You expect mansions with lush lawns, strawberries and tennis courts but this is Wimbledon local housing. You and David drag your suitcases along Pilford Road beneath summer-swayed trees, then onto the terrace of Blomfield Gardens. Number 29 has pebble-dashed walls and a door of chipped yellow paint, with voices and loud music pumping out the open windows.

Aunt Alice and Uncle Kevin hug you tightly. Kevin does a pretend squaring up to lanky David with his fists, a soft punch on the shoulder. Alice admires your thick, curling hair, then pulls you into the house to meet the family. You shake hands with Bobby, Alice’s eighteen-year old son from her first marriage. He’s carrying a massive stereo radio which belts out the Bee Gees current 1978 hit, How Deep is Your Love. Turn it down love, Alice yells, can’t hear our blinking ears with that racket.

Here’s Katherine, Alice goes on. Back from Nepal of all places. She’s the adventurous one, Katmandu isn’t it, she asks. Katherine smiles and shakes your hand too. You like the look of her, long mauve muslin skirt, dark hair escaping from beneath a bandeau, a frank expression in her grey eyes. She smells of patchouli oil.

Three small boys, triplets, clatter down the stairs. Hello, Irish cousins, one of them pipes up as he inspects you. You’re shy of David’s London relatives, their curling accents with missing h’s, their casual, city confidence.

A tan and white rough-haired terrier races in circles around Uncle Kevin, then from room to room, barking its head off in excitement. You stroke its head and it stops, sits and gazes up at you. Oooh, an animal lover, you won’t get im away from you if you give im that kind of attention, Uncle Kevin says, sticks like glue he does. He’s a nice dog, you reply. They all laugh at this, but kindly.

So what you done in London, Bobby enquires. You tell him that you attended an experimental film at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Where’s that then, he asks. Just off Trafalgar Square, you say, the Mall. Oh very nice, Bobby says. You don’t tell him that it was a lesbian film in which two female bodies writhed in a tangle of white sheets, or how serious the audience seemed. The day before, a silent horror film in Notting Hill which David had wanted to see. Nosferatu. It wasn’t your idea of horror, but David said it had antisemitic undertones, so that was important. You can’t wait to see Grease in two days’ time, you tell Bobby, just to lighten things. A fillim, he grins, teasing you for your Irish accent.

Dinner is a free for all of chunky chips and vinegar in paper in the centre of the table and paper buckets of fried chicken from the local place. Everyone stretches and paws to get some onto their own plates, then pass the salt cellar around. Every so often David glances at you, checking. You smile back to reassure him. Nobody minds what you do here, although instinct tells you not to mention wanting to go to Harrods or the Brompton Road or that your mother has told you to treat yourself.

At the table, everyone competes to be heard over the blare of Bobby’s stereo and the big television in the sitting-room. David tells Uncle Kevin he’s thinking of accepting an offer to teach history for a year at New York University, while beside you, Alice is shouting about the good cut price places in Wimbledon.

You wish they’d listen properly to David’s news instead of yakking on about special discounts. Friday Specials. Uncle Kevin finished a late shift yesterday at the Waitrose depot. Before that he was a builder, but after his first heart attack he gave it up for part time work. They have the right lifting and carrying equipment in the depot, he says. There were no supermarkets in County Clare when he was growing up, people stuck to one job for life. Anyway, help yourselves to Swiss Roll, our favourite, the lemon. The triplets catapult their bony little hands out first and Alice cuts a slice each. Don’t be greedy you lot, she admonishes gently.

That night, you and David lie back to back in the small, wobbling bed in the box room. You are completely at sea and this bed is your squeaky boat as you try to let go of thoughts, to blot out street sounds, the final door-slam in the house as midnight approaches. You think of your parents’ silent country house, its ticking clocks in the night, fox cries outside, battering winds. In the end though, you sleep deeply.

The following morning Katherine has made fresh coffee. I love my coffee she says softly, the aroma making your stomach rumble. Already, the house vibrates with the thump of Bobby’s stereo, one of the triplets watches a pop programme on television and the other two jump up and down on the leatherette sofa. Easy lads, Bobby calls over from the kitchen.

