Sowing The Seeds Of Love Part 34

It took weeks to get an address for Samuel's cousin. They finally tracked him down through one of the Jewish agencies. Then the letter was sent. Uri wrote it but the teacher helped him and made sure the return address was legible. Uri felt as if he was sending out a letter in a bottle.

For two whole months he waited, each day checking the post, each day more anxious. He'd never met this man or his people. Would they even care about his existence? Be willing to take in a boy they'd never met?

At last a reply, with a return address in Dublin. Uri went off on his own to read it his entire future in his hands. He opened the letter and this was what he read: My dearest Uri, I am overjoyed to hear of your survival. I can only a.s.sume from your letter that your father and the rest of your family were not so fortunate. Nothing would make me happier than for you to come and live with us. Of course you must come. I will set things in motion immediately. In the meantime, please write often.

G-d be with you, Jacob Rosenberg Uri clutched the letter to his chest and closed his eyes. He was no longer alone in the world.

But the plan was to take another three years to come to fruition. Not until 1948 did Ireland agree to take in a hundred and fifty refugee Jewish children. The government didn't want to, but its leader, de Valera, made them.

Uri arrived at the port at North Wall, a tired, undernourished fourteen-year-old. His new family were there to meet him on dry land. He recognized them from photos they had sent. They embraced him as if they had known him for ever and brought him back to their home the first proper home he'd known in years. It was a heady experience. At first, it overwhelmed him and he didn't know what to do or say. But they were so welcoming, so kind, so full of unconditional love for this boy whom they had never met that they saved him.

There was his uncle Jacob because that was what he was instructed to call him his aunt Martha and his two young cousins, ten-year-old David and eight-year-old Sarah. They astounded him, these happy, robust, pink-cheeked people. He wasn't used to seeing such well-fed Jews. And the children played so happily, as if they'd never had to endure hardship or witness a bad thing in all their lives. Which, of course, they hadn't. Uri vaguely recalled having been like that once.

At first, he didn't believe in them, his faith in humankind smashed almost to nothing. But, little by little, they won his trust and later his love.

Jacob was a tailor, and the following year, Uri began his apprenticeship in that trade. He was hard-working, quick, dextrous and, most of all, grateful for being given a second chance. He learned quickly and advanced rapidly. It seemed as if his luck had turned. He wondered sometimes if it was possible for a person to use up all of their bad-luck quota for a lifetime. If it was, he had certainly used up exceeded his. But he wasn't optimistic enough to believe that.

Jacob's business partner a Mr Stern had a daughter. Her name was Deborah. She would come to the shop sometimes. She had glossy curls, which bounced every time she laughed, which was often. And her dimples. Uri could have watched them for hours. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Now he knew that perfection existed in this imperfect world.

'Close your mouth, Uri, you're catching flies.' The other men had laughed at him. Which embarra.s.sed him because he wasn't normally so transparent in his emotions. Uri was a reserved, serious and well-mannered young man, p.r.o.ne to dark moods but also to great kindness. Had his destiny been different, he might have been different. But that was something neither he nor anyone else would ever know for sure.

Miraculously, she liked him too. Her light was drawn to his darkness. He pulled her in. It was lucky that she was a forward and loquacious girl, because he might never have had the courage to approach her.

She would come up to him in the workshop and engage him in conversation. This wasn't always easy: Uri's innate reticence, combined with the dumbstruck nature of his regard for her, rendered him monosyllabic, but she must have sensed that there was something there, something beyond words, in the same way that Uri saw something beneath the girlish dimples. Depth. A woman deep enough and strong enough to take him on. She might even be his bashert. His soul-mate.

So it was that he found himself knocking on Mr Stern's office door one afternoon.

'Come in.'

The fear that Uri felt surprised him. He hadn't felt such fear for a long time because nothing had meant so much to him for a long time. Once he had thought that there was nothing no one left for anyone to take away from him. But now there was.

Mr Stern's face opened out into a smile. 'Uri. What can I do for you?' The older man leaned back in his chair, glad of the distraction, and placed his hands behind his head.

Uri closed the door behind him and, cap in hand, approached the desk. 'Mr Stern.'

'Yes?'

'It's about your daughter.'

'Ah.'

'I would like your permission to ask Deborah to go dancing with me this Sat.u.r.day night.'

Uri waited and waited, as Mr Stern regarded him solemnly for what seemed like an age. Finally, he spoke: 'You have my permission.'

Uri allowed himself to breathe. 'I do?'

Mr Stern laughed. A deep, raspy chuckle. 'Why the surprise?'

'Because I have nothing.'

