The Lost Garden (5 page)

Chapter Ten

They were on the cart for less than an hour, but it felt like the longest part of the journey to Aileen because she was not with Jimmy.

How was it possible that she had become used to this stranger after knowing him for less than a day?

While she had been falling in and out of sleep on the boat, she had felt his presence all around her as if he had somehow imbued the very hay she was sleeping on, the very coat that lay over her, with some of his spirit. He was a strange boy surely – strange-looking, strange-talking – and yet she felt safer under his guardianship than she had with anyone, even her brothers. She should not, perhaps, have called him ‘harmless’ in the way she did, but she had meant it at face value. She did not feel she could come to any harm when Jimmy was around her. His company itself was armour protecting her from the rigours of the big wide world she felt she had so suddenly entered.

On the cart, she sat between her brothers. Jimmy was in the cart in front of theirs. The night was dark and the air cold and damp, and Aileen was aware of being far from home. Excited but nervous too – of what lay ahead. She curled her hands around her eldest brother Paddy Junior’s arms and leaned against his chest, but didn’t get the comfort she was seeking. His chest
was still and impervious; his hands did not grip hers as they always had done when he had comforted her as a small girl during thunderstorms, or carried her on his shoulders back from the beach, or defended her if she got into a fight with the younger Martin. She looked across at her father and tried to catch his eye, but couldn’t. He was busy talking with Mick Kelly, quiet and conspiratorial men’s talk – all business. He had no time for her. Perhaps she was not his little girl anymore, but a woman. Could that be why Paddy Junior would not hold her hand? Were they to abandon her now to womanhood? To the savage intentions of Jimmy Walsh? The very idea that he might not be as ‘harmless’ after all terrified and thrilled her in equal measure.

When they did, finally, stop, Aileen stayed where she was while the others alighted, momentarily disbelieving that they had really reached their destination.

It was dark and they were in the courtyard of what seemed to be a large farm – Aileen made out a few horse stables and the shadows of some farm machinery. To one side were two long, low buildings running at right angles to each other with oil lamps clearly burning at their windows.

Aileen felt a twinge of excitement as she imagined what cosy set-up must be inside; would there be carpets and ‘teak sideboards’ like the English homes in her mother’s housekeeping book? Her brothers started to gather their bags from the cart, and as she went to climb down, Jimmy was there holding out his hand to help her, as she had known he would be. He squeezed her hand as he held it briefly, letting go when he saw Martin’s murderous glare.

The two of them walked side by side, then across to the accommodation. Inside, the building was not the furnished home Aileen had imagined. While from the outside the building looked rather large and grand, inside it was basically a shed with no
furniture to speak of. There were large shallow crates that were potato-seed boxes and that she later learned had to be laid in lines along the wall to be made up into beds. The other women were already inside, hurriedly stuffing straw into sacking to make mattresses without even taking off their coats – busying themselves to get the place liveable before the oil in the lamps ran out.

Aileen’s disappointment did not last for long, however.

‘Don’t be standing there catching flies in your mouth,’ an older woman shouted across. Aileen recognized her from the ship as the centre point of the women’s tableau she was excluded from. She was a good deal older than her own mother and squatting next to an old stove. ‘There’s work to be done! You –’ she pointed at Jimmy ‘– get me in a barrow of coal from the other house, and, girl, you can help me set the stove.’

‘I thought I was to set the stove, Biddy,’ Carmel said, emerging from the darkness behind the woman, her face as hard and cruel as it had been on the boat. ‘That one hasn’t the brains to light a match, and her scrawny shadow won’t be much good to you either.’

‘I’ll decide who I’ll have working for me,’ said the woman, ‘and when you’re here, you’ll call me Mrs O’Callaghan, Carmel Kelly – and I don’t care whose daughter you are. Your daddy may be the boss out on the fields, girl, but I’m the fore graipe of this house, so you’ll do as you’re told. You can make a start by washing that bucket of spuds at the door. We’ll go to our beds with full stomachs tonight.’

Aileen did not afford herself a moment of satisfaction in light of Carmel’s dressing-down – indeed, this boss-woman might be harder to please than any of them. Instead, she busied herself about the stove. Aileen had a way of building fast, effective fires. She started at the bottom with the paper balls and a handful of
crisp straw, placing the few dry clinkers of coal left from the last fire around them, then carefully setting the fresh coals on top before putting a match to it. It went up as smooth and fast as butter melting on toasted bread.

