The Lost Garden Read Free Page B

and kissed her. ‘Small wonder you look so pale and wanting leaving these behind.’
    In that moment Aileen felt so tired that she just wanted to lie down on the settle and have her mother put a woollen blanket over her and sing her to sleep.
    ‘Pray to her every morning and night, Aileen, and the Blessed Virgin will keep you safe.’
    ‘For the love of God, woman, hurry up!’ Paddy was anxious to get going.
    Both women turned towards the doorway. The house faced east to the Atlantic, and as the sun was lowering in the sky, it suddenly sent a shaft of deep orange light piercing through the open door that was so strong it seemed to trap them inside with its warm intensity. It appeared to Aileen, in her overtired state, that the outside world was on fire.
    ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want to stay here.’
    Anne took her daughter’s face in both her hands, and using her thumbs to stroke back some strands of auburn that had escaped from her side plaits, she smiled gently and said, ‘Whist, my girl, you’ll be fine – and back before you know it. Now go.’
    Then she prodded her gently out through the door. Aileen held out her hands for Martin to pull her up onto the cart, and even as her feet left the ground, steadying themselves on the wooden step, she felt the excitement of the past few days returning.
    They trundled down along the stony boreen towards the road and Aileen looked back at her family home. Her mother was standing by the door waving them off. They would be home in three months, when the summer that was just about to start was all but ended. One season, yet it seemed like a lifetime.

Chapter Four
    One season tattie-hoking in Scotland would guarantee the Walshes enough money to buy into Tom’s Galway hooker and young Jimmy desperately wanted in on that boat.
    One day out in it was all he had needed. The speed of it! The sturdiness! On a good day, the currach would take you a mile out to sea. If God was kind and the nets were good, you’d come straight back in. If not, you could be drifting around in small helpless circles and return empty-handed. The hooker would take you as far out as you could go – until you found the fish yourself – then hold you there until you carried in such a haul you’d have to go to Galway itself to find a trader big enough to buy it from you. ‘You’d never have a bad day’s fishing in a hooker,’ he told his father. If you wanted, she could carry you as far as Dublin. Jimmy, invincible as he was, thought perhaps he could drive the beauty all the way to England and back again. America maybe! There was even a cabin with a bed on board. It was like a house! A man could live in a boat like that and adventure all round the world. He didn’t say that to his father, but nonetheless Sean had not taken much convincing that the hooker was the way forward for them as a family of fishermen. ‘I can handle it easy, and we could fish the whole coastline, Da. We’d never be short a load again.’
    Jimmy was restless. Sean could see that his feisty son was not going to be content with life as a small currach fisherman. It was a miracle he was still here with them at nineteen, that he had not gone to England seeking adventure. A new boat would mean his son could be off down along the coast catching and selling fish in Galway and Cork even. He could find a wife and bring her home. A bigger boat was the only way to keep their status quo and ensure Jimmy a happy future.
    Sean’s wife, Morag, wasn’t so sure.
    ‘What do we need another boat for?’ she said, when Sean told her his plans to go back to Scotland with Jimmy for a season. ‘Aren’t we good enough as we are? A family can only eat so much food, and we’ve enough meat cured and enough fish smoked to see us through the winter and the season’s barely begun!’
    ‘A bigger boat will change things. A bigger boat could make things better for the whole island. It’s progress.’
    ‘My eye,’ his wife said, wiping one of