Promised Land (9 page)

Sean was surprised to see her there when he came home twenty minutes later. Making excuses the two of them slipped outside, walking down by the garden wall where a lilac tree in full bloom shaded them from sight of the house.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Sean,’ she told him.

‘Goodbye!’

She could read the utter disbelief in his face.

‘I’m going to Dublin to stay with Kitty.’

‘Dublin! For how long? When will you be back?’

‘I’m going to stay there, Sean, look for a job.’

‘Jesus, Ella, don’t do this. Don’t just go away!’

‘I have to, Sean, I can’t stay here any longer, not with the way things are between Liam and me. There’s nothing left for me at Fintra, not any more.’

‘Don’t go Ella, for God’s sake don’t go! Just stay! Give it another year, give me a chance to sort things out. I’ll explain things to the da and try and get another job somewhere roundabouts, even if I have to go in as far as Wexford town. Just don’t go and leave me.’

‘I can’t, Sean. I can’t wait another year. Liam and I are barely speaking, he wants me off the place and now to tell the truth I just want to go,
my
mind’s made up to it. Everything’s all organized.’

He stared at her angrily. ‘So I can’t make you change your mind and stay.’

She shook her head, swallowing hard. ‘No.’

He ran his hands over his face and eyes, dismayed. ‘What about us, are you just going to up and off and leave me Ella, is that it?’ His eyes stared straight into hers, searching for the truth.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘But you could come to Dublin too Sean, there’s nothing to stop you, we could still see each other. You could get a job there!’

She wanted him to say he’d go to Dublin, London, it didn’t matter at all once they were together, that he wasn’t prepared to let her slip out of his life. Instead he looked silently at her making no romantic declarations, no suggestions, both of them suddenly awkward and strained.

‘I was never much of a one for Dublin, Ella, you know that.’

Ella looked at his face. She couldn’t even begin to read his thoughts. Obviously he didn’t really care or love her enough; maybe he never had. Perhaps Liam was right after all. She tried to disguise her own hurt; she was likely the one who had imagined more between them. They were just two close childhood friends talking to each other, saying goodbye, the pain of it almost choking her.

‘I’ll miss you,’ he said simply. She noticed he made no offer even to come to Dublin to visit her, nor did
he
ask her to come home at the weekends to see him.

‘I’ll miss you too, Sean,’ she said, trying to appear somehow light-hearted, as against heartbroken at the thought of their relationship finally ending.

They hugged quickly, and Sean insisted on walking back home with her as she wheeled the bike along the laneway.

‘When are you going?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

‘Tomorrow morning.’

The sun beat down on them and she licked a line of perspiration from her lip, nervous. He walked her as far as the gateway to the farmhouse, both of them ill at ease, Ella trying not to cry or let him see how upset she really was. She supposed it was out of habit that he smoothed the long hair back from her face and bent down and kissed her gently. The smell of sweat and grass and fresh air clung to him and she could feel the warmth of his breath as she closed her eyes trying to fix that one kiss in her memory. When she opened them seconds later he’d gone.

Chapter Nine

LEAVING KILGARVAN WAS
likely the hardest thing that she’d ever done in all her twenty-one years. She had never stayed away from home for more than a few days and was beginning to feel nervous about sharing a flat in the city. What if Liam was right and she couldn’t find a job, what would she do then? She still felt shocked and bruised after saying goodbye to Sean, not believing it was really over between them and wondering if she had ever really meant that much to him. Or had it always been that she was just a good catch?

Carmel knocked on the door that evening and came in and sat down on the bed, Ella rubbing at her eyes so that her sister-in-law wouldn’t see that she’d been crying.

‘Are you OK, Ella?’

Ella nodded.

‘Honest?’

‘I’m just a bit sad, Carmel, that’s all. I’ve slept in this bedroom since I was a little girl. They’re the same
curtains
and flowery pale blue wallpaper I’ve always had. It’ll be strange waking up somewhere different.’

