The Insistent Garden (20 page)

“Sorry.”

“The chain likes to be pulled gently.”

“Got it,” he called over a roar of fluid. He flung open the door. “Phew, it's stuffy in there. You need to get yourself a window that opens. Chuck out that frosted glass and get a proper look at that garden of yours.” He smiled. “I could do that.”

“My father wouldn't allow it.”

“Bit of a stickler, is he?”

“He's not interested in the garden.”

Johnny opened his mouth but did not reply, he just gazed round the landing as if gauging it for repairs. The upstairs hall looked different with a postman standing within its walls. His suit intensified the maroon of the wallpaper and the shine on his shoes emphasized the tiredness of the carpet. He seemed larger.

“That your bedroom?” He jerked his head in the direction of my door.

“Please. . . let's just go down.”

“What's the rush?”

“Edith!”

Vivian's voice had burst through a nearby doorway. Johnny stiffened. “Yes,” I replied in a voice not like mine.

“Who's out there?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “No one.” I edged the bewildered postman into my bedroom and closed the door.

“I heard voices,” Vivian said, emerging from her bedroom pulling at her eyelashes.

“I was singing.”

She released an eyelash and stared. “Singing? Are you so happy then?”

“I. . .”

But Vivian had stopped listening. She shuffled towards the bathroom, paused to sniff the air then went inside and closed the door.

Johnny was sitting on my bed by the time I returned to my room, gently bouncing.

“We need to go downstairs,” I whispered.

“Shame. I was enjoying your springs.”

Nausea pricked my throat. “My aunt wouldn't approve of you being up here.”

“But you would?”

“No. . . Please, can we just go downstairs. Quietly.”

He launched into a childish tip-toe as we creaked down the stairs and returned to the front door.

“You can't come into the house again,” I said.

He looked hurt, then rallied. “What about the garden? I'm brilliant at digging.”

“No, I can do it. You have to go now.
I
have to go.”

“You're as bad as him next door,” he said sulkily.

“Next door?”

“Well, he doesn't exactly invite me in for tea.”

“Doesn't he?”

Johnny stopped fiddling with his badge. “No. That time I met him he wouldn't look me straight in the eye. I don't like that, do you?”

I focused on the bridge of his nose; a pimple lay there. “No.”

“Anyway, I better get going before that dog at number ten gets back from its walk. See you next time.”

“Yes, next time.”

I prayed the letterbox wouldn't open again. My stomach flipped when the metal flap trembled but then footsteps drifted out of earshot and I breathed again. Spotting something on the floor, I bent down and picked up an elastic band. I slid it over my wrist and sat down on the bottom stair mulling over the last few minutes of my life. A postman had been inside my room. Trousers had rubbed against my sheets. Then a question dropped into my head. What colour were the eyes that looked away?

31

November, November, November.

A lull replaced the final days of weeding and tidying the garden before winter set in, tempered only by Archie's promise of river boulders. ‘Beauties,' he'd assured me after spending an afternoon at the nursery thumbing through the spring seed catalogues. He'd even arranged delivery while my father was at work and on a raw morning on the last day of the month five pumpkin-sized rocks arrived on the back of a truck and were hauled into my back garden by ‘Sam,' a thick-waisted labourer who groaned like a pregnant horse every time he lifted one up. The smallness of his feet shocked me as he tottered across the garden with the boulders in his arms. My concern for his limbs was justified when he wrenched a muscle in his thigh and was last seen limping across to Archie's kitchen on a promise of tea and biscuits.

Left alone, I sat down on the largest boulder and imagined another me inside the stone circle. Clouds were achingly high in the sky when I looked up, little bits of fluff that made the garden feel bigger than it really was. And the ground felt damp, probably as damp as the ground on the other side of the wall. It was then that I noticed the brick. Shadows had accentuated the face of the high wall and a lone yellow brick I had never noticed before stood out from the rest. I liked it, the way it held its own among the orange bricks around it. It seemed to goad me, not in a way I understood but in a way that made me stand up and step onto the boulder. I was taller here, a greater distance from the ground, a new distance from the sky. I stretched up my neck and looked at the high wall. Here I saw a whole new piece of the garden next door. I saw the top of a small tree holding onto leaves. I saw upside-down trouser legs pegged to the peak of the washing line and I saw the tip of a ladder leaning against the other side of the wall. I turned to my ladder leaning against the side of the house. Anyone could climb a ladder. Just grip the sides and climb.

“Edith! Where's my change?” A blue handbag waved at me through the kitchen window. My blue handbag. I stepped off the boulder. “It's in the inside pocket,” I called back. “I'll come and get it.”

“Can't hear you.”

