The Insistent Garden (38 page)

“Who did then?”

“I don't know.”

“So what was it doing beneath your pillow?”

Vivian had been beneath my pillow. “I liked it.”

“Where did you get it?”

My heart fired up. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Vivian was closing in on me; she was going to find the boxes; she was going to throw away my mother.

“The postman gave it to me.”

“The postman. . . what, that scrawny little —?”

“Yes, I. . . think he likes me.”

The fish ribs were back. Laughter echoed around the kitchen; it reverberated in my ears, bounced off the tiles before being absorbed by the clothes drying quietly on the clotheshorse. I watched her as she laughed. Words were coming into my head, their order confused. Thinking is as good as saying, isn't it? Just allowing sentences into your mind makes them real.

The laughter ceased. I reached out, picked up the poem and put it into my pocket. Then I went upstairs to my room, Vivian's gaze resting on my back.

I returned to the square of yellow grass later that night, my feet a perfect fit inside its border. As thee birds formed a snug line on the top of the wall, the words Vivian had taken from beneath my pillow came back to me.
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

69

I sipped my tea and watched the shivering sky. It hung like a blank page, marked only by the silhouette of the oak tree that towered over me. But up high, suspended on a swathe of moving air, I did see something. Although not the slightest breath of wind could be felt in the garden, something was moving. A tiny speck of white on white had risen up from behind the high wall. It wafted towards me, spun a single degree, and then dropped. I held my breath as a petal, carried on the back of a miniature draft, landed inside my cup. Hot tea instantly drew the curl from its back and it flattened to an oval, its veins stained with caffeine. I looked back up at the high wall, and for the first time became aware of an intense longing.

70

A scream landed in my bedroom; it frightened me. I ran to the window and saw my father, halfway down the garden and on his knees, not praying, but clutching his hands to his head.

I ran to my wardrobe and ripped out a skirt. I flew to the chest of drawers and pulled a shirt over my head, and then I rushed from the room, before pelting down the stairs and out of the house. Orange dust chased me down the garden. “What happened?”

“He pushed the wall over!” bellowed my father, pushing out spit.

Chunks of wall were sprawled across an area of grass, some large, some split into shards. I glanced up at the top of the wall. Too high. The break was too high. “Could it have just collapsed?” I asked.

“It was pushed,” my father replied, tightening his grip on the brick in his hand. “It's all part of the plan.”

“What plan?”

He gazed at the ground as if looking for an answer in the grass. Then he got to his feet and began hauling blocks of broken wall across the ground, letting out painful “hup”s with each lift and deflated “whoar”s as he dropped bricks at the base of the wall.

I was hovering in one spot, unsure of what to do, when a scream rent the air.

“Bastard!”

Vivian ran towards us, her breasts swinging inside her nightdress like clackers. “Wilf. Is it holding up?” She tramped around the base of the wall; she shouted, she blew out her cheeks; she sent a torrent of insults in the direction of the bricks lying quietly on the ground. “We have to fix it,” she yelled. “Now!”

I walked towards the house to collect a bag of mortar but before I got there, I looked back. My father seemed smaller in Vivian's presence. Big brother had become little.

It was a long morning. Even Vivian helped with the repairs, wiping away drips, rinsing the mortarboard under the garden tap, even whacking the cement bags open with a spade. My arms were burnt after the third consecutive hour without a break and I slumped down in the grass, legs outstretched, with such heaviness that even my aunt did not bother to chivvy me.

I watched my father finish off. He battled on two fronts. He heaved chunks of bricks off the ground while he absorbed outbursts of spleen from his sister. After several hours in the sun Vivian resembled a large fried tomato: soft jellies of flesh hung beneath her arms, crispy edges of burnt skin hardened on the end of her nose. My father seemed to be feeling the heat too and he paused several times to rub a muscle in his shoulder. Then he stopped altogether, ran his fingers through his hair and slumped down on the grass, legs outstretched.

“
Is
there a plan?” I said, stretching out my legs beside him, the heat inducing a languorous lack of caution.

“He is always looking for ways to get at us. Never forget that,” he replied.

“Will it always be like this?” I continued, emboldened by the intimacy.

“Rub my shoulder,” he said.

“Here?”

“Yes, right there.”

It felt strange to touch the bony scapula, usually so foreign, and my hands trembled as I kneaded out the stiffness, dreading he would be angry.

“You must always be on your guard,” he said.

“Yes.”
Guard against what?
“But —”

“Always.” He pulled himself up off the ground with a low ‘
geruff
' and walked towards the back door.

