The Year I Met You (17 page)

‘Or maybe his feet smell really bad,’ Leilah says, pinching her nose.

‘Jonathan does not smell,’ Heather says, pouting, her hands on her hips.

‘Oooh, Jonathan is
so
perfect,’ I tease.

‘Jasmine!’ Heather squeals, and we all laugh.

The laughter quietens and the room descends into silence, waiting for her decision.

‘Separate bedrooms,’ she says quietly, and we hurriedly move on. While Jamie is talking about the logistics of getting there, I wink at Heather and she smiles shyly.

This is not the first time Heather has been away: she has travelled before with groups of friends, but always with her support assistant or another adult that I know in attendance. This is her first time alone, with a man, and I have to fight the nervous ball of tension in my stomach, the lump in my throat and the tears that are welling.

We move on to discussing her next issue, which is that, while she is very grateful for the three jobs that she has during the week, her main love is music and none of her activities seem to cover this. She would love to work in a radio station or a recording studio, and she tells everybody in the group about the conversation she has had with Matt Marshall. Everybody remarks on what a wonderful coincidence it is that she has met him on the very day she wished to discuss this.

‘Jasmine, perhaps we could invite Matt Marshall to the next meeting to discuss the possibilities?’ Jamie suggests.

Heather is giddy with excitement at the prospect.

I always like these meetings to be positive, so I summon up all the cheeriness I can. ‘Perhaps we can plan it for the next time. Maybe. Perhaps. After I talk to him and see if there’s anything he can do. If he has time – though he is having a personal moment out of work at the moment. So … yes. Maybe,’ I finally say.

Leilah eyes me warily. I’m grateful when we move on to the next subject.

It is with a heavy heart that I close the door on everybody after the meeting is finished and go upstairs to my bedroom. I am not jealous of my sister, I never have been. I have always wanted a better life for her, even though I know that she is happy with the life she has. Today, however, it has occurred to me for the first time that she has always known the direction she has wanted to take in her life, she has always had a team to help her, advise her, guide her. She has always had it sussed. It is me who hasn’t. It is me who suddenly has absolutely no idea what I am doing, it is me who has no PATH whatsoever. The realisation hits me like a ton of bricks and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I couldn’t tell anybody my dreams if they asked me right now, nor my hopes and desires. If I was asked to put a plan into action, I wouldn’t know where to start.

I feel utterly lost.

Spring

The season between winter and summer, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere the months March, April and May.

The ability of something to return to its original shape when it is pressed down, stretched or twisted.

14

All my life I have followed and respected signs. When driving through an estate where there are signs for children at play, I respect that and slow down. When I see a sign for a reindeer as I’m driving through Phoenix Park, I know to be on my guard in case one appears from behind a tree and dashes across the road. I always stop at stop signs, I yield when I’m supposed to yield. I trust signs. I believe they are accurate – apart from when some vandal has quite obviously twisted a sign to point in the wrong direction. I believe that signs are on my side. This is where I get confused by people who say they believe in signs, as if it is an enlightening and remarkable thing, because what’s not to believe about something that points you to something and instructs you to do something? What is not to believe about a physical thing? It’s like saying I believe in milk. Of course you do, it’s milk. I think most people who say that they believe in signs actually mean that they believe in symbols.

Symbols are something visible that represent something invisible. A symbol is used abstractly. A dove is a bird but it is also a symbol of peace. A handshake is an action but it is also a symbol of amity. Symbols represent something by association. Symbols often force us to figure out what the invisible thing is; for it’s not always obvious. While jogging along Dublin Bay towards my house on 1 March, the first day of spring, I see the most beautiful rainbow, which from afar appears to land directly on top of my house, going through my roof and into my home, or landing in my back garden. This is not a sign. It’s not instructing me to do anything. It is a symbol. As were the snowdrops which fought to rise above the ground in January and February, standing shoulder to shoulder, pretty and timid-looking, as if butter wouldn’t melt, as if in doing what they had done, achieving what they had achieved against the elements was no mean feat. They’d made it look easy.

