The Garden of Lost Memories

by Ruby Hummingbird

  The whole session was rubbish as we all queued up to hit the ball and I kept missing it, hearing the sniggering behind me every time.

  ‘You’re alright, Billy, you’ll get there,’ Mr Williams called, but only because he was paid to say that. I was rubbish.

  The day went really quickly, probably because I was dreading the short walk down the road and into Mrs Maple’s house. No doubt she’d be sitting there surrounded by her weird china stuff, finding more pieces of blue for her impossible jigsaw.

  Mrs Maple answered the door the moment I pressed the doorbell, even though it hadn’t made any noise, as if she had been waiting right next to it for me to arrive. ‘I told you he’d come,’ she added over her shoulder as if someone else was there. She’s a bit strange.

  She was wearing a smart dress and a silver necklace and I think she’d put some make-up stuff on her face because her lips and eyes looked a bit different.

  ‘Billy, I’m glad you came,’ she said as I shrugged off my coat in her little porch bit to put on the hook ’cos if I didn’t use it, she’d only nag me to.

  I didn’t say anything, it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. Soon I’d be old enough not to need anyone looking after me. I reckon I’m grown-up enough anyway. Mum always told me I was mature for my age, but apparently the police could arrest her if she left me on my own.

  I remembered my shoes too and bent down to slide them off.

  ‘You can keep them on, it’s fine. I can vacuum when you leave.’

  ‘S’OK,’ I muttered, not wanting to give her any reason to get angry at me.

  I padded after her into the kitchen where, surprise, surprise, the polka-dot teapot was sitting on the table next to a plate of custard creams. Great.

  ‘I thought you’d want a snack after school. It’s not really teatime but I thought I could make it now. For you,’ she added, a smile on her lips that had the soft shiny pink stuff on today.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, still not really looking at her, just sliding onto the kitchen chair and reaching for a biscuit. I wanted to hold my nose as I nibbled it but forced it down in two big bites.

  ‘Oh, you are hungry, do have another.’ She pushed the plate towards me.

  Oh, man…

  I picked up a second, holding it in my fist and hoping she wouldn’t notice if I put it back later.

  ‘Pear squash?’ she offered, placing a glass on the table.

  Then I noticed the red tin on the counter behind her. She had moved it from the dresser, wiped the soil and it was just sat there, waiting.

  She saw me looking: ‘I haven’t opened it.’

  I bit my lip and looked away, not wanting to get her cross or look like I cared. But my eyes couldn’t help flickering back. I felt the same curiosity that I had the other evening, remembering when I had hit the surface with the trowel, the strange clunk it had made, the excitement when I’d realised there was something buried, hearing the contents slip and slide as I lifted it out.

  Mrs Maple was sort of wiggling her hands. She sat on the chair at the head of the table, then stood up again, then sat back down again. It made me frown as I watched her. She finally settled and looked at me. ‘I’m so sorry for shouting at you the other day, Billy. It was, well, it was unforgiveable. How were you to know?’

  Know what?

  ‘And I hope you got my present? The gloves? I hoped you would want to wear them for when we garden again? You seemed to enjoy it befo…’

  She trailed away before I could add, ‘Before you shouted at me?’

  ‘They’re at home,’ I said, not wanting to cave, but then it felt rude, not saying anything about the present. ‘But thanks,’ I added, my voice low and quiet.

  That word seemed to relax her, her smile wider. ‘There’s no need for you to thank me, it was the least I could do to show you how sorry I was. We could get out there now if you like?’

  I looked up. ‘You said we could…’

  Mrs Maple swallowed. ‘I know I promised,’ she said, looking away, as if she was talking to the walls again and not me.

  ‘I did.’ She took a breath and I realised her hand was shaking as she reached for the polka-dot teapot. ‘Yes, I did, the tin.’ Her voice broke on the word and I realised she was nervous. Was she worried about being with me too? The thought made me soften a bit. She had apologised and given me the gloves and she did seem sorry; she was being quite friendly, like she’d been in the garden before it all went wrong.

