The Insistent Garden (40 page)

“Up here,” Alden said. “Mind the first step, it's higher than the rest.”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see, not much further.”

“Your hands are cold,” I said.

“So are yours.”

“Alden.”

“Yes?”

“What is up there?”

“You'll soon see. Just a few more seconds.”

We paused in front of a locked door. As he searched for the key in his pocket I became aware of the heat from his body. His presence was stronger in the confined space and parts of me tingled, the insides of my fingernails, the backs of my hands, and my lungs silently heaved, drawing in his scent, slowly, deeply, quietly.

“I hope you won't be. . . upset,” he said, fixing anxious eyes on me.

“Why would I be upset?”

“Come and see.” He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

Harsh yellow sunshine picked out the shapes in the attic and we lifted our hands to our foreheads in unison. Alden seemed intent on showing me something out of the window but I held back, getting a sense of the place I was in; I saw a compressed sofa, all air pressed from its cushions; I saw black-painted floorboards, a lonely book and a coffee cup sitting on the window ledge, its inside brown. Eventually, Alden could wait no longer and while patting pockets of air behind my shoulders he ushered me towards the window. I went. I looked out. First at the sky, trailing shredded clouds into the distance, then at the oak tree bashing itself into the wind, then down, right down at the ground. I clutched my cheeks in disbelief. “The garden!”

Nothing had prepared me for what I saw below. Not the visceral shock of meeting Alden, nor the intense, syrupy feelings that were lining my insides. After so many years wondering, of peeking, of angling to get a better view, I felt an abrupt and heady elation. The view of Alden's garden from my attic — so long hidden from me — was abruptly and completely revealed. The sun, resting high in the sky, had ironed the shadows and flattened the high wall to a narrow line, the thinnest of brushstrokes on a canvas of quiet beauty. I saw the garden behind Alden's house for the first time: a circle of boulders, a semi-circle of trees, a blue flower border growing against the back fence. Alden Black had made a garden on his side of the wall, a mirror image of my own.

Two gardens were one.

72

“You were never alone.”

Alden and I sat beneath his apple tree, identical to mine. The sun had inched higher into the sky and shadows pooled beneath the plants, dragging the garden up into three dimensions. Something had fluttered beneath my collar bone the moment I had stepped out of Alden's back door, something that dove and swooped and soared.

His
garden. So foreign, so familiar. Alden had continued to caress the air behind my back as we walked towards his semi-circle of trees. Now he was seated beside me on the grass attempting to put together his words over a pair of awkward hands that folded and unfolded in a cycle of anguish. It was
he
who had planted the bulbs at the end of my garden, he explained. It was he who had turned the boulder to mirror his and it was he, Alden, who had moved my semi-circle of trees to make a complete circle complementing his own. What did I think, he kept asking. Was it alright? And would I please say something?

I was unsure how I felt as I looked up at his side of the wall. Grimace had changed to smile as its face rippled with inter-locking leaves of
Humulus lupus
. Rope-like stems thundered along its length and papery hops were everywhere, clinging to joints and blown into gaps between plants.
My
garden seemed to have been lifted up and flipped over. I could see it all: the trees, the blue flowers. Even the stone circle exactly mimicked the shape of mine.

“I was always here,” he said, “You did not know me but I was here.”

“I never met you but I knew you,” I said.

“I never met you but I knew you,” he replied.

“Edith,” He moved his feet closer to mine. “I have to explain, I know that. When I came to live in this house. . .”

“You came?”

“Yes, I moved here after my father died and on that first day something happened.”

“What happened?”

“I saw you in the garden and. . .” he looked down, “I couldn't stop looking at you. . . watching you.”

I looked into the black hole of his irises. “Why did I never see you?”

His eyelashes flickered; the grass was receiving a deep massage. “It's hard to put it into words. I don't go out much; I like to be alone and I like the night. I moved into my father's house and milk bottles were thrown over the wall and I stepped into his shoes without realizing it — but Edith, where is your father now?”

“He was taken ill. He's in hospital.”

“Is he alright?”

“Yes, I'm sure. Vivian, my aunt. . . she called earlier.”

“Is she the woman?”

“Yes, she's the woman.”

He frowned. “Don't you want to be with him?”

I hugged my knees. “I don't know.”

He gazed up at the high wall. “I wasn't there when my father died.

He left me the house —”

“Not your mother?”

“No. They got divorced years ago. I moved here so I could live alone, just me, but then I. . .”

“Didn't want to live alone?”

“Yes, no. . . I had a lot on my mind. . .”

“What sort of things?”

“Things about my father.” His hands stilled. “I left it too late, you see. After my parents split up, my father never contacted me and my mother didn't want to talk about him. But I often thought of him. I had this idea that I would visit him one day, you know, just turn up on his doorstep and introduce myself. But it was hard. My mother got so sad sometimes and I stopped mentioning him. But I didn't stop thinking about him and I decided — when the time was right — I'd meet him, just come to the house and. . . meet him. But I left it too late. He died before I got here and I. . . I hardly remembered what he even looked like.”

