From Bray to Eternity Page 13

  Ann Leggit used to sing a beautiful song at these sessions that I never heard before or since, it was called Something in Red. Annette and I used to love to hear her sing it.

  Our sojourn in Le Littoral was more like a long holiday, with the occasional bit of work now and then. We had a lot of free time once we got the clients settled in so during the day we often went to the beach near Port Bourgenay, Plage du Veillion. It was a very safe and sandy beach, and I loved to see how great Annette looked in her bikini sunbathing. At home she was very conscious of exposing herself in public places, even in a swimsuit, but in France she was much more relaxed and confident about it. But I wanted more, and I used to pester her to go topless on the beach when there were few people around. On one or two occasions she acceded to my request which made my day.

  Other times Annette drove us to the surrounding towns to visit the churches and markets. It was a real tonic for us to be so free of the everyday chores we had to contend with at home. It gave us a chance to live like carefree teenagers in our mature years, which I now believe is the best time to act like carefree teenagers. You have all the experience and none of the inhibitions of youth and you certainly have none of the hang-ups that were so restricting for us when we were teenagers growing up in the Ireland of the late Fifties and early Sixties.

  We were free of all the care, worry and responsibility for anyone but ourselves. And I think we each saw a new side to the person we had shared the last thirty-five years with. I became much more sociable and less inhibited with people which pleased Annette immensely. She put away her sense of “decorum” and became much lighter in her behaviour, like topless sunbathing, which she would never do at home. The sense of freedom was great and with no bills to pay, we irresponsibly spent everything we earned, and more besides, on the good life. It really was a liberating experience for us and we took full advantage of it. We became even closer and more in love as a result.

  Of course working in such close proximity every day was not without its moments of friction. One of the things I found out about Annette during our working days was that she was a perfectionist when it came to cleaning the chalets. My attitude was, let’s get in and out as quickly as possible, so we would have more free time, but Annette believed in cleaning every nook and cranny in the chalet, and at times under the chalet. She would not leave until she was one hundred per cent happy that every last cup, saucer, plate and piece of cutlery was sparkling clean, because, as she said, that’s the way she would like to find the place if she was coming on holidays. At times this infuriated me, as I, after finishing my part of the work, had to stand and wait in the scorching heat, sweating, as Annette went over and over the cups, saucers and pots, making sure there was not a mark on them. On a few occasions our voices were raised as high as the temperature as we argued our points. But we usually ended up laughing as we stood facing each other, in our sweaty t-shirts, with our hair stuck to our heads. We were pretty dirty to boot after spending the morning cleaning chalets and barbeques. Then we’d kiss and make up, put the cleaning materials into our little hand cart and head back to our caravan for a shower, a light lunch and a glass of wine. Afterwards we would either head somewhere off site like Talmont or Saint-Gilles-Croix-De-Vie for the afternoon or else sit by the pool with a cool drink if we felt lazy.

  It was a great time to be a “mature teenager” and pretend we had no responsibilities at home in Ireland, but we had responsibilities and we thought about them from time to time. Annette’s mother Mary, was getting progressively worse with dementia at this time and Annette did feel guilty about leaving the care of her mother to her sisters and brother at home; and our daughter Gina was pregnant, unmarried and at home without her parents. From time to time these things did make us feel that having such a good time was irresponsible and that we should have been at home fulfilling our roles as parents and daughter and son-in-law. But I’m glad to say those moments passed quickly, and we reverted to our summer roles as middle-aged, good-timers pretty quickly. We convinced ourselves that there would be plenty of time to revert to our more responsible roles when we got home, and that the time spent away would make us more capable of coping with the situation. When we said it often enough it worked, and we did not feel too guilty as we resumed our mid-life hiatus of pleasure.

  We had a brief return to the role of responsible parents in August when Gina, then five months pregnant, came to stay with us for a week. We prepared the small bedroom in the caravan for her and took down all the erotic pictures we had on the walls (caught ya, only joking!). Gina was supposed to fly from Dublin to Paris and then get the train to Les Sables d’Olonne where we would pick her up, but because of delays in Paris the train she eventually got only went as far as La Roche-Sur-Yon. This was about sixty miles from Le Littoral. We were expecting clients that night who were late arriving, so after waiting as long as we could for them we had to ask Ann and Tony to cover for us. Annette then had to drive the sixty miles to pick Gina up.

  Again Annette rose to the occasion. As darkness began to fall she ventured out on the French roads to pick up our daughter. We got to Le Roche-Sur-Yon just in time to meet Gina as she came out of the train station. It was dark and late when we got back to Le Sables, but we managed to find a restaurant that was still open and we had a meal before we went back to the camp.

