It is a lovely sunny afternoon on Saturday, after so much rain on Friday, that it is warm and humid and too nice a summer day to cook indoors, so I offer to have a BBQ in the evening.
Caoimhe always enjoys BBQ food and Etain says she also loves food cooked outside. I get steaks and sausages out of the freezer and put them in the frig, intending to completely defrost them in boiling water in five or six hours’ time. I have the fixings for salad and I make a mental note to go and get some more ice cream before the evening.
However, Etain offers to make hot apple hand pies with Caoimhe’s help instead of ice cream.
"We don’t have any cooking apples," I point out.
"True," Etain replies, "but I have dessert apple trees with small unripe fruits in the garden,. They can be slow cooked in a pie which will soften the fruit, and sweetened with cinnamon sugar and honey in a simple short crust pastry. I’ll cook them in an oven over an open fire. They’ll be delicious."
"Daddy, they sound perfect," Caoimhe says, "Etain, can I help make them?"
"Of course you can," Etain replies, squeezing Caoimhe with a hug, "you can help me pick, peel and slice them, then soak them in water with some lemon juice to prevent browning. We’ll make and roll the pastry, fill up the pies with scoops of sliced apple, fold over the pastry and crimp them. That’s 14 crimps we’ll make for each pie, which is traditionally for luck. We’ll make and cook six pies, one each for tonight which we’ll eat hot, and one each cold for dinner tomorrow."
"Mmm, sounds great," I say.
I remove the still-frozen steaks from the frig. They’ve been supplied individually cello-wrapped, bought from farmer Carrick Cormack some months ago. He often slaughters a couple of cows every few months and offers various cuts to the neighbors beforehand at prices far too good to pass up. I’ve always found the ruddy-faced farmer, a solid built man about my age, rather taciturn, but his meat distribution was a tradition and everyone around benefited. I’ve known him, very slightly, for a decade but never exchanged more than a dozen words maybe six times a year in all that time and didn’t even know his first name until Etain met him just this morning.
Maybe I’m too much of a self-centred computer nerd for my own good and, by extension, to Caoimhe too, who clearly misses female company. That’s probably why she has hung out with Etain most of the day.
I guess you’re wondering whether I’m missing female company too?
Sure, I miss Ella, my wife, I miss her like mad. At High School and College I was a complete nerd, and a little overweight for most of my teen years, so I wasn’t much in demand when it came to dating. The only sports I indulged in was softball and wrestling, but never made the college team at baseball and, although I did letter through the wrestling team for two years I never set any records or any co-eds’ pulses race.
Ella was my one shining light, we just connected almost as soon as we started our courses at Cork, me in computers, while she majored in clothes fashion design. When she was gone, I had my hands full with caring for Caoimhe and working to pay the bills. If it wasn’t for Katie, Etain’s aunt, living next door I would have been lost. I really miss her and I know Caoimhe does even more.
Katie may have been in her 70s or 80s (I’m hopeless guessing ages, especially regarding women) but she did babysit for the very few dates I went on, starting about two years after I lost Ella. And she was alwys available to collect Caoimhe from the bus stop, give her tea and look after her if I had work late to fix a system or install a new server.
Katie encouraged me to go out with girls I met on the road visiting clients’ facilities, but my heart wasn’t really in it and I knew it would have to be someone really special to take on Caoimhe as a stand-in Mom, even though my daughter had never experienced having a mother around her before.
Maybe, I used to think, once Caoimhe went to college, I could find some divorcee or widow prepared to settle down with someone set in their bachelor ways. I was in no hurry.
Back to thinking about dinner. Normally I would defrost frozen steaks in the frig overnight, but there isn’t time for that, with me intending to start cooking at about 6pm, in about four hours’ time, so I soak the wrapped steaks spread out in a pan of hot water to start them off on a gentle defrost.
I have a very good marinade recipe for steaks, that my father’s always used on our BBQs back home, which involves some hot chilies. We used to have a lot of BBQs at home and all-year round. Here in Ireland the window of opportunity, or rather my personal primeval urge to cook outdoors, is restricted to a couple of months a year.
