The Physic Garden

by Catherine Czerkawska

  At that time, I cherished the idea that I might one day be able to work entirely for and with Thomas. In fairness I would say it was he who planted the seed in my mind. He would tell me tales about travellers who went to foreign parts: not just the likes of Linnaeus, who was our God at that time, or William Kent, Joseph Banks and William Paxton, but other men, such as Archibald Menzies, men who had started out as common gardeners like myself, men from comparatively humble beginnings, but with a thirst for knowledge and a sense of adventure, not so very far removed from my own. We would talk about the places my Uncle Johnnie had spoken of. Thomas would tell me how there were men who would sail overseas, not as tarry sailors, but as gentlemen or at least passengers, who would travel and collect plants which they would bring back for the gardens of the rich, or for various botanical gardens. He said that there were rich men who loved to collect such things and were willing to pay good money for them. In short, he opened my eyes to a hundred possibilities.

  ‘It is not something anyone and everyone can do, William,’ he said. ‘It needs bravery, dedication and knowledge, a unique combination of skills.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘And I think that we would make a good partnership, you and I.’

  ‘Do you really believe so?’

  ‘I do. I really believe it!’

  So we would beguile the hours with dreams. For they were only dreams. But it seemed a wonderful prospect to me. And this was the foundation upon which the two of us constructed a whole edifice of impossibilities.

  I had forgotten that Thomas was a dreamer at heart. For that short while, he turned me into a dreamer too. How could it be otherwise? I deferred to him in everything, so why not this? But the reality of the situation was that he had a wife and children, he was a Glasgow doctor and a professor of botany to boot. All his interests and responsibilities were in the city. He had money, but it was not a fortune of the order of, for example, Joseph Banks. And, more to the point, where on earth would he find or even make the time to travel overseas in search of plants, in his current situation?

  Maybe later in his life he would have been able to do it, although I am not aware that he ever did. As time passed he transferred his affections from plants to fossils, from living things to their petrified remains. Perhaps he thought it safer that way. Perhaps with these at least, he could do no harm. I heard that he amassed a fine collection, but at second hand only, leaving others to do the travelling. Perhaps he should have done it much earlier in his career, if that was what he wanted to do. But he had not known me then, and I pride myself even now that it was our conversations and my enthusiasm that had sparked these ideas in him. If it was an unrealistic ambition for him, then how much more unrealistic for me, who still had a widowed mother and younger siblings to support, no money whatsoever to spare, and so much work that I barely had enough hours in the day to complete it all, a man who invariably slept the sleep of exhaustion when he finally retired to his bed?

  All the same, I have since thought that if we had genuinely wanted to do it, perhaps we would have found a way. There were other men with even fewer resources at the start and they managed it. So it comes to me that we didn’t want it enough, while there were others who did, who had the imagination, the dedication and the confidence to bring their dreams to reality.

  * * *

  I must return to my story. My grand-daughter has been unwell, taken with fierce pains in her stomach. Illnesses can overtake the young so swiftly. In the space of an hour they can switch from robust good health to desperate sickness. We were all worried about her, but it turned out to be nothing more than an overindulgence in unripe plums from a tree in a neighbouring garden. I have done the same myself and the repercussions can be most severe. Her mother fetched a hot stone bottle wrapped in a blanket and a cup of sweet peppermint cordial in warm water. I sat with her and sang to her until her symptoms abated. Now she is well enough to play outside in the low sunlight, although sternly warned away from the tree whose branches overhang the garden at the back of the house. And I am free to return to my tale, but curiously reluctant. I was in full flow. The interruption has disturbed me. I find that I don’t wish to think about it any more. The thought of Thomas makes my heart ache and time will not cure me. But the story must be told, nevertheless.

  There we were, waiting for Thomas to arrive – Jenny and myself and my poor, half-demented mother. She was restlessly rearranging things, pulling the threadbare curtains over the beds in the wall, which she had smoothed with unusual care that morning, moving his chair – or at least the one where she always made him sit – up close to the fire, flitting from the table where the christening cape was still wrapped up in its silk, to the fireplace, to the shelf where the best pewter was set out for the visitor’s ale and a couple of wheaten cakes made especially for him and now smeared with enough of the best butter to serve us for a month. Rab, who had been unwell all that week, was tucked up in a blanket close beside the fire. My mother had even been ready to banish him, her darling, to the scullery or to one of the cold garrets upstairs, fearing that his coughing would disturb the doctor, but Jenny was so horrified by the very idea that my mother relented and let him stay.

  God knows what Thomas would have made of it because he always liked to see Rab, always liked to question him about the state of his health.

  ‘Anyone would think,’ said Jenny, when my mother had gone out of the room briefly to fetch something, another cushion for the doctor’s chair, a better cup for his ale. ‘Anyone would think that we were expecting a visit from the king himself. Is this Doctor Brown such a demanding personage then, William?’

  ‘No. Not at all. You’ll see for yourself. But my mother worships the ground he walks on. To be sure, she does treat him as if he were the king. Perhaps better. He doesn’t demand it, you know, but she seems to feel it’s his due.’

