The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  The trowel paused. “When will what be finished?” A comma of mortar flecked my arm.

  “The wall.”

  “When it’s done.” A full stop dripped to the ground.

  “Is it. . . safe?”

  He looked down at me, the skin of his cheeks puckering beneath his eyes. “He might be standing on the other side of the wall at this moment. Do you realize what that means?”

  I squeezed the rails of the ladder. “The wall —”

  “Yes, the wall!” he thundered. “That’s what makes you safe.”

  I gripped the ladder more tightly then looked away. The accusatory ‘you’ was a powerful beast.

  I was eleven years old when I discovered the key to the cellar. It had languished in a gap at the back of the kitchen drawer for longer than I knew, jammed between the cutlery rack and a long-forgotten spatula. Cold and clunky and smelling of iron, it had sent a shiver down my arms as I pulled it out. A key with no lock is a thrilling object and I’d turned it over in my hands for several minutes before setting out to find the place it fit. Doors, drawers, cabinets, cupboards, trunks were all attempted with childish optimism and I can still remember that feeling of triumph as it turned a full circle in the cellar door. But I’d felt scared too, scared of the room. Still I went down, through the freshly embroidered cobwebs, down to the place where I found something. Something I didn’t know I was looking for. For weeks the room remained a mere thought in my head until I realized that no one ever went down there so I began my regular descent, rising silently out of bed as my father’s snores slipped beneath his bedroom door and creeping down to the room at the bottom of my house.

  The cellar felt colder than usual when I pushed open the door. Even the book covers gave out a papery cold when I searched through the box. I dug deeper than normal and before long my fingers brushed across an unfamiliar title, gold letters embossed into the spine of a thick red book. I heaved it onto my lap, curled a nested blanket round my feet and opened onto a fresh page.

  Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed.

  I stared into the dark. Two living, breathing, people shared my house, heat seeping constantly from their bodies, yet every room was always cold.

  27

  The birth of a new garden made little impact on my father. He seemed oblivious to the tide of freshly turned soil appearing in front of the back fence; he continued to drag the ladder along its usual path and he mixed mortar in the same spot he had been using for years. The only way to protect the plants from stray chips of masonry involved changing the way we worked. I fashioned some concrete slabs I discovered behind the shed into a crude path that skirted round the new seedlings and I dragged the bags of cement to a new location, so keeping the plants out of range of the ladder’s swing. Working on the garden was solitary work but I was never completely alone; a robin always accompanied me. He perched on the handle of my fork whenever I left it unattended and he pecked constantly at the soil, throwing crumbs across the ground like the beads of a broken necklace. And occasionally I would hear the sound of another person’s spade digging. Somewhere close, or somewhere far away. I could think only of the days ahead, of new shoots, of leaves unfurling, and of hidden flowers making their way slowly out from their casings.

  My father was working at the sink, shirtsleeves wet, back bent, when I entered the kitchen. Scrubbing noises slipped out from beneath his armpits. I hovered in the doorway, my toe on a tile, and released a small cough. He turned. “Yes?”

  “Could I could help you with somethi —”

  “No.”

  He turned back towards the sink and the scrubbing sound started up again. I edged forward. Orange water filled the sink, chopped into furious waves; something thrashed below water level.

  “What are you washing?” I asked.

  The thrashing stopped and he pulled out a brick and shook it in the air. Silently, as if holding a precious creature, he laid it gently on a tea towel and sat down at the table.

  I eyed the brick nervously, transfixed as orange liquid leached onto the tea towel “I was up at the corner shop this morning,” I said.

  He folded a triangle of cotton over the brick. “Did you get milk, we’re short?”

  “Yes. I. . . spoke to Mrs. Wordsworth today, the new owner.”

  “Mmm?”

  “She needs some help in the shop.” I sat down beside him and ran my fingernail along the seam of the tablecloth “I thought I might apply for a part-time job there. She’s looking for someone.”

  He looked up. “A job?”

  “Yes, helping in the shop. Mornings only. . . at first.”

  He ceased folding and sighed, not so much a movement of air, more a spreading of his chest. “You have a lot to do here, you know.”

  “I’ll make sure everything gets done.”

  He sealed the tea towel over the brick and turned to look at me. “Everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright.”

  28

  It was hard to walk into the shop unnoticed. I eased down the handle. I cracked open the door, but still the bell rang.

  “Edith! Welcome! You’re just in time. Hold onto that a sec, will you, love.”

  Jean Wordsworth, tall, gaunt and flushed around the eyes, thrust a tin into my hand. “We’re going to be busy this morning,” she continued, shoving a cardboard box to one side with her foot, “Penman’s are dropping off a delivery, so stick your coat in the back and I’ll show you round.”

  “What shall I do with. . . ?”

  “Let me see. . .” She held my wrist and turned the tin back towards herself. “Rice pudding, bottom shelf, right behind you. No, yes there, there.”

