Blessed Are the Cheesemakers Read online

  “Why didn’t Rose believe you about her mam going to Portugal with Mary-Therese and the pool and all that?” she asked Corrie as they strolled in the afternoon sun.

  Corrie sighed. “She couldn’t contemplate that option, Abbey. It was too hard for her. She didn’t want to believe it. She told me she’d seen me with the body and I told her the truth about exactly whose body it was—and a perfectly healthy one at that. But it just didn’t suit her to believe me.”

  Abbey took his hand and gave it a squeeze. She knew all about Rose twisting the truth to suit herself.

  “It was easier for her to turn her heart against me than believe that her mother would leave her for another woman, of all things,” Corrie went on. “I didn’t realize until later that she’d told people at school and in the village her version of events, but the ones that counted knew the truth.”

  “What was she like?” Abbey ventured softly. “Before me?”

  “Your mother?”

  There was so much to say but he didn’t want to say it. Corrie wanted to tell Abbey that her mother had loved her with all her heart and that she was a good and kind woman, but he knew that simply was not true. The pain of her mother’s abandonment had settled in the already-selfish Rose’s heart and hardened it when she was but a child herself. He had watched his only child grow wilder and harder with every year that passed.

  “She was a complicated girl who grew into a complicated woman,” Corrie answered his granddaughter. “And the best thing she ever did was have you.”

  It was his turn to squeeze her hand.

  “What about—” she faltered. “I don’t suppose you know . . .”

  It would be unnatural for her not to want to know, Corrie supposed.

  “About your father?” he prompted. “Not exactly, no.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “Himself back there no doubt getting stuck into bottle number three has the details but I gave up asking about them. Sure, I never cared how you got here, Abbey, just that you did.”

  Abbey bit her lip. It was hard to be this near, yet this far from the truth.

  “Rose would have had us believe your father was a famous disc jockey from Dublin,” Corrie continued, “but Fee says he came from a little closer to home. A lot closer, in fact. Schillies to be precise.”

  “He’s local?”

  Corrie shrugged his shoulders. “Fee says your man cottoned on to the fact that he was the daddy and had a go at Rose, who pretty much came home, packed her bags and was on the next boat across the Channel.”

  “But why would she leave and never come back? Why would she do that?”

  If there was one thing that Rose was never going to be, Corrie thought to himself, it was an ordinary small-town girl bringing up the local barman’s bastard. She had dreams far grander than that.

  “She got a job,” he said, “modeling in London. It was what she always wanted. And she never saw a reason to come home again.”

  “But what about me?” Abbey asked, trying not to sound wistful. “Did you never come looking for me?”

  “Abbey, she broke my heart taking you away from me. I must have been to London two dozen times and rung a thousand more,” said Corrie, “but your mother would never let me in or talk to me for any length of time. There was a part of Rose that enjoyed keeping you away from me.”

  “And that story about the curing-room floor was to make sure I stayed away from you,” said Abbey slowly. “She’s a one, is she not?”

  The two of them looked at each other ruefully. Rose had created a world that focused solely on herself, and the miracle was that her father and her daughter had discovered each other again, despite her best efforts.

  Abbey thought about her own unknown father. There would be time, she realized, and plenty of it, to smooth out the knots and tangles of her past. In the meantime, she was happy just to be who she was, where she was, with this warm, wonderful old man.

  “I feel at home here, isn’t that gas?” Abbey said, looking at Corrie, her face breaking into a smile he could remember from nearly twenty-five years before. They walked home in silence, swinging their arms and savoring the sweet sensation of whatever it was they were sharing.

  “I thought I might take Kit for a picnic,” Abbey said shyly as they walked up the driveway. “Do you think he’d like that?”

  “I think he’d be mad not to,” Corrie answered. “And he doesn’t strike me as being mad, compared to most, anyway. We used to go for picnics when you were small, do you remember? In the field up behind the house, behind the dairy, on this side of the hill, under the old oak tree? It’ll be beautiful up there now.”

