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Authors: Cathy Kelly
But now she had to live out the rest of her life without having let him go. For her, there was no sense of closing that chapter of her life.
The bus rattled out of Waterford, rolling past beautiful countryside that Lily barely saw. In her head, she was still in London, hurrying through tired grey streets, looking up at the shimmering sun bursting through the clouds, thinking of Jamie…
‘Will I let you off here?’ the bus driver said loudly, jerking Lily back to the present. The bus had stopped as close to the Old Forge as it could and she stared out at familiar countryside.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.
When the bus had driven off again, Lily looked at the suitcase she’d hauled from London and thought that she really didn’t give a damn if she left it on the side of the road; she
didn’t have the energy to drag it half a mile up the lane to the house. She shoved it into a hedge and stood facing in the direction of her home.
Rathnaree was hidden behind the trees to the left and Lily felt a surge of hatred for it and all it represented. Those class barriers had driven a wedge between her and Jamie, even without Sybil and her venom.
The Lochravens, the Beltons and the Hamiltons were from another world, and it made no sense that people couldn’t cross between the two. Well, Lily wasn’t stepping foot near Rathnaree or its like ever again. That world had hurt her too much: she would stay in her own from here on.
She wiped away a tear and, for the first time, allowed herself to breathe in the clear country scent of fields and trees and wild garlic. There was another scent: lavender. She stood close to the dry-stone wall and peered over it. There, in one corner of the field, were around twenty lavender bushes. She half-remembered there having been a single bush there, but now the lavender had spread until there was an entire copse of it, richly scenting the air with that evocative smell. Lily climbed the wall, hopped down the other side and walked towards the lavender. On impulse, she took off her shoes and stockings and felt the softness of the grass under her feet. Then she sat down, drew her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes. She could remember Granny Sive talking about lavender being a very old herb, and there was some connection to the fairies, or the little people, as Granny Sive referred to them.
Here, in the protective copse of the little people, Lily sent a silent prayer: ‘Help me,’ she said and began to cry.
She didn’t hear him until he’d scaled the wall and was striding towards her: a giant of a man with a tanned face, hair the colour of copper, and the kindest blue eyes she’d ever seen.
‘I saw you from the road,’ he said, concern in his voice. ‘I had to see if you were all right. Are you?’
Lily just stared silently at him.
‘Don’t be frightened, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, I was only worried. My name’s Robby Shanahan. Can I see you home or anything?’
Surrounded by her fairy lavender, with this kind giant looking at her with a gentleness Lily hadn’t experienced in so long, she felt a warmth flood through her body. It was a lightness, a feeling that, if she closed her eyes now, she’d sleep soundly and the pain and sorrow would go away for a little while.
Thank you.
She wasn’t sure who she was thanking, but some deity had brought a little peace into her heart for the first time since Jamie died.
She smiled at the gentle giant. ‘I’m Lily Kennedy,’ she said. ‘You could carry my suitcase home.’
At midday, Rhona came in with a cup of tea for Izzie. She could smell dinners being served in the rooms along the hall, but she didn’t feel hungry. She felt strangely as if she was waiting for something that was just about to happen.
‘Sometimes people need to be told they can go,’ Rhona said.
Izzie stared at her. Rhona had the look of a woman who wasn’t prone to flights of fancy. It seemed such a strange thing to say; but then, hadn’t Anneliese said much the same thing?
‘You have to tell her she can go,’ Rhona went on. ‘She’s been waiting for someone, for you, so she could go.’
‘How can you tell?’ Izzie asked.
‘You learn things during twenty years of working with dying people,’ Rhona said.
Izzie winced at the word ‘dying’.
‘It’s all right to say it,’ Rhona went on. ‘She knows she’s going. She’s at peace. Some people fight so hard. It makes me think of that Dylan Thomas poem I learned in school: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. Some people don’t go gently, they really do fight. Your grandmother is happy to go,
she’s not fighting it now, but she has been holding on for dear life until now, until you came.’
Izzie didn’t realise she was crying until she felt the tears drip on to her shirt. She reached up to find her cheeks were wet. Rhona fished in her pocket, found a tissue and handed it to her.
‘I’ll leave you.’
Izzie nodded.
She sat on the edge of the bed and smelled the lavender again.
‘Gran, I love you,’ she said, ‘but you can go now.’ Suddenly, she thought of the words in the diary, written over sixty years ago:
I know I have to let him go. I don’t want to but it’s the right thing to do. We’d end up hating each other and I love him too much for that.
