The Insistent Garden (16 page)

“I've no idea. Why not ask her?”

“You know I can't.”

“Well,” Archie glanced anxiously towards his tomato plants on the verge of ripening, “let's hope they don't move anything else.”

I laughed — a false, unpleasant sound.

My new lawn had been a long time coming. I'd pulled a muscle in my back as I dug out the roots and the newly seeded soil had remained brown for days as puny blades flecked the ground like the hairs on a fly's back. Then almost overnight, green had flooded the ground and I had grass. Or a sward, as Archie liked to call it. But an encyclopedia of weeds discovered a haven in my garden and after many hours spent pulling I went back to the nursery. The shop was quiet when I arrived, the counter abandoned; a solitary man rummaged noiselessly in a box full of bulbs.

“Hello dear,” said Nancy Pit, emerging from a cupboard smelling of herbicide. “Back so soon?”

“I've sown some grass. . .”

She nodded.

“And I've been overrun with weeds.”

She smiled and nodded again.

“So I'd like to buy some Paraquat.”

The nodding stopped. “Paraquat?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say Paraquat?” Her cheeks faded, a dry flannel of skin.

“Yes, Paraquat.”

“The weedkilller?”

“. . . yes.”

She glanced over my shoulder. “We don't have any. Sorry.”

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

I felt confused. “Will you be getting any more in?”

“No.”

“Why is that?”

“It's been taken off the market.”

“Oh, why?”

“It's too. . . dangerous.” She hesitated. “Especially if it gets into the wrong hands.”

“I see. I'll just keep pulling weeds then.”

“Yes dear,” the flannel was flushed, “you keep pulling.”

24

Another magazine arrived. Another collection of unfamiliar things. I picked up the copy of
Billingsford Homes
that had fallen onto the mat and studied the cover. Other people's homes were not like mine. Other people's homes had coffee-making machines and televisions and wide, comfortable armchairs. Other people's homes had books, displayed on shelves not sneaked into the house beneath a coat and hidden beneath the bed. Years of stagnation had abandoned my home to the past and while the rest of my street had moved on, double-glazing their windows and replacing their net curtains with blinds, my home was on hold. I had been making tea in the same teapot my whole life.

I tucked the magazine under my arm, picked up a duster and went into the living room. We hardly ever used this room. Not even Vivian, with her constant desire to rest, liked to lay her elbows on the bony couch. Those limp, fleshy bundles gave me the creeps, the way they sagged over the arms of the sofa if she ever deigned to sit there. Only my father used this room. Always at night, always opposite the window, close to the wall. I came upon him one evening with his hand flat on the wall as if trying to feel a pulse. I tried it later, perched on the chair, hand on the wall, but apart from the cold in the wallpaper and the hum of the fridge passing through the cavity, nothing came back.

I flicked the duster across the top of the telephone. I could not remember the sound of its tone and picked up the handset on impulse. It sounded sad and lonely and I placed my finger in the dial, making up a number I might call in my head. It was then that I noticed the small handle at the base of the phone. I supposed it had always been there but something made me reach down and tug it. As I pulled it, a drawer opened up and a set of stiff papers flipped upwards like a deck of cards. Names and phone numbers were written in compressed letters, ‘Beverley Crossman, 284 3379, Jane Titchmarsh, 667 5690, Doris Winehouse, 667 4894.'

I flicked through, memorizing the names and was so deep in thought I did not realize my father had come into the room, until he spoke.

“Close that drawer.”

The doorway framed his body, the edges of him orange with dust. His shirt was creased on side of his chest as if he'd been hugging a small, warm animal.

“Alright.”

“Come outside. I need your help down at the end.”

I forgot about the drawer as I stood up and followed him to the garden. I forgot about the little deck of cards showing its hand. All I could think of were the names, the names of my mother's friends, Beverley. . . Jane. . . Doris.

Harold Jones' front path was thick with the eager leaves of an ash tree when I arrived at the bookshop and it was almost impossible to approach his front door without making a noise. He appeared to have friends visiting when I peered through the window, if the heap of coats balanced on the back of his chair was anything to go by, so I held back, half tempted to walk quietly back to the street and return to my house. But I couldn't help but watch as a bony-shouldered man, whose hair had become trapped inside the back of his collar, lifted his hand to pull a book from the shelf with the casual ease of someone in his own home. Then I spotted Harold Jones, showering his guests with what seemed like ‘thanks for coming' gestures so I turned the door handle and stepped inside.

