The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  “Yes, please.”

  He slipped off the desk and disappeared through a doorway. I glimpsed a sofa draped with a brown blanket and cushions flattened. It was good to be alone for a moment, to have time to look around, a tentative look at the place my mother had walked into every day. A moment later Harold Jones returned holding a cup. Before he reached me the door opened and an elderly man stepped into the shop. “Morning, Harold.”

  “Albert.”

  The man removed his hat. “Sorry to barge in but I’m in a bit of a hurry, did my order arrive?”

  “I believe it did.” Harold Jones slipped off the desk. “I’ll be back in a moment, Edith.”

  “Nice day,” the man said, turning towards me.

  “Very nice.”

  We were held in silence for a moment, me not knowing how to behave in this room that was neither shop nor home.

  “I haven’t seen you in here before. . .” said the man.

  “No, this is my first visit.”

  “So, what brought you to this neck of the woods, Harold’s new copies of Portnoy’s Complaint?” He winked, almost too fast to see.

  “I was looking for something.”

  The old man nodded and slipped his finger into his beard, an exact replica of Harold Jones.’ “May I ask what?”

  “I. . .” The room felt small suddenly. “Would you mind telling Mr. Jones I had to go?”

  “Certainly.”

  I glanced back through the window as I hurried down the garden path. The old man reached up to the top of a shelf, his shirt-tail escaping his trousers. I hurried down the street, the details of the last few minutes crowding my mind: tea cups, beards, shirt-tails, all eclipsed by a single thought that wouldn’t go away: my mother reading my father a poem.

  22

  I was unprepared for the amount of energy required to start a new garden from scratch. Even Archie had failed to warn me of the strength needed to separate a square of turf from soil. ‘Don’t skimp on bed preparation,’ he’d said a day earlier, and I tried to keep this mantra in mind as I dug in the earth and pulled at the roots that clung so tenaciously to the ground. I held one end of the tape while Archie swung round the other like a trainee carthorse. Then we’d dragged a hosepipe from the side of the house and marked out the flowerbed along the back fence. Then we dug. Archie lifted up whole blocks of soil on his shovel while I scraped handfuls onto mine. So many roots, but we tugged, we snapped, we twisted until the flower bed was ready to receive whatever we had to give it. ‘What are you doing about plants?’ Archie had asked. I wondered about pulling up some saplings from the wood at the end of the garden but before I’d finished my sentence Archie’s legs were flailing like an upturned ladybird as he disappeared over his garden wall. ‘Give me a couple of days,’ he’d said.

  Now he was back, dwarfed by the corn stalks that rose up behind him and stroking a mischievous grin with blackcurrant-stained fingers.

  “What have you got in that bag?”

  “You alone?” he said in a theatrical whisper.

  “Yes. My father’s out and Vivian’s taking a nap.”

  “Crikey, it’s Tuesday again already?”

  I nodded.

  “Trees, as ordered.” He held a grubby sack towards me.

  “In there?” I felt the side of the bundle. “How many?”

  “Eight.”

  “What sort are they?”

  “Hornbeam.”

  “My favourite!”

  “Your favourite.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “See? We have to get them into the ground. Hold on a second.”

  He shoved the sack into my hands and levered his body over the wall. I glanced inside — probably the saddest-looking bundle I had ever seen — dried-up roots hanging off shriveled sticks.

  “What are these?”

  “Whips, sweetheart, bare root whips. They’re like babies pulled from their mother’s breast. But we have to get them straight into the ground. Just show me where.”

  We marked out the planting positions with our feet. Archie demonstrated the precision stride of an expert pacer while I scuttled behind. Then, he showed me how to dig a hole, gouging out the packed earth, loosening the crumbs then reuniting the babies with their mothers. I felt my shoulders relax as the first treelet was lovingly nursed into its pit but couldn’t help but cry out when he stamped it down with a heartless heel. “What are you doing?”

  “Heeling it in,” he said, “it’s the most important part.”

