The Making of May

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘I think it’s a brilliant idea!’ I gasped.

  ‘Well, it was your idea really,’ he reminded me.

  ‘I just said you should do one painting of a sunflower to hang on the wall. But this is going to be awesome!’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, letting out a shy grin.

  For the next few days, Alex and I worked in the garden whenever we could while the painting of the rose sat drying on its easel in the shed. Oil paint took a long time to dry, Alex had warned me, so I had to be careful not to knock against the painting when I went in and out of the shed with the gardening tools.

  Between us we got rid of all the convolvulus from the flower beds and then we started to cut back some of the other plants. Since they had been allowed to get so overgrown and tangled together, I guessed that we would just have to try to separate them again as best we could. Fortunately there were only four main flower beds, each one starting off in a corner of the garden and extending out to meet the path that ran around the periphery of the lawn. The lawn – which had last been cut two or three months ago by Jimmy – took up the largest part of the space inside the walls, and I knew that if we could get that looking tidy then the whole garden would start to take shape.

  ‘Ben says there’s a small electric mower as well as that big sit-on thing he uses to do the main lawns,’ I told Alex. ‘Let’s go and ask him if we can borrow it. There’s a power point in the shed where we can plug it in.’

  ‘We’ll only have to cut the grass again before the competition,’ Alex pointed out.

  ‘I know, but if we give it a first cut now, we can keep it under control much more easily,’ I said.

  Ben fetched the Flymo from one of the outhouses and brought it to the door of the walled garden for us. Then he said he wanted to inspect the power point to check it was safe before he let us use it.

  ‘But you can’t come inside our garden,’ I said.

  My brother looked irritated. ‘I won’t look at anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll go straight to the shed.’

  ‘But there’s stuff in the shed – secret stuff to do with the garden,’ I said, looking at Alex.

  ‘Look, either I get inside that shed or you don’t get to mow the lawn – it’s as simple as that,’ Ben said firmly.

  ‘It’s OK, Mary. We’ll move the stuff,’ Alex said.

  ‘You’ll have to hurry up,’ Ben said impatiently. ‘I haven’t got time to muck around here all day.’

  Alex and I quickly let ourselves into the garden, leaving Ben waiting outside the door while we rushed to the shed to remove Alex’s painting and all the other art things. ‘Where are we going to hide them?’ I asked.

  ‘Put them round the other side of the shed. He won’t be able to see them there.’

  Once we’d let him into the garden and inside the shed, Ben crouched down and inspected the power socket, then slotted something into it that looked like some sort of adaptor plug. He told us it was a power-breaker unit, which was a safety device that ensured the electricity would cut out straight away if anything went wrong. He tested the power breaker was working before plugging in the mower. Then he went outside and carried the machine on to the lawn for us. He switched it on and called Alex and me over to show us how to work it.

  ‘I’ve fixed the blades so they’re the right height for cutting long grass,’ he told us. ‘Later, if you want to go over it again, I can adjust the blades for you to get a closer cut.’

  He left us the mower – which luckily turned out to be very light and easy to use – and we spent the rest of the afternoon cutting the grass, bagging it all up and carrying the bags out to the compost heap in the main grounds. We also trimmed round the edges of the lawn and the base of the sundial with the long-handled edging shears Ben had given us. I left the dandelions growing, even though Alex said they were weeds, because they were yellow.

  ‘Gardening is harder work than you think,’ Alex said, wiping the sweat off his face with his sleeve when we’d finished.

  ‘But cutting the grass has made a big difference, hasn’t it?’ I said. I was sweaty too as I stood admiring our newly cut lawn, which was now a neat oval shape with the unobscured path running round it and the sundial sitting in the middle. ‘It looks much smarter now.’

  ‘The grass’ll grow back really quickly,’ Alex pointed out.

  ‘Ben says we should cut it once a week from now on to keep it under control. That’s what he’s doing with the main lawns.’

  ‘Once a week!’

