The Insistent Garden (13 page)

The book smelt of Una's bedroom, and that other smell, the scent of the outside that seemed to be on every object that came in through the front door. It was lovingly wrapped — razor sharp folds, tape cut in a perfect line — and I hardly dared disturb the paper as I sat on my bed. I didn't bother to read the title, just rattled through the pages anxious to see what my friend had left for me. Then I found it, a poem written by a man, a long time ago.

She left the web,
She left the loom,
She made three paces through the room.

18

I kept thinking about my flower bed — all brown and sharp-smelling — and wondered if a bird had dared leave footprints, or whether worms had wrinkled the surface, or worse, wondered whether Vivian had been through, dislodging the seeds and breaking off the tiny stabs at life. Yet, for now she was just watching.

The papery pods of Honesty were the first objects to catch my eye as I squeezed through a gap in the back fence looking for more seeds. I gathered in earnest, tapping hollow poppy pods, stroking the downy heads of scabious and easing bluebell bulbs out from the woodland floor, assuaging my guilt with thoughts of the care I was going to lavish on them. Chaff caught on my eyelashes as I rummaged and reaped and soon my pockets were bulging like a freshly made potpourri. But I glimpsed movement in the kitchen window so I squeezed through the fence and strolled back up to my house, humming a tune I had heard somewhere. I'd almost reached the back door when I noticed Archie was in his garden, leaning against his wall watching me. “Been over the back?”

“Oh, I didn't see you. Yes. I gathered some seeds, I thought they wouldn't be missed.”

“They won't be missed.” He smiled.

I walked towards him. “Archie, is this stupid, trying to grow flowers when we have. . . we have the wall?”

He held out his arm and took my hand; rough skin lined his palm. “Edie, if you don't make your garden, what will you do?

“Will you help me?”

He glanced at my kitchen window. “I've had one of my brilliant ideas!”

I shored up a smile. Archie had a tenuous grasp of the word
brilliant.
For him it could be applied as easily to a piece of greasy cod from the fish and chip shop as it could be to a well-rotted apple at the bottom of his compost heap. “What is it?” I asked nervously.

“Come with me and I'll show you.”

“Now?” I checked my watch.

“Yes, now.”

“Will it take long?”

“O ye of little faith. Follow me.”

Archie's kitchen smelt of tea and burnt cake and I felt my shoulders relax as I wiped my feet on his mat. “Have you been baking?” I said. “An experiment,” he replied. “Like a biscuit?”

“No, thanks.” I laughed.

He laughed too. “But I do have something you might want. Come upstairs.”

We reached his landing quickly. I watched the back of his shirt strain against his belt as he rummaged in a cupboard. “What are you looking for? I asked.

“Hang on. . . here it is.” He moved in further, dragged out a step ladder and then split its legs apart with a great deal of fuss, grinding of metal and repeated utterances of a word that sounded like ‘shiggle.'

“Can I help?”

“'Sokay. It's nearly done.”

With a request to ‘hold the legs please, Edie,' he climbed up the ladder and dislodged the hatch in the ceiling with the top of his head.

“Doesn't that hurt?” I called up, disturbed by the grunts that fell back down.

“It's fine, I'm nearly in.”

He shoved the hatch sideways with his shoulder and groped in the triangle of black that had appeared above his head. Next he stretched up, placed his elbows into the hole and heaved his body upwards. Slippers swung from the tips of his toes before he disappeared from sight. A light switched on.

“Archie?” I called.

His face appeared in the hole, cheeks flushed. “Coming up?”

The ladder shook as I climbed up and hauled my body up through the opening. It took a moment to get my bearings. Floorboards had never made it up through the hatch and the span of the joists was intimidating, the way they stretched so far yet seemed so tenuously attached to the wall. And spiders lived here. I could see that straightaway; their webs draped the beams like never-washed net curtains.

“Archie. . .” I looked round. “Is this what my attic looks like?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Edie, have you never been up there?”

“I. . . no.”

“Well, it might be a bit like this one, but don't forget: we live in semi-detached houses. This attic,” his voice dropped, “will be more like the one on the other side of you. That might have a proper floor, of course, but see the beams, they'll be the same.” He swiveled his feet and stepped in the direction of the far corner of the attic. I followed and we picked our way across the joists like a pair of tightrope walkers until we reached a pile of boxes stacked up against the far wall. I held Archie's waist to keep my balance as he rummaged and sorted, eventually slipping out a heavy book from beneath a pile of
Railway
Modeller
magazines.

