Come to the edge, he said,

They said: We are afraid,

Come to the edge, he said,

They came: He pushed them…

And they flew.

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

Aisling Gayle is one of life's pleasers. A young country schoolteacher in 60s Ireland, she spends her life pleasing philandering, Jack-the-lad husband Oliver and pious mother Maggie. She also worries about her sister Pauline, home from England with an illegitimate child, and her brother Charles who sees life differently to most other people. Aisling's wedding anniversary reveals Oliver's latest infidelity and she decides to escape for the summer accompanying her parents to beautiful Lake Savannah in Upstate New York.

There she meets Thomas Carroll a slow but amiable teenager and a frightening encounter introduces her to his father, reclusive artist Jameson Carroll. Soon Aisling finds herself in a once-in-a-lifetime passionate affair. As return to Ireland, and Oliver looms can her passion overcome the obstacles awaiting her? Can Aisling Gayle find the courage at long last, to please herself?

At the moment Aisling Gayle is not available in the UK, but can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk and www.poolbeg.com

You can now read chapter one of Aisling Gayle

Chapter One

Tullamore, County Offaly

May 1963 

The morning after her seventh wedding anniversary, Aisling Gayle awoke to the early morning sun shining through the windows, and an empty space in the bed beside her.

She looked at the bedside clock. Quarter past seven. Quarter past seven on a Monday morning after a weekend away celebrating seven years of marriage. Neither of them needed to be up for another half an hour, and yet he was gone from their bed. He was downstairs and on the phone already.

Last week, they had sat with some of Oliver’s drama group at a wedding, and a new member had made a funny comment about them approaching the ‘seven-year itch’. Only no one had laughed. There had been a very awkward silence. The rest of the group knew – as Aisling knew – that Oliver had always had the itch.

He had the itch even before they got married.

Aisling threw the bedclothes back and padded across the cold linoleum floor, her long blonde hair swinging like two curtains on either side of her face. She opened the door just a few inches. Just enough to hear who he was talking to. Just enough to be sure.

“Of course,” she could hear Oliver say in a low voice. “You know I do. Why else would I be on the phone to you, at this hour of the morning?”

Aisling leaned her head against the jamb of the door and closed her eyes. Why else indeed? she thought. Why else indeed?

Oliver gave a little cough to clear his throat. The sort of cough he gave when getting agitated. “It was a special occasion ... what else could I do? It would have looked bad if I hadn’t done something.” Then there was a pause. “Listen,” he said in his smooth Dublin accent, “I’ll have to go. I promise I’ll ring you later ... same arrangements as usual.”

Aisling heard the click of the phone, and waited. But Oliver didn’t come back upstairs. She listened and heard him first go into the bathroom, and then a few minutes later into the kitchen, and then she heard the rattle of the tap as he filled the kettle.

Aisling closed the door and got back into bed. She shivered, even though she had woken several times during the night with the heat. The old familiar feelings of dread and hopelessness began to wash over her again. Though it was not half as bad as it used to be in the early stages of their marriage. She was twenty-nine years old now – no longer the naive young girl who had fallen under Oliver’s spell.

But still it hurt. It hurt very badly. Especially this morning. Especially after a romantic weekend in a nice hotel in Galway, which she had thought of as a fresh start in their marriage.

And now this. An early-morning phone call which heralded his latest infidelity. The latest in a long line of affairs. Aisling reached over to her bedside table for her romantic novel – her escape from reality. Her sad escape from a faithless, loveless marriage.

* * *

“Good morning, good morning – I heard your alarm go off just as the toast was ready.” Oliver was chirpy and cheerful as he elbowed the bedroom door open, to manoeuvre the breakfast-tray into the room. “Since you’ve become so accustomed to first-class hotel service this weekend, I thought I’d break you into the real world gently.” He gave a little laugh. “But I’m sorry to say we only serve tea and toast in this establishment.”

He placed the wooden tray with the varnished flowers on the bed beside her and, from the fleeting glance that she gave him, he knew that she was not fooled. Their eyes did not meet very often these days, because he couldn’t bear the accusation that looked straight back at him. At one time those blue eyes had so captivated him that he had gone out and bought her the biggest sapphire engagement ring he could afford. Now, he could barely look into those same eyes.

“Are you not having anything?” Aisling asked, for something to fill the silence.

