The Insistent Garden

by Rosie Chard

  “Alden. . . wha — !”

  “Stand back, Edith!”

  I ducked behind the sofa as the hammer slashed the air, and hit the plaster. A crack raced across the wall, splitting into hairs then the hammer swung again, pounding, pounding until a triangle of brickwork emerged. A sound rose up — half grunt, half sob — and the hammer swung again. Fragments clung on by a thread; plaster chips fell to the floor and helpless specks of dust swirled round and round in a large, lank ‘O.’

  I coughed. Alden coughed, and then paused, his lungs pumping on regardless. Slowly, so slowly, the dust gathered inside a parallelogram of sunlight suspended in the centre of the room. Then he began again, chipping, grunting, sweating. Flying.

  At last he stopped. Alden rested the hammer on the shattered wall and leaned forward to inspect it; a square of back opened up beneath his shirt —beautiful skin.

  He swung round to face me. “There’s the door!” His face, layered with dust, looked older. “See the frame.” His powdered hands fingered the wall and, finding a weakness, he levered, he chipped, he picked until the grain of a long-sealed door emerged. He dusted off the hole where the door handle once lay then he poked his finger in and pulled. “Damn, it’s jammed.” He dashed back to the cupboard, rummaging with fever, then he emerged, brandishing a long, green jemmy. Dust rose again; a rhythmic scrape ricocheted around the room, and varnish specked the floor. Dragged from the cupboard, an axe — hungry — bit into the door.

  Slowly, sliver by sliver, an unknown part of my house appeared. First he gouged the crack into a slit, then shaved it into a gap, and then finally chipped into a hole.

  “Let’s go in.” I said. I snagged my hair on a splinter of wood as I passed through the opening but I hardly had time to absorb the contents of the attic room, glimpsing crowded things, before Alden dashed back into his side of the house and gesticulated wildly at me, bracing his shoulder against the back of the sofa. “Edith, will you help me?”

  We dragged the sofa into the gap, not caring that its feet were scratching grooves into the floorboards like the claws of a reluctant dog. Alden stopped as it reached the centre line of the party wall. “That’s far enough,” he said.

  We slumped onto the sofa, straddling the two houses, our bodies mirrored limb to limb.

  A new room had entered my house; I had a moment to inspect it. My whole life had been spent sleeping beneath the attic, undressing beneath it, dreaming beneath it. The proportions were identical to those in Alden’s house; the floorboards married, the roof sloping to the floor at exactly the same angle. Only the contents were different. Now draped in silently falling dust I saw all the signs of a passion: encyclopedias, manuals, catalogues, journals, trophies, plaques, photographs of handshakes, newspaper cuttings. . . With trembling fingers I picked up a framed certificate and read;

  Gold Medal — Year 1949

  Vegetable category

  Winner — Wilfred Stoker

  Alden’s shirt had an uncanny capacity to absorb tears. Words seemed to clog my throat as I wept into his shoulder, unable to progress beyond a single phrase: “How dare he. . . how dare he. . . how dare he. . .”

  “You have something in your eye,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Brick dust.” I felt calm as I watched him twist the handkerchief into a point then brush it along the bottom of my eyelid.

  “He loved plants,” I said. “My father loved plants. How could he not tell me?” I bent my head forward; it felt heavy in my hands. Yet the rest of my body felt light. I was hardly there. So much had changed in a short space of time. My heart couldn’t take anymore.

  77

  “Alden.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to show you my side.”

  He smiled, but a sheen of nervousness showed through. “I think I’d like that.”

  I sensed a change in the creak of the stairs as we descended together. We passed quickly through the hall, opened the front door, crossed the garden and squeezed through the gap in the hedge. The dog greeted us in the hall of my house, sniffing frantically at Alden’s ankles before he trotted off into the living room.

  The kitchen seemed to have a different smell as we passed through in silence. Alden paused by the back door, then shifted his weight from foot to foot, hand held to his chest.

