The Garden of Lost and Found

by Harriet Evans

  As John grew older and his eyesight faded, he could not see the details of the painting at night, so he took to removing it from its cylinder during the day. But footsteps in the quay behind the house alarmed him – his hearing was not what it had been, someone might come in while he was staring intently at it, and in his mind he had it that everything would unravel if he was found out.

  He knew his father had died days after their final meeting, for he had seen a report of it in the Picture Post left behind on the boat. He read of the loss of the painting, the artist’s collapse with influenza. But of anyone else in England he had no report, not for many years. The struggle to survive absorbed him, utterly, wholly: he had deserted his post, and was a wanted man who would be court-martialled if he was discovered. Time passed but his longing for Liddy did not abate: he still missed her so very much but he knew he couldn’t ever go back. He couldn’t do it to her. He had to make the choice and, once made, stick with it.

  Recasting himself as Frank Thorboys, a schoolteacher from Northamptonshire, a real person and not someone whose papers he’d stolen, and not giving way to the nightmares of battle, the shakes that overtook him, the attacks that were triggered by children’s pop-guns in the market square, the scream of gulls high overhead, or the braying of horses, was a monumental struggle, one that threatened to overpower him for many years. To lose it all because one morning some young man he’d brought home the previous night, or someone he thought was a friend, came upon him staring intently at the most famous painting in the world: he couldn’t risk it. He had, all things considered, made a life for himself out of the ruins of his former self. He loved his small, calm, ordered world in Dinard. He was loved.

  And, gradually, as the decades passed, it came to be that the old familiar action of unrolling the painting and diving again into that world, imagining he was back in the garden with his big sister, their mother close by, believing that everything was golden, safe, happy once more, brought him no pleasure at all. And what would happen to the painting when he died? It hung, heavy on his heart. Over time, he saw he would have to leave the little town by the grey churning sea and return the painting to its rightful home once more.

  ‘He caught a boat from Bristol to St Malo,’ said Juliet’s dad. ‘He stayed there for a few weeks, and then he wandered again, and settled in Dinard. The war was over, many young men had not returned, the town was in a bad way. Frank Thorboys was welcomed most warmly. The Inspector of Sûreté himself came to express the hope that he would stay. They hoped he would work in the fields, marry one of the young ladies whose young men had been killed . . . John used to joke they’d never have welcomed him in had they known he was a fairy with one useless arm.’

  ‘You knew him?’ Juliet said. She sat facing her parents, leaning on the table, arms folded, staring at them. ‘How? How on earth? And how strange he ended up in Dinard . . .’

  ‘You don’t see it yet?’ said her mother, and she turned to Juliet’s father. Both of them were pale; Juliet’s mother had been crying as they outlined what they knew of John’s story to her. ‘She really doesn’t remember it.’

  ‘The Royal Wedding. Charles and Di,’ Juliet said, suddenly.

  ‘Exactly. You and Ev were already in the sitting room. We were getting ready to watch it. We had snacks, everything . . . And he simply walked up the drive.’

  ‘Did he say who he was?’

  ‘Afterwards. He introduced himself to us. He didn’t know who was living in the house, whether the family had moved away. Until Frederic came here, and wrote to him about Stella, he didn’t know Grandi had been born, you see. He knew Frederic from Dinard.’

  ‘They were lovers.’

  ‘Oh yes. Frederic’s first in fact,’ said her father. ‘When Frederic was looking for a place outside London to open a shop, John told him about Godstow. Frederic wrote to him, telling him about the village, this lovely house, this strange woman he’d befriended called Stella Horner. Before that, John knew nothing.’

  ‘He didn’t know he had a sister?’

  ‘No, and she didn’t know he was still alive. Of course not; her mother never knew John had survived the war. Isn’t it awful?’ Juliet’s father shook his head, his eyes swimming. ‘It is all a great tragedy.’

