The Insistent Garden (14 page)
“Not for a few hours.”
He surveyed the brickwork, then let out a word that sounded like “gristle” as he spotted a bubble in the mortar. “This thing's on the piss, love, I don't think I like it.”
“But it's not high enough yet.”
“Sweetheart,” he took my hand in his. “High enough for what?”
“To keep him out.”
“Edie, he's not going to climb over.”
I didn't reply.
“And if he really wanted to get to you he could knock on the front door, like the postman.”
Elastic bands jumped into my mind. “Archie, I have to check something.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the front garden.”
I rushed in the back door, through the house and out into the front garden. Although adept at scrambling over walls, Archie was not a runner, and as he caught up with me he wheezed like a constipated donkey.
Approaching the hedge I noticed a strip of newly flattened leaves between the two gardens.
“Looks like a fox trail,” Archie said, coming up beside me.
“Yes, it must be that, yes, a fox trail.”
“Edie, what are you worrying about?”
“I. . . he wouldn't come into our front garden, would he?”
Archie sighed. “Edie, he can go where he likes.”
“He wouldn't though, would he?”
Archie wiped his hand over his bald patch. “He hasn't yet, so why should anything change?”
“Yet?”
“Look, love,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder, “Maybe you should try to forget about him? Just for a while.”
“How can I?” I said.
He bent forward and picked up a handful of soil. “By getting your hands dirty.”
The flowers in Archie's garden were arranged as if for a painting. My garden was in a state of upheaval: mortar bags lined the wall, the beds lay naked and ready for planting, the lawn was stippled with tufts of rough grass, and as I surveyed it from my bedroom window I realized I needed to make a plan for this piece of ground that had been so unexpectedly given up to me. I hurried down into the kitchen and looked for something on which to draw. But mine was a paperless house. Apart from the daily newspaper, telephone directories were the densest repositories of text that gained entry to our home. I rummaged in the sideboard but found nothing but a pile of stained receipts left by the brick merchant. The newspaper lay unguarded on the table but I ignored it, went over to the pantry and opened the door. Tins of peas sat quietly on the top shelf. I peeled off a label, picked up a pencil that lay on the table and went outside.
I had never learned to draw. Straight lines had kinks and circles had straights and even a simple rectangle taxed my abilities so the edge of the plot was tired and ragged. Drawing the centre of the garden was harder still. The old hawthorn bed was all I managed to get down on the page, hovering beside Archie's wall like a sulky child. I sucked the end of the pencil, tasting lead, and wondered from what place ideas come. I thought of Snowshill. I tried to recall its shape, its interlocking rooms and the loose piles of colour, and as I did so a square appeared. It hovered, lost on the page. I rubbed it out. Then a circle appeared. I rubbed it out. Then I pictured my father standing at the kitchen window and a new line crawled across the paper, thick and black, it crossed at right angles between the two walls. A new wall. I rubbed it out. Then the line returned, dots placed in a row. Trees. I would have trees. No one would be able see me behind them. I rubbed it out. I thickened the line of the existing high wall; specks of lead gathered; I blew them off. Finally, a curved line curled its way across the paper and a half circle dared to touch the edge of the high wall in two places.
Archie was feeling the waist of one of his prize marrows when I eased my body over his garden wall.
“I sense something important is coming my way,” he said looking up.
“I need your opinion.”
“Made a new skirt?”
I glanced down at the swath of material tethered to my waist. “No, I've drawn a picture of the garden. I'd like to know what you think.”
Archie smiled. “Forward planning. Brilliant.”
I knelt down beside him and smoothed the label across my knee. “This black line shows the wall, ours, not yours.”
“Edie, I can see that.”
“And here are the new trees.”
“You're planting trees?”
“Well. . . one day, I thought. . .”
“In a semi-circle?”
“Don't you like it?”
“I love it.”
“And here's a blue flower bed along the back fence. It'll be filled with nothing but blue flowers and â”
“Why blue?”
“I'm not sure.”
He folded long fingers over his knees. “My mother told me blue is the colour of dreams.”
“Is it?”
Archie's pupils were dilated, the irises flecked with orange. “Let's wait and see.”
My mother told me.
Pieces of damp plaster stuck to my fingers as I felt my way down into the cellar that night. The books lay in silent rows, their spines begging me to choose, so I lifted out a thin volume, its cover the colour of vellum, and flicked through the pages, which pushed air up onto my face. But I didn't read the words. All I could see was the drawing of a garden in my head, the shaky lines, the scattered dots, the picture of something that didn't yet exist.
Just then a piece of paper flew out and landed on the floor. When I picked it up I saw it was a receipt. The date had faded with time but the name of the shop was clear. âJones Bookshop' could have been printed that morning.
