The Lost Garden (27 page)

‘Perhaps you can call in to see your mother in Ballina,’ Biddy said, within François’s earshot, ‘on your way to Dublin?’

‘That would be an excellent idea, Biddy,’ François said. ‘It would be a good thing to get her “blessing”, yes?’

Aileen knew her mother would be delighted to see her land on the doorstep with a betrothed. Biddy, John Joe and François all felt this was the best thing for her, and although she was not certain of her feelings for him, she also knew that she had to move on with her life. Aileen could not stay dreaming of Jimmy forever; she had to get on with her life and in order to do that she had to leave the garden and the island. It was the only way to expiate the demons of her father’s and brothers’ deaths. The only way was to keep moving forward.

As Dr Freud explained in his book, the only thing that was stopping her was the irrational fears of her own mind.

If only she could believe that this agoraphobia was all that it was, and that there wasn’t something more powerful at play.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Jimmy opened his eyes and his head was filled with a blinding light. Was he dead? Was this heaven? If it was, it hurt like hell.

As his eyes adjusted and the familiar institutional green of a cotton curtain came into view, he realized he was in a hospital. Was he still recovering from the burns? No – he remembered the pain from before, and if he remembered it, that meant it wasn’t still there, which meant this must be a different hospital and a different time. The effort of working it out made him close his eyes again, but the light from the bulb above his head seared through his closed lids. Goodness but his head hurt. He felt nauseous and tried to sit up, but his limbs hurt too. Not in the sharp way from before, but a dull muscle ache. He felt his stomach heave, but there was nothing inside to come up, just a vague, empty stabbing feeling. He remembered he hadn’t eaten for days: he had ordered spaghetti in Manzini’s, but he had seen the picture of Aileen in the paper before it arrived.

Aileen – he had lost her and he felt the pain of that drench his spirits like a wave of acid. He remembered then how he had gone back to his room and taken two, three, how many phials of morphine? He had not been thinking about killing himself –
he had just wanted to kill the pain – but by God, he wished he was dead now.

‘Hello, old man.’

Anthony was here. He remembered everything now: how he had upset that man’s sick wife, that he had stolen drugs from his boss. He did not want to see Anthony. He did not want to see anyone. He wanted to get up and run away, but it was too late now. Why hadn’t he done the job right and killed himself? Whatever was ahead of him now, he could not face it. He could not take any more disappointment or pain. Jimmy Walsh realized that was all that his life had amounted to these past few months: a series of false hopes followed by disappointments and pain. There was no doubt in his mind that he was better off dead, and as soon as Anthony Irvine had said what had to be said, and done to him whatever he was going to do, he was going to go off and do the job right. He would find the highest spot in London, maybe St Paul’s Cathedral, and throw himself off the top of it and be done.

When Anthony Irvine had called round to Jimmy’s to collect his money that night, he had not expected to find the scene before him. His young charge was stretched out on the floor; his mouth was stretched open in a grimace that highlighted his already macabre appearance, five emptied phials of morphine – enough to kill a horse – on the floor beside him. Anthony thought the boy was dead. His initial reaction was one of panic – the drugs! The chest! But then the boy’s burned and disfigured face drew him back.

Anthony had earned his scar; there was no doubting that: when the bomb had exploded on the beach and he had fallen on the sharp rock, slashing his face, it had certainly hurt like
hell. However, the physical pain he had experienced, even though it was in an act of heroism in which he had saved hundreds of lives and for which he had been publically rewarded, was nothing like the carnage that had been wreaked on this lad’s face in his brave pursuit to save ten men who were already dead.

