by Tara Heavey
Joe looked at her in despair. If only she wouldn’t keep staring at him with those big weepy eyes of hers. He put his arms around her. ‘Of course I’m not going to break up with you.’
Emily wept gratefully into his jumper.
For a while it wasn’t too bad. She couldn’t claim that Joe was as keen as he had been in those first few weeks, but he was turning up on time to meet her. And he showed concern when she was unwell – once even buying her a packet of gingernuts because he’d heard they were good for nausea. But every time she tried to talk about the baby, he fell silent. They’d agreed not to tell any of their college friends for the time being. Why add to the pressure? But when Emily was nearing sixteen weeks, her waistline disappearing, she felt it was time to bring up the thorny topic of their parents. She’d almost told her own mother twice, but courage had failed her at the critical moment. Her parents weren’t much keener on pre-marital sex than they were on abortion. Quite frankly, she dreaded their reaction. But she couldn’t hide it for ever.
She was going to have a baby. Her heart flooded with happiness at the thought. She really had amazed herself. In the beginning, the pregnancy had seemed such a tragedy, her career plans scuppered, her relationship with Joe threatened. But now they were going to be a family.
She announced her plans to Joe over coffee. They could go to his house and tell his parents this Friday night, then get the bus down to Kilkenny on Saturday morning to tell hers.
‘Okay,’ he said finally.
She smiled and squeezed his hand. It was all going to be ‘official’.
So that Friday evening she dressed in her best clothes, not taking as much care as she usually did to hide her slight bump. She’d been dying to meet Joe’s parents – to be introduced as ‘the girlfriend’.
She arrived at their designated meeting place outside the library five minutes early, so she wasn’t too concerned that he had yet to arrive. She watched college life whiz happily by, everyone in good form, preparing to go out for the start of the weekend. She didn’t envy them. What she had was even better.
It wasn’t until ten past that she started to worry. She texted Joe: ‘Where are you?’
The response came about five minutes later. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this any more.’
Panicked, she rang his number but it went straight to voicemail. What did he mean? That he couldn’t go through with telling his parents? Or that he couldn’t go through with any of it? Ever again. She sat rigid for a couple of minutes, then got up and walked decisively to the public telephone. She bypassed the queue and headed for the directory suspended from the wall. D: Devine. There they were, Joseph and Patricia, at an address in Ranelagh. She walked quickly outside to College Green and hailed a taxi she couldn’t afford. If Joe was too chickenshit to tell his parents, she’d have to do it for him. They had the right to know that they were going to be grandparents.
They were at the house already. She paid the taxi driver and got out. No point in asking him to wait. She sat on a wall opposite the house. Passers-by glanced at her curiously. She supposed she might look a bit unhinged. Someone turned a light on in a downstairs room. A woman in her fifties. She was tall with flicky, ash-blonde hair. Emily watched her as she picked up a newspaper, put on a pair of reading glasses and sat in an armchair beside the window. Her future mother-in-law. After a while, the woman got up again and drew the curtains. Emily saw her shadow sitting down. They had a nice garden, she thought dispassionately. She wondered if Joe’s father was a keen gardener. Did his wife call him Joseph or Joe? She’d never know.
After about an hour, the owner of the wall on which she was sitting came out and stood in front of her. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her tone and expression lacking warmth.
‘I was just leaving.’ Emily got up. Her buttocks were ice-cold anyway.
The Spring Garden
Whoever loves and understands a garden will find contentment within.
Chinese proverb
13
Aoife was amazed at how satisfying it was, all that digging. Slicing through the earth with the blade of the spade. Feeling it give. Like sticking a fork into a moist piece of chocolate cake. And overturning the soil, all black and crumbly and teeming with earthworms. Worms that hadn’t been disturbed for the best part of four decades – they and their great-grandworms before them. She felt guilty about them, but it was all for the greater good.
