The Lost Garden (14 page)

Jimmy thought it was funny the way Anthony spoke about being Irish with his London accent, using words like ‘chaps’ and ‘fellows’ like the actor David Niven, but it made him feel important nonetheless that this debonair officer saw himself as one of them.

He was most fascinated, though, when Anthony talked about the surgeon in England who had worked on his face.

‘It was pretty straightforward, just a few stitches really, but there’s no doubting this Archibald McIndoe fellow is a genius. He can more or less fix up any chap’s face to be as good as new. Puts them together more or less from scratch, I’ve heard – some of them come out from him better-looking than before they got blown up!’

Sean and Jimmy flinched before forcing a laugh. The explosion was still too close to home, although both men were thinking the same thing. Morag knew what they were thinking too and, as a diversion, started to grill their guest about his war experiences. Had he been to France? Where else had he been in Europe? When was he expected to go back into active service?

It turned out that Anthony Irvine was a proper war hero. As an engineer with the Royal Navy, he had both built and disarmed mines. He had sustained his injury from a bomb that had been found near a beach on the coast of England where he had been visiting on leave from his job with a bomb-disposal unit. The unexploded bomb was found by children buried under the sand. Anthony volunteered himself and got the local defence force to clear the area of people, including themselves, while he carried the bomb to a safer place, in a deep cave further down the beach. The idea was that they would cordon off that area until Anthony could return properly equipped and organize a controlled explosion. However, while he was walking back along the beach, the bomb went off. Anthony was flung forward and a flying shard of rock cut through his cheek.

‘Can’t complain,’ he said. ‘They stitched me up and it was back out again with me. Lots of chaps plenty worse off than me. Lucky to be alive.’

They had given him a medal, although Anthony didn’t tell them that. Dan, the watchman, had told Sean. When Sean mentioned this, Anthony reacted in an odd way, saying, ‘They give those bloody things to everyone. Means nothing.’

The man’s face darkened. Either he had experienced too much anguish or felt awkward talking about subjects of battle in front of Irishmen, given their own history of conflict was so recent. Either way, Morag came to his rescue.

‘Anthony doesn’t want to talk about the war, my love – we must respect a soldier’s diversions . . .’

He left shortly afterwards with Sean, who was taking him back to his digs on the mainland while there was still some light.

As soon as they were out the door, Jimmy said, ‘Did you hear what he said about the surgeon?’

Despite having done all he could to flatter and charm his
hostess, Morag had not warmed to the visitor. Now she liked him even less.

She picked up the crockery and on the way out to the scullery said quietly and firmly, ‘You are not going to England.’

Jimmy followed her. He stood at the open arch that separated the main room from the five-foot-square kitchen scullery where his mother prepared all their food and did most of her washing chores. Raging, he turned the ‘bad’ side of his face to her and said, ‘Look at me, Mam.’

She turned her face away and he held up his fist in frustration.

‘Look at me!’ His hands reached out as if he were going to grab her face in his hands and force it in his direction. Then he threw his hands down again by his sides and said, ‘Even my own mother is afraid to look at me.’

Morag fixed her eyes on the window and said in a solid, uncompromising voice, ‘You’re a stupid boy, Jimmy Walsh – go outside and fetch me in some fuel and get the fire lit before your father gets back and brains you for giving me cheek.’

When he left, Morag Walsh rested her hands on the side of the butler sink and let her chest collapse for a moment.

It was not looking upon her son’s disfigured face that had frightened her; it was the look of despair in his eyes.

Chapter Twenty-One

As they were coming back from their picnic, the same man Aileen had seen on their return from Cleggan passed them out on the road leading up to the house.

He raised his cap and smiled. Aileen waved back at him out of politeness, but John Joe didn’t greet him in return.

‘He’s a friend of my mother’s,’ Aileen said.

John Joe just grunted in reply.

Aileen added, ‘I can’t remember his name. Do you know him?’ but John Joe ignored her again.

When they came up to the house, John Joe got down from the cart and, passing Aileen her box of messages from the back, said, ‘You bring those in and send your mother out to me like a good girl. Ruari, Mary, you go inside and help Aileen unpack.’

Anne was stony-faced when Aileen told her John Joe wanted to talk to her and marched, more than walked out to him. Aileen could sense there was something badly wrong. She put on her apron and busied herself by telling the two children to go and play together in the garden, which, sensing her altered manner, they did without question. Aileen could hear from the strained tone of her mother’s and John Joe’s voices that they were arguing. It could only be about her, about something she had done or said. Perhaps John Joe had guessed from her manner when they
saw Biddy that it was
she
who had caused the fire. Perhaps he was urging her mother to have her confess to the police. Aileen felt certain that’s what it was. What else could it be? She felt a sick dread rise up in her and her hand sought out the scapular that was sewn into the pocket of her apron. Perhaps if she had taken the apron anyway, against her father’s wishes, hidden it in her bag, she might have better observed the rules of the Sacred Heart hidden within it and would not be being punished now for letting Jimmy Walsh touch her in the way that he had. For a moment Aileen entertained the terrible idea that perhaps God had punished her whole family because of her romantic transgression. Then her mother came back in and she heard John Joe whip and ‘hup’ his horse back down the boreen.

