calm, to wait, that the cycles changed but it would all come round again: spring would follow a harsh winter, eventually. Nothing, not problems nor solutions, could be rushed – any more than you could rush the questing head of a snowdrop. The snowdrop would emerge sleepily into the air when it was good and ready.
That became Anneliese’s motto. Things happened when they were good and ready.
And now, it seemed, she was wrong. Totally wrong.
She got up, went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. It was a reflex action. When she had nothing to do, she flicked that switch and busied herself with the ritual of tea-making. Most of the time, she barely drank more than half the tea.
Edward wasn’t a tea person: he preferred coffee. There was still a jar of his favourite and wildly expensive Blue Mountain from Fortnum & Mason in the cupboard.
Anneliese hated coffee but liked the smell of it. There would be no one to make coffee now, no rich aroma lifting into the air to tell her that Edward was in the kitchen, idly listening to the radio as he brewed up.
There would be no other person to move a tea towel, reposition a cushion, unfold a newspaper. After three decades of living with another person, would she now get used to this aloneness? Perhaps aloneness was the true human state, and not the Platonic vision of two together. She hoped so.
She flicked off the kettle switch, grabbed her keys and went to the back door. Swapping her flat shoes for boots, she put on the old padded jacket that hung with a selection of others on a peg in the tiny back hallway. The back door faced the beach and when Anneliese pulled it open, the fresh hit of sea breeze caught her breath.
The scent of sand and the tang of the sea filled her lungs and she gasped for a moment before recovering.
Her cottage was half a mile from the beach, half a mile where tenacious scrub grass and hardy sea orchids clung to the land before giving way to a crest of small stones that gleamed like precious jewels when the sea drenched them. Now, the tide was out and a swathe of fawn-coloured sand stretched out ahead of her in a big horseshoe. This was Milsean Bay, a small cove that sat beside the much larger Tamarin Bay, the two separated by the jagged cliff that ran down to the edge of the water.
The Milsean side of the cliff was the more exposed part of the headland, where sand and sea rusted cars and pummelled paint off houses, leaving cottages like Anneliese’s the same colour as the driftwood that swept up on to the beach.
On the other side of the cliff sat Tamarin itself, protected from the bite of the wind and the sea by a tiara of cliffs.
The valley that ran through Tamarin down into the bay, where a chunk of glacier had carved a path millions of years ago, was occupied by both the River Bawn and the fat road in and out of town. In a sunny haven in the curve of the valley was the garden centre where Anneliese had worked until last year.
Years ago, Anneliese had thought she’d like to live safely nestled within the crook of Tamarin Bay, where the wind still rattled the windows but there were neighbours close by on the nights when the power went. In the shelter of the cliffs and the hills, what was almost a micro-climate existed and in the garden centre Anneliese grew plants and flowers she wouldn’t dream of planting on the Milsean side.
Her aunt-in-law, Lily, had a fig tree in her garden, for heaven’s sake: hugely rotund and not so good in the fig department nowadays, like an old gentleman who couldn’t be bothered with productivity now that he’d reached his three score and ten, but it was still a fig tree, still a creature of warmer climes.
Now though, Anneliese was glad she and Edward had moved out here to the cottage twenty years before. The sense of isolation suited her. The wind couldn’t scream with any more pain and anger than she did, and here at least if she wanted to sit on her weather-beaten porch and drink wine while Tosca shrieked in the background, nobody would call her mad or phone her relatives wondering if they ‘could have a quiet word’.
The beach was scattered with shells and trails of slick seaweed. High on the shoreline were the hoof marks made by the morning riders who galloped along the beach from the stables three miles inland. Edward had taken photographs of them one summer: black-and-white shots of the fury of the gallop, nostrils flared and manes rippling as horses and riders thundered along, sand and surf flying.
One of the photos still hung in the cottage where she could see it every time she walked in the front door. It was a beautiful shot.
‘You could take up photography,’ Anneliese had told him. Edward was very artistic, although there wasn’t much call for artistry in the insurance business.
‘I’m only an amateur, love,’ Edward said back, although she knew he was pleased. He hadn’t been raised to compliments. Edward’s mother thought praise was a word you only used in church, praising the Lord. Anneliese had always tried to make up for the lack of praise in Edward’s youth.
‘It’s pretty good for an amateur.’
‘You’re blind, do you know that?’ Edward said, smiling. ‘You only see my good points.’
‘Selective blindness,’ Anneliese smiled back at him. ‘I see the bits I like and I like most of it.’
Walking along the beach now, Anneliese knew she’d have to take the picture off the wall when she got home. It would hurt too much to see it.
The wind bit into her face, stinging her eyes. Anneliese stared down at the sand, determined to find something to shift her mind off the sharp pain in her heart. A few yards ahead of her lay a piece of driftwood, tangled up in a skein of chemical blue net from the fishing boats.
Bending slowly, she picked it up. It was a foot long, twisted like a coil of rope. Some of the driftwood was beautiful, sculpted by the sea, still a thing of beauty despite the battering.
And then there were pieces of driftwood that were just that: wood flung on the beach after thrashing around in the surf, desolate and hollowed out, ugly and unwanted. Like this one. Like me, Anneliese knew.
She wasn’t a plant at all – she was driftwood. Ugly to most people, beautiful only to the very few.
Summoning all the pent-up energy in her body, she hurled the driftwood back into the ocean and screamed at it.
‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’
There was nobody to hear her scream. Her voice was caught on the wind and whipped away into the air where the seagulls paid no attention.
Edward hadn’t seemed to pay attention that morning when she’d got up at eight and said she was going to Sunday Mass at nine, then might call in on Lily. He’d murmured something that sounded like assent, and rolled over in the bed, bunching the snow white of the duvet around his lanky frame. Anneliese didn’t mind. She was a lark and he was an owl. Opposites and all that.
Ten minutes later, she was showered, dressed and sipping a cup of green tea before she hurried out the door. She’d grown to like green tea, for all that she’d loathed it for ages after the acupuncturist had said it was good for you. Why was it that things that were good for you took a long time to get used to and things that were bad were instantly addictive?
The early service in St Canice’s in the square in Tamarin was pure and perfect. The cold spring sun sent rays of light shining through the stained-glass windows, leaving dust motes hanging in the air, an effect that was for all the world like celestial rays blessing
