The Physic Garden
Page 28
Our minds were so very much in tune. We were like two halves of the same fine fruit, Thomas and I. We had thought to plant trees, like weans, and watch them grow. We had thought, perhaps, to force each other to put forth buds and bear knowledge. And so we did. But as well as the knowledge of good, we found the knowledge of evil. And in the end, trees are no substitute for people.
* * *
There is a last great truth that comes to me now, as I sit here in the autumn of the year. It is a truth that has lurked at the back of my mind for a long time; one that I never wished to bring out and examine in the light of day. Untenable you see. I never thought to do it until now. At this time of life you feel, oddly, that everything matters but nothing matters very much.
I loved Jenny Caddas, that’s one truth. And I missed her. I miss her yet. But all the same, if you were to ask me what it was that made and sometimes still makes me wake in the night with a sense of regret that feels like an amputation, a lost limb that aches fiercely, bitterly, then I cannot in all conscience say that it is the thought of Jenny. My feelings for her have mellowed through time. My grand-daughter, who looks more like her great-aunt than her grandmother, comforts me, brings her before my eyes, heals the thought of her.
I loved my wife. That’s another truth. We were absolutely faithful, throughout the long years of our marriage, and perhaps what’s more important, we were always kindly to one another, each making allowances for the other. I have nothing to reproach myself with, now that she has gone.
So it is not Jenny or Anna that I think of at those times. It is something quite different. And I tell you, without guilt or even very much surprise, that it is Thomas I think of. It is our friendship, the affection that lay between us once, perhaps most of all those days of intimacy and ease on the Isle of Arran or in the college gardens, among the trees. I think of the attachment, the fondness that was all lost, all wasted, like some exotic flower, trampled underfoot. It is the thing that he betrayed, as I could not. What pains me most is the absolute certainty, even now, that I would not have so betrayed him, no matter what the reason. I would have died first.
I think afterwards that he blamed me for my lack of forgiveness, for my persistent distrust of him. But he did not understand the full extent of the wound that lay deep within my heart. Or perhaps, as he tried to tell me in that last letter, he hardly thought of it as a betrayal at all, but as something that he was driven to do by his need to put himself in my place. Can I bring myself to believe that? I would certainly like to do it. The wound healed over, in time, but the ache of it is with me yet. Whatever motives and excuses he may have had, nothing can change that. He was a good man, even a great one, but I still think that my affection for him was stronger than his for me.
Or do I? Was it not simply different? What comes to me is the thought of what was lost, of all that we might have done, the places we might have gone, the work we might have achieved together. None of which is in any way to devalue what I have, which is very precious to me. You must understand that. We are like that, we human beings. We can regret what might have been, even while loving and cherishing and holding fast to what we have.
So I confess, it is the thought of Thomas that sometimes makes me wake in the night with a sense of regret so profound, so bitter, that it is like a physical pain in me and I shift and squirm with it and must light a candle and bury my nose in a book so as to be rid of it. What’s for you won’t go by you, my mother would have said. Looking up at the night sky, you will maybe see a shooting star and sometimes it seems to fall to earth and sometimes it seems to hurtle past and travel on its way to another time and place. But I am not sure which is which, whether that star is myself, or whether it was Thomas, who hurtled past me, dazzled me, blinded me to all else and then travelled on his way.
And still he comes before my eyes. My dearly beloved friend. Not the crabbit old man he no doubt became. How would I know? I never saw him again. But tall Thomas, with his grey eyes, his strong limbs and his warm smile, as he walked into the garden in search of me, Thomas, talking to me of thistle and valerian and sweet honeysuckle. Thomas, admiring the wayfarer tree and laughing uproariously at the thought of the students trying to set fire to it, and the vision of me chasing them with a spade and swearing at them. Thomas, full of ideas and ideals. Thomas, who loved to teach, and talk, who loved, more than anything, the imparting of knowledge, which is not always the same thing as wisdom.
My Jenny has just come into the room.
She looks at me and says, ‘You’re sad!’
I tell her that I have dust in my eyes. Dusty old books just.
She loves books too, and often asks me to read to her, but I tell her that she must not devote all her life to them. No. I tell her that she must be out and about in the world, breathing the fresh air. She can enjoy her books if she wishes, but she must not elect to live life at second hand. Books are but a poor substitute for experience, no matter how painful. I do not think she understands me yet, but she will, in time, God love her.
Now she takes up my linen handkerchief and wipes my eyes with it, much as I sometimes wipe her own when she weeps over her small troubles.
‘There now,’ she says. ‘Is that better?’