So what d’you fancy doing, Katherine enquires, her eyelashes fluttering as she sips from a mug on which the words I ♥ Krishna are printed. It’s the first time you’ve seen the heart sign and you think this is pretty cool. David, a post-grad historian, tells Katherine you’ll maybe view the Elgin Marbles. Of course, Maria also wants to shop on Oxford Street, he smirks. You look at him sharply. Of course, he’d rather stay around Bloomsbury, feeling heavy and historic after seeing the Marbles. I don’t mind what we do, you say to Katherine, what do you think we should do?

Uncle Kevin butts in then and says you should go to see King Henry VIII’s palace at Richmond. I’ll show you, he adds. You hesitate. You get enough history from David’s doctoral thesis on the Reformation. He wasn’t happy about the tickets you booked two months ago for Quentin Crisp performing at the Duke of York Theatre. You really are looking forward to that. You’d won the money in an art competition but David grumbled that it would have paid for some new kitchen cupboards in the cottage.

Katherine puts down her mug of coffee. I know, she says, you could go to the new Hare Krishna centre. Oh Katherine, Alice protests, what d’you want to bring them there for? You’ve seen the bare-headed Hare Krishnas in Dublin, flapping around in saffron-coloured garments. Before you met David, you’d entertained the idea of joining them, but you wondered how equal the Hares are, and if a woman can ever become a guru.

The new centre is opening today, Katherine says, with a free vegetarian meal for everyone who joins in the ceremony. Neither of you has eaten much vegetarian food, but you like the idea that animals are children of Krishna too, born with a soul. At home, your parents slaughter beasts every year, carving up several for the freezer and selling the rest at the market. Briefly, you recall the squealing pig, and hot metallic blood which your mother uses to make black pudding.

Within an hour you, David, and Katherine take the tube to Croydon. Soon, you notice a trail of young people your own age on the street. You wonder if some are heading for the Hare Krishna centre too, and glance back at a pair of tall punks with black eye make-up and mohawks, one blue, the other green. You’d spotted them on the train. They stride close behind in black boots and studded leather waistcoats, then overtake you, chains draping from the loops in their jeans.

You enter the centre through a tree-shaded anteroom with red and black floor tiles. A trail of smoke rises from little incense burners in several windows. The two punks clatter ahead of you and are welcomed by a group of followers of Krishna, who welcome you too with joined palms. Katherine smiles and bows back at them. She points to a corner of the porch where you are to deposit your shoes. Yes, please leave your footwear here, a young man confirms. The punks confer in deep voices, uncertain about relinquishing their boots to the general heap, but eventually unlace to reveal sockless feet. There’s an accretion of black filth around the toenails of the one with the green mohawk but the other one’s feet are clean. You’re okay with letting go your platform sandals, which hurt your feet anyway. Shaking his head dubiously, David slips off his desert boots, then you both look to two particular Hare Krishnas who appear to be in charge.

One of them points to a room off to the left, already packed with young people. From another room to the right of the porch, a waft of food reaches your nostrils, you inhale a tracery of cumin, fenugreek, ginger and coriander, your lungs filling with what to you is truly exotic. You may yet convert, whatever about David, whose arms are folded tightly across his chest. Despite a low-level whiff of bare feet throughout the ceremony, this feeling grows.

The two punks stand opposite you in the circular throng around the group of Hare Krishnas, one of whom steps forward to speak. You catch the eye of the one with the blue mohawk, then look away quickly. Lord Krishna says in Srimad Bhagavad Gita ‘Blessed is human birth; even the dwellers in heaven desire this birth; for true knowledge and pure love may be attained only by a human being’. Then he tells you to submerge yourselves into the love of Lord Krishna through compassion.

Away from home, it sounds simple. Away from being broke, away from parents who pity the pair of you as you try to renovate the rundown cottage outside Kilkenny, away from David’s parents who don’t understand why you in particular insist on living together and not getting married. Over here, nobody cares that you’re not married, and the Hares don’t frown on anything so long as you’re compassionate. You resolve to try to live with David in harmonious honesty, and are keen to discuss how you might spark your lives up on returning to Ireland. Or at least whenever he finishes the doctorate and has his head out of the books long enough to spend some time with you.

The chanting begins. This is the Maha-Mantra from the Upanishad, Katherine whispers to you and David. You nod and start to chant self-consciously. The two punks are chanting an octave lower than everyone else in a grumbling way, staring hard at the floor. Gradually, you relax into it. The sound feels joyful. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare . . .

