The Insistent Garden (26 page)

“My father likes the crossword.”

“What do you like, Edith?”

No one had asked me that question before. “I listen to the radio and there's. . . my garden.”

“Ah, yes. How are those ugly salvias doing?”

“Growing,” I replied, smiling.

“I would love a closer look one day.”

I froze. “Closer?” I turned towards her. “You saw it. The wall, you've seen it already, haven't you?”

She oozed guilt. “Yes, I saw it. It was that first day we went to Archie's.” She looked down at her hands. “I didn't want to say anything.”

I felt queasy. “I forgot it was there. Dotty, can you believe I forgot it was even there?”

“We didn't need an introduction.” She smiled faintly.

I looked at the floor. “No.”

“So,” she said, putting her feet up on the coffee table, “how do you like my lounge?”

“It's lovely.”

And it was. The carpet was so thick I had left footprints in it. I could see them coming towards me from the door. Everything exuded comfort: puffed-up cushions sat on every chair, a blanket straddled the back of the sofa and a pair of slippers was parked up in front of the radiator, which clicked like the keys of a typewriter. There was something luxurious about having the heating still on so late at night and I walked over to the radiator and ran my hands over the hot metal. From there I noticed a photograph sitting on a writing desk in the corner of the room. It depicted a man's face up close, just eyes. Something drew me over to the desk. Something about the eyes.

“Dotty, who's the man in this photograph?” I asked.

“Oh, that's Victor,” she replied with a wave of her hand.

“Is he —?”

“My lover? Yes.” She re-organized the crumbs on her plate, pressing them into straight lines with the blade of her knife.

“Does he live round here?”

“Oh no, Australia.”

“Australia?”

“Yes, down under.”

I looked back at the photograph. “I don't understand. When do you see him?”

“I don't.”

“But Dotty, I still don't understand, how can he be your. . . lover?”

“Good question.” She shoved the cushion further down her back and folded her feet beneath her bottom. “We met as pen friends. . .”

“What do you mean?”

“Edith, pen friends. You must know how that works.”

“Well, a bit. Some of the girls at school wrote letters to children in France. But how do you meet someone like that?”

“You don't. That's the problem. I fell in love with the idea of him.”

“What idea?”

Dotty paused. Crumbs were defying gravity, forming into a steep-sided pyramid. “Darling, you're taxing my tired brain.”

I picked up the photograph and examined the eyes. “Was it his face that you fell in love with?”

“No,” she replied. “It was the words.” She looked wistful. “I poured myself into those sentences. We have a connection, you know.”

“But, you've never met?”

“No.”

“And you have no idea how he smiles or smells. . . or stands?”

“No idea.”

“And the eyes. . . did you never get to see his full face?”

She paused. “Not. . . yet. Maybe that is all he wanted to reveal of himself.”

“What did you reveal of yourself?”

She curled a lock of hair behind her ear. “I can't remember.”

Edward Black's house was dark by the time I walked past two hours later. I traced out the edge of his garden with my hand, the privet leaves cool beneath my fingers, and then looked at the bedroom window. It exuded an incredible stillness, a house holding its breath. I knew then I wanted more, more than a silhouette. I wanted something that lay between a glimpse and a complete, clear view.

My door key turned in utter silence and I tiptoed upstairs, balancing on the quietest corner of each tread. The blankets felt itchy when I took off my clothes and slipped into bed. Retracting from the cold rubbery skin of yesterday's hot water bottle, I slid my feet deeper between the sheets, but my toes refused to warm up, so I made a nest inside my nightdress with my heels tucked high against my buttocks.

I thought of the eyes. The ones from down under. Dotty had fallen in love with a pair of eyes. Not the nose, nor the mouth, just a sliver of a person's face. She was probably sitting at the desk at this moment, feet stuffed into slippers, teeth unbrushed, writing words of love to a person she had never met.

Then I heard a noise on the other side of the wall, the sound of a person moving through a room. Then — did I imagine it? — the creak of bedsprings compressed beneath the weight of a body. I stared at my bedroom wall, my sight ambushed by the darkness. I tried to make out the pattern on the wallpaper but more thoughts crept in, vague, transparent thoughts, teasing my brain with their skittishness, then solidifying, gathering round a single question.

What was
he
thinking now?

43

Vivian arrived again. Only a day had passed since she'd departed but now she had returned and I stood in position, watching the taxi driver leave the street, his resentment marked by a screech of tyres and a groove sliced into the grass verge.

“Bring in the bags, Edith,” she said, stepping across the threshold.