Monday O’Hara is another example. Him coming into my life, headhunting me for a job, seeking me out and thinking I am worthwhile. This represents something invisible too. I think of him often, not just because of how handsome he is but for what he represents. We have spoken on the phone twice since our meeting and I never want to hang up. Either he is very dedicated to his job, giving me so much of his time, or he doesn’t want to hang up either. The month he gave me to think about the job is up. I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

The rainbow over my house, the snowdrops, the carpet of purple crocuses in the Malones’ side garden, and Monday O’Hara are all symbols for me. They are all visible things representing something invisible: Hope.

I begin the day by decluttering. Before long the house is in such a mess that I realise I need a skip – which I have, but it is currently on my driveway, filled with expensive paving that attracts a string of untrustworthy types who keep knocking on my door to ask if I’d like help getting rid of it. So in order to fill the skip with my indoor junk I must first empty it of stones, but having removed the stones I must place them somewhere. It is then I recall your rockery suggestion. Even though it annoys me to take your advice – and worse still, for you to see me taking your advice, given that the skip is in front of my house, directly in line of your view – I know it has to be done. It’s too late to ask the landscaper for help. When he showed up after the storm, expecting to find the pile of turf destroyed by the rain and wind and instead discovering my not-so-perfectly laid front lawn, I told him I would do the rest of the garden on my own. Finish what I started, as it were. Not that I would give Larry the satisfaction of knowing that his comment had prodded me into doing something for myself.

Abandoning the ransacked house that I have made even more cluttered in my effort to declutter, I shift my focus to the garden. I am going to do this garden properly, this has my full attention. I draw up a list and set off to the garden centre to buy what I need to buy. I am focused. I am in the zone, the gardening zone. I receive two text messages from friends, suggesting we go for a coffee but just as I’m about to say yes to the first one – something I’ve taken to doing automatically, jumping at the chance of midweek, midday company – I realise that I am actually busy. I have a lot of work to do before the storm clouds start gathering again. The second text is easy to send: I am busy. Very busy. And that feels good.

Today is the ideal day to work because the ground is dry. Having realised that my ‘Indian Natural Sandstone’ paving stones are not going to give me the rugged look that I envisage for my rockery, I have made arrangements for the ideal natural stone to be delivered. Right on time, the helpful young man from the garden centre who has been educating me on each trip pulls up in his car, towing the rocks behind him on a trailer. He studies my sandstone.

‘Shame to waste it,’ he says.

We stand staring at the slabs with our hands on our hips.

‘You could make stepping stones,’ he says eventually. ‘Like they’ve done next door.’

We both look into the Malones’ perfect garden and see their heart-shaped stepping stones leading to a fairy house. Eddie wasn’t exactly careful with the jackhammer, so my stones are irregular shapes. It’s more natural that way and I rather like it. The garden centre man goes on his way, leaving me to amuse myself moving sandstone slabs around on my new grass. I improvise, using the end of my rake to decide how deep to position the slabs. Then I measure my stride and lay the stones so that there’s a stone underfoot for each step. I take my half-moon edger alongside the paver, step down on it to cut completely through the turf’s roots. I make an outline of the stone and then strip out the sod. I dig down to a depth equal to the stone’s thickness, then I repeat this process for the ten stones I have leading away from my house towards where the rockery will be. I mix stone dust with water in my new wheelbarrow until it is the consistency of cake batter. I add two inches of mix to each hole to prevent moving or sinking, and then I wiggle the stone into its slot and pound it with a rubber mallet. I use a leveller to set each stone evenly. All this takes me some time.

By six p.m. it is dark and I am sweating, hungry, sore, tired – and more satisfied than I can ever remember feeling. I have completely lost track of time, though at some stages I was conscious of Mr Malone pruning his roses and trimming the overgrowth while telling me in a jolly voice that he should have done this in January and February but couldn’t, not with Elsa so sick.

As I collapse into bed that night, relaxing into freshly changed sheets with the smell of ‘summer breeze’ tumble-drier sheets, I realise that an entire day has gone by without me giving a minute’s thought to my current problems. My mind was well and truly on the task at hand. Maybe it’s the genes I inherited from my granddad, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m Irish, have sprung from the land and this compulsion to dig, and the digging itself, breathes life back into me. I may have walked into my garden all tensed up, but as soon as I started to work, the tension disappeared all by itself.

