The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  “Alright, dear?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  I scanned the display, looking for inspiration amongst the drawings on the seed packets I recognized from Archie’s kitchen: ‘Baby’s Breath,’ ‘Hound’s Tongue,’ ‘Black-Eyed Susan.’ Then I picked up an envelope and shook it. It weighed nothing. Fingering the corner, feeling for seeds, I counted in my head.

  “Finding everything you need, dear?” called the woman from the counter.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  I could not help but tidy the display and while slipping Primula back behind Poppy I noticed a folder lying at the back of the table. ‘Horticultural

  News Back Copies’ was written in a confident hand. ‘Best Mums,’ roared out as I opened the first page and looked inside, gaudy orange flowers, thick green stems. I flicked through further — picking off the occasional seed stuck between the pages — and slipped them into my pocket. ‘Forster Road triumphs agai. . .’ announced the next headline, the accompanying article chopped off. I smiled to myself at the thought of Archie heaving one of his humungous marrows onto the judge’s table, its massive girth threatening to split.

  “Hyacinth?”

  I caught a whiff of freshly chewed shortbread. “Sorry?”

  “You’ll need some of those if you’re going for blue this time.” The woman had appeared by my side; she stood too close.

  “What do you mean?”

  She pointed at the seed packet in my hand. “Nigella. Love-in-the-Mist.”

  “Oh, yes. . . blue. What a lovely colour. I’ll take these.”

  I delved in my purse. It seemed an awful lot of money for a packet that weighed nothing and I anxiously calculated how I was going to cover up the shortfall in my grocery budget while the woman rang up the price on the till. She wore a uniform, a faded green tunic, which seemed to drain colour from her face. Her hair was flat, as if recovering from the restrictions of a recently removed hat, but it was her eyes that held my attention. They examined the money in her hands yet constantly returned to me with quick, furtive movements, a sparrow’s glance.

  “Bye, then.”

  “Goodbye, dear.”

  As I hitched up my skirt, ready to swing my leg over the crossbar, a segment of the woman’s words returned to me, ‘You’ll need some of those if you’re going for blue.’ But it wasn’t the whole sentence that bothered me. It was two simple words stuck on the end, glossed over in the rush of departure, which nagged me with their obscurity.

  “‘This time.’”

  I felt a breeze rummage through my hair as I stood in the back garden later that day. It sent a shiver along the lightest twigs of the oak tree and rustled the feathers of a thrush sitting on top of the high wall. I gazed towards the house of Edward Black and felt a creeping sensation beneath my skin. I studied the back of his house, trying to add some substance to the feeling that I was being watched but the windows were empty. I was wondering what it would be like to sleep with my curtains open when the wind carried the sound of a knock on the door round the side of the house and dropped it at my feet.

  An unfamiliar silhouette was hovering in the door window when I reached the hall — a woman — her handbag a square on her chest.

  “Hello, Miss Stoker.”

  The face seemed familiar when I opened the door but a shifted context stalled recognition. “Um. . . ?”

  “Nancy Pit.” She flicked her lip mole up half an inch. “From the nursery.”

  I glimpsed her uniform beneath her jacket. “Yes, of course”

  She held a purse towards me. “You left this on my counter.”

  I snatched it out of her hands, entire scenes of recrimination playing out across my mind. “Sorry, it’s just such a relief to get it back.”

  The woman blinked then smiled. “You’re welcome. I was on my way home from work, it’s an easy detour.”

  “How did you know where I live?” I asked.

  “I know your aunt.”

  “Vivian?”

  “. . . Yes.”

  “I don’t think she’s ever mentioned you.”

  “We’re out of touch.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you see much of your aunt?” The woman moved closer; I could smell chemicals on her hair.

  “Yes, she’s here quite a lot, she stays with us once a week.”

  “That must be. . . nice.”

  “Well. . . yes.”

  “So, did you get your seeds in?”