Like other activities you could carry out on autopilot, such as walking, driving and taking a shower, digging had an uncanny way of helping her sort out her problems without her consciously trying. She organized her life as she organized the piles of earth.
Uri came up behind her. ‘It’s coming on.’
She stopped digging and leaned on her spade, slightly puffed. ‘It is, isn’t it? I thought we’d start with a bed of nasturtiums, followed by a row of spuds along there, then carrots, Swiss chard, corn, turnips and finish up over there with the cornflowers.’
Uri nodded. Then he crouched and scooped up a handful of black earth, rubbing it through his fingers. ‘This is good stuff. Very good stuff.’
‘I know.’ There was a time when Aoife would have considered an activity such as enthusiastic fondling of soil quite alarming. Now she understood. Something caught her eye. ‘There she is again.’
Uri followed her line of sight towards an upper window at the back of the house. He was just in time to discern the twitch of a curtain. ‘Missed her again. What a shame she doesn’t just come down and say hello.’
‘Yes. Pity.’ Privately, Aoife was quite pleased that she didn’t have to deal with any interference from Mrs Prendergast.
She watched Uri as he returned to his apple trees, stopping now and then to tug at a weed, like a garden gnome come to life. The weeds were a problem that had only fully revealed itself come spring, one in particular, which Aoife had thought of as ‘the pernicious weed’ until Uri had told her it was called ground elder. It had taken over almost half the garden during the long years of neglect. The discussion about a chemical solution to the problem had been brief.
Aoife: ‘We could always use weedkiller. Just this once.’
Emily: ‘No.’
Uri: ‘Absolutely not.’
Aoife: ‘All right, then. Let’s get weeding.’
She felt that they were winning the battle. Just about.
Aoife resumed digging. And then something wholly unexpected happened. There was a wooden door at the top end of the garden: none of them used it because it opened on to Mrs Prendergast’s private garden. But this morning it opened. Enter Mrs Prendergast bearing a tray of tea things and a plate of posh biscuits. They stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Before anyone could approach she had put down the tray and exited the way she had come, closing the door behind her.
The three looked at each other and approached the tray cautiously, as if it had been left there by the fairies. It was laid out as if the Queen were coming to visit – delicate china cups and saucers and a doily on the plate. Uri laughed as he bit into a biscuit. He gestured to the teapot. ‘Will you be mother?’ he said to Emily.
* * *
Later that day, at going-home time, Aoife opened the wooden door and approached the back of the house. She knocked three times. When she got no response, she put the tray on the doorstep and walked away. She hesitated after the first few paces and turned. ‘Thank you,’ she called into the silence.
This pattern was repeated on every day they worked in the garden. At first, either Uri or Aoife would try and approach Mrs Prendergast to thank her or to engage her in conversation, but she was too quick for them. Sometimes they didn’t even hear her. They would stumble across the tray at some point, the temperature of the tea indicating how long it had been there. Then, one day, the pattern was broken. Mrs Prendergast appeared at the door, earlier than usual, minus a tray. She was wearing a straw hat tied with a pink ribbon and worn brown leather gloves. In her right hand she carried secateurs, and in the lef
t a wicker basket, such as one might use for gathering cut flowers. She brushed past Aoife. ‘I’ll do the roses,’ she said. ‘You’re making a mess of them.’
Later that morning Aoife approached her. ‘Hello, Mrs Prendergast. How are you keeping?’
‘I’ve decided to put the garden on the market.’
‘What?’
‘I’m selling the garden.’
‘But you can’t!’
Mrs Prendergast turned abruptly and gave her a look designed to intimidate.
‘I didn’t… I mean… What about the roses? Why?’
‘My son needs the money for a business venture.’
‘But –’
‘I’m afraid my decision is final.’
Aoife nodded weakly and withdrew. What was she going to do?