When they gave Anthony his medal, he couldn’t wait to get back out there and prove himself again. Everyone thought he was a great man and he wanted more of it. Anthony was a born hero: saving people’s lives was what he did. They brought him to McIndoe, but he said he didn’t need any reconstruction – everything would grow back fine, which it did. Within four weeks Anthony Irvine looked battered but more or less back together and insisted on going straight back out into the field. His wound was barely healed by the time he was sent out on his next mission, but then he was a hero – what did people expect? An army psychologist examined him and felt that, given the severity of the explosion he had experienced, it was too early to put Irvine out directly into a warzone: his nerves might crack. Anthony assured his commanding officer that he was fine – stronger than ever. So when a promising young naval officer, Jack Hart, was taking a vessel out along the Irish Sea to disarm some errant mines that the Paddies were complaining they could see floating about their coastline willy-nilly, Irvine’s bosses decided this would be a good introduction back into the field for him. Nothing too exciting, a soft intro back into the war. After all, disarming British mines was something he could do with his hands tied behind his back.

The two officers headed off in the boat and got on well enough, although Anthony felt this was a bit of a comedown for him and he resented somewhat being sent out on what felt like a baby-minding mission with a novice.

They sailed out, found the first mine and pulled it gently up
to the back of the boat. While Jack went to check the engine, Anthony found himself staring at the rusted sphere: petrified. His hands shook as he forced himself to open the thing, and when he opened the mine and saw the wires and tried to fathom what went where, it was like a switch in his brain flicked.

Anthony knew he had lost his nerve, but he told nobody.

Only he knew about the nights when his body jerked awake with the memory of his pain on the beach as the shard of stone had seared through his cheek. Only he could remember the thunder of a large explosion reverberating through every vein, every muscle, every nerve in his body, snapping the very core of him in half so that he could never be fully repaired. The person he had become, the fearful shadow version of himself, could be disguised, painted over, but no matter how much he lied to himself about it, he would never be the same man again.

He pretended he was fine because he hoped that, once he got back out there, the hero magic would kick in. Only Anthony knew that it was
his
faltering hand,
his
fear in handling the explosives, in doing his ordinary job of disarming a mine – the thing he was trained to do and had done a thousand times before – that had caused the young naval officer Jack Hart’s death. It had been
his
voice that had refused to make a sound when he opened his mouth to call out the warning to the young officer. With seconds to spare, Anthony had panicked: he jumped and swam and left the young officer to be blown to smithereens.

When he himself was found and rescued by the Irish coast-guard, clinging to the wreckage of their blown boat, Anthony knew Jack Hart was dead, but he could not admit what he had done – even to himself.

He told the Irish coastal guard Dan Murphy that he was certain Jack was still alive.

He made them search and search, and when the body did
finally turn up, he was not shocked that Jack was dead – only that his body was still in one piece. The power of the blast must have thrown him whole in the air. Perhaps he jumped after Anthony but had not got as far.

Anthony took his pension after that. Even a hero could only do so much active service. He told them the mine was faulty and that it had been shoddy workmanship that had killed his friend. Somebody was bound to ask how he had escaped the blast when his friend hadn’t, so he went with the story that they had both jumped at the same time.

Anthony set about turning the army pay-off into more money. He was, after all, a war hero now – he had a medal. Aside from being a hero, making money was the only thing Anthony could think of to make himself feel better, to help him forget. Anthony could charm everyone but himself, so that’s what he did. He found a couple of girls willing to work for him in exchange for generous salaries and protection. He inveigled himself into the lucrative underground homosexual scene in Percy’s; he dabbled with drugs. Jimmy had been a real godsend because he’d been getting fed up with the delivery rounds and dealing with the customers. So Anthony Irvine became an arch spiv and lived out his seamy fantasies without giving much thought as to how he had come to be doing what he was doing until he found himself confronted with the possibly dead body of a young, disfigured Irishman who, like young Jack Hart, had fallen into his charge.

When he saw the twisted figure, the shattered cheek resting in a puddle of bile, what struck Anthony Irvine was not the pitiful sight in front of him but the cruelty in his own grotesque nature that had allowed this situation to happen – perhaps even encouraged it.

