to throw yourself into life, confront it head-on, create havoc while you can. Sinead has lived with Mairie since her parents died alongside her aunt and uncle in a car crash when she was three years old. It was a miracle that the child survived. She still has scars on her stomach from the hours of surgery that shifted the balance from death to life after she was pulled from the wreckage.

  Mairie shakes her head at the thought of Sinead’s parents. Sometimes she wonders whether a curse lies over her family. She and Sinead are the only ones left from what was a large, noisy family twenty years ago. Sometimes she hears their voices late at night in quiet corners of the cottage, as if a party is going on that she can only stand on the fringes of. Memory is a strange friend at her age. She finds it easier to remember what occurred forty or fifty years ago than to recall the events of the past few days. But where her neighbour, Seamus, is concerned (and she makes sure to concern him at every opportunity), each small event is vividly imprinted on the fabric of her mind like a brand. It warms the cold nights when she flicks through her mental picture-book, and the thought of him now brings a grim smile to her lips.