The Lost Garden (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

After two days’ travelling, Jimmy arrived in Camden Town.

He had found the journey to London much more gruelling than the journey to Scotland had been. Most of the passengers on the boat were male, and every one of them was going to England in search of work.

While he himself was comfortable travelling on the rough sea, within twenty minutes of the ship sailing out of Dublin Port everyone around him was vomiting wildly. An hour into the ten-hour boat journey and the upstairs deck was swimming in sick.

While the inside of the boat was worse again, the makeshift bar was the worst of all. The few seats were permanently occupied by the more seasoned passengers, who had drunk themselves into a stupefied state before getting on board, while the rest of the space was filled with men in the midst of a drinking and vomiting cycle as they drank more and more to try and ease the discomfort of their swaying insides.

It was savagery the likes of which Jimmy had never seen before and hoped he would never see again. It seemed that while the shipping company was happy to sell drink to their Paddy passengers, they felt less obliged to provide them with proper seating or toilet facilities. Indeed, as Jimmy noted to himself while wandering through the boat looking for somewhere to
settle himself for an hour, even a few carefully placed buckets would have achieved a lot.

He was glad to get off the boat and onto the train at Holyhead, and although it was packed to its lid with everyone from the boat, most of the passengers used this leg of the journey to sleep off the excesses of the boat.

Jimmy lay down on a corridor floor and slept using his small knapsack as a pillow. He had brought very little with him. On his last journey to Scotland, his mother had packed his bag. This time, she had not even come to the door.

‘She’s stricken with grief,’ Sean had said to him, handing him his knapsack and ten pounds. ‘She doesn’t want you to go.’

Jimmy was not happy that his father had borrowed the ten pounds he needed, but he had no choice, so he took it.

‘I’ll send back as soon as I can, Da,’ he said.

‘Never mind that – just come back soon and in one piece.’

‘In one piece.’ He’d been in one piece when he left the last time, but the fire in Scotland had claimed a part of his face and now he was going to get it back. Jimmy had a little hope in his heart again. He would earn a fortune working as a navvy on the buildings, and this doctor Anthony had told him about would fix up his face. Then he would come home good as new. Better even than he had been before, because now he’d be a man of the world: strong, mature and rich – ready to go and claim his own true love.

‘You do know England’s not all it’s cracked up to be?’ Sean had said.

‘You mean the streets aren’t really paved with gold?’ Jimmy joked.

‘Be careful, son.’

Somewhere in the bottom of his heart, Jimmy believed that, for him at least, they might just be.

Jimmy had been in London for less than an hour and he liked it already. It was early morning when they disembarked from the train at Victoria Station and there were hundreds of people rushing past each other in straight lines, determinedly going about their business. Jimmy had never experienced anything like this before. This was not the shuffling, murmuring crowd of a boat queue, where everyone looked the same and was going to the same place, for the same reason. Here, each person was different from the next: a man in a pinstripe suit with a bowler hat and a briefcase; a woman in a smart dress, the likes of which you might see only on a doctor’s wife in Mass once a year; ordinary girls in plain dresses; men, like himself, in working clothes; a lady selling flowers; a cockney man waving papers in his hand and doing transactions with passing customers while scarcely acknowledging them and with them scarcely missing a step. He saw a man with skin as black as coal; then within a minute he saw another – two black men in the same place in as many minutes and nobody paying them one bit of heed, as if such a sight was a commonplace thing. He stood for a moment and watched the scene in front of him. All these people rushing hither and thither, all in a mad rush to get somewhere yet nobody talking, or touching or stopping to notice each other at all. Everyone here was minding their own business.

On the boat, he had been plagued with men asking about his face, and one drunkard had tried to take the mask off him. Although some others had stepped in to defuse the situation, Jimmy had felt violated by their questions and gawking. Irish people wanted to know everything about you. That was just the way his countrymen were, and that was fine as long as you were Invincible Jim – the dandy man – ahead of the crew. Now he found their questions intrusive and upsetting.

Suddenly, standing on the concourse at Victoria Station, all that was gone. He was just a man in a mask, nobody paying him any heed at all. This was a great place altogether. This was a place where a man could get on with things and not be bothered.