I make up my Dad’s marinade from ingredients I have at hand and set it to one side. Once I was sure the steaks were defrosted I would soak them in the marinade and pop them back in the frig.
I made sure we had the makings of a salad and selected three potatoes that I would part-cook in the microwave and finish off in the oven nearer the time, aiming for a 6pm dinner.
I said BBQs are rare for my little family of two and the inconsistency of the weather means that the table and half a dozen folding chairs were never left out in the elements but stored in the garden shed, so I look the table and three chairs out and give them a dusting over to remove the many cobwebs. Was it really that long ago that we last ate outside? Come to think of it, this was certainly the first time we’d BBQ’d this year.
We have a stock of old glasses stored in the shed, ones El and I picked up from yard sales or jumble sales and put candles inside that when lit help keep the insects away, so I look those out too, polish off the dust and replace the candles that are burned down too low to reuse. We get a lot more insects in the evening than we ever used to get at home, where we have BBQs all year round on permanent and more substantial garden furniture.
The fence between our two properties is low enough to see over, between three or four feet high. It is an ancient fence of woven osier sticks and each panel seems a different age, as if the fence had been there forever and each panel regularly replaced or repaired as it rotten away from the bottom up. The uprights are a different beast, thick and solid wrought iron bars, not steel or wood as we tend to use back home. These sturdy posts are set in concrete and I do paint them with black exterior paint every couple of years and so they look pretty solid; again they look as though a blacksmith hammered them into shape when the cottages were originally built.
From where I prep in the kitchen, I can look across to the girls, and they are happily sitting together on a blanket spread on a sunny patch of lawn. They seem happily occupied, playing and laughing at whatever they are interacting with together on Caoimhe’s school tablet. Seeing them so happy together makes me miss Ella more. How she would have loved to have known her daughter, but she didn’t even see her, didn’t hold her even.
I can’t help but wipe away a tear that had nothing to do with chopping the onions for the salad.
***
"These hand-made apple pies are fantastic," I say, the pie in my hand still steaming, the sweetness of the honey and sharp, fruity acid of the firm chunks of apples perfectly balanced within, "Etain and Caoimhe, you’ve outdone yourselves."
"Thank you, Richard, but those steaks were really very nice," Etain smiled, "I’m not sure if I’ll eat another mouthful for a week."
"Ha! There’s nothing of yah," I say, and it is true, I can’t believe how much she had put away, without appearing like one of pythons that swallowed a baby hippo.
Caoimhe just sticks a thumb up, her sweet face occupied shuffling the hot pie filling around her mouth without burning her tongue or cheeks.
I relax into the slightly uncomfortable folding chair as the night begins to draw in and I feel a sudden chill.
"Look, why don’t we retire to the lounge and I put the kettle on for a cup of tea?"
"Not for me, Dad," Caoimhe stretched one arm above her head and yawned, "I’m knackered. I’m gonna finish this brill pie and then shower and bed. Can we leave the dishes until tomorrow?"
"Get away to bed with you," I smile, "I’ll sort the dishes after tea and clean up the grill when it’s cool in the morning."
Two or three weekends a month I used to play golf on a Sunday morning, usually while Caoimhe sleeps in, but since Katie next door departed for her mysterious care home that she didn’t want us to visit some five months ago, I’ve had to cancel my usual 7am spring and summertime tee slot with three friends, because I refuse to leave Caoimhe without someone nearby to keep an eye out for her.
Katie had been pretty active for an old woman and she was always up and about earlier than me every morning. I thought that if Etain was an early riser and amenable the the idea, I could start playing again in a few weeks’ time once she was settled in.
To keep fit, I was indulging myself in an hour’s run most Saturdays and Sundays. I probably need a runout tomorrow, those steaks I cooked were huge!
I tidy up after Caoimhe hugs and kisses Etain and me and goes to bed. She’s 10 and and a ball of energy most of the time, but we rarely have guests and none at all since Covid struck, and when tiredness sets in, she tends to collapse like a pricked balloon.