After all, Anthony had been invincible himself once: fear had turned him cowardly, and that cowardice had turned into
bitterness and greed. He fed the bitterness and greed to keep it alive so he wouldn’t see what was underneath it.

What was underneath it was the body of Jimmy Walsh: a brave young man, broken.

One part of Anthony Irvine – the drug-dealing pimp part, the man who had jumped ship and left a man to die – thought of clearing any trail of evidence leading the young Irishman to him from the room and walking away.

Then there was the other part of him, the man who had cleared a beach and carried a German bomb on his shoulder to save the lives of complete strangers. The man who had given little thought to his own well-being in the service of others until the unthinkable happened and he had discovered that he was as human and vulnerable as those people he was serving to protect.

Establishing that Jimmy was alive, he dragged him out of the small room and into the hallway, closing the door on the drugs. He called for an ambulance on the phone in the hall and then walked his young friend round on his dead limp legs until they came, to try and get him to regain consciousness.

He then went to the hospital with him and waited. He told the hospital staff that he was a neighbour of the young man and that he had called to find him in this state. He planted a couple of phials in his pockets so they would have enough evidence to know what was wrong with him – then he went back to Jimmy’s bedsit and cleared out the rest of the drugs.

It was two days before Jimmy came round from his morphine coma and Anthony was there, waiting, when he woke up.

‘Why did you do it, mate?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry about the morphine, Anthony. I’ll pay you back. Every penny.’

Anthony waved his apologies aside.

‘Why did you take all those phials? What were you thinking of? Be honest with me, Jimmy . . .’

Anthony had to ask, even though he was somewhat afraid of the answer the lad might give. If Jimmy told him the truth – about how he had been so miserably corrupted and addicted as a result of Anthony’s vile exploitation of his innocence – it could be the truth that might save him from himself. Perhaps it might even turn him back into a hero. Hell, he’d saved the boy’s life in the past two days – he was halfway there already!

Jimmy took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s my girl, in Ireland . . .’

Anthony almost laughed out loud – partly from relief. All this drama for a girl? God, the Irish were a romantic bunch.

‘She’s met somebody else.’

‘Has she married him?’

‘No . . . Maybe . . . I don’t know.’

‘Well, then you must go to her at once and find out, and if she hasn’t married him yet, you must claim her. And if he
has
married her, then you must take her anyway!’

‘I-I can’t,’ Jimmy stammered. He was confused that Anthony had not brought up the stealing. ‘My job, the money – I can’t go back.’

‘Ah yes,’ Anthony said, ‘I forgot to say – you’re fired, so here’s your passage back to Ireland and some back pay.’

Anthony handed him an envelope. There was a lot of money in there. Jimmy knew by the thickness of the envelopes Anthony traded in. Anthony was right to sack him, but there was no need to pay him off.

The older man placed the white wedge on the bed and nodded at it. ‘Once the doctors told me you’d be back on your feet, I took the liberty of booking you a ticket home. The train leaves Victoria tomorrow.’

Jimmy did not question being sent home. Some part of him, perhaps, knew it was the right thing.

‘She wouldn’t have me anyway – I’m so ugly.’

‘You’ll get uglier if you stay here,’ Anthony said.‘Well, goodbye, old chap.’

He took up his hat and was about to put it on to say his final goodbye and leave when he paused.

‘Let me tell you something, Jimbo,’ he said, pointing his hat at the young man’s face, and then before he spoke, he closed his eyes, paused again as if changing his mind, then eventually blurted out, ‘It takes more courage for a man to face who he is than anything else. Medals, bombs, trying to save men from a burning building – all those acts of bravery don’t mean anything if a man can’t be who he is.

‘You might be an ugly bastard, Jim, but be a man – go and face her anyway.’ Then as he turned and headed out the door, Jimmy heard him say, more to himself than him, ‘You’ll be more of a man than I’ll ever be,’ before he headed back to his girls and his drugs in Soho.

Chapter Forty

‘Is that all you’re bringing?’

