Sowing The Seeds Of Love Part 19

'Why were you sad?'

'I can't remember. But I'm better now.'

'Were you sad that Liam's daddy has gone away?'

Seth and Aoife glanced at each other. Aoife thought he looked as alarmed as she felt. 'Did you tell her?' she asked him.

'No! It must have been Liam.'

'My daddy's up in heaven with Holy G.o.d and all the angels,' announced Liam. 'And Katie's with him and she has wings too.'

'Where's heaven, Daddy?'

'It's a very long way away from here.'

'Like Bray?'

'A bit like Bray, yes.'

'Can we go there tomorrow after playschool?'

'No, Kathy. It's a really, really long way away.'

'We can get the bus.'

'No, Kathy.'

'Oh, why not? It's not fair.' She started to bash the earth with her Barbie spade.

'I know. Who'd like some chocolate?'

'Me!'

'Me!'

Aoife delved into the pocket of her fleece for the few squares of Dairy Milk she hoped she hadn't eaten already. No, they were still there. 'Here we go.'

'Yippee!'

'Yippee!'

She glanced at Seth. He wasn't looking at her but was instead focusing hard on pulling up a stubborn root. She recommenced digging, concentrating on the far end of the bed, hitherto unworked. The spade hit something hard. Must be a rock, and a big one at that, judging by the feel of it. She attempted to go around it, digging elsewhere, but kept reconnecting with it.

'You got something there?' Seth was behind her.

'Yes. I can't shift it.'

'Here. Let me have a go.'

Seth sliced into the earth she'd been digging and came up against the same hard object. 'I don't think that's a rock.'

Aoife grabbed at his sleeve, her eyes wide. 'You don't think it's a bone, do you?' She looked around for Mrs Prendergast.

'I wouldn't say so.' He laughed. 'You don't seriously believe that story, do you?'

'I don't know. No. Of course not.'

'She may be a mad old trout but she's not a murderer.'

'She might have been driven to it.'

'How?'

'He might have been an annoying b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Seth laughed. 'Here. I'll prove it to you. It's not bone, it's metal.'

He was digging again, frenziedly now, then tugging at something with his hands. He lifted the object out of the soil. It was an old, square, rusty metal box. Liam and Kathy had finished their chocolate.

'What is it, Daddy?'

'It's a box.'

'What kind of box?'

'I don't know, Kathy.'

'Open it!' The children jumped up and down, excited.

'It's not mine to open,' said Seth. 'It might belong to Mrs Prendergast. We'll have to ask her first.'

Gathering Uri as they went, they trooped en ma.s.se to the back door of Mrs Prendergast's house and knocked. They heard her advancing steps.

'His teeth might be in there,' whispered Seth, as the door was opening, leaving Aoife to bite down on her giggles.

'Mrs P.' He held out the box with outstretched hands. 'Look what we found. Does it mean anything to you?'

Mrs Prendergast wore an unfamiliar expression on her face. She took the box out of Seth's hands and walked back into her house. The adults looked at one another. Uri nodded and they followed her into her hallowed living quarters.

The back door led them into a kind of coats-and-mucky-boots area, which opened into the kitchen. Seated at the surprisingly rustic table was Lance, Mrs Prendergast's son, a half-drunk mug of coffee in front of him. He was slumped in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened. He straightened as they entered, his expression shifting from tired to surprised to wary.

'Lance, look at this. Do you remember?'

She proffered the box and Lance took it out of her hands to examine it. Aoife could see now that it was an old biscuit tin, badly rusted, Jacobs USA. Recognition brought her whizzing back to her childhood in her grandmother's Dublin home at Christmas time. Oliver Twist on the telly and a brown-grey furry toy rabbit called Strawberry on her lap her favourite present of that year.

'Have a biscuit, Aoife love.'

She'd selected a fluorescent pink wafer sandwich, her grandmother smiling at her indulgently. Aoife was suddenly nostalgic for the Irish food of her childhood: Galtee and Calvita cheese, Tayto crisps, Lemon's sweets, Kimberley, Mikado and coconut-cream biscuits. All of them you could probably still get, although she hadn't tasted most for years. She resolved to remedy that as soon as possible. Could you still get USA biscuits?

Lance and his mother were searching each other's faces.

'The time capsule,' said Lance. Then he laughed and attempted to prise it open.

'What's a time capsule?' said Liam.

Aoife scooped him up and held him to her. 'It's when you put some things in a box and bury them for somebody else to find years later. You put things in the box to show the person who finds it what life was like when you buried it. Sometimes it might not be found for hundreds of years. But this one wouldn't be that old.'

'How old is it?'

'Let's see,' said Lance, who had opened the box and was unfolding a newspaper. It was slightly damp and some of the pages were stuck together. Aoife took a step closer to peer at the date on the front of the Irish Times. As she leaned in, she breathed in the mustiness of the last forty-odd years and the scent transported her instantly to her childhood again.