Etain helps bring in the leftovers while the electric kettle boils. She makes the tea. Then we retire to the lounge. I take to my recliner and she perches herself on the sofa.
Ah, that first sip of tea! I feel most of the time I’m still a stranger in a strange land and I drink coffee most of the time, but there are some instances where sitting with a cup of tea just seems right and this is Etain’s own blend that emerged from her cavernous bag when the kettle boiled and she took charge of the little-used 2-cup earthenware teapot that Ella had brought to the marriage from her dorm room all those years ago.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I start the conversation, well, I am supposedly the host and, out of practice I may be, but I feel relaxed, fat and happy … more comfortable after subtlety undoing the top button of my jeans for relief.
"Thank you for entertaining Caoimhe today," I smile in thanks to Etain, "I had some remote work to do on the computer and she seemed very happy playing with you on her tablet."
‘Oh, we weren’t playing, Richard, she was using an ‘ap’ I think she called it to learn how to read English."
"What?!" I exclaim, somewhat shocked, "but surely…."
"There’s no surety about anything, except everything but the exceptions. I can read runes, I was taught my futhark—”
"Your what?"
"Like your alphabet, named after the first two sounds in your order of letters, the futhark are the first five letters in the list of runes," she clicks her tongue in a ‘tsk!’ sound, clearly critical of my ignorance. "Caoimhe explained the alphabet to me very clearly, as did the educational lessons I see on the tablet, designed for 5 and 6 year olds, so I am able to advance quite quickly. I already knew place names from road signs by recognising the overall shape, even if I was unable to break the words down to individual sounds before. Now it all makes sense."
She smiles a little too smugly, like I imagine a demon might might pretending to be an Angel in disguise.
I wonder if she’s escaped from an institution or a Traveller family or from some commune hangover from the swinging sixties/seventies/eighties hidden away in some rural backwater in the west of Ireland. Somewhere remote that doesn’t have access to online kindergarten lessons, and no-one qualified to show her how to use them. I think I better ensure Caoimhe’s room’s locked when I go up to bed. I might do that now, as soon as I’ve wound this weird conversation to a close, without making her angry or even vaguely psychotic.
"She’s wonderful, Caoimhe, isn’t she?" I throw into the conversation, clutching at straws not to upset her, but somehow ease her into accepting that I need to retire for the night.
Perhaps I could go via the kitchen and contrive to take the knife block upstairs with me.
I know that anyone listening into my thoughts right now would think, what a wimp, she’s only a wee girl, easy to pick her up and tip her out of the house, or just run. But I’m used to paranoia, I’m from California, the land of the drive-by shooter, the high school multi-murderer, where not only does every second person have a gun at home, they have a back-up too.
Me? I’m a nerd, I’ve fired a gun before, my father has two pistols … but they’re kept at the gun club, Mom won’t have one in the house.
You know, I like Ireland, it’s quiet and the people rarely get angry with one another and if they do they settle their differences with lots of words and at extremes exchange one or two punches, and then they buy each other a couple of rounds of black stuff. This girl worries me but she’s only saying weird stuff, she’s not threatening me.
"Aye, she’s a very special wee girl, I think I love her already, certainly as much as Kaetlynn does." She smiles wistfully as she speaks of my daughter, her face a picture of calm, a beautiful girl, around half my age that has probably had a deprived upbringing and, inheriting Katie’s cottage and learning to read and how to cope with normal society, well, it’s probably ideal that she’s met up with us when she has.
She’s harmless, I feel, even if she is off her nut, crazy. I could take her under my wing as almost another daughter and gently introduce her to the world of normal people.
"So," I ask, how’s the reading going?"
"Grand, according to Caoimhe she has got me through six weeks of English reading and writing lessons and she’s started me on writing Gaeilge, it’s great fun, but, now, we need to talk, seriously you and me, Richard."
She drops her smile and looks directly at me with those dark blue eyes.