That shocked them both and hung in the air between the two men, waiting for a response. It was a long time coming, as Reuben Stern thought back on the years he'd known this boy now a man how from the very first day he'd observed his capacity for hard work, his respect for his elders, his loyalty, his integrity. His grat.i.tude.

'I think you have everything my daughter needs,' he said quietly.

'Thank you, sir.' Uri inclined his head and backed towards the door.

'And besides,' said Mr Stern, as Uri was about to leave, 'you're Jewish, aren't you?'

That Sat.u.r.day night, Uri's heart caught in his throat every time he looked at Deborah and when his arm encircled her waist, her hand resting gently on his shoulder. Many years later, the widowed Uri could still remember the feel of her in his arms. He didn't even have to close his eyes: Deborah was as real to him as if she were still living and breathing beside him.

They were betrothed a year later, but it was another full year before the wedding ceremony took place. A year in which Uri worked outlandish hours to earn enough to set up home with his bride.

The week before the ceremony, in which the bride and groom were not permitted to see each other, nearly killed Uri, but it made his first glimpse of Deborah on their wedding day, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears beneath her veil, all the more mesmerizing. As they stood under the chuppah, the seven blessings recited, Uri had the strangest feeling that something was being returned to him the feminine element of his life, which had been missing since that first day in the camp. And in the riotous celebration that followed, he laughed as he hadn't done since he was ten years old.

He marvelled at the forces that had brought him to this point in his life. An orphan, but with a family. In a strange land, but with a home. And now setting up his own home and about to start his own family.

On their wedding night, Uri told Deborah what had happened to him and his family during the war. Even the part about his father being shot and his own hand in it. He hadn't told another soul. But she was his wife now, and part of him. She listened to the grim reality of a life she had only half guessed at and they cried in each other's arms. Deborah promised Uri that it would be her life's work to heal his pain with her love. She was as good as her word.

They waited a long time for the children to arrive, so long that they'd begun to think they wouldn't come at all. Part of Uri was content with this a part he tried to keep hidden from Deborah. Did he really want to bring his children into a world in which so many terrible things could happen? He didn't know that he could survive another loss. But the children arrived in their own good time. Deborah thought them a miracle.

They had two sons Seth and Aaron. The day Seth was born, Uri finally knew how much his father had loved him. He'd always thought he'd known, but now he knew it in his soul. And when he saw Deborah with their child, he understood how much his mother had loved him.

The boys grew, as boys do. They gave him unimaginable joy and unimaginable sadness first, because they would never know their grandparents and, second, because their grandparents would never know them. He wondered what kind of aunt Hannah would have been. What type of woman would that precocious child have become?

There were times when Seth looked so like his grandfather, Samuel, that Uri felt as if G.o.d was ripping out his heart with his bare hands. Such piercing, bittersweet pain. And when Seth exhibited a flair for gardening, Uri knew for sure that his father lived on. He taught Seth everything he knew, everything his own father had taught him, and he watched that talent grow and blossom.

But a part of him could never fully connect with his children, the same part that couldn't talk about the past. They felt it and he felt it too. It was at its worst when they were teenagers, their moodiness colliding with his own. They were all so lucky in having Deborah to coddle, correct and act as a warm, cuddly buffer between them.

By the time Deborah died, they had reached an accommodation, Uri and his sons. They gathered around each other and held each other up, urging each other to go on in their own individual ways. Privately, Uri didn't know if he could. Deborah had sustained him for so long that there were days when he felt he could no longer go on living. He survived for his sons, and in memory of those who hadn't had any choice as to whether they lived or died.

Then one day, about a year after Deborah's death, Uri saw a notice in a local food store. Or was it a sign?

Could it be that, for a second time, a garden would save his life?

45.

Pearl, the quiet but intense Protestant lady, had set Aoife thinking. Even if she didn't want the gathering to be religious in the strictest sense of the word, perhaps they could inject a little meaning into it to make it something more than a mere autumn party.

The name itself was something they discussed endlessly. The children were vociferously unanimous in favour of the Autumn Party. Emily, who was now on the phone almost daily with her constant ideas and enthusiasms, wanted to call it Cornucopia, in reference to the ancient symbol of food and abundance, otherwise known as the horn of plenty.

'I have one of those,' said Seth.

'Stop!' Aoife hissed Mrs Prendergast was within earshot.

'I don't know what all the fuss is about,' the older lady said. 'Why can't we just call it a harvest festival and have done with it?'

'That's too traditional,' said Aoife.

'What's wrong with tradition?'

'Nothing. But it might give people the wrong impression. Make people think it's something it's not. Like what happened with your friend Pearl.'

'She's no friend of mine, dear.'

'Okay. But you know what I mean.'

Mrs Prendergast was silent, which indicated that she did know what Aoife meant but wasn't going to admit it.

Then Aoife suggested, 'Fall Harvest.'

