City of Hope (37 page)

I pulled them on over my stockinged feet, leaving my shoes behind—smart green leather on the gnarled, muddy wood; they were out of place, didn't belong here.

I climbed over the stile to the right of the yard and walked toward my husband's land.

I walked for an hour or more. My boots carried me across the familiar terrain, dodging the bog holes, negotiating the small valleys and streams that John and I had walked so often that our legs were all the maps we needed. I stopped at every tree we climbed, knelt and touched the ground on the hills we had tumbled down, grabbed a handful of fresh new mint from the corner of the field where we had first made love and rubbed it into a spicy, sticky paste in my hands. I stopped and drank water from the stream where we used to wash ourselves in summer and picked a palmful of sheep's coat from a barbed bush. I held the fleece to my face and smelled John coming home in the early morning, his hands rough with the blood of his animals, touching my face.

He was the earth and the grass and the breath of a newborn lamb. All those things were still here, as they had always been, but he was gone.

I cried, seamless automatic tears; tears of freedom; tears of love without the desperate, jabbing regret.

Our own house came into view, but I did not feel ready to go in. Instead I walked toward John's smoking tree. The ground around it was strewn with leaves and shreds of bark, such a dry surround that I did not think of placing anything down before sitting with my back against its mossy hollow, as he had always done. For a moment I felt glad for the comfort of just sitting in such a soft, dry spot; a contented feeling, as he must have felt every day when he came to his special place.

I reached up and found John's tobacco pouch; the cigarette inside it was dry as the day I had left it, the day he had died. In my imagination I wondered if John had come in the meantime and replaced it, and I smiled at the thought of it. Perhaps it was true; or perhaps all I had to do was believe it was true to make it so. Like God.

I fumbled in my pocket for matches and drew out the sheep's wool and held it to my nose again before lighting the cigarette.

I drew deeply and, as the smoke bit through my lungs, I closed my eyes. Two birds on either side of the tree were calling to each other—
pwheet, pwheet
—
pwheet
. I loved listening to birdsong. As a child I had always wished I was a bird, and had been so envious of their ability to fly. I had never lost my sense of awe at these tiny creatures, with their brassy, loud voices and their cheeky ability to flit and escape on a whim. Even now I wondered what they might be saying to one another; alerting one another to my presence perhaps, musing on the likelihood or quality of worms in the vicinity? I was amusing myself listening to them when suddenly their tweeting stopped and a silence descended on the oak. I opened my eyes and looked across the fields. The landscape was as still as a picture—blue skies, green fields, purple bogs on the horizon—like a postcard, as if it wasn't real.

I heard a wind push its way through the bushes that separated me from the house, then fill the branches of the oak above me, whispering through the leaves like an almighty sigh. The strong breeze descended down over me in a warm, shimmering wave, then was drawn off across the fields in front of me. As it traveled through me I felt as if it were taking some of my pain with it, and leaving in its wake something that I needed. Not freedom—I had that already. Despite the emotional imprisonment of my grief, it had been the first thing I embraced after John died.

What I needed now was greater than freedom, or the reasonable purpose of the good life I had built in New York.

I needed to find a new reason to live—and now I knew what it was.

New York, June
1935

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-
ONE

I took a taxi straight from the docks to Mr. Williams' office in Yonkers, where I met him and Lavinia and conducted all the business that needed to be done.

I had telegrammed Matt from the ship to tell him about my plans, but had not given him a specific date or time for my arrival. I had told him that I did not want a welcoming party and hoped he would respect my request.

I said I needed time, and that I could not marry him. I still wasn't over John, and he deserved better than merely some of a grieving widow's love. He was too good for that. I knew he would be heartbroken, angry, humiliated, and was not looking forward to facing him, so it was with some relief then that I found the house in Yonkers empty. It gave me the chance to gather myself, and my things, before the others got back. I went straight upstairs and, containing Tom in his cot, started to pack my bags.

I opened each cupboard and drawer and laid out all the things I had acquired in the past year. It wasn't much; most of the new clothes I had bought in my first few weeks here with Sheila I had taken with me to Ireland, so they were already packed and left in the front hall. Aside from them, there was the baby blanket of Tom's that Maidy had knitted; a handkerchief embroidered with my initials by Maureen, which she had given me as a token of her friendship shortly after I “saved” her; a blue bead necklace that Sheila had given me after I said I liked it, and insisted I took it, saying, “You've such an eye for cheap rubbish, Ellie.” “Perhaps that's why I like you!” I replied. I missed her.

Matt's good shirt and trousers were laid out neatly on the bed. I flinched. He would be changing into them for dinner. I didn't plan even to stay that long.

On my way back downstairs I reached up to unpin my hat, but stopped myself. I had better keep it and my jacket on, or I might be tempted to change my mind. It would be so easy to take them both off, hang them in the hallway and stay.

I could walk straight back into where I had left off, settle for a while, perhaps even marry Matt.

Except that now I knew this was not the life I was meant to live. All this had been a stopgap, a symptom of my grief. Rescuing families, setting up this house and the others, the shop—all of it had been a distraction, and when the novelty ran out, I would have to go in search of who I was again. Without John, I did not know who I was. Not really. Oh, others would say I was this extraordinary woman who helped people—had said it about me already, in the papers and to my face. I demurred, for I knew it wasn't true. It was what I did—what I had done—but it wasn't who I was. I wasn't a particularly “good” person. I was just human. A mixture of circumstance and good fortune, and the need to escape my own grief, had led me to do what I had done. I saved Maureen because she had one set of needs—shelter, food—and I had another—distraction, guilt. My friends had given back to me as much as, if not more than, I had given them; they had given me a family when I needed one, and they had carried me through my depression and out the other side. They had amused and occupied my thoughts and my heart—as I had theirs. That was all.

