The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  Carefully, Helene asked, “How is business?”

  Kevin shrugged his shoulders. “It’s fine. It’s been better. The way things are with the economy in general … you know.”

  Helene sighed. Of course times were bad. Hardly anyone could expect business to be as lucrative as in the boom years of the eighties. But still she couldn’t quite work it out for herself why …

  “How much money do you need then?” She asked.

  They were sitting in the dining room, where a dim half-light shut out the splendid early summer day outside. A cherry tree by the window cast cool green shadows. Helene and Beatrice had planted it shortly after the war was over, driven by the need to create something that was alive, something that would grow, something beautiful. Back then the tree had looked like a thin, bent broom handle.

  “To life,” Helene had said, with one last pat of her shovel. Brushing her tousled hair away from her forehead, she had felt faint again and suddenly had had to sit back down. Hunger had made her too weak. Her already delicate constitution had suffered greatly from months of starvation rations. She would black out at the slightest exertion, and the heat that day had only made things worse.

  For the longest time the tree was sickly. They were diligent about watering it, but there was always the sense that it would pack it in at any moment. But then one day, long after they’d lost faith, the spindly little tree had suddenly recovered. Its leaves no longer drooped; it even brought out a few pretty white blossoms. And now it’s so strong, Helene thought, so tall!

  She’d actually wanted to have tea with Kevin out in the garden, but he had requested that their conversation take place in the house. And so already she’d known that it was about money again.

  “I need about a thousand pounds,” said Kevin.

  Helene gasped. “That is quite a lot of money!”

  “Twelve hundred would be even better. I could get by for a fair stretch of time.”

  “Don’t you think you could’ve gotten these greenhouses for cheaper?”

  “If you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it properly.” Kevin raised his hands helplessly. “I know. It’s ridiculous, the way I’ve been acting. You must feel like I’m taking advantage of you — like I’m using you. But I’ve got no one else to go to. You’re still the only one.”

  As usual, Helene felt flattered by Kevin’s tactics — she saw through the calculation behind them completely — which elevated her to the status of being his only source of hope and salvation. It was good to be needed, especially when you were old and felt used-up and superfluous. Kevin knew this, of course, and made use of it for his own purposes, but Helene was also convinced that he did in fact like her. She was a stand-in mother, grandmother, older sister. Kevin hadn’t a single relative left. He’d often claimed that he’d feel even more abandoned if it weren’t for Helene.

  “I’ll go upstairs and grab a check,” Helene said. She rose briskly and saw how the tension left Kevin’s face. He’d been afraid she might say no this time. While she headed up the stairs she tried to think of how much money he already owed her. It must have been close to ten thousand pounds, all told.

  When she came back down again she crossed paths with Beatrice, who was just coming in from the garden. She wore workman’s gloves and had bound her hair in a silk scarf to keep it from getting in her face. Helene recognized the scarf: she had bought it in Paris and given it to Beatrice as a present. It had cost a fortune. And now she was using it like it was any other headband!

  Everything she does, thought Helene. Everything she does she has to show me how little I mean to her!

  “I saw Kevin in the dining room,” said Beatrice. “Did he come to see me or you?”

  “Me,” Helene replied. She tried to hide the check in her hand, but Beatrice had already seen it.

  “You’re giving him money again! He was here just three weeks ago! And the week before that! And the beginning of February, and …”

  “I don’t mind. I have enough.”

  “I will never understand,” said Beatrice, “how it is you manage to have such sums at your disposal. Your pension really isn’t all that much. You must have squirreled away every penny — and now you’re just wasting it all on Kevin.”

  “I’m not wasting it. What’s an old woman like me supposed to do with all that money? There’s nothing wiser than helping a young person who’s in the process of making a life for himself.”

  “Kevin made a life for himself a long time ago. If he’s still in need of money all the time, it means he’s set his sights higher than his circumstances allow.”

  “He’s bought those greenhouses in Perelle Bay.”

  “That was a year ago already. And I’d really like to have a look at these fantastic greenhouses of his. The way he’s been borrowing from you, it must be unbelievable how lavishly he’s built them up.”

  “I always thought you liked Kevin!”

  “Of course I like Kevin. But he doesn’t know how to handle his money. Whether it’s greenhouses or something else — somehow he’s always miscalculating. He’s like a bottomless barrel!”

  “It’s my money,” Helene said after a moment’s silence. “I can do with it what I like.”

  Beatrice raised both her hands. “Absolutely. Nobody is telling you what to do. But just be careful, okay?”

  The telephone rang, relieving Helene of the need to respond. Beatrice hurried to pick up, and Helene went into the dining room, where in the meantime Kevin had become restless and begun pacing back and forth. He reached for the check like a drowning man for a rope.

  “Thank you, Helene, I don’t know where I’d be without you.” He folded the check with care and put it in his wallet. “I have to go. Would you like to come over on Saturday? I’ll cook something wonderful for you.”