  ‘Well I wish she would stop it. It makes me nervous. I hope he likes the cape.’

  I had seen her work and it was impossibly beautiful, the stitches so tiny and detailed that it was sometimes hard to distinguish them one from another with the naked eye. I have no idea how she managed it with human hands and eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry!’

  And then he was there, coming in the door, cheerful as ever, and Jenny was suddenly shy, lurking behind me, hands folded in front of her, quite unlike her usual confident self. She was wearing a light cotton dress, very fine and pretty, her new best dress she said. I think her father had had it made for her in honour of the meeting. She wore a cream wool shawl with a narrow border of flowers down each side and a deeper border of exotic flowers and ferns woven at either end, in imitation of the fine Kashmir shawls that the ladies of fashion loved to wear, and that cost a king’s ransom when brought from India. It was said that the wool from which these shawls were woven was so fine that you could thread one of them through a wedding ring. Jenny’s shawl, which her father had woven especially for her, was fine, but not quite as fine as that. The local weavers were setting up in competition to the Indian shawl makers. I think Jenny’s father, always a canny man where a business opportunity was concerned, was hoping that Thomas might see the shawl and make enquiries about it, but I’m afraid his attention was all focussed on Jenny and on the silk parcel containing the christening cape. As for Jenny, she seemed a creature of light and air. I was so proud of her. I thought her a princess, standing in her pale dress with her pale hair falling onto the dazzling shawl, there in our gloomy house.

  ‘You must be the lady who makes gardens with her needle,’ said Thomas, quite unexpectedly. Coming from anyone else, this compliment would have seemed ridiculously contrived and overblown, but when Thomas said things like that, you believed him. You accepted what he told you as the truth, as no less than your due. She was standing just behind me. She gave herself a shake and came forward, smiling. He took her hand.

  ‘I can’t wait to see it.’

  She went to the table, and carefully unwrapped the g
arment from its enveloping silk. I held my breath, hoping that he would say the right thing. She unfolded the cape and spread it out on the silk, which she had first laid on the kitchen table. Thomas stood back to look at the garment, drew in his breath and then let it out in a contented sigh. I saw that Jenny had been holding her breath too, and now she also sighed, faintly, echoing him, satisfied that the work was as perfect as she could make it.

  It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever set eyes on, and to think that it had been made by a country girl, working in her father’s cottage, was a marvel. I had never seen anything like it in my life before – but then, I never moved in those circles. Babies in my family were christened in whatever decent garments could be found for them, each handed down from the next eldest, and if the kirk was cold, which it invariably was, even in summer, they were wrapped in a simple woollen shawl. But of course this had been made for the precious son of a gentleman.

  It measured some three feet from collar to edge and consisted of a double cape in Chinese silk. It was the colour of clotted cream or new butter with a quilted edging of sky blue and it smelled sweetly of the lavender with which she had stored it to keep the moths away. The work had taken her months, and they had delayed the christening because of it, but Marion wanted the very best and Thomas had been willing to go along with her. Most wonderful of all, the cape was hand-embroidered, sprigged with numerous flowers like the flowers which Jenny grew in her garden, like the flowers which we tried to grow, but could not, in the physic garden. They were the blossoms of spring and summer, as befits a baby: pinks, rosebuds, violas, campion, all in many different colours, small but accurate, made with love.

  Thomas looked from the cape to the girl who had created it and I saw Jenny glance up at him in return. ‘Is it alright?’ she asked. ‘Is it what you wanted?’

  ‘Is it what I wanted?’ he echoed. ‘My dear girl, it’s wonderful. Miraculous! I can’t imagine what Marion will say. I’m sure she never expected anything half as beautiful as this. I know I didn’t. William, why didn’t you tell me what a genius this lass is with her needle?’

  He examined the cape in the way he touched my plant specimens, delicately and with concentration, turning it this way and that in the light, looking at the way it was stitched, praising everything from the embroidery itself to the minute stitches on the blue quilted border. He was always wholehearted when something impressed him. There were never any half measures with Thomas.

  Afterwards, when the garment had been safely folded away, he went over and put his hand on Rab’s head, took his wrist, and questioned him gravely for a moment or two. He felt in his pockets and brought out a bottle of some tincture or other and told my mother to put a few drops in some fresh milk if she could get any, ale if she could not, and it would ease Rab’s aches and pains.

  Only then did he sit down, drink his own ale and eat his bannock with every appearance of relish. He offered a piece to me – which I accepted, although my mother had warned me to refuse – and to Jenny, who did refuse because, as she told us afterwards, she was still so nervous that it would have choked her. Then he washed his hands in a bowl of warm water and dried them on a fine linen towel I didn’t even know we possessed, like a participant in some religious ceremony. Which for my mother, at least, it was. He shook Jenny by the hand, took up the cape in its parcel of silk and carried it carefully home. Before he left, he handed her a purse of money and when she counted it, after he had gone, she was surprised to find that there was a good deal more than the sum they had agreed upon.

  ‘He had no need to do that!’ she said.’ Do you think it’s a mistake?’

