Return to the Secret Garden

by Holly Webb

  But as the broadcast went on, even the smallest ones grew silent, frozen by the dreadful sense of sadness and frustration in the voice coming from the radio cabinet. Miss Dearlove was clutching Ruby on her lap, and Emmie saw her rest her face in Ruby’s hair just for a moment. She was so shocked by Miss Dearlove’s frightened eyes that it took her several seconds to understand what Mr Chamberlain had said.

  And that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

  It was almost an anti-climax – she knew that. That was why they had been dragged out of London, wasn’t it? Had they all been hoping that it wouldn’t happen after all? Emmie glanced around under her eyelashes at the men and women in the room. Their fear felt so real that she was almost sure she could touch it. She jumped a little as the miserable voice died away, and a great pealing of bells rang out – and all the frozen statues in the room shifted, and gasped, and the maids turned to hug each other. Several of them were crying.

  “Ssshhh, listen.” Miss Sowerby nodded towards the radio again – a man was now solemnly repeating instructions about air-raid sirens, and shelters. “The cellar. We’ll have to use the cellar for an air-raid shelter. It’s the safest place.” Miss Sowerby looked over at Mrs Craven, who nodded, and gave a little cough.

  “We’ll start this afternoon. I shouldn’t think they’d come here, but in case…”

  “We could build some bunks, ma’am,” one of the gardeners suggested. “Better get some hurricane lanterns down there.”

  And then everyone stumbled to their feet, hauling up the confused children to stand for God Save the King. No one sang, only listened, heads bowed. Emmie wondered if the king was still in London, and the little princesses, or had they been evacuated too?

  She was probably supposed to be in the cellars now, but she’d slipped out to the gardens again instead. Miss Dearlove had said that after lunch they could all help to clean and dust. But even with lanterns, Emmie couldn’t bear to be down there in the dark and shadows. They’d slept two nights at Misselthwaite Manor now, and she’d seen how strange and dark it was, even above ground. The little night light on her bedside table had seemed nothing against the weight of the darkness outside the windows. The Yorkshire nights were black in a way that Emmie was sure London never could be, and the stars looked cold. But London’s street lights had been turned out now. Miss Dearlove had explained that to them, when Ruby complained she hated the dark. This was war. All the country was night-black, to give the bombers nothing to see. The thought made Emmie shiver, and run to the light and the warmth of the gardens.

  She ran her fingers along the brick wall that edged the path, and then rubbed them together, brushing away the powdery redness. This path ran all along the side of the kitchen gardens and the orchard, Emmie knew now. She still hadn’t explored all of the gardens, not even half of them, probably. But the kitchen gardens were interesting – there were plants under strange glass bells, and tall wooden towers with what seemed to be beans hanging off them. They looked like good places to hide and spy and nose, and Emmie had been down this path a few times now.

  The wall was soft and worn, with fat cushions of faded velvet moss between the bricks. Towards the far end of the path, the wall was covered in a thick curtain of those glossy dark leaves. The door to the kitchen garden was open, and Emmie peered round it curiously. She didn’t think anyone would be here – she wouldn’t have to skirt around the edges of the garden, trying not to be seen.

  All the gardeners had been in the servants’ hall – even those who were married, and would spend Sundays at their own cottages, had come in to listen to the prime minister’s message. The cellars would be for them and their families too, if there should be an air raid. Everyone was down there now, planning how to furnish them, and strengthen the roof beams, and wondering whether the coal chute could be turned into some sort of emergency door in case the house were to collapse on top of them. When the butler had said that, everyone else had turned to stare at him in horror, and he’d reddened and looked apologetically at Emmie and the other children. But then he shrugged. It happened – he had fought on the Somme, he had seen the craters. The bombs they were talking of these days… Of course, there was no airfield nearby – yet – and they were a long way away from York, or any other town, but they were not far from the coast. And everyone nodded, and swallowed, and tried not to think of the weight of stone above their heads.