  I’d worn a dress with large pockets for my interview two days earlier. Those wide flaps of cotton had been useful, a place to store my hands, but after the third question my fingers had become sweaty and I had had to find a way to hold them somewhere outside my clothes. Jean didn’t delve too deeply, but she did look at my face, not just once but several times, as if she didn’t quite believe what she saw. I was beginning to think I had dirt on my face when she’d come out with it, ‘Edith, don’t you wear any make-up?’

  “Now,” Jean continued, her face towards me, but her shoulders oriented elsewhere, “you need to learn all the shelves, what goes where and whatnot, and then I’ll teach you the till.”

  “The till? But I thought I was just stacking shelves?”

  “You are, but you need to know how to use it when I’m having my coffee.”

  “Your coffee?”

  “We get ten minutes each.” She smiled. “You know how to clean shelves, I suppose? There is a method.”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. First, I’ll give you a tour.”

  At first I couldn’t see a pattern as Jean rattled through her inventory. Bleach leaned against beans, biscuits jostled polish, but when I noticed all the ingredients for baking a cake lumped together on a single shelf I began to relax. But it was hard to take it all in: the special offers, the drawers of price tags, the bulging ledgers of Green Shield stamps.

  “Wear glasses normally, do you, love?”

  “No, I — ”

  “Me neither.” She smiled. “Right, now I’ve shown you everything we can get cracking. I’ll find you a fresh cloth and you can make a start on the top shelf. It needs a good wipe down. Give me a shout if you need anything.”

  The metal of the stepladder felt cool when I gripped the frame, yet I felt a tingle in my fingers as I climbed higher, past semolina, past flour, past bottles of vegetable oil all lined up like bottled sunlight.

  The shop looked different from above. Spilt rice had gathered in cracks and a path, invisible at ground level, showed as a line of white worn into the linoleum.

  “Do you want me to wipe all these puddings?” I called down.

  “Yes, freshen them up, if you can, but don’t bother about the ones at the back.”

  Patches of scalp showed through Jean’s hair
as she bent over to open the next box. I suddenly felt an urge to stroke her head, to see if it was soft. I returned to the shelf in front of me and proceeded to work. Forgotten things lay here: a lone glove, a caramelized cloth and a gloomy line of rice pudding tins long past their sell-by date. I stretched out my hand and moved them, one by one, wiping and re-stacking until I happened to notice a small window at the back of the shelf. I could see right inside the neighbour’s garden. A young girl emerged from the back door as I watched, skipped across the grass, paused, swung her arms back and forth then flipped into a handstand against the wall — just pointed toes, sagging vest and an upside-down dress. I moved the tin a fraction, lining it up with the tips of the girl’s toes. Then a voice raced up towards me.

  “We can see your knickers!”

  I cranked my head round to see a pair of freckled faces staring up from the bottom of the ladder. The cloth slipped from my hand.

  “So, apart from the Brown brothers’ little visit, how was your first morning?” said Jean, scraping coins from the back of the till.

  “It was fine.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then, same time?”

  “Yes.”

  She snapped the till shut and examined my face. “Don’t say much, do you love?”

  “Hello. . . could I speak to Doris Winehouse? . . . Is this 2-8-4-3-7-3-7? . . . Oh, I must have the wrong number, I’m sorry. . .”

  34 Ethrington Street

  Billingsford,

  Northamptonshire

  October 14th 1968

  Dear Gill,

  I had that girl start on Thursday. You know that little prodijay of Archie’s. But you know what Gill, she’s not only Archie’s little prodijay, she’s that girl who’s been coming in wearing her brother’s socks. Turns out she doesn’t actually have a brother so I can see I’m going to have to give her one of my little talks — you know, the one about making the most of your legs. She’s actually quite pretty when she’s not looking so worried but she’s also got that hair that flies up whenever she gets near something electric. Edith’s her name. Doesn’t suit her one bit. She’s more of a Susan or perhaps a Dawn. But talk about mousy. She’s hardly said a word since she got here. Funny thing is, when she does speak there’s words in there I’ve never heard. Hope she doesn’t turn out to be one of those girls who’ve always got their nose in a book. Between you and me, I’m not sure if it’s going to work out as she seems scared of her own shadow (and mine, she jumped when I unexpectedly came up behind her with a box of chocolate biscuits.) But there is something interesting about her. I can’t put my finger on it, she’s — how’d you say — got something to say but hasn’t managed to say it yet.

  Must go. Got a delivery due any second. God knows where I’m going to put it all.

  Jean

  29

  The time of objects floating down from above began. Fall, they call it in America.

  Autumn arrived slowly in Billingsford. Leaves coloured up like chameleons, red chasing green, chasing yellow, before collapsing into brown. The eerie sense of curling and shrinking grew stronger as the last drops of moisture were squeezed from exhausted veins and dead leaves clung to the trees, each hanging by a thread until that first wet weekend in November when rain slathered mud onto the pavement and autumn was suddenly winter.

  I looked up at the leaves drifting down towards me, arranging then rearranging themselves against the sky, and felt sad. Something was ending just as something else was beginning. With my plants only days in the ground, autumn had arrived, bringing with it the smell of winter and the platinum colours of decay.

  I picked up the rake and began to tidy up. There was something soothing about the pace of the work, no rush, no pressure to finish. Then I heard a noise. The dry crackle of metal on leaves drifted over the high wall.

