Return to the Secret Garden

by Holly Webb

  Emmie blinked at him – she had almost forgotten. “Oh!” She chewed her bottom lip. “It’s stupid, you’ll laugh…”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “It was only that I couldn’t get into the garden. I could see it, and it looked so sunny and beautiful, but I was stuck in all these shadows.” She shivered, remembering.

  “I had a dream like that about Dad,” Jack said, slowly. He sat down on the steps, and Emmie sat next to him. Lucy padded away to peer down into the water.

  “You couldn’t get to him?”

  “Yes, and he needed me to pull him up out of the water, but I couldn’t reach.” He put his chin in his hands. “It wasn’t like that, actually. Mum got the letter. It was a torpedo from a U-boat, but he didn’t drown. The torpedo set off an explosion, and it killed Dad and the captain – they were on the bridge. Lots of sailors were killed too, but then everyone else was rescued by another destroyer. It’s silly – Dad’s ship had stopped to rescue survivors, and then they went and got hit themselves. If they hadn’t stopped, he might still be all right.” He moved his hands up so they covered his face. His voice was muffled, and Emmie shifted closer to hear. “The destroyer that rescued the crew from Dad’s ship had to sink her. They couldn’t tow her back, not with everything that was going on, and she was too badly damaged anyway. So they used the guns on her. Dad loved that ship. He went down with her.”

  Emmie swallowed. “That’s what they do in books, isn’t it? It’s like a hero thing to do.”

  “But this was real.”

  “I know. Sorry.” Emmie leaned against him gently – it seemed easier for him to pull away if she did that. But he put his head down on her shoulder, and they sat, watching Lucy’s tail beat on the stones as she imagined hunting fish.

  Emmie stopped on the path outside the green-painted door. It was standing open behind the ivy – Jack’s mother was in there. Emmie could hear her humming to herself.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack turned back to look at her. “She said you could go back in there. She doesn’t mind, Emmie. She told me last night that she’d talked to you.”

  “It isn’t that,” Emmie muttered huskily. “I’ve got something – I need to go back and get something. I’ll be back in a minute.” She raced back through the shrubbery to the house, pounding up the stairs and into her room. Then she sat down on her bed, breathless and uncertain. She had to give the diaries back – they were Mary’s. But Mary hadn’t wanted them, had she? She’d forgotten all about them, probably. She was busy with everything else. The faded little books had been in that drawer for nearly thirty years. If Emmie gave them back, she’d have to admit that she’d read them.

  But most importantly, if she gave them back, she wouldn’t be able to read them again. Emmie opened the drawer, and ran her fingers over the worn covers regretfully. Mary from the diary was so like her. Emmie had imagined meeting her, talking with her – that grumpy, friendless girl torn away from everything she knew. Now she had met Mary, but she was no longer a girl. She couldn’t talk to Mrs Craven about how lonely she’d been, or the way the garden had come to feel like home. Not the same way she would have talked to Mary from all those years ago.

  Still. The diaries weren’t hers. She stood up, and began to walk slowly back along the passageway, and down the stairs.

  The sun was brighter than ever, and the heat hit her as soon as she stepped out of the heavy door on to the gravel path. Lucy came trotting towards her from among the yew trees, mewing loudly.

  “Where have you been?” Emmie murmured, crouching down to stroke her. “I thought you were begging in the kitchens. Were you out mousing?” Lucy purred, and rubbed against Emmie’s ankles, her black fur shining in the sun. She was glossier every day, even if there weren’t that many scraps for her to eat. She had adopted Mrs Martin, and kept bringing her small furry presents, usually in the middle of breakfast.

  “Come with me,” Emmie said coaxingly. She made chirruping noises as she crunched over the gravel, and Lucy bounded in front of her, darting off every so often to chase invisible bees.

  “What were you doing?” Jack demanded, running over as he saw her duck under the ivy and out into the sunny garden. “You were gone for ages.”

  “Like I said, I was getting something. For your mother.” Emmie marched across the grass and thrust the little pile of notebooks at Mrs Craven, who was deadheading roses. She blinked down at them in confusion.

