The One I Was (11 page)

‘Perhaps there are a few jobs you could look at.’ She stood up. ‘Mr …?’

‘Cathal.’ He rested the bicycle against the steps and came towards her, hand out. ‘Cathal Pearse.’

‘Cattle?’ Andrew said.

The man’s dark-blue eyes twinkled. ‘You don’t pronounce the “t”. My mother was a romantic. She named me after some Celtic chieftain, can you believe?’ He sounded amused.

Mum and Cathal Pearse walked along the drive, Mum pointing out weeds, Cathal nodding his head every now and again. Andrew and I stayed on the lawn. It had only been fifteen minutes since we’d picked the daisies for the chain, but already the little white petals were curling up.

15

That evening Cathal Pearse brought in a colander of raspberries, stooping as he passed under the kitchen lintel. He placed the raspberries on the table. ‘You’ll be wanting these for your supper.’ He smiled at me with those eyes that were the colour of a new pair of jeans. ‘Thank you,’ he added. ‘For putting in a good word for me.’

I felt my cheeks turn warm.

‘Who is this?’

Smithy’s sharp tones made us all turn round. She was wearing her best beige summer suit, the one she always wore to cycle over to her niece’s, whatever the weather.

‘This is Cathal,’ I said. ‘He will be helping out with the garden and odd jobs.’ For a second I fancied there was a bit of Granny in my tone.

‘I see.’ Smithy’s pale eyes scrutinized Cathal’s open sandals and his faded trousers. He didn’t look like the old gardener had. His fingers were clean and soft.

‘Call me Cathal,’ he said, smiling.

Smithy regarded him expressionlessly.

‘Must get on,’ he said.

He brought in more colanders of strawberries, red currants and raspberries, filling the kitchen with the scent of berries. ‘Best to work in the cool of the day,’ he said at about six. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’ Mum looked up from the kitchen table, where she was hulling strawberries, ready to make jam.

‘Would you like a cold beer before you go?’ Mum looked at Smithy. ‘There are still some down in the cellar, aren’t there?’

‘Just a glass of squash would do me.’ I made him a glass and his long, strong neck pulsed with each swallow. The drink was quickly gone.

‘What time should we expect you in the morning?’ Smithy asked.

‘About eleven,’ he said.

She sniffed. I watched him cycle off, twiddling the almost-wilted daisies on the necklace around my neck.

Next morning Smithy and I stood at the window and watched Mum telling Cathal what she wanted him to do in the garden. ‘Quarter past eleven, by the time he arrived,’ Smithy said. ‘And I need the rest of that soft fruit brought in.’

‘He said
about
eleven,’ I reminded her.

Smithy grunted. Cathal was tugging out bindweed from a honeysuckle bush, each movement firm and precise, and graceful too. Mum walked away towards the lake. He stopped his work to watch her. When he returned to the bindweed his movements were slower. Perhaps he was feeling the heat.

I slipped out of the kitchen and upstairs to inspect the bottle of tablets on the dressing table. I counted them. Three fewer than yesterday. Mum was keeping her promise to Granny.

I went to find Andrew. He lay on his bedroom floor, a Meccano set spilled out in front of him in a grey-and-red metal heap. ‘Don’t step on anything.’ Without looking at me he reached for a screw.

‘I didn’t know you had all this.’ Surely there were enough metal pieces to build a full-size crane.

‘Smithy brought it up from the basement. She says it’s forty years old at least.’

‘It must have belonged to the refugee boys.’

‘Lucky things.’ He tightened the screw and examined the joint he’d constructed.

‘Not lucky to leave their homes and parents, though.’

His shoulders stiffened slightly and I knew he was thinking about Dad and how much he missed him.

I went downstairs again. Smithy was stirring another saucepan of bubbling fruit and sugar. Cathal came in with a colander of raspberries. ‘Thought you’d like these, Miss Smith.’

Smithy blinked slightly at the title. ‘Thought you were doing the bindweed this morning?’

‘I like to move between tasks,’ he said. ‘I find it makes the work more interesting.’

She looked at him in a way that suggested he wasn’t expected to find the work interesting. Cathal reached out to place the colander on the kitchen table. But before it reached the table, his hand twitched slightly. The raspberries trickled down to the lino. Smithy gasped. Cathal stared at the raspberries as though uncertain as to what they were doing on the floor.