'No,' said Uri, very firmly, surprising Aoife as he normally offered no opinion on the matter, instead listening to their endless discussions with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. Seth seemed uncomfortable too. It wasn't until she got home and looked up 'Fall Harvest' on the Internet that she discovered why. Her face burned, even though she was alone in her own house: it was a term the n.a.z.is had used to describe a particular phase of Jewish murders.

Mrs Prendergast had got Aoife thinking about tradition. She remembered the corn dollies of her childhood and realized that she had no clue as to their significance. So she looked them up too. She learned that the practice of plaiting wheat stalks to create a straw figure came from the belief that the corn spirit lived in the wheat and, as it was harvested, fled to the wheat that remained. By making the dolly, people believed they were keeping the spirit alive for the following year and the new crop. The next spring, the dolly would be ploughed back into the earth.

Aoife had a word with Liam's teacher, purchased several wheatsheaves at the local agricultural show and had the boys and girls of that year's junior infants busily making a veritable army of corn dollies.

Another memory from the harvest festivals of her youth was the bread. From the Church of England primary school she had attended, she had a clear recollection of a large loaf of bread in the shape of a wheatsheaf. She consulted Mrs Prendergast.

'Yes, that's right. It's to symbolize thanksgiving for the harvest. They usually surround the bread with lots of fruit and vegetables.'

'Like a display. What a great idea. We could do that. Surround a loaf with produce from the garden. Let the people see what we've been doing. Do you think the Mothers' Union would bake the loaf for us?'

'Well, I could help you with it if you like.'

'Really?'

'Yes. I did it a few times when Lance was a child.'

'That would be terrific. In fact...'

'What is it now?'

Aoife's mind was joyfully ticking overtime. She had a dim recollection of an essay one of her students had written. It concerned the Celtic celebration of the harvest, the feast of Lammas, or the celebration of bread, when all the women of a village would come together to prepare the bread, this being seen as a sacred ritual in itself.

'We need lots of bread to serve with the soup. Why don't we all get together for a great big baking session?'

'Who's "we"?'

'You, me, Emily, Emily's mother, Kathy... Well, that's it, really.'

Emily was coming up a few days early to help. She was bringing Rose and her mother with her. They were staying with Mrs Prendergast her first house guests, Aoife reckoned, for a very long time.

'So just women, then?'

'I think so. That'd be more fun, wouldn't it?'

'You can use my kitchen if you like.'

'Thank you!'

'Or had you made that a.s.sumption already?'

'Kind of.'

Mrs Prendergast tried to look grumpy and failed miserably. The matter was settled. Aoife began organizing the ingredients that very afternoon.

The news Aoife received the following day caused her to feel both happy and anxious: her mother was coming for the party. While she was looking forward to having her there, and happy that Liam would get to see his nana, she couldn't help but worry. She supposed this had mostly to do with Seth. Her mother had known Michael and that seemed to matter. Furthermore, he had been her beloved son-in-law, the father of her grandchildren. Of course, she didn't have to tell her about Seth. It wasn't as if they were living together, and n.o.body else knew about it yet.

They had decided to keep it secret mainly for Liam and Kathy's sake in case it all went pear-shaped. So that was it. She wouldn't tell her. Nothing to worry about.

The Autumn Party was the t.i.tle decided upon, greeted with much whooping and jumping by the children. They put flyers all over the neighbourhood: Come join us for our Autumn Party, Music sweet and food so hearty, Homemade soup and bread for all, Come celebrate the harvest haul.

'What music?' said Emily. Aoife had just read the flyer down the phone to her.

'Hold on. I haven't read the rest of it. "Bring your musical instruments, dancing shoes, story-telling hats and hours of sunshine." '

'Oh.'

'Well. What do you think?'

'Um. It's very good. Only...'

'What?'

'Do you mean we're just relying on people bringing their own instruments and making their own music?'

'That's right.'

'Isn't that a bit risky?'

'How so?'

'What if they don't, and everyone's standing around waiting to be entertained?'

'It'll be fine. They'll make their own entertainment.'

'If you're sure.'

'I am.'

Then Aoife's mother arrived. They went out to Howth, a mutual, almost unspoken decision they'd both loved it in their separate childhoods. It was to be beside the sea as much as anything else, on the beautiful, golden, windswept autumn day, Liam running ahead in a state of high excitement. The seals were in the harbour five of them, so close that you could hear them breathing, watch their nostrils opening and closing, see their sleek, glistening bellies as they rolled over and dived. A dog stood on the quayside, barking dementedly at them. Aoife bought a bag of fish sc.r.a.ps from the fishmonger across the way and Liam fed the seals, laughing joyously as they caught the fragments in their mouths.