The Rose Garden (26 page)

All during the year the nuns walked privately in their garden, and opened it to ordinary people only the one day. It is a pity that everyone in the world could not be admitted at one time or another to walk in that garden, best of all to walk there alone, it was so beautiful in the sun. The nuns walked there undisturbed, apparently, and still it was altogether a stirring place, warm red, even burning red, the way it filled the nostrils and left a sweet red taste in the lips, red with too many roses, red as all the passionate instruments of worship, red as the tongue, red as the heart, red and dark, in the slow-gathering summertime, as the treacherous parting in the nuns' flesh, where they feared, and said they feared, the Devil yet might enter in.

Even if there wasn't much of a summer, even if the sun was thin, what heat there was somehow collected itself inside the high stone walls of the garden. The walls should have been covered by a creeper, a red leaf or a green leaf, but instead they were bare and clean, warm under the hands. The tall walls of the garden were uncovered and stony under the sun, except for one, the end wall, which was covered by forsythia, yellow at its blooming time, on or about Christmas Day. Then the forsythia wall would stand up overnight in a brilliant tracery of true yellow, a spidery pattern of yellow, more like a lace shawl than a blanket, but none the less wonderful for that. Of course, the forsythia showed to great advantage then, with the rest of the garden a graveyard.

When word came of the yellow blooming, the nuns would come out together in twos and threes, with their black wool shawls around their shoulders, to witness the miracle. It was a great pleasure to them, confused in their minds with the other joys of Christmas, and they compared the delicate golden flowers to “baby stars in the canopy of heaven” and “tiny candles lighted to honor the coming of Our Lord.” All of their images were gentle and diminutive, and they spoke in gentle excited voices, crying to each other across the frosty air, “Sister, Sister, did you hear what Sister just said?” “Sister, have you noticed how clear and silent the air is this morning?”

But with the coming of June the roses arrived in their hundreds and thousands, some so rich and red that they were called black, and some so pale that they might have been white, and all the depths between—carmine, crimson, blush, rose, scarlet, wine, purple, pink, and blood—and they opened themselves and spread themselves out, arching and dancing their long strong stems, and lay with lips loose and curling under the sun's heat, so that the perfume steamed up out of them, and the air thickened with it, and stopped moving under the weight of it.

Mary loved that burning garden. From one summer to the next, she never saw the nuns, nor did she think of them. She had no interest in them, and there was not one among them who as much as knew her name. It was their urgent garden she wanted. She craved for her sight of the roses. Every year she made her way up the hill, alone, and went into the garden, and sat down on a stone bench, covering the bench with her skirt so that no one would offer to share it with her. She would have liked to go in the early morning, when few people would be there and she would have a better look at the garden, but she was afraid she would be too much noticed in the emptiness, and so she went in the middle of the afternoon, when the crowd was thickest.

Once she had seen the garden in the rain. That was the year she remembered with most pleasure, because the loitering, strolling crowd that usually jammed the narrow paths between the rose beds was discouraged by the weather. She had the garden almost to herself, that time. Wet, the roses were more brilliant than they ever had been. Under the steady fine rain the clay in the beds turned black and rich, and the little green leaves shone, and the roses were washed into such brightness that it seemed as though a great heart had begun to beat under the earth, and was sending living blood up to darken the red roses, and make the pink roses purer.

Another year, the day turned out cold, and all the roses stood distinctly away from each other, and each one looked so delicate and confident in the sharp air that Mary thought she could never forget one of their faces as long as she lived. She had no desire to grow roses herself, or even to have a garden. It was this red garden, walled, secret, and lost to her, that she wanted. She loved the garden more than anyone had ever loved it, but she did not know about the forsythia that came in December to light up the end wall. No one had ever told her that the forsythia bloomed, or how it looked. She would have liked the forsythia very much, although it could not have enveloped her as the roses did. All during the year, she thought backward to her hour in the garden, and forward to it. It was terrible to her, to think that the garden was open to the nuns and closed to her. She spoke to no one about her longing. This was not her only secret, but it was her happiest one.

Mary's father used to take in lodgers—one lodger at a time because they had only one room to spare. The lodgers were men who visited the town from time to time, commercial travelers. Sometimes a man would take a job in the town, and stay with them for a few months or so. Once they had a commercial traveler who made a
habit of staying with them every time he came to town, and then he got a job selling shoes in a local shop, and stayed almost a year. When he left for good, to take a better-paid job with a brother-in-law who had a business in Dublin, Dom Lambert came, and moved into the lodger's room.

Dom was a meek and mild little draper's assistant, with wide-open, anxious blue eyes and a wavering smile. He was accustomed to watch his customers vacillate between two or more rolls of cloth, and his smile vacillated from habit. He had small, stained teeth that were going bad. When they ached, he would sit very quietly with his hands clenched together and ask for hot milk. He told Mary that his skull was very thin. He said it was as thin as a new baby's, and that a good crack on it would be the finish of him. He was always stroking his skull, searching for fissures. He was afraid a roll of cloth might tumble down on him off a shelf and he would die with customers in the shop. Even a spool of thread, he said, might do considerable damage.

Dom dressed neatly, in dark draper's suits. He was most particular about the knot of his tie, and he wore a modest stickpin. He was proud of his small feet, and polished his shoes in the kitchen every morning, assuming various athletic positions according to whether he was wielding the polish brush, the polishing cloth, or the soft finishing brush. He brushed his suits, too, and did his nails with a finicky metal implement he carried in his pocket. He tidied his own room, and made his bed in the morning. Every morning he left the house at eight-thirty, and he returned at six-thirty. He liked to read the paper at night, or play a few games of patience, or go for a stroll. He went to bed early, and in the morning descended looking brisk and ready to do his day's work. Still, his color was bad, and he often had to hammer his chest to dislodge a cough that stuck there.

