The Insistent Garden (43 page)

I glanced up; the sky was blue. “I don't want to work on the wall anymore.”

“What did you say?”

“I. . . don't want to —”

It came suddenly. Vivian's hand whipped up from her side and ringed fingers sliced across my face, “You little idiot! Don't you realize?”

I stepped back then steadied myself. “Realize. . .” I suppressed the shake in my voice “. . . what?”

“
He
wants to get us.” Vivian's chin jutted forward; a drop of saliva landed on my cheek. “He'll do anything. He's waiting. He's sly.” She glanced up. “He's probably watching now.”

I glanced up too and held in a smile.

“Are you listening to me?” Her whole body seemed to be about her mouth and I stared at the line where red lipstick met pink inner lips.

A movement beyond her head caught my eye.

“Edith, are you listening?”

“Yes.”

She gripped my shoulders and put her face close to mine. “I don't like the feel of you.”

Before I could respond, she began to shout. “I'm going to collect your father now. I expect to see you working when I get back. And don't forget what I said. He's probably watching. Right now.”

I pressed my handkerchief to the side of my face as I watched her go in the back door; I could still feel the hard pinch of her hands on my shoulders.

The front gate was still swinging on its hinges when Alden arrived at the house a minute later.

“I saw what she did!” he said, barging into the hall. Grinder tore passed my legs — a blur of fur — and licked Alden's hand.

“You can't come in here!” I cried.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “Edith, it's alright. Now, it's alright.”

The softness of his touch belied the ferocity of his expression; his eyes were wide: he breathed fast. He began to pace, striding across the hall in heavy silence.

“Alden,” I placed my hand on his arm. “Please, slow down.”

“I can't.”

“What's wrong?”

“We must do something to stop this,” he said, moving in the direction of the kitchen.

“What are you going to do?”

He turned. “I don't know, but Edith, this
must
stop.”

He wrenched open the back door and strode down the garden. I ran behind, terrified. He halted at the base of the high wall. “Edith, where's the ladder?”

“I. . .”

“It's alright, I can see it. Can you help me?”

The ladder creaked, its feet gouged a groove in the soil and Alden began to climb. I gripped the rails and stared at the back of his ankles, overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of his heels.

“Have you got a hammer?” he yelled, cranking his head down towards me.

“I'm not sure, I. . .”

His ankles were moving; his feet back on the ground and he scanned the garden like a hungry animal. “That'll do.” He grabbed the handle of the spade and clambered back up.

Brick chippings showered down; a speck lodged in my eye but I did not let go of the ladder, which shuddered with every whack of the spade. A groan fell down from Alden's mouth; I watched the triangle of sweat that glued his shirt to his back as he lunged from side to side.

Suddenly it stopped; a bird braved a tiny chirrup. Alden climbed down the ladder slowly and placed the spade against the wall. Then he stepped towards me; I could feel heat coming off his hand, which rested on my shoulder. “This has to stop,” he said.

Of course it had to stop. Hadn't I always known that the wall would never touch the sky? I fingered the pulse in my neck and looked at Alden. But he was distracted, gazing up at his attic. Then, a new expression crept across his face. “I'm going to end this,” he said.

“What do you — ?”

“The attic.” He raised his hand. “There's a door up in the attic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Edith, we can end this. Let's go up.”

He began to run. Up the garden, through the kitchen, into the hall and out of the front door. I ran too, ducking twigs as we squeezed through the hole in the hedge. I watched patiently while he rummaged through the contents of his pocket, happy to absorb the details of his body in motion: the shift of his collarbone, the darting movement of his fingers.

“Got it,” he said, holding up the door key.

I could hardly keep up as he tore up the stairs, our hands squeaking out elated terror on the turn in the banister. Nothing had changed up in the attic; the imprint remained untouched on the sofa, a stain still lined the coffee cup on the floor.

Alden rushed at the party wall and ran his hands across its surface.

“Edith,” he cried. “Feel!”

I ran to his side. “Feel what?”

“Feel the door! There's a door between the houses. My mother told me.”

Our hands moved in circles; they touched then swirled apart as we felt for a trace of the door in the wall. But we couldn't find it. Alden walked over to a cupboard in the corner of the room where he rummaged noisily; a paint tin was thrown; a sleeping bag flew through the air, curling up on the floor like a dead body. Finally, back muscles taut, he bent down and pulled out a huge, steel-headed sledge hammer.

“Alden. . . wha — !”

“Stand back, Edith!”

I ducked behind the sofa as the hammer slashed the air, and hit the plaster. A crack raced across the wall, splitting into hairs then the hammer swung again, pounding, pounding until a triangle of brickwork emerged. A sound rose up — half grunt, half sob — and the hammer swung again. Fragments clung on by a thread; plaster chips fell to the floor and helpless specks of dust swirled round and round in a large, lank ‘O.'