  “I’ll come,” said Helene. His friendliness, his smile — they did her good, like a warm summer wind or the smell of grass and flowers. Kevin had a magical way of moving a person’s soul. Helene would have paid three times as much for such tenderness.

  She accompanied him to the door and watched as he got into his car. That past fall he’d been without a car for a time; someone had slammed into him hard while parking, and his car had been in the shop for a long while. Helene had paid for the repairs, as they couldn’t find the driver responsible for the damage. It truly was just bad luck, she’d explained to Beatrice. It hadn’t been Kevin’s fault at all.

  He waved to her before driving off, and it wasn’t until he had disappeared past a bend in the road that she finally closed the door. Beatrice came up to her.

  “That was Franca,” she said. “You know, the young woman that Alan turned up with here in September. She’s coming to Guernsey tomorrow and wanted to know if she could have the room at short notice.”

  “That is really short notice,” said Helene. “She certainly must have made up her mind quickly.”

  “She did sound odd,” said Beatrice meditatively. “Hectic, upset. I asked how long she would be staying, and she said she didn’t know. Then she added, ‘maybe I’ll never go back,’ and hung up.”

  She’d started out throwing her clothes into a suitcase at random. She couldn’t manage to concentrate. She reached in the dresser and took out whatever she could grab, eventually realizing what a useless and absurd selection this method had given her. She took everything out of the suitcase and forced herself to collect her thoughts. It was April. It was somewhat warm. She should bring a few lighter things with her. T-shirts, shorts, one or two dresses. But she needed sweaters for cool evenings. Jeans, rain gear. Since she would be going by car, she could take plenty of luggage with her, as much as she wanted. Would she be able to pull it off? She had studied her route closely on the map. She had to go down to Saarbrücken, and from there over the border into France. Then towards Paris, farther on
into Brittany until she reached St.-Malo, and from there take the ferry to Guernsey …

  Franca closed the suitcase and then threw underwear and socks into the travel bag she’d prepared. Beatrice had sounded surprised on the telephone, but also quite delighted.

  “Of course, Franca, come! I have absolutely nothing booked for the spring. The room is all yours.”

  Beatrice’s kindness had done her good. She’d been lucky; it could easily have been the case that the room wasn’t free. Franca wasn’t sure if she would have had the courage or the follow-through to find herself another room. She might have given up on the whole plan.

  Even though, strictly speaking, she had no choice.

  She paused. She’d been frantically packing up her things. She’d laid suitcases and bags out on the bed — on the bed she’d shared with Michael every night for almost twelve years. Including the previous night. The last one, perhaps.

  Once again he had come home late. He’d neither called nor mentioned anything at breakfast about possibly coming home a bit later. For some time now he had no longer bothered with such courtesies. He came and went as it suited him. He acted like Franca was barely even there.

  She had watched television and drunk a lot of red wine, and she had tried to hold back the growing suspicion that she was basically wasting her life, alone in this house evening after evening, watching television and upping her alcohol consumption. She was thirty-four years old. Everyone said this was a fantastic age, that the years between thirty and forty-five were the best in a woman’s life. For Franca, it seemed, they’d turned into a nightmare. At half past eleven she went to bed, tired and feeling sluggish on account of the wine. But she’d barely turned off the light when all at once she was wide awake again. She tossed from side to side, listened to the house’s every sound. Finally, she turned the light back on and reached for a book. She started to read and realized she wasn’t really able to take in a single sentence. She couldn’t understand a thing.

  At one o’clock the front door opened and Michael came up the stairs. Franca knew by the bounce in his step that he was in a good mood. Once he had reached the landing he tried to move quietly — it’s obviously just occurred to him that I still exist, Franca thought bitterly. He came into the bedroom on tiptoe and was startled to see that the light was on and Franca was awake.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” He asked, his voice full of reproach. In an instant his good mood seemed to have fallen in on itself.

  “You’re home rather late,” Franca said in place of an answer. It was clear to her that he was coming from his mistress. She saw it on him — though she couldn’t have said for sure what it was exactly that she noticed about him. His tie wasn’t crooked, there was no lipstick on his face, his hair wasn’t ruffled. Nor did he smell of strange perfume, as far as she could tell. But he radiated something … smug contentment, unswerving self-confidence, a sense of harmony with himself and his life — happiness …

  Yes, maybe that’s it, thought Franca, and the sharp pains in her stomach made it clear how much this thought shook her: He is happy.

  Up to now she had refused to consider a link between the notion of happiness, which as she conceived of it had always combined a certain purity with an old-fashioned romanticism, and a frivolous extramarital affair. But maybe she’d been kidding herself. Michael was happy, he looked happy, and that was that. She could ignore his happiness all she wanted, but it didn’t change a thing.

  “What time is it, anyway?” Michael said in response to her observation. He sat on the bed with his back to her and began to take off his shoes. Franca made a show of looking at the alarm clock next to her, though she knew quite well how late it was.

  “Five past one. I assume you weren’t at the office all this time.”

  He had slipped his shoes off by then. He stood up and tugged at his tie. “God no, of course not. What would I be doing spending half the night at the office?”

