Consider the Lily (28 page)

‘Thank you, Daisy.’

Daisy paused before rising from the plush banquette. ‘Don’t think it will solve anything though, Matty. I am sorry to be blunt and I’ve said it before. Two thousand miles, three thousand miles, whatever, won’t stop me loving Kit nor, necessarily, will it stop Kit loving me.’

She left Matty staring at crumbs, crumpled napkins, lipstick-stained cigarette stubs, not at all sure how the balance now sat.

The afternoon paper reported several items. One: the likelihood that two point six million were now unemployed in Great Britain. Two: following on from its trade and friendship alliance with Poland, the USSR was planning to sign a treaty of neutrality with Afghanistan. Other, less disturbing, items covered the possibilities of the Socialists winning the general election in Spain, and whether or not a new electric tote would be used at Ascot.

The articles on Russia required careful reading, and Matty, fascinated as always by Russia and the East, wondered, as the chauffeur piloted the car into Knightsbridge, whether Russia
was
aiming to dominate the world and make them all Communists.

The first warning – a ripple of discomfort in her groin, light, but determined — came when Matty was being fitted for a skirt with the new longer hemline. She closed her eyes and knew she had tempted fate by allowing herself to browse through the baby department.

She stepped out of the skirt, and a second warning flashed between her legs and up to her stomach. Matty looked up at the assistant and fought an urge to dig her nails into the plump forearms.

‘Are you quite well, madam?’ enquired a voice.

Deep inside Matty, a seed was pulled up by its bloody roots.

‘No,’ said Matty. ‘No, I don’t think I want this skirt.’ She handed it back.

‘This one, madam?’ The girl held out a shorter, cleverly cut skirt on a padded hanger. Her scent was strong, cheap and made Matty nauseous. Because she could not think of anything better to do, she tried on the second skirt. Pat, pat, went the assistant’s hands over her bottom and hips. Rip, answered something inside Matty’s body, and a cold, hard clod dropped into her groin. She swayed and put out a hand for support.

‘Excuse me, madam,’ the assistant peered at her white-faced client, ‘are you sure you are quite well?’

But Matty was far away, concentrating on the demon that was now ripping the flesh from the walls of her womb. No! She screamed.

No.

After that, Matty could not distinguish much. She heard the terrified assistant say,
‘In Harrods!
This is awful. Get a doctor.’ There was a blur of light, a prick of a needle in her arm, and the impression of a large hand examining her stomach. The clod grew heavier and more punishing, then nothing.

Some time later, it was night. Matty worked that out because of the electric lamp shining in the corner. Someone sat beside it, and each time they moved, a square of linen danced above a blue uniform. A pad of soft cotton was wadded between Matty’s legs, and her arm ached where the needle had gone in. She was thirsty and made an effort to reach for the glass of water by the bed. The nurse, wearing an artificially concerned expression, came over and helped Matty to drink it before tucking her up and telling her to go to sleep.

She awoke properly into daylight. The bedroom at Bryanston Court was filled with late morning sunshine. Matty lay and watched it filter between her eyelashes and observed the colour change as she moved her eyes this way and that. It meant she did not have to think.

‘Poor old girl.’ Flora stood beside the bed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Matty looked up at her sister-in-law. Flora’s nimbus of hair made her seem stronger than usual and she was too weak to fight envy. ‘So am I.’

‘Kit is beside himself.’ Flora dragged up a chair and sank into it. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Kit knew.’

‘Oh.’ Still not accustomed to the fact that husbands and wives had secrets, Flora looked put out. ‘He feels very guilty.’

‘He shouldn’t. It’s not his fault.’

Flora examined the face on the pillow and considered privately that it was Kit’s fault. If he had behaved better or, at least, less obviously at Lady Londonderry’s ball, then Matty would not have been so upset. Love, Flora concluded after analysis, was complicated and involved odd factors such as timing and luck.

Matty made an effort. ‘How was the nightclub?’

‘Fun.’

‘And Marcus?’

Flora made a face. ‘Well,’ she confessed uncertainly. ‘He wanted to kiss me again.’

The face on the pillow tried to smile. ‘Is this becoming a habit, Flora? You know what happens to fast women?’