34 Ethrington Street
Billingsford,
Northamptonshire
September 18th 1968
Dear Gill,
You're right, it was a bit cheesy, quoting from a greeting card last time, but those rhymes get to you don't they? It's a clever bloke who can write a little poem that makes a tough old bird like me think twice. Talking of clever blokes, I met Martin Moist in the pub last night. Didn't tell you about him, did I? His dad used to have a grocer's up on Wiggington Street â he knows all about the hell I go though trying to sort the Sunday papers at four in the morning â anyway, he works at the brickworks, does deliveries â so he tells me this long story, one of those that never end â when there's time to order a pack of pork scratchings and pop to the loo and you haven't missed a thing â when he starts telling me about this house he delivers to. Been going for years, he says, and there's this mad family living there. So, what do they want with all those bricks I'm thinking when he drops the bombshell. The main madwoman always wears red. Now I'm really interested. The main madwoman must be that woman, that mad red woman of ours. But Gill, what's more he knows all about her, went to school with her and her brother. So I waited for him to tell me, (got another lager and lime) and it all came out. They were both a bit odd as children, their father died in an accident at the factory and their mother was never home. The woman in red, called Vivian (bit fancy) was the school bully. She started young. She had kids crying all the time and found a way into the plumbing and knew how to flush the loos when the little ones were sitting on them. Then she'd follow them home and yank on their hoods when they tried to run away. I listened and all the time I'm thinking of that red stare and I'm thinking of how awful it must've been when he starts telling me how she never stopped being a bully, how she lives alone, and now even grown men are scared of her. Even Martin Moist with his big brickie shoulders crosses the street when she appears on the horizon.
Couldn't resist another rummage in the greeting cards just now. Those little messages do make me want to cry. I wrote one down for you Gill, but rubbed it out.
Jean
I'd never been to the top of Adlington Street before. My family's shoes often sat on a shelf in the cobblers at the bottom of the road but the area beyond was unknown to me. I soon discovered the cracks between the pavement stones were spaced more widely in this part of town and as I placed my foot in the centre of each slab I reached the top of the hill quickly. I fingered the receipt in my pocket while I gazed along a narrow garden path. It led to up to a front door with a hand-written âOpen' sign taped to the top.
Jones Bookshop was part of a house; I could see bookshelves through the bay window as I approached the entrance. I pushed the door open as quietly as I could but a bell rung shrilly from somewhere above me. A man looked up from behind a large desk â its surface heavy with papers â at the end of the room. His body jumped into a greeting posture. “Good morning!” he said.
I felt like his first ever customer, such was the delight in his eyes.
“Morning.”
“Harold Jones,” he said, coming towards me and gathering up my hand.
“Edith. . . Stoker.”
“Oh, my,” he said, loosening his grip. “I was wondering when you might come.”
I stepped back. “What do you mean?”
“My, my.” He twisted the tip of his beard into a point. “You don't know who I am, do you?”
I glanced over my shoulder; no more than six steps to the door. “Sorry, I don't.”
“You did know this is where your mother used to work, I assume.”
“No. I didn't. Here?”
“Right here.” He smiled. “We worked together for several years.”
I didn't know I'd been waiting for this moment to arrive. “Did she. . . did she. . .” I scanned the room; a mug sat innocently on a nearby shelf, “. . . did she like tea?”
He blinked. “Well, yes. She liked tea. She was particularly good at taking tea breaks, come to think of it.” He smiled. “One of the best.” He looked over his shoulder. “I don't have a spare chair but would you like to sit on my desk with me and talk?”
“Yes. . . yes I would.”
Harold Jones preferred desks to chairs. I could see that from the way he opened a hip-wide space into the papers on his desk and lifted his body up. I eased myself up onto the other end.
“If you don't mind me asking, how old are you now, Edith?” he said.
“Eighteen.”
He seemed to be seeing something in the air. “I can't believe it's been that long.”
“Since she worked here?”
He smiled awkwardly. “Yes, since she worked here. I was very fond of your mother, you know.”
I squeezed the edge of the desk, trying to summon the courage. “What was she like?”
Harold Jones gazed across the room. “Well. . . she was quiet when she arrived. I never knew what she was thinking. But she settled in and she was a good worker and yet she knew how to relax. We spent many happy tea breaks on the sofa, reading, and I soon realized that she'd found something here that she hadn't found anywhere else.”
“What did she find?”
“Poetry.”
“You mean her books?”
“Which books?”
“Her boxes of books down in the cell â”
“I'm not sure what you mean but I'm talking about the books here, the ones she was selling to customers. She read them all. Then she started buying them for her friends.”
“She had friends?”
“Oh, yes, they often came in when she was at work, then she started taking books home and reading them to your father, she'd ask me to help her choose the titles and, oh. . . are you alright?”
“Yes, I. . .”
“Can I get you something, a glass of water? You look pale.”
“Yes, please.”
He slipped off the desk and disappeared through a doorway. I glimpsed a sofa draped with a brown blanket and cushions flattened. It was good to be alone for a moment, to have time to look around, a tentative look at the place my mother had walked into every day. A moment later Harold Jones returned holding a cup. Before he reached me the door opened and an elderly man stepped into the shop. “Morning, Harold.”
“Albert.”
