The Seven Secrets of Happiness

by Sharon Owens

  ‘Well, that’s quite something,’ Jasmine sighed, almost weak with relief. ‘Our very first experience of arrest in the retail trade.’

  ‘So I just wanted to say thank you for standing up to him,’ Mary said quietly to Ruby and Jasmine. ‘I don’t think anyone else ever has. And you two really rattled his cage, I can tell you! Especially since you were only “a couple of stupid women in a stupid handbag shop”, as he put it. I just wanted to say thanks for showing me that I didn’t have to be a drudge cowering in the corner any longer. Whatever happens, I’m free of that awful man. I’m divorcing him immediately.’

  Ruby simply nodded. While Jasmine reached for a crisp carrier bag and parcelled up the contentious handbag for a second time. Then Mary took her precious purchase and went breezing towards the door.

  ‘Thanks again,’ she called back over her shoulder as the door to Ruby’s shop swung open. ‘I’d like to say I’ll be seeing you, but I don’t expect I’ll be back here for years and years, if ever. Cheerio!’

  And the door pinged shut again.

  For a few moments both Ruby and Jasmine were too shocked and saddened to comment.

  ‘That poor woman. Did you see the state of her eye? Of course you did. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Well, it’s my turn to brew up.’

  Jasmine made tea while they digested what had happened.

  ‘I think she’s been bottling her feelings up for far too long, Jasmine. It was good for her to say it out loud, I daresay. Anyway, what else could she have said with a shiner like that? It would have been mortifying for all of us if she’d pretended she’d walked into a door. Do you suppose she’ll be all right now?’ Ruby wondered next. ‘And the children?’

  ‘Yes, she’ll be fine,’ Jasmine said confidently. ‘Once a bully understands that it’ll be more effort for him to go on tormenting his current partner than it’ll be to find a new victim, the innocent party is pretty much home and dry.’

  ‘Unless he’s a total psycho?’ Ruby pointed out. ‘Then he might track her down and kill her!’

  ‘Obviously there’s always a chance of that, yes.’

  ‘Oh, Jasmine… Why has the human race lasted so long?’ Ruby pondered with a sad shake of her head. ‘It’s so messed up.’

  ‘Because all we single women live in the hope of finding a little gem like your Jonathan, that’s why,’ Jasmine told her kindly. ‘Chocolate biscuit?’

  ‘Go on then. Just bring the bloody packet in here, in fact. We’re allowed extra biscuits when we’ve just rescued a customer from an abusive relationship.’

  The two friends munched their way through half a packet of milk-chocolate biscuits in near silence. Jasmine reflecting on how close she had just come to stabbing someone in a fit of bad temper. And Ruby realizing that perhaps it was time she stopped defining herself by her marriage to her late husband. Or at least it was time she stopped dwelling on her loss for every hour of every day. Now that she had seen what clinging to a man for twenty solid years had done to Mary Stone. Even clinging to a good man like Jonathan hadn’t been an altogether good idea, as it’d left her so broken when he’d died. No, emotional dependency of any kind was clearly not the road to happiness.

  ‘Jasmine,’ Ruby said eventually, ‘I don’t know if there’s a secret, or maybe a list of secrets, to being happy… but I’ll tell you this much. The first secret of happiness is to be emotionally independent. You know what I mean? You can’t expect another person to make you happy or to give you happiness. Or even just allow you to be happy, as if you’ve got to ask their permission or something. You’ve somehow got to create happiness within yourself and let nobody else touch it or take it away.’

  ‘Well done, Ruby,’ Jasmine agreed at once. ‘Ten out of ten for observation. It’s obvious really, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Ruby mumbled, through a sip of tea. It might have been obvious to Jasmine all along but it was something Ruby was only beginning to understand.

