The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  I turned to go. My shout was a mere baby, a helpless, toothless infant.

  Every piece of Vivian’s clothing had a place. The bottom drawer was home to blouses, the middle drawer held trousers, and the top housed underwear, some indecently worn. Folding them was mindless work but it had advantages over other chores. It gave me a chance to think. The methodical buttoning, the straightening of cuffs all gave up thinking time that had a rhythm of its own. Why did Vivian want to live with us when she still had her own house sitting empty a few streets away? The question was beginning to burn.

  I slipped a folded sweater into the drawer and returned to Vivian’s washing basket. It was vile in there, it really was. Dried sweat lent extra weight to the clothes and I could see the shape of my aunt’s feet inside a sock, distorted by a recently held bunion. Then there was a vest, bulging with huge temporary breasts, and as I held it between my fingertips I was struck by a thought. I dropped the garment back into the basket and, holding my breath, plunged my arm in deep, pulled out a blouse and laid it on the bed. Just smoothing out the creases brought nausea to the back of my throat but I continued, I buttoned the collar, I folded the arms then I slid my hands behind its back and lifted it up. Finally, I walked over to the drawer and slipped it inside. So childish, I thought as I padded silently down the stairs. So childish and pathetic and quite mean. So, I wondered, why did I feel so unbelievably good?

  34 Ethrington Street

  Billingsford,

  Northamptonshire

  September 3rd 1969

  Dear Gill,

  I still haven’t recovered. That aunt Vivian came to see Edith in the shop today. It was a bit like royalty turning up, only she actually had a few bob in her pocket and wasn’t wearing a hat. She strode in like she owned the place and I, yes I, felt my back going up against the wall. What on earth was I doing, laughing all nervously like that? Edith was watchful, like one of those rabbits that stand stock still, not moving but sniffing the air. But it did no good, the woman laid into her like she was some sort of servant — get straight home after work, she says — walk the dog. Anyway by then I’d got over my groveling and came to Edith’s defence. I put it to her (when E was out the back) — any chance of going a bit easy on her, she’s a nice kid. Of course I could have said it better but anyway, she turns on me and here I’ll put in the exact words for you Gill, in those comma things. — “Don’t you dare even think of interfering in Edith’s life.”

  Should I do something Gill? Should I tell the police? I could try and get a social worker round but they do have a habit of suspecting the messenger don’t they. There’s something funny going on at Edith’s house. Trouble is I can’t put my finger on what it is. I was angling to get an invitation for tea or something but neither Archie nor Edith seems willing to have me over. Suppose I could pay a visit to the neighbour on the other side — you know, drop in with one of my special offer vouchers and see if we could make friends and they might throw some light. I am worried about her. She seems to have a lot on her mind, things she won’t talk about. But then Archie’s keeping an eye isn’t he? Perhaps I’ll let things go. But come to think of it, Gill, I’ve never heard Edith mention that neighbour on the other side of her. I know most people in the street now but I’ve never heard mention of whoever’s in there. Perhaps I’ll take a stroll up that way this evening and see what I can see.

  Jean

  67

  It was dark when I entered the living room that night. Not pitch but the faded grey of an over-washed sock and I didn’t notice my father was sitting there until I’d sat down on the sofa and slipped off my shoes and curled my feet under my bottom.

  “Everything done for the night?” he said.

  “Oh. . . yes.” I slipped my feet back onto the ground. I could see the tip of his cigarette move through the air and I could hear his hand rubbing across the wall in the dark. And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that I scarce was sure I heard you. “What’s. . . under there?” I said.

  The rubbing stopped. “I could show you. . . if you want.” His sentence hung in the dark, just hung.

  “I’d like that.”

  “Turn on the light.”

  I didn’t want to turn on the light. It might expose us for what we really were. “I’ll put the hall light on.”

  He’d pushed back his chair by the time I returned to his side and was down on his knees, picking at a corner of wallpaper. I felt scared, wanting to know but wishing I’d never asked. Slowly, so slowly, the paper released its long-held grip and crawled up the wall with a long, low growl. I peered at the dusty underskin. “I can’t see. . . anything.”

  “It’s gone. . .”

  “What’s gone?” I said.

  A sound came out of my father’s mouth. I couldn’t see tears; the light was too bad, but I could hear them, down in his throat. I would pull a handkerchief from my pocket. I would put my arm round his back and try to make it stop. But I could think only of the wall outside my back door, the massive wall that protected me from something unseen. Something he’d always said was really there.

  “We have to go,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Go where?”

  “We need more wallpaper.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now!”

  “Won’t they be closed?”

  “Not if we run.”

  He fumbled in the cupboard and then dragged on his coat; I was vaguely aware of his hand groping for the sleeve, pushing through, missing, and then pushing again. I shoved on my shoes, threw on my cardigan and chased him up the garden path.

  The hardware store was getting ready to close by the time we arrived. The owner dragged up a smile and nodded at the shopgirl who was organising a pile of coins on the counter.

  My father turned his head from left to right. “Where’s the wallpaper gone?”

  “We’ve put it away for the night. Janice, bring it back out for Mr. Stoker, can you.”