“My mother died when I was a baby. I don't remember her either.”

“Not at all?”

“No. All I have left of her is her books. My father put them all in the cellar and I go down there at night sometimes and look at them. They're mainly poetry. She loved poetry.” I looked down the garden. “She loved flowers.”

“Does he know you look at her books?” Alden asked.

“No.” I looked up through the branches of the apple tree. When I looked back he was still watching me. “How do you live?” I said.

“I inherited a little money from my father and I have a job.”

“Inside the house?”

He laughed. “No, I work at the hospital, the night shift.” He turned towards me. “Edith. Why did your father build the wall?”

“He said you. . . your father, would hurt us. We had to hate you.”

“But
why?
”

“I don't know why.”

He glanced over my shoulder. “She never told me about any of this.”

“Who didn't?”

“My mother.”

I studied his mouth, trying to predict the next word to come out.

“But she told me about my father,” he continued. “He changed after they married. She never told me what happened but I know he wouldn't talk to her. Then he hit her.” Alden pushed a hair off his face. “So we moved out.”

“Where did you go?” I picked a daisy out of the grass.

“Not far. The other side of town.”

“Our fathers used to be friends,” he continued.

I thought of Harold. “I know.”

Alden wrenched a blade of grass out from its socket; it was pale at the end.

“You have some blood on your hand,” I said.

“I bleed easily,” he replied, wiping a red dot from his knuckle.

I stared at his hands — the hands that pushed through the letter box, the hands that pruned the tree.

“It was you! The letters.”

“Yes.” He smiled sheepishly. “It was me. I hoped you'd return them yourself. But you never did.”

Alden stroked the grass again, flattening the stalks beneath the weight of hands. I felt strange, as if a creature was waking inside me.

“Alden,” I said.

He glanced up. “Yes?”

“I want to go inside.”

“It's alright,” he said, “there's no one here but us.”

“I want to go back inside your house,” I said. “With you.”

“Wha —”

“I want to go now.”

Alden looked puzzled as I slipped my fingers through his and pulled him up the garden. I rushed him through the back door; he tripped; we laughed; I gathered him up. We ran up the stairs; I knew where the bedroom was located. I pushed open the door, and looked round the room: clothes on the floor, a book flat on its back, a glass of water, half drunk; a nest of roughed-up blankets beckoned from a bed in the corner of the room. The flowers on the wallpaper blurred as I placed my hands on him.

The hinges on the garden gate squeaked out a complaint; a shot of lamplight hit the back of the hall at its usual angle. Yet my house felt different when I walked in the door at three in the morning. Had the smell of the hall changed? Were there fewer coats on the pegs? I kicked off my shoe, sending it flying towards the ceiling. Then I removed my tights and flung them up the stairs where they slumped onto the frame of the single painting hanging on the wall, Samuel Palmer's ‘Coming Home from Evening Church.'

I began to swing my arms, back and forth, higher and higher and in the final swing dropped down into a handstand against the wall — just pointed toes, sagging petticoat and an upside-down dress.

The dog, inverted, scuttled towards me; his ears retracted, and then froze.

“You look hungry,” I said, after dropping my feet to the ground. “Let me find you some food.”

He pushed his eyebrows up into a peak, padded back into the kitchen and waited patiently while I opened a tin of dog food and with my hand held just beneath his nose, scraped it into his bowl. The sight of his chewing reminded me of my hunger and I set about making myself a meal, baked beans and toast with extra butter. Ignoring the sluggish, orange, juice spitting onto the cooker, I sat down at the table, opened up the newspaper and started work on the crossword. Oh, why had they agonized so? Toast crumbs peppered the crossword as I worked; I cheered at
rigmarole,
agonized over
animosity,
before I placed the pen back down on the table.

When I finished my meal I picked up the knife and licked it clean. Then, swirling my tongue in circles, I cleaned off the plate. Finally, I reached up and put it back into the cupboard.

I instinctively pulled on a sweater before peeling it off again, marveling at that rarest of things, a warm English night. My garden awaited me.
Our
garden. The wall was hunched towards me like a giant's back but nothing could obscure the thought, the deep, sensual thought of the place beyond.

The moon was up. Huge and round and familiar. I gazed at its eye, then at its mouth dropped open into an oval, and reveled in a new feelings. I knew what was on the other side of the wall. Feeling the thrill of possibilities, I wanted to pull down the sky, it looked so immense. And the stars, they looked close enough to touch.

My nose twitched; something was releasing scent into the night air. I ambled down the garden, between the trees and past the stone circle until I reached the blue border, almost invisible in the darkness. The scent was stronger here and I traced it to a jasmine bush that was scrambling over the low wall. I plucked a sprig and slipped it behind my ear and then looked back at Archie's house. His bedroom window looked lonely but the curtains had a solid look that I found comforting. I strolled back towards my house but when I reached the circle of boulders a door creaked open to my right and I heard the soft sound of slippers rub across the grass.

“Archie, I thought you were asleep,” I said to the face that appeared on the other side of the wall.