by Aaron D. Key
“Now I’ve had another text that doesn’t sound too healthy. My wife has gone off travelling around the world for God knows how long. I think she was objecting to babysitting for my cousin, as they don’t get on. I’m thinking I should go back. The nights can get long and dark up there and it’s a lonely place.”
“What’s stopping you?” I asked.
“Just inclination: I’m being selfish, I suppose. Apparently, it’s something I do a lot. I’m really enjoying myself here. I’m really starting to think I have a hope of looking after my garden. It was such a frightening prospect when I first realised the responsibility was all mine.”
“We would miss you,” I said with surprising candour. “But perhaps you could come back again after everything is resolved?”
“Well, perhaps,” he said in that tone of voice that meant probably not. “Look, the other reason I came here …” His voice trailed off. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw McGregor coming towards us.
“How are you getting on?” she said. “I think it’s going to start snowing later.”
I looked up, surprised. In the direction we had been facing there had been blue sky with just a few bubble-like clouds close to the horizon, but when we turned around the sky had become dead: alight with pale pink and septic-green clouds. Everything was still and quiet with just a few lethargic birds bothering to call. It looked like she was right.
“If it does start, don’t stay too late. They don’t grit the roads round here.” After a few more minutes of conversation she made her way through the archway again. Peter started after her, saying, “I’ve got to have a word with her.”
A couple of flakes of wet snow fell and the air warmed up, although the sun’s rays were completely obscured by cloud. I carried on working. My back was starting to feel it now, although I tried to deny it. Things that I once would have done with no thought were becoming trickier – a depressing thought for a hypochondriac who still imagined himself as too young for aches and pains.
I leaned on the spade and watched as a robin scratched around my feet with a cheeky upwards glance as if to say “keep off this bit until I’ve checked it”.
“I knew you didn’t work so hard when I wasn’t looking,” Peter said with a grin as he came back. “You know, it’s looking quite ugly out there. It’s really sheltered in these walls, like my garden. You don’t realise until you go outside. Now I have decided, I’ve got to leave quickly if I’m going to make it all the way home. I’m ninety per cent sure that Maone is cured but I know if I left it and the ten percent possibility happened I would never forgive myself. Also, Christmas is coming up and no one should be alone on Christmas. I’ve had a word with Miss Gregg, a beautiful and delightful woman, about my idea and she agrees it’s a good one. Perhaps I should have spoken to you first but I didn’t want to do anything underhand.
“You see, I need a head gardener. I need someone to supervise the transformation of my neglected garden. This is a big project and I think you are the person I need.”
“All you’ve seen is how I dig,” I said dryly. “It’s not a lot to go on.”
“That is sort of true, but Miss Gregg has been telling me about your ideas and the way you’ve worked here. She was doing that even before I’d met you. She believes you could do it. I trust her judgement and the little I’ve seen of you. I don’t want someone too experienced in projects like this or someone who thinks they know it all. I want someone who will work with me at the level I’m at and listen to my ideas.”
“It does sound tempting,” I said slowly. “I feel I’m ready for something new, but I have never lived that far north. I don’t mind the cold but the thought of the long, dark months is a real problem for me.”
“I’m not asking for a definite answer now. I just wondered whether you had any plans over Christmas, or around there, when you get your two weeks holiday. You could come up and see what you think. I know it’s not a completely tempting offer – Christmas with me, a potentially suicidal woman, and some old people you don’t know – but it’s all I’ve got to offer.” He smiled with a hint of resignation and desperation, as if hoping to charm me into accepting his offer.
He must have known I was attracted by the warmth in his character, although I knew this would never lead to anything other than friendship perhaps. Yet he was prepared to use this weakness against me, also knowing how inappropriate it was to lead me on, as if he was sure I would forgive him in the end. I wondered what this knowledge was based on. Was it really the beauty of the gardens? Could he be that fanatical about them?
A few days ago, I would not have considered his offer. I had already planned my Christmas. It hadn’t taken a lot of planning: some DVDs, a chicken, some chocolate mints. Now I felt as if I needed an adventure, something different to look forward. I could imagine the horror of the sort of Christmas he had portrayed, and yet with his company it did not seem that much worse than the alternative.
I agreed that I would go in a few weeks.
* * *
The days seemed to drag once Peter had left, both for me and McGregor. She spent more time hanging around while I was working, asking me about the new project. Not that I had any details to give but we still speculated. She seemed to have convinced herself that once I had gone, I would not be back. I was far less certain of this but it seemed to make it easier to assume it so that it could limit any relationship between us. We got on better for those few weeks than we had at any time in the last nine months. I even found myself admitting to her that I was gay, not that that word felt right. It seemed to have no relevance to my existence but I could find no better word.
It annoyed me that I found it so hard to explain this tiny aspect of my character that in some inexplicable way was still important enough that it needed to be said. But once the haltering words were out, life was easier. I was able to relax and be myself in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible before.