“You have more luggage than usual.” I slipped my fingers through the handle of the largest case.

“I'm staying longer than usual,” she replied, drawing a gust of sweat-laden air into the hall and heading towards the kitchen. She had swept out of the back door before I managed to catch up. “Your father has ordered more bricks, hasn't he?” she called over her shoulder, coming to a halt beside the crabapple tree.

“A hundred,” I replied. “They're coming today.”

“Only one?”

“Yes.”

“We need more. What about cement?”

“We have two bags.”

“Get six.”

I drew in breath. “Aunt Vivian?”

“What?”

“Do you think the wall is safe?”

“Of course it's safe,” she said. “Your father knows what he's doing.” She glanced up. “What's that thing doing up in the tree?”

“The coconut?” I replied.

“Yes, what's it doing up there?”

“I put it there for the birds.”

“What birds?”

“The birds in the garden.”

“Ridiculous.” She turned towards the high wall, scanning its face. Then, she began to count the courses, breathing in numbers and jabbing her finger at each line of bricks in turn. Suddenly, she stopped. A low sound had halted her hand. Someone was humming, very softly, very deeply, on the other side of the wall.

“Edith, take my bags up to my room,” she said, the gaps in her words evenly spaced.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Are you coming in too?”

“In a minute.”

I heaved the bags upstairs before rushing back down to the kitchen. Vivian was visible through the window. She hadn't moved; she stood uncharacteristically still, her shoulders frozen into a square. I thought I saw her lips move yet the rest of her body remained motionless; she could almost have been an ordinary person in an ordinary place. Then she saw me and walked quickly up the garden. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“So what are you doing standing there like that?

“I have to be somewhere.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I was about to go somewhere.”

“Well, get there, just get there, and stop getting in my way.”

“Order for Stoker?” Massive shoulders filled the doorframe, cutting out light.

“Yes. Can you leave them in the front please, on the pavement.”

“Can do. That'll be twenty-seven pounds and ten shillings. Sign here please.” He thrust a paper into my hand; I smelt engine oil. “Round it up to twenty-eight if you like.” He winked. “We'll bring 'em round to the back in the barrow for another couple of quid.”

“Oh, no. It's alright, the street is fine.”

“You got a permit for that, love?”

“What do you mean?”

“You need a permit now to leave bricks in the street, that's unless you can move them within the hour.”

“It's alright, I can move them before. . . then.”

He looked me up and down. “No offence, love, but can you manage by yourself?”

“Yes. I'm used to it.”

He gave me a long look. “Oh, go on love, I'll move them for nothing, I can't have you doing your back in.” He turned round. “Terry. Get yourself over here. The lady needs some help.”

“Oh. . . no please, I can do it.”

He frowned, “I
said,
we won't charge you a penny.”

Light poured back into the hall as he plodded back down the garden. I looked over his retreating shoulder; the driver of a large lorry shuddering on its frame, waved. I waved back.

They had nearly brought all the bricks into the back garden by the time I had finished folding the laundry and gone outside. Vivian was there, up from her nap and shouting instructions over the clunk of bricks being stacked into a pile. I drifted towards the circle of activity, distracted by the bustle, by the squeak of the wheelbarrow, the dust. It took a second for me to realize. “Aunt Vivian, where are the flowers that were by the wall?”

Vivian glanced in my direction. “Can't hear you.”

“The flower bed!” I cried, “They're dropping the bricks on the new flower bed.”

The man paused. “Is there a problem?” Sweat glistened atop a large friendly nose.

“No,” said Vivian. “Carry on.”

I touched my aunt's sleeve. “Aunt Vivian. . . please.”

“Carry on,” she said again, flicking her hand in the direction of the man.

At that moment my father stepped out of the back door. I ran up to him, forgetting to check, forgetting to be me. “He's crushing the plants!” I said.

He surveyed the bricks, his face a plaster cast of concealment. I waited, holding my hand in my pocket, feeling the line of the seam. He gazed at the ground as if looking for something. Then he turned his finger in a circle. “Continue.”

The barrow wheels turned.

I separated.

I was here; they were over there. My father stood talking to Vivian beside the pile of bricks, but I did not care what he was saying. Why should I? It was too late to save the plants crushed underneath. Yet something compelled me to watch their faces: mouths widened with volume, hands cupped behind their ears, the slow deliberate nods. Something ingrained. Then I noticed an aspect of their faces that I had never seen before. A sibling resemblance, brought out by the shouting, was visible in their profiles. Although the skin was different, my aunt's slack, my father's taut like the membrane of a paper kite, an identical bone structure showed through.