Friends Like Us (10 page)

Rob was at work, one of the main benefits of his specialism was that he hadn't done a nightshift since his training. But this morning, when she tried to sleep away the nightshift, she couldn't so instead of lying there thinking she got up, pulled on her old cord trousers and her wellies and went out into the garden. Spring was beginning to peak out, the garden gently rumbling into life on this morning. As she stood there, surveying her tiny plot, she could feel herself being woken up.

She took a moment, standing in the sunshine, to text Steph.

When can I come and see you?

She had been thinking about her and wondering if everything was as it seemed. There was something about Steph, something slightly shaky about her, she wasn't the same as she used to be. And it was a chance to see Rachel again. Steph was always the coolest and the calmest of the three of them, but not anymore. Her energy was different, she acted the same, but Eilis couldn't help thinking that there was something wrong.

Gardening was Eilis' therapy. It was something she did on her own, entirely without Rob, it was her space, her thing. And if the insides of the cottage were a homage to all things modern, the garden, on the outside, was a hymn to all things traditional. She had honeysuckles and roses, she had lupins and foxgloves, she had climbers and ramblers, she fought duels with slugs, snails and greenfly and she put food down for birds and would let ladybirds crawl over her hands. If she didn't have this garden, she often thought, she would have gone quite mad.

Mam would have liked this, she would often think, as she was kneeling down digging away. And she would imagine her mother sitting on a chair nearby in the early-spring sunshine, the two of them chatting every now and then. But she couldn't think about that because it made her too sad, so she would shake the thought away and carry on weeding.

 

A lilac tree, she thought. That was the answer. A lilac tree! She suddenly couldn't think of anything else. She would plant it just there by the fence and she imagined it in full bloom, and she thought of the blossoms she would pick every year in early summer.

She'd been driving past a new gardening shop in Sandycove, just down the road, for some time now and she wondered if it was time to try it out. According to the small swinging sign by the front door, it was called O'Malley's Garden. And one thing she had discovered, second only to gardening on the soothing the soul stakes, was a good potter in a gardening shop, a surveillance of secateurs and seeds, a pondering of pots and plants. And God knows, she needed soothing. O'Malley's Garden was on the corner of the row of shops in Sandycove. There was a yard to one side, filled with plants and pots, and inside were all the seeds and gloves and trowels and kneeling pads and various trinkets and treasures that only the green-fingered would love, such as a large and impressive display on bug and disease repellents. She stood inside for a moment, thinking how lovely it was; her perfect place. Some women liked the posh stores, she liked gardening shops. She settled in for a long and leisurely browse.

Eventually, she found a lilac tree outside and shifted it to the cash desk, and waited her turn to be served. It was probably on the big side but she had thought that maybe she could half-roll it, half-shuffle it back to her car, get it in somehow and she'd worry about the getting it out of the car when she got home. Rob wasn't the gardening type, even if he was around. She was used to yanking things around, wrestling with trees and bags of compost.

‘Going far?' She jumped as the girl behind the desk spoke.

‘Um…' Eilis was hidden by the tree.

The girl sized Eilis up. ‘I'll get some help for you.' She obviously thought that a small woman like Eilis wasn't able to carry a huge tree on her shoulders… And she'd be right. The girl shouted in the general direction to the back of the shop. ‘Muscles!'

A man appeared. Tall, broad and handsome and wearing a checked shirt rolled up to his elbows, his face stubbly, slightly salt and peppery, with dark hair curling around his ears. He reminded her of someone…

And then she recognized him. That man from the hospital, the one who sent the flowers. Mr Blue Eyes, or Mr Shouty as Becca had called him. Suddenly, Eilis felt incredibly embarrassed and tried to shrink even tinier. For one, brief mad moment, she imagined she could hide behind the tree like someone in a cartoon but, petite as she was, she couldn't get quite enough cover.

Eilis peered at him through the leaves. My God, she thought. He certainly is handsome. Better than she remembered at the hospital. But then again, A&E wasn't the place which showed people in their best light, she should know; the fuzzy, buzzing electric lights of the hospital, sucked the light out of everything. He was laughing.