  No one had told them they were not to explore these working gardens, but Emmie had only peered round the doors until now, as there had always been gardeners in there working. They were friendly – one of them had smiled at her and asked her how she was settling in. She’d just given him her stare. Emmie had been avoiding company, unlike Arthur and Joey, who’d taken less than a day to discover that there were apples and plums in the orchard, and gardeners who might look the other way while they climbed the trees, particularly if they’d help with the weeding or pick stones in return.

  Now the gardens were deserted, sun-warmed and silent. She could wander around the little paths, and peer at the vegetables – most of which she didn’t recognize, since she’d only ever seen them boiled to within an inch of their lives. Perhaps she would see the robin again, she thought, glancing around hopefully. Birds ate vegetables, didn’t they? He had been on the creeper-covered part of the wall when she saw him before, very close to here.

  Padding quietly along, Emmie walked round a thicket of beans, the last few pods still dangling from their frame, and nearly tripped over a man tying in the stems. She skipped back, gasping, and then took another hurried step back when he looked up at her.

  “Who are you?”

  Emmie was silent for a moment. It wasn’t the Yorkshire accent that made him hard to understand. The tight skin of the scars that covered one side of his face had pulled his mouth sideways, and slurred his voice. She swallowed. “I’m allowed to be here.”

  “Never said tha’ weren’t.”

  “Why aren’t you with the others? Building bunks, and … and things.” Emmie shrugged vaguely.

  “Bunks?” He frowned at her.

  “They’re making the cellars into an air-raid shelter. Because now we’re at war.” It was the first time she had said it – somehow she felt it ought to have been more dramatic.

  “Are we?” he muttered. “That why th’art here, then? One of those evacuee children Mrs Craven mentioned?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you go and listen to the radio this morning? I thought everybody did.”

  “Happen everybody doesn’t want t’know.”

  Cautiously, Emmie moved a step closer to him. She wanted to ask what had happened to his face, but she couldn’t think of a way to say it politely. She suspected he’d been injured in the Great War – like the lame man who came to the Home every few weeks to sharpen knives. She was just trying to frame the words, when a little streak of red-and-brown fluttered past, and landed between her and the man, glancing between them curiously.

  “Oh, the robin!” Emmie crouched down to look at him closer.

  “Tha’ knows him, then?” The man looked at her thoughtfully.

  “I saw him yesterday. He was sitting in all those green leaves on the wall.”

  “Ivy, that is.”

  “Ivy,” Emmie murmured, not really paying attention. She was trying to chirrup at the robin, who was looking at her with his head on one side, quite confused.

  “I don’t think I’m making the right noises…”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Well, there’s no need to be rude.” Emmie glared at him, and then the robin shot up into the air and landed on the man’s shoulder, its little scaly claws digging into his velveteen waistcoat.

  “Tha’ll fright him, wi’ that sharp voice,” the man said, his own voice very gentle – soft under the strange slurring.

  “Sorry…” Emmie dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why does he sit on you?
Does he like you?”

  “Known him from the egg, I suppose. He hatched out here, in this garden – one close by, at any rate. And I move slow.” His face twisted a little, and the scars crinkled. Emmie tried not to grimace, but her eyes flickered, and her mouth twisted too, in a moment of disgust.

  “Even slower now,” he added, in a growl under his breath. And suddenly he heaved himself up, so that the robin sprang away from his shoulder, spreading out his wings to catch the air, like little brown fans. The man grabbed at a wooden crutch that had been lain down beside him – Emmie had thought the crutch was some sort of garden tool, but now as he stomped down the path leaning on it, she saw that part of his leg was made of metal. The robin swooped around his head, chittering fiercely as the gardener made for the door at the other end of the garden, and then it fluttered away over the wall.

  Emmie stared after them, wishing she hadn’t made a face – she hadn’t meant to. She’d liked the man, even if he had been as grumpy as she was. She could see that she’d made him angry – or sad. And she longed for the robin to land on her shoulder too.