  “Nearly. I’m preparing some new flower beds —”

  “Could I see?”

  “Erm. . .” I could not dredge up the slightest whiff of an excuse. “. . . I suppose so.”

  “This way?” Nancy Pit stepped into the hall and headed towards the kitchen.

  I followed on jellied knees. Perhaps the back door would jam; perhaps a vicious dog would come into the garden.

  “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed.

  I followed her gaze through the kitchen window. At that moment I saw the wall with new eyes. Stranger’s eyes. Bigger, uglier, it towered over the garden like a border crossing. Before I could stop her, Nancy Pit stepped out of the back door, walked down the garden and halted inside the wall’s shadow, releasing another, “Oh, my goodness,” but quieter. Then another. A pale face turned towards me. “What is this?”

  I sighed inside. Where to begin? I had told Johnny Worth; I had told Dotty Hands; now I would have to explain things to Nancy Pit. I settled on honesty. “I work on the wall with my father. It’s there to keep our neighbour out. We want it to be as high as possible so he can’t come into our garden.”

  “Why would he want to come into your garden?” The little moustache trembled.

  “He. . . he doesn’t like us?”

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t reply. Nancy Pit’s eyes lingered on my face, and then she looked back at the wall. “Is it safe, dear? Look at how it’s leaning in that bit over there.”

  “I don’t know. My father. . .”

  “I think I. . . someone should speak to your father.”

  “No, please don’t say anything about this.”

  She looked at me for what felt like a long time. “I think I should go.” I followed her to the front door. “Thank you for bringing back my bag.”

  “You’re welcome, and please. . .” She jerked her head in the direction of the garden. “. . . don’t stand too close to that wall.”

  “Shall I tell my aunt you called?”

  “If you like.”

  I closed the door and watched the figure walk towards the gate.

  If I liked. I had a decision to make. One of my own.

  I had no idea how to start a garden. The thought nagged me as I knelt inside the remains of the hawthorn bush, a trowel in one hand, and a garden fork in the other. The expanse of blackened soil, so enticing the night before, was intimidating in its emptiness and I sensed my father’s presence close by, an imagined glimpse here, and a masculine odour there. Before the fire I had been dreaming of something, a small flowerbed squeezed between the Little Meadow and the rear of the house but now over twenty feet of burnt grass and hawthorn stumps waited outside my back door. I prodded the ground, dwelling on the moment my father had said yes. All night I had struggled to make sense of his answer and still I feared the consequences, the abrupt change of heart. Digging a random hole seemed futile, yet I wanted to feel the soil beneath my nails, to smell it, to taste. I wanted to begin.

  “Looks like something’s about to start.”

  I looked up to see a head on the other side of the low wall, its accompanying body cut off just beneath the armpits. “Archie! You made me jump.”

  “What are you up to?” He folded his arms on the top of his wall.

  “I’m trying to work out where to start the new flower bed.”

  I thought I had seen all Archie’s expressions: the grin of delight as he passed the ‘best in show’ trophy over the wall for me to hold, the restrained look of disappointment if he
pulled a mealy carrot up from the soil, and the compressed lips of worry whenever he heard my father’s voice calling from the kitchen, so I was unprepared for the delight on his face the moment I’d finished speaking. He glanced at my house. “Your father’s not in, is he?”

  Before I could reply, he triangulated his elbows, heaved his skinny hips into view and flopped forward so his head was upside down on my side of the wall. I thought I heard bones cracking but there was no time to confirm it as his head flipped upright again and a knee appeared on the top of the wall. Frantic scratching sounds followed while his second leg scrabbled for traction, then he was over, straightening out his waistcoat, brushing moss off the front of his trousers and mumbling a word that sounded like ‘falafel.’

  “So,” he said, wheezing out words, “let’s get these stumps out and then we can see about finding you some plants.”