For the next few days mother and daughter resumed the choreography of their simple domestic life, moving around each other quietly as they cooked, set fires, scrubbed tables, swept floors and fed chickens. Aileen sensed that her mother was troubled, that there was something dark on her mind – something darker still than the death of her husband and sons. She was not despairing like before, but cold and thoughtful, which Aileen found even more troubling. She said nothing, but kept her mood even and continued with her chores.

On the fourth day, her mother sent Aileen running down to meet the postman on the road, where she was to give him two letters. One for Anne’s sister and the other for an office address in Dublin that Aileen did not recognize but presumed was to do with the Cleggan compensation fund.

On the fifth day, Anne slaughtered, gutted and plucked all of their six hens and left them in the cold cupboard in the scullery.

On the sixth day, she took their one remaining suitcase and filled it with her and Aileen’s clothes.

‘We are leaving,’ she said when Aileen finally asked what she
was doing. ‘We are going to stay with your aunt Eileen in Ballina. It’s for the best.’

Aileen did not ask for how long; she had never met her aunt Eileen or been to Ballina, her mother’s hometown, but she did not argue.

It was her godlessness and selfish stupidity that had caused all this. Living with strangers on the mainland was better than prison – although perhaps prison was what she deserved. In truth, Aileen did not care where she lived or with whom anymore. She had caused the death of her family. Her life was over.

John Joe collected them. Anne loaded the six dead chickens and the rest of their perishable food into the back of his wagon, and he gave her cursory thanks and said he would distribute the chickens among their neighbours before they turned. Beyond that, John Joe and Anne did not speak for the rest of the journey, despite sitting next to each other at the front of the cart. Anne’s head was held high and her back stiff and unmoving. John Joe was, in truth, their only friend on the island and it sickened Aileen to think she had drawn such a wedge between him and her family in this way. Aileen chatted busily to Mary and Ruari, talking about going on her ‘great adventure to the mainland’ and assuring them she would be back before long. It was a total pretence, and the naturalness with which she was able to maintain the lie to these two gullible children made Aileen all the more certain that she was a thoroughly bad person.

‘But
why
are you going, Aileen?’ Mary pleaded.

‘Because I have a rich, important aunt living in great style in the big town and I want to see how it is to live like a grand lady for a while!’

Aileen wished for her mother to turn round and smile at her version of events so that her mother’s approval might make it true, but she did not. Both Anne and John Joe sat looking ahead
at the mountain and the bogs and the flat sea beyond, unmoving and silent against the lines and undulations of the landscape ahead – estranged from each other yet united in their stoicism.

The car Anne’s sister, Eileen, had sent for them was waiting on the mainland side of the bridge. Anne and Aileen had to walk across, as John Joe’s old nag would not cross the bridge. The animal had become island-bound; it happened to humans and animals alike – a kind of inbuilt instinct that something bad would happen if they crossed water.

As John Joe took down the case from the back of the cart and she and Anne stood at the mouth of the bridge, Aileen found herself saying, ‘I’m not going.’

Her mother turned to her. ‘Don’t be silly, Aileen – hurry on. John Joe has to get back. Look –’ she pointed across to a dark brown vehicle parked on the other side ‘– Eileen’s car is waiting.’

Aileen was not certain what had come over her, except that her feet were locked to the ground. As she tried to move forward, she felt a terrible dread holding her back; it was as if she were on the edge of a cliff and her mother was urging her to step off it into a crevice so deep she could not see the bottom.

‘Come on, Aileen,’ her mother said. ‘What’s come over you at all?’

John Joe took her arm and tried to walk her forward, but she threw it off sharply.

‘I’m not coming with you.’

The words came out with a clarity that shocked even Aileen herself. She was not sure that she even meant to say them, but once she had, she knew they were true. ‘I am staying here.’

Aileen’s head was telling her to follow her mother, yet there was another, higher instinct holding her back. Some physical force inside had her paralysed.

Anne was raging and came back and grabbed her arm.

‘You are coming with me, young woman, and that is that. For God’s sake, what will Eileen think?’

Aileen looked at Anne. Her mother looked tired and worn; the two of them should be back in the cottage trying to rebuild their lives together after the terrible thing that had happened. Aileen knew that she had caused her mother all this worry and distress, and it wasn’t fair, all this upheaval.

‘Stay, Mam – let’s stay here. We can face this together.’

Anne’s face contorted with horror and shock when she said that, but Aileen felt relieved that her terrible truth was almost out. ‘I know this has been all my fault, Mam, but I’ll make it right – I promise I will. Let’s stay in our own home. I don’t care what anyone says about me, Mam – I don’t want to leave the island, and you’re only doing this for me.’

‘I can’t,’ her mother said, and she grabbed the case and ran towards the car without another word.

Aileen was speechless. What was going on? Was Anne expecting her to chase after her? Did her mother assume that in running, Aileen would surely be behind her?

Aileen looked across the bridge, stunned, as her mother bundled herself and the suitcase into the back of the car. The car started, turned and drove off along the mainland road without her mother giving her as much as a backward glance.