  Annette was delighted to see Gina looking so well in her pregnancy, as was I. She had a lovely relaxing week with us, mostly sitting and reading by the pool, which I’m sure did her the world of good. It was just what she needed at that time. We took great pride in introducing her to our friends on the site and she joined us for dinner and drinks each night. On those nights her parents were on their best behaviour. We went for a few trips to towns along the coast on the days we were free and all the sea air could not but have done her good. Her stay also did us good. We did not stay out as late when she was with us, and the week allowed us to recharge our batteries for the rest of the season, which we needed to do at that stage.

  At the end of the week we left Gina to the train station in Le Sables, and with tears in our eyes, waved her off on her journey to Paris and home. It had been a very good week which we thoroughly enjoyed. Seeing Gina in her pregnant condition made us long for the time to return home and be with her when our grandchild was born. But before that we had four or five weeks left to use up and to get rid of our irresponsible behaviour. We had to purge ourselves of the carefree lifestyle that was in danger of becoming ingrained in our systems. The weather, after a slight blip for a few days in August was beautiful again and we spent as much time as we could on the beach in Port Bourgenay by day. At night we went into Le Sables, Jard-Sur-Mer or Le Trench-Sur-Mer for meals with Carol and Tim or Tony and Ann.

  On Annette’s birthday, the 13th of August, we went out on our own to Port Bourgenay to a lovely little restaurant, Le Manureva. We had seen it earlier and we had a very romantic and intimate meal there together. I remember we reflected on how lucky we were to have this time together at this stage of our lives. I’m in tears as I write this and would give anything for that time with Annette again.

  After dinner we took a stroll on the beach and then came back to get a taxi, but none were available. We decided to walk back along the coastal walk which was skirted by a forest. By this time it was almost dark, but as we had walked the path many times by day, we were confident we would have no trouble finding our way back to the camp. How different things look in the dark. We started walking through the not very dense woods. A hundred yards or so later we should have been on the coastal walk, with the camp straight ahead. But after fifteen minutes we were still in the woods, and it was now completely dark. I know we were not exactly lost in a wilderness, miles from anywhere and we were certainly not in mortal danger, but nevertheless it was unnerving to have lost our bearings. We did not know which direction we were headed in as we had made a few turns thinking we were going out of the woods. After walking around for a few more minutes we still could not find
our way out. We stopped talking and stood silently listening for the sound of the sea. After a few moments of total silence we could hear the faintest lapping of waves and we headed in that direction. As we very carefully made our way forward, the sound got progressively more wavelike. We finally exited the woods onto the coastal path. We were facing the bright lights of La Sables in the distance and a few minutes later we were back in the camp. We made it to the bar in time for a celebratory drink with our friends for Annette’s birthday.

  We truly had a wonderful time in France that year. Annette was never happier than when she was cycling to Mass on a fine sunny evening, with the summer wind blowing in her hair and her arms and legs exposed to the evening sun, as it deepened the already golden tan on her smooth skin. Although Annette was then fifty-eight years of age, to my admiring eyes, as she cycled off to Mass in the little church near Port Bourgenay on those summer evenings, she was still the young and beautiful girl of eighteen I had been lucky enough to meet in Bray all those years before; only now she was my wife, and the woman I held tight in bed every night. As Deano sings: “how lucky can one guy be.”

  We learned a lot about the Irish on holiday during our time in France. Some of it was not anything to be proud of, but this is not the time or place to go down that road. We did our job as best we could and we were always conscious that our clients had paid a lot of money for the privilege of staying in a chalet for a few weeks, so we, and particularly Annette, went out of our way to be as helpful and informative about the area as we could be. We wanted our clients to have the best time possible. While I did a lot of the heavy work, cleaning the barbeques, changing the gas cylinders and bits of maintenance work, Annette ran the Buzzy Bees children’s club. She was a natural at this and the children loved her. She went way beyond what was required or expected of her, organising games and making sure no child was left out of the fun. And occasionally being a “Nana” to a young child left alone by their parents for the first time. Her group of children had so much fun that the girls running the kiddie’s clubs for the other holiday companies asked if they could join their group with Annette’s.

  As all things do, the season came to an end in September. It was suddenly time to pack up and say our goodbyes to the new friends we had made. We had the usual exchange of addresses and promises to keep in touch, and if we were in the vicinity to drop in. But these events are one-off affairs and although we sent Christmas cards we never met again, which is probably as it should be. We had met under particular circumstances when we were all away from our own environment and free to be the people we wanted to be and wanted others to see us as. If we met up again in a more “normal” environment, and I mean this about us all, I’m sure we would not have “gelled” as well as we did in France. In the camp we had no reason to be anything other than person we wanted to be at that moment. We were free to drop our inhibitions and be who we really were. We were like people who don masks and fancy dress costumes at a ball and challenge others to guess who they are. In France we were masquerading as a couple of mature couriers, indulging in a bit of harmless immaturity as we reached back through the years for a brief reprise of our youth. And for four months Annette and I had the privilege of just that, being young again and being responsible only for ourselves, answerable to no one for our behaviour and behaving only to please each other. I think we both liked what we saw. And we continued to like what we saw when we came home.