I didn't meet his eye as I paused on the doormat but saw, or maybe just imagined, a smile cross the room. The poetry section was small but well signposted and I gravitated towards it as someone who regularly visits bookshops might. I immediately recognized a book on the shelf and succumbed to a feather of anxiety, same title, identical cover, yet this book was out in the light, ready for the eyes of anyone. I began to look through the shelves and was so immersed in a copy of
The Hawk
in the Rain
that I didn't realize Harold Jones had come up beside me.

“Good to see you again, Edith.”

I closed the book. “I'm sorry about last time, Mr. Jones.”

“Oh, that's fine, nothing enlivens the day like a dramatic exit. And Edith, please, call me Harold.”

“What about a remorseful return?” I ventured.

He smiled and touched my shoulder, just for a second. “I'm glad you came back. The pull of a good poem, was it?”

“Where did everyone go?” I noticed the chair was free of coats and the room empty.

“It's getting close to opening time at the Adlington Arms,” he replied, pushing a book back into line. “Looking for anything in particular?” “What did my mother like to read?”

He didn't even pause. “Bereft I was — of what I knew not, too young that any should suspect.”

“Who wrote that?”

“Dickinson. The wonderful and long overlooked Emily. She was a recluse you know.”

Elysium is as far as to the very nearest room.
“What do you mean?”

“She never went out.”

“Why didn't she?”

“My own theory, of course,” he said, “but I suspect she didn't fit her world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she wouldn't receive guests, she never went out and. . .

well, here my theory breaks down a bit, but she always wore white.”

“Does that mean. . . the rest of us are a good fit?”

“My God, you're like your mother.” He pulled out another book, “That's just the sort of remark she'd come at me with. Well, my dear, you've seen her photographs obviously, but I might be able to show you what she really loved.”

It took two hours. Two hours of Harold Jones rummaging through the shelves, letting out the occasional delighted squeal, running to answer the phone, running to sell a book, running back to me, and all the while reading aloud fragments, ‘a little space with boughs all woven round' in a hoarse whisper or, with hand held dramatically on heart, ‘the pear tree lets its petals drop.' And through it all I imagined that I was her, hovering round the shelves, fingering the covers, drawn into the thoughts of people she'd never met. Then we sat on the sofa for a short time and Harold brought me a cup of tea and looked at my hands and said they were just like my mother's.

When I finally left the shop he yelled something up the front garden, something chopped and hidden inside his scarf. It felt good to raise my voice. “What — did — you — say?” He jumped, waved both hands at me and bellowed. “Robert Frost, I forgot Frosty. Your mother adored him. My apple tree. . .” He cleared his throat, “. . .will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.”

I got an attack of nerves when I approached my house, but the excuse was ready, the little lost boy who needed a person to take him home. But the little lost boy had become lost for no reason. When I entered the hall the house reeked of wallpaper paste and the man up the ladder had no idea of how many hours had been lost.

“Hello. . . could I speak to Beverley Crossman. . . yes, Beverley. . . oh, do you know where she moved to? . . . no. . . no, I never go to London, . . . thank you. . . goodbye.”

25

Late summer heralded a glut in Archie's garden. By the end of September bags stuffed with lettuce began arriving outside my back door and as the days grew shorter I started to catch sight of him heaving box-loads of vegetables onto the back of his scooter, heading I knew not where. During this great surge of apple-gathering and corn-shucking, my garden turned purple. Sparrows splattered elderberry excreta onto the high wall and then dashed magenta stripes into the bedsheets hanging on the washing line.

I was standing in the front garden looking towards the horizon so I didn't notice a figure standing behind the front hedge, until it spoke. “They are out, aren't they?”

I patted my chest. “Dotty!” I could have hugged her. “I saw you the other day in the street! And yes, they
are
out.”

“I saw you too.” She cocked her head. “You look different.”

“I've started making a garden.” I replied.

“A garden! How wonderful. How far have you got?”

“Well, there was a fire —”

“A fire! Were you. . . what happened?”

“There was a fire in the garden and the hawthorn was all burnt, so I dug it out and made a new bed and I cut the grass and —”