by Tara Heavey
Emily had her first contraction in the supermarket, meandering down an aisle, her trolley full of ice cream. Braxton Hicks? Another came. Maybe not. She abandoned the trolley beside the cereals and walked rapidly out of the sliding doors. She didn’t think of it again until she was well into labour when she wondered had the ice cream melted. She stood outside and breathed in great big gulps of Dublin city air. Was this it or not? She still had a week to go. How could she tell if her labour was really starting? If only she had someone to ask. The truth was, she did. Plenty of people, in fact. She’d just chosen not to.
Her friends back home. She’d deliberately kept her distance since she’d found out about her pregnancy. They thought she’d gone all snobby on them since she’d moved to Dublin. Her classmates in college – she wasn’t even sure if she could call them friends. And that, she supposed, was why she hadn’t told them – absenting herself from college life towards the end, only attending vital lectures and tutorials, perpetually wrapped up in her multi-layers. If anyone suspected, nobody said. Her mother. God, no. Her aunts and cousins – they’d just tell her mother. Her sisters were too young and silly. No. The only people she spoke to about her pregnancy and the increasingly abstract concept of the baby were her doctor and the lady at the adoption agency. Emily had always been self-contained but now she was taking self-containment to a whole new level.
The truth was, she didn’t want anyone talking her out of it.
Several contractions later she rang the hospital. The midwife on duty told her that, yes, she was probably in labour, but as it was her first baby, she most likely had hours, if not days, to go, and that she’d be better off staying at home and getting her hubby to run her a bath and make her a nice cup of tea. She stuck it out for another half-hour before she headed to the hospital. Let’s get this over with.
She liked the midwife who examined her. Or maybe she just wanted to like her – she was desperate to latch on to anyone. And this woman was gentle. Soft, warm hands, quiet, measured movements.
‘You’re only one centimetre,’ she was saying. ‘You may as well go home. It’ll be a long time yet.’
Please don’t send me home.
The gentle one was leaving the room.
‘Please don’t send me home.’
The midwife came back and leaned over the bed, her hand clasping Emily’s forearm. ‘Are you on your own?’
Emily nodded, somehow unable to speak.
‘Would you like me to call someone for you?’
Emily shook her head and bit her lip.
‘Your mother? A sister? A friend?’
‘I’m having the baby adopted. Nobody can know.’
The midwife squeezed Emily’s arm. ‘You can stay here as long as you like. You might get moved around a bit, though. Try and get some rest and I’ll be back to check on you in a while.’
Emily sagged back into the bed. Thank you, God.
And, for the next twenty-four hours, that was the last thing she felt inclined to thank God for.
The pain was bad enough.
The terror of the unknown worse.
But the sense of aloneness. That’s what unhinged her.
The gentle midwife was with her for the first half, holding her hand, massaging her shoulders and feet. The sense of betrayal she experienced when the woman’s shift ended was enormous. But she had to pick up her children. She promised she’d call in the next day.
‘Would you not give your mam a call?’ was the last thing she said.
Emily shook her head, tears gathering momentum at the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t. Not now. Not like this.
And as for Joe…
In her weaker moments, those moments of agony towards the end, her need of him was ferocious, as if he’d only just left her and the last few months of hardening her heart against him had never happened.
Her new midwife was briskly efficient and lacked the bedside manner of her colleague. In a funny way, this was an unexpected relief. Emily stopped being tearful and focused on the matter at hand. Let’s get this done. And the woman was there when it was crucial. Push. Pant. Rest. Push again. Until at half past three that morning, Emily’s baby was born. Six pounds, eleven ounces. They laid the baby on Emily’s chest, inside her nightdress, where it lay snuffling and covered in sticky stuff. It only started to cry when they took it away to clean it up.
Later, when they were both sanitized and wheeled to the ward, Emily eased herself into a sitting position and reached for her mobile. She rang the last – the only – number she had for Joe Devine. The mobile number that had remained resolutely unanswered for a whole week after he’d left, before she’d given up trying to contact him. It went straight to voicemail. Her throat tightened at the sound of his voice. She waited for the beep. ‘I thought you should know. You have a baby daughter.’
Then she switched off her phone, lay on her side and stared at her baby.
She looked just like her father.
Later that morning, Emily’s daughter lay cradled in her arms as she fed her from a bottle. She was wrapped in a pink blanket that some nurse had given her and dressed in a borrowed Babygro and nappy. Emily hadn’t thought of these things. She hadn’t packed a bag. Why should she when it wasn’t really happening? It had been more than an hour since she’d rung the woman from the adoption agency. The foster-family should have been here by now.
She heard footsteps coming towards her bed and saw a shadow behind her curtain – she hadn’t wanted to talk to the other mothers.
It was the gentle midwife. She approached Emily’s bed cautiously. ‘They’re here.’
Emily nodded.
‘Do you want to meet them?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ll just give you a minute.’ She went back out and Emily could hear her footsteps receding.
