The Unfinished Garden (15 page)

Tilly chewed on her thumbnail and replayed the conversation
that she and Isaac had danced around the night before, when she’d explained she
would be incredibly busy for the next two weeks, saving the walled garden with
James’s help. Isaac, who only weeks earlier had urged her to take James on, had
accepted the news with a silent stoicism, which, in anyone else, Tilly would
have interpreted as jealousy. Or maybe he’d read her explanation for what it
was—a feeble cover-up.

Sebastian squeezed Isaac’s shoulder. “Well done,” he said.

Archie stopped pounding the daisy, scooted around and turned
his back on them, but not before flashing what Tilly used to call Sebastian’s
granite face. Cold and set like a statue, it was the closest teenage Sebastian
ever came to a pout.

“Right,” Sebastian said. “Time for you boys to go and ask Mr.
Nealy—”

“James,” Tilly corrected him.

Sebastian ignored her. “If you can help in the kitchen.”

Archie and Isaac groaned in camaraderie.

“Don’t bother, chaps.” Rowena pushed through the French doors
that led from the drawing room onto the patio. Her hair was looped on top of her
head and secured with a kitchen baggie clip, and she was balancing two cans of
Coke on a tray of salmon-and-asparagus rolls. “I have everything under control.
I am Ms. Kitchen-Skivvy, sidekick to the infamous—but
oooh
he has such a sexy
arrrrrse—
”
Archie stifled a giggle with his hand. “Mr. Fussy-Wussy! Who insists on washing
up every bloody utensil as he goes.” Rowena put the tray down on the
wrought-iron table next to Mrs. Haddington, who awoke with a jerk.

“Goodness.” Mrs. Haddington rubbed her eyes. “How embarrassing.
Nodding off like a doddery old has-been.”

“Rubbish, Mrs. H,” Rowena yelled. “You’re resting from the
demands of state.”

Joke about it, but since when do you nap,
Mum?
Her mother could make a thousand excuses, but she was slowing
down. Tilly hadn’t watched her father age. His decline had been swift, but his
family—
my harem,
he called them—had stayed
close, nursing him like a tag team. But what if the next time around, Tilly was
the one who needed nursing? She shook her head.
Not these
thoughts, not today.

Rowena snapped open a Coke can and handed it to Archie.
“Consolation prize, sweetie.”

Archie giggled. “Dad doesn’t let me drink Coke.”

“Good thing I’m not your father then.” Rowena handed the other
can to Isaac. “Grub’s up in fifteen minutes, so shoo, the pair of you. Go do
whatever vile things boys do.”

A look sparked between the kids. “Let’s go climb that big oak
tree,” Isaac said, and he and Archie ran, shrieking, toward the paddock.

“Rowena!” Sebastian might well have been shooting for parental
outrage, but he missed his target by yards. “Did you just give my child
Coca-Cola?”

“I most certainly did. Got a problem with that?”

“Not if you share your last fag with me.” Sebastian’s lopsided
smile stretched across his face, but his eyes, the color of stirred-up river
silt, followed James as he came through the French doors.

“Can I offer you a refill, Virginia?” James asked her mother.
He held a cut-glass pitcher of Pimm’s in one hand, and a goblet of red wine in
the other. He had been skeptical about the Pimm’s, commenting that he preferred
his alcohol undiluted and without a floating garnish. At this point in his life,
he had said, he knew what he liked.

“Wonderful, thank you.” Mrs. Haddington held up her glass. “I
must say, in less than twenty-four hours you have certainly perfected the art of
making Pimm’s. Are you sure you don’t have English genes?”

“Pure Irish-American mongrel,” James replied.

Sebastian leaned into Tilly.
No aftershave
today. Thank God.
“How long is he staying?”

“Two weeks.” Tilly dunked a bobbing piece of strawberry in her
glass and tried to ignore Sebastian. His tone had suggested petulance. The same
tone, in fact, that he had used on the night she had refused to relinquish her
virginity in a musty old sleeping bag.
Sod it.
Why
did every conversation with Sebastian trigger a mental reel of adolescent sex
highlighted by fumbles to rebutton blouses and tissue-up spills before
someone—human or pet—crashed open the door? No wonder they’d run to the Dower
House for privacy. The ghosts of a ruin had disturbed them less than life at
Woodend.

A fighter jet roared over the patio, and Tilly hunched her
shoulders. Military aircraft had zoomed over the village since she was a child,
but every sighting, every crack that split the sky, still unnerved her.

“Why’re you so interested in James’s plans?” she said. “You
jealous?”

Sebastian spluttered into his drink. “Christ, Tilly. Keep your
voice down.”

“It’s just if you’re not jealous, you should stop staring at
James. You’ll give him the wrong idea. And don’t snap…no one heard me over the
jet.”

“I did not snap.” Sebastian’s voice was crisp, a voice that
closed deals and signaled his intention they should stay closed.

