A Garden of Trees (21 page)

“Just sprinkle it, lady.”

“They will not eat they are frightened.”

“An aquarium and a fruit tree are so unusual.”

“They will eat, lady.”

“Can you switch on the light then the bubbles will rise?”

“Switch it on, lady.”

“The bubbles I will count them they are warm I hope.”

“They are warm when the light shines they think it is the sun.”

We stood around while she sat up in bed and tapped at the glass with one fragile finger.

“Does that tree really have fruit and can I eat it?”

“Oh certainly, we'll see, fruit is so quenching.”

“Does it matter if I eat it?”

“I do not think that it would matter if you ate it.”

“They are eating now, lady, fishes always eat when you stop from watching them.”

“They have eaten, then I can see their mouths.”

“That's enough, lady.”

“Everything has eaten, I will eat my fruit.”

“Hope it makes you better, lady.”

“Oh we'll be much better won't we much more comfortable altogether.”

“I remember about trees once you have eaten them you go on.”

“The bubbles are like pearls.”

“I have always eaten fruit I will go on.”

“The bubbles are like eyes.”

“I will watch them.”

When the workman and the nurse had gone I stood at the end of her bed and Marius sat beside her and the fishes quivered like ghosts. “I want to thank you,” she said.

“You have thanked me.”

“Let me give you my hand.”

I walked round the edge of her bed and she lifted the hand that was like a shell and she put it in mine. “You have given me back my garden,” she said.

I looked at the fishes that were quite still as if there was no pressure on them and no time because nothing ever happened. Her hand was like coral. Only the square glass case and the light that was the sun and the bubbles that went on rising for ever and for ever.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

“I am thinking that for them there is no time.”

“Nor for me,” she said.

“They are floating and there is nothing to move them.”

“I am in this room,” she said. She looked around it. “What will you be doing in six months time?”

“The same as I do now, I suppose.”

“That does not often happen. Will you be together?”

“Perhaps we will be together.”

“I should like it if you were.”

I looked up and saw for the first time that there was a crucifix at the head of her bed.

“We shall be here,” Marius said.

“Perhaps you won't.”

“We will have a Christmas of crystallized fruit.”

“I want to know what you will do.”

Marius said, “I suppose there are still some things we can do.”

I said, “Do you remember saying that you and I were dead to the world? That for us there was no future?”

“There are others,” Marius said.

“You ought to be free,” she said.

Marius was sitting forwards looking carefully at the fish. “You know all that nonsense about freedom,” he said.

“It is not all nonsense,” she said.

I was looking at the crucifix. I was sure it had not been there the day before. “Don't we have to make sacrifices?” I said.

“Sacrifices?”

“That is what you said.” Marius looked at me.

“You see,” she said, “whatever you do you will be children, and that is what I mean by free.”

“Are we so like children?”

“I hope so, yes, it is a proper thing to be.”

“Children are so cruel.”

“That is nonsense, they are not, they simply have a capacity for being practical.”

“They have a capacity for being hurt.”

“That is quite a practical thing to have.”

She saw that I was looking at the crucifix but she said nothing about it.

“Children . . . ” Marius began.

“Of course you will get hurt,” she said.

“I suppose so.”

“I want to know what you will do when you are hurt.”

Marius turned to me. “You can only do anything in the world where it concerns you. It still does sometimes.”

“Often,” I said.

“Children are free from responsibility like this,” she said.

“Like what?” Marius said.

“That is the point of them, that by having nothing but rules they are free to make a choice.”

“Rules?”

“That is where old people are so stupid, they have rules to stop you making a choice instead of to enable you to.”

“Like what?” Marius said.

“Children are free to do anything.”

“They are not.”

“They are free from this sort of responsibility which is not practical because it is over and done with and there is nothing fresh.”

“Like what?” Marius said.

“This room,” she said.

I did not know what they meant. They were looking at each other and there was something disturbing between them, and I wondered if I should leave them on their own.

“When we are hurt,” Marius said, “this is where we shall come to.”

“No,” she said.

“This is where we shall come.”

“You have done something very beautiful for me, you have made my garden, but this will never be a garden for you.”

Marius looked at her. She went on:

“Gardens are old things, they are where things start from, they are only a myth later, they are only for people who can live in myths.”

“You . . . ” Marius said.

“People who are dying can live in myths. For the rest you can do what is proper.”

“You frighten me,” Marius said.

I touched a leaf of the tree and dipped my finger in the water. “I must go,” I said.

“Don't go just yet, you see this you have done for me, but there are other things to do for other people, I have gone back into the past because that is what I had to remember, but for others there is not a past but a present and I know it now for myself having gone to the past.”

“You frighten me,” Marius said.

“When you get hurt you must go forwards, I can do that now, but perhaps you will have to look backwards sometimes as I have done.”

“What will we do?” Marius said.

“You will know,” she said.

She looked very tired. She lay back on the pillows and rested her head, but she was not as I remembered her the first time I had come into the room, the face no longer breakable and fragile with china eyes but soft and heavy like a dying flower, the edges curling, the hands no longer a shell, a coral, but fallen petals from a yellowing rose. There is a softness in dead flowers that is terrible. As Marius looked at her I wondered if he were now frightened in the way in which once he had frightened her.

“I am going backwards,” Marius said.

“For a little,” she said.