When I was seven years old, Mum bought me my first bike, a Purple Heather, with a white-and-purple wicker basket in the front, and a bell that I used to love playing with even when I was sitting on the grass with the bike lying down around me. I loved the sound of it, I felt like it was the voice of my bike. I would ask it a question and
briiing
it would answer. I spent every day cycling out on the street, circling, going up and down the kerbs, fast, slow, braking, almost as if I was an ice skater swirling around with an audience watching me, judges holding up numbers and everyone cheering. I’d stay out for as long as possible in the evenings, eat my dinner so quickly it would be painfully stuck in my chest before racing back out to the bike. At night I cried, leaving it. I would park it outside in the garden and watch it, alone, as it waited for me and our next adventure. Now I feel like that child again, staring out the window at my darkened garden, knowing exactly what will go where, imagining each feature, how I can mould it and nurture it, all the possibilities.

I am having the most delicious dream about Monday O’Hara. He is listing, in complete awe, all the things I have achieved in my garden – which is no longer my garden but Powerscourt Gardens in Wicklow. I shrug off his compliments, telling him I’m a snowdrop and that’s what snowdrops do, no big deal, we’re tough, we push up above the soil, like fists being raised in victory. Things are beginning to get juicy between us when the sound of ‘Paradise City’ intrudes on my dream, blaring from a Tannoy system strapped to the roof of the groundskeeper’s van as he tries to clear the gardens for closing time – which leads Monday to realise that I’m a phoney, that the gardens I’ve shown him aren’t mine after all, that I’m a liar. Then the groundskeeper rolls down his blackened window and it’s you. You are looking at me and smiling, a smile that grows and turns into a laugh that gets louder and louder as the music blares. I awake suddenly to hear ‘Paradise City’ still playing. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to get back into the dream with Monday, to pick up where we left off before the groundskeeper ruins it, but when I do fall asleep I find myself in a different dream, with Kevin sitting on the grass, making daisy chains. Everyone around is dressed in black and he is speaking and acting as if he is ten again, even though he looks like the man I met in Starbucks, and when he goes to put the daisy chain on my hand I discover it is actually made of roses and the thorns slice my skin.

I wake up to voices outside. I stumble out of bed, disorientated, and look out the window. You are sitting at the table in your front garden with Dr Jameson. The table is now so worn the wood is chipping and peeling off. It needs to be treated – why this should occur to me as more important than the sight of Dr Jameson sitting outside with you at 3.10 a.m. confuses me. Dr Jameson is facing my house; you are at the head of the table as always. There is a collection of cans on the table and you knock one back, face parallel to the sky as you squeeze the can of every last drop. When you’ve finished, you scrunch up the can and throw it at a tree. You miss and immediately pick up a full can and fire it angrily at the tree. You hit the target and beer foams out from the burst tin.

Dr Jameson pauses to watch where it has landed, then carries on talking. I’m confused. Perhaps he has lost his key to your house and the two of you are too polite to bother me for my set. I find this highly unlikely. You burp, so loudly that it seems to bounce off the end wall of the cul de sac and echo. I can’t hear Dr Jameson’s words, though I want to, and I fall asleep listening to the soothing rise and fall of his gentle tone.

This time I dream about a conversation with Granddad Adalbert. Though I am an adult, I feel like a child again. We’re in his back garden and he is showing me how to sow seeds. Under his watchful eye, I sprinkle sunflower seeds, cover them up with soil and then water them. He is talking to me as though I am still a child. He is showing me how he prunes his winter-flowering jasmine, which he tells me can be pruned when the flowers have withered completely. He shows me how he prunes any dead or damaged wood needed to extend the framework or coverage of the plant, and then he shortens all the side growths from the main framework to two inches from the main stems. This will encourage plenty of new shoots that will flower next winter. ‘Plenty of new growth, Jasmine,’ he says, busily feeding and mulching.