The chanting ceases after twenty minutes of repetition, but that’s how mantras work, and despite your impatience you feel cleansed, the way you used to when Mass ended and you and your parents would drive home. Your mother would hurry into the house to check the oven temperature and the fragrant, fat-encased lump of roast beef within, then set to preparing a Yorkshire Pudding batter while your father walked the fields checking the cattle.

You recall seeing a Hare Krishna centre in Dublin, along South Circular Road. You could go there even if David doesn’t. You’re not joined at the hip to him and must each realise soul destiny independent of the other. Not that David believes in the soul as he’s an atheist as well as a Marxist.

The Hare’s then invite the crowd towards the room on the right, where food is spread. You pause on the threshold as your eye absorbs the colourful dishes, like edible jewels on a huge, yellow-clothed table. As you inhale the fragrances, you also watch the robe-clad young men and women who proffer this meal with such reverence, who ask nothing but your presence. You imagine yourself in one such robe, and how graceful you would look with your long neck and thick bush of hair. You feel a nudge in your back, quite a sharp one too, as the punk with the blue mohawk and clean feet attempts to move you forward into the room, his head twitching like a bird of prey as he eyes the laden table. Hey, you mutter at him, but he only winks at you and grins in a sour way, so you move on.

Now everybody is grabbing and stretching, there are bowls, spoons, sauces, piled heaps of nuts, raisins and roasted chick peas. Everything is labelled with a smiling cartoon Krishna and the name of each dish. You help yourself to a creamy chickpea cauliflower dish, onion bhajees, and some pushpanna. The pushpanna is colourful as flowers, its fragrance garlanding your senses. The punks have loaded mounds of everything into their bowls, potato-stuffed samosas, sundried tomato pasta bake, pushpanna and bhajees, and indiscriminately shovel the food into their mouths. The one who pushed you sees you looking, gives a nod of recognition and another wink. You notice his food-moistened full bottom lip, and the trace of a smile like a faint heat that nonetheless reaches you.

You glance at David, who pulls at a flatbread on the other side of the table, dipping it in mango chutney before then forking up a small mouthful of black beans and creamed spinach. He’s chatting to Katherine and they reminisce on the summer she spent in Ireland as a ten year old while Uncle Kevin’s divorce was ongoing.

You return to the table after a few minutes and help yourself to more pushpanna, just at the same time the winking punk does. So what’s crackin, he asks, letting you have the spoon first. David, chewing sombrely, is now observing from the other side of the table. You shrug and move back to the wall to concentrate on your meal, and the punk follows. You stand together in silence, spooning your food. Peace, love and pushpanna, eh, he says then, looking at you.

At first you don’t respond, your mouth a cave of flavour that drifts into places still learning to be filled, cumin and coriander telling new stories to your awakening body. A black-haired woman seated cross-legged has begun to play a sitar. As your shoulders roll gently into the rhythm, you hope David will accept a year’s teaching and travel to New York without you. Now, you’d like to flow in a saffron robe through the throng and around the room. Yeah, peace, love and pushpanna, you reply in a droll way, winking back at him. At this, he straightens up, you see him swallow before speaking. So where you from then, he asks. You pause before answering.

Mary O’Donnell’s poetry collections include Unlegendary Heroes, Those April Fevers (Ark Publications) and Massacre of the Birds (Salmon Poetry). Four novels include Where They Lie (2014) and the best-selling debut novel The Light Makers, reissued in 2017 by 451 Editions. Her stories have been published by Stand Magazine, The Fiddlehead Review, The Manchester Review, The French Literary Review, the London Magazine, and in the anthology The Glass Shore. Her most recent collection of short stories, “Empire”, which focuses on social and family situations before, during and after the Irish Rising in 1916, was published by Arlen House. She won the Fish International Short Story Competition in 2010. Her essay “My Mother in Drumlin Country” was published in New Hibernia Review and listed among the Notable Essays of 2017 in Best American Essays (Mariner). A selection of her poetry will be published in book form in Brazil (with Arte & Letra), also translations of her short stories in Argentina, autumn 2023. She facilitates creative writing courses, reviews books, and also writes for radio. She is a member of Ireland’s affiliation of artists, Aosdana. 

Issue Fourteen of The Lonely Crowd can be ordered here.