  Scowling, the girl jotted a number down on a pad then disappeared behind a screen. Moments later she re-appeared, dragging a bin full of wallpaper, then plodded back to the till.

  “You choose.”

  I looked up at my father. “Me?”

  “Yes, pick out a pattern.”

  There wasn’t much left, just some shiny roses, a winter scene with cast iron lamp posts and snowmen cavorting in scarves and right at the bottom a damaged roll with one corner bent back revealing a small pair of webbed feet. “I’d like that one,” I said.

  My knees seemed to have lost some of their strength as I climbed up the ladder that rested against the living room wall. I took the objects from my father’s hands one by one, the cloth, the big wallpaper brush, and finally the sheet of paper, heavy with paste, ready to tear.

  He looked older from above. A circle of grey sat on the top of his head; I imagined it would slip off if he looked to one side. As I stretched out my arm to line the paper up with the picture rail, I glimpsed him below me passing his hand over the place on the wall, smoothing and pressing, feeling the ‘thing.’ Had there really been something hidden beneath the wallpaper? I did not know. I did not know how to know. I thought again of the high wall waiting outside my back door. A person dwelled on the other side. A person my father told me to fear but whom I had never once seen.

  “How does it look?” I said, stepping off the bottom rung and looking up.

  “Nothing quite so vulgar as flying ducks,” said Vivian from the door.

  My thoughts sneaked into my neighbour’s bedroom that night. No need to knock on the door, just step softly on the carpet and slip my hand beneath his bedcovers and feel if pockets of warmth still remained there. Perhaps there would be something under his pillow, something small and precious. And beneath his bed I might find something, a lost letter, the envelope torn in haste, and he’d never know that I’d opened the wardrobe and felt inside his pockets. Would I find his bed pressed against the wall in the same position as mine? And his
clothes, would they be folded into drawers or would they hang carelessly on the back of a chair? Like mine? No-one would ever know that I’d sipped water from the glass beside his bed and left an imprint of my body on the cushion of his chair. And the wallpaper on his side of the wall, might it even tell the same story as mine?

  34 Ethrington Street

  Billingsford,

  Northamptonshire

  September 4th 1969

  Dear Gill,

  Have I got a story for you. It was getting dark when I walked up the street after work but I managed to get a good look at that house next door to Edith’s. What a creepy place. The garden was all overgrown, teasels everywhere and grass as high as my thigh. The curtains had that look as if they are permanently closed, hanging all funnily. The whole place looked like someone had died and no-one had bothered to check but then I noticed milk bottles on the doorstep all rinsed out and clean. Then Ginny Moss from number 36 comes by and I asked — who lives in there? She looks a bit confused and then says, Mr. Black. ‘Mr.’ I think, such reverence. And what does Mr. Black do with himself all day? I ask. Don’t know, she says, I haven’t set eyes on him for about ten years. Ooh, Gill, I felt all creepy myself after she said that. No wonder Edith’s on edge.

  The shop’s ticking over alright, thanks for asking, but I’ve got to be honest I’ve started locking my back door at night, what with all these dodgy characters roaming the streets. Wish my Raymond hadn’t slunk off the way he did. Perhaps it’s time I got a dog?

  Must go,

  Jean

  68

  Something lay on the grass.

  Instinctively, I glanced up at Edward Black’s house, its face still, its windows black as liquorice. When I looked back down, I saw it to be a square of yellow grass imprinted on my lawn. The grass felt damp when I knelt down and touched the flattened blades. Something had been lying here and starved the young shoots of chlorophyll. Something had been moved.

  I ran my hand across the faded shoots. The patch marked an absence. Something lying on the grass had been taken away. Something had been taken from me before I even knew I had it.

  A layer of skin was tightening the surface of my porridge when I stepped back inside the kitchen. Vivian sat at the table, a piece of paper in her hands and I paused in the doorway, sensing something was about to be thrown. She put on her reading glasses, held up the paper and cleared her throat. “I wish to read a poem to the audience.” She paused, fixing her eyes on me. “A poem by Edith Stoker —”

  “That’s not mine —”

  “Shh!”

  “But it’s not —”

  “Quiet!” Vivian cleared her throat, revoltingly, and continued. “What we behold is cens. . . censured by our eyes. Where both deliberate, the love is slight.” She looked at me, her nose wrinkled into a sneer. “Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?”

  She laughed; her head tipped back, the roof of her mouth exposed like the ribs of a gutted fish.

  “I didn’t write that,” I said.

  “Who did then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So what was it doing beneath your pillow?”

  Vivian had been beneath my pillow. “I liked it.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  My heart fired up. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Vivian was closing in on me; she was going to find the boxes; she was going to throw away my mother.

  “The postman gave it to me.”

  “The postman. . . what, that scrawny little —?”

  “Yes, I. . . think he likes me.”

  The fish ribs were back. Laughter echoed around the kitchen; it reverberated in my ears, bounced off the tiles before being absorbed by the clothes drying quietly on the clotheshorse. I watched her as she laughed. Words were coming into my head, their order confused. Thinking is as good as saying, isn’t it? Just allowing sentences into your mind makes them real.