He had at first thought that he should stop somebody and ask directions to Camden Town, but now he decided that if all these people could work out where they were going, it couldn’t be that hard. Sure enough, across the concourse, he spotted what looked like a map jutting up on a pillar out of the ground. Negotiating his way across the flitting bodies, he found it was not an ordinary map but some class of a diagram for the ‘London Underground Railway’. Various coloured lines mapped out train lines and Jimmy quickly found Camden Town among them. Now all he had to do was find the train. He stood for a moment, then simply allowed himself to be swept along by the crowd around him, streaming down a wide stairwell, at the bottom of which he joined the queue at a booth selling tickets. Within seconds he was in front of a man behind a window.

‘Camden Town,’ he said, passing over a shilling and hoping for the best. The man gave him back his change without even looking up at him. This was surely the best place in the world – but there was more to come.

After showing his ticket to another uniformed guard, Jimmy was astonished to see that the crowd in front of him seemed to be disappearing in a strange, smooth downward movement into the bowels of the earth. His stomach churned with a mixture of excitement and dread as he followed them, stepping onto a shaking slat of wood and metal, part of a moving stairwell that descended in a mechanical motion down into a tiled cavern below. He stood, part of the silent crowd in a curved well-lit
cave, and looked across to the straight-line diagram in front of him – the colour of the Blessed Virgin’s cloak – with the names of the stations: Victoria, Green Park, Oxford Circus, Holborn, Russell Square – but no Camden Town.

He turned to the person next to him, a woman in a plain grey wool coat, and said, ‘Can you tell me the way to Camden Town, please?’

For a moment he saw a flash of alarm pass across her eyes and he remembered how strange he looked. ‘Change at King’s Cross,’ she said, just as the train whooshed into the station like an angry snake. Its doors flew back as if by magic. They both stepped in through its open jaws and the woman disappeared into the throng. Jimmy knew he would never see her – or, in all likelihood, any of these people with whom he was crammed at such close quarters – again. With that knowledge, Jimmy felt such a rush of freedom that when he alighted at King’s Cross as he had been told, he found himself almost skipping as he searched cave after cave, through cavernous, snaking corridors and up and down sets of endless moving stairs, for a line that said, ‘Camden Town’.

He must have walked for an hour, but Jimmy didn’t mind being lost. He was enjoying the feeling of being invisible, moving easily in and out of the crowds unnoticed.

Eventually, he got on another train and, after a short ride, found himself in Camden Town, where he followed signs for the exit and hopped on the escalator as if he had been travelling them all his life. As he reached the top of the tunnel, Jimmy felt the sting of fresh air hit the good side of his face. He looked out and saw London spread out either side of him and for the first time since he had left Aghabeg Jimmy felt slightly afraid.

Down on his left, sitting against the exit wall on a pile of abandoned newspapers, was a vagrant man nursing a bottle of wine.

He looked up at Jimmy and in a Mayo accent as broad as the shivering Atlantic asked, ‘What happened to your face?’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Life goes on
. Somebody had said that to Aileen’s mother at her father’s and brothers’ month’s mind Mass. They were standing outside the church, slightly back from the rest of the widowed families, and Nelly French, a rather large, talkative woman who lived near the church, came over to Anne and said, ‘You must be terribly lonely, Anne. Still, you have this lovely young woman for comfort –’ she squeezed Aileen’s arm ‘– and life must go on, eh?’

Anne had bristled and responded to the mourner with nothing more than an icy smile. It was among the many things Aileen had heard people say, outside Mass, in the shop – stupid, awkward things said for the want of offering some solace in the face of terrible misfortune.
They’re in heaven now with God. They’re at peace
. Pointless words that didn’t help and only served to make you feel worse. ‘Life goes on’ was a popular one and particularly pointless, Aileen felt. Of course life goes on: it was obvious we were still alive, yet this expression was supposed to mean ‘normal’ life after someone had died. It was nothing more than a myth, people wanting to believe that everything would go back to how it was before. What made that expression all the more irritating for Aileen was that in some part of her she had hoped it would be true. Even though her father and brothers
were dead, somehow she had hoped that life might go back to how it had been before they had died. That was what Aileen had been trying to make happen: recreating her world as it had been before she had brought this bad luck on them by travelling to Scotland. Clearing the garden, painting the cottage, trying to make things ‘normal’ again. Then her mother had run away on her and changed everything.