“This is for you,” he announced, lurching backwards then slapping his palm on a nearby beam.

“What is it?” I tightened my grip on his elbow.

“It's a book, sweetheart. For you. Come back down and I'll show it to you.”

We teetered back across the room and after much shifting of weight and passing the book back and forth descended the ladder. We sat on the top stair. Archie made a great show of blowing off the dust and straightening the cover before he laid the book on my lap. “This is for you, Edie,” he said, grandly, “It belonged to my mother, and her mother before her. God knows where she got it from, but I
do
know it's old.”

No title, just a gold poppy embossed onto a deep blue cover. I turned to the first page then glanced at my watch. “Archie, I'm sorry but I don't think I have time for this now, I have to get back.”

“Course you do. I'll slip it into my shed later. Don't forget to collect it before it rains.”

“I won't. And thank you.” I smiled; it felt comfortable on my face.

This book is a muster of various once forlorn hopes and
skirmishing parties now united with better arms and larger aim.

Such a beginning. I read the sentence twice as I adjusted my present on my pillow.
The English Flower Garden
was the thickest book I had ever held and I turned the dried-up pages cautiously, fearing they might crack. I began to flick through but almost immediately the book fell open on a double page spread of
Lilium,
‘
white-robed apostles of hope
,' full of tiny ink drawings and even tinier captions. I pulled the blanket up over my shoulders and settled down to read.

Lilium longiflorum
came first, its petals curled outwards like the mouth of a baby bird jostling to catch its mother's eye, then
Lilium martagon
, thrusting out orange anthers and finally,
Lilium regale
, loveliest of all, holding up tiny throats, stained by a recently swallowed juice. I wanted to pluck it right off the page and hold it in my hand. But I couldn't. I just memorized the page and moved onto the next,
Linaria
glauca,
then the next,
Yucca flaccida
and then the next. My mind sated, I lay my head down beside
Veronica spicata
and was drifting into sleep when I freed up a fresh thought. I would learn everything there was to know about plants. Not just snippets from Archie but learn everything I needed to know. I was ready to step right inside the botanical world.

19

Sewing weightless objects into the ground was harder than it looked. It was eight o'clock in the evening by the time I'd sprinkled seeds over the old hawthorn patch after an hour spent kneeling on the ground, fluffing up clumps of sticky soil and smoothing amateur footprints from the centre of the bed. My father was reading the newspaper when I returned to the kitchen to wash my hands. “
NASA HAILS
‘
PERFECT EARLY MISSION
'” brushed my consciousness as I sat down at the table.

“I was wondering.” I began.

“Mmm?”

“The grass is very long this year and the ladder gets caught when it's wet so I thought maybe I could cut it. . .”

“Hmm.”

“And I thought, maybe I could even put a few flowers in at the far end. Archie has some seeds he doesn't want and. . .”

My father's eyes caught the light as he looked up. “Do what you like.”

The shed door opened more easily the second time around. My footprints lay undisturbed in the dust and I put my feet inside them as I crossed the room. The lawnmower felt as heavy as a wardrobe when I pulled on the handles and it whined softly on its way to the grass. It would not cut, every working part congealed with age, so I looked for a lubricant to get it going. But even the oilcan needed oiling so I went to find Archie who seemed amused at the thought of anyone cutting such long grass with a mower. ‘You'll need to shear it first,' he said, passing a shiny pair of blades over the wall, ‘then rake till your arms ache.' It took a week to cut it all. A week of rushing outside when no one was home, of raking grass into gently warming piles and returning again and again to the rogue stalks that snapped upright behind me every time I'd gone over them with the mower. Every now and then I uncovered objects lost in the grass: a doll with working eyelids that rolled its eyes when I picked it up and a rotted glove with fingers the size of a child's. Calluses had begun to sprout at the base of my thumbs but I didn't mind, I got pleasure from those rough little circles, and found myself rubbing them whenever I was alone, recalling the pleasure of working in the garden, the unexpected pleasure of refreshing my view.

“Bloody hell, what's your father been up to!” Archie stood in his garden, staring across at the high wall. “He must have added another six inches at the end since I last looked.”

I followed his gaze. “He wanted to make the most of the dry weather.”

“Still nothing holding it up, I see,” he said, scrambling over into my garden. “Don't let him get any ideas about my side, will you?”

“We like you,” I said, without thinking.

“I'm glad to hear it, as I'm standing in your territory.”

He walked along the base of the wall, rubbing his knuckle into the small of his back. “When's Wilf due back?”