  The laughter ceased. I reached out, picked up the poem and put it into my pocket. Then I went upstairs to my room, Vivian’s gaze resting on my back.

  I returned to the square of yellow grass later that night, my feet a perfect fit inside its border. As thee birds formed a snug line on the top of the wall, the words Vivian had taken from beneath my pillow came back to me. Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

  69

  I sipped my tea and watched the shivering sky. It hung like a blank page, marked only by the silhouette of the oak tree that towered over me. But up high, suspended on a swathe of moving air, I did see something. Although not the slightest breath of wind could be felt in the garden, something was moving. A tiny speck of white on white had risen up from behind the high wall. It wafted towards me, spun a single degree, and then dropped. I held my breath as a petal, carried on the back of a miniature draft, landed inside my cup. Hot tea instantly drew the curl from its back and it flattened to an oval, its veins stained with caffeine. I looked back up at the high wall, and for the first time became aware of an intense longing.

  70

  A scream landed in my bedroom; it frightened me. I ran to the window and saw my father, halfway down the garden and on his knees, not praying, but clutching his hands to his head.

  I ran to my wardrobe and ripped out a skirt. I flew to the chest of drawers and pulled a shirt over my head, and then I rushed from the room, before pelting down the stairs and out of the house. Orange dust chased me down the garden. “What happened?”

  “He pushed the wall over!” bellowed my father, pushing out spit.

  Chunks of wall were sprawled across an area of grass, some large, some split into shards. I glanced up at the top of the wall. Too high. The break was too high. “Could it have just collapsed?” I asked.

  “It was pushed,” my father replied, tightening his grip on the brick in his hand. “It’s all part of the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  He gazed at the ground as if looking for an answer in the grass. Then he got to his feet and began hauling blocks of broken wall across the ground, letting out painful “hup”s with each lift and deflated “whoar”s as he dropped bricks at the base of the wall.

  I was hovering in one spot, unsure of what to do, when a scream rent the air.

  “Bastard!”

  Vivian ran towards us, her breasts swinging inside her nightdress like clackers. “Wilf. Is it holding up?” She tramped around the base of the wall; she shouted, she blew out her cheeks; she sent a torrent of insults in the direction of the bricks lying quietly on the ground. “We have to fix it,” she yelled. “Now!”

  I walked towards the house to collect a bag of mortar but before I got there, I looked back. My father seemed smaller in Vivian’s presence. Big brother had become little.

  It was a long morning. Even Vivian helped with the repairs, wiping away drips, rinsing the mortarboard under the garden tap, even whacking the cement bags open with a spade. My arms were burnt after the third consecutive hour without a break and I slumped down in the grass, legs outstretched, with such heaviness that even my aunt did not bother to chivvy me.

  I watched my father finish off. He battled on two fronts. He heaved chunks of bricks off the ground while he absorbed outbursts of spleen from his sister. After several hours in the sun Vivian resembled a large fried tomato: soft jellies of flesh hung beneath her arms, crispy edges of burnt skin hardened on the end of her nose. My father seemed to be feeling the heat too and he paused several times to rub a muscle in his shoulder. Then he stopped altogether, ran his fingers through his hair and slumped down on the grass, legs outstretched.

  “Is there a plan?” I said, stretching out my legs beside him, the heat inducing a languorous lack of caution.

  “He is always looking for ways to get at us. Never forget that,” he replied.

  “Will it always be like this?” I continued, emboldened by the intimacy.

  “Rub my shoulder,” he said.

  “Here?”

  “Yes, right there.”

  It felt stra
nge to touch the bony scapula, usually so foreign, and my hands trembled as I kneaded out the stiffness, dreading he would be angry.

  “You must always be on your guard,” he said.

  “Yes.” Guard against what? “But —”

  “Always.” He pulled himself up off the ground with a low ‘geruff ’ and walked towards the back door.

  The wind dropped; the grass stilled; a twig cracked on the far side of the high wall.

  “You’re not listening to me, Wilf!”

  The air was brittle when I entered the kitchen. Vivian seemed to be winning an argument, her neck stretched into a rod of indignation, while my father’s whole body sagged and his eyes had the look of thoughts elsewhere.

  “We must finish the repairs tomorrow,” Vivian continued. “We’re vulnerable.”

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  Tired. My father was never tired.

  “I don’t imagine he’s too tired.” Vivian said.

  My father rubbed his shoulder. “I’m going to lie down,”

  “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure!” he snapped.

  The words had hardly left his mouth when he clutched his arm and dropped onto the floor, heavily and noisily.

  “Wilf!” cried Vivian. Showing unusual agility, she leapt from her chair and knelt down beside her brother’s body and yelled into his ear “Wilf! What is it?”

  “No. . . thing,” he murmured.

  Vivian did not know what do. I saw panic in her eyes as she launched into a charade of half-remembered first aid, trying to unbutton his collar, blowing into his nostrils, slapping one of his cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “His lips look blue,” I said, kneeling down beside him. My father smelt of sweat. And another smell I could not place.