See? This was why she didn’t want a man in her life. Who had
the energy to deal with hand-me-down emotions, to second-guess a partner,
especially one whose life was guided by propriety? Thou shalt not reveal thy
emotions. Had she ever seen Sebastian break down, either from rage or ecstasy?
He was a sweet drunk and a silent lover. He could probably step on a copperhead
and not whimper.

His competence at life had appealed to Tilly-the-teenager as
she’d struggled to curb a constant bubbling urge to scream at the world. Even
when faced with her temper, his devotion had been quiet and solid, expressed not
verbally but through the way he handled the minutiae of her life. But would she
settle for that now?

Tilly blew an imaginary bubble from her lips. Thank God she
worked with plants, not humans. Take those leggy pinks in her mother’s
herbaceous border. One swift round of deadheading and they would bounce back
with fatter, healthier blooms. Sebastian on the other hand…had grown rigid. He
was glaring at a wasp perched on the rim of his glass.

Best say nothing. After all, Sebastian would prefer it that
way.

If she grabbed Sebastian by the shoulders and gave him a good
rattle, would any emotions fall out? Was it so awful to admit that you loved a
person who had abandoned you or that wasps terrified you? As Sari had commented,
everyone was frightened of something. Except for Rowena, who was more likely to
skip toward danger, arms open, shouting, “Yippee!”

Sebastian cleared his throat, signaling that the wasp had gone.
“Are you free next Saturday night?” he said. “For dinner at The Flying
Duck?”

Symmetrical cubes of fruit—
that takes
talent, James
—floated on the surface of her drink, refusing to sink.
She looked up. “A date?” Might as well establish the ground rules.

“No, Tilly. Not a date.” Sebastian picked at the back of his
signet ring. “I’d like to talk to you in private.”

Good thing she got that sorted, then. Tilly flicked imaginary
lint from her sundress. Still, his timing was spot-on. She could ask for advice
about buying Woodend. Her mother might be shut down to the idea, but if Tilly
could get Sebastian on her side….

James appeared in front of them, silhouetted by brilliant
sunshine.

He looked different today and strangely exotic in the setting
of Woodend, like a black swan that had flown off course and found sanctuary in
an alien habitat. Maybe it was his black silk shirt or the chunky swirls of
earrings that reminded Tilly of the @ sign on a computer keyboard. Maybe it was
the mere fact of his height, which meant he had to duck under every interior
doorway of the house. Tilly was still trying to place him in her world, and then
he smiled. His smile suggested he was drawing her into a conspiracy, which,
technically he was. But even if you hadn’t deciphered his code, it would be
impossible to resist such an intimate gesture. He had that rare gift, the
ability to give you his attention without distraction or restraint.

Tilly shifted her focus to her glass. “Cooking for the whole
crew is above and beyond, James. Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” James said. “Since you’ve found me a
room with a shower.”

“Really?” Sebastian sounded bored. “Where?”

“With me!” Rowena released the baggie clip and swung her hair
free. “Think I should warn him that my bathrooms are circa World War I, and the
shower is a rubber contraption one has to shove up the taps?” She made a lewd
gesture and laughed. “Makes sense, though,” she explained to Sebastian, “since
he and Tilly are going to be noses-deep in my soil every day.”

James blinked several times, paused and blinked again. It
seemed oddly ritualistic. Was this a compulsion, an outward sign of OCD? If he
were standing closer, Tilly would put her arm around him, or stroke his back.
Instead, she jiggled her head to catch his gaze, hoping he could read her
intention. But before she could clock his reaction, she jumped.

Sebastian’s arm had curled around her waist. His other arm
claimed Rowena. And then he tightened his grip.

Chapter 15

James threw his right leg on top of his left, and let
his ankle rest on his knee. Good casual posture, just your average crazy waiting
for his first gardening lesson. Despite being perched on the edge of the bench
to avoid a small stain. He jiggled both legs like a psycho on an amphetamine
high and fretted with the lace of his red Converse high-tops.
Red. The universal color of danger, of warning, of stop. Of
stay away, Tilly, for your own sake.

But she entered the walled garden with a wave. He wanted to
wave back, honest to God he did. Instead, he jumped up and began wringing his
hands as if washing them with air. What a stellar impersonation of Lady fucking
Macbeth. Now what would Tilly think?

He couldn’t do this. On no level could he do this.

The gate clanked shut behind her, and Tilly dumped the basket
she called a trug on top of a mutant dandelion. Biggest fucking dandelion he’d
ever seen. Dandelions. There had been dandelions at Maple View Farm that day
everything had changed. The day Tilly had let him in. That was a sign, a good
sign. Right?

“I don’t suppose there’s any point explaining that gardening is
therapy for the soul?” Tilly said. “You look as if you’re waiting to be hung,
drawn and quartered. And I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened in
Northamptonshire since the Tudors were knocking around.”

His fingers flew to his hair and he scraped it back from his
scalp in two fistfuls. Then he emitted a noise that was halfway between a choke
and a laugh. Feral. He sounded feral.