  He was there, dragging prongs across the ground with slow, methodical movements, a scrape and a scrape and a scrape. I glanced towards the kitchen window and continued to rake, gripping the handle, picking up the rhythm, a scrape and a scrape, and a scrape.

  I wished I could sleep late on Sundays. But Sundays in November were tipping into winter and by seven o’clock in the morning cold air had sneaked into the cracks between my sheets and flocks of birds had gathered outside the bedroom window, scrambling for prime spots on the oak tree and fluffing up their feathers before getting down to the murderous job of repelling their enemies.

  In spite of my tiredness, I couldn’t help but love the dawn chorus. I adored those wild birds that flitted across the garden wall, twitching their heads at nothing, and then flying away at the slightest hint of danger. It took effort to peel my ear from my pillow but as I lifted my head and listened to the rising vibration of avian throats I became aware of a different sort of sound drifting into my bedroom, not the solemn warble of the blackbird or the chap, chap of the wren, but the unmistakable sound of slippered feet as they slapped their way towards my door.

  “Get up, Edith, we’re going to the shop,” Vivian said, poking her head into my room.

  My body stood to attention beneath the sheets. Shop. Singular. I sat up and got out of bed. “Which shop? I bought all the groceries yesterday.”

  “My shop, of course.”

  Vivian’s shop. Three mornings a week my aunt left her house with a packed lunch, an umbrella, and plastic mac rolled up into her bag and returned smelling like a new shoe fresh from its box. I knew this because she carried out the same ritual when she stayed with us, packed lunch, umbrella, plastic mac. I’d never been to Vivian’s workplace before. Never in all my years as a niece had she invited me to see how she spent her time way from the house. I scrambled to get dressed and caught up with her just as she opened the front door.

  “Why are we going to the shop?” I ventured.

  “I need you to move some stock,” Vivian replied.

  “How far is it?”

  She looked incredulous. “How long have I been working at Hegarty’s?” “I know you told me but is it. . . eight years?”

  “Eighteen!” she thundered.

  “You must like it.”

  Vivian scowled, snapped her coat shut and stepped out of the front door.

  “What’s happened to Jimmy Smythe?” I said, buttoning my collar as I hurried behind.

  “That lazybones, he’s gone and hurt his back so I’ll need a bit of help from you now and again.”

  “But, I have this job at the corner shop and. . .”

  “And what?”

  “Well, she’s taken me on.”

  She looked sly, “Family comes first, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “I’ll fit it in.”

  Forty-five breathless minutes later, we approached a shop with a large ‘Hegarty’s’ nailed above its window. The ‘H’ had slipped and a bedraggled starling sat perched on the ‘Y,’ its tail bent in half, but something about the place reminded me of a shop I had been to once before. I observed the window display while Vivian rooted round in the bottom of her bag searching for keys. The patience of the person making the display had clearly worn thin; the shoes seemed to have been dropped from a great height and the laces were broken on the pair at the end.

  “Wake up, Edith, there’s work to be done,” Vivian said, pushing open the door.

  As I followed my aunt across the threshold, the scent of the interior leapt up to meet me, new leather mixed with a background aroma of day-old socks. I drew air into my nose.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Her eyes lingered on my face then she flipped a grey gown off its peg and slung it over her shoulders, her red dress reduced to a thin line of colour resting on her neck.

  “Aunt Viv —”

  “What?”

  “I. . .”

  “What is it?” she said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “I’ve never seen you in your uniform before. It’s. . . nice.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Get your coat off, y
ou need to start moving those boxes from the store room to the other end of the shop.”

  Another set of muscles. Another set of ligaments aching. I felt them pull together as I moved the boxes from one part of the room to the next. No pattern, just lift, move and stack. But I didn’t mind. There was no dust, no thugs of mortar drying on the backs of my hands and I loved the smell of the leather, unable to stop myself sniffing beneath the lids whenever Vivian’s back was turned. I had moved almost all of the boxes when she abruptly removed her gown, reeled out further instructions and announced she was going to the bank.

  Left alone I felt anxious but after a moment I walked across to a stack of shoeboxes piled up against the back of the shop. The scent of leather increased as I pulled out a pair of shoes and held them up to the light. Magenta: two-inch heels. I sat down on the bench, levered off my old shoes and slipped my toes into the new ones. Then I stood precariously up. Surveying the shop from two inches higher than before felt good. I sensed my spine adjust to the new angle of posture as I turned in a circle, shifting my weight from shoe to shoe. I tottered towards the foot mirror and examined a small square of myself. Pale ankles, magenta toes, silk bows. With pleasure suspended on a knifeedge I walked round the room, lifting foot after beautiful foot then lowering, and then lifting again, every movement sending a pulse of pleasure up through my legs, one which I had never felt before.

  By the time Vivian returned, the shoes were back in the box, tissue smoothed back down and all fingerprints removed with a wipe of my handkerchief. Yet on the walk home, I couldn’t help but think of the magenta toes crossing the floor, tiny steps, tiny shadows following behind.

  30