I coughed. Alden coughed, and then paused, his lungs pumping on regardless. Slowly, so slowly, the dust gathered inside a parallelogram of sunlight suspended in the centre of the room. Then he began again, chipping, grunting, sweating. Flying.

At last he stopped. Alden rested the hammer on the shattered wall and leaned forward to inspect it; a square of back opened up beneath his shirt —beautiful skin.

He swung round to face me. “There's the door!” His face, layered with dust, looked older. “See the frame.” His powdered hands fingered the wall and, finding a weakness, he levered, he chipped, he picked until the grain of a long-sealed door emerged. He dusted off the hole where the door handle once lay then he poked his finger in and pulled. “Damn, it's jammed.” He dashed back to the cupboard, rummaging with fever, then he emerged, brandishing a long, green jemmy. Dust rose again; a rhythmic scrape ricocheted around the room, and varnish specked the floor. Dragged from the cupboard, an axe — hungry — bit into the door.

Slowly, sliver by sliver, an unknown part of my house appeared. First he gouged the crack into a slit, then shaved it into a gap, and then finally chipped into a hole.

“Let's go in.” I said. I snagged my hair on a splinter of wood as I passed through the opening but I hardly had time to absorb the contents of the attic room, glimpsing crowded things, before Alden dashed back into his side of the house and gesticulated wildly at me, bracing his shoulder against the back of the sofa. “Edith, will you help me?”

We dragged the sofa into the gap, not caring that its feet were scratching grooves into the floorboards like the claws of a reluctant dog. Alden stopped as it reached the centre line of the party wall. “That's far enough,” he said.

We slumped onto the sofa, straddling the two houses, our bodies mirrored limb to limb.

A new room had entered my house; I had a moment to inspect it. My whole life had been spent sleeping beneath the attic, undressing beneath it, dreaming beneath it. The proportions were identical to those in Alden's house; the floorboards married, the roof sloping to the floor at exactly the same angle. Only the contents were different. Now draped in silently falling dust I saw all the signs of a passion: encyclopedias, manuals, catalogues, journals, trophies, plaques, photographs of handshakes, newspaper cuttings. . . With trembling fingers I picked up a framed certificate and read;

Gold Medal — Year 1949
Vegetable category
Winner — Wilfred Stoker

Alden's shirt had an uncanny capacity to absorb tears. Words seemed to clog my throat as I wept into his shoulder, unable to progress beyond a single phrase: “How dare he. . . how dare he. . . how dare he. . .”

“You have something in your eye,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Brick dust.” I felt calm as I watched him twist the handkerchief into a point then brush it along the bottom of my eyelid.

“He loved plants,” I said. “My father loved plants. How could he not tell me?” I bent my head forward; it felt heavy in my hands. Yet the rest of my body felt light. I was hardly there. So much had changed in a short space of time. My heart couldn't take anymore.

77

“Alden.”

“Yes?”

“I'd like to show you my side.”

He smiled, but a sheen of nervousness showed through. “I think I'd like that.”

I sensed a change in the creak of the stairs as we descended together. We passed quickly through the hall, opened the front door, crossed the garden and squeezed through the gap in the hedge. The dog greeted us in the hall of my house, sniffing frantically at Alden's ankles before he trotted off into the living room.

The kitchen seemed to have a different smell as we passed through in silence. Alden paused by the back door, then shifted his weight from foot to foot, hand held to his chest.

“Are you alright?” I said.

“I hardly know,” he replied.

“What are you thinking about?”

“It's just that your garden, your side of the wall, it's always been. . .”

I waited, eager to know what word would fill that gap.

“Out of bounds,” he said at last, “or, something more than that. It's always been the place that I would never see.”

I looked into his face, but just as I placed my hand on his arm someone knocked on the front door.

“Who's that?”

“I don't know.” I felt scared, yet at the same time I became aware of a need to be ready.

A face stricken with anxiety appeared before me when I opened the door. Nancy Pit clutched a handbag to her chest, her fingers whitened beneath the strap. “Oh. . . I. . . Edith, your aunt isn't in, is she?”

“Vivian's not here,” I said.

She squeezed her bag tighter. “Could I come in a moment?”

“I'm not sure. . . I. . .” I suddenly recognized the expression on the woman's face; I'd seen it in my own bathroom mirror. “Come in.” I opened the door wider. “Come in and sit down.”

As if readying a stage for a play, we took our places in the kitchen. Nancy Pit, perching on the edge of a chair, clutched her handkerchief, turning it over her fingers in ever-tightening circles. I sat opposite, my hands on the table; Alden stood by the door. No-one spoke but the kitchen clock ticked on regardless; the fridge sighed.