  ‘We’ll have to keep weeding too – everything grows really fast in the summer.’

  ‘OK, but I want to start my next painting tomorrow,’ Alex said. ‘I was thinking . . . Could I come and have a look at your gardening books to see if there’s a sunflower in one of them? It’ll be easier if I’ve got a photograph to work from.’

  So we left the garden, shutting everything up carefully in the shed again, and headed for the cottage. Ben wasn’t back yet so we had the place to ourselves.

  The first thing Alex said when we got there was, ‘Can we see what’s on the telly first?’

  I looked at him sharply, remembering the last time I’d let him watch TV in our house.

  ‘I won’t laugh at anything and spoil it for you, I promise.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just that The Simpsons should be on round about now.’

  ‘You’re meant to laugh at The Simpsons,’ I told him as I switched on the television.

  We were flicking through Ben’s gardening books, watching TV at the same time, when Ben arrived back. ‘Hi, guys. What’s happening?’ He started to take off his boots.

  ‘We’re just getting some ideas for our garden from your books,’ I told him. I pushed a glossy picture of a sunflower towards Alex. ‘What about that?’

  Alex took the book from me. ‘That’s perfect.’

  ‘It’s too late to plant sunflowers this year,’ Ben told us, coming to look over Alex’s shoulder.

  ‘We know that,’ I said quickly. ‘We’re just looking.’

  ‘Right, well, I’m going for a bath,’ Ben said. ‘Then I’ll make tea.’

  ‘Is it OK if I go up to the house with Alex now to email Lou?’ I asked him. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘We’re eating in an hour,’ Ben told me. ‘So make sure you’re back. It’s spaghetti tonight.’

  ‘OK.’ Spaghetti bolognaise was one of my favourite meals and Ben tended to make it quite a lot since he knew I wouldn’t put up a fight about clearing my plate.

  After Alex had got his dad to set me up on the computer in the library, I opened my in-box and found that Louise had sent me another email. This time she had some important news. They were about to fly to Australia to stay with Greg’s aunt and uncle as planned, but instead of just visiting for a short while, they were going to spend the rest of the year there. Apparently Greg’s uncle owned a magazine in Sydney and had offered Louise and Greg jobs with him for a year. I know we were going to spend as much time as possible travelling, Lou wrote, but getting these jobs is a fantastic opportunity for both of us. We’re staying with Greg’s family to start with, so it isn’t going to cost us anything. We might rent a flat later if we can afford it.

  In a way I was pleased because now I knew exactly where she was, and we might be able to phone her at Greg’s aunt and uncle’s house, once we got our phone connected. But on the other hand, she was getting a proper job in Australia – and maybe her own flat. What if she decided to stay there for longer than a year once she’d got settled? Worse still . . . and I felt sick when I thought this . . . what if she decided to stay there permanently?

  It rained a lot on and off over the next few days so it was difficult to get much work done in the garden. I told Ben about Louise’s job in Australia and when he checked his in-box later it turned out that she had emailed him about it too. He seemed pleased for her. ‘Maybe it’ll inspire her to try and get a decent job here when she gets back,’ he said. He didn’t seem to think it was very
likely that she would stay in Australia for good.

  Ben finished reading the history book he had borrowed and when he returned it Mr Rutherford asked him what he’d thought of it and they ended up having a big discussion about medieval England. Ben was all fired up afterwards and he borrowed two more history books, which he promised to go and discuss with Mr Rutherford too when he’d read them. Mr Rutherford seemed to stop and have little chats with Ben on a daily basis after that, and Ben started talking about him in a way I’d never heard him talk about anybody before: ‘Mr Rutherford was telling me such-and-such . . .’ and ‘Mr Rutherford thinks I should read such-and-such . . .’ Normally Ben was quite scathing whenever anyone older than him tried to tell him anything.