  11. The Maze at Camberwell

  Tom loved it when the weather took an unexpected turn for the worse. It wasn’t something he was proud of, especially as he worked as a professional gardener in one of the wettest climates in Europe. But over the last five years he’d come to associate bouts of damp and windy weather with a kind of inner peace and outer tranquillity. For when the grey foreboding clouds rolled in and the sky was suddenly dark with the promise of torrential rain, the bruising pressure on his heart always seemed to lift a little bit. Heavy summer downpours were his favourite. The huge, fat raindrops bouncing off the dried-up flowerbeds and the pebbly pathways and eventually pooling in the centre of the formal lawn. For one thing it saved him many hours of watering and tedious soil maintenance. And for another it gave him a bit of much-needed privacy as the chattering visitors went dashing towards the warmth of the café and the well-stocked souvenir shop.

  He’d worked as the head gardener at Camberwell House for most of his adult life, though he was the only gardener on the payroll most of the time. It just looked better on his staff ID badge if they pretended there were a few other green-fingered minions toiling away in the background… But the truth was that Tom had been the sole person employed to look after the grounds of the estate for a few years now. The house and gardens cost an awful lot of money to maintain. And most of the estate’s annual income went to support the current owners’ second home and very comfortable lifestyle in the Bahamas. So Tom and Mrs Kenny did their best to keep the place ship-shape and the cream teas up to standard. And they silently hoped that the current owners of Camberwell House would some day sell it on to someone else who actually cared about heritage, and about precious and ancient things.

  In the meantime, whenever the rain came on, Tom would take refuge in his official headquarters: a large wooden potting shed painted dark green, and tucked away behind the kitchen garden at the back of the house. There he could relax in his comfy old armchair while Noah curled up in his basket and slept in the blue glow cast by the gently flickering gas heater. The shed was where Tom stored his packets of seeds and most valuable gardening tools. He also kept a tin of biscuits, a bottle of whisky and a framed photograph of his late wife Kate. Not that he was a heavy drinker. He definitely wasn’t. He’d seen other people’s lives ruined by drink, entire decades written off, and he didn’t want that to happen to him. But on particularly rainy afternoons he would put his feet up on a small bench, pour a large whisky for himself, and just reminisce.

  It had been five years now since Tom had lost his beloved wife to breast cancer. And some days he still woke up thinking he’d dreamt it all and that she’d be lying in the bed beside him still. He was almost grateful he had so much work to do at Camberwell because it kept him busy for more than twelve hours each day. He had endless hedges to clip and feed, the kitchen garden to cultivate, the raised flowerbeds to protect from frosts and pests, and the Christmas-tree plantation to keep an eye on. That last project had been his own idea: a way of gaining valuable income from some watery fields with a rather dull view on to an electricity sub-station. The trees surrounded the Camberwell estate on three sides now and acted as a kind of physical barrier between it and the outside world. And, even better, Tom had also discouraged the bored teenagers of the city from popping over to vandalize the estate by starting a rumour that the plantation was haunted.

  Tom laughed now as he recalled starting the rumour on impulse a few years earlier. Weary of collecting empty drinks cans, smashed cider bottles and crumpled cigarette packets from the plantation, he’d told the young girls working in the café that he’d seen a ghost there one night. The ghost of an old man with only one arm, wearing Edwardian clothes and limping towards the statue of an angel in the centre of the plantation. Nobody could say why the pretty statue of a weeping angel had been erected in such an unlikely spot, but the general assumption was that it marked the resting-place of a favoured dog or horse. In any event the excitable waitresses had lost no time in spreading the story. Soon the rumour was all
over the city, and the empty cans and bottles and the smouldering cigarette butts were no more.

  People were so afraid of the dead, Tom thought now as the rain thundered down on to the wooden roof of his cosy little hideaway. People didn’t realize that the dead could do them no harm. It was the living they had to be wary of. For if ghosts really did exist then he would have seen Kate again by now. He’d hoped and prayed for a nightly visitation for five long years, but his lonely bedroom had remained resolutely ghost-free. And if Kate had been able to come back and let him know she was all right then she surely would have done. No, his bedroom had been sadly, tragically, empty for half a decade…

  He had to catch his breath suddenly as an image of Ruby O’Neill came completely unbidden into his mind. And the way she’d behaved with such dignity at her husband’s funeral. No ugly rants against the other driver. No embarrassing pictures of her shouting insults, her face all twisted with rage. She’d said nothing vengeful to the reporter either except that the service had been very thoughtful and beautiful.