Those eyes are disturbing. I’ve never looked directly at her eyes before, well, old men my age try not to look too closely at young girls as a general rule, especially if they are lovely, and even more especially not if they are particularly ugly, unless they are family or lovers, then it doesn’t matter if they’re lovely or ugly. But looking at her here, staring back into my eyes, I feel as though I’m out of my depth, that somehow she’s not the weak innocent young girl, there’s a strength and confidence in her beyond my experience in one so young.
It is silent for what seems a long time.
"Er, are you supposed to talk or am I?" I say rather haltingly after a long silent eyeballing.
She smiles again, god! She’s beautiful and I feel I am in her power, that she could ask me to bark at the moon and I would sit in the garden for night after night until the next full moon and do nothing else.
"No, you listen, Richard, and I’ll talk, all right?"
"Whatever you say," I reply, adding, "you’re an enigma that I cannot get my head around."
"Enigma? What’s that?"
"Something mysterious that is difficult to understand."
"Oh, I like that," her smile grows even wider, "but really, you are the enigma. Kaetlynn saw that in you as soon as she met you and your poor wife, and she’s been pressing me to see you and meet with you ever since. Caoimhe too, is a closed book. And I really need to dispel some of the mystery so we can understand where each of us are coming from and where we go from here."
"Sorry, I don’t understand, are we going somewhere?"
"Aye, we will be going places, Richard. There are places I will take you so that you will understand who and what I am. But this is difficult for me."
"What is so difficult?" I ask, I still can’t get my head around what she would want with me. Does she need money? She mentioned something about her aunt leaving her some money in the cottage, maybe she couldn’t find her aunt’s stash of cash and needs a sub?
It can’t be a relationship that she wants, could it?
"Well, for a start I have always avoided men…."
Damn, she’s a lesbian. Oh, shite! How safe will Caoimhe be around her if she is?
"… I was brought up in a household of a mother, six sisters and a step-father who was a spike trader and was often away for a year at a time, so we were all of us females in the family. Because my Mam loved her seventh husband dearly, when he and my youngest sister Dubheasa died of the fever, my Mam never married again."
"When did your step-father die of fever?"
"When I was about 10. I loved him so much. He may not have been my real father, I was told at the time, but he loved all of us sisters so much, as if we were his own. His daughter Dubheasa was born two years behind me, was dark skinned with dark brown hair with a hint of auburn and dark brown eyed. She had such a sweet face and sweet nature, I loved her to bits. When I heard she’d died I couldn’t sleep and my Mam was worried that I might die of the grief."
"Oh you poor girl."
I want to hold her but I have to hold back.
"It’s all right, Richard, I’ve got over it, long ago. And it’s fine now, very fine in fact."
"Well, I lost Ella about the same time, ten years ago and I still find I’m talking to her in the car and pointing out interesting things and catching her up on what Caoimhe’s up to."
"I think my sister’s death brought me and Kaetlynn and Bebhinn closer together. Even though we all slept together in the same bed—"
"Wait, you mean you slept with your two Aunts?"
"I have a confession to make, Richard, Kaetlynn and Bebhinn are not my aunts, they are my sisters and we four youngest sisters all slept together because by then my eldest sister Afric had moved away when I was 2 years old, I barely knew her but apparently she was very dark-haired and brown eyed like Dubheasa too. Caoilfhoinn was 2 years behind Afric and was very fair and red headed, but she was taken by pirates when she was ten and I was 4 and I barely remember her either."
"Hold up," I say, "you tell me one of your sisters was taken by pirates?"
"Aye, we lived in the coast then, in Cork, and we often had pirates disturb the peace. Anyway my next sister Alannah was 2 years behind Caoilfhoinn and she died during infancy, before I was even born, apparently she was fair skinned with dark red hair and green eyed I was told. Kaetlynn was 2 years behind Alannah, as you know she was green eyed and blond haired, although she was silver haired during the time you knew her. Oh, she always had a fiery temper and very passionate, she married young and had 3 children by the time we laid the curse on Fionn Mac Cuill and, because the three youngest sisters were cursed to live only on Slievenamon, she could never go back to live with her surviving child again. They came to Slievenamon to visit but she had to watch them grow old and die.—"
"Time out! Time out!" I cry, "is this a story that you’re writing? Now that you’re learning to read and write. None of this makes any sense. I never knew Bebhinn, because we bought her house from Katie after Bebhinn had already left, to go into a home, I think was said. But Kaetlynn, although we knew her as Katie, she’s in her 80s and you’re 60 years younger."
