Consider the Lily (44 page)

‘Oh, Kit,’ she said, realizing that he was going to let her down for a second time. Then with the self-abnegation of love she asked herself, What does it matter? ‘I love you, Kit,’ she said and pulled him towards her. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

With an inarticulate sound between a groan and a sigh, Kit buried his head in her shoulder. ‘Nothing, Daisy. Nothing at all. Just a goose over my grave.’ He muttered something else into the nape of her neck, which she did not hear, and held her so tightly that her breasts hurt. He had not meant to touch her ever again. But shock, the darkness and the flowers removed his defences. After a minute, he pulled free and cupped her chin in his hand.

‘I wasn’t going to do this,’ he said. ‘It’s all over as we agreed. It has to be.’

‘Is it?’ she whispered.

‘I can’t bring myself to say it,’ he said.

‘It is,’ she said.

Frightened, exhilarated, disappointed, Daisy’s hope died.

Kit pushed down her shoulder strap, peeled away the damp silk chemise underneath, and bent to kiss the exposed breast that gleamed lily pale in the moonlight.

‘Delicious coffee,’ said Archie who had forgotten his initial doubts about Matty. In fact, he had enjoyed the evening: Matty had been ready to agree to all his opinions.

‘I can’t live without good coffee.’

‘Quite right,’ said Archie. Matty tucked her handkerchief into her evening bag. ‘You are not at all like your cousin, Mrs Dysart.’

‘No,’ said Matty, rather sharply for her. ‘Not at all.’

Where was Daisy? Matty looked up and realized that neither she nor Kit was present and nerve ends sent a warning. She got to her feet and smoothed the Dove gown over her hips. Like a doll, thought Archie idly, but when she looked down at him he found himself looking into the undoll-like eyes of a real woman who was angry.

‘I must check that there is more of this delicious coffee to give you,’ she said.

Is that the way of it? thought Archie, having worked out that both his host and the girl from London were missing. Dear, dear, how predictable things were.

Matty held the skirt of her gown in one hand and ran down the kitchen passage, past the Exchequer. The door was ajar revealing piles of paper on the desk and a forgotten teacup on the window sill.

It should have been cleared away, she thought.

In the kitchen Mrs Dawes was busy decanting left-over food at the table. She looked weary, and Matty knew she should go in and say something. But not now. Not now.

She let herself out of the back door. Away from the terrace, it was quiet outside in the kitchen yard and Matty caught the sharp, feral smell of a fox which had been rooting in the compost buckets. Something, someone, moved, and Matty turned her head sharply. The moon shone directly onto the path leading into the garden. Dressed in a blue smocked cotton dress, hair shining, the girl ran ahead of Matty.

And Matty, knowing that she should be with her guests, knowing that she was courting disaster, that it was best to leave alone, knowing all these things, followed the figure, her heart soft with fear.

‘Wait for me,’ she called, stumbling down the cleared path towards the garden.
Her
garden. ‘Wait for me.’

The moon drew pointed fingers on the path. There was the spot under the beech trees where Matty had knelt and grubbed up laurel roots with splitting fingernails. There was the place she had dug until her back shrieked in protest, filled the hole with compost, steadied a hornbeam’s roots and driven in the stake. There she had slashed, cut and trampled on the nettles and weeds, and there she had planted anemones, daffodils and a scented viburnum.

At the edge of the garden, the girl stopped and turned. Matty gasped. The patched light had turned the small face almost transparent:
A curious, deathly bloodlessness that filled Matty with a sense of unutterable waste.

‘Who are you?’ she asked desperately.

Anguish darkened the blue eyes, tightened the childish mouth and traced lines between the thin nose and golden hairline. Seemingly irresolute, or casting deep within herself, the child hovered at the edge of the garden. Then she glided down the slope, flitting on booted feet with a swish and a swing of blue cotton.

The sexual parts of a lily are obvious. Huge, swollen and sticky with pollen, they wait for the bee’s attention or the gardener’s cross-pollinating brush. The Madonna lily –
Lilium candidum –
has a strong claim to be the oldest domesticated flower, and the loveliest. It is found on Cretan vases; it was known to the Assyrians and carried west by the Phoenicians. Possibly the Romans brought it to England and, possibly, it was the poet Virgil who gave this lily its name. The Venerable Bede made the lily the symbol of the Virgin’s resurrection but also the bulbs were used for the most earthbound ailments: boils, baldness, dropsy, erysipelas and quinsy.

