Free The Lost Souls' Reunion by Suzanne Power Page A

need, that’s me and most of the girls in here. Then there’s the women who do it out of choice. Myrna belongs with them. She’s no tart, but she’s too fond of freedom for the times she was born in.
    â€˜She couldn’t settle and in our days, not yours, women who didn’t settle had no life. She could have married any man she pleased and it didn’t please her. I know she was born with nothing, because she’s left with it now. I know she lived with gypsies for a time because of her potion-making. I know she learned that from them, because one called to Sergio’s once, begging, and Myrna spoke to her in the gypsy tongue. Mind you, she speaks more than gypsy, she speaks—’ Fanny broke off, suddenly unwilling to continue before adding, ‘There are girls round here who turned into old ladies and into gravestones and Myrna’s still alive. There are some who think, and I’m one of them, that Myrna’s lived forever.’
    The door tinkled and Fanny sensed it was Myrna, even though her back was to it.
    â€˜Well,’ Fanny said. ‘Wet enough for you?’
    â€˜Have you been boring the child?’ Myrna asked Fanny.
    â€˜No, Sive likes to hear the old stories.’
    â€˜Do you think, Sive,’ Myrna asked quietly, ‘that you would like to come for a walk with me?’
    I took Myrna’s hand and we walked out into waiting Soho.
    â€˜I take this walk most days before I come to the café. It’s a walk you will like, Sive, a walk into the past. All places are somewhere different before they become what they are. They move on to become somewhere different. Just like people, Sive. Like you and I. You and I will be very different in the years to come,’ she said, as we walked down Berwick Street. The doorways to Soho were doorways to worlds of many choices and the same end.
    â€˜What happens here,’ Myrna said as we walked along, ‘is the same as happens anywhere else. All you have to do is look to see the same stories told time after time. Mine is just the same as yours, Sive. It’s started somewhere else and has ended up here. This place has more than its fair share of past.’
    She stopped at a fruit stall and picked two bright red apples, bloody with ripeness. She bit firmly into hers.
    â€˜Soho has sold everything from the apple to Eve herself. Life is for sale here, Sive, and death in some places. This is life, Sive, this is how you must learn to treat it. Be fierce with it and it will not beat you, be tender with it and it will not harm you. At each moment you will be told what is the right way to take hold of life. Listen well and do only what your heart tells you. Do only as you please. There is no other way of living unless you prefer death as life.’
    She put her hands on my shoulders.
    â€˜You are a great find, Sive. Don’t be afraid of ghosts, they only appear to the living they find worthwhile. The ghosts will come to you, Sive, because your eyes invite them. One day, when I am long gone, you will remember that.’
    Myrna and I walked on. I was given in those hours and that talk a sense of all that could be done with a future. I wanted to rise up and out.
    Myrna saw the stir in me and she smiled at it. We walked back to the familiar café.
    â€˜You can walk between two worlds, Sive, but you’re best off picking one. If ever you need me I’ll come to you in dreams,’ were Myrna’s last words to me before we went through Sergio’s door.
    *   *   *
    My first memory of my grandmother Noreen was that she filled the room early one morning in a big green hat with a yellow band. She came by way of dreams – with hope of mending what had been long broken.
    *   *   *
    Carmen and I had found our way from the room under the earth to a room near the sky. But it was my sky now. I sat at the open window and stared at it and was a part of it. My mother