  It really was a source of strength to us to have had that time together. We were no sooner home than Annette got involved in the care of her mother. We took her out of the house to give her sister Louise a break from time to time. Gina was staying in our house in Tallaght while she waited for the baby to be born, and her boyfriend, Dave, now her husband, was there a lot of the time as well. So straight away it was back to being the responsible adults our families expected us to be as normal service resumed. But we did not mind, well not too much. France was a great experience and one we were glad we had taken on. It had opened our eyes so that we saw the person we’d married in a completely new, and dare I say it, sexually attractive way. Things got back to normal pretty quickly though, Annette resumed her part-time consultancy work and I started to look for a job. I was now over two years out of a “real job” and I thought it was time to get back into the workforce before I got much older or I would not get back at all. I had no luck in that department until after Christmas when I got a job counting cash in Securicor in Rialto.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  As Christmas approached so did the time of Gina’s delivery. We were all looking forward to the new arrival, who we knew would be a boy. Gina ran over her time and had to be taken in to the Rotunda where she had a section. Thankfully everything went well, and on 13th December, Senan O’Toole was born, our first grandchild. Annette immediately introduced him to Mozart to soothe and calm him before bedtime. Gina and Dave stayed with us for another three months before moving into their own apartment in Park West.

  If all that was not enough, around the same time our eldest son, David, announced that he and his girlfriend Ciara Byrne, whom he had been living with for the past four years or so, were engaged. They planned to get married the following June. There was no end to the excitement in the Halpin household.

  We had our new grandson, Senan, with us for Christmas and his presence added a new dimension to the celebrations. Gina and Dave were delighted with their new son as were we all and Christmas was a very happy occasion.

  Shortly after Christmas we were invited to meet Sheena from Kelair to talk about us going back to France that summer. We all met up and, after a chat, we decided we would go back again. To bridge the time until I was due to go back to France I took the job with Securicor.

  In early April, Gina, Dave and Senan moved into their new home and we started to get ready for France. We had only been to Dingle a few times the previous year because of our time in France and it looked like it would be the same in 2005. We went down in April and told Paul Scanlon that we would be going back to France again, whereupon he asked if his daughter Pauline, for whom the mobile was originally bought, could use it until we got back, while the house she was buying with her boyfriend was being built. We agreed as the mobile would be lying idle for the summer, as our own children did not want to use it.

  A few weeks before we were due to sail to France, I got a phone call from Niall Bergin, the Chief Guide in Kilmainham Jail, with an offer of a job I had not applied for. How this came about was that, over a year before, I had applied for a position as a guide in Rathfarnham Castle. I had attended an interview but I did not get the job. I was, however, put on a panel for future vacancies should one arise. And one had arisen in the Pearse Museum in Rathfarnham. After expressing surprise at this turn of events I told Niall that I was due to go to France in a few weeks and asked for time to consider his offer. He said he would have to know in a matter of a day or two, as if I did not want the job he would offer it to the next person on the panel. Now the strange thing was that a few days before I got the phone call from Niall I had started reading Ruth Dudley Edwards’ biography of Patrick Pearse, The Triumph of Failure and now, out of the blue, I was being offered a job as tour guide in his old school, St. Enda’s.

  The job offer presented me with a dilemma. While France had been great the year before, it was only a job for a few months. There was also no guarantee that things would be as good this year, or that we would be with the same people. I told Annette about the phone call and she reminded me that we had told Sheena we would be going back and it was now only a few weeks before we were to sail. She felt we could not pull out now as it would leave Sheena in an awkward position, but I was not listening. I kept thinking how strange it was that I should be offered this job, a job I had not applied for just when I had started reading Pearse’s story. We discussed the situation in depth, and after agonising over it for two days, and Annette saying the decision was mine to make, I decided I would take the job in St. Enda’s and inform She
ena that we would not be going to France that year.

  At the time I made that decision I was only thinking of myself and once again I let Annette down. While I was aware that she was looking forward to going back to France I did not give sufficient weight to her feelings and made the decision purely for my own selfish reasons. It was only after making the decision that I became fully aware of what a disappointment it was to Annette. When she had said the decision was mine, she did not believe that I would pull out of our commitment to Kelair but at the time I felt that I was meant to take the job in St. Enda’s because of the, to me, strange circumstances in which it came about.

  Anyway the decision was made and I went to work as a tour guide in the Pearse Museum which occupied my summer, while Annette had nowhere to go, as we had also given up the mobile in Dingle. But again Annette showed how strong her love was and how forgiving she was. She supported me all the way in my new job, putting aside her own disappointment and sense of loss at not being given the chance to have another season of freedom.