Stainless white through which shines the likeness of gold. Pure and yet carnal. Beautiful and gross. Obedient to cultivation, yet eluding the cultivator — for the scent of the lily has never been captured. And dies with the flower.

Like the slug who flings himself over the sand to feed on their white and gold and suffers a thousand razor slashes to do so, Matty, who had dug their beds, guarded them, staked, cherished and fed the lilies, was drawn by the child towards their dying trumpets and their heavy, selfish perfume.

The child dodged around the stone statue. And vanished.

Under Kit’s, Daisy’s long, slender body seemed even more so than Matty remembered. Her dress lay sloughed beside her on the grass, her long arms were twisted around Kit’s neck and her legs raised to take in his body.

Kit’s face was hidden, but Daisy’s was thrown back on the turf. Dizzy from the heat and from running, Matty, nevertheless, saw clearly the parted mouth and the beautiful face on which was mixed passion, shame and triumph in equal part.

I like to think that at the cusp between two seasons, time pauses: nothing changes, one plant is suspended in dying, another in taking its place. Such is the moment between high summer and that cool displacement of air in the evenings which warns that the wheel has turned a ratchet towards autumn.

Shakespeare, who had these things right, chose the image of two buckets passing one another to illustrate the anatomy of power. First one king is up, then the other. So it can be said of the garden.

September’s cool nights and dew-drenched gardens suggest winter – only to up-end our ideas with a succession of hot, luscious days. I don’t object. The lilies are dead, blackberries ripen in the hedges, the scent of windfall apples in the orchard fills the air, and the sun feels hot and strong on my back as I pick fruit crops and fuss over flowerbeds with secateurs.

In September, I dispatch Thomas outdoors to plant bulbs in the cottage garden, which he does with a reasonable grace. Full of contentment, and the memory of the good years we have shared, I watch him potter up and down the path and give thanks that I have been dealt with so generously by life.

Up at the house, I contemplate the stars of the September garden. Pink nerines, autumn crocuses and the powder blue of the agapanthus. I take out my notebook and record that we should move this hosta, or that iris, try this experiment... grow the clematis ‘Étoile Violette’ through a dull green tree... eradicate the marigolds... I write it down because memory is never as precise as you imagine. Certainly not
my
memory.

Last year I forgot to put in the asters, so essential to prolonging the autumn flowering season. The autumn spectrum tends to red and gold but with their whites, pinks, lavenders and mauves, the perennial asters (introduced from America in the seventeenth century) nicely contradict this rule. They are obliging plants, offer themselves in a range of heights, will grow in both light and shade – and Thomas will tell you I never like to bypass a willing flower.

My last thoughts for September rest with the sedum. The most generous and showy form is ‘Autumn Joy’, whose flat pink platelike blossoms act as a beacon for bees. (If you leave the dead flower heads till the frosts you will be rewarded by an ice-sprinkled fantasy in the flowerbed.) I love watching the bees cloud the flower; busy and pollen-filled. The young sedum is no trouble, but the older plant tends to splay outwards – a bit like myself, I always think.

Afterwards Matty could never be sure how she came to be lying on the river bank. She was wringing wet, hair trailing over her face and her mouth tasting of rot, gravel and sour vomit. Mud spread into her eyes and ears.

She remembered only the hot scent of lilies, Daisy’s sudden cry as she saw Matty, Kit’s bent, absorbed head and running. Running away. Running on high heels up the river path towards the splintering jetty. She remembered the crunch of stone, a splash and the piercing cry of a disturbed bird. There was a smell of wet vegetation, the slap of water on her skin and mud sprouting silkily through her fingers. Then, she had spun round and round, the black Dove gown billowing, and plunged into the matching blackness.

Above all, Matty remembered the stones pressing into her face as someone thumped hard on her back. Danny shouting, ‘Get ‘elp. There’s been an accident’ – and of how it did not surprise her to be hovering between death and a ridiculous desire to ask if her guests had been offered more coffee.

Matty had known all along that she did not deserve happiness.

‘My goodness, you gave us a fright.’ Robbie plumped up the pillows and wedged Matty upright. ‘Open your mouth now, please.’ She inserted a spoon between Matty’s lips and then pushed Matty’s jaw shut. ‘Swallow, please.’

If ever I have sinned, thought Matty, wearily picking her way back to consciousness out of drugged sleep, this surely must be my punishment. Robbie and a medicine spoon. ‘Time?’ she whispered through a throat so sore it was raw.