  Death by fire hadn’t lessened the hawthorn’s grip on the earth. Nourished by phantom limbs, the charred roots resisted all our initial attempts at removal, forcing growls and grunts and unexpected whistles out from Archie’s lips and pushing a bend into the prongs of his strongest fork. Yet release was worth waiting for. For the sigh of the soil as the final root hairs were broken and the crack of the stems as they were piled up on the ground. Archie’s body seemed made for the job, the way symmetrical muscles flared through his shirt like stumps on an angel’s back every time he lifted the spade. He chatted as he worked, telling me everything he knew of the plant we were removing: its power to outlive generations of men, its strength to lever its roots into the finest cracks and its uncanny ability to heal the vessels of the heart.

  I felt the thrill of the empty page as I leveled the soil behind him, picking out hawthorn haws — all wrinkled up like raisins — and leaves and old twigs that had gathered between the teeth of my rake. And I felt a morsel of strength enter me, enough to deal with what was coming. With what I knew was coming.

  Vivian had been subdued since she’d arrived early that morning. She’d accepted the laundry placed at the end of her bed without comment and hadn’t even bothered to mention the crumbs I’d spilt on the stairs. Rather than sit plumb in the centre of my day she’d lurked round its edges in a way that was beginning to make me nervous. I almost wished she would come outside. I kept expecting to see red reflecting off the kitchen wall. But it wasn’t Vivian who strode into the garden; it was my father. And he stumbled rather than strode, a man falling from his house, not seeing us as he pulled the door shut behind him and closed his coat. I’d never been so invisible as I watched him drag the ladder down the side of the wall — its feet tangled in the remaining long grass — and prop it up at the far end of the garden. Yet briefly I relished the moment, an observer of my own ritual, momentarily on the outside.

  “See you later,” Archie whispered.

  I nodded, sensing my friend vacate the corner of my eye, yet unable to stop watching my father climb up the ladder. Maybe he’d find the crack in the mortar close to his right hand. Maybe he’d need the cloth rinsed out. Maybe he’d see me from up there.

  17

  Una was the only person I knew who walked the same speed as me. My father and aunt both liked to hurry, surging ahead, emptying the intervening space of conversation, but Una, she’d get there when she’d get there and it was a pleasure to walk down the street with her without having to constantly adjust my rhythm or re-measure the distance between us. I saw her ahead of me as I left the house to fetch some milk and rushed to catch up. “Una, wait.”

  “Edith.” She turned and smiled and I became aware of a feeling in my stomach, a feeling I’d tried to leave somewhere.

  We fell in step. “I’m so happy I caught you. I’ve been hoping to see you before I left.” She laid her hand on my shoulder, light, the weight of a child’s. “I didn’t dare call the house after. . .” Her hand grew heavier. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  “I have something for you. I’ve been keeping it on me in case I bumped into you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a book, from my reading list. I saw it the other day and I thought you might like it. Page sixty-seven, stanza sixteen. That’s for you.”

  “What does it say?”

  “You wait. Read it when you get home.”

  I put the book into my bag and forced the zip shut over its spine. “When will you be back?”

  “Christmas holidays. Not so long.”

  “No, not so long.”

  I looked at her back after we’d said goodbye and felt an urge to shout.

  The book smelt of Una’s bedroom, and that other smell, the scent of the outside that seemed to be on every object that came in through the front door. It was lovingly wrapped — razor sharp folds, tape cut in a perfect line — and I hardly dared disturb the paper as I sat on my bed. I didn’t bother to read the title, just rattled through the pages anxious to see what my friend had left for me. Then I found it, a poem written by a man, a long time ago.

  She left the web,

  She left the loom,

  She made three paces through the room.

