The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  The kids are coming back into town for the summer holidays. Any day now the shop’s going to be packed with giggling girls and lads loading up with fags and razors. Waste of money judging by the size of their moustaches but as the supplier of goods to the foolhardy who am I to complain? Reminds me, better get a special order of spot cream in before the rush starts.

  Jean

  55

  “She doesn’t seem to have homework anymore.” Una’s father seemed glum when he opened the front door.

  “She’s back though, isn’t she?” I said.

  “Yes, she’s back.”

  He watched me as I went up the stairs to Una’s room. She was in her usual spot on the bed but when she turned to smile I didn’t recognize her. Her hair had been straightened and her eyelashes, heavy with eyeliner, flipped up and down like little black wings. She hugged me but the weight of her hug was different. We settled down to talk.

  “Edith, you need to meet a bloke,” she said.

  “Oh, Una, no.”

  “We all do, don’t we?” she continued.

  “This is the sixties,” I said. “Women don’t need men anymore, do they?”

  “Edith! Who’ve you been talking to? Not your father surely?”

  I smiled. “No, not my father.”

  “Vivian?” She cocked her head.

  I laughed. “Did you know she’s moved in?”

  “You mean she’s there every day?”

  “Yes.”

  “God. So how come you’re looking so. . . well, so perky?”

  “Am I? I don’t know.”

  “Have you met someone?”

  “No, I haven’t. I still see Harold, now and then, at the bookshop, but. . .”

  “But Harold’s like an uncle — from what you’ve told me.”

  “Yes, an uncle.”

  Her eyelashes flickered as she looked at me. I felt a chill, a fresh worry.

  “Edith, do you want to come to the pub with me tonight? I want to celebrate the start of the summer holidays.”

  “Una, you know I can’t.”

  “Why not? Really, why not? You’re nineteen years old. You’re your own woman. They can’t stop you.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Ah, but I do.”

  There was always a certain sort of noise coming from the pub whenever I walked past on my way to the shops. A restful hum broken by the occasional shout, which always made me jump. It smelled too, a rich aroma of beer and cigarettes that caused my heart to pump a little faster and my feet to move more quickly across the pavement. Now I was inside its warm walls, my back pressed into a fake leather bench and my hands lying neatly on the table. It had been remarkably easy leaving the house. I knew where I was going but they didn’t. My voice had even held steady when I’d explained I was visiting Una — not for long — and I would be home before it got dark. Yet I still fretted that those words I’d said, so clear to my own ear, were actually saying something else, something more akin to the truth.

  “Edith, relax, they’re not going to know you’re here.” Una draped her jacket across the back of her chair. “What would you like? A lager or something?”

  “I think I’ll just have a soda water.”

  For a second she looked annoyed.

  “Or maybe a whisky, that’d be nice.” I unfolded my hands and laid them on the table, daringly far apart.

  “Did you say whisky?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whisky it is.” Una kept her gaze on me as she picked up her purse and headed in the direction of the bar. I felt relaxed, wrapped in the arms of the pub. I gazed round the room and noticed the worn parts of the place, the threadbare carpet at the doorway, the groove in the table where I imagined fingers had stroked. My house seemed far away; I didn’t want to go home.

  “I got you a double.” Una’s eyes smiled.

  The glass in front of me was bigger than I expected and the taste was rough, quite unlike the silky liquid I had sampled at Dotty’s house.

  Una seemed at ease with her drink, wiping condensation off the glass and swigging it down in noisy swallows. I sipped. She told me about her life in London, the parties, the men, and as I listened I began to feel the weight of her gaze.

  “Edith, do you want to try some eyeliner on?” she said.

  I looked at the little wings; they beat quietly and persuasively. “Alright, but will I be able to get it off later?”

  “What for?”

  “My aunt would be angry.”

  Una sighed. “I see what you mean. I forgot. What about a dab of lipstick?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  She pulled a compact out of her bag and flipped open the mirror. Two pairs of lips puckered, two sets of teeth caught a speck of lipstick. “Edith, to be blunt I think you’re going to have to try a bit harder.” She put the compact down on the table. “When you come up to London you’ll have to wear make-up; otherwise you’ll stick out in a crowd.”

  “I know.”

  “And your clothes, you’ll need to get some others.”

  I smiled with eyes that felt like they were shining. “I’d like to live in this pub.” I said, leaning back against the bench.

  “Edith, you’re not tipsy are you?”

  “No, I’m not tipsy. But I’d like to live in this pub.”

  “You know, Edith,” said Una, draining her glass, and smiling, “I’d like to live in the pub too. Let’s get a chaser.”

  It took all my concentration to slip back into the house as myself. The hall floor seemed to have developed a slope and the walls were unsteady but fortunately my father and aunt were engrossed in a crossword and I held my breath as I called my return into the kitchen then sneaked up to my room. I could hear them talking through the floor below me but I didn’t care what they said.