The past year had taught me one thing: with a few notable exceptions, people were essentially good. There was nothing outstanding about what I had done—anyone would have done the same, had they been in my shoes.

Now I was going to leave them to do just that.

I had signed each of the houses over to the individual families who lived in them, and taken my own name off the shop cooperative so that it could be shared out equally among the other women. Lavinia French now had my power of attorney and could complete all of the legal paperwork on my behalf.

I went through the kitchen and out onto the back porch to look around the garden. The hedging was trimmed, the chicken coop cleaned, the vegetable patch dug with ridges for the potatoes. Matt had painted the back porch and put in a new swing.

Was I mad to be leaving this walk-in life; this secure, domestic paradise that was, after all, largely of my own making?

From childhood I had been terrified of being alone. John had taught me how to love, he had been everything to me, and as such I had altered the course of my life by coming back from America to be with him. When he died I had filled the gap he left with people and things to do: fixing problems, engaging in dramas, and friendship and romance. I could continue like that, but in a few weeks, months, a year—perhaps even two years, if the weakness of being too comfortable, the fear of change took hold of me—I would have to move on. Sooner or later I would have to go and fulfill a destiny of my own, instead of riding on the back of other people's.

I went back into the house just as Bridie, Maureen and Matt were all coming in. There was another man with them whom I didn't know, and their bustling friendliness stopped when they saw me. I had been dreading this moment. Had Matt told them I was leaving for good? Or had he stuck with the “holiday” story, as I had asked him to? That I had been invited upstate to visit long-lost relatives and would be gone for another month.

Maureen came straight over and embraced me, then signaled to the stranger.

“Ellie, this is my husband, Patrick.”

“Goodness!” I was surprised, but my happiness for her was muted by Matt's dark expression.

“The old tramp came through,” she said, glowing. “Can you believe it? Two miracles in one year, Ellie—you, and now my Patrick is back.”

I gave her a huge hug and shook his hand warmly. “I'm delighted for you both. You must tell me the whole story.”

Patrick's reappearance was the answer to Maureen's prayers—and it was wonderful for the children to be reunited with their father.

“Oh, but I can't believe you are going off from us again—you've just got back! Still, we'll tell you all about it over dinner: you're staying the night, of course.”

“No,” I said, and my eyes flicked across to Matt. He looked away, cold and angry. Tom called from upstairs.

“Ma, ma, ma!” he cried.

I ran upstairs, glad to get away from Matt's coldness, picked up the baby and went back downstairs. I held him tightly to my chest, hoping neither Tom nor the others could sense the urgency of need in my grip.

This was what I had missed, what I had been missing all my life, the thing that even John had been unable to give me—a child. Tom was the gift this last year had given me, the link with life, my reason to carry on. I would cherish him and give him all my love and then, when I had to, I would let him go; just as I had been forced to do with John.

Nobody belongs to anyone. Everyone dies or grows up and leaves. It amounts to the same thing: you are on your own, so you had better know who you are and what you want. I didn't, but I knew that I had been given the job of being this child's mother and, beyond that, I had to move on from this life and start on my journey to find out who I really was.

“I'm sorry I can't stay, Maureen. I'm afraid I'm expected tonight. Matt has to take me straight down to the station.”

“But we've hardly said hello . . . and baby Tom!”

“I'll be back soon,” I lied. I would write, I would visit—if I didn't go now, I would never leave. Already Maureen's kind pleading was knitting my feet to the floor.

“But Anna will be so cross if I let you go! There's no rush surely—your relatives will understand. Bridie, tell her to stay, for a night at least.”

Bridie had her apron on and was already standing with her back to me at the sink. She did not turn around.

“If you're going,” she said crossly, “then just
be on your way
.”

She knew.

Matt and I exchanged a look outside Maureen's range of vision. He raised his eyebrows—he hadn't told her. Bridie just knew. She could feel it in her bones, for the old battle-ax could intuit everything, and there would be no persuading or placating her. I loved the old woman, but I was as weak in her presence as I was with Maidy. One word, one look from her and I would be powerless to do anything but stay.

I backed out of the kitchen and picked up the small leather bag I had packed with Tom's things. Matt carried my large case out and put it in the pickup along with Tom's new buggy.

Maureen followed us out, but Bridie stayed resolutely where she was. Maureen raised her eyes to heaven and shook her head at the old woman's rudeness, but knew better than to confront her. I felt sick leaving her like that. I was so fond of her—she had been and still was, to all intents and purposes, like my mother in America. She felt my going as a betrayal, and I felt it too, but I knew I could not stay.

Matt opened the door and I clambered up into the seat of his truck and gave Tom a bottle so that he would settle in my lap for the short journey to Ludlow.

As we were pulling away, Tom flapped at the window, squealing, and I turned around to see Bridie coming toward the car.

I could not help smiling, a broad, grateful smile that I could feel reaching to my ears. Entirely inappropriate, given my abandonment of her.

I opened the window and she shoved in a brown paper bag.

“Soda cake for the journey, for the boy. He likes it.”

“I'm sorry, Bridie,” I said.

She picked up the corner of her apron and wiped it across her face, exactly as Maidy had done with the dish towel. When the apron came down, her face was still contorted and she lifted it again to hide her pain.

Matt turned off the engine and I went to open the door and get out.

Bridie shouted in at Matt, “Turn it back on, you fool,” then bashed the door shut on me and said, “If you don't write soon, Ellie, so help me God I will find you and flatten you. You'll not abandon us that easy.”

“Am I doing the right thing, Bridie, going off like this with the child?”

“You have to do whatever you have to do, Ellie. I learned that after Mr. Flannery died. There's no right nor wrong in it, only whatever has to be done next.”

Then she stuck a hand in the window and patted Tom awkwardly on the head.