  Juliet could barely speak. ‘I can’t believe it. That’s terrible, it’s—’

  ‘But no more than thousands of other families around the country,’ said her mother, reaching across the wide table and patting her daughter’s bare arm. Juliet looked down at her mother’s hand on her skin. The old familiar fingers, long and tapered, the sapphire and diamond engagement ring. ‘That’s what war does. Uncle John wasn’t a coward, he had shell-shock. He had it all his life. He’d sometimes have to leave the room, or his eyes would close and he wouldn’t be there. He had nightmares about rats. Awful nightmares.’

  ‘Yes. Rats.’ Juliet’s father opened his eyes wide. ‘I’d forgotten. He wouldn’t even kill a mosquito, but he was absolutely terrified of rats. There was one time we were staying with him, and we took a walk to the old harbour. We sat down, ordered a drink. It was dusk, you know. And a rat scuttled out from a wooden garage door and ran across the square. John screamed. I’ve never heard anything like it. He wouldn’t stop. We had to help him all the way back home, he couldn’t walk, he was shaking, sweat pouring down his face. It was horrible. He was an old man by then, almost ninety, but he was strong as anything, he’d spent half a century there, he loved the fresh air and the sea and the – other amusements, as it were. I think that night weakened him. He got the chest infection soon after.’

  ‘Me too.’ Juliet’s mother had bowed her head but she looked up. ‘Now, of course, one would instantly recognise he had PTSD. He should have had intensive psychotherapy. But of course he didn’t. Oh, he was a lovely man, Juliet,’ said Elvie, and she clasped her husband’s hand.

  ‘But why didn’t he come back?’ Juliet rubbed her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you bring me over to meet him? You went to visit him, is that how you ended up buying the house over there?’

  ‘We had no idea of his existence until the day he turned up at the house. And what could we do? We felt very strongly . . . John needed protection. He needed a family, after all these years but he didn’t want people to know he was Michael’s uncle. He was terrified of being found out.’

  Juliet’s father nodded. ‘But I couldn’t just let him leave on his own.’ He furrowed his brow.

  ‘Of course, Stella was wonderful,’ said Elvie, rather mechanically. She patted Michael’s arm now. ‘But she did rather start to lose the plot after that day. Any mention of John sent her off again. I think she’d worked so hard to build up this myth of her family, to have it utterly dismantled in one day . . . We felt awful about how she’d treated him. She really – I’d never seen her behave that way, before or since. As though he flipped a switch.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  Juliet’s parents looked at each other.

  ‘I still can’t really explain it,’ said Michael, after a pause. ‘She wouldn’t let him stay a moment longer. That’s all.’

  ‘Anyway, so that was how it happened. Daddy caught up with him – on the driveway—’

  ‘He was walking away and he said, look, please don’t upset your mother, I’m awfully sorry, I shouldn’t have come back, and I said, we are coming to France next month, may we come and visit you if it’s convenient? Where do you live?’

  ‘And he said – I’m in Brittany. Your father was very clever, you see.’

  ‘And I said – didn’t I, Elvie? – my goodness, well we’re coming to Brittany, isn’t it a small world?’ He blinked back something and Juliet, staring at him, wondered why she had never seen how kind he was before today. ‘You see I couldn’t let him walk away like that. Just couldn’t. And I’m afraid I found it rather hard, the way Mum treated him then refused to discuss it ever again. But there you are. We go on.’

  ‘Grandi used to say that. All the time.’

&nbs
p; ‘Did she?’

  ‘She did, Dad. I don’t understand – did he tell you what he’d done with the painting? Didn’t he ever mention it?’

  ‘Well –’ Juliet’s father looked ashamed. ‘You see, he mentioned something about it once or twice but I didn’t think much of it. You know me. I wasn’t really interested in Ned Horner. I know I should have been. You, my dear, made us so proud, understanding him and making your work all about his paintings. But I personally never got it. Never really got paintings at all. I like buildings. Mum was furious about me becoming a quantity surveyor. So cross. I think she wanted me to go to art college. Carry on the tradition.’

  Juliet was thoughtful. ‘But Dad – did he really tell you it was The Garden of Lost and Found? And you just didn’t care?’

  ‘He said he’d had one of his paintings once but he’d got rid of it. You know, when I was growing up, Ned Horner was terribly unfashionable. No one wanted them.’

