The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  “Good to see you again, Edith.”

  I closed the book. “I’m sorry about last time, Mr. Jones.”

  “Oh, that’s fine, nothing enlivens the day like a dramatic exit. And Edith, please, call me Harold.”

  “What about a remorseful return?” I ventured.

  He smiled and touched my shoulder, just for a second. “I’m glad you came back. The pull of a good poem, was it?”

  “Where did everyone go?” I noticed the chair was free of coats and the room empty.

  “It’s getting close to opening time at the Adlington Arms,” he replied, pushing a book back into line. “Looking for anything in particular?” “What did my mother like to read?”

  He didn’t even pause. “Bereft I was — of what I knew not, too young that any should suspect.”

  “Who wrote that?”

  “Dickinson. The wonderful and long overlooked Emily. She was a recluse you know.”

  Elysium is as far as to the very nearest room. “What do you mean?”

  “She never went out.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  “My own theory, of course,” he said, “but I suspect she didn’t fit her world.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she wouldn’t receive guests, she never went out and. . .

  well, here my theory breaks down a bit, but she always wore white.”

  “Does that mean. . . the rest of us are a good fit?”

  “My God, you’re like your mother.” He pulled out another book, “That’s just the sort of remark she’d come at me with. Well, my dear, you’ve seen her photographs obviously, but I might be able to show you what she really loved.”

  It took two hours. Two hours of Harold Jones rummaging through the shelves, letting out the occasional delighted squeal, running to answer the phone, running to sell a book, running back to me, and all the while reading aloud fragments, ‘a little space with boughs all woven round’ in a hoarse whisper or, with hand held dramatically on heart, ‘the pear tree lets its petals drop.’ And through it all I imagined that I was her, hovering round the shelves, fingering the covers, drawn into the thoughts of people she’d never met. Then we sat on the sofa for a short time and Harold brought me a cup of tea and looked at my hands and said they were just like my mother’s.

  When I finally left the shop he yelled something up the front garden, something chopped and hidden inside his scarf. It felt good to raise my voice. “What — did — you — say?” He jumped, waved both hands at me and bellowed. “Robert Frost, I forgot Frosty. Your mother adored him. My apple tree. . .” He cleared his throat, “. . .will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.”

  I got an attack of nerves when I approached my house, but the excuse was ready, the little lost boy who needed a person to take him home. But the little lost boy had become lost for no reason. When I entered the hall the house reeked of wallpaper paste and the man up the ladder had no idea of how many hours had been lost.

  “Hello. . . could I speak to Beverley Crossman. . . yes, Beverley. . . oh, do you know where she moved to? . . . no. . . no, I never go to London, . . . thank you. . . goodbye.”

  25

  Late summer heralded a glut in Archie’s garden. By the end of September bags stuffed with lettuce began arriving outside my back door and as the days grew shorter I started to catch sight of him heaving box-loads of vegetables onto the back of his scooter, heading I knew not where. During this great surge of apple-gathering and corn-shucking, my garden turned purple. Sparrows splattered elderberry excreta onto the high wall and then dashed magenta stripes into the bedsheets hanging on the washing line.

  I was standing in the front garden looking towards the horizon so I didn’t notice a figure standing behind the front hedge, until it spoke. “They are out, aren’t they?”

  I patted my chest. “Dotty!” I could have hugged her. “I saw you the other day in the street! And yes, they are out.”

  “I saw you too.” She cocked her head. “You look different.”

  “I’ve started making a garden.” I replied.

  “A garden! How wonderful. How far have you got?”

  “Well, there was a fire —”

  “A fire! Were you. . . what happened?”

  “There was a fire in the garden and the hawthorn was all burnt, so I dug it out and made a new bed and I cut the grass and —”

  “Could I have a peek?”

  “Oh, no, not yet.”

  She smiled. “Have you got many plants?”

  “I’ve got some little trees, Archie got me those, and I bought a couple of packets of seeds at the nursery and. . .”

  “Was there any trouble when you got home from Snowshill?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t mention it to anyone.”

  “Edith, can you leave the house for an hour or two?”

  “You mean now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “I. . . .”

  “Fetch your coat.”

  It was spitting by the time we reached Dotty’s car. She had parked too close to the van from number Forty-Eight and I gripped the sides of my seat as the bumper scraped free. Soon we were hurtling up the main road towards the edge of town.

  “Where are we going?” I stretched my legs out beneath the dashboard.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Does it involve scrambling over walls?”

  “You’ll find out.” Dotty smiled. It altered the angle of her earlobes.

  Dotty’s suit was not actually green. More turquoise, with a hint of cedar. I looked it over, then leaned back into my seat and watched the houses rush by.

  Her driving was subdued at first. She eased round corners in second gear; she predicted the steepness of the slopes, but as we neared the edge of town she brightened up, pressed her foot harder onto the accelerator and launched into a meandering description of herself.