The fore graipe heard the discreet
whoosh
, then looked back and raised her eyebrows, impressed.

‘Load that up good and high, girl – thanks be to God we’ve somebody good for something around here.’ Then she turned on the others: ‘Are you finished making those mattresses yet, Noreen? And we’ll hand out the blankets. For love of the merciful Mother of Jesus, there’s no need to put so much straw in a single bed – we are not the Savoy of London, girl.’ Then she turned back to Aileen and said, ‘Well? What are you still doing in here? Didn’t I tell you to go outside and build us a fire for the cooking?’

Aileen did not argue and went straight outside, where the dark, empty yard had no signs of a fireplace. Jimmy took up helping her with gusto. He fetched some large stones that were piled up near the gate and in a flash built them into a three-sided wall on the cobbles between the two buildings. Aileen went about building her fire, and while it was settling, Jimmy magicked up a rusting cattle grid and balanced it over the top. On this he placed a bucket of cold water to heat for the spuds. In moments the whole courtyard was glowing orange as Jimmy and Aileen gathered various buckets and planks of wood and old farm machinery to use as stools and tables and placed them in a wide semicircle round the new fireplace.

When Biddy came out to roar at them to hurry themselves up, she stopped short with surprise.

‘My God,’ she said, when she saw the water already boiling ready for the potatoes. ‘What kind of magic is this at all?’ For a moment Aileen thought her senior was going to tear the head off her for being a witch (red-haired women got a raw deal in
that respect in some quarters, she knew), but Biddy shook her head and, wiping her forehead with the heat of the roaring fire, exclaimed, ‘Well, I’ll say this only once, Aileen Doherty –’ she knew her name all along ‘– but your mother should be proud of you.’ Then she turned and roared, ‘Noreen? Carmel? Are you growing them fecking spuds or peeling them, would you mind telling me?’

The six women and twelve men of the tattie crew sat round the fire and ate heartily. There was no talk as they mashed the floury potatoes into the bowls they had brought with them from Ireland, every now and again one of them leaning across the other to reach for a ladleful of buttermilk from the bucket the host farmer had set aside for them.

‘This is rotten sour,’ Carmel said, then looking across at Biddy, added cheekily, ‘Is there any salt, Fore Graipe?’

Aileen saw Biddy look up over her bowl and hoped she never made her eyes slant with such a cold stare.

‘Carmel,’ Mick chided her, ‘show some respect.’ Carmel glowered at him as if unaware of what the word even meant. ‘Besides,’ Mick said, ‘Biddy hasn’t had time to get the full kitchen set up as yet.’

The insult reverberated round the silent circle as everyone’s eyes reached down to the bottom of their bowls. Biddy’s face was as set as stone. Mick coughed, knowing he had said the wrong thing, but pride would not have him take it back, so he looked down as well.

Aileen remembered there was a dish of salt next to the stove inside. As in her home, with the damp sea air and the cooking steam, it was the only place the condiment would stay dry. Biddy must have set it there and yet the old woman did not move from her seat.

Aileen thought she was right not to hop up at every command, but at the same time she wanted everyone to see that Biddy was in control of her domain.

As Aileen got up from her seat to fetch it herself, Carmel said cattily, ‘Mind you don’t leave your shadow behind or he might run off on you.’

Aileen did not know what made her angrier – the patronizing attitude to Jimmy or her suggestion that he might leave her. She went inside and fetched the salt dish, then scooped up a palmful and tipped it on top of Carmel’s spuds.

‘What are you doing?’ Carmel screamed. ‘You’ve ruined my food, you little bitch!’

Mick, still smarting from his own mistake, stood up in front of his daughter. ‘Right, madam,’ he said, ‘I have had enough of this. You apologize to this good company for using that language and you apologize to Aileen.’

‘Ah now, Mick,’ Aileen’s father, Paddy, said, ‘leave the poor girl be – sure we’re all tired here tonight. It’s been a long journey, and Aileen maybe went a bit heavy with the salt all right.’