  “But you’ll kill it, won’t you?”

  “I’ll kill it if I don’t.”

  I watched. There was so much to learn. Plants were not just objects, I could see that. Soil was not just dirt. It had texture, a smell, a way to absorb moisture. I felt a rush of affection as I watched Archie grind bowls of mud into the ground with his heel. Then I found my mind racing forward in time, to thickening branches, to giant shadows circling the garden and to winter pollen drifting down onto the grass. Then I thought of my mother. Would she have loved this embryonic garden? Would she have felt the childish joy of watering her first seeds? But it was not a mother who yelled something from the kitchen. It was an aunt. An aunt with a purpose.

  “Edith, my sheets need changing!”

  I turned back to Archie, but Archie was gone. All that was left of him was a pair of airborne heels disappearing down behind his wall and lichen dust floating silently upward.

  “Just coming.”

  But Vivian was already bearing down on us. “What’s this mess?” she said, nearly treading on one of the trees. “Where did you get those tools?”

  “I found them in the shed,” I said, “My father is happy about it.” ‘Father’ and ‘happy,’ the two words sat uneasily in the same sentence.

  Vivian’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. For a second she didn’t speak and the only sound creeping round us was the crackle of leaves being raked, slowly, methodically, somewhere else. I waited for her to speak. And she did. “That’s a lot of trees.” I waited further. “Trees take time. You’ll never see them grow.” I looked at her shoes, the toes showed signs of scuffing and buffing.

  “These ones grow quite fast,” I said.

  “That makes no difference.” She turned, swishing round her skirt and strode off towards the back door.

  I did not watch her go. I just eased a column of soil off the end of my trowel.

  “You packing up?” said Archie. He’d suddenly reappeared on the other side of the wall, all head and shoulders.

  “Yes.”

  A flat smile traversed his face. “Don’t let her get to you, sweetheart. It won’t always be like this.”

  I met his gaze, then looked back at my fledgling trees leaning into the breeze. I was going to make a garden. A garden of consequence.

  Left alone, I became aware of a breeze lifting my collar. I pulled the packet of Nigella seeds out of my pocket and shook it over the freshly turned soil. Some of them had become trapped in the paper seam but I scraped them out and threw them up into the air. But as I watched the black dots drop back down the wind arrived, dragged them back up and threw them up, high, up and over the high wall. I looked down at the picture on the packet. Pale blue petals, leaves like sewing needles. Love — in — the — Mist.

  23

  Dew had seeped a line along the hem of my nightdress by the time I’d made one turn of my garden the following morning. It was quiet out there and even the birds were silent, one eye open, one eye shut. I approached the line of baby trees cautiously. Whips, Archie had called them, promising me with an earnest nod of his head that the leafless sticks would grow into trees of great beauty. One day. Even now, the sight of them, shriveled and specked with soil, shot a shiver of anticipation through me.

  I leaned against Archie’s wall and looked across the garden, checking the curve of the young trees. The accuracy was hard to gauge. A breeze skimmed the grass; it whipped the saplings over before throwing them upright again. I knelt dow
n to straighten the closest tree whose roots had become exposed. It was then that I noticed a small mound of earth a few inches away: a molehill. I shuddered. Moles terrified me. They did terrifying things. They snuck around below my feet; they held their breath and listened to human conversations. They dug; they churned. They tunneled.

  I counted the molehills curving round beside the trees. Then I knelt down and touched the mole soil with my finger. But this was not the granular soil of a molehill. This was something else. Getting to my feet, I surveyed the mounds again. Then I realized. These were not molehills at all. These were planting holes, recently dug. Recently vacated.

  Someone had moved my trees.

  Archie’s house was never locked. Even during his weekly walk to the grocer’s he left the door unbolted and the gate off its latch. I pushed open the back door and slipped into his kitchen.