John Joe put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed it with his large hand in a gesture of comfort.

Her mother had abandoned her? Surely not.

Aileen shook her head in disbelief. She did not understand what was happening. Why would her mother run away like this? She knew what she had done was terrible, but her own mother leave her behind? After all they had been through?

‘Grief is a terrible thing,’ John Joe said, answering her unspoken
question. ‘It makes people do things they would never dream of doing otherwise.’

John Joe walked her back to the cart and Aileen sat up front, as stiff as her mother had been. She was numb, too confounded and hurt by her mother’s actions to cry or even fully take them in.

She looked around the island and all about her she noticed that the world was growing and beautiful. Weeping fuchsia flowers reached out from the sides of the road, their pretty buds yielding to the slightest breeze. There was a crowd of delicate wild roses clambering across the wall of an otherwise unremarkable cottage, and a bank of lavender whose scent was so strong it followed them down the road. The sun was shining, and the island all around was glowing with life. Inside, Aileen felt dead.

As they reached the turning for their house, John Joe suddenly roared at the horse to hurry, and when the poor animal wouldn’t pick up speed, he cursed the ‘bastard nag’. John Joe never swore and the occurrence pinched the children into a kind of terrified silence. He then pulled the horse to a halt, and barely calling for them all to stay where they were, the older man leaped down from the cart and took off running up the drive at remarkable speed.

It was only when Aileen heard John Joe roar something that sounded like ‘Come back till I bate you!’ and saw her parents’ friend Maurice coming out from the back of their cottage that she realized John Joe must have thought him an intruder. John Joe had seen him before – did he not know he was a friend of her mother’s? What on earth was he doing? Aileen had some vague idea that John Joe didn’t like the man, but to assume he was robbing their house?

She jumped down from the cart herself and ran after him; she was nearly at the house when she saw the argument between them turn into a fight; Maurice poked John Joe in the chest and the solid farmer landed him such a punch that the slimmer man fell to the ground. She managed to catch John Joe just as the man was getting up and the sturdy farmer was standing over him, fists raised, as if planning to put him down again.

‘Go back to the cart, Aileen. Let me handle this.’

‘She’s gone,’ the man wailed, looking up at John Joe. ‘Where has she gone? Merciful hour of God, man, will you not tell me?’

He was drunk, either from alcohol or the punch – it was hard to tell – and his words were slurred slightly as he noticed Aileen and said, ‘Oh, may the Lord be good. Girl . . . You’re her girl, right? Oh Jesus, but she can’t be gone after all. Girl, where’s your mammy now? Where is she?’

‘Another word out of your mouth and I’ll bang your teeth clean into your neck,’ John Joe spat at the man. ‘Have some respect and leave this family alone if you have anything decent left in you. Get out of here now and we’ll say no more about this.’

‘I’m not leaving until the girl tells me where her mammy is.’

John Joe picked him up by the collar of his shirt and Aileen was afraid herself for the mixture of fear and rage that emanated from him. This Maurice must have done something terrible altogether to him to elicit such anger from mild-mannered John Joe.

Suddenly, the man, Maurice, reached over and, grabbing her arm, held her eye and blurted out, ‘I am in love with your mother.’

Aileen saw his dark eyes move from flashing fear to tenderness and she knew he was speaking the truth. The facts hit her hard, in three cruel slaps, like a teacher cracking her ruler down on a wooden desk: the man had been in the house on the day
they got back; he was the first person her mother had ever introduced to her as a ‘friend’; when John Joe had ‘found her out’, her mother’s shame had been so deep she had run away.

Everything fell into place: her mother fleeing and John Joe’s anger as he tried to protect them both.

She felt like she wanted to be sick.

Had her mother been courting this man all the time they were away in Scotland or just since her father had died, in some terrible surge of madness brought about by her grief?

She looked at John Joe and, in some part of her, tried to blame him for all this, but their farmer neighbour’s face was so dishevelled with hurt and anger that she knew in her heart and soul he had done all he could to protect Aileen and her mother from this horrible reality, as well as, doubtless, to protect the memory of her father and brothers.

John Joe waved the man away and seeming to know the fight was over, he scuttled off across the bog. The older man put his arm around Aileen and led her back to the cart.

He lifted her up into the back with the children, and even though it was a warm day, he placed a blanket over her shoulders, then said to Mary, ‘You lean in there to Aileen like a good girl and give her some comfort, Mary. She’s coming back to stay in our house for a while.’

‘Why didn’t you go in the car, Aileen?’ Ruari asked as soon as John Joe pulled down the drive. ‘On the bridge – why didn’t you run after your mammy?’

Being motherless himself, the young boy was still reeling from the fact that Aileen had not chased after her mother, although he was equally mystified as to how she had turned down a ride in such a fine vehicle as Eileen’s brown car.

Aileen didn’t reply. Her spirits were drowned in the tidal wave of truth she had just learned and she was flooded with black
hurt. There was something in what the boy said that nagged at her. Something from before the fullness of this drama had revealed itself: the mystery of her own mule-like refusal to leave the island.