Cathy Kelly - Once in a Lifetime

Star lay in bed for a while, stroking the two cats, and staring out of her window at the dark shapes of the trees and shrubs in her garden. She could see the red maple tree she’d planted when she was twenty and lost in love.

‘Plant something to remind you of this,’ her mother had said, and Star had been surprised.

‘I’ll always remember,’ she’d said simply.

Everyone said she was at the peak of her beauty then, lush like her mother’s precious peonies, full-lipped, and with hair of spun gold–the Bluestone women always had golden hair, no matter what their fathers looked like–that fell about her slender waist. She’d secretly picked out her wedding dress with her best friend, Trish, and she knew that Danny and she would be so happy if they rented the house on the hill road. From there they could see the town and the sea, and he could be at his father’s garage, where he was one of the mechanics, in five minutes.

Still, she had liked the idea of a tree for them both and planted the red maple.

But, ‘I’m too young to settle down,’ Danny had told her not long after the tree was planted, when its roots had barely had time to unfurl into the earth and Star was still patting it each morning with joy at all it represented.

‘That’s not what you said before,’ Star replied, knowing in a painful instant that the wedding dress, a jewel she’d mistakenly thought was meant for her, would remain on the rail in Brenda’s Boutique.

‘It’s my mother,’ Danny said reluctantly. ‘It’s about the business, too. She said–’

‘She said you needed a better wife if you want to expand the garage. She said she didn’t want you marrying one of those atheist Bluestone women with their strange herbs and their unnatural hair.’

Star wasn’t bitter towards Danny. It wasn’t his fault. She should have known that he wasn’t a strong enough man to turn the tide of public opinion. Even in the mid seventies, when the rest of the Western world seemed to be enjoying free love and the Pill, the more conservative parts of Ardagh ate fish on Fridays, blessed themselves when they passed the church and remained unsure of the Bluestones.

Old Father Hely, the parish priest, and Sister Anne, headmistress of the Immaculate Mother of God Convent, had both been remarkably understanding about Eliza’s preference for her daughter not to practise the Catholic traditions. Learn them, yes. Eliza was all for learning and tolerance. She was fascinated by all religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, everything out there. But not practise. Eliza saw the central truth in the world around her, a world that had been there longer than any man-made religion.

‘We’ll take care of Star in school,’ Sister Anne said firmly. ‘You might not come to our church, but you understand Christianity, Eliza. I know how kind you are to those who need it. There are plenty here in town who trot along to Mass every day and still don’t love their neighbour,’ she added grimly.

‘Indeed, you’re right, Sister Anne. Nobody in this parish will ever hear me say a word against you,’ agreed Father Hely, who’d studied too much Christian history, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, to be doctrinaire when it came to unusual Eliza Bluestone with her earthly wisdom and her home-made elderflower wine.

However, not everyone in Ardagh agreed with Father Hely and Sister Anne, and many of the people who went to Sunday Mass and hung holy water fonts inside their front doors disliked the Bluestones because they were different. And clearly Danny’s mother fell into this category. Star hadn’t realised before quite how strong this dislike was. She herself didn’t care what or whom anyone worshipped and was astonished that other people could object to her views.

‘You’ll always have your tree,’ Eliza told Star the night Danny broke the news there would be no wedding. Mother and daughter sat in the hand-hewn walnut love-seat in their garden that overlooked the sea, and sipped rosehip tea.

Star gazed gloomily at the tree. And then looked around at all the other trees in the five-acre plot. The house, a higgledy-piggledy concoction of white clapboard with slanting roofs and an oriel window, was surrounded by trees: smooth-skinned, tall ashes, swooping willows, a graceful plane tree, a crowd of copper beeches by the vegetable garden, and another sharp-leafed maple that turned blood red in the autumn.

‘We have lots of trees,’ she said, suddenly understanding. She got up to touch the other maple. ‘You once said this was my dad’s tree?’

Star’s father had been the sort of man who preferred travelling to settling down. India was his favourite place in the whole world, especially the beaches of Goa, where a man could lie in the sun and not have to think about anything except what the human race was for and other philosophical questions.

‘I loved your father,’ Eliza said.

‘But he left?’

‘I planted the tree when we were in love,’ Eliza answered.

‘Then he left.’ Star got it. ‘What about the other trees?’ she asked, wondering how they’d never discussed this before. But then, her mother was a gentle and slow teacher: the lesson came when the lesson came, it would never be forced.

‘Two more I planted, both before you were born, before I met your father.’

Three loves.

‘And all these other trees?’ Star gestured.

‘My mother’s, her mother’s, all the Bluestone women have planted trees for as long as we’ve lived here.’

Star laughed then and ran around the garden, touching her hands to the bark of each of the precious trees. She loved this link with her female ancestors. It was like holding hands with all of them, listening to them laugh and talk, strong women who’d seen so much.

The trees, plants and flowers of her wild garden that gave such comfort to Star eventually provided the raw material for her livelihood. She designed and made tapestries embroidered and appliquéd with wools and silks hand-dyed from natural dyes. Star’s eye for nature meant her pictures were landscapes of hills and woodland glades, sometimes with a brightly plumaged bird peering out from the undergrowth, or a blossoming creamy magnolia positioned against a backdrop of verdant green, even the misty shape of a unicorn in the distance. For many years, she had sold her work in a tiny craft shop on the outskirts of Wicklow town and just about made a living out of it. Then someone had brought one of her tapestries to the attention of a buyer in Kenny’s department store in Ardagh.

Kenny’s were always on the lookout for new talent, the woman said, and Star’s exquisite artisan works would complement their homes department perfectly. The store didn’t deal in paintings: too complicated and time-consuming, but the Bluestone Tapestries were exactly what they were looking for. Within six months, Star’s tiny business had become a thriving cottage industry. That was five years ago. She had three employees now and they’d been working flat-out to complete their latest order for Kenny’s, which was where Star was bound that morning.

There were twenty hangings of all sizes ready in their moss-green tissue paper. She was dying to see what Lena, the buyer and one of the store’s directors, would think of her new departure, a large mermaid tapestry. Star hadn’t worked on many sea pictures before: the pigments were hard to make. It was easy to mix up rich loden greens and dusty ochres, but the pure blues and aquas for sea pictures had been more difficult. When she’d got into sea tapestries, she’d finally begun using hand-made dyes bought from artisans, although she still used the heads of pure blue hydrangeas to make rich blues, and her blackberries summoned up an inky purple that spoke of the ocean depths. Star had been in two minds about selling the mermaid tapestry at all. It would have looked so perfect on the wall in the kitchen, under the rail where the copper pots hung. But she’d hardened her heart and packed it up. The Bluestone Mermaid, with her foamy sea-green eyes and skeins of pale hair, needed to be out spinning her magic on someone else’s wall.