  The room showed all the signs of a tidy spirit who had become bored. The table was half wiped, clean on one side and spotted with curls of dried-up cheese on the other. Crumbs still lined the dishcloth slumped across the edge of the sink and cups, some dirty, some clean, littered the draining board. I picked up the tea towel that had fallen onto the floor, slipped it back onto the rail and went into his hall. I was familiar with déjà vu, even if I could not explain the feeling of repetition that swooped down so unexpectedly. It was the houses. Street matched street in my neighbourhood, builders adored the cheap bricks that streamed out of the local brick works and homes were built in pairs, not twins, but singletons forming a mirror image. I felt confident I could describe the shape of the light switches in other people’s houses, could pinpoint the turn in their stairs or locate the hot water tank without ever having been inside. Everyone — I imagined — could.

  I tip-toed up Archie’s stairs for the first time, turned left at the top and headed straight for his bedroom. After tapping lightly, I nudged open the door.

  The interior smelt of sleep. The curtains were drawn and the room was dotted with heaps: trousers turned inside out on a stool, socks scrunched up on the carpet, a bed heaped with blankets. And feet.

  “Archie,” I whispered.

  The feet twitched.

  “Archie, wake up.”

  A fold in the blanket moved. Then a hairy arm emerged, followed by a head.

  “Edith?” His eyes were swollen, eyebrows flat. “Wassatime?”

  “It’s early. Archie, you have to come and look in the garden.”

  “Wha —?”

  “The trees have moved.”

  “What trees?”

  “Our trees, the sticks, someone has moved the sticks.”

  He sat up. “Sticks?”

  “Yes, come and look.”

  He yawned, squeezing tears from the sides of his eyes.

  “Where’s your shirt?”

  “I’m not sure. . . hey, stop pulling, your hands are freezing.”

  “How about this one? Archie, did you take this shirt off without undoing the buttons?”

  “S’pose I did.” He smiled weakly.

  “Will these socks do?”

  “Edith, stop! Stop please. Pass me my dressing gown. It’s behind the door.”

  The garden had taken on a different hue by the time we reached the back door and stepped outside. Rhubarb leaves, still glued to the ground with dew, had turned from grey to green in a matter of minutes and sunlight now spliced through the bean poles at the back of the garden, throwing pokers of light right across the lawn. We clambered across the low wall together. I gripped the hem of my nightdress as I went over, while Archie paused to secure his slippers before laying his chest on the top and swinging his legs round from behind.

  “Archie, are you alright?”

  “Yes.” He rubbed his leg, “Just a stiff hamstring.”

  “There, look, do you see what I mean?”

  He tightened the belt of his dressing gown and studied the semicircle of trees. Then he strolled along the line of empty holes in a leisurely fashion, a judge at a show, poking his finger into the piles as he examined each one in turn.

  “You’re right. The line has been moved.”

  “Would an animal do that?”

  “What animal?”

  “A mole?”

  “Edie, a mole cannot plant trees. A person has done this. Your father did agree to you planting the trees, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What about your aunt?”

  “Vivian? Why would she move anything?”

  “I’ve no idea. Why not ask her?”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Well,” Archie glanced anxiously towards his tomato plants on the verge of ripening, “let’s hope they don’t move anything else.”

  I laughed — a false, unpleasant sound.

  My new lawn had been a long time coming. I’d pulled a muscle in my back as I dug out the roots and the newly seeded soil had remained brown for days as puny blades flecked the ground like the hairs on a fly’s back. Then almost overnight, green had flooded the ground and I had grass. Or a sward, as Archie liked to call it. But an encyclopedia of weeds discovered a haven in my garden and after many hours spent pulling I went back to the nursery. The shop was quiet when I arrived, the counter abandoned; a solitary man rummaged noiselessly in a box full of bulbs.

  “Hello dear,” said Nancy Pit, emerging from a cupboard smelling of herbicide. “Back so soon?”

  “I’ve sown some grass. . .”

  She nodded.

  “And I’ve been overrun with weeds.”

  She smiled and nodded again.

  “So I’d like to buy some Paraquat.”