  I didn’t see any more lights in the tower room after dark and it occurred to me that Mrs Daniels might have moved whoever had been there to a different hiding place. I was glad there were no lights because I wouldn’t have been able to investigate them now, in any case – not unless I wanted Ben to lose his job. Strangely enough, Ben seemed to be getting on much better with Mrs Daniels now and she was spending a lot of time out in the grounds with him, advising him on the garden. Apparently she’d been really taken aback when Ben had presented her with a bunch of flowers after the clematis incident and had lost no time in telling him that the last person to buy her flowers had been her Geoffrey.

  ‘She’s not so bad really,’ Ben insisted. ‘She just cares an awful lot about the garden, that’s all.’

  Maybe Mrs Daniels could tell that Ben was genuinely warming to her – or maybe it was the flowers that had softened her – but, in any case, the result was that she seemed to be easing up a lot on Ben.

  A whole week passed – and then another. I was emailing Lou every two or three days and there was always an email from her waiting for me, since she had constant access to the Internet now that she was staying with Greg’s family. She seemed to be really happy in Australia and she said that Greg’s aunt and uncle, who didn’t have any children, were treating her like an honorary daughter.

  Every day – apart from the days when it rained or when Alex’s dad took him out somewhere – Alex and I worked in the garden together. When Alex wasn’t there, I went on my own and those were the times I felt most like I had my very own secret garden to care for. It was hard work keeping all the weeds at bay and cutting back everything we could that was overgrown. We couldn’t cut back the flowering things too much or we’d have lost all the colour. There were a few non-yellow flowers, which I guessed had self-seeded from further afield over the years, and Alex and I debated whether or not to leave them. Most noticeable were some big white daisies growing in clumps and a plant with pretty blue flowers on it that must have been chucking its seeds about all over the place, judging by the way it was springing up everywhere. Alex said he thought the spots of different colour here and there weakened the overall effect, but I didn’t have the heart to pull them out, so in the end we let them stay.

  We mowed the lawn again twice. Ben lent us the Flymo each time, so long as we allowed him inside our shed to set the power-breaker switch, which he didn’t seem to think we were capable of doing correctly on our own. Alex hardly ever had time to go down to the village to buy sweets now, and because we weren’t eating between meals and we were so active in the garden I was starting to feel much hungrier when it was time to eat in the evening, which pleased Ben. I noticed that Ben had a bigger appetite these days too. ‘It must be all this working outside that’s doing it,’ he told me as he made up three cheese rolls for himself to eat at lunchtime, instead of his usual two.

  Alex was painting whenever he wasn’t gardening. He had taken to wearing an old plastic apron while he was working, because the oil paint seemed to get everywhere, and I told him he ought to get himself a smock like a proper artist.

  ‘How will we hang the paintings up?’ I asked one afternoon as I inspected the wall where they were to be displayed.

  ‘I think we’ll need special nails to bang into the bricks. We might have to ask your brother about that.’

  Alex wouldn’t let me see the sunflower paintings until they were all finished – he’d banned me from the shed while each one was drying and stored the ones that were already done with their faces to the wall.

  ‘Your dad’s not going to believe it!’ I exclaimed, when, three days before we were due to put the garden – and the paintings – on display, I was eventually permitted to admire his work. Like the rose, Alex’s sunflowers were huge and bright and quite lifelike. They were a million times better than any painting I could have done myself, but then art wasn’t exactly my best subject at school. (And that wasn’t through lack of trying, since the crowd I hung out with thought that being arty was cool.)

  ‘Not going to believe what?’ Alex asked me.

  ‘That he’s got two artists in the family, of course!’

  I thought he’d be pleased, but something was clearly troubling Alex.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked him.

  ‘You know, I don’t really think they’re good enough,’ he said glumly.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Like I said, I thought the paintings were great. OK, so they might not look like they’d been done by a professional artist – but then, Alex couldn’t expect to be that good yet, could he? I reminded him of that and he nodded.

  ‘I know, but I’m not sure they’re anywhere near as good as Chris’s.’

  ‘Chris is older than you – and he’s had loads more time to practise,’ I pointed out.

