Sowing the Seeds of Love

by Tara Heavey

  ‘Must you?’ she said. ‘It stinks to high heaven.’

  ‘Look. Do you want them to grow or don’t you?’

  ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’

  ‘If you want roses, you gotta have shit.’

  ‘Honestly!’

  But he didn’t say a word now, surprising Aoife as he let Mrs Prendergast take the credit. Although, on second thoughts, she wasn’t surprised. There was a new atmosphere in the garden – of joy. A sense of hard work paying off. In such a beautiful, life-affirming setting, it was virtually impossible to be anything but entirely pleasant to every other soul. It hadn’t always felt this way – not to Aoife. There had been times when she’d felt that nothing was happening, that the earth was intent on retaining all her secrets. The morning she had arrived to find her Peter Rabbit lettuces devoured by slugs. The times she had knelt on the earth and willed her veggies on. ‘Grow, goddammit,’ she would hiss, peering into the furrows for signs of green. She agonized over everything – every blade of grass. The tomatoes weren’t ripening quickly enough and she feared that there wasn’t enough sunshine left in the season to redden them. As for the apple trees – a very poor showing considering all the pruning that had gone into them.

  ‘We have an apple tree at home,’ said Emily, ‘an ancient thing, and she produces an incredible crop every second year.’

  Maybe that was it. This wasn’t their year.

  On one such day Uri approached her, her anxiety visible to the naked eye as she peered into the soil. He bent low over her – she could almost feel his beard brushing her cheek – and murmured, ‘Each blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” ’

  Aoife looked up into his face.

  ‘It’s not all about you, you know,’ he said quietly, then smiled and walked away.

  Aoife felt her arrogance. She straightened up and relaxed her shoulders, experiencing a new lightness. It wasn’t all up to her, thank God. And she felt that with a new humility – quicker than she would have imagined.

  ‘I’m a bit concerned about my potatoes. Would you have a look at them, please, Seth?’ she asked one day.

  ‘Sure. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Look at the leaves. They’ve gone yellow and withered. I’m afraid it might be blight.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He bent over and examined a leaf. ‘I think you may be right.’

  ‘Oh, no. What are we going to do?’

  ‘There’s only one thing for it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going to have to emigrate to America.’

  ‘Seth!’

  He laughed. ‘When the leaves turn yellow like that, it means it’s time to dig them up.’

  ‘What? The spuds? You mean they’re ready for eating?’

  ‘No, for juggling.’

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing her a spade. ‘It’s only right that you should do the honours.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Go on,’ he urged.

  She took it from him, feeling a ridiculous level of excitement and anticipation. They were spuds, for God’s sake. She sliced the blade into the earth beside the plant closest to her, then stepped down hard on it. The soil gave way easily. She bent low over it and tugged the plant with both hands. She felt it give and pulled it out. Nothing but a compact little network of roots. She looked at Seth in dismay.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ he said. ‘Look in the ground.’

  Aoife hunkered down and sifted through the soil with her fingers. She couldn’t believe it. Nestled in the soil, for all the world like precious jewels, were three potatoes. ‘They’re pink!’ she said, holding one up for inspection.

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Incredible.’ She brushed away the earth with her thumb. ‘They look just like something you’d get in a shop.’

  Seth laughed. ‘What were you expecting?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t think that they’d be so – perfect.’

  She had an overwhelming urge to ask Seth if he’d bought them in a supermarket the night before and buried them especially for her to find, like a bizarre adult Easter-egg hunt. She rifled around and found three more. Then she dug up another plant. Then another. It was almost addictive, the thrill so unexpected. It made everything worth while – the impossible seem possible. It was the proof that everyday miracles could occur.

  25

  Michael was killed instantly. I like to think he felt nothing. I don’t like to think of the terror he must have experienced as he saw the truck skidding towards him, out of control, on the wrong side of the road. The driver’s heart-attack was fatal for everyone. Katie died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, her little heart fluttering in her chest like a butterfly. Then still. Alone in the ambulance with no mummy. Not even her daddy’s inert, smashed-up body, which stayed behind in the tangled metal that had been a Ford Focus, waiting to be cut out by the firemen. I like to think she was already gone, that only the mechanics of her body were still ticking over. That she was with the two other Kathleens, who’d finally got to hold and cradle their posthumous great-grandchild. Because she needed someone to look after her.

  I didn’t think I’d ever get through the pain. It immobilized me. Crushed me. I couldn’t believe it at first – couldn’t take it in. How could they be with me at one minute and at the next obliterated? Where was my Michael – the essence of him? His soul. And my baby. All the potential locked inside that chubby little body, where had it gone? It couldn’t have vanished just like that. Yet it was nowhere to be found.

