Free Winterwood by Patrick McCabe Page A

thinking that in my life. I know Catherine did —but not
     me. It might have been better, perhaps, if I had. But that simply wasn't the way things had happened.
    I'd literally spend hours daydreaming about them. Daydreaming about them and the lovely life they lived. I could see Ivan
     and Catherine on holiday, sitting in the lounge bar in the cool of a Greek summer evening. Sipping cocktails and listening
     to the music - just a piano player going through standards. Not John Martyn or anything like that. 'Cavatina', maybe, or 'Unchained
     Melody'. Ivan's hand would move across the table quite slowly — before reaching hers and touching it ever so gently. The French
     windows would be thrown open and you'd be able to feel the salt breeze on your face.
    —This is a long way from Dublin, you'd hear him saying, it's a long way from Dublin and Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham.
    —It certainly is, my darling, she'd reply.
    It was an idyllic scene and was the one which — against my better judgement - impelled me, irrationally, to decide to go out
     to their house one evening, completely on the spur of the moment. Immediately I arrived I knew something was wrong. The garden
     gate was chained, which it never was, and the house was enfolded in a desolate quiet. Their estate car was nowhere to be seen.
     I thought that perhaps they had actually moved house, or perhaps even had left the country altogether. My head was reeling
     as I stood there, quietly devastated on that leafy suburban road. It was as though I was standing on the top of Slievenageeha
     Mountain, and Imogen was waving to me from far away, her voice growing fainter all the time.
    —Don't leave me, Immy! I cried, helplessly, plunging my face into my hands.
    When I got back to the hostel, I became preoccupied again with thoughts of the photo. The hostel was silent, apart from the
     strange noises that often trouble an empty building. I couldn't settle - I kept walking around, searching here, there and
     everywhere. Then it began to dawn on me —the unthinkable had happened. The utterly unthinkable. The photograph was gone!
    I was perplexed. It became so bad I was actually moaning!. But then, almost instantaneously, I found myself swept up by a wave of the most intoxicating pleasure, when I discovered
     in its place an even more beautiful and tantalising image — the most delectable portrait of Catherine Courtney!
    Or, should I say, what could have been a delectable portrait of my ex-wife. If she hadn't been in the company of her Maltese lover, as they gazed so rapturously
     into one another's eyes.
    They were obviously having a real good time. It must have been 110 degrees out there, on the illicit weekend they'd shared
     in Malta. In Valletta, the capital, when Catherine had told me she was going to be in Cork, visiting her 'terribly ill' mother
     in hospital.
    The most unacceptable aspect of the humiliating court procedure was being told how and when I might see my child. Pieces of
     time being fed to me like crumbs. I would rather never have seen her at all than accept those terms. I mean, your blood is
     your blood, as they used to say in Slievenageeha. In the long run, it's thicker than anything. And Immy was my blood-kin.
     That was my nature - she was my heartbeat. And I couldn't have changed that even if I'd tried. I'd finally accepted it that
     night in Bournemouth.
    And once that has happened, there is no going back. I appealed for strength and felt a powerful influence surging through
     me.
    —You won't be on your own - you can rely on me to shield you from wind and weather, Redmond. I'll always be there - till the
     very last pea is out of the pot, till the angels quit heaven's golden halls. Be assured of that.
    My first intention had been to call to the house in Ballyroan Road, as soon as I knew for sure that Immy was on her own. With
     a story for her to the effect that I'd arrived over from London on a surprise visit and that her mother and Ivan were