  56

  As the days grew longer, armies of hot colour set up camp in my garden, trampling the reticent blues of spring in their path. Orange crocosmia strode into the borders, brandishing their swords like warriors, while red-hot pokers surged skyward, overshadowing the clumps of poppies that bled red onto tissue thin petals. The climbing hop bore out Archie’s prophesy. It forced its tendrils into rock-hard joints, climbing higher daily until flowers clung to the end of the high wall like balls of yellow candyfloss.

  The air had a transparency to it that morning as I strolled round the garden, every shape pronounced, every colour soaked. I began slowly, starting at what I thought of as the beginning, the semi-circle of trees, now boldly leafy, then continued through the middle, the circle of boulders and flower bed on the site of the old hawthorn, and finally came to the end, the blue border that lined the back fence. I pulled a pair of scissors out of my pocket, leaned forward and cut a single rose. It shed a droplet of water as I brought it up to my face and breathed in the scent. A state of perfect happiness entered my garden.

  My family hardly noticed me as I entered the kitchen, picked up an empty milk bottle from the draining board and filled it with water. My father flicked a glance in my direction and then continued to read his newspaper. The headline was enormous, great pounding black letters — ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN. I slipped the rose into the bottle and placed it squarely on the table. Vivian, seated beside my father, was busy removing nail varnish; the air reeked of acetone and the water in the bottle flared red, reflecting her sleeve resting nearby. She turned towards me, her expression obscured by drying fingertips. Scrubbed-looking, they could have belonged to a nurse. “Where’s my handbag?” she said.

  “I haven’t seen it,” I replied.

  “It must be in my room. Edith, go and. . . oh, I’ll get it.”

  The air felt lighter as Vivian carried her nails out of the room. I pulled the milk bottle towards me and examined the rose. Bubbles of air lined the stem and anonymous bits of black speckled the table. I brushed them off, smearing a family of shocked aphids sideways with the same movement.

  “Pass me that bottle,” said my father.


  The newspaper was closed, its headlines obscured by folded arms. I pushed the bottle towards him, leaving damp fingerprints on the glass. His fingers looked long as they circled the neck. I could think only of the fly. But he did not throw the bottle. He did not even pick it up. He leaned forward and, with eyes a quarter closed, smelled the rose.

  He smelled the rose! I could not believe it. He smelled the rose.

  “Wilf!” said Vivian, from the doorway. A petal fell. “What are you doing?”

  He snapped upright then Vivian’s hands closed round the neck of the bottle and water splashed onto the table.

  “What. . . are you going to do with that?” I said.

  “Get rid of it.”

  “Why?”

  “I get hay fever.” She flashed a set of horsey teeth.

  I didn’t reply. As I lowered my gaze, a rectangle of sunlight fell onto my feet, then a shadow flicked across my toes. I looked up just in time to see my aunt step out into the garden and throw the bottle into the air. Airborne, floating in flying water, the rose sailed over the high wall like a red bird. A crash seared the air.

  I looked back at my father. He had a strange look on his face. One that I had never seen before.

  My bedroom produced a unique range of sounds. I was used to it: the abrupt crack that came from deep inside the wall or the tap of the radiator as it cooled down late in the evening. But this night was different. As I stared into the dark, the sheet taut between my fingers I became aware of a new noise coming from somewhere outside: not the sniff of hedgehogs rooting around outside the back door, nor the creak of the oak tree rubbing against the high wall, but the sound of a broom, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping, that mixture of petals and glass.

  57

  I thought my father would enjoy an apple pie. He’d looked pale lately and he wasn’t eating much, poking around the edge of his plate, his thoughts elsewhere. Even beef dripping spread on toast — with the lion’s share of the jelly scraped out from the bottom of the bowl — failed to bring any enthusiasm back into his fork.

  I got up early so I could pick the fruit off the tree in our front garden before they dropped and I made the pastry from scratch, trying not to let the heat from my hands spoil the texture of the dough. I gouged out bruises with the point of a potato peeler, scraped zest from a lemon and felt content as I brushed milk over the crust. I was doing the washing up when my father appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s that smell? he said.

  “I’ve made a pie.” I peeled off a rubber glove.

  “What sort of pie?”

  “Apple. From the tree. The first ones are ripe.”

  His eyes jerked towards my mouth. “What tree?”

  “The. . . one in the front garden.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just picked up the oven gloves, slowly, as if they might bite, and he didn’t seem to feel the pillow of heat that came out of the oven as he opened the door. But I felt it. A hot apple breeze warmed my face as he carried the pie across the room and opened the back door. His eyes caught the light as he turned back towards me. “Don’t touch those apples again,” he said.

  I waited on that spot in the kitchen for a long time. Yet when I dared to look out of the window, there was no sign of my father, and no sign of the pie I imagined burning his hands.

  It was dark when he returned home. He went straight to his room, his jacket still on. I didn’t like the way the hanger hung empty in the cupboard for so long so I put my hand in there and slipped a scarf round its neck. Thinking about it, I realized the apple tree in our front garden had always had a strange effect on my father. Whenever April blossom rushed in the front door, he’d take the broom from my hands and sweep the hall floor, muttering words under his breath that I could never quite catch. Then, as fruit dropped onto the front path, he’d be out there, collecting every last one of them before disappearing into a part of the garden that I never could see. This slender tree, which occasionally dipped its branches over the hedge, sampling our neighbour’s air, was the only living thing in the whole garden that felt the care of his hands.