  When they reached the courtyard at the top of the drive, they were surprised to see the tractor idling there.

  “What are you doing?” Corrie asked as Fee bustled past him with a Thermos and a biscuit tin and jumped astride the rumbling machine.

  “I’ll be back later,” Fee said, settling himself onto the tractor saddle and moving slowly forward, then turning down the drive. “Don’t wait up!”

  “Where is he going?” Abbey asked. Corrie shrugged his shoulders. Fee had never learned to drive a car and very occasionally took to the road on the tractor, but for what, on this occasion, he didn’t know.

  “Is it just me,” Abbey asked, looking at Fee’s fat round bottom jiggle down the driveway on top of the old machine, “or is he totally barmy?”

  “It’s not just you,” Corrie said fondly, and went inside to find the picnic hamper.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Don’t think just because you’ve got your cheese to the curing room that the hard work is over. It’s not, you can still make a poxy whore’s melt of it. Imagine what would happen if even a single blue mold spore got into the Gold room? Total disaster even at that late stage in the proceedings. Blue mold in the right place is a gift from God but in the wrong place it spreads like a cancer.”

  JOSEPH FEEHAN, from The Cheese Diaries, RTE Radio Archives

  Abbey and Kit were sitting on a tartan blanket under the oak tree on the hill behind the house, testing their dental work on May’s nut toffee. It was delicious, but something of a challenge orthodontically speaking.

  It was late afternoon, and they had pretty much picked over the basket Abbey had filled earlier with fruit and sweets and a Thermos flask of coffee before hunting down Kit and inviting him up the hill for a late lunch. Feeling a freedom and happiness that she hadn’t known for years, Abbey had shared the events of the smoking room with her fellow cheesemaker, who had listened and laughed and listened some more.

  “I can’t believe I thought that Corrie would murder his own wife,” Abbey said. “It seems so ridiculous when I think about it now.”

  Kit rubbed his jaw, aching now from the toffee. “Yes, but there’s something about this place,” he said, “that makes the ridiculous seem ordinary. Have you noticed that?”

  Abbey closed her eyes and let the sun and her thoughts wash over her. The usual merged with the unusual a lot more at Coolarney House than anywhere else, she agreed. But she didn’t mind that. She understood it. Just like she understood, perhaps always had, that her mother was a difficult woman, at times even dangerous, but she had survived her and she was going to be the woman that Rose never had been. She had goodness in her genes, thanks to Corrie, she knew that now. And she was going to stay here and make cheese because her heart did a little somersault when she thought about it and her nose was twitching now at the ghost of the warm, wet, yeasty factory smell.

  Kit watched her face, wrinkling and beaming as she thought her happy thoughts, and felt an ache that he didn’t recognize. He wanted to kiss her, and do more, desperately, right now, he knew that much. But there was more to his longing than that. He wanted to be old with her, he realized as the sun shifted and dropped the dappled shade of an oak branch’s giant leafy fingertips over her cheek. He wanted to look across the milk vat in forty years’ time and see her aged, wrinkled face break into a smile as she suc
ked the fresh curd from the palm of her crinkled hand. He wanted to slip up behind her as she packed it into a mold and encircle her with his own ancient arms, adding his strength to hers. He wanted their children, lots of them, to drive them crazy with their constant good-natured bickering and highfalutin labor-saving inventions. The more he thought about it, the more he just plain wanted her.

  Abbey opened her eyes and turned toward him, the leafy shadow sliding off her ear and onto the grass. “Can I help you?” she said, a mischievous glint in her eye.

  Kit leaned forward and kissed her, long and hard, his soul soaring as he felt her body rise up to meet him. Her back arched and he slipped his hand behind it and hungrily pulled her closer, on top of himself as he lay back on the grass. She tasted like toffee and freedom. Freedom from his troubles, his bent and broken life, his inner ache. As he felt her heart beat against his he knew with a sudden monumental clarity that everything was going to be all right. He pulled away from her mouth, and her knees slid down either side of his hips as she sat up, straddling him, licking the taste of him off her lips as he slowly began to unbutton her shirt.