Aileen decided that the only way she could approach this dramatic change in her circumstances was to change everything around her. She felt dead inside. That would never change – not now. Her family were either dead or had abandoned her. Jimmy was a memory too painful to accommodate. The dark, anxious feeling she had now was who she was; there was a permanence about it; the fire, its destruction and death had branded her. Her only hope for survival now was to change everything about her life and never go back. She would never be happy again, not deep down, not how she had been when playing on the beach with her brothers as a child or kissing Jimmy as a young woman. But Aileen could, she found, at least pretend to be happy when she was around John Joe and the children, and for all that it was a lie, it was better than the black despair she knew she would fall into if she went back home alone.

So Aileen did not go back to her cottage; she stayed living with the farmer and his niece and nephew. She joined in their simple, ordered life as if she had always been there: cleaning the house and preparing the meals while he worked on the farm, sitting in front of the fire reading to the children in the evenings and sharing a bed with Mary, who was particularly thrilled to have her there, although Ruari and John Joe were equally welcoming.

A week after she moved in, John Joe offered to take her back to the cottage to get some more clothes. Aileen told him that
her mother had taken all of her clothes with her in the case. He went to the wardrobe in his room and took out a large trunk, opened it and began pulling out piles upon piles of women’s clothing – dresses, skirts and blouses, even a woman’s coat.

‘They belonged to my late sister-in-law,’ he said. ‘She won’t be needing them now. I knew they’d come in handy one day!’

He held up one enormous coat; Aileen could have fitted into it three times over!

‘Maisie was a substantial woman,’ he said, and they both laughed. ‘She couldn’t find clothes big enough to fit her in the shops, and she was too embarrassed to go to the dressmaker, so she made most of these herself, which meant –’ with great aplomb John Joe whipped a woollen blanket from a corner table and revealed a shiny black and gold Singer ‘– she had a sewing machine, complete with a double foot-pedal. As complex and brilliant a piece of machinery as any you’ll find on the farm. We could do some alterations? Make you a dress?’ He said it with such an air of keen hopefulness, as if it were she doing him a favour instead of the other way round, that Aileen laughed again.

Over the coming days, after the chores on the farm were done and the supper things were put away, John Joe fashioned Aileen a whole new wardrobe out of poor dead Maisie’s clothes. The fabric was of varying quality, but it seemed that John Joe was something of a genius on the machine. One Sunday morning, she got up early and found a tweed skirt, fashioned to the middle of her calf, and a matching jacket with a perfectly fitted nipped-in waist laid out on a chair at the end of the bed, along with a yellow blouse that from the soft feel of it had been made of silk.

‘You’ll be good for Mass now,’ John Joe said, when she put it on and twirled round the kitchen.

Aileen said nothing, then felt bad when he quickly took his words back, saying, ‘Of course – when you’re ready.’

Three Sundays had passed since her mother had run away and Aileen had not joined John Joe and the children at church. She could not face the whispers and the concerned looks. Even though the island was wild, with large tracts of uninhabited land between them and their nearest neighbours, islanders seemed to know every detail of each other’s lives. It was as if news travelled on the wind and landed itself directly into the ears of interested parties as they sat in their kitchens. However, the majority of news was discussed in the church grounds on a Sunday morning after Mass, and since the tragedy the widowed families of the Cleggan Ten were under the constant scrutiny of their neighbours. Most people meant well, and several of their neighbours had called to the cottage with food parcels and to help after she had come home. The immediate aftermath of death had now passed and given way to often arch speculation about the compensation fund. Money coming onto the island was always big news.

‘
They’ll be glad of the few bob
.’

‘
They’ve been through a lot surely
.’

‘
They’re saying there was thousands raised – more than any family could spend
.’

‘Perhaps they’ll make a donation to the church fund
. . .’

‘
Perhaps
. . .’

People never said what they meant and Aileen was her mother’s daughter insofar as she preferred to keep her business to herself.

She knew that tongues would be wagging about her mother’s disappearance and about her having moved in with John Joe. It was beyond naive to think that the whole island did not know she was living in his house, and it looked very bad on him, his going to Mass without her. Now that Aileen understood that such things were possible after her own mother’s transgression,
she could barely bring herself to speculate about what they might be saying.

Aileen did not care so much what they thought of her, but she did not want to hurt John Joe. He had acted in the way of a father to her and he deserved the best of respect for his kindness towards not just her, but his brother’s children. When the truth came out about what she had done, when she finally came clean, which she would have to do – soon – she would face whatever punishment, but John Joe was a good man and should have no part of it.