I hurried up to the house. Vivian sat at the kitchen table, her hands deep in my bag.

“It's in the inner pocket,” I said.

“Where, for God's sake?” She pulled out a handful of objects.

I could hardly bear it. The exposure. “I can find it.”

“No, I'll do it,” snapped Vivian, “What
is
all this rubbish?”

Plant labels followed a ball of string onto the table. Then a handkerchief, unraveling in slow motion.

“Could I look? I know where it is,” I said.

My handbag skimmed the table. “Hurry up,” she snapped.

I delved inside, slipped my hand into the inner pocket, and pulled out two coins.

“About time.”

I continued to hold my bag, cradling it in my arms. Suddenly, inexplicably, thrillingly, I felt courageous. “I left my purse at the nursery.”

“What?”

“I left it at the nursery. Nancy found it.”

Vivian stared. “Who did you say found it?”

“Nancy Pit. The woman who works at the nursery. She found it and brought it round.”

“Nancy Pit came here?” Gaps had sprung between Vivian's words; cheek muscles bunched.

“Yes. She said she knows you.”

“She came
here?
” Vivian repeated.

“She said you used to be friends.”

Vivian gazed down at the pound coin in her palm. Her roots showed grey. “Did she come inside?”

“She wanted to see the garden.”

“The garden? You showed her the garden!” Vivian slammed her hand down hard; coins thrummed sound out on the table.

“She wanted to see it,” I stammered.

Vivian's face veered towards me. “I don't want her coming here again, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You do not go to the nursery. You do not let her inside the house. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I remained still until she had left the room. But that did not quell movement in my head, a thought. Vivian had a friend. Once.

The sun had left a shadow beneath the yellow brick when I returned to the garden. I walked towards it, slowly, and touched the edge. It was loose. Snatching back my hand, I checked the top of the wall. A sparrow gazed back, its feet crooked over the edge. I looked again at the yellow brick and then folded my fingers around its edges and eased it out. It fitted perfectly into the palm of my hand. I looked back and studied the opening that had been left behind. I saw a strange, crooked route inside the wall but as I moved forward a wealth of detail began to pour between its newly exposed edges. Hardly daring to breathe, I pressed my face against the wall and looked. Through.

It felt cold in bed. Even with an extra blanket, I'd pulled my knees up to my chest and encased my hands between my thighs. The whole room felt cold: the clock beside the bed, the teeth of my comb, the insides of my shoes. Stretching the sheet over my head I thought about the hole in the wall.

A small tree had been framed in the hole like a botanical print. I had counted every single yellow fruit that clung to the branches but had stopped when I noticed a different sort of fruit, not yellow, but brown and hollow and hairy. A half coconut had been tied to a gap in the branches. I'd studied it for a while, noting the shreds of pecked flesh hanging off the shell, memorizing every curl, every black blemish, until the angle of the sun reminded me that Vivian would soon be home, so I pushed the loose fragment back into the wall and covered it over with a piece of moss, as if it had never been.

I turned over, feeling a plume of chilly air rush into my bed. But my goose-pimpled skin masked a warmer layer inside my body. I had glimpsed a slice of
his
garden; the real now overlaid the imagined. And the imagined could barely be recalled. But as I wrestled to untangle the knot of thoughts, something rose above the others, something strange, something inexplicable. Edward Black. The mean, the frightening, the invisible Edward Black — fed birds.

32

“She
says
she's doing her homework.”

I wanted to hug Una's father when he opened the front door. I almost did, but instead I smiled and then skipped up the stairs. Una's feet were waving in the air behind her when I entered her room, a book tucked between her elbows. “Edith!” She jumped off the bed and hugged me.

I attempted to return her embrace. “You smell different.”

“You don't,” she said smiling and ushering me to sit down beside her on the bed.

Una's hair was longer than I remembered, her nails long too, but her skirt was shorter and she tugged at it repeatedly as she talked, attempting to manage the hemline as it skitted round her thighs.

“What's it like? I said.

Una's cheeks pinked. “What's what like?”

“At University?”

“Hard work, but we have a lot of fun — but first tell me, how's the job?”

“It's alright. Jean's nice, she's kind.”

Una laid her hand on my arm. “You know, actually you
do
look a bit different.”

“New laces,” I said lifting up my feet and pointing at my toes.

Her fingers squeezed tighter. “I mean it. There's something that's changed about you. Has something happened?”

“No.”

Una tipped her head. “I was so pleased when you told me about the job.”

“It's just a shop.”

“I know, but a shop is full of people and —”

“Not too many.”

“No, not too many but. . . isn't it nice seeing some different faces?”

I thought of the boys at the foot of the ladder. “Yes. That's nice.”