  Ruby O’Neill was beguiling and wise-looking, as well as gorgeous. There was something otherworldly about her that he could not easily define or hope to forget. That routine delivery of a Christmas tree had stayed with him over the last year and he didn’t know why. He’d only been collecting the unsold trees from the garden centre to pass them on to the YMCA. Otherwise he would never have met Ruby in the first place. If he’d been five minutes later arriving at the garden centre that day, someone else would have delivered Ruby’s tree to that lovely house on Ravenhill Road. And their paths would never have crossed. Strange the way these things happened sometimes.

  Yes, Ruby O’Neill was very attractive in a serene and sophisticated way. Not like Kate’s bubbly freckle-faced beauty. Not like Kate with her bright red mane of curly hair and her all-natural, dressed-down style. Ruby O’Neill had perfect cheekbones and arching eyebrows that were as sharply defined as blades of grass. But it was definitely about more than that. Something in her expression told Tom that she too was enduring extreme grief. That day at the funeral, in that picture of her in the newspaper, she’d looked so different already from the happily flustered woman he had shaken hands with. And that other time at the shop, even though she’d smiled at him, he could tell right away that she was struggling to contain her sadness. Was there something he needed from Ruby? he wondered. Would it help him to talk to someone whose heart had been truly broken also? Would Ruby understand how he felt? Only half alive, most of the time. Would she be able to save him from his loneliness? Would they be able to save each other?

  How could he find out more about her? He couldn’t ask anyone he knew if they’d ever heard of her. They would only assume he was getting over Kate, and start treating him normally again. He wasn’t ready for that. Oh, it was all madness anyway, he thought grumpily. He wasn’t ready to let another person into his heart. And he wasn’t ready to put up with being teased about having a new girlfriend.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said to nobody in particular. Though Noah pricked up his ears and growled softly. ‘What does it matter? I’ll never see her again or speak to her again. And anyway I’ll never stop loving Kate, and no doubt a fine woman like Ruby O’Neill isn’t looking for a relationship with a scruffy old curmudgeon like myself.’

  He was only forty-five, but Tom knew that his weather-beaten face was lined and worn already, and usually he made no effort whatsoever to tidy himself up. In fact, he went out of his way to live up to his reputation as the hardworking but anti-social head gardener of Camberwell. It meant that nobody ever bothered inviting him to awkward social gatherings that he had no interest in attending.

  But as the rain continued to hammer down on Camberwell House and its surrounding gardens and outhouses Tom’s thoughts were interrupted again by Ruby’s smiling face thanking him for the delivery of the Christmas tree and casually wishing him a merry Christmas. Something nobody who knew him well had dared to do since Kate’s death. Strangers had said it, of course. But with them it had meant only politeness; Ruby seemed to actually mean it.

  ‘I felt normal that day,’ he told Noah. ‘Only for about half a minute, of course. It was a good feeling. It scared me too. I mean, I haven’t felt normal for a very long time. I didn’t know what to do with myself.’ Noah yawned and went back to sleep.

  Tom checked the calendar on the wall. The winter programme was winding down now and the New Year parties would soon give way to the coach-loads of summer visitors who would come from far and wide to walk through the newly restored box maze and marvel at its mystery and complexity.

  ‘Better check the maze again, I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘If it’s going to be the star attraction next summer.’

  Yes, when the rain stopped he would get his bale of string and go and make sure the tightly packed green walls of the huge maze were perfectly straight and uniform, and also do a bit of light clipping. Sweep up any leaves that had blown in and collected in dark or damp corners. Check that none of the large blue and white pebbles on the pathways had cracked or come loose with the cold.

  ‘As if we haven’t enough excitable day trippers to feed and water in this place already,’ he said to Noah’s sleeping face. ‘But, hey, all that grand living in the Bahamas has to be paid for somehow. Yes, I know! Why don’t I leave here and get another job somewhere else, one that pays better? Because I can’t be bothered to, that’s why.’