The women were all in the gardener’s cottage saying goodbye to Aileen the night before her big move to Dublin. Biddy had had an awful job getting rid of François for the night: that young man seemed to have no understanding whatsoever of social etiquette. Women sometimes liked to gather on their own and it was the same with men. Maybe it was because he was French, but he was always hanging around Aileen’s skirt tails. In the end, Biddy forced him on John Joe, who bluntly informed him they were going drinking in the hotel, even though neither man drank – although François was such awkward company John Joe seriously thought about taking it up for the evening.

As the women trooped in, Aileen’s small case was already sitting by the door. She had packed only a few changes of clothes and her two gardening books. She would wear the dress and jacket John Joe had made for her on the journey, as François had arranged for them to get married on the evening they arrived in Dublin in a church near Kingsbridge Station. ‘In this way we can go straight back to my lodgings and save booking into separate rooms.’ It made sense.

Carmel gave the case a disparaging poke with her foot on her way in.

‘That’s not much of a trousseau!’

Aileen had come to realize that Carmel did not mean any nastiness with her harsh tone: it was simply the way that she was. In the same way that she herself could be withdrawn and, at times, sharp, Carmel was blunt in her manner. Everyone was different. Aileen had learned to look behind the facade. People were a lot like plants, she thought – plain, pretty, spiky or smooth. What you saw on the surface seemed to be everything and yet each living thing, even something as small and simple as a daisy, had a complex and miraculous life force pushing through it. Younger plants, like people, were tender and needed more care; older ones grew tougher skins and, sometimes, very sharp thorns. In the end, none of it mattered. No matter what people thought or felt, in the end we were all just vessels for the frenetic activity humming within us – life itself. A blade of grass and a woman, both could have the life crushed out of them. One by the simple stamping of a foot, the other by the cruel turns of life itself.

Aileen felt she had lost everyone she loved in her life and that was how she had come to love plants more than people. François was the only other person who seemed to understand that. She and he had a good friendship, so even if her heart was not entirely in tune with her head, she kept telling herself she would grow to love him as time went on.

‘Carmel, watch your tongue!’ her mother said then, with the other women gathered behind her. She came over and presented Aileen with a box. ‘A wedding gift,’ she said, ‘from all of us.’

She peeled back the newspaper and inside the box was a piece of tapestry depicting the flowers from her garden, including the fat, rather ugly pod of their new discovery.

‘We all did one,’ Carmel said, ‘
even
Attracta – and she’s got two left hands.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Aileen said, and she didn’t. Nobody had ever given her a gift like this before.

‘I think “thank you” is what you are looking for,’ said Biddy, afraid she’d fall out with them all – again.

Aileen was speechless and just looked at each of them and smiled. She was beyond sad to be leaving, not just her garden, she realized, but all of them. The garden had become her lifeblood, and these women, and their nurturing and their work and their soft company, had become a part of her too.

They ate heartily that evening. After the women left, Aileen went to her glasshouse to spend her last night there, her last night alone. She was dreading the next day. She had no idea how she was going to get out of the garden, never mind across the island and over the bridge. François had assured her that her fears were irrational, that although her terror felt real, it was all in her mind and that he would be with her every step of the way. François promised he would catch her and put her back together if she fell apart – which in her heart she knew she certainly would.

Aileen lay on the horsehair mattress and looked up at the navy sky and the dark grey shadows of the clouds moving across it: the world turning. She fell asleep listening to the crinkle of the vine leaves as they stretched and curled in the cooling of the day and the murmur of growth coursing through their stems: the sounds nobody else could hear.

Jimmy did not know if it was the wrong thing or the right thing to follow Anthony’s advice, but he did know that he did not have a great deal of choice in the matter. He briefly toyed with the idea of going back up to Camden Town and taking his chances on the buildings again, or even throwing himself at Percy and seeing if the homosexual club owner might fix him
up with some work, but in his heart of hearts, Jimmy knew that he had to get on that boat back home.