  “Are you alright?” I said.

  “I hardly know,” he replied.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “It’s just that your garden, your side of the wall, it’s always been. . .”

  I waited, eager to know what word would fill that gap.

  “Out of bounds,” he said at last, “or, something more than that. It’s always been the place that I would never see.”

  I looked into his face, but just as I placed my hand on his arm someone knocked on the front door.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt scared, yet at the same time I became aware of a need to be ready.

  A face stricken with anxiety appeared before me when I opened the door. Nancy Pit clutched a handbag to her chest, her fingers whitened beneath the strap. “Oh. . . I. . . Edith, your aunt isn’t in, is she?”

  “Vivian’s not here,” I said.

  She squeezed her bag tighter. “Could I come in a moment?”

  “I’m not sure. . . I. . .” I suddenly recognized the expression on the woman’s face; I’d seen it in my own bathroom mirror. “Come in.” I opened the door wider. “Come in and sit down.”

  As if readying a stage for a play, we took our places in the kitchen. Nancy Pit, perching on the edge of a chair, clutched her handkerchief, turning it over her fingers in ever-tightening circles. I sat opposite, my hands on the table; Alden stood by the door. No-one spoke but the kitchen clock ticked on regardless; the fridge sighed.

  “I’m sorry to turn up like this but I had to talk to. . . to someone. . . to you.” The woman’s voice seemed unnaturally loud. “She won’t be back for a while, will she?”

  “Not for a while.”

  The statement seemed to confuse her. She sighed, then coughed — a child’s made-up cough — then tried to lay her hands on the table, just somewhere to put them.

  Alden moved across the room and sat down beside me.

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  The woman glanced at the clock, “I have to tell you something important, I —” But her sentence was never finished, a grinding sound, a twist of metal on metal, slid into the room. The woman’s limbs shrunk as one. “Oh. . . is that her?”

  Alden touched my arm; we stood up together.

  My father entered the kitchen first. He walked unaided yet his shoulders drooped and I thought of a hospital blanket folded at the end of his bed. He brushed a nervous glance across Alden’s face, then fixed his eyes on mine.

  Vivian came next, sweeping an indecent swathe of colour into the room. The strangeness of the unfolding scene seemed to confound her and she stood rigid. “What’s she doing here?” she shrilled, glaring at Nancy Pit.

  No one answered. The fridge sighed again.

  I fingered my collar. Someone had to speak. Someone had to process all the changes that had collected in a single room, and utter a meaningful sentence. Encouraged by the warmth from Alden’s shoulder touching mine, I managed to put three words together. “This is Alden.” I said.

  “Alden?” replied my father.

  “Alden Black,” I repeated, sensing the power of my words.

  A frown flickered on my father’s forehead, instantly eclipsed by the reaction from Vivian, whose cheeks coloured up like a handkerchief rinsed in blood.

  “Are you Edward’s son?” said my father, looking directly at Alden for the first time.

  He said Edward.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Does your father know you’re here?”

  “My father is dead.”

  I saw a muscle in my father’s cheek jump.

  “He died a year ag
o.”

  I saw Alden’s hands clenched behind his back. His nails dug crescents into the base of his thumb.

  “I was not living here when it happened. He died alone.” The crescents deepened. “I hadn’t seen him for a long time before that.”

  Alden’s words were scaring me. Not the tone, so soft, but the direction. Each additional sentence seemed to be filling in the missing parts of my life. But nothing prepared me for the next sentence that came, not from Alden, but from my father’s mouth, slow and even. Electric. “Edward Black killed my wife,” he said.

  Alden’s hands fell open.

  “He did! blurted Vivian. “It’s true. He killed her.” The seams of her blouse were stretched, about to burst.

  “He poisoned her,” my father continued, “poisoned the whole garden. Our garden was beautiful. “

  “It’s not true!” Alden shouted; his hands fluttered around his face like panicked birds. “It’s not true.”