  ‘Do you remember one of your friends at Imperial found one in a junk shop, on the King’s Road? And he wanted some of you to lend him the money to buy it?’ said Elvie, amused.

  ‘Yes. The Artist’s Wife and Her Dog, or something. Old Jerry. He was rather into Victorian art and we used to rather laugh at him. We persuaded him not to buy it. Terrible waste of money.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Juliet helplessly. ‘Do you still see him?’

  ‘No, lost touch with him years ago. He rather dropped us. Don’t know why.’

  ‘Can’t imagine,’ said Juliet. ‘Poor Ned,’ she said, thinking for a moment. ‘He became the thing he most feared. A reactionary member of the bourgeoisie. And poor. He almost died rescuing Liddy and pulling himself out of poverty, and then working to give her this house and then he bought that damned painting back on some poetic whim and ruined himself. He’d have been declared bankrupt if he’d lived. Not the kind of legacy he wanted.’

  ‘His son had all that, that’s the irony.’ Michael Horner stood up. ‘When he died, the whole town turned out for him. Brass band, policemen in white gloves . . . They adored him. There’s a watercolour of Frank’s in the Hôtel de Ville, a view of the town, with a nice plaque to him. Very moving. We unveiled it, actually.’ Juliet shook her head, marvelling at this. ‘You can ask Frederic. And I think John was happy in his new life, my love. Not like Mum. She gradually lived more and more in the past . . .’ He looked up, rather embarrassed at this confession. ‘That’s what I think, anyway.’

  Juliet came round the table and embraced him, leaning in to her father’s sturdy, broad frame. ‘Oh, Dad. Yes, yes, of course. Poor Grandi. Poor John. Oh, Dad. Thank you for telling me. You too, Mum.’

  ‘My dear one, I am so glad you know now,’ he said, and Elvie stood up too, and the three of them hugged, tightly, silently.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  June 2015

  Juliet sat in the car in the broiling heat for five minutes, not getting out, just watching the old street, window open, arm out of the window. The city smells of summer – tarmac, burning oil, petrol, pollution, barbecues, something indefinably primal – thudded through her.

  She had been back to London a few times since she left, but this felt different. She was a visitor, not someone returning home. How packed the houses seemed together, how huge the cars, parked up on the pavements of her narrow road. It was early afternoon, and quiet. A knock on the car roof made her jump out of her skin and she looked out to see a face with a headscarf looming in at her.

  ‘Zeina. You – gah. I nearly had a heart attack.’

  ‘The year you’ve had and someone tapping your car gives you a heart attack? I’d say your priorities ain’t quite right.’ Juliet climbed out of the car and hugged her. ‘What’s this, hey? Hey . . .’ Zeina patted her back as Juliet clung to her, burying her face in her shoulder.

  ‘You said you’d come to visit.’

  ‘You said you’d invite me. Oh, and your kid nearly died. Why are you here? Have you—’ Zeina pulled herself away from Juliet, holding her by the shoulders, fake shock on her face. ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve changed your mind, yes? Is that it? You’re moving back?!’

  ‘Yes! We’re all moving in together! My three, me, Matt, and eight-months-pregnant Tess and her two children! . . . I’m picking up Bea. She’s been staying for a week, her exams finished early.’

  ‘But she’s not there. She and Matt left an hour or so ago. I saw them coming back from the shops. Come inside, have a cuppa with me while you wait for them.’

  Juliet looked at her watch. ‘Sure. Or I could walk on the Heath . . .’

  ‘You don’t want to come to my house?’ Zeina was smiling, head on one side. ‘OK, babe. OK.’

  ‘I do.’ Juliet couldn’t look at her. Standing here she felt a deep love for the simplicity of the life they’d had, where everyone lived on the same road or nearabouts, and life was easy, school was down the road, the Heath was metres away, the Tube, the corner shop, the pizza place and where everyone was from another place, was interesting, hardworking, hadn’t made their mind up about stuff. ‘But I don’t want to sit in your kitchen. I think it might make me lose my shit. I miss you.’ She felt fat tears, plopping from the corners of her eyes on to her sleeve. ‘I really miss you.’