“No, I’ve had a cup of tea. That’ll hold me until I get time at the shop.” He turned to the wardrobe to select a shirt. Although he left everything else in the house where he dropped it, Oliver’s wardrobe was perfectly organised. “I have a commercial traveller coming down from Dublin with a new range of fancy ties and hankies. I’m quite keen, but I’ll have to knock his prices down a good bit. I’ll have to make the poor mouth about business being slow and all that old shite. It’s worse than being on the stage.”

Aisling took a sip of her tea. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll perform well as always, Oliver,” she said in an even tone. “Sure, aren’t people always telling you that you’re a born actor?”

“Thank you, m’dear,” he said jovially, slipping the shirt from its hanger and throwing it on the bed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” 

Aisling’s eyes were cold and hard as she watched him take off his dressing-gown, revealing the firm, well-toned body that he was so proud of. As usual, he couldn’t resist a glance at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. An imaginary blemish on his shoulder, which he had to examine carefully, allowed him to draw out the process.

As she sipped her tea and bit into toast she didn’t taste, Aisling took in his curly black hair – still damp from his bath – and the rest of him down to the curly black hairs on his legs. Apart from being slightly below average height, he was – as the older women would put it – a fine figure of a man.

And didn’t Oliver Gayle know it.

After the short pause to admire himself, Oliver checked his watch and then hurriedly threw on his clothes. Another quick look in the mirror as he did up his latest new tie, a dab of cologne – and he was ready.

“I’m not too sure what time I’ll get in tonight,” he said, rubbing the excess cologne into his hands, “so don’t bother cooking me anything. I’ll get something in town, and it’ll keep me going ’til after rehearsals.”

There was a pause.

“So you’re rehearsing again tonight?”

Oliver made towards the bedroom door. “I don’t know why you’re surprised – didn’t I tell you last week?” He blew a kiss in her direction from the bedroom door. “I’ve got my key, so don’t feel you have to wait up.”

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

Aisling pushed the tray with the unfinished tea and toast over to Oliver’s side of the bed. She swung her legs out of the other side, and then moved to the window. She drew back the curtains and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. She looked out into the large, flower-filled garden, the tending of which – like her romantic novels – gave her an escape from thoughts of her crumbling marriage.

What a waste, she told herself, what a waste! All those moments – of diverting her thoughts from the lie she was living – had grown into hours. And the hours into days. And the days into months. And it all added up to years of her life – wasted. Wasted on a shallow, hopeless charade of a marriage in which she was trapped.

For there was no future for her in her marriage with Oliver. And there was no future for her – out of her marriage – in Ireland.

To think of it hurt. It hurt badly, for she had loved Oliver once. She had loved him very deeply. That’s why she had almost slept with him before they got married, why she had almost allowed herself to get carried away, risking the wrath of both her family and the church. When she realised what she had done, she used all her powers to coax him into marriage. And a hard job that was.

In all fairness to him, Oliver had warned her. He had told her that he didn’t know if he could live his life with one woman. And he told her that few women could live with his restlessness. But Aisling didn’t hear his warnings, because she was convinced that she could change him.

She wanted him, and she got him. But on Oliver’s terms.

At the time it had all seemed worth it. Aisling was positive that when they were married, and had started their family, he would settle down. But she was wrong on both counts. So far, there were no signs of a family, and there was no sign of Oliver settling down at all. She knew now that she would never have the life with him that she had dreamed of. But what else was there to do?

Of course she could leave him. Leave him and their sham of a marriage. How many times had she gone over the scene in her head, telling Oliver that she was leaving him, and then – the impossible part – telling her parents. How could she? How could she? It would kill her mother. Maggie Kearney couldn’t take any more local gossip about the family.

There had always been the jokes and sneering remarks about Charles – Aisling’s older brother. Just because he didn’t operate the same way as the other local fellows, and wasn’t remotely on their wavelength – or at times, anyone else’s – even in the family. But mainly because he preferred to keep company with the characters in his books than sit and have a pint with another man. And because he was thirty-one years old, and as yet had never been seen in the company of a woman.

And then there was the real cause for gossip. Aisling’s younger sister, Pauline, had been brought back home from England three years ago. Unmarried and with a baby daughter. Maggie had never been the same since.

The whole family had never been the same since. 

