Page 8 of Secrets in the Snow
He puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He swallows so hard I see his Adam’s apple move and, if I’m not mistaken, I think there might be a hint of tears in his weary eyes.
‘No, I’m not going to watch it at all, Roisin. Look, I’m really sorry, but I’d better get going,’ he says, shuffling as if he needs to escape from here immediately. ‘My business here is just that,business. I don’t have any inclination to allow for any emotional attachment to Mabel or to Ballybray get under my skin.’
‘This is unbelievable,’ I mumble. ‘How could you just choose to ignore this? From your own aunt?’
I am floored by this package, but also alive with the anticipation of hearing from her again, while he, in turn, is stiff, bitter and sore.
He fidgets, pauses, and then heads for the hallway as if he can’t wait to get away from here quick enough.
‘It’s a bit of a surprise all right, isn’t it, but I’m sure it will be positive?’ I call after him, realizing that if he doesn’t watch what she has to say with me, Mabel’s efforts aren’t being received in the way she intended.
I walk after him to the door, but I don’t want him to go so quickly, leaving me hanging like this. I want to talk about it, or at least to get this over and done with and hear it so we can start building our lives without her. I want to talk about Mabel with someone who knew her as well as I did, but he’s leaving and can’t wait to do so.
‘I can’t and I won’t watch it, Roisin,’ he tells me, meeting me at last in the eye. ‘I need to get back to New York in a day or two to my … I’ll leave it with you.’
He needs to get back to New York to his wife and his big business and polar opposite luxury lifestyle.
‘Aidan!’ I call as he walks down the path towards my garden gate. ‘If you change your mind—’
‘I won’t,’ he tells me without looking back, and then he disappears into the snowy, dark night, taking a tiny piece of my heart and the chance of a final connection to Mabel with him.
I clutch the envelope to my chest, wondering if I should go ahead and watch it without him, but I can’t. It’s not what she wanted.
‘Oh Mabel,’ I mutter to myself as I make my way back to the kitchen. ‘Whatever are you planning now and what the hell is his problem?’
I run my fingers over her writing, bewildered at Aidan’s attitude, but content in knowing she hasn’t gone too far from us at all just yet.
In fact, she is very, very near.
5.
Ifind Ben hard at work in Mabel’s back garden the next morning, rolling a snowball into a huge mound across her tiny lawn that is now unrecognizable under the thick snow. Aidan was right about the storm. It snowed all night long and there’s a chill in the air that hints at more, though for now the sky is blue, and the white on the ground makes everything look bright and magical.
Ben is humming to himself, just as he always does when he is busy, and on the small stone table in Mabel’s garden where we used to share breakfast, lunch and lots of conversation, I see he has laid out a scarf, a hat, a carrot and some obligatory pieces of coal for his final masterpiece.
There has always been a tangible solace in Mabel’s garden and if Ben is finding comfort from being here, then that’s good enough for me, so I stand in silence watching him, delighted that he’s keeping busy in his grief.
‘The garden is like your mind,’ Mabel used to tell me when I’d find her fixing and planting at all times of theyear. ‘Find the time to weed your garden and you’ll find the time to weed your mind. Believe me, Roisin, it works.’
A bird table that Ben once could barely reach is now almost shoulder high beside him as he stands back to admire his work so far, lost in a world of his own. Watching him play there with such ease, so at home, makes my heart pang for days gone by. This is the life he had grown so comfortable with; the peace, the love and the kindness. I pray every night that he never ever remembers the contrasting darkness of the times with his father before we came here.
This is his entire world, going from house to house, from garden to garden, and instead of the shouting and name calling from our life before, all he ever heard here was the sweet sounds of Mabel singing along to her old favourite records from her own heyday. She introduced us to the sounds of Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Dusty Springfield to name a few, and Ben spent so much time with her that he knows almost every word to every song.
Mabel had made a little hole in the hedge that ran between our back gardens soon after we moved in to Teapot Row. The hole had grown over the years into a ‘Ben sized’ opening so he could come in and out to her at his leisure, and the sight of him so hard at work now and busy in mind takes my breath away. Mabel’s garden, despite the battering rain and snow of the past few days, still looks like a palette of colour from an artist’s canvas, with various shades ofgreen scattered around an immaculate little square of grass, framed with a salmon stone patio where my son used to sit and chat to her for hours on end.
‘You know, we won’t always be able to come in and out of Mabel’s garden like this,’ I try to break to him gently when he finally catches me watching him play. ‘It won’t happen for a very long time, I hope, but when there are new neighbours living here it won’t feel like ours any more.’
He looks up at me and pauses, then goes back to his snowman.
‘It’s OK for today, though,’ I assure him. ‘You can stay here as long as you want today.’
He ignores me and continues polishing up the snowman, so I leave him to it, having made my point.
I cross back into my own patch of nature next door and I hear Mabel’s words in my ear at the contrast of the two gardens – my unruly jungle versus her wondrous masterpiece.
‘You’ll never believe it, but lawn mowers are on offer in town right now,’ she told me one day, dropping a clanger of a hint in a way only Mabel knew how to. ‘Or you could always borrow mine? It’s really light and easy to use. You can have it any time.’
There was no doubt about it, my back garden was sometimes an overgrown mess, but there was always something else more pressing for me to do and I just never found the time to take care of it properly. I eventually did buy a lawnmower, but its outings were few and far between.