For three whole weeks she wrestled with her conscience. Should she tell the others? Frequently she woke at night in a sweat, the weight of not telling them pressing heavily on her chest. But she still had hope. She had to have hope. It must be a good thing, mustn’t it, Mrs Prendergast working on the garden? Surely she’d be less inclined to destroy something she’d helped to create. And maybe nobody would want to buy a prime piece of development land so close to the city.
Her concern grew, as relentless as the pernicious weed and even harder to uproot. She bit her nails to the quick as she observed the first conversations between Uri and Mrs Prendergast. What were they talking about? She moved to work on a patch closer to where they stood, heads together. She heard snippets.
‘David Austin roses… the best… richest colours… headiest fragrances… catalogue.’ And was she hearing things or were they discussing tailoring as well? But why on earth not? They were two of the best-turned-out people she’d ever met. ‘Pinking shears’. Or was that some gardening implement? She wasn’t sure. And so far so good. Nothing about apartment blocks or developers. But she had to, had to, had to say something to Uri tonight. She owed it to him. And, besides, she was going to lose her mind if she kept quiet any longer.
They were packing up that evening. Emily had already left for her shift in the Good Food Store and Liam was playing quietly with his toy excavator in the newly dug herbaceous border. Her golden opportunity. Except it didn’t feel golden. She approached Uri as he was putting away his tools meticulously in the little makeshift shed. ‘I have something to tell you.’
‘I already know. And, yes, you should have spoken to me about it.’
This unbalanced her. Were they talking about the same thing? She didn’t want to put her foot in it. ‘You mean…?’
‘Mrs Prendergast’s plan to sell the land, yes.’
Aoife deflated. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have told you sooner. All the work you’ve done over the last couple of weeks.’
Uri stared at her for a few moments. ‘It’s all right.’
She stared back. ‘But I more or less lied to you. What if it’s concreted over by this time next year? It’ll have been for nothing.’
Uri observed her closely, his body still, his face composed. ‘But it might not be.’ He picked up his bag and walked towards the gate. He turned just before he reached it. ‘You still should have told me.’
They agreed to tell Emily together.
She was hunkered down in the earth, humming softly to herself as she worked it with her trowel. She jumped when Aoife spoke, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
‘Emily, can we have a word?’
‘Of course.’ She looked wary, as was her custom.
‘I – we – have something to tell you. It’s about the garden. Something I should have told you a while ago.’
Emily looked alarmed.
‘You know how I said before that Mrs P agreed we could have the garden and do whatever we liked with it?’
Emily nodded.
‘And you know she still owns it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, she’s decided to sell.’
‘Sell? I don’t understand.’
‘She’s selling it for development.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as she can get a buyer.’
‘What? But that could be tomorrow! Today!’
‘Hopefully it’ll take longer than that. Maybe even a year or more.’
Aoife looked on in dismay as the girl’s face crumpled. Emily hid her elfin features in her delicate little hands and started to sob.
Uri and Aoife exchanged a look.
Aoife reached over and tried to take her wrist, but Emily jerked away, mumbling something incoherent.
‘What?’
‘How could you?’
Aoife thought she had never been on the receiving end of such a look – such an expression of hurt and betrayal. Maybe once. Her face burned with the intensity of her shame. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Really sorry.’
Uri approached Emily and put an arm around the girl’s heaving shoulders. To Aoife’s chagrin, she didn’t try to shake him off. He uttered strange, foreign-sounding soothing noises, reminding Aoife that he was not from these shores any more than she was. Emily kept repeating the same thing over and over. Aoife strained to hear. Something about how they couldn’t take this away from her too. Finally the heaving and the sobbing came to an end. But Aoife was not entirely off the hook.
‘How long have you known?’ asked Emily.
‘Three weeks.’
‘Three weeks! And you never said anything!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And you, how long have you known?’ She looked imploringly at Uri, eyes wide, willing him not to have betrayed her too.
‘I found out yesterday.’