They had picked themselves up and dusted themselves down, but the fact was they were now marked in the eyes of the townspeople. They had joined the ranks of the fallen. Maggie’s well-to-do farming background, and Declan’s grocery shop on the outskirts of Tullamore town no longer gave them immunity from the gossips. Even the fact that Maggie had a brother who was a priest and Declan had two sisters who were nuns, cut them no sway with the Catholic moral majority. Nothing the Kearneys now did would lift them back into that comfortable, privileged little niche they had enjoyed.

Not even the fact that Mr and Mrs Kearney were planning a trip to America in the summer would impress their customers. They would forever be haunted by veiled – and not-so veiled – references to Pauline’s situation on a regular basis.

Three years of getting their own back with little digs was nothing to customers who felt they had been overcharged by the Kearneys for the last twenty years – customers who didn’t care or understand about overheads in running a business.

“And how is poor Pauline and the babby getting on?” Maggie would hear each and every day from women clutching loaves of bread and bags of cooking-apples. Their kindly smiles would never hide the dark reminder behind the words. Poor Pauline and the babby.

Maggie heard that question so often that she often woke up in the night saying it to herself.

And it wasn’t just Maggie and Declan and Pauline who suffered from the fallout of Pauline’s indiscretion. Even if Aisling was a teacher and living in a fine big farmhouse with modern furniture and a bathroom and running water, she still had a loose sister with an illegitimate child.

And though Aisling could rise above it, being younger and more open to the modern ways of the world, and Declan – being a man – could shake his head and say, ‘What’s done is done, there’s no good in looking back, you have to look forward,’ Maggie was bowed over by the shame of it all. There was no consolation in any words about ‘what’s done is done’ for her.

What Pauline allowed to be done to her, should never have been done at all.

Aisling knew this only too well. And knew what it all meant for her. One daughter who had brought shame on the family was enough. To have another daughter home with a failed marriage would be just too, too much.

So Aisling plodded on. Her vague, ‘if the worst comes to the worst’ plan of one day just disappearing to England to live with Pauline had been well and truly smashed when her sister and baby returned home. Aisling had no means of escape – and daily was becoming as good an actor as Oliver was in his local, amateur dramas.

A tide of sorrow rose up in her now, and she closed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. There was no time for crying or feeling sorry for herself. She had to get dressed and get ready for school.

Eventually, when the tears had dried, Aisling opened her eyes to stare out over the garden. Out over the trees, and out to the fields which surrounded their house. Then, her gaze shifted down into the garden again. A movement on the path caught her attention. She looked closer now, and recognised a small bird. It was a goldcrest – a tiny, yellowy-green thing. It was hopping aimlessly. First in one direction, and then another.

Without realising it, Aisling smiled. It was a young bird, obviously learning to fly. She watched intently as it hopped a few inches into the air, wings flapping, only to descend again back to the ground.

For several minutes she watched, until she was rewarded with the sight of the bird taking itself several feet up into the air. It then disappeared into the depths of a small fir tree. Aisling smiled and clasped her hands together in pleasure.

A few moments later she turned from the window, a thoughtful look on her face. She picked up her dressing-gown and made for the bathroom. A few minutes later she sighed out loud with annoyance when she realised that Oliver had used up most of the hot water. Thankfully, she had bathed and washed her hair yesterday morning in the hotel. Her long, thick hair took ages to dry, and she had to get up a good half-an-hour early on schooldays when she washed it. She filled the bath a third of the way up with the barely lukewarm water and got in. At least it was a warm, early summer morning. There had been many winter mornings when she’d shivered in the freezing cold, after Oliver had gone off early leaving a grate full of ashes and a tank of cold water. It would rarely cross his mind to stack the fire up before he left. Aisling did all that before setting off for school. There was no room in the house for two sets of vanity. Oliver’s vanity took all that space up for him alone.

Later, as she towelled herself dry, a small seed of an idea started to grow in Aisling’s mind. A seed sown by her mother a few weeks ago – buried and forgotten but now brought to life again after Oliver’s behaviour this morning, and further nurtured after watching the little bird’s determined attempts to fly.

Aisling Gayle was going to fly. She was going to rise up and leave her home. She was going to fly – far, far away. Even if it was just for a short time. She was going to leave Oliver – and everyone who pitied her for being his wife – a long, long way behind. She was going to join her parents on a trip to attend a wedding in a sunny, beautiful place. A place with a beautiful name: Lake Savannah.

She made up her mind as she rubbed the towel vigorously over her firm, attractive body.

She was going to fly away to America.

She was going to fly to Lake Savannah.

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