  “Why did he do it, Archie?”

  Archie and I sat at his kitchen table, sorting seeds into piles.

  “The apple tree in the front garden was your mother’s,” he said.

  “Her tree?”

  “Your father planted it the year they moved into the house. Spindly little thing, I never thought it would grow — told him as much — but I was wrong.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he planted it for her’?”

  Archie blinked. “I don’t think I follow your question.”

  “He planted a tree in the garden because. . .”

  “Edie, because he loved her.”

  58

  Six bags of frozen peas and five bunches of carrots. It was the colours that caught my eye when I looked into the shopping trolley that was holding up the front of the supermarket queue. Green beside orange. I rubbed my eyes then noticed a packet of oatcakes peeping out from beneath the carrots. I liked oatcakes, so did my father. I looked down at my shopping basket, full of cheap cheese, and oatcakes and eggs checked for cracks. Then I looked back towards the front of the queue but this time a wide, grey back obscured my view. I gazed vaguely down at the floor. Why was I so tired? My head felt heavy and although the walk to the shop was short, my feet ached. I edged my cart forward but paused when a chipper voice sounded in my ear.

  “Hello, Edith.”

  Johnny Worth was suitless and capless, almost unrecognizable in crumpled civvies. And he had hair. I saw it for the first time, ginger clumps lined with the imprint of absent spectacles just above his ears.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  He maneuvered his trolley behind mine. Rims touched.

  “I haven’t seen you for a while,” he said.

  “No.” I re-arranged a bag of sugar.

  “Is this where you do your shopping?”

  His lips looked redder in supermarket light. “Sometimes.”

  He glanced over my head into the middle distance. “Checking on Mr. Black, were you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Mr. Black, he was just here, at the till.”

  Someone turned the ignition and started an engine, right inside my chest. I whipped my head round and scanned the leisurely queue: a woman studied her shopping list, a man picked his nose. “Where?”

  “At the front by the till,” he said. A hint of smugness glanced his lips. “Didn’t you see him?”

  “Is he still here?” I whispered.

  “No, he left.”

  I could not identify the feeling in my stomach as I struggled to recall the last few seconds of my life. “I see you bought the pineapples on special offer,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You like orange squash, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Does he often wear that grey shirt, when you see him. . . at his house?”

  “Oh, no, not the grey shirt. Not him. He was the bloke at the front of the queue, the skinny shrimp.”

  Oatcakes, I thought. A skinny shrimp with oatcakes.

  “You still haven’t met him, have you?” said Johnny.

  “No.” I looked down at my cart. The frozen beans were suddenly fascinating, the way they sagged as they started to melt.

  “Probably wouldn’t want to,” said the postman.

  “No, I probably wouldn’t.”

  59

  Flower dust had settled; the sun had inched further along its arc, and the back quarter of my garden lay in shade. I surveyed this furthermost border proudly. The plant cuttings had embraced the soil like native species and, now swollen with health, they pushed upwards on fat stems. As I scanned the patch for weeds, my eyes came to rest on a swath of deep blue. I moved closer, remembering what I had briefly forgotten. Monkshood grew here. How I adored that name. Such a perfect title for the crowds of inky blue caps suspended on invisible stems. I leaned forward, picked a single flower and held it u
p to the sky. Blue veins crowded the blue hoods and untidy bristles lined the edges of the petals like hairs stuck to the back of a collar. Then, just as I was testing the flower’s transparency against the low light, I heard a throat being cleared. I turned to see my father’s face framed against the high wall. My mind raced, vacuum the stairs, done, clean the back windows, done, wash the sheets, all done. I dropped my hand behind my back and stared at the tips of his shoes. Just one word. Just one word of praise for the flowers I had grown in a dark corner would be enough. Surely no living breathing human could be immune to the intricate petals steeped in ink? But as he turned towards the monkshood I saw, not admiration, not pride, but fear. Wild eyes swiveled towards me. “Why are they here?” he said.

  They? I scanned the border in a silent panic looking for a sign of wrongdoing; some stray bricks perhaps, a missing bag of mortar. But all I saw were the flowers nodding their little hoods beneath a slip of wind. “Don’t. . . you like them?”

  My father turned round. Then he began to run. He ran up the garden, crushing the head of a lily that had dared to rest its neck on the path, then disappeared round the side of the house. No time seemed to have passed before he was back in view, striding now, rushing towards me. Something was in his hand. A spade. Colour flapped by his side, yellow work gloves slapping a thigh. I stood stupefied. Not a single explanation came into my head, just a canvas of images, gritted teeth, striding thighs, yellow gloves. Then I focused. Spade.

  I stood very still as he dug into the soil and wrenched out the first plant. Separated from the ground, the plants wilted visibly, their blue hoods sagging mournfully like wet socks lifted from a bowl.