The remark made Flora laugh, albeit uncertainly, because she was not sure where the dividing line was between fast and acceptable. ‘I’ll take care, Matty,’ she promised. Even so a faint red crept into her cheeks. ‘But you don’t want to talk about nightclubs,’ she said to Matty. ‘What can I do to help?’

Matty moved restlessly. ‘Will you ask Kit to do something for me?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘I want to go home. Will you ask him to take me?’

Four days later, Matty woke to a different sunlight and the sound of birdsong. She listened for a moment: the birdsong had sounded different when spring came and now it was changing again for the summer.

Matty pulled herself upright and felt the hammer of headache in her left temple. The clock on the bedside table registered only five thirty. It also ticked comfortlessly at her. Look at you. Tick. Anxious. Tick. Tearful. Tick. Full of dread.

Yes, she told herself, I am all these things. She directed her willpower against the greyness that seeped through her defences.

‘Well, Mrs Dysart,’ said Dr Hurley, who had descended yesterday from the magnificence of his Harley Street consulting rooms to Bryanston Court before they set off home. ‘What have we been doing to ourself?’

‘Nothing,’ Matty almost snapped.

Dr Hurley stared at his normally timid patient and took out his notebook. ‘It’s quite natural to be angry, Mrs Dysart.’ He took Matty’s pulse. ‘Now, tell me what happened.’

Reliving details and events did not make them better. Matty explained the missed periods, the sore breasts and the nausea and asked, ‘I
was
pregnant, wasn’t I, Dr Hurley?’

He put his fountain pen down on the pad. ‘To be honest, Mrs Dysart, knowing your history and physiology, I would be surprised.’ Matty stared at him, and Dr Hurley made a smooth change of tack. ‘But,’ he amended, ‘strange things do happen, of course.’

She shivered as she engaged his bland look. ‘What about next time, Dr Hurley?’

Dr Hurley assumed the expression of professional compassion that got him out of most difficult situations. ‘Mrs Dysart, I am almost sure there will not be a next time. Your illnesses, certain irregularities... we have discussed them many times and you know my views.’

‘Never, Dr Hurley?’

He busied himself with the pen. ‘Never is a hard word. But consider, Mrs Dysart, you are luckier than most. You have other things to keep you busy.’

The clock ticked inside its tortoiseshell case. ‘Other things?’ Hats to tilt over one eye and jewellery to wear and indeed, as Mrs Christopher Dysart, summer fetes to open. Yes, there was the house to think about: windows to curtain, china to check, meals to plan. Yes. It was good to see the furniture gleaming, to smell pot-pourri in the rooms and to enjoy fresh paintwork on the shutters.

But it was not enough to provision a life, or to please the spirit, or to fill the hole made by her treacherous body.

‘Goodbye, Dr Hurley,’ she said and he left.

Everything hurt – breathing, talking, dressing, thinking, remembering. Matty examined the rogue crack in the ceiling above the bed, and imagined that it grew wide and enormous, inviting her to climb into the space and lose herself. Below it hung a painting of a woman wearing blue striped trousers by an artist called Suzanne Valadon. (‘Good God,’ exclaimed Kit on seeing it. ‘I can’t get over your taste in paintings.’) Matty concentrated on the cigarette hanging out of the woman’s mouth and felt better.

Inch by inch, she got out of bed. First her feet, second her legs and a great push upright, towards the bathroom. Then her brassiere, next her knickers, and a petticoat edged in Nottingham lace. Try to ignore the ache in her abdomen. Concentrate. Stockings. Cotton skirt and blouse. Concentrate. Lace-up shoes. A glance in the mirror. A dab of rose water, a quick pat of the hairbrush. Out of the room, down the stairs and into the sunlight.

It was already warm. Matty took off her cardigan, left it draped over the stone balustrade and made her way down the steps, releasing a waft of thyme. Under the beech tree emerald moss was sharp and jangling in contrast to the brown tree trunk. Matty stopped to look and then, drawn almost against her will, glided on.

At the thicket she hesitated, stepped forward and beat her way along the covered path towards the garden whose hidden life waited for her. At the top of the slope, she halted. Light filtered through a lacework of leaves, a ring dove sounded from the silver birch and its mate answered. Cradled in the undergrowth, the statue stood out, yellow-green with moss, while the choked plants in the flowerbed were drenched in damp. Her eye caught by a blob of pink in the green, Matty edged her way down the slope and knelt down on the wet earth.