‘Four o’clock in the afternoon. You’ve been asleep for some time. Very natural, considering.’ Robbie did not refer to the hideous business of resuscitation, the bowls and tubes, the sounds, the touch-and-go of the first half-hour.

‘What happened?’

Robbie pulled down her sleeves, fastened the cuffs and sat down heavily on the bed with the determination of a professional interrogator charged with a mission to gather information. ‘You tell me, Mrs Kit.’ She leant over and Matty’s vision was filled by the moon face and hedge of hair. ‘Did you trip in the dark? Those high heels? You can tell me, Mrs Kit.’

Matty closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her sore lips. ‘I don’t know.’ Fragmented memories sifted like blown dust through her mind.

‘Mr Kit can’t make out why you were up by that part of the river in the first place.’

‘Who found me?’

Robbie pursed her lips. ‘That Danny person,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why he was in the grounds. He said he heard a noise and came to check up. He found you floating in the water by the boathouse.’

Deceptive and incomplete, the first recovered memory drove a needle into Matty’s chest. I can cope with that, she thought. Then, as the rest assembled – the hot night, the girl... Kit and Daisy twined together – the needle turned into a sword which smashed through bone and nerve. Matty closed her eyes: somehow she had to endure it. Finger on Matty’s pulse, Robbie checked off the pulse beats against the watch pinned onto her chest in the way she had observed Miss Binns doing it.

‘There, there,’ she said, her tone a mixture of curiosity and excitement at the drama. Matty’s eyes remained closed and she continued, ‘Fancy. I’m going to have my hands full with two invalids. I haven’t been so busy since Mr Kit and the girls were young. I don’t know how I’m going to manage.’ She meant exactly the opposite.

Because she knew it was important to put the record straight, Matty summoned the remnants of her energy. ‘I must have fallen in,’ she croaked – and allowed herself to believe it. She opened her eyes and willed Robbie to look directly at her. ‘Wasn’t that silly of me?’ Robbie was silent. ‘Wasn’t it, Miss Robson?’

The older woman gave in. ‘Yes,’ she said, reluctant to bypass drama but aware of her duty, which was to preserve the Dysart reputation. ‘You must have done. That landing stage is a disgrace. I’ve warned Sir Rupert about it for years.’

Half an hour later when Robbie went downstairs for her tea, Flora came and sat by Matty’s bed.

‘Poor darling,’ she said, in her best conversational manner to conceal her shock and concern. ‘Father sends his regards and says hurry up and get better as no one reads to him like you. He says you and he are two of a bloody kind. Careless.’ Flora took Matty’s hand. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘My throat is hellish.’

‘Aha.’ Flora nodded. ‘That must have been the tube Dr Lofts put down.’ Conscious that her interest made for a certain ghoulishness, she supplied the medical detail. ‘Robin had to make sure you hadn’t swallowed anything terrible in the river.’ She rubbed Matty’s hand hard. ‘Awful for you. You might have died.’

‘Dr Lofts?’ Matty’s croak was awful. ‘How did... I thought...’

‘Well.’ For the life of her, Flora could not prevent her eyes brightening. At the same time she managed to look both shamefaced and defiant. ‘It was an emergency and he
is
the nearest doctor. Besides, I thought you liked him. Don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Flora was forced to bend over to hear Matty properly. ‘I do.’

A flush stormed into Flora’s cheeks and she ducked her head. ‘I mean, he’s so good with people, don’t you think? Not that it’s any of my business. So gentle, though.’ Too preoccupied with the reappearance of Robin to ask questions, Flora would have continued in the same vein but Matty interrupted.

‘Flora. Listen. Please.’

Flora edged the chair closer to the bed. ‘What is it, old thing? I don’t think you should be talking too much.’

Matty took a deep shuddering breath. ‘Daisy?’ she asked. ‘Aunt Susan and Uncle Ambrose? Have they gone?’

Flora’s hair was a halo in the evening sun; beneath it her blue eyes were perplexed and affectionate. ‘They went this morning,’ she said. ‘Daisy felt they should get out of the way. Besides, she wasn’t feeling very well. It was the best thing and, frankly, they were a nuisance. Did you...?’ Flora hesitated to ask Matty because it did not seem likely, but perhaps a brush with death made people feel different. ‘I don’t suppose you wanted to see her.’