‘Muscles?' he said. ‘Me? Who do you think I am? And doesn't my brain get a mention?' He raised an eyebrow.

‘If you had one, it would. As it is, we're just being kind to you. Care in the community, you know, dear brother. Now, would you be so kind as to help this lady to the car with her beautiful lilac tree.'

Eilis couldn't take her eyes off him. He was more the kind of gorgeous that you thought was long gone with Clark Gable or the rise of the New Man. Who was it he reminded her of… Poldark! That's the one.

And then he looked up and Eilis found herself frozen to the ground. And then she saw that he was blushing.

‘It's you,' he said, slowly, surprised, a smile now edging its way across his lips.

‘Yes, it's me,' she said.

‘You know each other?' said the girl.

‘Yes,' he said, at the same time as Eilis shook her head.

‘No,' she said.

‘Which is it?' said the girl, intrigued.

‘Well,' he said. ‘You know that night when Mam had to go to hospital?'

‘When I was in Cork?'

‘Yes, well,' he paused. ‘And we had a bit of a wait in A&E…' he broke off to glance at Eilis. ‘Well, I was a little on edge and I took my frustration out on this poor woman. She was the doctor on duty… in the middle of, I presume, an extremely stressful shift…' He looked at Eilis. ‘I'm sorry. No excuse. I was out of order and I am sorry for making your difficult job worse.'

‘That's okay,' said Eilis. ‘We get it. Don't worry. It happens all the time.' She was gripping her tree and squashing the leaves under her sweaty palm.

‘Well, I'm really sorry… I was just… you know.'

‘It's okay,' she said gently. ‘It's fine.'

He was looking at her intently.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘What can I do to show I'm sorry?'

‘Well, you sent the flowers, so that was enough. Thank you, they were lovely.'

‘I'll have to think of something else,' he said, looking at her. ‘I was really out of order.'

‘You can carry it to the car, that's what you can do,' said his sister. ‘You're a pillock. We now have official confirmation.' But she was laughing. ‘Please ignore my brother,' she said to Eilis. ‘Once an arse, always an arse. And thank you for looking after our Mam.'

As she was speaking, the Poldark-alike had moved around the counter towards Eilis. He took the tree from her and for a moment his hand was on hers and she felt suddenly that something was happening, and it felt dangerous and exciting and that she was alive. Jesus. She tried to breathe.

He hoisted it easily and they began to walk towards the car, about ten metres away.

‘Just there,' she said. ‘Thanks so much.'

Poldark placed it down while she searched for her keys and, as she fumbled around, she couldn't help noticing his hands, the very opposite of Rob's smooth doctor hands, she thought. These were calloused working hands, made for grabbing and carrying. How could
hands
be attractive? she thought. Hands! For God's sake. She felt hot… early menopause, she wondered, or a mid-life crisis or just generally crazed. What was wrong with her? She wasn't normally so flushed and blushed.

She could see chest hair poking out of the top of his shirt and found herself thinking of his hands grabbing her and him kissing her all over her body and what his body must look like under his clothes…

He held out his hand. ‘Charlie O'Malley.'

‘Eilis McCarthy.'

They shook hands. His felt rough to the touch, nothing soft about those hands. She wanted to hold onto them and never let go. But thankfully she managed to loosen her grip just before it got too weird.

‘Will you be okay when you get home?' he asked, speaking gently. ‘Do you have help the other end?' He was looking at her with his amazing eyes. He looked like he really cared. Would it be too much to ask him to come home with her? To help her, of course.

She was going quite, quite mad.

‘Grand, I'll be grand… don't you worry,' she said, sounding not grand at all and rather addled. He was looking at her as though she was a curiosity. Which of course she was. A sex-starved female who was latching on to the first gorgeous, visible man.

‘How's your mother?' she managed. ‘Is she totally recovered?'

‘Oh…' for a moment, she saw something flash across his face. Sorrow or fear. ‘Well, I don't know… but you're very good to ask.'

‘But is she okay?'