  She moaned at the touch of his finger brushing her breast and realized with a shiver that of course it was the finger of her daydream in Ate’ate. Her shirt open now to her waist, she felt his strong, hard hands around her ribcage, and then his thumbs worked their way up and teased her nipples as a melting sensation ate up her entire body. Throwing her head back, she was distracted momentarily by the sound of a car speeding up the driveway, and in that moment passion subsided and reason took hold.

  “Not here,” she said, brushing away Kit’s hands. “Not up here. Let’s go back.”

  Kit groaned. “Don’t tell me you have a sister you think is buried underneath this tree,” he said. “I don’t think I could stand it.”

  Abbey laughed. “I told you,” she said, buttoning up her blouse, “no one is dead.”

  Kit groaned again but supposed that she did have a point. Their picnic spot was clearly visible from the house and as their coitus had been twice interrupted already, it made sense to ensure they were really in private this time. He put his hands on Abbey’s hips and pushed her down onto his thighs so he could sit up. Then he leaned forward to whisper into her perfect neck. “You’re beautiful,” she felt him say into her collarbone and she wanted him so badly, so immediately, she wondered how she was going to make it down the hill without imploding.

  She stood up, smiling and wet with anticipation, and held out her hand to him. Kit took it, then brought it to his lips to kiss it with a tiny salty lick before he grabbed the picnic hamper and the blanket and they both started down the hill.

  Abbey felt so happy it was all she could do to keep from skipping and jumping and screaming. Her body was humming with expectation and her heart was singing with joy. Who cared about anything else? The time was right and she could feel it right to the core of her skeleton. She sidled closer to Kit and kissed him on his arm just below his shoulder. He was such a good man, she thought. Such a good, good man.

  Halfway down the hill she spotted the car that she’d heard earlier. It was a yellow convertible with its black roof down, which had swung into the courtyard between the house and the dairy.

  “I wonder who that could be,” she said, pointing at it. “Pretty fancy set of wheels for around these parts.”

  Kit looked at her, smiling a wicked smile, and shrugged his shoulders. “Who cares?” he said. “No one’s going to stop us this time.”

  “It’s not a Coolarney thing, you and I, is it?” asked Abbey, suddenly scared it was all too good to be true. “It’s not one of those ridiculous things that seems ordinary just because of the ‘Coolarniness’ of it all, is it?”

  Kit laughed again and swung her arm. “It doesn’t feel ridiculous,” he said, “and I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t feel ordinary either.”

  He was right, thought Abbey. Of course, he was right. It was right. She could be sure of that now. She couldn’t wait to get naked. To be loved. To love.

  They were at the bottom of the hill and Kit was helping her over the gate when an evil, dark cloud rolled over the horizon of their happiness. A voice calling to them from the top of the driveway seemed to freeze Kit to the spot. Abbey looked over his shoulder as he held her around the waist, ready to help her to the ground.

  A tall, beautiful blond woman in a tiny flowery sun frock was walking toward them, teetering on the blacktop in a pair of red stiletto heels. She was almost painfully thin but deliberately so, her spaghetti straps showing off the skeletal bones in her neck and shoulders. Her legs were impossibly long—like a thoroughbred racehorse’s—tanned and bare. She minced closer and shaded her eyes with her hands.

  “Hello, y’all,” she drawled, and Abbey saw the life drain from Kit’s face as his hands dropped from her waist and he turned slowly toward whoever it was that was coming toward them.

  “Well, don’t look so surprised, darlin’,” she called. “Y’all must have known I would come looking.”

  She started to pick her way across the dried mud track that led from the end of the sealed driveway to the gate where they were standing.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kit whispered, a loud buzzing like a jackhammer muffled with cotton wool vibrating the inside of his head.

  “Who is she?” asked Abbey, confused. “Why has she come looking?”

