The Insistent Garden (11 page)

“North-northeast. Ten miles an hour,” he said.

Edging forward I glimpsed a weather map between his outstretched arms but before I had time to understand what it meant he began separating the paper into sheets, holding them down with his heel as the wind tugged at the corners. “Get some kindling!” he said.

Preparing a fire gave me time to think. We gathered up twigs, we screwed up paper, but I couldn't see where this moment would end.

Flames, as if waiting for life, jumped into the air the second my father struck the first match. The newspaper writhed, the hawthorn twigs dipped into the fire and the flame took hold with a crackle of sparks, singeing the clematis beards that brushed across the ground before creeping deeper into the bushes. Then a fresh breeze, sent by an unknown sky watcher, tore into the garden and a hot yellow ball cracked twigs deep inside the thicket.

I moved towards my father. But he wasn't watching the fire; he wasn't even checking that the house was safe. He was staring at the balls of grey smoke pouring over the high wall.

North-northeast.

My father and I stood together in the garden two hours later, looking at the broken-down scaffold of hawthorn. We rarely ‘stood together.' Occupying the same square yard as him, a hair's breadth from touching, was a novel experience. I had no idea what he was thinking, or feeling, or about to do next. I thought of the fire. As it rushed through the hawthorn, Archie had appeared, shouting frantically through the smoke. But my father had ignored him and the last sight I had of him was as he desperately hauled a pair of overweight pumpkins towards the far side of his garden. The flames had cut the hawthorn to the ground and now the garden looked bigger, the wounded earth dotted with singed grass, stumps, and weeds so black they lay on the soil like strokes of burnt paint. Archie's side of the garden remained intact but a ghostly mark smeared the top of his wall as if a grey veil had been dropped from a great height.

But despite the flames and fear and smoke-filled eyes, it was not the fire that remained in my thoughts. It was a small event that occurred later. I was washing up, watching my father through the kitchen window, when I saw him bend down and pluck a handful of grass, untouched by fire. He ran a stalk between his fingers and popped off the seeds, one by one. Then he cupped them in the palm of his hand and sniffed. I had never seen such a gentle gesture from my father, never imagined it possible. But it was his final movement that made a saucer slip from my hand. He flicked his hand upwards and cast the seeds high into the air.

Then, he smiled.

15

“My God! What happened?”

I had never seen Vivian's face so shocked before. Normally so in control of her expressions, she arrived in the back garden early next morning with her face redder than usual, her lips rounded out into a capital ‘
O
.'

“The Fireblight got it,” replied my father.

“What do you mean, ‘The Fireblight got it?'”

He rubbed his eyebrow, working against the grain. “The disease. It was in the garden. I had to get rid of it.”

A flicker of confusion crossed Vivian's face then she relaxed. I relaxed too. But I couldn't help but watch her tongue traverse her bottom lip as she studied the blackened stumps. “It came from next door of course,” she said.

“Not Archie!” I said without thinking.

“Don't be ridiculous! Archibald Bishop wouldn't say boo to a goose. It was
him
.”

“Of course it was him.” My father tilted his head in the direction of the high wall. “I sent the smoke over.”

“Clever man.”

“The wind was perfect.”

“The wall wasn't damaged, was it?” Vivian said, scanning the brickwork, “I'll check.”

I felt a breeze as my aunt walked past, laced with garlic. She was halfway down the garden before we heard the scream. Her hands flew up to her cheeks. “He's made a hole!” she screeched.

My father ran. I ran too, my fastest ever, suddenly gripped by an intense longing, to see, if only I could get there first, to see.

Vivian stood like a woman caught naked. “Wilf, get a cover, a plug or. . . something! Anything!” she yelled, clamping her hand across the hole. “Just cover it up. Hurry!”

“I'll get some mortar.” My father rushed back up the garden, stiff and awkward, as someone who never ran.

Moments later he was raising dust and sluicing water over a heap of cement. I blinked, aware of my teeth drying inside my mouth. “Aunt Vivian,” I said, “Would you like me to mind the hole? You might like to take a rest.”

“Don't be absurd!”

So I waited. Waited and watched, absorbing every last detail of the hand pressed over the hole. I counted the rings; I studied the fingernails; I watched the veins bulge across the back of her hands every time she changed position. My father raised the trowel loaded with mortar and Vivian's back bobbed across my view.

“Better check the whole wall, Wilf. And get it built higher,” she said.

“Yes. Higher.”

I stared at the wall, mesmerized by the blob of mortar already changing colour at the edges.
Isn't it high enough?

A thread of air poked through the kitchen keyhole an hour later; it chilled my ear. Without the aid of body language I had to concentrate to catch the words coming out of my aunt's mouth. ‘Burnt' jumped from the muffle of words, then ‘Edith' rose up.