  She trailed around the vegetable beds for a little longer, hoping at least to see the robin again, but he had disappeared. There were only a couple of blackbirds, pecking hopefully at a fruit net, and they swooped away almost as soon as she had seen them.

  “I suppose I ought to go back,” Emmie murmured, trying to speak softly, like the gardener had said. If she stayed out long enough to make them worry, Miss Dearlove might keep her indoors the next day. If she was lucky, everyone had been too busy and anxious to notice she wasn’t there. She ran along the path to the shrubbery, laughing a little as she felt the wind blowing her hair back.

  Then she stopped, pressing herself back against the scratchy yew hedge, and straightening her face to a proper, wartime seriousness. Mrs Craven was walking towards her.

  Emmie ducked her head politely, hoping that the lady would just walk past, but she didn’t. She stopped and leaned down to talk.

  “Are you having fun out here?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Emmie said swiftly.

  “Oh, I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t. It’s lovely to see you running about.” She swallowed. “I hope all that doesn’t change.”

  Emmie looked up cautiously, not sure if this was meant for her to hear. Mrs Craven sounded more as if she were talking to herself.

  “Were you exploring the gardens?”

  “Yes. I was looking at the vegetables. I met a gardener,” Emmie added. “He made a robin sit on his shoulder.”

  “Oh! That would be Mr Sowerby. He can charm the birds out of the trees – when he tries.” She looked down at Emmie in surprise. “Did he speak to you?”

  “He told me my voice was too sharp,” Emmie said, frowning. “And that he knew the robin when he was an egg. Mr Sowerby like Miss Sowerby in the house?”

  “Yes, her brother.” Mrs Craven put her hand on Emmie’s shoulder. “He doesn’t talk to people much these days – don’t be upset if he should bark at you, will you?”

  “Did he hurt his leg in the war?”

  “At the very end of the war.” Mrs Craven sighed. “It’s never healed properly since. It hurts him. And he remembers things.” She tried to smile at Emmie. “I know it’s a long time ago. Long before you were born, or my Jack, or even David. But it doesn’t feel all that long, sometimes.”

  Emmie nodded. Miss Dearlove probably wouldn’t want her talking to Mrs Craven at all, but she wanted to know – now was her chance to know more than Joey, and Arthur. “David?” she asked politely. “Is that another of your children? I only knew there was Jack.”

  Mrs Craven glanced down again, blinking, almost as if she’d forgotten that Emmie was there. “Yes. Of course, you’ve not met him. My older son, he’s gone to join the RAF.” She pressed her hand against her mouth for a moment, and murmured something to Emmie about enjoying the day. Then she hurried away down the path and whisked round the hedge, but Emmie could see that she was still standing there. She was hiding – like Emmie did when she was trying not to cry.

  Shaken, Emmie crept away, trying not to let the gravel scrunch under her shoes, and slipped in through the side door to find the others. Perhaps there were worse things than being afraid of the heavy dark on the moor.

  Emmie kicked at Ruby’s bear, which was lying on the floor by her little cot bed. She could hear Ruby and the others laughing and squealing as they chased each other across the lawn below the window.

  Of course Miss Dearlove had noticed that Emmie wasn’t helping in the cellars the day before – Miss Rose had even gone to look for her, so they said, when she turned up looking like butter wouldn’t melt, after we’d been worrying ourselves sick over you all afternoon. Emmie thought that they looked downright cross rather than worried, but for once she’d had the sense not to say so.

  After breakfast Miss Dearlove had confined her to her room, and given her dusters, and some wax polish, and told her to tidy it up. Emmie had rubbed a little of the polish into the dark wood table by her bed, so that the room smelled pleasantly of lavender and they couldn’t say she hadn’t tried – and then gone back to looking out of the window. Even the misty purplish slopes of the moor looked welcoming, now that she was shut up. But listening to the others playing only made her feel crosser, when she had to stay indoors for a whole day. Miss Dearlove had said she would let Emmie out for lessons, but that wasn’t much better than being stuck in her bedroom, except that it gave her a chance to scowl at Jack across the table.