  ‘I did promise your mum we could open it together.’ She took a breath and looked straight at me, ‘So we should, yes, that’s fine, yes…’ she said, one hand crossing over the other.

  I licked my lips, wanting to silence the voice in my head shouting ‘YES’. Shrugging, I put my two hands in my lap. ‘OK,’ I said. Inside my stomach was doing little flips. There was definitely treasure in it.

  She stood up slowly. ‘It’s alright,’ she said aloud. I frowned, not sure who she was talking to.

  She stood at the counter for a second, her back to me. I was leaning forward in my chair, almost toppling onto the floor. I’d a hundred per cent forgive her if she shared the gold. Oh my God, that would totally help Mum out! No more counting the money at the till, she could buy a million chicken breasts.

  ‘Right. Well, here we go…’ Mrs Maple’s voice sounded funny, higher, her shoulders tense as she lifted the tin from the side and carried it carefully over to the table. ‘Here it is,’ she said, placing it on the surface.

  I stood up, my heart starting to race as she looked across at me.

  ‘Would you like to open it?’ she asked and, eyes wide, I nodded at her. ‘Go on then.’

  She pushed the tin towards me and I placed my hands on it. It felt cold, the spots of brown rust still there. Mrs Maple sat back down, her hands gripping the wooden armrests of her chair as she watched me.

  The tin’s lid was stiff as I hooked my fingers and pulled. Nothing happened. Then with a scrape something came away, tiny red flakes from the tin fluttered to the table and some stuck under my fingernails. A tiny noise, a small pop, and the lid was in my hand.

  I was holding my breath, waiting to see what was inside: the glint of silver or gold.

  Nothing shone.

  The tin was almost full, something woollen lying folded on the top, squeezed into it. I pulled it out, heard Mrs Maple suck in her breath. A small rectangular white knitted square, it would barely cover my legs if I sat down.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, holding it up – too small for a blanket or rug.

  Mrs Maple rubbed at her neck before answering. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said vaguely.

  I set it to one side, excited to see what it had been covering, frowning as I stared at the items beneath it.

  No gold coins, no silver coins, no diamonds. But then my hand reached in and I pulled out a necklace – some round shiny cream stones.

  ‘Pearls,’ Mrs Maple said, her own hand fiddling with the silver chain at her throat. She looked frightened, her face frozen, as if it was a bottle of poison. It was just a necklace.

  There were other things: a small cardboard ticket thing, a name printed on it; a black-and-white photo of a man with a moustache turning to his right and staring off into the distance, ‘Bernard, 1956’ written on the back in purple ink; a pack of playing cards; a postcard, the writing too slanted and small to make out, signed only as ‘H’, the tiny date squashed at the top, 04/06/58; an oval hairbrush with pink flowers painted on the outside. A picture drawn by a child: two stick figures holding hands.

  So just junk, really.

  There was a small paper bag: the last hope. Maybe that was where the sapphires and rubies were and I felt my heart hammer, seeing different coloured circles inside. I spilt them out on the table but it was just a lot of boiled sweets, all wrapped individually: red, green, yellow, purple.

  This was rubbish. Just bits and bobs, not even new things – the brush looked really old and like something a grandma would brush her hair with, an
d there was no way I’d be eating any sweets that came out of the ground.

  Disappointed, I looked inside the tin for one final time, hoping I had missed something. Lying on the bottom of the tin was a white card with a date on it: ‘2nd March 1950’. Turning it over, I realised it was another photo. This one was of a baby lying in a funny-looking basket, all tightly wrapped in a blanket. I peered closer: it looked like the white knitted thing in the tin. Weird. I put it down and sat back, mouth turned down.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Maple said, reaching across, ‘that’s it then.’

  She picked up the photo of the baby, glancing at it briefly.

  I looked up. ‘Hey, I think that baby’s wearing this blanket.’

  Mrs Maple seemed to go very still. ‘Oh, oh yes, so she is.’

  I leant forward. ‘She? Is it you?’

  Mrs Maple placed the photo back in the tin, her hand shaking a little, but hands on old people often did. I wasn’t sure she heard me. ‘It’s our old biscuit tin,’ she said, her voice fast, high.