  34 Ethrington Street

  Billingsford,

  Northamptonshire

  September 3rd 1968

  Dear Gill,

  How many teenage girls can there be in one small town? They swarmed in again today while I was trying to sort out the card display. I’d been having such a nice time, reading all those greetings when the door burst open and the shop was suddenly reeking of perfume and cheap hairspray. I’m sure I lost at least a dozen packets of fags in the crush. They create a diversion — what size are these hairbands? — have you got any white nail polish? — then before I know it they’re gone, scampering up the hill on those big heels of theirs. Thank God some are going off to University soon. Though that means I’ll be left to contend with the rowdy ones. There’s one girl that comes in who isn’t like the others though. Quiet and a little scared-looking, she always buys the same bread and two pints of milk. She wears a skirt that comes down below her knees and has these grey socks on that look like they belong to her brother or someone. I long to pluck her eyebrows for her but I can’t just sit her down and set to with the tweezers can I? I once saw her trailing the crowd as it poured down the road. Reminded me of when I was a kid, all awkward smile and tiny voice. But I did see her talk to one of the girls and they looked like friends. Funny you know Gill, I felt happy when I saw that. Everyone needs someone don’t they? One friend’s enough but everyone needs someone.

  Jean

  18

  I kept thinking about my flower bed — all brown and sharp-smelling — and wondered if a bird had dared leave footprints, or whether worms had wrinkled the surface, or worse, wondered whether Vivian had been through, dislodging the seeds and breaking off the tiny stabs at life. Yet, for now she was just watching.

  The papery pods of Honesty were the first objects to catch my eye as I squeezed through a gap in the back fence looking for more seeds. I gathered in earnest, tapping hollow poppy pods, stroking the downy heads of scabious and easing bluebell bulbs out from the woodland floor, assuaging my guilt with thoughts of the care I was going to lavish on them. Chaff caught on my eyelashes as I rummaged and reaped and soon my pockets were bulging like a freshly made potpourri. But I glimpsed movement in the kitchen window so I squeezed through the fence and strolled back up to my house, humming a tune I had heard somewhere. I’d almost reached the back door when I noticed Archie was in his garden, leaning against his wall watching me. “Been over the back?”

  “Oh, I didn’t see you. Yes. I gathered some seeds, I thought they wouldn’t be missed.”

  “They won’t be missed.” He smiled.

  I walked towards him. “Archie, is this stupid, trying to grow flowers when we have. . . we have the wall?”

  He held out his arm and took my hand; rough skin lined his palm. “Edie, if you don’t make your garden, what will you do?

  “Will you h
elp me?”

  He glanced at my kitchen window. “I’ve had one of my brilliant ideas!”

  I shored up a smile. Archie had a tenuous grasp of the word brilliant. For him it could be applied as easily to a piece of greasy cod from the fish and chip shop as it could be to a well-rotted apple at the bottom of his compost heap. “What is it?” I asked nervously.

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  “Now?” I checked my watch.

  “Yes, now.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “O ye of little faith. Follow me.”

  Archie’s kitchen smelt of tea and burnt cake and I felt my shoulders relax as I wiped my feet on his mat. “Have you been baking?” I said. “An experiment,” he replied. “Like a biscuit?”

  “No, thanks.” I laughed.

  He laughed too. “But I do have something you might want. Come upstairs.”

  We reached his landing quickly. I watched the back of his shirt strain against his belt as he rummaged in a cupboard. “What are you looking for? I asked.

  “Hang on. . . here it is.” He moved in further, dragged out a step ladder and then split its legs apart with a great deal of fuss, grinding of metal and repeated utterances of a word that sounded like ‘shiggle.’

  “Can I help?”

  “'Sokay. It’s nearly done.”

  With a request to ‘hold the legs please, Edie,’ he climbed up the ladder and dislodged the hatch in the ceiling with the top of his head.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I called up, disturbed by the grunts that fell back down.

  “It’s fine, I’m nearly in.”

  He shoved the hatch sideways with his shoulder and groped in the triangle of black that had appeared above his head. Next he stretched up, placed his elbows into the hole and heaved his body upwards. Slippers swung from the tips of his toes before he disappeared from sight. A light switched on.