When she was a little kid, her family used to take weekend breaks at Eastbourne, in a caravan belonging to friends of her parents. Each time they opened the caravan anew, months of mustiness would invade their collective nostrils. It was a scent peculiar and exotic to Aoife, and exactly the same as that which was now emanating from the newspaper. She had only experienced it one other time and that was when she purchased a secondhand book from a little shop in Notting Hill. She'd opened it and, whoosh, she was back in the caravan, six years old again. She looked into her son's four-year-old face. Would this moment become a memory for him?

Lance was reading out headlines from the paper. They all crowded around and peered in. It did occur to Aoife that perhaps they should give him and his mother some privacy but, quite frankly, she was too nosy. And Liam would have a fit if she took him away now. In any case, the Prendergasts had buried it with the intention of somebody else finding it, so it couldn't be that private. And, besides, n.o.body else looked as if they had any intention of budging.

It appeared, from the headlines, that not much had changed in the intervening years, which was either comforting or depressing, depending on how you looked at it.

'What else is in there?' said Kathy, standing on tiptoe, tense with impatience. Lance folded the newspaper and put it to one side. He delved into the box and pulled out a clear plastic package.

'Money.' He emptied out coins representative of every denomination and an old pound note.

'What else?' said Kathy, unimpressed.

Mrs Prendergast reached down and took out what appeared to be an old photograph. She stared at it for a good two minutes before handing it silently to Uri, who was standing beside her. After several seconds, his face broke into a smile. 'The apple trees.'

They all crowded around him, except Mrs Prendergast who sat, her face mask-like.

Trust Uri to notice the apple trees. Aoife had barely registered them, recognizable as they were, although less gnarled and more tender. Instead, she was focusing on the three people standing in front of them, smiling for the camera and squinting into the sun. A young boy Lance presumably dark-haired and skinny, wearing sixties-style shorts and a plaster on each bony knee. Standing behind him, a protective hand on his shoulder, was none other than a young Mrs Prendergast. It had to be her the same narrow figure, the tiny waist. But her bearing was less stiff, as was her hair, pale gold and wavy, tied into a ponytail that cascaded over her left shoulder.

'Kathy, look at Mrs P,' said Seth. 'Wasn't she a fine thing?'

'That's not Mrs Prendergast,' said Kathy, her tone full of derision.

'Yes, it is.'

'Then why does she look so different?'

'It was taken a long time ago.'

Aoife could see that Seth was regretting bringing the matter up. But she was far too interested in the photo to pay much heed. The third figure was a man. He stood a little apart from the others, presumably his wife and son. He was large, attractive, muscular his face and smile not unlike Lance's. His hands were on his hips and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. The famous Mr Prendergast.

'Is that your father?' Uri asked Lance.

'Yes.' Lance sat down again, his face closed.

'Look, roses!' Aoife's attention was momentarily distracted by a cloud of pale pink to the left of the photo. It was tremendously exciting to see this picture of how the garden had once been, if only in part.

One last thing remained in the box. Lance took it out now. He handed it to his mother and she turned it over in her hands, smoothing its face with her fingers. 'Do you remember this, Lance?' She was smiling now.

'Vaguely.'

It was a ceramic angel, faded and old, like something you might put on a Christmas tree. It was blue and white.

'Your father brought it back from Amsterdam.'

'It's a fairy,' said Kathy.

'Actually, no, Kathy, it's an angel,' said Uri.

'I didn't know you Jews believed in angels.'

It wasn't what Lance said so much as the way he said it. Indefinable. Yet unmistakable. The way he spat out the word instantaneously transformed the atmosphere in the room from wonder to hostility. Aoife felt as if she'd been slapped in the face. She could only imagine how Uri and Seth felt. It was horrible. With great dignity, Uri placed the photo on the table. 'You'd be surprised at what us Jews believe in.' He walked out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the garden. The silence in the kitchen grew. Aoife could feel something mounting in Seth beside her. She willed him not to say anything, not to thump Lance. He didn't. Instead, he glared at the man, then followed his father out to the garden.

Aoife was left in the kitchen with Lance, Mrs Prendergast and the two children, who were examining the angel minutely.

'How could you, Lance?' Mrs Prendergast turned to her son.

This time they needed their privacy.

'Come on, kids. It's nearly lunchtime. Let's go and get something to eat.'

'I'm not hungry.'

'Me neither.'

'I've got treats.'

'Yippee!'

'What are they?'

'Come outside and I'll show you.'

They left mother and son to discuss whatever they had to discuss.

Aoife hated the way the garden felt that afternoon Seth and Uri so quiet. As if the very air itself had been tainted. She wanted to say something but they seemed so unapproachable, each man working in his own s.p.a.ce. It was so awful, though, that she had to do something. She eventually went over to Seth, who had finished digging the bed. He was loading his wheelbarrow with an a.s.sortment of rocks.

'Hi, Seth.'

'Aoife.' He continued loading the rocks.

'How are you?'

'Grand.'

'Are you sure?'

'Why wouldn't I be?' He stopped what he was doing and looked at her, his hands on his hips.