  “Were you with her, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it nice?”

  She had expected him to bat her question away, to shout at her, tell her she shouldn’t talk that kind of nonsense and embarrass them both. But instead, he hesitated a moment and said, “Yes. It was a wonderful evening.“

  His voice had a soft tone to it. Franca remembered, darkly, having heard this tone once before. It was a very long time ago, many, many years ago. She had forgotten it, hadn’t believed it still existed. And now Michael summoned it up as if not a day had passed and nothing had changed. As if, in all the time that had passed in between, the world hadn’t fallen apart.

  She needed a few moments to get a hold of herself. Then, her voice raw, she said, “My night was not quite as wonderful. I watched television, though I couldn’t tell you anymore what was on, and I drank a bottle of red wine. No one called. I didn’t talk to anyone.”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders. “That’s just how you like it, right? No calls, no conversations. No one who can frighten you. It’s the life you want to lead, so be content with it.”

  “You really believe this is the life I want to lead?”

  “It’s the life that you are leading. And so I assume that’s also how you want it to be.”

  “You mean to say that everything a person does, that person wants to do? As a rule?”

  “Otherwise the person wouldn’t do it, right?” Michael had undressed. He crawled under the covers and stretched out, yawning. “I’m dead tired. Will you please turn off the light?”

  She sat up. “Did it ever enter your head that I could need help? Your help?”

  His mood visibly darkened. He had had a nice evening, what he wanted now was to think back on individual moments from this evening as he fell asleep, and in no way did he want to concern himself with his wife’s problems. He couldn’t solve them. He had been sick and tired of them for too long. “Do we have to discuss this now?” He asked, yawning a second time. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. I need to get some sleep still before I have to get up again at six.”

  “It’s not my fault that you’re getting to bed so late.”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault. I only asked you to let me sleep now. Could you maybe do me that favor?”

  His voice had the honed edge to it that Franca knew so well. She had learned that it was better not to ignore this tone. But hadn’t she always kept silent when he had indicated that she should do so?

  “It can’t keep going on like this.” The words came rushing out. “You have to finally tell me how you imagine things will be from now on. How long are you going to keep up this relationship of yours? And how long are we supposed to keep up this farce of a marriage?”

  She had wanted to speak clearly and harshly, to stand up to him, to act tough and courageous. But as it did so often, her voice sounded whiny and accusatory, even childish. A child, she thought, begging for love and understanding.

  “Michael,” she whispered, and with that she had worn through his patience. Now he was sitting up. He looked at her, eyes flashing. His voice was trembling with rage.

  “Listen up, Franca. Once and for all. Anything to do with your problems, you leave me out of it. I can’t help you, the most I can do is sink down into the mud with you, and I don’t have the least interest in doing so. For me, you’re like a little girl, who sits and sobs and waits for someone to come take her by the hand and care for her and protect her and what-the-Hell-do-I-know-what-else! But goddamn it, Franca, it doesn’t work like that! Not for anyone! Either you pull yourself out of the muck or you let yourself sink deeper and deeper. But stop asking for help. You’re wasting your strength. And you won’t be getting the kind of help you want!” He was breathing hard. Franca couldn’t see any glimmer of sympathy or respect in his eyes. Only irritation. He was fed up.

  “Now leave me alone,” he said, and lay back down
on his pillow.

  He had fallen asleep soon after that. She could tell from his even breathing. She, on the other hand, didn’t close her eyes all night. His words kept on hammering inside her skull. After the injury and anger had faded, she realized to her horror that he might have been rough and brutal, but he had been right.

  She wasn’t a child anymore. There wouldn’t be any mother who would rush in and take her in her arms. No one would come and push away all the stones blocking her way. No one would tell her where she had to step to get through her life unharmed.

  There she stood, alone.

  She had to decide what she wanted to do next. She had to take on the risk of doing the wrong thing. She had to take each step alone and alone bear the responsibility. She grew faint with how mercilessly this knowledge came to her, but there was also the feeling, rising alongside it, that she neither had a choice, nor did she have anything to lose, and this knowledge alleviated the mounting panic. It was as if she’d found herself in free fall. She might as well abandon herself to the fall, since there was no more sense in fighting it.

  Stop throwing tantrums and crying for help, said a voice within. Don’t bury yourself in your fear, either. Just live. Nothing more is asked of you.

  By morning she had made the decision to go to Guernsey. Her heart was racing and her stomach was in revolt, but she tried to ignore these hysterical reactions from her body. She waited until Michael — silent, tired, and in a rather bad mood — had left the house. She didn’t ask if he’d be coming home late that evening — it was all the same to her now. She had the sense that her reserve had confused him a little, and this filled her with a rush of cheeriness.

  The bag was packed. She still had to gather her shoes together and then to go to the bank to take out money and exchange it. It was true she planned to make liberal use of Michael’s account in St. Peter Port, but she wasn’t sure if he could close it, and she didn’t want to find herself suddenly without money. She would take enough with her to last her for at least six weeks.