And I tell her that it is. That all is well. That we will put the dusty old books away for the time being, and perhaps I will come down into the garden for a walk, before supper, for I may be in the winter of my years, but it is still a fine, golden autumn and besides, the very essence of spring is here beside me, tugging at my hand and, however much the city has grown, tonight the air out there among the trees seems very sweet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Some of this story is based on truth. There was a gardener in Glasgow called William Lang. There was a lecturer in botany at the old college of Glasgow University whose name was Thomas Brown, and the celebrated anatomist Professor James Jeffray did indeed ask him to undertake the botanical lectures in his stead. It is clear from existing correspondence that William Lang and Thomas Brown, who were not very far apart in years, struck up a friendship. It is clear that Thomas valued the work William did in collecting plant specimens for him. Later, when William found himself struggling to cope with a polluted garden and the necessities of providing for a widowed mother and younger siblings, Thomas Brown defended him from the complaints of Faculty, as far as he could. The book which so shocked William is all too real as is the old book about gardening. I have included a select bibliography of the books and websites I used in my research, in case any reader might be interested in the historical details. For the rest, although I hope it is a vivid recreation of the time and place, it is entirely fictional.
I would like to thank my family and friends for all their encouragement and understanding as ever but especially Michael Malone and Cally Phillips. Many thanks are also due to all at Saraband, but especially Sara Hunt, to my editor Ali Moore, as well as to The Society of Authors for years of advice and support. Finally, a special mention must go to all the ‘Authors Electric’, best of online friends and bloggers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A.D. Boney. 1988. The Lost Gardens of Glasgow University. Christopher Helm.
Eric W. Curtis. 2006. The Story of Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. Argyll Publishing.
Sir James Fergusson. 1972. Balloon Tytler. Faber and Faber.
Carol Foreman. 2002. Lost Glasgow. Birlinn.
Henry Grey Graham. 1937. Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century. A & C Black.
Elizabeth S. Haldane. 1934. Scots Gardens in Old Times. Alexander MacLehose and Co.
William Hunter and Jan van Rymsdyk. 1774. The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. Birmingham (accessed in Glasgow University Library).
Latta and Millar. 1904. The Kingdom of Carrick and its Capital. John Latta.
Ann Lindsay. 2008. Seeds of Blood and Beauty, Scottish Plant Explorers. Birlinn.
Vincenzo Lunardi. 1786. An Account of Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland.
Martin Martin. 1994
. A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, Circa 1695. Birlinn.
Mary McCarthy. 1969. A Social Geography of Paisley. Paisley Public Library.
Robert D. McEwan. 1933. Old Glasgow Weavers. Carson and Nicol Ltd
Alexander Murdoch. 1921. Ochiltree, Its History and Reminiscences. Alexander Gardner.
John Reid. 1683. The Scots Gardener. Introduced by Annette Hope. Mainstream. 1988.
Norman Scarfe. 2001. To The Highlands in 1786. The Boydell Press.
‘A Significant Medical History’. The University of Glasgow website (under the “about us/history” section).
Margaret Swain. 1955. The Flowerers. Chambers.
‘The University of Glasgow Story’. The University of Glasgow website.
James Walker. 1895. Old Kilmarnock. Arthur Guthrie and Sons.
About the Author
Catherine Czerkawska is a Scottish-based novelist and playwright. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in Mediaeval Studies followed by a Masters in Folk Life Studies from the University of Leeds. She has written many plays for the stage and for BBC Radio and for television, and has published eight novels, historical and contemporary. Her short stories have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and as ebook collections, most recently by Hearst Magazines UK. She has also written non-fiction in the form of articles and books and has reviewed professionally for newspapers and magazines. Wormwood, her play about the Chernobyl disaster, was produced at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre to critical acclaim in 1997, while her novel The Curiosity Cabinet was shortlisted for the Dundee Book Prize in 2005.
Catherine has taught creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and spent four years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland. She is currently serving on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland. When not writing, she collects and deals in the antique textiles that often find their way into her fiction.
ALSO BY CATHERINE CZERKAWSKA
FICTION
The Curiosity Cabinet
Bird of Passage
The Amber Heart
Ice Dancing
A Quiet Afternoon in the Museum of Torture
Catherine Czerkawska: Short Stories
NON-FICTION
God’s Islanders
PLAYS
Wormwood
The Price of a Fish Supper
Quartz
Burns on the Solway
The Secret Commonwealth
Copyright
Published by Saraband
Suite 202, 98 Woodlands Road
Glasgow, G3 6HB, Scotland
www.saraband.net
Copyright © 2014 Catherine Czerkawska
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN: 9781908643513
ebook: 9781908643520
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