‘Well don’t just stand there.’ Smithy slapped her spoon down on the worktop and crouched on the floor. ‘Give me that colander.’

‘What a mess I’ve made.’ He pulled the colander back from her outstretched hand. ‘I’ll sort it out, Miss Smith, never you mind.’ She straightened herself, leaving him to pick up the spilled fruit. ‘They’ll probably need rinsing.’

He handed the colander to her and walked out.

‘Don’t worry about wiping the floor over,’ she called after him. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

I listened to Cathal’s footsteps walking across the flagstones. They stopped. I went to peep out of the doorway. He stood at the table by the front door, examining the base of a blue vase, eyes screwed up in concentration. He replaced the vase on the table and made for the grandfather clock, reading the words on the face.

He turned.

I jerked myself back into the kitchen, but not before I’d seen him wink. He made me feel as though I’d sided with him, which was strange because until then I’d always really got along with Smithy; she let me help her make jam and tied old dusters to my feet when she was polishing the floor so I could skate on the surface and buff it.

But Smithy could make you feel you weren’t living up to her high standards, as though you weren’t living up to the shiny surfaces and perfectly dusted ornaments. Cathal seemed to suggest that it might be more fun not to try to be perfect.

*

Cathal came to Fairfleet most days. Mum would take him out a mug of tea, chatting to him while he drank it. Sometimes she smiled at his jokes. Seeing the lines crease around her eyes made me smile too.

‘You’ll grow roots if you keep standing at that window,’ Smithy warned me, as I stood watching the pair of them. ‘Go outside and play. Shame to waste the weather.’ But she watched Cathal too. He was replacing stone slabs on the wall that separated the vegetable garden from the lawn. The slabs were large, but he moved them into place as though they were pieces of Lego. ‘Bit of a navvy in that one,’ Smithy said. ‘I hope we haven’t made a mistake, letting him ease his way in here.’

‘What’s a navvy?’

‘An Irish labourer. They do heavy building, roads, railways, that kind of thing.’

But I couldn’t imagine Cathal building roads.

Smithy was still frowning at him. ‘There’s more to that one than meets the eye.’

I felt as though she was accusing me of something. ‘Mum was so tired,’ I said. ‘And the garden was becoming a mess.’

She put a wrinkled hand on my arm. Smithy wasn’t usually one for making physical gestures. ‘You’re a good girl, Rose, you care about your family. But there are some in life that aren’t as good.’

I went out and rode my bicycle around the lawn a few times, watching Cathal. Mum had left him with his mug of tea. He was preparing the lawnmower. The catch connecting the fuel container to the mower seemed to be causing problems. He swore gently, then turned as he heard me on my bicycle.

‘Ah, Rose. You find me the victim of a recalcitrant piece of machinery.’

I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but I liked the way he used grown-up words with me.

‘Granny used to take off her boot and bang it on the catch.’

‘I’d like to have met your grandmother.’

I wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed surprising that someone who’d barely met us would want to meet Granny. Perhaps he was just being polite.

He reached down for the mug and took a mouthful of tea. ‘You’re all very kind to an old vagrant. This job is just what I need. And I know I’ve you to thank for it.’

‘You like gardening?’

He placed his mug on the grass very carefully.

‘Mine has been a funny old life. I’ve had some bad luck.’ It was a kind of answer to my question, I supposed. He put a hand out to the stiff catch on the mower and snapped it down successfully. His hands were strong, despite their smooth appearance. ‘There, resolved without acts of violence against a defenceless machine.’

I laughed. ‘My mum wouldn’t say nice things about the mower, she hates it.’

He was watching me carefully now. ‘A lady like your mother shouldn’t be worrying herself about lawn-mowers.’

‘I know.’

‘I feel at home here.’ Cathal was looking over the gardens, the mower still rumbling beside him. ‘Fairfleet reminds me of my old childhood home and your mother reminds me of some of the people in my own family.’

I wasn’t sure whether I liked the idea of my mother reminding him of someone else.

‘Although there’s something very special about her, isn’t there?’ He nodded to himself. ‘Not many people can be so strong when life is difficult. But she has you two to support her.’

‘She misses my granny. And my dad.’

Cathal stretched his neck out a little as I said the last bit.

‘Where’s your father now?’ He fiddled with the mower handle as he asked.

‘Saudi Arabia.’

He pulled the brake lever, seemingly unbothered by its stiffness. ‘I must get on. Wouldn’t want …’

‘What?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want your mother thinking I was taking advantage. She pays me to do the gardening.’