When Dom had been living nine years in the house, Mary's
father died very suddenly one night. Mary was lying awake in the dark, and she heard her father's voice calling loudly. She found him hanging half out of bed, holding the little white stone holy-water font, which he had dragged off its nail in the wall.

“The font is dry,” he cried to her. “Get me the priest.”

He waved his dry fingertips at her, which he had been feeling in the font with, and died. Dom helped her to raise him back against the bolster. She lifted the dry font from the floor and upended it over her father's forehead.

“There might be a drop left in it,” she said, but there was nothing. The font was sticky and black on the inside, and when she put it to her nose it smelled like the room, but more strongly.

“He went very quick,” Dom said. “Are you going to call the priest?”

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” she said. “I meant to fill the font with holy water this coming Sunday.”

“Are you going to shut his eyes?” Dom asked, pressing his hands painfully together, as though he already felt the cold man's lids resisting him.

“No,” she said. “They'll be closed soon enough.”

She took up her candle and walked back to her room, her white flannel nightdress curved and plunging around her large body. She got into bed and pulled the clothes up around her.

“Good night now,” she said to Dom. “There's no more to be done till morning.”

She raised herself on her elbow to blow out the candle.

Dom said, “Are you not afraid to be in here by yourself, with him dead in there like that?”

“He can't do anybody any harm now,” she said. “What ails you, Dom? Are you trying to tell me you're afraid of a poor dead man?”

“I'm afraid of my life,” Dom said. His shirt, which was all he had on, shivered in the leaping candlelight.

“Let me stay in here a minute,” he said.

“Are you afraid he'll come after you, or what?”

“Let me kneel up here against the bed till it gets light!” he begged. “I'm not able to go back into that room by myself, and pass his door. Or put on your clothes, and we'll go together to call the priest.”

“I'll do nothing of the sort,” said Mary. “If you won't go back to bed, throw that skirt there around your shoulders, or you'll catch your death.”

She dragged her great black skirt from where it hung over the end rail of the bed, and flung it to him. Then she blew out the candle and fell asleep, although she had intended to stay awake. As the room grew light, she woke up, to find Dom huddled against her in sleep. He was lying outside the covers, with his nose pressed against her shoulder, and her skirt almost concealing his head. As she watched him, he opened his eyes and gazed fearfully into her face. He started to close his eyes again, to pretend he was asleep, but thought better of it.

“I only wanted to get in out of the cold,” he said.

“That's all very fine,” said Mary, “but don't go trying to get on top of me.”

“Oh, God, I wouldn't do the like of that!” Dom said.

“I don't know, now, there was a man lodged here before you came. He weighed a ton, it seemed like.”

“A great big man!” said Dom, who was shocked.

“The same size as yourself. Maybe not even as big, but he was like lead. He came in here two nights running, just before he went off for good. The first night he came in, it was black dark. I thought for a minute it was my father getting in the bed with me, and then didn't I realize it was the commercial traveler. The next night, in he came again. I let on in the morning nothing had happened, and so did he.”

“And did you not tell your father?”

“Why would I tell him?”

“Maybe it was your father all the time.”

“It wasn't him. It was the commercial traveler, all right. If nothing else, I'd have known him by the feel of the shirt he had on him. Anyway, my father hadn't that much interest in me.”

“Lord have mercy on him—your poor father, I mean,” said Dom, who was growing uncomfortable and ashamed as the increasing light disclosed them to each other.

Mary had run out of small talk, but because she wanted him not to go, and because she had as much ordinary courage as any other human being, she spoke up. “I'll move over,” she said, “and you lie in here beside me. As long as you're here, you may as well settle yourself.”

The bed in which they lay, like all the beds in that house, was made with only one sheet, the undersheet. There was no top sheet—only the rough warm blanket, and then another blanket, a thinner one, and on top of all a heavy patchwork quilt. The beds were high up off the floor, and made of brass, and all the mattresses sagged. The floors sagged, too, some sliding off to the side, and some sinking gently in the middle, and all of the rooms were on different levels, because of the way in which the two houses had been flung together. There were no carpets on the floors, and no little mats or rugs. The bare old boards groaned disagreeably under the beds, and under Mary's feet, and under Dom's feet.

Mary and Dom got married as quickly as they could, because they were afraid the priest might come around and lecture them, or maybe even denounce them publicly from the pulpit. They settled down to live much as they had lived before Mary's father died. Most of their life was spent in the kitchen. This was a large, dark,
crowded room set in the angle where the two houses joined, and irregular because it took part of itself from one house and part from the other. The only window in the kitchen was small and high up, and set deep in the thick old wall. It looked out on a tiny, dark yard, not more than a few feet square, in which there was an outhouse. In this window recess Dom kept his own possessions—his playing cards, a pencil, a bottle of blue-black ink, a straight pen, a jotter, a package of writing paper with matching envelopes, and the newspapers. After Rose got big enough to be with him, he began to keep a tin box of toffees there, and he liked to play a game of coaxing with her, with a toffee for a prize. The toffees were not of a kind sold in Mary's shop, which offered only cheap loose sweets, sold five for a penny, or even eight or ten for a penny. Rose liked those sweets, too, but she liked the tin-box toffees in the bright twists of paper best of all.

Rose was her father's girl. Everyone said so. Mary said so, more often than anyone else. She said it bitterly to Dom, and mockingly to Rose, but once she had said it she shut up, because it was not to start a quarrel that she said it but only to let them know that she knew.