  “What are— Oh! Emmie, I’d forgotten these…” she murmured at last, turning the thin books over in her hands. “Of course, you’re sleeping in my old room.”

  “I found them,” Emmie admitted. “And I read them. I’m sorry. I didn’t know – it seemed like such a long time ago. I never thought she was you.”

  Mary flicked through the pages, frowning at her own spiky writing. “So this is where you found the story about the garden, and Colin and me? It wasn’t that anyone told you?”

  “I told her about Dad’s mother haunting the garden,” Jack put in, peering over his mother’s arm at the diary. “Your writing’s much worse than mine.”

  “Too many governesses gave up on me. I’m amazed you could read them, Emmie.”

  “You don’t mind?” Emmie whispered worriedly. “I didn’t know it was you – not even when Jack said about his grandmother being a ghost. I didn’t understand that it was Colin’s mother. Mary was always a girl, like me.”

  Mary shook her head slowly. “No. No, I don’t think I mind. She seems a long way away, that girl. It’s like Dickon said, I was a mean-tempered little thing. But I was so used to being on my own. All I had were servants who didn’t like me because I had such spoilt ways. The garden changed everything. Well, you know that it did.” She smiled at Emmie, and sat down on the grass to look more carefully at the diaries. Jack crouched next to her, and Mary patted the grass, telling Emmie to sit too.

  “Why did you stop writing a diary?” Emmie asked, curling up beside them cautiously, waiting for Mrs Craven to change her mind and send her away.

  “I didn’t. But Colin’s father – Uncle Archie, I called him – gave me a beautiful new diary as a present. Red leather, with a lock, and a little golden key. I wore the key on a ribbon around my neck, it felt so special. Another secret. I wanted to write in that book instead, and I abandoned these. I wrote a diary all the way until the end of the war – the last war. And then I stopped…” She sighed. “It was too hard to write about. Nothing like that had happened to us before – Misselthwaite was so quiet. We were protected from everything. The war broke into that – even into the garden.”

  “Dickon had to go and fight,” Emmie whispered. “And Colin.”

  “Yes. Colin had been away before, to go to school, but Dickon had hardly been off the moor.” Mary shuddered. “It was … unbelievable. But we thought at least it could never happen again.” She began to turn over the pages, tracing a word with her finger here and there.

  Jack huddled against her, and Emmie stared at the grass. They sat silently, listening to the birds, until at last Mary pointed to the page she was reading. “So much of the garden is the same. Look, that rose is still here. The dark red one. I’m sure it still has the sweetest scent of them all.” She smiled at Emmie. “Dickon cut some of those, you know. He gave them to your Miss Rose.”

  “Did he?” Emmie’s eyes widened. “Yes! She had them in a vase in the schoolroom.” She thought back, trying to remember if Miss Rose had said anything about the flowers. “Does that mean – if he’s courting her – would she stay here, when we go back?”

  Jack sat up straight, staring at her. “You’re going back? When?”

  “I don’t know – I mean, when the war ends. Lots of children went back already, didn’t they?” Emmie tried to look as though she didn’t care. “No one’s said.”

  Mary folded the diary closed, and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I don
’t think the war is even nearly over, and it isn’t safe for you children to be in London. You won’t be going back for a long while.”

  “You promise you’d tell us?” Emmie begged. She wasn’t sure she could bear to be dragged back again, back to sitting on a fire escape, and staring at the sky.

  “I promise.”

  “Are those German?” Emmie asked anxiously, peering up at the sky.

  “Yes!” Arthur said disgustedly. “Those are bombers. Junkers Ju 88, can’t you tell?”

  “No, I can’t, you’ve got the binoculars. Can’t I look?”

  “You can see it without the binoculars,” Jack pointed out. “Two massive engines – if they were Lancasters you’d see four little ones. I suppose you could mix them up with Whitleys.” His voice implied that maybe Emmie could, but he certainly couldn’t. “But they don’t have those little tail fins. And anyway, Emmie, these have got black crosses painted on, see? Under the wings and at the back of the fuselage.”