‘You can let go, Gran. Thank you for sharing it with me – your life. I love you, Gran. I will miss you so much.’
She felt tears sliding down her face and she mopped at them with the tissue. ‘It’s OK, we’re all OK. Me, Dad, Anneliese, Beth – all of us. Even Mitzi. You’d love her – she’s such a little pet. So you can go. We all love you, you know. And thank you for everything, Be happy wherever you’re going, be happy, you deserve that – I love you.’
Unable to go on, she laid down beside her grandmother’s frail body, hugging her one last time.
Lily found she was wearing an old dress she’d had in London when she, Diana and Maisie lived in Diana’s godmother’s house. It was green chiffon, with flaring panels in the skirt, and it brought out the chestnut of her hair. ‘Where have you been, dress?’ she said to it.
She was young again too; how strange. Her bones didn’t ache and her skin wasn’t wrinkled around her elbows.
Now where was she? In a field, that’s where. Close to the Old Forge, the field with the lavender in it, where she’d met Robby for the first time. There were deckchairs arranged among the lavender bushes with people relaxing happily in them. Diana and dear Maisie were there.
Lily smiled at them, pleased to see them. It seemed like only yesterday they’d been writing to each other, bridging the miles and the years with their letters.
There was Lady Evangeline, Philip, Matron, Isabelle Lochraven too, so many people from her past lined up.
There was Mam, sitting smiling, and Dad beside her: there was her darling brother, Tommy, with Moira, his wife. How wonderful to see them.
Lily ran past them all, waving, motioning that she’d be back, but first she had something to do.
Then she saw him: Jamie, in his uniform and looking as handsome as ever. Behind him, in the distance, coming running to her, were two people: one a tall man with copper hair and the other a slim woman with dark hair and her father’s kind expression. Robby and Alice.
Lily beamed at them. ‘Just a moment,’ she whispered. ‘I’m coming.’
She turned to Jamie and touched his hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said to him. ‘Thank you for teaching me how to love. I don’t think I knew how until you taught me. And I’m sorry, I had to let you go, you know that.’
Robby and Alice were closer now.
Jamie’s hands slipped through hers. He was smiling, disappearing somehow.
Lily looked past him at her husband and daughter.
They’d waited for her: she’d always been afraid they wouldn’t and yet, here they were, smiling, holding out their arms. And she ran to them, to the two people she loved most.
Praise for Cathy Kelly:
‘A must for Kelly’s many fans; a warm, moving read.’
Daily Mail
‘Totally believable.’
Rosamunde Pilcher
‘An upbeat and diverting tale skillfully told…Kelly knows what her readers want and consistently delivers.’
Sunday Independent
‘An absorbing, heart-warming tale.’
Company
‘Her skill at dealing with the complexities of modern life, marriage and families is put to good effect as she reases out the secrets of her characters.’
Choice
‘Kelly deamatises her story with plenty of sparkly humour.’
The Times
‘Kelly has an admirable capacity to make the readers identify, in turn, with each of her female characters…’
Irish Independent
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This edition 2008
Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2008
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Cathy Kelly
For Dylan, Murray and John, with all my love
Star Bluestone had talked to bees all her life. She talked to her flowers too, murmuring to the rare yellow poppies she’d nurtured from seeds gathered in the old Italianate garden thirty miles away across the Wicklow hills. She and the young Kiwi gardener there had such great chats, he walking her through the orchard and reaching up to cradle a baby apple bud the way another man might touch a woman.
He understood that people who loved the soil talked to their plants and to the bees whose careful industry made their flowers bloom. Even though he was only thirty to Star’s sixty years, he didn’t think she was an eccentric old lady. Rather, he was impressed by Star’s encyclopaedic knowledge of plant life. His earnest, handsome face became animated when they talked.
When she watched this kind boy, Star always remembered fondly that good gardeners make good lovers. Nobody capable of the tenderness required to separate delicate fronds of fern for replanting would ever be heavy-handed with another person’s body.
It had been a few years since Star had lain in a man’s arms. She’d had many lovers, but the one she would remember for the rest of her life, the one whose memory was imprinted
upon her skin, hadn’t been a gardener. He’d been a poet, although that wasn’t how most people knew him. To the world, he was a conventional man, handsome, certainly, with beautiful manners and an important job waiting for him. To her, he was the man who sat with her under the stars and recited poetry as he traced his fingers along her face and talked about their future.