  The morning of the funeral had an air of unreality about it. I wasn’t in my own body. I didn’t want to be. I was only aware of Liam’s small hand, a permanent fixture in mine. He wouldn’t let go and I wouldn’t have let him. But I could scarcely look at his white, pinched face, permanently upturned towards my own. His large, questioning eyes. When I saw the tiny white coffin I lost all reason and my mother took charge of him. I held Katie on my lap one last time on the way to the graveyard. No need to worry about car seats any more. Hers hadn’t saved her anyway. I believe what I did was keen – loud, open-mouthed wailing while I rocked over the body of my dead child. It was unbearable. Indescribable. I wanted to throw myself into the grave and be buried with her and Michael. I thought I’d die anyway, from the grief. Nobody could feel what I was feeling and keep on living. Nor would they want to.

  All the arms that encircled me, the arms of the living. All the voices that said sorry, the voices of the living. It was all a blur of black and flesh and tears. My family rallied around me, a human shield, as did Michael’s. Would they have been so understanding if they had known the truth?

  Peter didn’t attend the funeral, but Lara did. She embraced me fiercely, not attempting to disguise the rivulets of tears flowing freely down her cheeks. I presumed that Peter had elected to stay at home and mind their son. I was grateful for his absence.

  He rang me two days later. ‘Aoife.’

  ‘Hello, Peter.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How’s Liam?’

  ‘Coping, I think.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Do you want me to come over?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Silence again.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘You go and be with your wife.’

  I heard his sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘For ever.’

  ‘I’ll call you again in a few –’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘But just as a friend.’

  ‘No. I don’t want that. I need you to respect my wishes. Please, Peter.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Goodbye, Pete
r.’

  ‘’Bye, Aoife.’

  I was letting him off the hook.

  And that was the last time I ever spoke to him. It was the last time I ever saw him too. He and Lara moved away shortly after that, out of London to the countryside, to make a new start. Lara sent me a beautiful card around that time. I have it somewhere still. I wondered if what had happened to my family had made them value their own all the more.

  I didn’t miss Peter. Not once. Events had thrown everything into a stark perspective. What I’d had with him meant nothing. It had been meaningless lust. A petty excitement. A sordid betrayal. I couldn’t understand how I’d been so blind, so deluded. My emotions were not to be trusted. I – clearly – was not to be trusted.

  I missed Michael like a hollow ache that wouldn’t go away. Our bed was cold and empty and huge. I’d spent the last couple of months of our life together trying to escape his embraces. Thank God he’d never found out why. Did he know now? Up in heaven looking down?

  ‘Forgive me, Michael,’ I whispered, over and over. But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive myself. I knew I was being punished for my betrayal. I hadn’t valued them enough so they’d been taken away from me. My Michael and my Katie. My baby girl. When I wasn’t in our bed, wrapped in Michael’s dressing-gown, I was in Katie’s room, on the floor in front of her chest of drawers as if it were a shrine. I would take out her tiny pink clothes and smell them. Then I’d fold them and refold them, rearrange them until they were perfection. I’d always loved to see them lined up in neat rows. I spent hours doing that. When I’d finished, I’d start all over again. It may have been meaningless, but so was life. And it gave me comfort. Afterwards, I’d curl up into a ball on the floor beside her cot and fall asleep.

  I slept a lot in those first few weeks. I think it was the drugs the doctors had given me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to be conscious. My mother took over Liam. I was useless to anyone – so much so that eventually she had to say something.

  She called around one day to find me on the couch wearing Michael’s socks and dressing-gown, a cup of cold tea in my hand, staring blankly at the blank TV screen. ‘Why don’t you come back with me, love?’

  ‘I’m okay here, Mum.’

  ‘But you need to be with people.’

  ‘I’d rather be on my own.’

  My mother knelt in front of me and forced me to look her in the eye. ‘Listen to me, Aoife. I know you’re feeling – just awful. I know your heart has been broken. God knows, we’re all shattered. I remember how I felt when your dad died, and I know that this is much, much worse. But, my darling, it’s not all about you. If it was I’d say, “Fine, wallow in your misery for as long as you need to.” But you have a little boy to think of. Your son. Liam needs you. He’s missing his mummy desperately and there’s only so much I can say or do. It’s you he needs. You have to pull yourself together for him, love. I know it feels impossible but you have to try.’

  The tears were back, pouring down my face as usual. Hadn’t I cried enough already? No wonder I was dehydrated, my skin desiccated. I nodded and blew my nose. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, you will? You’ll come home with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good girl. Jump into the shower first. You’ll feel the better for it.’

  But I was in no condition for jumping into anything. Instead, my mother helped me up the stairs, linking me all the way. Then she turned on the shower and, encountering some resistance, removed Michael’s robe.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘will you be okay from here on in?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good girl. See you in a few minutes. I’m going down to make a fresh pot of tea.’

  My mother shut the door behind her and I removed my pyjamas. It was like shedding a second skin, I’d been wearing them so long. I looked down at my body. My skin seemed grey, tired-looking. I was skinnier than I remembered. I seemed to have shrunk. Maybe I could disappear altogether.

  I stood under the hot jets and willed them to wash it all away.