‘Yes, I think so, but it's just hard to see her so old. She is in her eighties now, but she was the best mother, ever,
is
the best mother ever. We're just very fond of her. She's just not in the best health…' he paused. ‘The thought of losing her scares me, if I'm honest.' He looked at Eilis. ‘Sorry, it's not something I talk about very often but you were there. You looked after her.'

‘I understand,' she said.

‘You wish they would last forever, don't you? Is your mam in good health?'

‘Not really.' Eilis paused. ‘She passed away. Years and years ago, when I was eighteen.'

‘Oh my God, I'm so sorry.'

‘That's okay.' She almost laughed. ‘Sorry,' she said, looking at his appalled face. ‘You weren't to know.'

‘You were so young,' he said, searching her face for signs of how she was feeling.

‘I know…' But that's the thing, she wanted to say, that's exactly it, I can't seem to move on. I can't stop feeling like it has just happened. I can't stop feeling like that eighteen-year-old whose mother has just died. ‘So, anyway,' she said, ‘thanks so much and say hi to your mam.'

There was something about him that made her want to stay and talk to him, something that drew you in. She didn't want to leave but she could hardly just hang around like a lemon. She turned reluctantly to get into her car.

‘We give classes, you know,' he said, suddenly. ‘On tree care. On loads of gardening-related things. Why don't you come to one? They're free.' He stopped.

She looked at him, into his handsome face, his dark eyebrows, his blue eyes and she realized that she had to see him again.

‘So, maybe you'll come?' he said. ‘The classes. Gardening… you know. All sorts. They're really popular. We've got a little gang now. They are all really nice. Come next Saturday. It starts at five. And if you can't come this Saturday, it's every Saturday, Now, spring is here, it's going to be weekly.'

‘Are you giving them?' Shut up, she told herself. You are acting like you will only go if he is there. Which may have been the truth but he did
not
need to know that.

‘Mainly my sister, Kate. She is the real gardening genius. I'm just the man about the shop.' He nodded in the direction of the shop. ‘We've both been gardening for years, but I set up the business a year ago and Kate helps out whenever she can. She's a horticulture lecturer at the Botanic Gardens. I'm the brawn. She's the brain.'

‘You're the muscles.' She involuntarily glanced at his broad shoulders, his height, his arms, his torso. Oh God, he noticed her. She was like a sad old woman, desperate for make attention. She looked away.

‘Yeah…' he said, running his fingers through his hair, as though suddenly self-conscious. ‘You could say that. I'm just here to lug things round.'

‘What were you doing before?' she found herself asking, as way of keeping him there as long as she could.

‘Law. But lost the will to live eventually. I went into it for my dad… to make him proud, but then one day I thought, he's still going to be proud of me even if I am not a lawyer.'

‘Really? And is he?'

‘Well, he's passed away now,' he smiled to show that it was okay, ‘but I am 100 per cent positive that he would be. I wish I'd done it years ago.'

‘I went into medicine to make my Mam proud,' she said, wondering why she was telling him this. She never spoke about her mother but there was something about him that made it seem like the most natural thing in the world.

‘And did it?'

‘No, she died before I even went to college but she would have been. I'm sure of it. Her daughter, a doctor! I often think of her when I am on my way to work, what would she say now? She would have told everyone about me.' She couldn't stop talking! Just close your mouth, it's not that hard.

‘I'm sure she would,' he said, looking at her, smiling gently at her.

‘It's quite humbling, thinking of that pride and then me just being me, nothing to be proud of, really. Anyway,' she said, realizing that there was so only so long she could keep the poor man captive. ‘I should go. Let you get back…'

‘Okay.' He hesitated. It was him that seemed reluctant, or was she imagining it?

‘So, see you around,' she said, casually. ‘I might see you at the class.' Might?
Definitely.
‘Well, thanks so much for your help.'

‘No problem at all.' He was still looking at her. ‘Glad to be of use. See you.'

‘Yes, see you.' As he walked away, she allowed herself to watch him walk back to the shop. She had never seen anyone so… so happy. He was tall, tanned, muscular… and happy. Is happiness so rare, she thought, that it's
obvious
when someone looks it?