  Dotty lived alone. At fifty-six years old, she adored fitted suits, loved anything that grew in the ground, and had a taste for adventure. And for Dotty, I quickly realized, adventure meant breaking into public gardens: clambering over walls, crawling through hedges, and discovering the loose slat in wooden fences, ‘of which there is always one,’ she assured me. She had visited every large garden within a radius of a hundred miles, some many times, and got a secret thrill from ‘going in through the ladies’ loo window,’ as she proudly described it. But it was not just public gardens she loved. She was drawn to the ‘Keep Out’ signs of the wealthy like a butterfly to nectar, unable to resist the challenge of a padlocked gate or the temptation of an overgrown hedge. I envied her spontaneity. Even my most adventurous dreams never came close to evoking a life of such impromptu roving.

  The town came to an abrupt end at the brickworks, the cluster of mismatched buildings replaced by mismatched fields. We wove on through stickle-backed lanes edged with wild flowers until we approached a small farm perched on a hill with a large number of cars parked outside. “Aut mn Pl nt S e” flickered on top of a homemade pole, the flag dancing and folding in the wind.

  “This is where the battle begins,” said Dotty, sliding the car into a narrow gap between a baker’s van and a grubby Cortina.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The gardening brigade, they’ll be out in force.”

  “But Dotty, I don’t have any money.”

  “Don’t worry. Just follow me.”

  It was hard to keep up. Dotty marched towards the farmhouse with a speed that belied her bulk; she strode down the side of the building then headed towards a field crowded with people. As we got closer I could see stalls, wheelbarrows and bored dogs on leads. Dotty wove through the stalls with fox-like stealth, ducking beneath umbrellas, trespassing on the stallholders’ side of the tables, and clipping conversations with a series of brusque ‘scuse me’s’ before coming to an inexplicable halt, sniffing the air and doubling back the way we had come. I observed the people around me. Everyone wore boots. Even elderly women
in dresses wore great black Wellingtons that snagged on their hems. Pearls rested on several throats and I fingered my bare neck before running to catch up with Dotty who had halted beside a group of pots filled with tired-looking shrubs.

  “Edith, look at this,” she said, pointing at a pot of stumps.

  “Isn’t it dead?”

  “Not dead, someone’s just gone over it with a pair of pruners. In nine months’ time this crabby old plant will be so beautiful you’ll want to dance.” She fondled a shriveled stem. “And it will be in your garden, tickling the feet of that wall of yours.”

  I glanced round. “What is it called?”

  “Salvia uliginosa.”

  “Oh.”

  Dotty smiled. “The viler the name, the more beautiful the plant. The flowers are blue and we can get ten or eleven and cram them together and. . .”

  “But I don’t have any money. None at all.”

  “I’ll buy these.” She peered into my face. “You don’t mind?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Dotty darted to the left; I followed, inspecting my surroundings with fresh interest. Women, I suddenly realized, made up the bulk, all wearing similar expressions of concentration as they inspected root balls and poked dismissively at trays. The excitement seemed to reach a peak around the bargain displays as nicely dressed women jostled and shoved like excited children. I sniffed the air and let the scent of crushed petals go right down into my lungs.

  Mud dotted the back of Dotty’s car half an hour later. Flattened clods of it mixed with grass. It clung to our shoes and I picked at my heels with a twig as Dotty stretched out to settle the final bag. She had haggled with every stallholder before wrenching her purchases out through cracks in the crowd and as we set off an earthy smell filled the car. Dotty seemed relaxed, smiling, letting out small sighs and even half closing her eyes at one point, only snapping them open when I pointed out that an extraordinarily wide tractor was lumbering towards us. Infected by the general sense of calm drifting inside the car, I leaned back on the headrest, a small smile lying on my face. But as we turned into the end of my road I thought of muddy bags, limp on the kitchen floor. “Dotty, could we slow down a bit?”

  “Why’s that, darling?”

  “I can’t take all these plants into my house, I have to think what to do with them. I’m not sure what my father will say.”

  “Couldn’t Archie look after them?”

  “I could ask him.”

  “Will he be at home?”

  “I’m not sure, he usually is.”

  We parked several yards up the street, then hauled the bags out of the car. They were heavier than expected and wafted an earthy scent with every change in position. We went round the side of Archie’s house and Dotty made a small noise in her throat as I tapped on his back door. A sock was nestling in Archie’s palm when he opened the door.

  “Edie, come in.”

  “Can I leave something here for a bit?”

  “Of course. Bring it in and —” His mouth fell open.

  “Dotty Hands,” said Dotty, holding grubby fingers towards him.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Dotty, I’ve heard. . . about you. Please come in.” Dotty smiled serenely and strode into the kitchen, as someone who lived there might.

  “We went to a plant fair at Cooper’s Hill,” I said.

  Archie’s eyes widened. “What did you get?”

  “Everything. I’ll show you.”

  “Bring them over to the table.” He gathered up a pile of socks and shoved them onto the draining board. One fell to the floor.

  “This one got away,” said Dotty, bending down to pick it up. “Where’s its pair?”

  Archie rubbed his forehead. “I’ve been searching for the last couple of minutes. My eyes. . . they’re not so good. . . oh, you don’t need. . .”

  But Dotty was already beside the sink. She held a sock up to the light. “Here he is,” she said.

