~ Casting Off ~

by

Trisha FitzGerald-Petri

Cool Atlantic waters swirled around her bare feet. The ocean swell, barely perceptible within the sheltered inlet, rose and fell against the slick wooden pilings. Meg shuddered as an icy current suddenly snaked about her calves, a sharp contrast to milder Gulf Stream coastal temperatures. Further along, on the pontoon at the end of the short pier, the yacht strained to go with the tide. The ropes groaned in protest every time the ocean sucked greedily at the hull.

From where she sat, the plump straw-haired woman could see the smooth slope of manicured lawn sweep up towards the house standing like a brooding sentinel on the crest of a small incline. Half hidden by huge banks of flowering rhododendron, the building appeared to reprimand her for those few stolen moments of respite, and feeling duly admonished, she lifted her legs up onto the warm wooden surface and began to dry off the salty wetness with the sleeve of her jumper. In another hour the conger eel would be back from the city, her beady eyes searching the nooks and crannies for any microscopic particles of dust Meg might have inadvertently overlooked.

The conger eel. Pulling the apron strings tightly about her, she chuckled. The similitude had come to her one day when Helen Featherstone had slithered out of the darkness of the back hallway and caught Meg dreamily perusing the dramatic seascape, which rolled across a framed canvas hanging in the stairwell. Fixing the domestic help with a withering look, the would-be lady of the manor had dared her to dally one instant longer, a challenge the weaker of the two knew wasn’t worth facing. Instantly resuming her menial duties, Meg cursed herself more than the other woman, wishing she had enough guts to fling the dusting rag into Featherstone’s smarmy mug. Yet, as always, common sense prevailed. Jobs were hard to find in the small south-west coastal community, the men living from the sea, and the women from the men. Not professionally, of course, heaven forbid! Security lay in marriage (a myth most young girls blissfully relied on), and those who failed to pull a husband onto land and come forth with a shoal of offspring, were forced to seek employment in the local fish factory, doomed to while away their working lives pulling the viscous entrails out of mackerel. Faced with this choice, the dumpy blonde figured cleaning toilets and polishing silver for a conger eel was a far better bet. What was bitter fate for some was blessed fortune for others, and Meg was one of them. In short, she had no more intention of marrying a local fishmonger than flying to the moon, and a lot of hard work and perseverance had gone into seeing it stayed that way. While not glaringly apparent to others, Meg had her sights set on higher things: a job in the city, a man who wore a tie to work, a fancy detached house in a tree-lined residential area. And a boat.

Stuffing her feet into a pair of shoddy canvas slip-ons, she stared longingly at the sleek sailing vessel bobbing languorously on its mooring lines, the hull gleaming white in the late afternoon sunshine. At the top of the mast a seagull screeched loudly. The grey head swivelled from side to side in jerky mechanical movements as it observed the woman standing on the pier below. A sudden gust of wind scudded across the inlet, ruffling the bird’s grubby feathers, and moments later, with a final grating squeal, it rose up, hovered for an instant on an invisible cushion of air, then swooped off towards the village.

Meg wrinkled her nose as she watched the gull disappear behind the church spire, which was barely visible beyond a high fuchsia hedgerow marking the perimeter of the estate. Bloody scavengers, she thought caustically, shit everywhere and live off other people’s pickings. A bit like that conger, Featherstone. Not that she shat everywhere, but she was certainly adept when it came to sucking the blood out of unsuspecting landowners. Above all, Connor Gorman. The char sighed wistfully and began to make her way up the winding garden path, which led through the shrubs to the kitchen door. How could a man like that let himself be fooled by such an insufferable leech?

The bachelor of all bachelors and master of Killgorman House, he had kept the local community on tenterhooks for years, and local back-room bookies quickly rolled up their sleeves every time a potential candidate passed between the two cast-iron eagles flanking the front gate. As years passed and the pillar of Scullymór’s society remained unmarried, the villagers began to get fidgety, the more malicious gamblers among them even placing bets regarding his masculinity--a notion Meg found perfectly ludicrous. She had never met a man who oozed more corporal manliness than the owner of Killgorman House--her boss. Mercifully, however, just before vindictive rumours had a chance to take root, Mr. Gorman had returned from a golfing trip to Killarney with young Helen Featherstone hanging off his arm. The community breathed a collective sigh of relief and bets started flying. When the dark-haired beauty took up lodgings in Dotty Murray’s Bed & Breakfast (good God, you couldn’t have them living together out of wedlock!) speculation was rampant. If nothing went wrong, she’d have him up the aisle before he hit forty, and Scullymór would have its long-awaited first lady.

The cleaning lady bunched her lips together in annoyance. What did he see in her? The two weren’t suited at all, any gombeen could see that. Featherstone was a fawning, hollow city slicker with aspirations of grandeur, he, a down-to-earth country lover, arrogant and reserved at times, maybe, but unpretentious and rustic. And a sailor. With a yacht.

“Blast and damn!” She pulled off the apron and flung it into the corner.

“Now, now... what kind of language is that?”

Meg started, her expression of surprise turning sour as the gardener’s bright red face appeared around the back door.

“Shag off, Jimmy. I’m not in the mood for pleasantries. If it’s a cup of tea you’re after, go somewhere else. I’m off duty in five minutes.”

Undeterred, the burly man pushed his way into the room, leaving a trail of wet soil on the freshly scrubbed Italian floor tiles. “Just wanted to say hello...”

