The Man On The Cliff

“I know what it said, Sharon. I wrote it.” He got up and walked across the kitchen to the window and stared out at the dark night.

“I don’t make a habit of reading your personal mail,” Sharon said. “You know that. You had that exhibit in Paris last month, and I thought that this was something to do with that. A business matter. We’re supposed to be partners, aren’t we?”

He didn’t answer.

“Whatever you think you understand from what you read,” he said a moment later, “you understand nothing at all.”

“But Niall—”

“You understand nothing,” he repeated. “Moruadh was a talented young musician, greatly loved and admired by everyone who knew her.” He said the words as though by rote. “She was also a beautiful woman who had a lot of admirers. Her death was a tragic accident and an incredible loss to us all.”

Sharon stared at him as though transfixed.

“Is that clear?”

Various emotions played across her face. For a moment, she seemed about to speak, but then she shrugged and took his glass to the sink.

“There’s another matter I wanted to talk to you about.” He sat down at the table, watched as she pulled out a chair. “Look, I think we both know this isn’t working, Sharon. Us, I mean. We spend half our time together arguing over one thing or another. There’s just—” he shrugged “—nothing there anymore.”

“Oh, really?” She got up from the table, crossed the room. Regarded him, arms crossed, her back against the wall. “Nothing there, you say? And do you know why that is? Niall? Do you have the faintest bloody idea why there’s nothing there?”

He waited for her to tell him.

“No, of course you don’t, because you’re as oblivious to what’s happening with us as you are to everything else going on around you. Well, I’ll tell you. You’ve lost touch with yourself, Niall. You can’t connect.”

He bent to pick out a burr from the dog’s coat. “You’re right, Sharon. I can’t. Don’t. Won’t. I’ve never been much on giving guided tours of my psyche. Go and find someone who emotes. There’s a drama teacher at the college who’ll sob at the drop of a hat. I’ll find out if he’s available.”

“Sure, make a joke of it. It’s the easy way, isn’t it? Well, fine. It’s over, finished. I’ll survive. And you’ll meet someone new and it’ll be fine at first, just as it was with us. She’ll fall in love with your looks and the way you have about you, so bloody interested with all your questions and rapt attention, but you’re like a collector. You take what you need, but you give nothing back.”

“Well, that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, Niall. And frankly, I’m glad to be done with it. You’ve got something locked away up there and you’ll sacrifice anything before you let it out.”

AN HOUR OR SO AFTER Sharon left, Niall sat at his desk in the study, going through the rest of the mail. Press notices from his show in Paris, an invitation to a gallery opening in Dublin. Another letter from the American writer who wanted to interview him about Moruadh. For a moment, he held the blue envelope in his hand, its color triggering a memory of a spring day five years ago. Wisps of clouds, a lark high in the sky. A windy hillside…

Moruadh had found a gentian, the first of the year. A bright blue flower that she’d held out for him to see. There was a bit of doggerel that went along with finding the first one. They’d both learned it as children, and he had recited it in Irish, one of the few scraps of Irish he knew.

“May we be here at this time next,” he’d said.

“I won’t be,” Moruadh replied. “I’m going to die.”

Her eyes as blue as the flower in her hand looked right into his and he felt a chill across his back.

“What is it? Are you ill? Is there something wrong?”

“There is not.” She smiled, one of the lightning-quick smiles that lit her face like sunshine. “Nothing at all.”

“Then why would you say something like that?”

“Because it just came to me.”

“You’re standing in a field on a sunny day and it just comes to you that you’re going to die?” He started to become angry with her. “Sure, it makes perfect sense.”

“No, it makes no sense. It just came to me.”

At a loss for words, he shook his head at her.

“Ah, Niall.” With a laugh, she tossed the flower aside. “Don’t try to understand. Some things aren’t meant to be understood.”

By the same time the next year, she’d claimed not to remember that day with the gentians. Niall looked at the blue envelope again, and without bothering to open it, threw it into the wastepaper basket at his feet.

CHAPTER THREE

STILL GROGGY, Kate stood in the doorway of Annie’s sitting room. Instead of the quick nap she’d meant to take, she’d slept through dinner. When Annie tapped at the door to say she’d made sandwiches and tea, it was nearly eleven.

Kate’s glance shifted from the bartender, dozing now by a blazing fire, to Annie, who sat at a little desk talking on the phone. A girl with cropped orange hair and thickly mascaraed eyes sat on the couch next to a dark-haired boy who was whispering in her ear. Arms folded across her chest, the girl dangled a shoe from her toe, studying her foot as she listened.

Apparently sensing Kate in the doorway, the boy looked up and his eyes widened slightly. It took Kate a moment to recognize him as the Garda she’d seen earlier, changed now into jeans and a red sweater. He half stood and smiled at her.

“Didn’t I meet you on the cliffs earlier this evening?” she asked.

His face went blank.

“About six-thirty?” She waited for him to recognize her. “I told you about seeing a fight, or something.”

He shook his head. “Must have been someone who looked like me.”

“Rory was out on the Galway Road investigating an accident.” The girl draped her arm around his neck, eyeing Kate as though she might constitute competition. “Weren’t you, love?”

“I was.” He winked at Kate. “But sure, all the Gardai look alike, don’t they? Tall, dark, handsome and irresistible to women.” He nudged his thigh against the girl’s. “Right, Caitlin?”

Kate shrugged. Maybe she was wrong. She’d been tired, her brain still on California time and the light hadn’t been good. She started to speak, but Rory had turned his attention back to the girl, his mouth at her ear. Awkward and more than a little confused, Kate was about to go back upstairs, when Annie got off the phone.

“Did you have a little snooze then?” Annie put her arm around Kate’s shoulder, drawing her into the sitting room. “This is my daughter, Caitlin.” She laughed. “Kate and Caitlin, funny that. And this is Rory McBride, soon to be my son-in-law.”

“June fourteenth.” Caitlin gazed adoringly at Rory, who had one arm around her shoulder, the other draped along the back of the couch. “And we’re going on honeymoon. Majorca,” she added with a little giggle.

“And this Sleeping Beauty over here—” Annie tweaked the bartender’s cheek “—is my husband, Patrick, who you’ve already met.”

“Whaa?” The bartender stirred and opened his eyes.

“Nothing, Pat. Go back to sleep. Kate, you make yourself comfortable, now.” Annie flapped her hand at Rory. “Move over and give Katie some room on the couch.”

“No, stay where you are.” Kate dropped down on a hassock by the fire and looked over at Annie. “Did your houseguest come home yet?”

“She did not.” Annie poured tea into flowered cups and handed one to Kate. “But that was my brother Michael on the phone. He’s the sergeant in charge at the station. ‘Don’t worry about Elizabeth,’ he tells me. ‘Teenagers are like that.’”

“He’s right, Annie,” Rory said. “Elizabeth’s been on and on about wanting to go to Galway. It’s natural enough. The whole reason she’s here with us is to see a bit of the country. She’s not seeing much of it stuck in Cragg’s Head.”