‘I felt like that when I was getting married, Ella. Imagine, I shared a tiny bedroom with my two sisters, the three of us all on top of each other in an old brass bed. We’d torn lino on the floor, cracks in the windowpane and we still had our blackout curtains long after the blackout, and yet I missed it, missed them. I was used to a family living on top of each other, to never having peace and quiet. There wasn’t much of that where I grew up. When Liam and I moved into the flat I was lonely at first. It seemed so quiet and I missed them all something awful.’

‘You must miss them now, being so far away from England!’

Tears welled in Carmel’s eyes. ‘That I do, but we keep in touch.’

Ella had noticed that the postman Tim O’Reilly seemed to come a lot more regularly of late, Carmel racing to the door to greet him when he cycled up the path, her eyes shining when he took an envelope with an English stamp from his bulging postbag. Ella knew that it must be hard for Carmel, with her English accent and ways, for it would take time for her to make friends locally and be accepted by the neighbours.

‘I wish you didn’t have to go, Ella. Everything that has happened is so unfair. I tried to talk to Liam about it, tried to make him see sense, but you know what he’s like. He won’t listen!’

Ella sighed. She knew that Carmel was being
sincere
, for even in these few weeks they had come to understand each other. A farm could be lonely, especially when the dark winter days came and the woman of the house was left to her own devices. If circumstances had been different she knew that the two of them could have, would have been close friends.

She hugged her sister-in-law tightly before she went to bed.

The next morning Liam drove her into Wexford to the train station. You could have cut butter with the tension that existed between them in the car, and she could tell by the set of her brother’s jawline that he was not going to ask her to change her mind and stay. Poor Carmel sat embarrassed between them.

The Kilgarvan grotto was almost finished, the local stone carved to resemble something from Lourdes, a statue of the French peasant girl Bernadette looking upwards to the spot where the statue of Our Lady would be placed. Railings protected it and an altar rail of stone and iron was being erected around it.

‘Sure you’ll be back for the blessing and the special Mass,’ murmured Carmel.

Ella doubted it. She had no plans to return.

In Wexford town the shops were only starting to open and the place had that drab sleepy early-morning air about it as the shopkeepers swept their front steps and threw buckets of cold water onto the path. Canopies were cranked open and window
blinds
rolled up in readiness for the day’s business as they drove up along the quays. The sunlight lit up dusty windows and faded sale items.

Aunt Nance had given her the address of the flat that Kitty was renting and the big fashion shop that she worked in, in Grafton Street. Ella was nervous about leaving the life she was used to and the place and people she knew but her change of circumstances meant there was nothing to tie her to Kilgarvan any more.

She had put on a good light wool navy suit that she had barely worn and a pair of nylon stockings and low-heeled court shoes that would be comfortable for walking and the journey. The station was not too crowded or busy and Liam parked outside it. He lifted her case from the trunk of the car but didn’t even offer to come inside with her, and bending down pretending to fuss with the stiff handle and her handbag, she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how upset she really was.

‘There you go, Ella. Have a safe journey!’ he said abruptly.

She watched him walk away and get back in the car, without giving a further thought to her or her situation. They might have been complete strangers instead of brother and sister.

‘Promise that you’ll keep in touch,’ pleaded Carmel, holding her.

Ella just nodded, not really saying anything.

‘You could come home some weekends, get the bus or the train down. We’d both love to see you.’

Ella wasn’t even thinking of anything like that.

‘Will you get in the car, woman, I’m blocking the entrance here!’

Liam hooted the horn impatiently to hurry her up. Carmel was all apologies for his rudeness and refusal to see her off properly; Ella watched as her brother and his wife drove away, Carmel waving farewell.

Ella purchased her single ticket to Dublin and joined the crowd on the platform. There was a delay on the line and she pushed to the front of the platform when the train eventually appeared, flinging herself into a window seat. She stored her case away and made herself as comfortable as she could. The carriage smelled of stale tobacco and was none too clean. Ignoring the people around her she concentrated on the countryside that tumbled past the window, the fleeting glances of back yards and farmhouses and derelict-looking building sites with their rusting piles of old machinery and the cluttered kitchens and scrappy vegetable plots that flew by. Every mile was taking her further and further from home and she tried to push thoughts of Fintra out of her head.