  “I said, hello y’all,” the leggy blonde said again to Kit as she reached him. “What’s the matter, honey? Deaf as well as disappeared?”

  Close up Abbey could see the intruder was perfect. Her skin was golden and clear, her eyes brilliant blue and widely spaced, her mouth big and full and stretched into a smile that showed off two rows of impeccable teeth.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your little friend?” she asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” whispered Kit again, still frozen, as the clear crisp landscape around him smeared and melted like a painting left out in the rain.

  “You seem confused,” the blonde said, ignoring him and holding out her hand to Abbey. “That’s my name, honey. J.C. Jacey Stephens. Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.”

  Abbey stared at the hand being offered to her and then at Kit. He looked as though he were seeing a ghost.

  “Jacey,” he whimpered, his eyes black and disbelieving in his pale shocked face.

  Abbey, feeling sick to her stomach, forced herself out of her frozen state and half jumped, half fell to the ground, steadying herself as she stood up straight with one hand on top of the fence post.

  “I thought . . .” she started, then stopped.

  “You thought what?” the blonde asked, her cold tone making a liar of her dazzling smile.

  “I thought you were dead,” Abbey said.

  There was a split-second’s silence, then Jacey threw back her long blond hair and laughed a deep sexy laugh lacking absolutely nothing but humor. “Dead?” she repeated. “Hell no, honey. I wasn’t dead, I was in rehab.” She turned her gaze again to her stunned husband. “What on earth have you been telling people, darlin’?”

  Abbey looked at Kit for signs this was all part of some sophisticated prank but something in the look on his face told her it wasn’t so. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes had sunk deeper into his head. His mouth was slightly open as though he were trying to scream but couldn’t and a vein in his temple was throbbing so hard she could almost hear it. He bore almost no resemblance to the man she had been desperate to give herself to only moments before. He looked like a total stranger.

  “Kit?” she ventured, a quiver in her voice. “Kit?”

  “You’re dead,” Kit said hoarsely to Jacey, ignoring Abbey. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Just because you say I’m dead, honey, doesn’t mean I am. It might be wishful thinking but it’s still just thinking, sugar.”

  Kit closed his eyes and started to shake his head from side to side. He could not take it all in.

  “You know
what, pumpkin?” Jacey said, turning to Abbey. “My husband and I could really do with some time alone, so if you could just scram that would be great.”

  Abbey sought out Kit’s eyes for confirmation this wasn’t happening, but still they were closed.

  “Kit?” she tried again, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Run along now, honey.” Jacey smiled with the warmth of a frozen Margarita. “I need to get reacquainted with my man.”

  “I have to go,” Abbey said, as if she hadn’t twice been asked to. She turned and started to walk, then run, toward the house.

  Kit listened to the sound of her feet taking her away from him yet was powerless to do or say anything to stop her. He’d been having a dream, he supposed, that had turned into a nightmare. He wanted to wake up and find himself walking down the hill again with the woman of his dreams. He opened his eyes. His dead wife was looking at him with interest.

  “Snap out of it, baby,” she said, clicking her fingers in front of his face. “A little harder to pretend I’m dead when I’m standing right in front of you, huh? Preferred it when I was tucked away in detox?”

  “What are you doing here, Jacey?” Kit croaked, confused but becoming stomach-lurchingly less so. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, let me refresh your memory, honey. I had a little accident at home and wound up in the hospital. Then you dumped me, then I was ordered by the court to spend ninety days in rehab. Now the ninety days are up and I’ve come to get you, so can we please go? All this fresh air and countryside is getting to me.”

  Kit felt the panic that had left him alone these past few days start rising again in his chest. Visions of Jacey lying dead on their floor having lost their baby flickered through his head. Her pale face, her hair spread out like peacock feathers on the floorboards, blood. Paramedics bending over her, the hospital bed, the tubes, the oxygen, the doctor, vodka.

  Kit started to tremble as he tried not to remember the doctor. He needed a drink so badly his toenails were thirsty, bent and clawing inside his shoes. The doctor.