‘Do you love her?’ Anthony had said.

Jimmy loved Aileen; he knew that more than ever now. But he also knew that he had all but lost her. Like he had said to Mr 7 Winchester Close, he was a man with nothing to lose. He may as well go back and face Aileen and finally know where he stood. He would show Aileen his face and have her reject him or pity him or put whatever other heartbreak was coming his way in front of him, because until she did, Jimmy would still hold on to the tiniest shred of hope that she might still love him. Having hope, he had come to think, was the cruellest thing of all. Without hope, there was no pain. Without hope, he could be the shambling failure he was and live out his days hiding himself away in his parents’ house on their small island. He could let loneliness fill his pockets with stones and drag him down to the seabed for all he cared.

Jimmy got off the boat in Dublin Port, then walked to Kingsbridge and boarded the next train to Westport. From there, in his London suit and with money in his pocket, he had no problem getting a taxi as far as Illaunmor.

‘Where do you want to go on the island, son?’ the driver asked.

Jimmy didn’t know.

They were at the bridge, and as the driver pulled up, Jimmy began to shake with fear. Aileen was somewhere on this island. He had been driven here by some strange despondent longing placed in him by Anthony. Jimmy had come for the want of anything else to do, anywhere else to go. It felt like this was the end of the line. If Aileen rejected him, his worst fears for himself would be realized, and she would, surely, reject him.

‘Is there someone in particular you’re looking for, son?’ the
driver asked again. ‘If you give me a name, I’ll probably know where to find them.’

‘No,’ Jimmy said quickly, ‘nobody in particular. You can just let me out here.’

Agoraphobia is a very serious condition, a kind of madness, and the behaviour of people suffering with this could be very extreme. François knew that and yet he had not bargained for Aileen’s reaction when he took her out of her garden.

Although he was happy to pay for a car to come and take them from the garden all the way to Westport, John Joe and Biddy had insisted on taking the horse and cart as far as the bridge. François had conceded, even though he felt that the less they had to get in and out of vehicles, the easier it would be for Aileen, but it seemed these island people were full of all sorts of superstitions and customs that he was expected to go along with, even if it was just for Aileen’s sake. In truth, he had started to find them a little annoying. Very annoying, actually. The quicker he got his wife-to-be away from this backward place and into the civilized world of culture and academia and the everyday machinations of city life, the better.

When Aileen reached the wall of the garden, it was as if her body was being filled with the black toxic smoke of the fire that had destroyed her life, that the despair had filtered into her very organs from her soul and was poisoning her from the inside out. Her mind kept telling her it was all right, move, move, move forward, but the rest of her did not believe it. As had been the case on the day her mother left and she had been unable to cross the bridge, every fibre of her being seemed to be hauling her back into the safe confines of her garden. To the others, she simply turned into stone. Short of tugging her or lifting her – neither of which he wanted to do for the sake of their dignity
and his pride (was he forcing her to leave after all?) – François had the idea of asking her to shut her eyes. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Nothing bad is going to happen.’ Gently her fiancé led her as far as the cart, where John Joe lifted her in.

As they drove through the island, Aileen became more and more distressed, moaning and rocking and digging her long fingers into François’s arm so hard that he feared her nails might cut through the fabric of his wool jacket. ‘Breathe deeply,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s all in your mind, Aileen. There is no danger. Your fear is irrational – it is not real.’ His reassurances didn’t seem to be working, and by the time they were within sight of the bridge, François was beginning to get seriously concerned about whether he was doing the right thing. Firstly in taking Aileen off the island – perhaps she was more entrenched in these naive tribal customs than he had thought – but also her behaviour was making him wonder if he wanted to marry somebody who was quite possibly more unstable than he had realized. Aileen was beautiful and she had an innate understanding of botany and was undoubtedly gifted with a talent for plants, but really, he was beginning to think that the girl did not have a rational bone in her body. He had supposed he loved her because he had never experienced the feelings of warmth or companionship with anyone else, and Aileen was mesmerizingly beautiful – like the most exotic flower. However, this, this
carry-on
, as he had heard Irish people describe indescribable behaviour, was not something he had bargained for when he had asked her to marry him.