  The nodding stopped. “Paraquat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you say Paraquat?” Her cheeks faded, a dry flannel of skin.

  “Yes, Paraquat.”

  “The weedkilller?”

  “. . . yes.”

  She glanced over my shoulder. “We don’t have any. Sorry.”

  “None at all?”

  “None at all.”

  I felt confused. “Will you be getting any more in?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s been taken off the market.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “It’s too. . . dangerous.” She hesitated. “Especially if it gets into the wrong hands.”

  “I see. I’ll just keep pulling weeds then.”

  “Yes dear,” the flannel was flushed, “you keep pulling.”

  24

  Another magazine arrived. Another collection of unfamiliar things. I picked up the copy of Billingsford Homes that had fallen onto the mat and studied the cover. Other people’s homes were not like mine. Other people’s homes had coffee-making machines and televisions and wide, comfortable armchairs. Other people’s homes had books, displayed on shelves not sneaked into the house beneath a coat and hidden beneath the bed. Years of stagnation had abandoned my home to the past and while the rest of my street had moved on, double-glazing their windows and replacing their net curtains with blinds, my home was on hold. I had been making tea in the same teapot my whole life.

  I tucked the magazine under my arm, picked up a duster and went into the living room. We hardly ever used this room. Not even Vivian, with her constant desire to rest, liked to lay her elbows on the bony couch. Those limp, fleshy bundles gave me the creeps, the way they sagged over the arms of the sofa if she ever deigned to sit there. Only my father used this room. Always at night, always opposite the window, close to the wall. I came upon him one evening with his hand flat on the wall as if trying to feel a pulse. I tried it later, perched on the chair, hand on the wall, but apart from the cold in the wallpaper and the hum of the fridge passing through the cavity, nothing came back.

  I flicked the duster across the top of the telephone. I could not remember the sound of its tone and picked up the handset on impulse. It sounded sad and lonely and I placed my finger in the dial, making up a number I might call in my head. It was th
en that I noticed the small handle at the base of the phone. I supposed it had always been there but something made me reach down and tug it. As I pulled it, a drawer opened up and a set of stiff papers flipped upwards like a deck of cards. Names and phone numbers were written in compressed letters, ‘Beverley Crossman, 284 3379, Jane Titchmarsh, 667 5690, Doris Winehouse, 667 4894.’

  I flicked through, memorizing the names and was so deep in thought I did not realize my father had come into the room, until he spoke.

  “Close that drawer.”

  The doorway framed his body, the edges of him orange with dust. His shirt was creased on side of his chest as if he’d been hugging a small, warm animal.

  “Alright.”

  “Come outside. I need your help down at the end.”

  I forgot about the drawer as I stood up and followed him to the garden. I forgot about the little deck of cards showing its hand. All I could think of were the names, the names of my mother’s friends, Beverley. . . Jane. . . Doris.

  Harold Jones’ front path was thick with the eager leaves of an ash tree when I arrived at the bookshop and it was almost impossible to approach his front door without making a noise. He appeared to have friends visiting when I peered through the window, if the heap of coats balanced on the back of his chair was anything to go by, so I held back, half tempted to walk quietly back to the street and return to my house. But I couldn’t help but watch as a bony-shouldered man, whose hair had become trapped inside the back of his collar, lifted his hand to pull a book from the shelf with the casual ease of someone in his own home. Then I spotted Harold Jones, showering his guests with what seemed like ‘thanks for coming’ gestures so I turned the door handle and stepped inside.

  I didn’t meet his eye as I paused on the doormat but saw, or maybe just imagined, a smile cross the room. The poetry section was small but well signposted and I gravitated towards it as someone who regularly visits bookshops might. I immediately recognized a book on the shelf and succumbed to a feather of anxiety, same title, identical cover, yet this book was out in the light, ready for the eyes of anyone. I began to look through the shelves and was so immersed in a copy of The Hawk in the Rain that I didn’t realize Harold Jones had come up beside me.