  “I think I can see.” Emmie squinted up at the planes, black and menacing against the sunlight. The droning buzz of the engines sounded sinister, but perhaps that was only because she knew they were the enemy. “Do you reckon they’re going to Linton, then?”

  “Might be. Or Driffield. Here, give me a go with those.” Joey grabbed the binoculars off Arthur, who pulled a face, but didn’t say anything. It had been Joey who found the binoculars in the gun room, and he had first claim.

  They’d heard the drone of the bombers overhead just as they were putting away their books, and they’d all hurtled out on to the terrace, where there was a good view.

  “It looks like hundreds of them,” Emmie murmured.

  “Nope. Fifty or so.” Arthur had his hands up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “I’ve never seen that many.”

  “God help the poor blighters wherever they are going…” Joey muttered. “Fifty? You’re sure?”

  Arthur shrugged. “Maybe more. Heavy bombers.”

  “I suppose they know, at Driffield…” Jack murmured. “They’ll have been spotted coming over, won’t they?”

  “Must have been.” Joey lowered the binoculars. “Bet they’ve scrambled fighters from Leconfield already.”

  The drone was fading away now, the last of the heavy dark planes disappearing across the moor.

  “They’re gone,” Arthur sighed. “I wish we could have seen a dogfight.”

  Jack shuddered, but he didn’t say anything, just slipped his hand into the pocket of his shorts. Emmie knew he had the wooden Hurricane in there, his talisman.

  There were planes overhead almost every day now, if it was good weather. Fighting weather. Since the beginning of July, the German Luftwaffe had been dropping bombs on the ships sailing in convoy in the English Channel. The Germans had attacked the merchant ships so fiercely that now they only sailed at night. They had bombed the naval bases and harbours heavily too, and the manufacturing towns, where many of the weapons factories were. The first daylight raid of the war had come in early July, on the massive oil storage tanks at Hull, which even Emmie knew was in Yorkshire. The RAF couldn’t fly their planes without fuel.

  Jack’s brother David was flying from an airbase in Suffolk now. Jack kept scanning the newspapers, looking for anything about the air battles. There were so many accounts of planes shot down – from the RAF and the Luftwaffe. The day before Emmie had snatched the paper off him, because his hands were shaking.

  “I wonder if they dropped any parachutists?” Joey was still gazing out across the moor.

  “We’d have seen.” Jack turned back, looking up too.

  “They found parachutes near Leeds,” Joey reminded him stubbornly. “That was only yesterday.”

  “We know!” Emmie sighed. “You haven’t stopped going on about it since.”

  “Well, there could be spies camping out on the moor for all we know.” Joey adjusted the focus on the binoculars again.

  “What would they want to do that for?” Jack frowned at him. “What could they report back – how the heather’s flowering?”

  “This is talking about the day before yesterday,” Emmie murmured, clutching the newspaper that Jack had stuffed into her hands. “The day we saw all those German planes flying over the moor.”

  “It was a huge attack,” Jack said huskily. He dropped down next to her under the tree. “There were hundreds of them. The ones we saw wiped out Great Driffield – all the hangars got flattened. They bombed the Whitleys standing on the airfield, blew them all up. There were a load more of them fighting over Sunderland, but there were attacks down south as well. There are more attacks every day now. Hitler’s trying to wipe out our RAF, so he can invade. That’s what it says in here.” He stabbed a finger at the newspaper. “David’s squadron would have been fighting too, they’d have flown out from Martlesham. It’s 11 Group that’s really taking the pressure, this says. That’s the squadrons in the south-east. That’s him.”

  “He has to be safe,” Emmie whispered. “It wouldn’t be fair. Not both of them. Not him and your dad.”

  “I don’t think anything’s fair any more.” Jack swallowed.

  Emmie smoothed the paper down over her skirt. “Does your mother knew you’re reading the newspapers?” she asked suddenly.

  Jack shrugged and turned his head away, and Emmie knew that meant no. “This is Mrs Martin’s paper, isn’t it? You swiped it from the kitchen.”