Aileen knew life would be made easier for John Joe if she were to at least be seen out with him and the children as the normal, rosary-saying, God-fearing family they were. But when she thought about walking up the aisle of the church and everyone looking at her, Aileen’s blood ran cold. She had a vague recollection of getting off the boat in Dublin and being watched by a million eyes as they walked after the coffins down the quays, although the experience seemed so distant – more like a dream than a memory.

‘Why don’t you take the children to school,’ John Joe said, ‘in the cart? They are due back tomorrow and it’ll be a way of you seeing people without . . .’ He faltered, not wanting to offend her. Not for the first time Aileen felt a stab of something like the love she had felt for her father.

‘Being
seen
?’ she said.

He nodded, still unsure.

‘That’s a splendid idea!’ Mary said.

Aileen laughed. She had been reading Enid Blyton to the children and they were both starting to talk like the English children in her books.

‘Spiffing!’ John Joe said, and it was agreed.

*

Aileen drove the children across the island to the schoolhouse. The novelty of driving alone without John Joe made the three of them so giddy that the old horse seemed to join in and go at twice his usually plodding speed. Aileen wore the smart Sunday suit and blouse John Joe had left out the day before and called, ‘Good morning!’ cheerily at the three or four carts they passed on the road. That would be enough to quieten tongues, she thought. Far from hiding herself away, Aileen was out driving the children to school, so despite what may have happened with her mother, there couldn’t be anything untoward going on. The experience passed with such ease she thought she might even make it to Mass the following Sunday.

The children hopped down from the cart and ran towards their teacher, a Miss Nolan, of whom they seemed very fond. Aileen had heard all about her; she was a spinster of not yet forty. She waved, but as the teacher walked towards the cart to talk to her, Aileen panicked and, pretending she hadn’t seen her, drove straight off. She had meant to turn the cart in the clearing outside the school, but decided to travel along for a while in the wrong direction until she was certain classes had begun so she would not be accosted again.

‘It’s a fine day,’ she said aloud, realizing that this was the first time in quite a while that she was entirely by herself and she felt happy about that. The horse plodded along the narrow road with little guidance, while Aileen looked ahead for a clearing where she might turn him round. She saw what looked like an opening up ahead, and as they grew closer, she realized they were at the gates of the big house. She had not been there since the picnic and turned up the drive with a vague curiosity.

As they reached the front of the empty house, instead of following Aileen’s instruction to turn, the horse stopped and began to munch grass from an overgrown but rather grand,
elaborate urn near the burnt-out doorway. Aileen looked at the watch John Joe had given her so she could calculate getting the children to school on time. She had a few hours before the farmer would be in for his dinner and she had left out a cold meat salad and some boxty for him anyway, so there was no need to rush back. In fact, John Joe had suggested she take the cart down to the bridge and call into the church on her way back.

‘Have a day out for yourself, Aileen,’ he had said. ‘If I don’t see you until you’re back with the children after school, there’s no harm. You might call into the shop and get yourself some sweets?’ Then he had insisted on her taking sixpence, even though she had no intention of risking seeing anyone.

She got down from the cart and loosened the bit on the horse so he could wander around. He was old and would not go far. He snorted gratefully and then continued pottering to feast on the rich, swaying grass of what must once have been a lawn.

Aileen walked through the courtyard into the garden. It had been a few weeks since they had picnicked here and it was markedly more overgrown than before, but she did not stop to consider that and headed straight for the second door, yanking down the brass handle and heading into the second walled field. So much had happened in the intervening time that Aileen had not thought about this place at all since that day, but now that she was here, she found herself compelled towards the old greenhouse. She could see that the bindweed was thriving inside, but she was nonetheless curious to see what had happened to the stem she had cleared. As she tugged open the door, she saw it straight away, standing bare, just as she had left it, defiant in the face of the creeping, chaotic weeds. More than that, the plant had miraculously sprouted soft green leaves and they opened towards her like stretched hands. Moving closer, she could see
that little fruit buds were forming – of what she did not know – but as she leaned in to smell the flowers, she could hear the source of the stem whispering three words to her, the same three words over and over in the pulse of the sap being sucked through the veins of the leaves:
Life goes on. Life goes on. Life goes on
. . .

As if propelled by its rhythm, Aileen threw off her coat and immediately, ferociously set about clearing the overgrown greenhouse.