Some Old Lover's Ghost (5 page)

I felt Patrick looking at me, but I evaded his eyes. I knew, though, that I had made my decision. Sentences were already forming in my head; I longed to sit and write. Tilda’s story had entrapped me, weaving itself around me as finely and invisibly as the chains of gossamer that bound the box trees in The Red House’s garden.

When I climbed inside my car, the grey plastic interior, the lights and switches and the jumble of crisp packets and fruit juice cartons, jarred me. They seemed to be from another world, or another time.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Daragh Canavan left Liverpool for London as soon as he was able. Liverpool was too full of Irish.

He had sailed from Ireland in a hurry, having mixed with the wrong sort of people. It wasn’t until he climbed out of the lorry and watched it drive away, leaving him alone amid the rain and lights and traffic noise of a London evening, that he stopped watching his back. Standing on the pavement, Daragh felt a rush of joy that he had left the past behind, so that anything was now possible.

The past was Ma and Da and half a dozen younger brothers and sisters. Daragh’s joy diminished a little as he thought of his mother. Shrugging off the ache of homesickness, he gathered up the brown paper parcel containing his belongings, and began to walk. He was cold, and his feet were sore because his boots had worn through at the soles. He had only a few shillings in his pocket. He must find himself something to eat and a bed for the night. Tomorrow he would look for a job. England – London especially – was a land of milk and honey, didn’t everyone know that? And he’d been born lucky, his mother had always said so.

Stopping outside a restaurant, he gazed hungrily through the plate glass. Rain beat down on his shoulders, and when a customer opened the door the smell of the food was dizzying. A waiter looked out and glowered at him, so Daragh moved on. Along the street, he fingered the coins in his pocket as he stared at a menu. The prices shocked him. They wanted four shillings for a bit of fish and a serving of sponge pudding.

Daragh pushed open the door. The waiter approached him, and he felt a tickle of nervousness in his throat as he stood, his damp cap clutched in his hands.

‘Yes … sir?’

Daragh noticed the pause between the two words, but smiled pleasantly. ‘I was wondering whether you’d serve me just a nice pot of tea and a plate of bread and butter.’ Hungry though he was, he could not afford the two-course dinner.

The waiter, a little, pasty sort of fellow, twisted his gloved hands together. ‘I’m afraid we don’t serve tea.’

Daragh waited for the ‘sir’, but it did not come. ‘Just the bread, then.’

The waiter looked him up and down. A condescending smile stretched his thin lips. ‘I believe that the church of the Sacred Heart, down the road about half a mile, runs a soup kitchen for men such as yourself.’

Daragh’s heart was pounding. Some of the diners were staring at him, and he caught the eye of a beautiful girl, her shoulders and chest indecently bare, her hair as black as the night. She was seated between two foolish-looking men, half choked by their stiff collars, their slicked-back hair gleaming like tar. Daragh turned to leave.

His brown paper parcel, soaked by the rain, chose that moment to tear and spew his belongings over the restaurant floor. As Daragh stooped to gather up his tin mug, his rosary, the green jersey that his favourite sister Caitlin had knitted for him, and the old underpants that Ma had patched, he heard the black-haired girl’s tinkle of laughter. White-faced, Daragh gathered up his things and left the restaurant.

He walked until he reached the big Catholic church at the end of the street. There, the altar, the cross and the pictures of the saints had a familiarity that calmed him. He did not yet look for the soup kitchen, but knelt and prayed. He prayed for his mother and his brothers and sisters and for his old granda who lived out in the country. And he prayed that he would never again, in all his days, make such a fool of himself.

Daragh Canavan discovered that there were two sides to London. There was the entrancing, magical side – the great buildings, the smart theatres and picture houses, the department stores with their glittering window displays – and the other side, the darker side. The hostels, the soup kitchens, the snaking queues at the Labour Exchanges. As the weeks went on and he failed to find work, Daragh’s clothes became more ragged, and he hadn’t the money for the public baths. Soon, the doormen at the big shops refused to allow him in for a wander round, to take the chill off his bones. He stood outside in the cold March wind, flapping his arms around his body in an attempt to keep warm. Looking in, but shut out, excluded. Cold glass pressed against his fingertips. He was aware of a loneliness and a sense of isolation that he had never previously experienced.