Smothered by weeds, leggy and unpruned, a ‘Queen of Denmark’ rose flowered in a sugary pink with grey-green foliage. To please itself, thought Matty, liking the idea of its independence, and traced the shape of quartered, cupped petals, dotted with a button eye. Lower down the stem, a fat bud waited to bloom. Matty ran a hand down over her own body: flat breasts, empty stomach, slack thighs. Above everything – above
everything
else — she longed to feel a child’s body against her own, and empty, hungry, grieving, she was to be denied it.

What was she to do with her life?

After a few minutes, she brushed the mud away from her knees, rubbed her hands on her handkerchief and looked up at the clematis scrambling over the brick wall. Broken only by the rustle of leaves and the whirr of birds’ wings, the silence dared her to move, to break the moment, so she remained quite still. Then, with the lightest and most tender of touches, the sun spread over her tired skin and warmed her tired spirit.

And out of Matty’s grief was born a moment of exultation, and the conviction that, at last, she had found her place. She was the garden, the garden was Matty, and they were both living. Somehow, Matty had made her stumbling journey along an unknown road and reached a milestone.

It lasted no more than a few seconds, but it was enough.

Two days later, feeling much stronger, dressed in a linen shirt and trousers, Matty returned to the garden carrying a fork and a trowel. She took off her jacket, draped it over the statue, surveyed the space and began to dig in the flowerbed under the wall.

It required effort to drive the fork into the earth and, to her chagrin, Matty did not possess the strength. After five minutes she was panting. After ten, her back ached and her hands were slippery with sweat – but there was a heap of dug earth. Copying Ned’s favourite pose, Matty leant on the fork handle to draw breath. The disturbed earth was alive with worms and indignant insects and she watched them taking cover.

Again she lifted the fork and drove it down, and this time struck a root clump which refused to yield. Matty rocked the fork experimentally, and her foot slipped on the tines. With a thump, the handle whipped back into her stomach.

‘Blast it,’ she said.

Shocked by the blow and feeling childishly let down by her own weakness, she stopped, unaware that she was experiencing the sort of set-back most first-time gardeners encounter. She dragged her forearm across her sweaty face and suppressed an urge to burst into tears. Not this time, my girl, she told herself. You’re only tearful because you’re still weak.

Don’t be beaten.

You’re not going to be beaten.

Beaten, echoed the ring dove.

Matty knelt down on a piece of sacking which she had sensibly brought with her and tackled the mass of roots and grass in the bed. Bothered at first by the feel of earth on her hands, she brushed at them continually, but after a while she gave up, and discovered it did not matter if dirt caked under fingernails. Nor did she mind. Later, Matty grew to like the sensation, as she came to enjoy the smell of wet earth, leaf mould and rotting plants.

Such waste, thought the waste-hating Matty, tossing a slug-ridden bulb onto her refuse pile. Such waste.

Working her way along the bed, she encountered another root which refused to budge. Part of it snapped off, exposing a white circle of inner flesh. Matty pushed her fingers into the earth around it and grasped the fibrous remainder, pulled until her eyes bulged, and fell backwards when it came up. She held it in triumph.

Two hours later, she had managed to clear a patch of three feet square or so and felt like the early colonist in tropical Africa. After its long incarceration, the earth looked lifeless. Not sure if she had been too enthusiastic and unselective in what she had discarded, Matty sorted out suspects from the rubbish to consult Ned as to what they were. He would not approve, but she had an idea she could talk him into co-operating.

That night she slept through until seven o’clock and woke up hungry.

*

The garden was Matty’s secret. Like all secrets, it was the better for hoarding and being turned over in the mind, this way and that. For maturing like all good vintages. Matty’s plan was simple: to bring this garden back to life. Clear it. Plant it. Watch it grow. Then, only then, would she show it to Kit and, after she had proved to him of what she was capable, ask him again to let her manage the whole garden.

Oh, yes. Years of planning, planting, watching, retrenching lay ahead. Busy years, she thought with relief.

Since the miscarriage, Kit had been punctilious about visiting Matty’s bedroom to say goodnight but now he was due to return to London with Flora and to hand over the latter to Lady F. (‘Do you always make living sacrifices?’ Flora asked bitterly. ‘Do you like hearing victims scream?’)