  ‘But what if Dad thinks I’ve wasted Chris’s art stuff? He might be really angry with me for using his things without asking. I thought my paintings might be good enough to stop him being angry – but I don’t think they are.’

  I tried to think of something helpful to say. ‘Why don’t we tell him about the paintings before we open up the garden?’ I suggested. ‘At least, that way it won’t come as a shock, will it?’

  He nodded, as if that was a good idea. Then he looked at me. ‘Can you tell him for me, Mary?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re much better at explaining things than I am. You can make one of your speeches.’

  ‘My speeches?’

  ‘You know – like that one about freeing the garden to be itself again.’

  ‘But, Alex . . .’ I broke off, looking around the garden and remembering my own words only too well. When it had been all cluttered up with weeds and long grass, I had imagined that our garden had the potential to be the most beautiful, most mysterious garden in the world. Well, the lawn was neatly trimmed now, the flower beds were tidy and you could see the yellow roses and other flowers that had been hidden before because of all the overgrowth. The path was clear of weeds and overhanging grass. The brass face of the sundial was shinier than it had ever been. But all in all, the garden hadn’t turned out like I’d expected it to. I had to admit that now. It didn’t look anything like the secret garden in the story.

  The problem was, it was too neat.

  ‘Mr Daniels must have made it like this originally,’ I murmured. ‘All symmetrical and neat and tidy.’ I stood staring at the garden for a long time, thinking that in a way we had freed it to be itself again.

  ‘Why is it that when you imagine things, they’re always ten times better inside your head than they turn out to be in real life?’ Alex suddenly said.

  I saw that he wasn’t talking about the garden. He was still staring gloomily at his paintings.

  ‘I suppose what we have to remember . . .’ I began, struggling to stay positive, ‘is that I’ve never gardened before and you’ve never painted like this before.’

  ‘I’ve never used oils on canvas until now,’ Alex agreed.

  ‘Exactly! And we can’t expect everything we do to turn out perfectly the very first time we try it, can we?’ It was the sort of advice that Lou would have given me if she was here, and for a moment I felt as if she was here, reminding me to look on the bright side. ‘I think we should st
art out by telling that to your dad,’ I continued. ‘Then we’ll tell him how you wanted to paint sunflowers for the garden because your Aunt Charlotte loves them and it’s too late to grow any real ones in time for her birthday. We’ll tell him that this is her birthday present from us and we wanted it to be a surprise, which is why we did it all in secret.’

  Alex was looking more hopeful now. ‘That’s what I mean about your speeches. You can make bad things sound really good! So when are you going to speak to him?’

  ‘You mean, when are we going to speak to him. I’m not going to see him all on my own!’

  ‘OK.’ Alex sighed. ‘When are we going to speak to him?’ He looked at his watch. ‘We can’t do it this afternoon because he’s going to collect Aunt Charlotte from the station. She’s coming a few days early to help get things ready for her garden party.’

  ‘We still need to paint the benches in here,’ I suddenly remembered. ‘We’d better do that first. Did you ask Mrs Daniels about the paint?’

  Alex nodded, looking relieved at the prospect of not telling his dad anything for a bit longer. ‘One of the bedrooms got redecorated a couple of years ago and she says she reckons there was some yellow paint left over from that.’

  ‘Let’s go and get it then.’

  We left the paintings propped up against the wall while we went back to the house. Mrs Daniels was in the kitchen, and when we told her what we wanted she led us outside. She took out her big bunch of keys, searched among them for the right one, then unlocked one of the outhouse doors. ‘Wait here.’ She left the bunch of keys hanging in the lock while she went inside.

  Alex and I both stared at the keys. I could tell he was thinking the same as me – one of them must be the key to the tower room. For the past two weeks I’d tried not to think about the tower room because of Ben, but it was difficult to forget about it entirely, especially as Alex had reported seeing Mrs Daniels carrying trays of empty dishes down the back stairs on more than one occasion. She might have been carrying them down from her own sitting room, but still . . .