After a month he began to feel desperate. He knew that each day he was becoming less employable. The sight of his reflection in the shop windows offended him. He left London the day after they robbed the tobacconist. He didn’t do any thieving himself, he just stood outside in the street as two fellows he’d met at the hostel went through the place. But the scruffy little shop reminded him of old Paddy Meeghan’s at home, and he felt a heavy, gnawing shame that his months in England had reduced him to this.

With two pound notes, his reward for keeping watch, in his pocket, Daragh walked to the Great North Road and thumbed a lift. His luck changed at last when a van driver told him that he could put him in the way of a couple of days’ farm labouring. Daragh thought of County Clare, where his grandfather lived,
where he’d spent many happy summers. He did not, though, discover the gentle rain and rolling hills that he had been expecting. Cutting peat turves, he felt dwarfed by the flat countryside that surrounded him, and by the limitless sky. When a cloud, edged with gold, covered the face of the sun, and the great pale rays of light swept across the earth, Daragh, awed by such a harsh beauty, crossed himself. Paid off after a week, he wandered further into the Fens. The weather had eased and there was a warmth in the air that hinted of spring. Reaching Ely, he walked into the cathedral and sat looking up to where the vaulted stone soared above him. Daragh made a bargain with God: a year’s regular attendance at Mass if he found a job that day.

God shook hands on the bargain. When he left the cathedral and walked across the green, Daragh caught sight of a man struggling to roll barrels of ale down the steps to his cellar. He ran across the grass to help lift the heavy barrels from the cart. When they had finished, and the fat, florid publican was wheezing and mopping sweat from his face, Daragh asked about work. He was industrious and honest, and willing to put his hand to anything, he said, as he begged for a few weeks’ trial.

Daragh started behind the bar the following morning. He had been employed at the Fox and Hounds for a fortnight when he saw the girl. She was wheeling a bicycle through the cathedral close, talking to a friend. She was tall and slim and straight, her gold-brown hair almost to her waist. Her long eyes were the colour of pebbles washed in a stream. Any other girl that he had ever seen was plain in comparison to her. He felt an odd sense of recognition, a thrill of expectation, as though he had come home.

Tilda cycled the six miles to Ely each weekday. The classes at Miss Clare’s Academy of Typewriting and Bookkeeping began at nine o’clock in the morning. When they had first moved to Southam, Tilda had told Aunt Sarah that she wanted to train to be a nurse. Aunt Sarah hadn’t exactly said no, but had suggested
Tilda wait a year or so and had bought her some hens and found her the place at Miss Clare’s Academy.

Each morning she set off for Ely, Aunt Sarah’s warnings ringing in her ears. Men and strangers and drink, though not necessarily in that order. Miss Clare’s Academy was not as grand as its name suggested. All the lessons took place in the front room of a little house in the back streets of Ely. Miss Clare was tall and angular, and smelt of peppermints. She wore each day a striped cardigan that the girls, her pupils, nicknamed her battledress. She gave her lessons standing, pointing at a blackboard with a wooden stick, peering out into the street as though she was expecting someone – her sweetheart, the girls whispered. Emily Potter, who was Tilda’s friend, scribbled wicked cartoons of Miss Clare’s supposed lover, and passed them to Tilda in class. The classes were extremely dull. It would have taken imagination and flair to make shorthand interesting, and imagination and flair had long ago passed Miss Clare by. In lessons, Tilda’s mind wandered. Her daydreams were frequently interrupted by Miss Clare’s studiedly refined tones, or knocked off course by Miss Clare’s disconcerting habit of emphasizing the wrong word in a sentence. ‘Miss Greenlees, how will you succeed in your future career if you have not
acquired
the habit of giving your employer your complete attention?’

Emily invited Tilda to tea one day. After class, they walked through Ely. It was pleasantly sunny, and Tilda had stuffed her coat into her bicycle basket.

‘Do you want to be a typist, Em?’

Emily shrugged. ‘Lots of girls are typists, aren’t they? And I can’t think of anything else to do.’

‘You could be an artist.’

‘An artist?’ Emily was scornful. ‘My parents would never let me. Besides’ – she took an apple from her pocket and bit it – ‘I intend to work for a wonderful man. Tall and dark and handsome and terribly rich. He’ll fall madly in love with me and take me away from boring old Ely. Bite, Tilda?’

Tilda took the apple and bit. They walked past a row of shops and a pub.

Emily whispered suddenly, ‘I’ve just seen an absolute dreamboat … don’t look round yet, Tilda,
please
. Now. Over there.’