  Archie and I sat down at the table. There was something soothing about the way Dotty folded the socks into a ball, and then patted them with the palm of her hand.

  “So, what did you get?” Archie asked.

  “Salvias and lilies and brunneras and something called. . . what was that plant with big leaves, Dotty?”

  Dotty wasn’t listening. She was back at the draining board, poking through the pile of socks. “Oh, you don’t mind, do you?” she said.

  “Just checking for strays.”

  “Definitely not,” said Archie. “Feel free.”

  We gathered round the table and began to unpack. A miniature garden formed on the table: bulbs, plugs and small pots. Archie was thorough in his inspection. He rubbed expert fingers across the stems, sniffing at roots, and purring out words that sounded like ‘hound’ and ‘piss’ and all the while knocking elbows with Dotty who pulled out clump after muddy clump. After the last bag had been emptied Archie pushed his chair onto its back legs and clasped his hands behind his head. “Quite a haul you’ve got there, you’re going to be busy — oh, that reminds me, Edie, I was up at the shop this morning, I talked to Jean.”

  “Oh, how. . . is she?”

  “She’s short-handed again.”

  “I see.”

  “She needs someone to help out again, mornings only.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “It would be good to get out a bit, wouldn’t it, Edie.”

  I looked down at the seed catalogue lying on the table. “Yes, I could go and see her later.”

  “Jean gets a bit heated when it comes to late deliveries and can be a bit er. . . loose-tongued, but she’s kind at heart. You’ll like her.”

  “Do you think it’ll get. . . busy?” I plucked a hair off the tea cozy.

  “Oh, they’ll dribble in. But you’ll recognize most of them. Half the street shops there.”

  “Half the street?” I looked across at Dotty who was pressing a leaf to her nostril.

  “Edie, relax. You’ll like it there. I promise.”

  “Where have you been? I had to take my suitcase up myself.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, isn’t it Fri —”

  “Yes, it’s Friday. Where have you been?”

  “I was up at the shops.”

  “What did you buy?”

  “They were. . . shut.”

  “Why did you go then?”

  “I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “Don’t you have a watch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, look at it next time. It’s not that hard.”

  “I will.”

  “And by the way, don’t boil my egg for so long in the morning, it was like rubber last time.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And Edith. . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Take that look off your face, it doesn’t suit you.”

  26

  The fox was inside the house. I chanced upon him in the living room, the sofa to his left, a chair to his right. He stared at me; I stared at him. It wasn’t my room any more. It was his. Just for a brief moment the living room belonged to him. Then he fled, past the swans flying across the wall, through the kitchen and out of the back door. I picked an orange hair off the edge of the sofa and for a moment, I don’t know why, I thought about the person on the other side of the wall.

  Eleven across bothered me. It had done so for the past three days. ‘Used by small mammal to get a limited view.’

  Vivian’s pen lay beside the newspaper, left behind but ready to write instructions, as I sat alone at the kitchen table, turning possible answers over in my head. A voice, muffled by distance, landed in the room. “Miii-ss?”

  I lay down my pencil and went to the front door but before I reached it, the letterbox flipped upwards and a pair of flattened lips was forced through.

  “Miss, are you there?” The lips bulged then flattened again. “Miss?”

  Johnny Worth was bent forward when I opened the door. He snapped up
right and smoothed an imaginary crease from the front of his trousers.

  “Mr. Worth?”

  “Call me Johnny, please.”

  “What are you doing. . . Johnny?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, Edith — Miss, but I noticed the hedge needs a bit of work. I thought you might need some help to — you know — patch it up.”

  “Is there a hole again?” My voice held steady.

  “A hole? You could get a horse through that. Come and look.”

  Elastic bands lay on the front path, some broken, some muddy, all twisted up like dried-up earthworms. “What happened?” I said. “Did you see anything?”

  “Dunno,” he rubbed his chin, “looks like something came through in a hurry.”

  We bumped shoulders as I leaned forward to examine the hedge; I caught a whiff of after-shave.

  “Can we fix it?” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’ve got to work out how to do it.”

  “Please hurry.”

  He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a handful of elastic bands. “I’ve got a new load — we can use these.” He winked; it went badly. “They shouldn’t leave the stationery cupboard unlocked, should they?”

  “I hope this won’t make you late for your round.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s my day off —”

  I glanced at his chest. “But you’re wearing your uniform.”

  He attempted to tuck his tie inside his jacket. “It’s quite smart, don’t you think?”

  I stepped back and looked at him properly for the first time. Not at his accessories, the cap with the shiny peak, the nametag pinned on a skew, but at his face. It was held at an expectant angle and I noticed a wispy moustache clinging to his top lip. But it was his eyes that held me. They were saying something. But I did not know what it was.

  Afternoon light had rubbed the texture off the bricks when I looked up at the high wall later that day. I looked hopefully for signs of fatigue in my father’s movements but all I saw were his shoulders flexed for work and the trowel loaded with a blob of mortar. The garden was quiet, punctuated only by the creak of the ladder and the occasional grunt from above, but the rhythm was soothing, so soothing that a question slipped from my mouth. “When will it be finished?”