The wind dropped; the grass stilled; a twig cracked on the far side of the high wall.

“You're not listening to me, Wilf!”

The air was brittle when I entered the kitchen. Vivian seemed to be winning an argument, her neck stretched into a rod of indignation, while my father's whole body sagged and his eyes had the look of thoughts elsewhere.

“We must finish the repairs tomorrow,” Vivian continued. “We're vulnerable.”

“I'm tired,” he said.

Tired.
My father was never tired.

“I don't imagine
he's
too tired.” Vivian said.

My father rubbed his shoulder. “I'm going to lie down,”

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure!” he snapped.

The words had hardly left his mouth when he clutched his arm and dropped onto the floor, heavily and noisily.

“Wilf!” cried Vivian. Showing unusual agility, she leapt from her chair and knelt down beside her brother's body and yelled into his ear “Wilf! What is it?”

“No. . . thing,” he murmured.

Vivian did not know what do. I saw panic in her eyes as she launched into a charade of half-remembered first aid, trying to unbutton his collar, blowing into his nostrils, slapping one of his cheeks with the back of her hand.

“His lips look blue,” I said, kneeling down beside him. My father smelt of sweat. And another smell I could not place.

“Call an ambulance,” shouted Vivian into my face. “Now!”

The dial on the telephone resisted my finger so I forced it, dragging back the nine three times until I heard a ringing tone. A serene voice answered, methodical, quite bored.

“My father's collapsed!” I cried.

The telephonist requested the details in a measured tone. I rushed them out, ‘chest pains,' ‘Forster Road,' ‘June 1910,' then a frantic, ‘Are you coming?'

They were coming. ‘Soon,' the woman promised. I returned to the kitchen floor to find Vivian attempting to undo more buttons on my father's shirt. His eyes were open when I knelt down in front of him. But he did not look at me; he just stared at the bottom of the kitchen table. I followed his gaze. Something was attached to the underside, but I could not see what it was.

Movement nearby distracted me and I turned to see Vivian stroking my father's forehead. It was mechanical. I had seen the same gesture many times before as she brushed fluff off her skirt.

“Edith, fetch a pillow,” she said. Her tone was business-like; colour had returned to her cheeks.

I ran upstairs, pulled a pillow from my bed then returned to the kitchen floor. The back of my father's head felt greasy as I lifted it up.

“What's wrong with him?” I said.

“How would I know?” replied Vivian.

I stared at my father's face. The moment was testing me, a test of love. Without warning, orange light animated his face, objects quivered, and a siren let out a brief, plaintive cry. I jumped; ambulancemen have a loud knock.

“I'll go,” said Vivian, making an offer for the first time in her life.

I felt intense anxiety as my aunt left the room, not knowing what to do, where to look, or how to be. My father's eyes were closed; orange creases lined his lids.

“This way, please.” Vivian's returning voice was unusually civil.

“In here?” asked the first ambulance man who walked in behind her.

“Yes, yes, down there.”

A stranger knelt before me. I briefly forgot the stress of the moment and relished the unfamiliarity of him. A stranger's haircut, a stranger's voice, and a stranger's hands moving inside my father's shirt. I looked up to see more people, made large by uniforms, entering the room. Suddenly a crowd, they were setting up camp. Tubing, masks, an oxygen tank were all dragging my kitchen into the twentieth century; I caught the glint of chrome. Two men crouched over my father while a third rummaged in a bag, its wide pockets oozing importance. I relaxed as they started work, placing an icy-looking stethoscope inside his shirt and slipping a thermometer between his lips. The blood pressure cuff sighed as it was tightened over his arm. Then my father's blood, brick-coloured and thick, was sucked up into a syringe. Finally, the questions started; how old, how heavy, what pills does he normally take? I felt confused as Vivian left the room and returned moments later with a tray loaded with bottles. Leaving the ambulancemen to inspect the hoard — sucking pens and deciphering worn labels — I inched towards my father's body and looked into his face, now incased in an oxygen mask.

I went through the motions. I touched his shoulder; I pushed a hair off his eye, yet nuggets of power were rising in my chest. There was nothing to stop me leaning over and spitting in his eye. His eyelids flickered but didn't open so I sat back on my haunches and watched for changes in his expression. There was nothing to stop me leaning over and kissing his face.

“Edith, I'm going with him to the hospital, you stay here,” said Vivian.

Common decency required a protest. Even a fleeting show of feeling might have quelled the puzzled looks coming from the men carrying my father out of the room, but I had nothing, nothing to give.

“All right,” I said.