  My father continued to speak in a monotone. “He came in the night and he poured weedkiller over the whole garden. Miriam ate something. It got into her blood. It made her sick.” His voice dropped. “They couldn’t wash it out.”

  Then a fresh voice filled the room, clear, purposeful. “It wasn’t him.”

  Nancy Pit’s coat dropped open as she stood up and I saw a rash of anxiety at the base of her neck. “I came here to do something I should have done a long time ago,” she said. Someone drew in a breath. “To set the record straight.”

  Vivian seemed to be causing a stir just by staring at the floor; her cleavage had deepened; agitated breaths huffed out of her mouth.

  “The day I first saw Edith at the nursery I knew I had to say something,” Nancy Pit went on, a speech much rehearsed, “but she would not let me.” She glared at Vivian with fresh confidence. “That woman wouldn’t let me speak. She was rude; she was abusive; she slammed the door in my face. I nearly gave up until the day I saw that wall in your garden. That monster, that. . . thing.” Nancy Pit turned to me. “Then I knew I had to say something.”

  The commotion from Vivian’s part of the room had grown louder. She clicked her heels on the tiles; she clapped her hands as if they were cold.

  “Twenty years ago Vivian came to the nursery,” the woman continued, “she bought a gallon of Paraquat. ‘To cope with an infestation,’ she told me. A week later I heard the news. The Stokers’ garden had been poisoned. Every single plant dead. Later I heard the real tragedy. Miriam Stoker was dead too.” Nancy Pit looked towards my father. “She didn’t intend to, but Vivian killed your wife.”

  Vivian’s dress no longer seemed to fit her. “It was an accident, Wilf!” she yelled, “I swear it was an accident. I didn’t know she was going to drink from the bottle.”

  “What bottle?” cried my father. He swiveled round to face my aunt.

  “The bottle with the — I. . . I just put it down for a second. . . and you came back early. You shouldn’t have come back early!”

  “What bottle?” he growled.

  I thought of the fly, its wings heavy with milk, its legs seeking a hold. I didn’t recognize Vivian’s voice as she began her defence. Someone else it seemed — swallowing between sentences — began to explain, to tell her story of the night my mother died. She’d been called to babysit — I felt my throat tighten — to care for me, a small baby, while my parents went out to the pub. She’d always hated their garden, she said; it mocked her with its gaudy gladioli and prize-winning carrots. It was all they could talk about, the awards, the sherry with the mayor, and the certificates in their stupid frames. It made her sick, so sick that she decided to get rid of it. It was going to be easy enough — she swallowed again — just buy some weedkiller, bring it round disguised in a bottle of lemonade, pour it on, kill the damn lot and throw the evidence away. But she hadn’t bargained on my parents coming home early. She’d heard them coming and in her panic had put the bottle down on the step and rushed into greet them. But my mother had wanted a walk, a stroll in the garden to clear her head. Vivian had gone back outside as soon as she could, but the bottle was no longer on the step. She’d looked everywhere, she really had, and eventually she’d found it empty in the dustbin. She assumed Miriam had thrown it away. It was not until the next day that she’d heard. She’d heard her brother howl down the phone. Suddenly Vivian’s old voice returned. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come back early.”

  My father moved slowly towards her, his body shrunken and shaking. “You said it was him,” he said. “You said you saw Edward climb over the wall that night.”

  “A shadow, I said I saw a shadow.”

  My father stood in a deep trench of shock, his hospital inmate posture faded, replaced by the defeated pose of the graveside. “You said it was him.”

  The kitchen seemed suddenly crowded, shadows and sunlight darted across the room, flickering, diving, colliding and cutting. I wanted to stop it. I wanted to stop everything so they would all listen to what I had to say.

  I’d never hit another person. I didn’t know how to ball my fingers up so the knuckles splayed outwards and the bones really hurt but now I felt them flex — solid, impulsive muscles, squeezing and stretching, working alone.