Wexford, Enniscorthy, Gorey, Arklow, Wicklow, Greystones and Bray, Killiney, Dalkey; mentally she ticked off the names of the stations that they passed. Glimpses of sea and coast tantalized her; children waved as the train rushed past them, some trying to run along and chase it.

It was almost lunchtime by the time they reached
Amiens
Street Station in Dublin, crossing over the River Liffey. Taking her aunt’s advice Ella walked as quickly as she could, dragging her heavy case along the platform, bashing into fellow passengers who stepped in her way as she rushed to find a taxicab. She gave the driver the address in Grafton Street where Kitty worked.

It was years since she’d been to Dublin and she had to admit she hadn’t a clue as to her whereabouts. The first time she’d visited the city she’d been only eight years old, when her mother and father had brought Liam and herself to Dublin for a night, staying in a small hotel near the station. She remembered them visiting the famous Dublin Zoo in the Phoenix Park and the keeper letting her feed a sticky bun to a wrinkled grey elephant, its trunk snuffling her hand for crumbs. Liam had dragged them all off to climb Nelson’s Pillar afterwards and her mother insisted on the reward of a large glacé ice cream in a tea rooms close by. The only other time she’d been was when Aunt Nance had insisted she join herself and the girls on a trip to Dublin to get an outfit for her cousin Constance’s wedding. She recalled trooping along after Teresa and Connie and Kitty as they tried on almost every dress in Arnott’s ladies’ department. Her father had given her a twenty-pound note and told her to treat herself to something nice. How she’d agonized over the spending of the money!

She looked out of the window as the driver passed the Custom House and went along the city’s quays, turning up by the gas company showrooms. Students
thronged
outside the gates of Trinity College, the Protestant university, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of cobblestones and its central courtyard. The driver slowed as they neared Grafton Street and its huge department stores, Brown Thomas on one side of the busy thoroughfare and Switzer’s on the other, finally stopping outside Lennon’s, the lifelike mannequins in the plate glass windows dressed in the summer season’s bright colours and prints.

‘I have to go in and get the key to the flat from my cousin, do you mind waiting a minute?’

The Dubliner shrugged his shoulders, taking up a crumpled newspaper folded open at the racing page. Ella hoped she could trust him to mind her heavy old suitcase though there was little enough of value in it save for her clothes and underwear. She knew that Kitty would be busy working in the fashion department but was hoping she wouldn’t mind letting her have the keys so that she could deposit her case back in the flat.

There was an air of hush inside the door and soft carpet underfoot. Ella wished that she hadn’t the yoke of a suit on her and as she could see some of the staff staring at her. Aunt Nance had said Kitty worked on the ground floor, so Ella scanned the counters all around her looking for a glimpse of her cousin’s familiar chestnut hair and pretty face. There wasn’t sight or sound of her and Kitty generally managed to stand out from the crowd.

‘Excuse me,’ she asked, approaching the woman behind the glove and bag counter just inside the door.

‘Yes madam, may I help you?’

‘Thank you. I’m looking for one of the assistants here, Kitty Kavanagh. It’s just that I can’t see her.’

Recognition filled the other woman’s face and she gestured to Ella to move closer to her. ‘Kitty’s home sick, laid up with something. She hasn’t been in since the weekend.’

Ella couldn’t believe her bad luck. ‘I suppose I’d better go to her flat then. Is she bad?’

The other woman with her manicured nails and well-made-up face was dismissive. ‘How would I know?’ she said, turning to attend to a customer intent on buying a patent-look handbag.

Ella managed to get back to the waiting driver outside and give him the address of the flat in Merrion Square, imagining all kinds of calamities having befallen her cousin. She already felt hot and flustered and was glad not to have to carry her case such a distance as the driver passed through Dublin’s Georgian streets, the once-magnificent houses with their tall stone and redbrick façades and long narrow windows glinting in the afternoon sunlight now converted from town houses for the wealthy and aristocratic to flats and offices.