  I did feel slightly better once I was clean and wearing different clothes. Immediately I felt worse for feeling better. What right had I to feel anything but despair? My husband and child were dead and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t sent them out on the roads in the dark… If I hadn’t submitted to my lust… If I had been a better mother, a better wife, a better person… It was the downward spiral that kept on spiralling downwards.

  Downstairs, I allowed my mother to fill me with hot, sweet tea.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said, stroking my damp hair.

  She drove me to her home, a few miles away. I kept thinking that every car was going to career into us. I half wished they would.

  Liam was sitting on the floor in the middle of the sitting room, surrounded by miniature diggers – consolation toys. Everything leaped when he saw me – his body, his expression, his heart. He ran towards me and I knelt on the floor and opened my arms to him.

  ‘Mummy!’ He flung his around my neck and clung on for dear life. ‘I yuv you, Mummy.’

  ‘I love you too, Liam.’

  It was a minute before I tried to extricate myself, but he clung even tighter. ‘Don’t go, Mummy.’

  ‘I won’t, darling. I won’t.’

  The first anniversary was brutal. But the day after I felt a kind of relief. At least I’d no longer be thinking ‘this time last year’.

  When I saw a girl-toddler on the street, I averted my eyes.

  Liam became my everything. The whole universe focused into his dear little face. He was the reason I ate, slept, lived.

  The house was mine now. Michael’s death had cancelled out the mortgage. It was cold comfort. For a long while I was just existing, putting one foot in front of the other, putting each day behind me with relief that I was a little bit further away from the source of my pain. But I had to think of our future. Liam would be school age soon. Did I want to carry on living here?

  One night I had a dream. It was a dream like no other I’d had before or since. A perfect record of a conversation I’d once had with Michael. I dreamed about him often, but this dream was so vivid, so real, that I woke up newly bereft, the feeling so strong that he was with me still. I could almost smell the coffee he was making in the kitchen, could almost hear the shower as he stood under its jets. But the house echoed with nothingness. And that was when I knew I had to leave.

  He was never coming back.

  The memory was this. It was mid-morning on a Saturday. The sun shone through the window as we sat at the kitchen table, the morning papers spread out in front of us, the children playing at our feet.

  ‘You know,’ said Michael, suddenly putting down the part of the paper he’d been reading, ‘we should move to Ireland.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the perfect time to do it. The economy there is strong. I’d get a job no problem.’

  ‘What about my job?’

  ‘You’d get one too. It might take you a little longer.’

  ‘But I like the job I have.’ Peter was there.

  ‘The kids could start school in Ireland. Just think, they’d have Irish accents.’

  We smiled at the thought.

  ‘Are you serious about this?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  ‘It’s a really big step.’

  ‘I know. But what have we got to lose? It’d be a better quality of life for us. Just think about it.’

  I hadn’t really thought about it, my mind taken up with other matters at the time. But I thought about it now, sitting in my empty bed, enveloped by the warm feelings the dream had engendered. Why not? There was nothing for me here. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There was my mother, Liam’s nana, who’d been such a support in the last year or so. But I was stronger now. And she could visit. Dublin was only a short plane ride away. Because it was always Dublin for me. That was my home from home. And it would make Michael happy, I smiled to myself, his son growing up t
o be an Irishman. A proper Paddy, not a plastic one like me and his father. It was settled then. That was what we’d do. For better or worse.

  26

  It didn’t take Emily long to make up her mind. Not after she’d heard Aoife’s story. Or, at least, the parts Aoife had deemed fit for her young ears.

  She rang the woman in the adoption agency later that afternoon, sitting on the swing seat in her sensory garden, the beginnings of honeysuckle to her left, the stirrings of jasmine to her right. She rocked herself gently as she held the phone to her ear, one leg tucked under her, boots kicked off. ‘Hello. Can I speak to Stephanie, please?’

  ‘Certainly. Can I say who’s calling?’

  ‘Emily Harte.’

  ‘Hold the line, please.’

  The seconds ticked slowly by as Emily rocked to and fro, waiting for the opportunity to transform her future.

  ‘Emily, Stephanie here.’

  ‘Hi, Stephanie.’

  There was a short silence during which each waited for the other to make the first move. Stephanie broke it. She was used to awkward pauses: they were part of her daily round. ‘Are you calling to make an appointment to sign the consent papers, Emily?’

  Emily noted the professional compassion in the other woman’s tone and was grateful for it. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, feeling as if her heart was going to jump right out of her mouth and land on the ground in front of her. She pictured it coming to rest on the camomile lawn.

  ‘About what exactly?’ Stephanie’s voice was cautious.

  ‘I want to keep my baby.’ Emily was exultant, the adrenalin racing around her body and forcing her to her feet. She began to pace as Stephanie breathed at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Are you quite sure about this, Emily?’

  ‘I’m one hundred per cent certain.’

  ‘You don’t need more time?’

  ‘No. I’ve had enough time. Too much.’

  ‘Okay, then. I’ll put arrangements in place.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That I’ll organize a handover for a few days’ time.’