  So he would check the maze when the rain stopped. Okay. Then he would get on with a bit of light weeding in the kitchen garden. It was always easier to loosen the weeds after a rainstorm when the soil was wet and broken. He had to fork over the compost heap too and plant seven mature birch trees on the driveway to replace some that had died off. Hopefully by the time he lay down in his bed that night in his small cottage on the edge of the estate he would be much too tired to think about Ruby O’Neill and that telltale faraway look in her eyes. He could go straight to sleep and dream of Kate instead. He felt he was being unfaithful to Kate by even thinking of another woman. But still he couldn’t help wondering if Ruby had had a reasonable Christmas. And if he’d made a terrible first impression on her the Christmas before, in his old clothes and shabby boots. And his Land Rover that was falling to bits and loaded up with unsold Christmas trees. Ruby’s shop was perfection itself, he’d noticed. No, probably she had forgotten him already. Forgotten, forgotten, forgotten, the rain seemed to say.

  Well, that was the end of the story now, he thought sadly. For how could a man like himself with so much sadness in his heart ever get to be even casual friends with a woman who was carrying so much sadness of her own? The rain began to ease off and Tom felt fidgety all of a sudden.

  ‘Got to get out of here, Noah,’ he sighed. ‘Got to keep busy.’

  Patting Noah softly on the head, he put on his wax hat and jacket, slipped out of the shed and went across to the maze, taking a bale of twine, a yard brush and his sharpest clippers with him. His own heart might still be smothered in thorns of loneliness and self-imposed solitude, but at least when the maze was unveiled to the public in the summer it would be nothing short of perfect. As the rain slowed down and became just a mist, Tom clipped and tidied and swept and cleaned, burning off pounds of nervous energy, using up all those lonely hours. Thinking of Kate laughing at something funny he had said, and then thinking of Ruby smiling out at him from her little sparkly shop, and then trying not to think about anything at all.

  12. The Second Secret

  It was lunchtime on New Year’s Eve. Ruby had decided to open the shop for a few hours just to capitalize on any last-minute trade. And also because she had made no other plans and didn’t want to rattle around the flat all day on her own. She’d told Jasmine she could have the day off if she wanted to go somewhere special, but Jasmine had said she’d made no real plans either. She’d actually turned down quite a few party invites for New Year’s Eve itself just in case Ruby might have a breakdown or something. But she’d told Ruby she thought sh
e was coming down with a cold, just so they wouldn’t spend the day arguing about it.

  Anyway she’d been to a few parties in recent weeks and there hadn’t been much male talent in evidence. Jasmine had an awful suspicion that all the nicest guys were gay, married or had emigrated to Australia or New Zealand. All those irritating TV shows showing pasty-faced families from the British Isles living it up on Bondi Beach were to blame, Jasmine reckoned. She might consider going to Australia herself if she had better qualifications, but no doubt they had enough shop girls to be getting on with. Oh well, she just supposed she’d have to make the best of things here in dear old Belfast. Both jobs-wise and men-wise!

  Speaking of Belfast men, Jasmine wondered if she dared ask Ruby about that shy-looking man again. The one who grew the Christmas trees for the garden centre.

  ‘You liked that guy a wee bit though, Ruby, didn’t you?’ Jasmine asked gently now as Ruby knelt down to retrieve a stray Christmas bauble from underneath one of the painted wardrobes.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Jasmine Mulholland? Who am I supposed to like?’ Ruby asked as she put the bauble back on the counter display.

  ‘That handsome older man. Well, old-ish. It was hard to tell what age he was really, under all that tatty clobber of his. You know the one who was peeping in at you a few days ago? Who was he, really? Do you know him a bit more than you’re letting on, seriously?’

  ‘No, I don’t know him at all, Jasmine. Truly! He delivered my Christmas tree last year, that’s all. I told you that’s all it was. And I do not like him in that way. Are you completely mad?’ Ruby said crossly. How could Jasmine even joke about such a thing? With Jonathan only gone a year?