The fishes pointed steadily, the leaves of the tree shone backwards, they were going with them where I could not follow them, the sand by the sea where the wind was crying. From the past I did not know what they would remember and what they would learn, but out of the sad broken unutterable tiredness of her face there was something she had to give him and something she had to do. Her eyes were like candles and I was not frightened for them. Above her head was the crucifix. “Goodbye,” I said.

“Goodbye,” she said. “Do not be unhappy.”

“No,” I said.

I went to the door. I remember the terrible softness of the fallen rose, the flame burning within the waxen ruins, the candle gutted and rearing into shapes that were wild and gentle against the altars of her face. “Thank you,” she said. At the last I remember this flame that was burning that was very clear and very bright and then I left.

11

A golden evening. When the play is over you put on your coat you follow the crowd you go out into the street and then what do you do? The sun is setting on a thousand faces. When the lights went up you were caught, perhaps, there was a tear in your eye and there were no tears in other people's eyes and why were there no tears? Everything happens just once and never again. You have found your handkerchief and surreptitiously used it and there is no need to conceal your pride. In the street there are no tears and what do you do?

Standing by the cross-roads the day ran down like a tired clock, the day that was two days, the hours squeezed into one by the pressure of necessity, the effort that had lasted and that now was gone. The ticking of faces shambled to a standstill. The day in which for the first time in my life I had done something, the day which had happened and which would never happen again. Along the pavement people passed with the tired rush of those who are going nowhere and for whom tears are a luxury that they cannot afford.

Standing is a forgetting, there is nothing to do. After the play that you have loved that you have laughed that you have cried at you go back to the silence of a life that is dumb. People go past you in circles ceaselessly their mouths opening and shutting with the hunger of insects their heads nodding grotesquely in a puppet parade. There is no noise. They seize upon the crumbs that agreement offers them, the crumb of criticism, the crumb of approval, the crumb of “it is over now, there are other things to think of.” From the silences of their eyes you can see them watching you, you are afraid they will get you they will make you forget. Memory is a luxury that they cannot attain. There is only poverty, the poverty of agreement. Richness is in moments, and the moments happen once and never again.

If you wish to have the sickness you say—That is a moment I shall never forget, the moment when the curtain descended and the lights went up and there were no tears in any eyes except my own. Then you are alone, very alone, and for a while you stand on the corner of a street and the evening comes down on you like a descent of birds and the cries of starlings are above your head. You watch the people and you do not hear them and the silence is a mantle to deceive your eyes. Then they cannot bear it. Agreement is that there shall be no silence and you shall never be alone and the mouths and the glances are above you this time like vultures and they get very close to you because you are dead.

When you are alone you are dead and the vultures pick at you. The mantle is torn off you and the noise comes in in waves, the insect clatter the machinery of tongues the vibrant voices that have to forget that have to make you forget that have to take you with them so that you will never remember. As I moved down the street I said that I should never be dead, that I should be alive with Annabelle or alive beneath the vultures but that I should never be dead. The machinery mocked me. But I knew that if I was to remember this was what it would mean, to be for ever with her who could know and not deceive me, which was a decision I could not make and which had nothing to do with me, or to be for ever with the vultures that would wait with naked necks in the smell of rottenness that went on and was endless. At the end of this day with the blinds coming down across what I had done I thought I could try it. I went not alone because I loved and have loved and the golden evening was inviolate about. Whatever happened I had done one thing, and I went to Annabelle so that at least I could remember.

12

“We are coming to the end of something,” I said.

“Are we?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to cook supper,” she said. She put down the tray that she was carrying and went back into the kitchen.

“You are so serious,” I said.

I sat on the edge of the table and waited for her. She had been out when I had arrived, and it was late. Peter had not come in. When I was alone with her there was no awkwardness now, but just the suggestion that what we said meant more than the words we used. “Marius stayed with me last night,” I said.

“I thought he must have done.”

“We were tired. Time has gone so quickly that it is difficult to remember what has happened and what has not.”

“We got back very late, I wondered where you were.”

“I waited by the statue. I think time will go more slowly now. When did you first meet Marius?”

“Just before I met you, a year ago.”

“And has that time gone quickly? I did not really meet you then.”

“I saw you, I remember I was nervous and there was something in your eyes.”

“Marius and I went to the hospital to-day. I think his wife will be better now, she is happier.”

“Have you done that?”

“I don't know,” I said. Annabelle was carrying knives and forks going in and out of the room all the time so that the talk was disjointed.

“I remember you in the pub, we talked about musical-boxes,” she said.

“Do you remember Marius saying that only individuals can begin things?”

“Is that what you mean by coming to the end of something?”

“Yes,” I said. “For two weeks we have been together . . . ”

“For a year,” she said.

“But I . . . ”

“We often thought about you, Marius said it was like being in a monastery, one is much closer to people then.”

“Has Marius been in a monastery?”

“No,” she said.

She was out of the room again and I wandered over to the piano where there was a large photograph of Peter and Annabelle as children with their father and their mother. Peter looked fat and portentous and Annabelle was sitting on the ground peering cautiously through her curls with her small frightened face. “I should have liked to have known you as children,” I said.

“You have,” she said.

“Yes.” Her father and mother looked unreal as people of that generation do in photographs. He was a small man sitting bolt upright with his hands on his knees and she was draped indistinctly across the back of the chair. I knew it was not like them. “And your father and mother,” I said.