“You do know that Peter is married?” she said soon after my disclosure. I muttered “motherly concern” to myself until the irritation passed.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Though perhaps not happily so,” I only said this to wind her up and it worked.
“You aren’t going because you fancy him?” she said, horrified.
“Of course not,” I assured her. “The garden, that is all, and perhaps a change of scenery would be good for me. I’ve lived in my current house too long. It has too many memories for me. I’ve needed a change for some time but have always too scared or just too lacking in any energy to do anything about it.”
“I can’t believe it. I finally got the funding to buy a rotavator, just to save your back. Now, you might never get a chance to use it. Peter was lovely though,” she said with a sigh. “So charming and full of life!”
“You sound like you’re talking about someone who’s died,” I said, exasperated.
“I know. That’s terrible. It’s just that I feel I will never see him again, or you once you’ve gone to Scotland.”
“It’s not that far away by train,” I assured her. “I expect you’ll want to come and see the garden once things start to get moving.”
“If you invite me, I’ll come,” she promised.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Trip to Scotland
A couple of weeks later and the expected train tickets and instructions had arrived in the post. I was feeling nervous now, standing on the platform of an empty station with my travel bag, wind battering against my back. Once the train arrived, I settled back into a seat and relaxed again, enjoying the scenery rushing by the window.
It had stayed cold but all the snow had disappeared from the south. As I travelled further north, frost was replaced with proper snow, changing everything into an ethereally calm landscape. Although the journey was long with a few changes, there was one stretch where I could safely snooze. Even further north the snow
disappeared again, as if it were concentrated across the centre of the country like a modest belt of ice. I reached the end of the train journey with a sense of anti-climax. I had expected to leave the train on a lonely station in the middle of nowhere but instead I departed among a rush of shoppers returning home for their tea in a normal-looking town. Only the hills in the distance were larger than those I was used to. I stood still on the platform, waiting for the flood of people to finish flowing past me so I could get my bearings.
“You made it!” I heard the familiar voice behind me. I turned around and saw Peter walking towards me in a duffle coat, wrapped up well with hat, scarf, and gloves. I was glad I had not been over-optimistic about the sheltered climate he had promised me but had discounted much of what he had said as the voice of an enthusiast.
“You’re still planning to stay for two weeks?” he said, viewing my travel bag with a lack of enthusiasm.
“If I’m still welcome,” I said, wondering whether he thought the bag too small or too large. Should I have been bringing lots of Christmas supplies?
“Of course, you are very welcome. You travel lighter than me, that’s all.”
I followed him to an old Land Rover, put my bag on the back seat, and climbed into the front. It was pleasantly warm inside, almost too warm. After conversation in which I struggled to keep my eyes open, I fell into a comfortable and pleasant sleep.
At some stage I must have dragged myself inside half asleep in an unsociable way because I awoke to find myself in bed, still completely dressed apart from my shoes. The first time I woke, it was dark still. I could tell from the feel of the room that it was large and full of hard surfaces, but I was comfy and warm in the bed so I quickly undressed and dropped off again. When I next woke up it was just after dawn.
I had been tired after travelling so I had gone to bed about eight or nine o’clock, I estimated, which was enough sleep but I was starving.
I looked around the room. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was used to modern amenities, to carpets, radiators, and curtains. This room seemed to be free of all of these, although there was a large rug by the side of my normal-looking bed. The rug had a very modern striking pattern on it that made me think perhaps this sparseness was the result of interior design rather than anything else. There was also a matching and massive picture on the wall that seemed to pick up the same colours without depicting anything I recognised.
What I really wanted to do was see the garden, so I went over to the window bay and looked out. The view was breathtaking. I was higher up than I had expected, perhaps on a third or fourth floor. To begin with I only saw the distant view of a lake, perhaps a loch, and further away some mountains: these, to my disappointment not snow-topped. I had to get close to the window, even slightly stretch my head outside, to look down and see that the building I was in was surrounded by a courtyard garden, and beyond this another line of wall, or outbuildings, which seemed to be the outer perimeter. The scale of the place was bigger than I had ever contemplated. It seemed ridiculous that it belonged to just one young man, and no wonder he felt it as such a burden.
I could not see the details of the garden but it appeared to have no definite shape, texture, or colour scheme. The feel of it was of a lost and forgotten walled garden. I was excited to think of visiting this. It stirred my blood: a feeling I had not had for such a long time. After making myself look respectable, I made my way out through the door, which was in the smallest part of the room, like the point of a triangle, and down the spiral staircase. I could imagine that I had visited the place of my dreams, a place called Herron. This made me feel a little less like a stranger in an alien place.
“Good morning!” I heard a voice from up above and looked up at Peter’s smiling face.
“Come this way first,” he said, beckoning me. “We’ve got breakfast up here. You were so tired last night, I didn’t get chance to give you the tour. It’s a bit rambling to begin with but you’ll get the hang of it.”