  Emmie sighed, and thumped down on Ruby’s bed, which creaked painfully, and sagged a bit. Then she picked up the bear, and stroked him a little to say sorry, and sat him up against the pillow.

  What was she going to do? Even though Miss Rose’s boring lessons seemed to go on for hours, they actually didn’t take up that much of the day. Since the two nurses who’d cared for the younger children back at the Home hadn’t come with them, it meant Miss Rose was too busy looking after the little ones to teach anyone very much. So Emmie could be stuck in this room for hours. She couldn’t even read, since the books were all in the schoolroom. There had to be something in here to do, surely.

  Emmie got up, and stood in the middle of the room, watching the tiny specks of dust falling in the sunlight from the window. She supposed she could actually dust and polish the furniture, like she’d been told… It would pass the time, anyway. Grumpily, she went to fetch the jar of polish from the little bedside table, and leaned over to pick up the rags, which had slipped down underneath it. Crouched down like that, she noticed for the first time that the table had a drawer. She wasn’t really expecting to find anything interesting in there – but there might perhaps be an old pack of cards, so she could play patience.

  She tugged at the drawer – it stuck, as though no one had tried to open it for years, and then flew open sharply, so that the old notebooks inside slid about.

  Emmie sighed. The books didn’t look very exciting. There were three of them, all with faded cloth covers. They looked like the book Miss Dearlove made the laundry lists in.

  She pulled one out, and flicked through it – it was full of tiny, closely written notes, but not a laundry list. It was more like a story. And even though the writing was old-fashioned and scratchy and grown-up-looking, the spelling was quite bad. Bad enough to make Emmie snigger. It was then she realised that the books were diaries – a child’s diaries, she was almost sure. She had never heard of anyone writing a diary before, but there were dates written here and there. It was the story of someone’s life. Suddenly interested, she scrabbled in the drawer and got out all three books, searching through them to find the earliest dates.

  The most faded book of the three was red, its cloth worn to pink in patches, and the spine a little split. Emmie smiled to herself when she saw the date written on the opening page – January 1910. This was the first.

 
There was something written in faint brown ink on the inside of the cover, and she picked it up and took it over to the light of the window to read.

  Mary Lennox

  Misselthwaite Manor

  This is not my book, but no one wants it, so I am making it my diary. No one will care.

  Mary Lennox… Emmie rolled the name around on her tongue. She liked it. So this was a girl’s diary. Someone around her own age? That angry, scrawled line made her think so.

  Emmie forgot about polishing entirely, and put the later diaries back into the drawer. Then she lay down on top of her bed, with the limp notebook propped against the pillow. One of the pages was coming loose from the stitching, and as she slid it back in, a few words seemed to leap at her.

  soft scarlet feathers, and thin, spindly little legs … I wish he would make friends with me … I haven’t a friend of my own…

  Emmie stared at the page, swallowing hard. She felt as though there was something hard lodged in her throat. This Mary had felt just the same way she had – and she had seen a robin in the garden too. Perhaps her robin was the great-great-great-grandfather of Emmie’s.

  But if she lived here, and this great, huge house was really her home, why didn’t Miss Mary have any friends? She must have been so rich, Emmie thought. She must have had everything she ever wanted. Emmie turned back through the pages to the beginning of the diary, frowning to herself.

  I do not like this place, and I do not want to stay here. But I have nowhere else to go.

  Even in the faded ink the words seemed to shimmer on the page, and Emmie stroked her fingers across them. Someone else had felt so much like she did.

  There was a noise of running feet in the passageway outside, and Emmie slapped the book shut and stuffed it back into the drawer. Then she snatched up the cloth, and began to rub it over the carved post at the corner of her bed, with a cross, pinched expression on her face – just as they expected to see her.