Emily was clearly relieved that she had nothing to forgive him for. She swiped at her eyes with her knuckles. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing,’ said Uri.
‘But Mrs Prendergast…’
‘Don’t you worry about Mrs Prendergast.’
‘Why?’ Aoife was suddenly interested. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m not going to do anything. I won’t have to. I’ll let the garden do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Work its magic.’
The two women stared at him. He laughed. ‘Don’t you know that gardens are magic?’ He squeezed Emily’s shoulder. ‘Especially this one.’
The scene with Emily had floored Aoife. She had known all along how much the garden meant to her but she’d had no idea how much it meant to Emily. How it seemed to go to her very core. Aoife had never had any sort of personal conversation with the girl, sensing her desire to be left alone. Or had it just been fear on Aoife’s part? If she tells me her stuff I’ll have to tell her mine? Because when she thought about it, it really wasn’t all that normal. A pretty, twenty-year-old girl practically dedicating her life to a garden. Why wasn’t she out boozing and sleeping around? It was okay for Aoife. She was past it – not to mention a single parent. No one could expect her to have a life. But Emily? Aoife took a silent vow to keep more of an eye on her. She could hardly believe that two other people were as insanely obsessed with the garden as she was. This lost-cause underdog of a garden. Perhaps they were all as mad as each other.
She felt as light as helium for a few days, no longer weighed down by the burden of her guilty secret. But this feeling was to be short-lived.
14
Emily went home to her parents on the weekend that Joe abandoned her. But she didn’t tell them about the baby. How could she? They looked at her with such pride: their eldest daughter, first in the family to go to college. She wore baggy jumpers, not knowing how long she’d be able to get away with it. She had her meals prepared for her, got her laundry done and let her mother wrap her love around her like an old patchwork quilt. She’d need it to sustain her through the coming weeks.
She took to waiting for Joe outside his lectures. He never showed. She saw Niall noticing her. At the end of day three he came ove
r to her. ‘If you’re waiting for Joe, don’t bother.’
‘I’m entitled to wait for him if I want to.’
‘You’re not getting me. He’s not here.’
‘Where is he, then?’
‘London.’
‘What?’
‘He left college. He won’t be coming back.’
‘What? But what about his exams?’
‘He might repeat the third year. But he won’t be back any time soon.’
Niall was accusing, aggressive as he addressed the little trollop who’d ruined Joe’s life. He turned and walked back to his friends. Joe’s friends. Did they all know?
She was halfway through her pregnancy now. Horror had given way to despondency. She went about her business, attending lectures, handing in essays, going home at weekends. It was characteristic of Emily that her bump was small and neat. It was still barely perceptible and easily hidden beneath loose-fitting clothes. Sometimes she felt as if she was holding it in by sheer act of will. Her mother commented once that she was very quiet. Emily brushed away her concern and the matter was dropped. She was quiet. That was what happened when you had a lot of thinking to do. But she reckoned she’d decided now. Arrived at a solution that would suit all parties. She’d done her research. She was confident that she’d selected the most reputable agency.
‘You must be Emily.’ The woman was holding out her hand. She was in her thirties. Smiley. Glasses and curly hair. Emily followed her into a small office. It was warm and feminine, designed to inspire security and confidence.
Once she’d made the decision, it wasn’t so bad. In a funny way, she was able to pretend it wasn’t happening. She began to socialize a little more. She studied for her exams and sat them. It was actually working out quite well. She’d elected to stay in Dublin for the summer and get a job – obviously not in her aunt’s shop. Her parents would be disappointed that she wasn’t spending the time at home but not half as disappointed as they’d be if they knew the truth. The baby was due at the end of September, so she could start the new college year as if nothing had happened. Then, next summer, she could go to the States, as she’d originally planned for this year. Visit Montana. Come back and eventually get her degree. Do an MA. Maybe even a PhD. Dr Emily Harte! Yes. Once again, her life was going perfectly to plan.