I was half disappointed to be delaying the view of the gardens but the thought of a cup of tea or coffee and breakfast was tempting. On the floor above my bedroom there was a large open-plan area that seemed to serve as kitchen, lounge, dining room, and study. I had my cup of tea and ate happily, feeling my hunger gradually abating.
“We mainly live on this floor,” Peter was explaining. “Our bedrooms are upstairs and guest bedrooms downstairs.”
“How tall is this building?” I asked, confused.
“Well, there are seven floors. It looks like a mediaeval keep a bit from the outside but it is really a Victorian folly, one of the maddest, I always think, built as a hunting lodge by someone with more money than sense. Do you want to have a look around?”
When we made our way downstairs, I could see what he meant about the folly. It was an extraordinary building that would have seemed monstrous if it were not that the courtyard surrounding it was on a similar scale.
Small sections of the garden had been worked on but the greater part was like a meadow after a long, hot summer with some flattened areas that served as paths.
We went through an archway in the surrounding walls and there was another space, most meadow-like again, with paths down to the lake. We explored all of the outer walls, and Peter explained his vision of the garden as he saw it. It was not so much a garden as a completely self-sufficient estate, complete with farmland, roaming animals, forest, and orchards. Some of it was already there, I could see, but there was so much scope for improvement. I was busy imagining different ideas and different layouts. Some of it came to me so clearly it was almost as though I had seen the ideas before, although I racked my brains to think where.
We walked down to the lake. I was surprised by how warm it was. Peter had decided against wearing a coat and now I knew why. It was not hot like summer, but it was most unlike the last few weeks of weather where I had become accustomed to wrapping up carefully. The lake was beautiful and unlike any sort of water I had seen before, although most like a reservoir I had once visited in Somerset but on a much grander scale. The water looked clear and even inviting.
“It’s a tradition at Christmas time that we swim in the lake,” Peter said as I stared into the water. “Although in recent years that ‘we’ has only been me. If you want to join me, I’m going in tomorrow morning.”
“You are joking?” I said, thinking he really was.
“No. This year I have built a sauna, though, to make the act slightly more attractive.”
I realised he was completely serious, so recklessly agreed to join him.
We went back for lunch. This time I was introduced to Maone, a sad-looking woman in her late thirties, and to Peter’s son, Yan, a chatty boy of about three. It looked like there had been some attempt made at introducing Christmas to the room. A large tree had been brought in and some holly-like leaves and ivy scattered around artistically.
“I didn’t tell you my wife has unexpectedly returned from her travels,” Peter said. “She’s busy shopping at the moment, which is more complicated than you would expect due to our remoteness, but you will probably meet her later or tomorrow.”
We mainly chatted of the garden, interrupted now and again by Yan. Maone didn’t speak much but I caught her making strange faces over my shoulder as I bent down to retrieve a fork, as if she were expressing dismay at my presence. I tried not to take it personally and thought of her unsteady state of mind.
I had a free afternoon to sit, think, and dream. I took another look around all the grounds. The place was by no means deserted. There were lots of different families living there, by the look of it: holiday homes and accommodation for bartered work, Peter had explained.
My favourite place was in the courtyard outside the front door of the main building. The walls acted as a sun trap, and thanks to the slightly warmer weather this meant that here it actually felt like summer. I realised
sitting there for a little while that I felt completely relaxed – a feeling I had almost ceased to recognise, it was so unfamiliar.
I drifted into dreams in which my dead love walked with me through the overgrown meadows. We had been to stranger places, I mused, although this was pretty strange: almost like a mediaeval village – completely cut-off from the rest of the world. I felt at home here, though, even more so in this dream where I was no longer alone.
* * *
“See, he smiles. It makes my heart bleed to see it.”
In the place where I was sleeping, as I walked by in my dreams, I saw purple clematis and cream roses crawling over an arch and the ground covered with lungwort, cream geraniums, and pale green flowers of a variety I did not recognise at all with long grass-like leaves.
“Listen. I do not wish to sound unsympathetic but you will have to control yourself when he is awake. I do not believe he will stay here with two weeping woman hanging around him. One is bad enough, although Maone is getting better daily. We are lost if he does not stay. It is good, though, that he smiles. I haven’t seen that yet. I think he is remembering better times.”
Through the archway I walked and saw a large stone bowl backing onto the wall of the central building. A lion’s head spewed forth gentle, soft water that as I put my hand into it felt as smooth as cream. Another hand met mine in the flowing velvetiness and our fingers entwined.
“Our better times or his?”
“Mainly his own, I am afraid, although there is definitely something there that belongs to us.”
* * *
I woke with the uncomfortable feeling that someone was looking at me to find that they were. Yan was peering at my face from a distance of about four inches with an expression of intense speculation. When I opened my eyes he jumped so violently it made me jump in sympathy and sit up completely awake.
“Hello,” I said cautiously.