  ‘You idiot.’ Zeina put her arm round her and led her up the small path to her house. ‘We speak all the time.’

  ‘About solicitor things. Not normal things.’

  ‘Stop being crazy and come inside. The kitchen’s been painted. You won’t recognise it and that’ll make it easier.’ Juliet nodded, wiping her eyes, and Zeina gave a half-sob, half-laugh. ‘Oh, mate. I miss you too. I’ve flirted with other mums, but I don’t like them as much.’

  ‘Me too. Well, there’s this nice woman, Jo, but I haven’t seen her for ages. We chat at pick-up, and we’ve had coffee a few times, but now it’s the holidays I’m too shy to take it further and ask her for a drink.’

  ‘Oh good grief. Now,’ said Zeina, when they were inside and the kettle was on. ‘Now. Tell me quickly. What’s happening with the painting.’

  Zeina was acting as Juliet’s lawyer and had already advised her on insurance. ‘Sam might call today actually. He’s meeting someone from the Tate.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Hamilton. The museum director. I told you about him.’

  ‘Ah. You like him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your voice goes up when you talk about him. You like him. Or he likes you. Which one? Or both?’

  ‘Neither. Both.’ Juliet looked around the familiar kitchen, hers in reverse, the cork board, the word magnets on the fridge, the spider plant left on top of the kitchen cupboard that reproduced in looping brackets, hanging over boxes of tupperware – she had spent more time in this room than anyone else’s. It was very strange to be back. She glanced into the garden, the Astroturf square that Nawal rode his digger around on, the swifts that circled overhead in the evenings, looping up and around the streets below.

  We could just say it was a year off. I could sell Nightingale House, move back to London, buy my dream house on Dartmouth Park Avenue or somewhere in Highgate, pick our lives back up. Sandy wouldn’t even remember it.

  Then it hit her that Isla’s playdate with Emily was tomorrow, and Sandy’s coming home party was on Saturday, and Dr Mulligan was coming for lunch on Sunday, with her son who was Isla’s age. And George and Frederic had found a chest of drawers they said would be perfect for the hallway, and two more pieces for the doll’s house had turned up in a house clearance over in Walbrook, the recently deceased a long-forgotten schoolmate of Stella’s who’d perhaps purloined them for herself, many years ago. The doll’s house had not returned yet from the specialist who was repairing it at the Museum of Childhood but he promised it was fixable. So they were collecting new items for when it was back home again, this time probably to be kept in the hallway. Low down.

  Honor had come several times to help with the garden, and had said she’d send her gardener over
next week to give Juliet some advice. And, besides, the sweet peas needed cutting every day now, shoving into vases and giving out their cinnamon-sugar scent all over the house. The dahlias were just starting, and she couldn’t bear to miss them – the first bursting out from the tight, dark buds into elaborate origami-puffs of blood red, fuchsia pink, bright orange, mixed in with blue cornflowers, the citrus-yellow-and-pale-pink snapdragons, the cool green of the leaves against the wall. She had to stake the sunflowers, and pick the camomile for tea, and sort out Sandy’s room – he had a new big boy bed, with sides on it. Matt had said it was idiotic, buying a child who’d just suffered a head trauma a bed instead of keeping him in a cot, but Juliet felt the opposite – that he needed to be treated like a boy who was growing up, had things to look forward to, responsibility. He had been babied for three months, given his way on everything, and she had to give him freedom and teach him responsibility again.

  All of that he could have in Nightingale House. Not here. Not any more. She had grown out of London, grown away from it. It was Matt’s city, not hers. But more fundamental than any of that, it was that Juliet knew she couldn’t leave the house. The pull she had always felt towards it throughout her life was, now that she lived there, stronger than ever. As if she and the house were entwined. It wasn’t about Ned, or the painting, or Grandi. It was the house. It was her home. She wanted nothing else but that.

  She looked down at her Converses, and saw with shame that they were caked in mud.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Zeina handed her the cup of tea.

  ‘Just that it’s so nice to see you. I miss you so much but I don’t think I want to come back.’