"You are right, Richard, to make sense of all this you need to know who we three sisters, Kaetlynn, Bebhinn and myself were and are. That’s why I wanted to talk and tell you. We are Witches and once upon a time we did something together in anger, without thinking of the consequences. We put a curse on a man considered one of Ireland’s giants of legend, Fionn Mac Cuill. We made his lover reject him and run off with the very first man of Fionn’s acquaintance she saw. And, because of that ill-considered curse, the King of all Ireland himself cursed us three sisters to only find rest on Slievenamon, the scene of our shameful curse on his Champion and his favourite daughter. He cursed that we were never able to live anywhere else and unable to sleep anywhere. It was Kaetlynn that found a loophole, that we could find rest in Slievenamon Road, or Drive, or Park or Lane. She bought this land and built this original cottage. When her then husband died she moved back to Slievenamon Road in Clonmel and rented this place out for a century or so. She returned here when she married Piotr."
"Etain," I interrupt softly, carefully, not wanting to upset this crazy woman, "As I understand it, Katie married Piotr Wisniewski in 1951 or thereabouts. He was settled in Ireland after serving with the Free Polish Airforce during WWII. Katie told me that, his best friend was an Irishman, among many free Irishmen who fought for the UK against Nazi Germany and when his friends returned home to Dublin after the war, he brought Piotr with him. Piotr courted and married the young widow Katie, who lived in Dublin—"
"Aye, she lived in Slievenamon Road in Dublin and when Piotr wanted to move into the country, she decided to move to Thurles in the same named road, after giving due notice to her renters. And Bebhinn soon moved in next door. Piotr passed in 2008, in his late 80s he was after 57 years of marriage, but Kaetlynn had altered her appearance to look 80, but once she washed out the colouration of her hair she still looks only about 40."
"And you’re four years younger? I can’t believe you’re in your mid-thirties."
"True, Richard, but a gentleman should never ask a lady her age, and she will never truly reveal what it is without losing a few surplus birthdays, but I will tell you that I was born around the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century, many years before Christianity came to these shores. Instead we were practising Witches who lived by our craft, making and selling potions and foretelling people’s futures. We are blessed with second sight. Are you all right, Richard? You can close your mouth and breathe if you want."
Damn, I am not all right. I have a mad woman in my house telling me crazy impossible things with such sincerity that I almost believe her. Of course I don’t believe her, I would be crazy myself if I did.
"Second sight?" I repeat, simply for something to say that will animate my slack jaw.
"Second sight is the most common tool used by Witches throughout history, telling people’s futures. Sometimes we do it theatrically after a cup of tea and look at the tea leaves, which is all baloney. We read the future or possible futures of the subject during the drinking of the tea. We do it out of habit, we can read anyone, or I should say virtually anyone."
"Why not everyone?"
"The exceptions are basically close family, and that means that none of us sisters saw the calamity that befell all of us. And it was seeing Ella’s future and a motherless Caoimhe that had lead to Kaetlynn into selling this house to you and your wife and why she has been asking me to come and talk to you ever since your wife died. I think Kaetlynn started to fall in love with you a little too, she definitely loved Caoimhe, and now what she wants more than anything is for you and me to be together."
"But why?"
"Because, Richard, Kaetlynn couldn’t read your future or Caoimhe’s future and, now I’ve met you and known you for 24 hours, I cannot read your future at all."
"But what does that mean?”
"Hopefully, that you are destined to be part of my family, that you will learn to love me, then ask me to marry you and …" she lowers her eyes and dips her head for the first time since we sat together, "you can help me maighdeanas a chailleadh."