For a long time she looked down at the baby, who had finished feeding and was now sleeping, her tiny face puckered and closed. Emily brushed her daughter’s cheek with the back of her finger. Then she bent low and breathed in the scent that emanated from her head. As she heard more footsteps approaching, she stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked her baby’s temple.
The midwife came through the curtain. ‘Ready?’ She held out her arms. Emily handed her the baby, who squealed in protest.
Then they were gone. Footsteps receding again. Voices. Gone.
Emily sat there for a while. Then she lay down and faced the wall.
Her breasts ached, her stitches stung.
And in her heart there was a hollow place where the baby had been.
15
The next time Mrs Prendergast emerged from her little wooden door, she was accompanied not by a tray or a trowel but by a tall, dark-haired man in his forties. His bearing was so princely, his carriage so erect, that he could have been none other than Mrs Prendergast’s son. Mother and son stood talking together for some minutes, just inside the door. Eventually they came over to Aoife, Mrs Prendergast a few paces ahead.
Aoife laid down her hoe and rubbed the worst of the muck off her hands on to the arse of her jeans. Nobody would be looking there anyway. She was touched by the pride and pleasure in the old woman’s eyes as she introduced the visitor. ‘Aoife Madigan, this is my son, Lance Prendergast.’
Lance stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘How do you do, Aoife?’
Aoife shook it, no doubt leaving behind an earthy residue, which he had the good manners to ignore. His hand was cool and firm, his smile unwavering and his eyes direct. Shit. He was even quite good-looking, if you liked that kind of thing. He was dressed, very snazzily, in a dark suit, very much the businessman.
‘My mother told me about the Trojan work you three have been doing on the garden, so I decided I’d have to come and see for myself.’
‘Oh. Well. That’s… kind of you.’
‘What is it you’re doing here exactly?’ He pointed to the ground beneath them.
‘I’m planting seed potatoes. Should have
a crop some time in July.’
He was looking hard at her, as if trying to evaluate something. ‘Excellent. My mother tells me she’s been promised all the fresh fruit and veg she can eat.’
‘That’s right.’
He smiled at his mother and she beamed back. Aoife was quite taken aback. She had never seen Mrs Prendergast beam before – hadn’t thought she had it in her. Even Liam, the most regular beneficiary of her smiles, never got the full-wattage treatment. Would Aoife be like that when Liam was older? Who was she kidding? She was like that now.
‘I’ll be looking forward to some spectacular dinners this summer, then,’ Lance was saying. They all laughed politely.
‘There’s someone else I must introduce you to. Mr Rosenberg!’
Uri didn’t hear her call, so Mrs Prendergast went towards the far corner of the garden where he was labouring, leaving Aoife and Lance alone. He drew a step closer, so that he was standing squarely in front of her. It was quite intimidating – he was so tall and smart.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Aoife genuinely thought she’d misheard. He was still smiling at her, but the words coming out of his mouth didn’t match his expression. Until she looked into his eyes.
‘I said, what the hell do you think you’re doing, taking advantage of a helpless old lady like this?’
Helpless old lady? Aoife almost laughed when she realized he was referring to Mrs Prendergast. ‘I can assure you I’m doing no such thing.’
‘You know full well that my mother has all but agreed to sell this land. I’ll not have a bunch of…’ he searched for an appropriate phrase ‘… hippie misfits mess it up for her.’
She nearly laughed again. ‘Hippie misfits’. Was that the best he could come up with? But she didn’t laugh, because something in his eyes was really quite horrible.
He continued: ‘We – she stands to make a lot of money out of this transaction. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to stand in the way of a comfortable retirement for her.’
Or a whopping great inheritance for you, thought Aoife. ‘Of course not,’ she said, forcing herself to hold his eye.
‘Lance, come and meet Mr Rosenberg.’
With one more warning look Lance turned away from her, baring his teeth at Uri, whom she heard admiring his suit.
The son wanted the garden sold.
The mother adored the son.
They were toast.
Later, after he’d gone, Mrs Prendergast came back out in her gardening gear. She stood beside Aoife as she pulled on her gloves. ‘My goodness, that weed really does get everywhere, doesn’t it?’
Aoife straightened and looked at her suspiciously. Could Mrs Prendergast actually be making conversation?
‘You know he’s single,’ she went on.
‘Who?’
‘Lance. He’s single.’
‘Oh. Really.’
‘Yes. He’s handsome, isn’t he?’ She had a faraway look in her eye.
‘Um, yes. Very.’
Mrs Prendergast smiled, then regarded Aoife critically. ‘You know, dear, you might be quite pretty if you made a little effort.’ And off she went to tend her roses.
16
Aoife gazed into her palm. She was holding a handful of possibilities. Myriad microcosms of worlds. Worlds she could so easily let slip through her fingers. Tomato seeds. Dozens of them. Each one capable of great things. But not one capable of becoming anything other than a tomato plant. Not a carrot or a courgette or a cauliflower. Just as she was incapable of growing into anything other than Aoife Madigan.