  I looked up quickly.

  ‘Huntley & Palmers biscuits, hence “H” and “P”,’ she said, looking brighter and tapping the lid so it made a funny metallic noise. ‘It belonged to my mother. We used to have our custard creams out of it – until we got a new one, that is.’

  ‘It’s a biscuit tin. Why’d she put it in the garden then?’

  Mrs Maple turned away from me. ‘Oh, I haven’t the first idea. Speaking of biscuits, we could have another one now if you’d like?’

  ‘No, I’m alr—’

  I was about to ask her more when I saw something folded on the bottom of the tin. Pulling it out, I smoothed it out on the table.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mrs Maple asked, stepping towards me again, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘It was folded at the bottom.’

  ‘Was it?’ Mrs Maple’s eyes rounded.

  It was a map, neatly drawn and coloured with watercolour paints. There were winding roads, tiny houses, the river slicing through the page, curving off to the left, little green trees in clusters, everything labelled with different words: a butcher, a chemist, a sign for a train station, arrows going to other places.

  ‘This bit is the village,’ I realised aloud, recognising some of the places mentioned, then frowning at words I didn’t recognise.

  ‘What’s Brendan’s?’

  ‘It was a cobblers. It’s been closed for years now,’ Mrs Maple said, her voice robotic.

  ‘And there’s another village, and Reading,’ I kept looking, ‘What’s “ABC”?’

  ‘A cinema.’ She had a strange look on her face as she stared at the map too.

  ‘It’s like a treasure hunt,’ I said excitedly, starting to believe that the tin really would make us rich. ‘It’s leading us to all these different places. I wonder why?’ I frowned, looking up. It seemed odd to have this map in the tin with no explanation as to why. Maybe the other items meant something.

  ‘What do you think it means?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm… it is peculiar,’ she said, eyes sliding from my face as she went to take the map back. ‘Well, let’s put it all away.’

  ‘Maybe it’s like a mystery we need to solve,’ I said slowly, returning to the items on the table.

  Picking up the photo of the man, I stared at it. Maybe he was a spy or something and he’d buried it in the garden? ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

  Mrs Maple licked her lips, her finger and thumb rubbing together. ‘He was my father,’ she said.

  ‘Cool!’ I stared back at the man and suddenly I could see a similar-shaped nose, something in his faraway expression that was just like her. ‘What did he do?’

  Mrs Maple took the photo from me and tipped her head, ‘He worked in road construction.’

  My shoulders dropped. Not exactly a job for a spy.

  ‘He died before I was born,’ she said, her tone soft as she returned the photo to the tin.

  ‘What of?’ I knew it was probably rude to ask but this could be an important clue.

  ‘In a motorcycle accident, he loved them apparently. So, I never knew him.’

  ‘That’s sad. I miss my dad sometimes, even though…’ My throat felt funny, tighter, and I stopped. I could feel my face getting really hot and wanted to change the subject. ‘So, was all this stuff his? Did he take your mum’s tin and bury it, maybe?’ I asked, looking at the things in front of me. They didn’t seem like things a man who built roads would own though: a necklace, a flowery brush, an old postcard with a deep orange sunset peeking above a massive rock, all flat on top.

  ‘No, no, not his – no.’

  Why did I get the sense Mrs Maple was holding out on me?

  ‘So, your mum did?’

  Mrs Maple didn’t answer and I picked up the map, studying it again. There must be more clues here. ‘We should visit these places.’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘It might be fun. I haven’t gone anywhere since we arrived, and maybe we’ll find out more…’

  ‘Maybe…’ Mrs Maple said, her voice uncertain. She seemed in a mysterious kind of mood. ‘We could.’

  ‘I’ve literally only been to the school and that totally sucks.’

  ‘Does it?’ Mrs Maple looked surprised and I felt myself get hot in the face.

  ‘Well, it’s OK, I haven’t really… some of the kids, you see…’

  ‘Has it not been an easy start?’

  ‘Well, sort of, I mean…’ It was my turn to look a bit shifty.