  “Edith, please don’t,” said Alden, quietly.

  My hand relaxed, just went limp, but the rest of my body stiffened and I walked right up to Vivian until I could smell her breath. I could not remember my mother; I could not remember what it felt like to be loved. A roar came up, an ugly screech from the back of my throat. “Get out of my house!”

  78

  Alden and I sat side by side on the sofa in my living room, shoulders grazing, hips parallel, feet pressed into touching shoes. I wanted to cry. There was so much to cry about yet so many reasons to shout with relief. But I didn’t then. I just felt myself relax into existence. There was much to say. But we had no need. Not for words. Only memories remained for now, recently made ones.

  I held a painting in my mind of what had just happened, its surface still wet. Vivian wore red. Red cheeks, red tongue, red vessels in her eyes. My father wore white: a white face, white hair creeping out from his temples. And Nancy Pit. She filled the canvas with a kaleidoscope of confusion, ‘just passing,’ ‘had to tell someone,’ all wrapped in sad guilt. ‘Yes, I’d been watching the house.’

  They had all left the kitchen in different ways. A red petticoat flew up as Vivian turned and fled. Nancy had waited a couple of stilted minutes longer before walking backwards through a stream of apologies twisted round a falling smile. My father had been the last to go. He’d stood utterly still, drained of all expression, then turned abruptly and stepped outside into the garden.

  Alden and I watched him from the kitchen window. He stood by the high wall, engulfed in its shadow. Part of me wanted to go outside and walk down the garden and stand beside him and look up. But something held me, some feeling made me stay inside the house so Alden and I just stood by the sink and watched as the cold enamel pressed into our stomachs and we waited. My father stood motionless and stared up, his chin cranked up, his hair nestled inside the back of his collar. I wondered — could it fall down? — but then he bent down and closed the top of a cement bag that lay at his feet, very slowly, folding over the top, then sealing the corners. He seemed to have lost all strength as he tried to pull it across the grass, but just as I feared the strain on his heart, he got it moving and dragged it down the garden as if it were a sleeping dog, past the trees, past the boulders, along the blue flower bed and into the shed. Then my life paused; I had a moment to think. My aunt had sprayed Paraquat on the garden. She had casually left poison on a step for my mother. The cruelty did not shock me, but the way I heard about it did; the sudden torrent of information was almost too much. I didn’t feel like myself any more. I didn’t have any more questions; I didn’t want any more answers.

  I gazed across the empty garden. The trees seemed to be outlined in pen and the flowers were sharp dots that hung abo
ve the ground. There was no movement. It just waited. Waited for my father to return.

  “I see him,” I said.

  “What’s he doing?” Alden whispered.

  “He’s picking something up.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Edith, he’s holding something. What is it?”

  “I still can’t see.”

  “Shouldn’t we?”

  “No. . . he’s going back.”

  “Now what’s he doing?” said Alden.

  “He’s putting everything away.”

  It was now a badly rehearsed play, a man in a garden moving across the grass on heavy legs, bending down, picking up, passing up.

  I thought I knew what was going to happen when my father placed his hands on the sides of the ladder, and held them there. But I didn’t expect to see him pull it off the wall. For a moment it stood vertical, utterly alone, then it tipped back into his arms and he laid it gently down on the ground.

  “What’s he doing now?” whispered Alden.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s picking something else up. Can you see?”

  I stretched up my neck. “Yes, I see.”

  “What is it?” Alden said.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He’s coming in.”

  “I think he’s bringing something with him. Alden, let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I — back a bit. . . into the hall.”

  “Edith, don’t you want —?”

  “Please, let’s go, just for a second.”

  Sounds collected around us as we waited, our backs pressed against the hall wall: the creak of the back door, the wet gush of the tap. I knew I had to return to the room, yet I had no idea how my life might change when I stepped back through the door.