It was early in the morning. Ridiculously so. Not even half past seven. She’d come to the garden because Liam was on a sleepover – his first – with a little boy he’d got to know at the crèche. The other child’s mother had offered to take them both there this morning. Such a sensible idea. Now it took every ounce of will-power Aoife had to stop herself going over to their house right now and hugging the breath out of her son. She hadn’t been able to sleep without his knees sticking into the small of her back, and with no lecture to give until eleven and no little boy to prepare for the day, she felt utterly redundant. Which was why she had come to the garden. At least here she could do something useful. She could plant things that would grow into food.
She knelt on the earth that spring morning and slowly, painstakingly, following to the letter the instructions on the back of the seed packet, sowed her tomatoes in cute little seed trays. It was too early in the year to trust them to the soil. Then she sowed lettuce. She imagined the rows and rows of succulent green plants they were to become, like something out of Peter Rabbit.
She wasn’t alone. A robin was perched in the uppermost branches of the tallest, oldest, most gnarled apple tree, singing his beautiful song. Aoife felt blessed, as if the song was for her ears alone. A private recital.
‘Won’t you promise to eat any slugs that come near my lettuces?’ she said to him. He continued to trill. She smiled and returned to her task.
She must have spent a full hour sifting the soil with a giant sieve, discarding stones and roots, hair dusted with misty rain, overcoming her fear of spiders, when a thought came unbidden: all she needed was a man to steal up behind her and kiss the nape of her neck, where the soft downiness of her hair met the cool creaminess of her skin. The thought startled her and she shivered. She swung around. ‘Michael?’
But no one was there. Nothing, in fact, but the brute force of her loneliness.
Uri arrived at nine o’clock, as expected. He was semi-retired and dedicated most of his mornings to the garden. But today he wasn’t alone. He had with him a younger man, in his mid-to late-thirties, judging by the web of lines around his eyes. ‘This is Seth, my son. Seth, this is Aoife.’
‘Hi.’
‘Hello.’
‘Seth is a gardener. He’d like to help.’
‘Really?’ A gardener! Uri had never said. He’d mentioned his sons – he had two – but a gardener…
‘That’s if it’s okay with you.’
‘Of course it is,’ Aoife said quickly. ‘Absolutely. I mean, when can you start?’
He smiled and held out his hands. ‘Right now?’
She never would have pegged him as Uri’s son. He must favour his mother, she thought. He was taller than his father but by no means gigantic. His hair was brown, greying at the temples, and she couldn’t tell what colour his eyes were because they were screwed up against the sun. His skin had the weatherbeaten texture of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors and his arms were freckled, like speckled birds’ eggs.
‘You do know that the future of the garden is very grim, don’t you?’
‘I know. But I don’t see any fat ladies singing just yet.’
‘No.’ She laughed. Funny.
‘So, Aoife, what can I do for you?’
The answers crowded inside her head. ‘Well, no one’s gone near the pond yet. You could give that a go.’
‘Right you are.’
She watched him walk away, his jaunty steps, as though he had a spring in him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me your son was a gardener?’ she asked Uri.
‘He’s had a rough time of it lately. I wanted to wait. I didn’t want to put him under any pressure.’
They watched Seth work, straight into it already, his movements fluid, very unlike how Aoife imagined her own movements to be – awkward and stuttering. Amateurish. He’d be such a help. And he might even have a few spare plants knocking around.
Later that night, after Liam had gone to bed and before she climbed into a well-deserved bath, Aoife did something she hadn’t done for a while. She looked at herself in the mirror. Really looked. Peered. Examined. Things had certainly changed since the last time she’d studied herself and she got quite a shock. Her hair, with its silver roots and faded, coloured ends, resembled an Ice Pop with part of the juice sucked out of it. God, she’d really let herself go. She’d never thought that
her appearance mattered that much to her, but now, staring at her haggard reflection, at this woman old beyond her thirty-five years, she cared. What had happened to the laid-back, smiling girl Michael had fallen in love with and married? She could remember a time when the only thing that ever got her down was gravity. Now look at her! All dragged down and dishevelled. It was time to drag herself back up again. She owed it to Liam and she owed it to herself.
17
The for-sale sign was up now. They tried their hardest to ignore it, but it still cast its long shadow over the garden. March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. The gales blew the sign down. They all cheered. The onset of April’s showers cooled them, enchanted them, soaked them to the skin.
Liam had his own patch now – sunflowers. He watered them diligently every day with his Winnie-the-Pooh watering-can. He was in a state of high excitement over the introduction of fish into the pond. Seth had brought along some tiddlers one Saturday morning, allowed them to rest for a while, their plastic bags floating as they became acclimatized to their new home, then released them. This morning he had brought another tiddler with him – his four-year-old daughter, Kathy. She was two months younger than Liam and a head taller. And, Aoife discovered as she lifted the little girl up into the arms of the apple tree, at least a tonne heavier.
‘I thought they could play together,’ said Seth. ‘Keep each other out of trouble. You don’t mind, do you?’