‘I can’t do it, François. I can’t. I can’t cross the bridge,’ and she threw her head onto his shoulder, afraid to look up.

‘You’ll be fine – really. Everything will be fine, Aileen.’

Biddy looked back and gave him such a look, like this was all his fault, which, in a manner of speaking, it was. John Joe
pulled the cart over to the side of the road. These two people cared for Aileen a great deal and François could see that they loved her. He thought about his own parents and how they worried about him.

‘I’ll be good to her,’ he said to John Joe. ‘She’ll be happy with me. I promise you I will make her happy. She’ll be fine once we get onto the train. I am sure of it.’

He was sure of no such thing.

Aileen’s body beside him had gone from tense and stiff to shaking and limp, almost as if she was too exhausted to fight anymore, as if the fear had won. François led her from the seat to John Joe, who gingerly lifted her body down like a child and put her standing on the ground by the bridge. François took her arm and readied himself to walk her across, but as he did, Aileen lifted her face and he saw a change move across her. She cocked her head to one side and seemed to be looking intently at something on the other side of the bridge.

As François followed her stare, he saw a figure, some thirty feet away at the end of the slatted path, making strange movements around his head. Aileen was momentarily mesmerized and calm. Curious himself, François let go of her and quickly slipped on his strong glasses. As he looked across, he saw there was a man who was peeling a mask from his face. Before he could fully comprehend the grotesque disfigurement of the man’s face beneath the mask, François’s senses were overwhelmed with a scent so powerful, so sweet that he thought he might fall to the ground in a dead faint.

This was the first day that the women had been in the garden without Biddy or Aileen. Each of them was determined to keep things ticking along as normally as possible. Attracta Collins had taken charge of the kitchen and was lighting the outdoor
fire ready to put on the stew that Biddy had prepared for them, while Noreen swept the cobbles. Even though Biddy had left everything perfect for them, the women were determined that she would come back from her ordeal of saying goodbye to Aileen and find the place . . . well, even more perfect than when she had left it. All the other women were in the vegetable garden, picking and preparing their produce for the day.

‘Shh,’ Attracta said. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘What?’ said Noreen.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, confused herself. ‘A sort of . . . nothing?’

The silence was eerie. The sounds of nature – bees buzzing, birds tweeting and leaves rustling – had entirely stopped. The almost indiscernible symphonies of nature that we feel more than hear – sap rising, the fluttering chatter of flowers, woodlice scrabbling, worms burrowing – had also ground to a halt.

Into the unnatural silence came a noise from the vegetable garden: a low moan from the women calling out together. Noreen and Attracta rushed towards the others, but as they reached the edge of the low-walled beds, they hit a wall of perfume so strong and sweet that it stopped them in their tracks. Their mothers and sisters were kneeling on the ground, gazing in awe at the sight in front of them.

The pods of all ten plants had flowered simultaneously and their open leaves were sending a fragrance out across the entire island so sublime that afterwards there was only one description that any of the islanders who were there that day could put to it: pure love.

Aileen immediately realized the figure was Jimmy. Her legs, which had been so obstinate, were suddenly filled with flight as she ran towards him. She ran with the lightness and speed of wind
in a summer storm. The bridge, the sea and her fear all crumbled to ash in the backdraught of her urgency to be with him.

Without words she threw herself into his arms and he gathered her up as if she were as light and as beautiful as an armful of forest bluebells.

‘Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy . . .’ She said it over and over again until each word caught the tail of the last and sent a thread of tunes skywards to catch the very sun.

‘I’m back,’ he said. ‘I told you I’d come back,’ but he was crying so hard that he just held her until he was able to gather himself.