However, Aileen knew by the tone of her father’s voice he was being disingenuous. Nobody else came to Carmel’s defence, and looking around at the group, it seemed that everyone was delighted to see Carmel Kelly get a dressing-down – even her brother, Michael. Everyone, except, Aileen thought, her own brother Paddy Junior.

‘No,’ Mick said, ‘in fairness now, you said it yourself, we’re all tired. But look at your young one. It’s her first year and she is helping Biddy as if she has been here all her life. She is a credit to you, Paddy. Carmel, you will apologize for being nasty to Aileen.’

‘I will not,’ said Carmel. ‘She deliberately ruined my—’

‘Right!’ and with that Mick grabbed his daughter by the arm
and marched her away out of the company, presumably to give her a good hiding, which, in their absence, the present company decided she deserved.

‘A good round kick up the behind is what she needs.’

‘Long overdue.’

‘Mick’s a fine gaffer, but he has ruined that child.’

‘The rest of us working twice as hard to make up for her.’

‘Don’t get next to her in the field, that’s for sure – she’ll not do a scrap and will take credit for your load.’

‘Wasn’t she left behind in the bothy all of last season “helping” Biddy?’

‘Sure she didn’t as much as wipe a spoon . . .’

Biddy contributed the occasional ‘humph’ of agreement, but she was the kind of wise old bird who didn’t say much, generally communicating disapproval through the movement of her brow.

Mostly it had been the three girls, Noreen, Claire and Attracta, giving out about Carmel. Mick’s exit had signalled the end of the meal and most of the men had gone off about the yard smoking or getting settled in their beds before the lamps and the fires went out.

A young man with a round, open face and the slanted eyes of a simpleton who was still sitting with the women blurted out, ‘She does be sitting about her bed mooning over Paddy Junior.’

Aileen’s eldest brother got up and stormed out of his seat.

One of the girls poked the lad and said, ‘You’re a stupid eejit, Noel Collins – keep your mouth shut,’ but he replied right back, ‘You’re the same, Claire Murphy – I heard you calling his name in your sleep. “Oh, Paddy, Paddy, kiss me, Paddy Doherty! I love you, Paddy Doherty!”’

They all laughed at his exaggerated impersonation.

‘Still,’ Claire said, ‘you’ll all admit Paddy Junior is a fine thing.’

‘Keep in with Aileen there and you might have a chance yourself, Claire.’

‘What do you say, Aileen – will you fix me up?’

Aileen wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

‘Cross her palms with silver, Miss Murphy, and she just might make a match,’ Jimmy cut in.

Claire smiled at Jimmy, showing off every tooth in her head, and wriggled her shoulders from side to side, delighting in the banter.

‘You’re as cheeky as a monkey, Shadow Man.’

‘There’s no shame in being a shadow,’ he said, ‘to a woman like this – and I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth and back again.’

Aileen didn’t like the way they were talking about her as if she wasn’t there, but at the same time she wasn’t really able to join in all this chatter. She was still afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

‘Well, if you ever get bored following her around and you want to step out into the limelight . . .’

‘Thanks, Claire,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

Aileen had had enough. She grabbed Jimmy’s arm and, tugging him to his feet, said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

As soon as they were out of earshot, over to the side of the women’s house, she turned to him, raging, and mimicked, ‘“Oh, I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Claire.” What was that, Jimmy Walsh? You think you’re so fine every woman wants you now? You think I can’t speak for myself? You think you have to follow me around everywhere? That I can’t look after myself? Well, let me tell you—’

In that moment Jimmy reached down, and gripping the
back of her head in his small hands, he kissed her firmly on the lips.

It seemed then that a door opened on a room inside Aileen that she had not known was there and flooded it with light.

Was this love?

If it was, it felt something like terror, and something like joy, and something like her heart melting into a pool of blood, then opening out and sealing itself into the velvet petals of a freshly opened deep red rose.

Aileen Doherty did not know how it came to pass that this young man, and no other, had taken her first kiss from her. She was not entirely sure she was happy about it, but then Jimmy Walsh the swimming fisherman from Aghabeg took her in his hands and looked down at her with his funny, crazy face and said, quite inappropriately and far too soon, ‘I love you.’ And in the deepest, truest part of herself, Aileen knew that, forever and ever, that was that.