  “Mum won’t let me see hers any more,” Jack said flatly. Then he looked back at Emmie and began to gabble, as though the words were pouring out of him without permission. “They don’t want me to know what it’s like, her and Miss Sowerby! They think I’m too young to understand. So all I get is Joey and Arthur taking it in turns to be the Huns and racing round shooting each other down. Spouting about kills and strafing, and bailing out…” He stopped, gasping for breath. “David isn’t telling me the truth either – he’s stopped saying anything useful in his letters. I know they’re not allowed to say much because of the censor reading their post, but he used to write me proper letters, long ones, with funny stories in about buzzing over sheep in fields, or spilling soup all down his front when they had to scramble. Now all he says is he’s all right, and lots of love, and look after Mum.”

  “Maybe he’s just tired,” Emmie suggested.

  “I don’t want him to be tired! He’s got to fly! They’ve got seconds to spot the enemy aircraft, just seconds, Emmie! He can’t even blink. He can’t be tired.” Jack dragged the wooden plane out of his pocket. “Lot of use this is going to be…” He laughed shakily, and Emmie looked at him sideways. His eyes had a strange, eerie glitter to them, and they looked huger than ever. He didn’t look like his brother at all, Emmie thought vaguely. Jack was so like his father, with those great black-lashed grey eyes, and David was tall, with thick brown hair like his mother’s.

  Emmie tried not to let herself shiver – Jack was sitting close enough to feel it if she did. But she could picture Jack’s brother so clearly that it felt almost as if she knew him too. Jack had a photograph of David in his RAF uniform by his bed, Emmie had looked at it often. It was strange how that one moment staring into the camera had caught so much about him. She knew how excited he was about becoming a pilot. How everything was a great joke, even being up in the air with nothing but a sheet of thin metal between him and the sky, and the guns. She knew how much Jack loved him.

  It wasn’t just the photograph, of course. Emmie had all the stories, everything Jack had told her. All those strange little moments that reminded him of his adored big brother. Even the garden made Jack think of hide and seek, or David laughing and swinging him round and round in the middle of the grass. It was like flying, David had said, that was what flying felt like… They’d gone so fast he got dizzy, and they fell over and lay on the grass together laughing.

  Jack gripped the plane in his hands so tightl
y that Emmie heard it splinter.

  “Be careful! You’ll break it!”

  But he jumped up, shoving it angrily back into his pocket. Then he grabbed her arm and pulled her after him out of the garden.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Down by the sheds. Dickon had a bonfire this morning, didn’t he? He was burning leaves, I smelled them.” He raced her through the kitchen gardens, and out to the strip of ground between the gardens and the wood, where the gardeners’ tool sheds were, and the compost heaps, and a patch of ashy ground for bonfires. Jack crouched down by the cindery mess, and nodded. “Look, I thought so. There’s still embers there.” He stirred them with a stick, and blew, puffing out his cheeks so that a tiny flame licked up. “Emmie, help me get some of the dry stuff out of that barrow. Dickon didn’t have time to burn it all, look.” He seized an armful of garden trimmings, and cast them on the fire, still blowing. The green branches frazzled and wisped sharp-smelling smoke, but the dry grass and weeds crisped grey at once, and the flames rose a little higher. Doubtfully, Emmie threw on another load. She loved watching the bonfires, but she wasn’t sure this stuff was properly ready to burn. And the set look on Jack’s face was frightening her.

  “We’re not supposed to…” she started to say. But then she gave up. Jack didn’t care. And today, she wasn’t sure anyone else would, either.

  “That’s good enough,” Jack muttered, looking at the flames. There was still a lot of sullen smoke, but the fire had a glowing orange heart, criss-crossed with burned twigs.

  He pulled out the plane David had sent him again, and rubbed his fingers over the worn paint. He muttered something.

  “What?” Emmie leaned closer, coughing a little as the smoke caught in her throat.

  “I said, it isn’t going to work.” Jack looked round at her. “It was supposed to keep him safe. How can it? It’s just a toy, Emmie! It can’t do anything! He’s going to die. Just like Dad…” He turned back to the fire, and before Emmie realized what he was doing, he crouched down and shoved the tiny plane into the crackling centre. Then he stepped back, his eyes full of tears, cradling his burned hand.