  Mrs Maple stared right at me with her pale blue eyes, ‘You can tell me, you know.’

  Something about her expression made me want to talk. Mum had been so distracted she barely noticed I didn’t want to go to school, and I didn’t talk about any of it when I got home, just headed straight to my room and flipped through a textbook because there wasn’t even any TV to watch to help me forget.

  ‘A couple of the kids aren’t that nice,’ I admitted, ‘but I can handle it, it’s fine.’

  Mrs Maple rested a hand on my shoulder. Her touch made me jump a little but there was a kind look in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Billy. I never went to school, I was home-schooled by my mother, but I imagine that might be difficult.’

  ‘What’s home school?’

  Mrs Maple’s eyebrows lifted. ‘What it sounds like. I stayed at home for lessons. My mother taught me everything, even arranging the examinations I’d need to take.’

  ‘Were you sick?’ I asked. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t go to school. I thought it was the law – Mum was always telling me I’d get in trouble if I didn’t go.

  ‘No,’ Mrs Maple said, her words slower, ‘No, I wasn’t sick. My mother felt that she could give me a good education.’

  ‘She must have been clever then.’ I didn’t want to be rude to Mum but I wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell me everything I needed to know. Last year, she’d helped me with my maths and I’d still got all the answers wrong.

  ‘She was a wonderful teacher, she taught me all about literature and history and we did scientific experiments at this kitchen table.’ Mrs Maple looked off into the distance, a small smile on her face.

  ‘That sounds cool. And no PE,’ I added. No PE and no Daniel and his mates. That sounded even better, though our home wasn’t exactly filled with anything interesting.

  ‘And no other children,’ she said, and then she stopped looking happy and her mouth joined together in a thin line. ‘I’m sorry you’re finding school difficult,’ she added quickly, that funny look on her face, like she’d been about to say more.

  There was a silence which got a bit awkward and I looked back at the map for something to say. ‘So, can we go to the cinema next time?’ I pointed to the tiny square in the top right of the map, a small label saying ‘ABC’.

  Mrs Maple took a breath. She seemed almost worried. Maybe she didn’t like the cinema or thought I would just want to see films she’d hate, but then her face cleared.

  ‘Why
not?’ she said, a small smile appearing on her face, ‘I suppose it might be fun.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ELSIE

  Why had she agreed to it? Would it simply be an excuse for an excursion, something light-hearted, a chance to take a trip down memory lane with someone by her side? Billy had seemed so lost in the little village, missing London, his father, his best friend and this was an opportunity to show him some of the places that had once meant so much to her. And yet…

  She turned over, readjusting herself on the pillow, her hip hurting, turned back again. She couldn’t sleep.

  She recognised many of the places, spots where they’d spent time together. But not all of them held happy memories. One small square meant so much more. She pushed her fist into her pillow as she tried again to get comfortable. She couldn’t stop thinking about it though, the tiny details painstakingly painted in miniature. Elsie exhaled in the dark. She didn’t want to think about these things, she’d carefully constructed her day around small rituals that made the time pass, lessened the pain. Would enough time ever pass? She thought then of previous trips to places on the map, her chest aching with the images that she conjured.

  She lay awake, staring at the ceiling of her small square room. It was no good, she knew she would be restless all night; perhaps a mug of hot milk would help. She reached to switch on her lamp and swung her legs over the single bed, padding across to fetch her dressing gown from its hook. Opening her door, she stood stock-still, not wanting to move over the threshold.

  The door opposite was closed, as it always was, the marks in the wood so familiar to her after all these years, the swirl of the grain above the doorknob like a large brown eye, a small dent in the middle of one of the wooden panels where a workman had lost his grip on the wardrobe he’d been carrying. She stood in front of it, her hand reaching out to place a palm on the door.

  She could push it open, she could move inside, sit there for a while, and yet she stayed, frozen in the stairwell, the bulb overhead dull, the house breathing in and out. A cough through the walls from next door made her startle. The moment passed and she moved carefully down the narrow staircase, one hand on the banister.