Tilda glanced at the young man outside the Fox and Hounds. He was leaning against the wall of the pub, smoking, his dark, slightly curling hair uncovered in the spring sunshine.

‘Don’t stare,’ whispered Emily furiously. ‘He’s looking at us! Oh, my goodness!
Divine
. Utterly divine!’ They both began to giggle as they turned the corner that led to the Potters’ house.

Aunt Sarah was in the kitchen, making bread, when Tilda came home. Sarah Greenlees wore a long blue skirt and a white high-necked blouse, covered by a stiff brown apron.

‘Your supper’s in the stove, Tilda.’

Tilda sat at a corner of the kitchen table to eat her shepherd’s pie. The Greenlees didn’t have a separate dining room like the Potters, but ate in the kitchen. Over the six months since they had come to Southam, Long Cottage had acquired for Tilda a pleasant familiarity. She had never before lived for so long in the same place. Nothing at Long Cottage was new; the kitchen curtains were a patchwork of dresses that Tilda had worn as a child, the cushions on the settle were made of jumble sale finds and segments of one of Aunt Sarah’s vast petticoats. Tilda recalled the Potters’ bathroom. Fluffy pink towels and matching soap and talc. The scent of the soap still lingered on Tilda’s hands: she sniffed them surreptitiously. She and Aunt Sarah washed using cold water from the jug on their washstands, and bathed in a tin bath in the kitchen.

Tilda poked the shepherd’s pie around her plate with her fork, and wriggled in her seat.

‘Eat up, child. Waste not, want not.’ Sarah Greenlees kneaded the dough.

‘Waste not, want not’ was Aunt Sarah’s favourite saying. Her second favourite was ‘Look after the pennies, and the pounds
will take care of themselves.’ Tilda scraped up the remains of the shepherd’s pie, wolfed it down, and rinsed the plate under the tap. Then she ran outside.

She fed the hens and collected the eggs to sell to the shop the following morning. She was allowed to keep half the egg money. Then she weeded between the rows of vegetables, singing to herself as she worked. By the time she had finished, dark, twilit fingers had begun to creep across the sky. Tilda flung off her apron, and ran out of the garden, through the village, along the path by the church that led to the dike. On the bank, she lay on her back in the grass, staring up at the sky. The pink and gold clouds, patterned like a fish’s scales, were doubled in the waters of the dike. Tilda closed her eyes, and let herself slowly roll down the bank to the field, gathering speed as she tumbled. Dizzy, laughing, she dug her fingers into the soil to help herself sit up. The tip of her forefinger touched something hard and cold. Scrabbling at the earth, she drew out a small metal disc.

When she scraped away the impacted soil and polished it with the hem of her skirt, she saw that it was a coin. The coin was lumpy and of uneven thickness, and she recognized neither the face impressed on it, nor the battered ancient script. There was a small hole drilled near the rim. Tilda fished in her pocket for a length of string, and threaded it through the coin. As she strung it round her neck, she muttered to herself, ‘Grant that no hobgoblins fright me, no hungry devils rise up and bite me,’ and crossed her fingers for luck. Then she lay back on the scented grass and thought again of the man outside the Fox and Hounds.

Emily insisted Tilda walk home with her each evening, before cycling to Southam. Three days passed, and they saw only the fat publican, greeting the brewer’s dray. Emily was distraught.

‘He was probably just passing through, on his way to London, or somewhere exciting. No-one interesting lives in Ely.’

But on the fourth day, they saw him again.

‘Oh Lord,’ Emily muttered. ‘Oh Lord. Come and stand close to me, Tilda, so I can put my lipstick on without him seeing.’
Emily rummaged in her handbag and drew out a lipstick and powder compact. ‘“Practically Peony”,’ she whispered to Tilda, between dabs at her mouth. ‘Too gorgeous, isn’t it? Mummy would kill me. Have some – no—’ Emily gave a little scream. ‘Too late. He’s coming. Oh
Lord.’

A voice said, ‘Can I give you ladies a hand? You look awful laden up,’ and Emily whispered, ‘Irish.
Divine.’

He was tall, green-eyed, his curly black hair just touching the collar of his white shirt. ‘I don’t mean to intrude,’ he said ‘but I’ve seen you both once or twice and feel I almost know you already. My name’s Daragh Canavan.’ He held out his hand. ‘Let me help you with that bag, Miss …?’