I picked up his mug. ‘She’d never think like that.’

Smithy would, though. As I approached the kitchen door I could sense her disapproving stare.

*

Mum seemed almost shy of Cathal over the next few weeks, letting me take out the tea to him. But on one of Smithy’s Wednesday afternoons off, she took the tea mug from me. ‘I’ll do that.’

I waited until she’d gone out. ‘He’s very handsome,’ I told Andrew, who was sitting at the table fiddling with some pieces of Meccano.

‘He’s only the gardener. He doesn’t really matter.’

Andrew wasn’t meaning to be snobbish; I knew that. He was just comparing Cathal with Dad, an oilman who travelled out to remote deserts or swamps to find petroleum to keep factories and houses heated and lit.

‘Cathal makes her feel better.’

‘Maybe.’ Andrew looked out of the window too, his expression hard. ‘Obviously you’re going to see the best in him. You were the one who insisted that she gave him work.’

‘So what if I did?’ Andrew was obviously jealous.

Mum and Cathal spent some time talking out on the lawn. When Mum walked back over she looked thoughtful. And a little flushed. She poured herself a mug of tea.

Something screamed in the garden. Mum’s mug trembled and tea soaked her sleeve. ‘What was that?’

I was already at the window. ‘A peacock!’

‘Really?’ She came to join me. ‘I don’t believe it. There haven’t been peacocks at Fairfleet for decades.’

But there he was, his blue tail displayed with the eyes staring out at us.

I was already making for the back door.

Cathal was leaning on his rake, observing the bird. ‘Isn’t he just grand, Rosie?’

I wasn’t sure I liked him calling me Rosie, but I could overlook this for someone who shared my enthusiasm for this beautiful bird.

‘Is he a stray? Can we keep him?’

‘I haven’t heard of anyone keeping peacocks around here. We could ring the police. Or the RSPCA. Tell them we’ve got him.’ He made clicking noises at the bird. ‘Tell you what, in the shed there’s some bird seed someone must have put in the feeders.’

Granny. She’d loved watching the blue tits and chaffinches.

‘Why don’t you throw him a handful now?’

The peacock extended his graceful neck and picked at the seeds I sprinkled on the lawn. Mum came out to admire him. ‘He’s a beauty. I’ll ring round, see if anyone’s missing him.’

‘Oh I hope not.’

Smithy approached us from the washing line, carrying the linen basket. When she saw the peacock she stopped, eyes tightened. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘He’s a he,’ Cathal said lightly.

‘I’m aware of the gender, thank you.’ Smithy looked at Mum. ‘You won’t be keeping it?’

‘Why not? If nobody claims him. Fairfleet used to have peacocks.’

‘They were all dead by the time your mother and father had you.’ She made it sound as though this was good news.

‘Well it’s about time we reinstated the practice of keeping peacocks at Fairfleet.’ Mum looked at Cathal. ‘Can we make him somewhere to roost in the stable block? I think that’s where they used to keep them.’

Tyres scrunched on the gravel. The post van. The driver got out, whistling admiringly when he saw the peacock. He handed Mum a brown envelope.

‘Oh.’ She held it gingerly. ‘Better go up to my room. I’ve got all the paperwork there.’

Mum was still upstairs three hours later when I went to call her for lunch. She sat at the dainty walnut desk in the corner with papers strewn over the surface, frowning as she totted up rows of numbers. When I told her it was lunchtime she blinked at me.

Cathal came in for lunch too, padding through the hall in socked feet like a panther. He wore boots to work now, instead of the sandals he’d first appeared in. I couldn’t remember how it was that he’d started sharing meals with us; he seemed always to have been sitting in the kitchen with us, telling us funny stories. In his hand was a single peacock feather.

‘Poor fellow’s about to go into moult, I suspect. We may be seeing the best of the display for this year.’ He laid the feather on the table so that the eye examined us.

Smithy banged a bowl of soup down in front of him. ‘You can get that out of the house for starters.’

‘Smithy –’ Mum began.

‘Peacock feathers in the house are bad luck.’ She twisted her hands. ‘They give me the shivers, they look evil.’

Cathal sighed and rose, picking up the feather. ‘I’ll put it in the shed.’

‘Thanks. I suppose I need all the luck I can get to finish these figures,’ Mum said when he returned.