Vivian was talking about me but the usual edge to my aunt's voice was missing, replaced by a dull, business-like inflection. She might have been discussing how to replace a missing roof tile; how to gut a fish. Suddenly the sound level rose and I caught a full sentence from my father's lips. “Don't keep on, Vivian. I don't care what she does.”

I waited in the living room for Vivian to leave the kitchen. I knew she would. I knew her hour of rest beckoned and she would soon thump up the stairs, close her bedroom door and flop down onto the bed.

I slunk into the kitchen, pulled a chair up to the table, lifting it slightly so it didn't scrape. “I have something I'd like to ask you.” I said.

“Yes?” My father held his finger on a line of text.

“Now the hawthorn has gone, I wondered if I might grow some flowers in the bare patch. Just a few.”

He still didn't look up, but he did speak. “If you like.”

It was dark on Archie's doorstep, almost too dark to find the letterbox. I spread a piece of paper over my knee and then scribbled out a note.

He said yes
.

Part Two

16

It hurt to ride a bike after such a long time. I cycled slowly, trying my best to avoid the chain, which dabbed oil into my skirt and scratched the inside of my ankle. The saddle hurt too. A man's saddle, it ground leather between bones I never knew I possessed. The brow of the hill came into view just as I was ready to slow down, tempting me with its fake proximity, so I revved up my legs and pedaled harder, enjoying the burn in my calves. The ground flattened, then dropped, and I adjusted my body, the slow, laboured movements of the previous few minutes replaced by a stiff brace. Free-wheeling on straight legs gave me a delicious sense of freedom, whipped up into a frenzy by the twigs that slapped my shoulders and breeze that moulded my shirt across my chest. My skirt flew up, I wanted to laugh, to shout, to cry out loud until my throat hurt, but I held it all in, content to just smile and stretch out the muscles around my mouth.

A family of ash trees obscured the bottom of the hill and I had cycled several yards along the lane before I noticed a wooden sign lying on the ground.
McIntyres Plant Nursery
was only just legible beneath the grass that had grown through a hole in the centre of the ‘
P
' then sprawled sideways. I braked, lifted my leg over the crossbar, and wheeled my bike back to the sign. It was a relief to abandon the merciless saddle and I adjusted my underwear as I walked towards the building at the end of the path.

A rustle of newspaper greeted me when I entered the shop. I stepped across the threshold, feeling guilty for disturbing the occupant and encountered a woman perched on a stool at the reception desk. She brushed a crumb from the side of her mouth as I approached, then smiled, revealing tiny wedges of dough slotted into the gaps in her teeth. “Good morning.”

I glimpsed a white-smeared tongue between her teeth. “Morning.”

“Come to collect some bulbs have you dear, I — Wait a minute, I know your face.”

“Pardon?”

“I definitely know your face. Let me look at you.”

“I don't think so, I've never been here before.”

The woman moved round the side of the counter; I smelt the tang of burnt biscuits. “Let me have a good look at you.” She stroked her upper lip, caressing a faint moustache, and then stroked the hairs that circled a mole. “Are you a. . . Stoker by any chance?”

Her words disturbed me. A category was suggested, a type. “Yes, my name is Edith Stoker.”

The woman drew in a breath. “No, my mistake, I was thinking of another. What were you looking for?”

“I'd like some seeds, please.”

“They're over there.” She pointed at a display of packets on the far wall. “Take your time, dear.”

The seed display had a tired look to it and slovenly browsers had left their mark, cramming Batchelor's Buttons into Marigold and abandoning several dog-eared packets of Poppy on the table below. I could feel the crunch of seeds beneath my shoes and was considering scraping them off my soles and slipping them into my handkerchief when I noticed the woman was watching me.

“Alright, dear?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I scanned the display, looking for inspiration amongst the drawings on the seed packets I recognized from Archie's kitchen: ‘Baby's Breath,' ‘Hound's Tongue,' ‘Black-Eyed Susan.' Then I picked up an envelope and shook it. It weighed nothing. Fingering the corner, feeling for seeds, I counted in my head.

“Finding everything you need, dear?” called the woman from the counter.

“Yes, thank you.”

I could not help but tidy the display and while slipping Primula back behind Poppy I noticed a folder lying at the back of the table. ‘
Horticultural
News Back Copies
' was written in a confident hand. ‘Best Mums,' roared out as I opened the first page and looked inside, gaudy orange flowers, thick green stems. I flicked through further — picking off the occasional seed stuck between the pages — and slipped them into my pocket. ‘Forster Road triumphs agai. . .' announced the next headline, the accompanying article chopped off. I smiled to myself at the thought of Archie heaving one of his humungous marrows onto the judge's table, its massive girth threatening to split.

“Hyacinth?”

I caught a whiff of freshly chewed shortbread. “Sorry?”

“You'll need some of those if you're going for blue this time.” The woman had appeared by my side; she stood too close.