“Ara, for the love of God, look at the floor!” Meg screeched. “I only finished cleaning it half an hour ago! Get out!”

Jimmy leapt backwards. The abrupt movement released a further sticky clod from the toe of his Wellington boot. “Jaysus, sorry, love... here, I’ll help you.”

Without further ado, he grabbed a J-cloth from the sink and fell to his knees before she could stop him. Two swift movements were sufficient to smear the Mediterranean surface and mash the muck into the pristine grooves. Dropping to the floor beside him, Meg struggled to pull the cloth from his meaty clutches.

“For Christ’s sake, Jimmy, you’re making a pig’s arse of it!”

“No, no, It’s grand... just let me...”

They were still scuffling around on the tiles when the door opened and Helen Featherstone’s immaculately made-up face appeared above them. A look of fathomless disgust played across her patronising features. Glancing up, Meg began to protest, her jaw falling slack when Connor Gorman unexpectedly materialised at her side. Painfully aware of her beamy bottom thrusting into the air, the village woman winced inwardly as his gaze first slid over her crouching form, then moved on to her hands clasped in Jimmy’s, and finally came to rest on his huge Wellington boots, the feet of which were turned outwards like a walrus’s tail fin.

“Um... don’t let us disturb you, Megan, but if you have time to pop the kettle on before you leave, we’d be very much obliged.”

Plainly resisting the urge to voice her disapproval in Connor’s presence, Helen shot her fiancé one of her scathing looks. “Really, Connor...”

A playful smirk quivered at the corner of his mouth as Megan’s boss turned and followed the younger woman back into the hallway. Still on her knees, Meg’s attention returned to Jimmy, whose lumpy nose was hovering only inches from her own, the pitted lunar landscape shiny and red. Relishing the unanticipated intimacy, the gardener was leering down the front of her shirt, clearly appraising the globular expanse of milky flesh threatening to escape her bra. With a grunt of disgust, she pushed herself up and straightened the gaping neckline.

“Ach, for crying out loud, Jimmy! Do you never let up?”

“Sorry, Meg, I just...” Awkwardly organising his gargantuan Wellingtoned feet into a standing position, Jimmy shuffled to the back door, crestfallen. “I’ll be off then...”

Meg threw the muddy cloth into the sink and sighed. “Look, really, I didn’t mean to be so crotchety, don’t mind me.”

The gardener’s eyebrows scuttled all the way up to his hairline as a twinkle of hope lit up the dull grey eyes. “Actually, I wanted to ask... em... There’s a céili up at McCormack’s Cross on Saturday...”

Meg groaned silently. She knew what was coming.

“...I thought you might... well, perhaps we could go together.”

Wearily, the housekeeper pushed a chapped hand through her tatty flaxen hair. “Ara, Jimmy, it’s nice of you to ask, but...” She watched as his expression crumpled, his eyes dropping to the floor at her feet. “Well, maybe just this once, you know I’m not a great one for dancing.” She was kicking herself in the backside before the sentence was finished. God, what was she thinking? Accompanying Jimmy Dooley to a céili at McCormack’s Cross was the absolute epitome of everything she strove to escape. Was she backsliding once again into the clutches of Scullymór? Losing her hold on all those hopes and dreams? No matter how hard she tried to break free, the village, like some monstrous insatiable vacuum cleaner, constantly drew her hungrily back into the belly of the community.

Orphaned at a young age and raised by her grandmother, she had sworn to abscond the second she left school and, true to word, she’d even made it to the bus stop before news of Granny’s turn for the worse reached her ears. The ailing woman hung on doggedly for another ten years, her physical constitution plummeting drastically every time Meg’s longing glance fell upon the city coach as it pulled out onto the main road. When her grandmother was finally laid to rest, Megan’s involvement with a very much married local teacher shoved another spanner in the works. Convinced she was condemned to changing bed pans and cleaning up dribbles for the rest of time, the young woman had decided if she couldn’t get out, then she might at least get laid, and when Mr. Brogan’s fingers brushed hers during the Scullymór charity relay race, it wasn’t long before she had her fleshy calves wrapped around his skinny white buttocks. The clandestine relationship lasted almost six years, not because his balding head and bland charm held her in any great suspense. He just happened to be the only man in the village who didn’t reek of fish. By the time Meg discovered herself stuck in a rut, she was well into her thirties, her only success in life the fact that she’d avoided the factory in preference for a job serving grub at The Launch Inn luncheon inn near the harbour slip-way. In a way, she’d feebly hoped a passing tourist of wealthy means might whisk her off to a better life, but the only strangers that ever wanted more from her than a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a cup of tea were those requiring directions from McCormack’s Cross to Ballymuck.

Once again, this time brimming with burning determination, Meg had locked up the small cottage on Beach Road and made her way to the bus stop armed with nothing more than a cardboard suitcase, a map of Dublin and a heart full of resolve. Purposefully facing the east and stoically ignoring the nutty scent of flowering gorse wafting down from the meadow on a tangy coastal breeze, she failed to hear the car pulling up beside her.

“Miss Barry, isn’t it?”

Meg skittered. A voice as dark and mellifluous as lukewarm black molasses had just said her name. Turning to the waiting vehicle, she squinted unattractively against the low afternoon sun, which was now slowly sliding down the sky towards the western horizon. Her gut clenched. It was him. The object of Scullymór’s female fantasies and begrudging male admiration. Unruffled, utterly divine--and up for grabs.