  ‘He told me himself that he intended to reward you with more than you had asked for. But I did not know by how much. This is generous indeed, but then he is a very generous man.’

  She danced around the kitchen, her high spirits bubbling over, spirits that she had been restraining during his visit. She hugged herself, kissed my mother, me, wee Rab, who blushed furiously beneath his pallor. She could scarcely contain herself.

  ‘He liked it!’ she said. ‘He liked it, he liked it!’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’ asked my mother, stoutly. For all her admiration of the doctor, she was very fond of Jenny. ‘It’s a splendid piece of work.’

  ‘Do you think his wife will feel the same? Oh but what if she decides that she doesn’t like it? What will I do?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘How could she help but like it?’

  ‘I have lived with it these many months past. It always comes to me that I don’t know whether the work is good, bad or indifferent!’

  ‘It is a garden in silk. How could he not like it?’

  She seized my hands at that and we danced a jig around the kitchen together, bumping into table and chairs, like weans. My mother smiled while Rab sat huddled up in his blanket, watching everything that went on with feverish eyes, and clapping his hands in time to some melody in his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A Letter to Faculty

  A few months after Jenny had finished the christening cape, Professor Jeffray sought me out in the garden. He normally gave the impression of being a jovial enough fellow, or at least that was the appearance he liked to cultivate, but this time he was frowning. I realised that he had deliberately chosen a day when Thomas would be otherwise occupied, a day when Thomas was, in fact, lecturing in his stead. My heart sank but I decided to put on a brave front.

  He called me ‘Mr Lang’, to be sure, but he spoke with a certain edge to his voice, and very little respect. ‘Mr Lang, I have to tell you that we are growing ever more displeased with the way in which you are undertaking your duties. Or rather not undertaking, but seriously neglecting them!’

  ‘In what way am I neglecting my duties, sir?’ I asked.

  I looked around. It was very cold. There had been a hard frost in the night which had brought the smoke down, so that even now it lowered over the college. You could smell the sulphur off it. But so far as I could see, the gardens were fine and tidy. My brother had been working hard, I had spent every spare moment restoring order and the under-gardeners had done their best as well, mainly because, with the onset of winter, I had been at hand to encourage them or at least bawl instructions, interspersed with a little personal abuse when more than encouragement was needed.

  He gestured around expansively. ‘You must admit that you are not quite the gardener your father was.’

  ‘We are never the men our fathers were, sir. We can never aspire to be their equal, but we can surely hope to learn from them.’

  ‘And have you learned from your father, do you think?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You are much favoured by Dr Brown, I see.’

  ‘I think he respects my knowledge. As a gardener. Just as I respect his knowledge as a fine plantsman and botanist.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He pulled a long face and it struck me that he looked very like a horse. I had a disastrous desire to laugh at him. ‘He wrote a very fulsome letter in support of you,’ added the professor. ‘He seems to find you completely indispensible.’

  ‘Not indispensible, sir, by any means, but I like to think that I am some use to him in gathering specimens for his lectures. Specimens that – as I’m sure you must be aware – the physic garden can no longer provide.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘It is the plain truth, sir. The type foundry blights the physic garden. You must know that. When you yourself were delivering the botanical lectures, you must have known that there were problems with finding specimens.’

  ‘Ah yes. The botanical lectures. Old wives’ medicine.’ Again that sneer, an indication of disgust. He could see no use for botany whatsoever, that was clear.

  ‘But even Doctor Brown was forced to admit in his letter to Faculty that your behaviour had been improper in many respects.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Those were his very words, were they not? “I am afraid that his behaviour
has been improper in many respects.” That was what he said. And I’m afraid Faculty were less than impressed with your behaviour.’

  ‘But I believe he also intimated that I might be able to work more effectively if I were better paid for what I do.’

  ‘We would all do that, I’m sure, Mr Lang.’

  ‘What would you have me do?’ I could feel the rage rising in me. Somewhere inside me, at that time, was a hot-headed young man, but even then, his fires had almost been quenched by poverty, ill health and hard work. He is still there, buried beneath the weight of years and wisdom. I wanted to turn on my heel and leave the professor standing, but it would have been unthinkable, so I stayed where I was and hated myself for my cowardice. I did not bow my head, however, but gazed steadily at him, until he dropped his eyes to the turf beneath our feet.

  ‘I would have you do exactly what the college is paying you to do!’ he exclaimed. ‘No more and no less. The gardens have been far from satisfactory this year past. And yet when first you were appointed, you spent so very much money on trees. I would never have permitted it, but others were swayed by Brown’s eloquence. I would have thought that we might at least see the fruits of all that expenditure by now.’

  ‘Sir, may I be allowed to explain?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I thought, well we both thought, Doctor Brown and I, that if the garden was sick, which it was and is yet, the answer might be trees. We thought that if we planted trees, it might help to purify the air somewhat. We agreed upon such a course of action and Faculty seemed to see some sense in it.’

  ‘Purify the air?’ he scoffed. ‘And tell me, Mr Lang, what would you know of such things?’