Anne Doughty - The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay

ANNE DOUGHTYis the author of A Few Late Roses , which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.

Also by Anne Doughty

The Girl From Galloway

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019

Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008328801

Praise for Anne Doughty

‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’

‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’

‘I have read all of Anne’s books – I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’

‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’

‘A true Irish classic’

‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’

For Peter

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Anne Doughty

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

SEPTEMBER 1960

As the ten o’clock bus to Lisdoonvarna throbbed its way northwards, my spirits rose so sharply I found it almost impossible to sit still. Brilliant light spilled across the rich green fields, whitewashed cottages dazzled against the brilliant sky and whenever we stopped, people in Sunday clothes climbed up the steep steps, greeted the driver by name and settled down to chat with the other passengers.

How incredibly different my train journey from Dublin to Limerick. Under the overcast sky of a rain-sodden evening, we steamed westwards, stopping at innumerable shabby stations with hardly a soul in sight. I caught glimpses of straggling villages and empty twisting lanes, weaving their way between deserted fields. The further we went, the more I felt the heart of Ireland a lonely place. It was so full of a sad desolation that I longed for the familiar busy streets of the red brick city I had left two hundred miles away.

Through the dirt-streaked windows of the rattling bus, I took in every detail of a landscape that delighted me. Flourishing fuchsia hedges, bright with red tassels, leaned over tumbled stone walls. Cats dozed on sunny windowsills. A dog lay asleep in the middle of the road, so that the bus driver had to sound his horn, slow down, and wait until he moved. In the untidy farmyards, littered with bits of old machinery, empty barrels and bales of straw, hens scratched in the dust clucking to themselves, while beyond, in the long lush grass of the large fields, cattle grazed. They looked as if they came straight out of the box which held the model farm I played with at primary school.

Some hillsides were decorated with sheep, scattered like polka dots on a billowing skirt. There were stretches of bog seamed with stony paths, the new, late-summer grass splashed a vivid green against the dark, regular peat stacks and the purple swathes of heather. I imagined myself making a film to show to my family on a long winter’s evening but this country had been excluded from their list. An unapproved country, like an unapproved road, I thought suddenly as we stopped in Ennistymon, in a wide street full of small shops liberally interspersed with public houses.

An hour later, in the Square in Lisdoonvarna, it was my turn to weave my way through the crowd of people waiting to meet the bus. A short distance beyond the rusting vans, the ancient taxi and the ponies and traps by the bus stop, abandoned rather than parked, I spotted a row of summer seats under the windows of a large hotel. They were all unoccupied, so I went and sat down. It was such a relief to have a seat that didn’t shake and vibrate every time the driver changed gear.

It was now after one o’clock. As I watched, the bus disappeared in a cloud of fumes, followed at intervals by the other vehicles. In a few moments the Square was completely deserted. I looked around me. Directly opposite was a war memorial, set within a solidly built stone enclosure. The walls were hooped with railings and pierced with silver-painted gates, hung between solid pillars. Each sturdy pillar was capped by a large, flat flagstone, white with bird droppings. Within the enclosure, grass grew untidily around young trees and shrubs already touched with the tints of autumn. Dockens pushed their rusty spikes through the locked gates and dropped their seeds among the sweet papers and ice-cream wrappers drifted against the wall.

Except for the clatter of cutlery in the hotel behind me and the running commentary of the sparrows bathing in the dust nearby, all was quiet. Nothing moved except a worn-looking ginger dog of no specific breed. He trotted purposefully across the red and cream frontage of the Greyhound Bar, lifted his leg against a stand of beachballs outside the shop next door, and disappeared into the open doorway of a house with large, staring sash windows. A faded notice propped against an enormous dark-leaved plant in the downstairs window said ‘Bed and Breakfast’.

‘What do I do now?’ I asked myself.

Just at that moment, the ancient taxi I’d seen collecting passengers from the bus came back into the Square. To my surprise, the driver went round the completely deserted space twice before stopping his vehicle almost in front of me. He got out awkwardly, a tall, angular man in a battered soft hat, looked around him furtively and began to move towards me.

I concentrated on the buildings straight ahead of me, a cream and green guest-house called ‘Inisfail’, a medical hall, a bar, a grocer’s, and a road leading out of town, signposted ‘Cliffs of Moher’ and ‘Public Conveniences’. The bar and the grocer’s were part of a much larger building that occupied almost all one side of the Square and extended along the road towards the cliffs and conveniences as well. Against the cream and brown of its walls and woodwork, ‘Delargy’s Hotel’ stood out in large, black letters.