“An apt analogy, but it could be worse, far worse.” His speech
raced.
Pull back, James, pull back.
“My fear
thermometer hasn’t hit a ten.” His hands juggled imaginary weights. “It helps to
grade fears. Ten being the worst. I’m at an eight.” He pushed his hands into the
pockets of his jeans and clutched at his legs. “Eight and rising.”

“Peachy. Should I hide all the sharp implements?” Tilly nudged
the trug with her foot.

James exploded into laughter laced with mania.

What must she think? Why was he putting her through this?

She was explaining something. He should listen. It could be the
distraction he needed. As if. He was too far gone for distraction, the anxiety
too high. He needed to crash and burn. Hit a ten and let it all out, but that
wasn’t an option. Never done a ten in public before. Ten was private hell.
Private all the way.

You’re panting. Stop panting. Slow it all
down
.

Breathe, concentrate on your
breath.

Words. Tilly talking. Something about amending soil. Was she
serious? Him? Pick up a fistful of soil and
shake it all
about?
He gave two laughs, two hyena barks, as he pictured a conga
line of people singing the Hokey Pokey.

Tilly gave him a quizzical look. “Is this a ten?”

“Nine and a half, nine and a half.” He grappled with his
T-shirt. He wanted to gouge through his clothes, through his skin.

Inside he screamed:
It’s too strong. I
can’t control it.

Tears stabbed behind his eyeballs and an image flashed, an
awful image, one he couldn’t ignore: Tilly—gray, wasted, ravaged by cancer,
dying.
No, not Tilly, not Tilly.

Fear ambushed him from all sides, telling him to knot his hands
around themselves. If he did this six times Tilly wouldn’t die; the soil she’d
just shaken off that
Day of the Triffids
weed
wouldn’t contaminate her. She would not die.

“James.” Tilly sat back on her haunches and peeled off her
gardening gloves. “You haven’t told me everything, have you?”

She had no idea, no fucking idea. What kind of a bastard was he
to inflict this on her? He twisted his hands for the sixth and final time and
then backed away. He hit something solid—the wall?—and sank to his heels.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry, I’m
sorry.
“I can’t do this, Tilly. I thought I was ready. But I’m not.
Get me out of here, please.”

She walked over to him and held out her hand. All he wanted was
to take it. To take her hand, to hold her goddamn hand. But he couldn’t. She had
a smear of dirt on her knuckle.

Tilly shrugged and smiled the most beautiful smile he had ever
seen. “How about a stroll through The Chase?” she said. “I can guarantee it’s
unlike any place you’ve ever been.”

He blinked his agreement, too exhausted for words.

* * *

The gnarled trees of The Chase created a wall of green
so dark that your eyes saw black. Most newcomers dithered when they reached the
kissing gate at the entrance to the wood, but James entered without hesitation.
His head grazed the tangle of dog rose and elder that arched over the gate, and
a dusting of white blossoms fell to his black T-shirt like snowflakes.

Tilly took a deep breath and followed him in.

Immediately, the light changed from harsh morning sunshine to a
soft, luminous yellow. Tilly loved the light in The Chase—like a dusky sky
glowing with the charge of a million fireflies. The gardener in her called this
bright shade, but the romantic in her preferred fairy light. She glanced down at
the grass tickling her ankles. It was fluorescent, an unnatural tone that
suggested magic lurked under every blade.

The cool shade thrown down from twisted, sagging boughs was
refreshing after the dry heat. There was no shade in the walled garden, no
relief from the day’s brutal sunlight.

James stopped and Tilly took the lead. Arms above her head, she
wove through the bracken where it reached over the path. Leaves wobbled a few
feet from her, betraying the antics of wildlife. Squirrels or rabbits, she
hoped, not adders. One poisonous snake this summer was one too many.

They joined the public bridle path, a trail worn bare by
generations of ramblers and riders, and James pulled alongside her. She tripped
several times over the hard, lumpy ruts of compacted earth. James, however,
didn’t even stumble. He seemed to have a sixth sense for the hazards ahead.

They moved deeper into The Chase, sidestepping tree stumps
filled with new plant life and hoofprints sculpted out of caked earth. Echoes of
traffic on the far side of The Chase disappeared, and the melodies of
bullfinches, chaffinches and goldfinches—the bird songs Tilly had been listening
for since arriving in Bramwell Chase—played all around them.

A brace of pheasants shot across the path, and Tilly felt a
familiar jab of trepidation. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to
catch history replaying itself. Walking here, usually alone, was the only time
she believed in ghosts. She inhaled the intoxicating scent fermented over
centuries: the musk of trampled earth, the odor of fox, the old-fashioned floral
perfume that she could never quite identify. Once, not long after her father
died, she could have sworn she’d smelled his cigars in this very spot.

“You love this place,” James said. “Don’t you?”

Tilly peered into a mass of red campion flowers. “Time stands
still in The Chase, which I find reassuring. Rowena and I used to climb that
tree.” She pointed at a sprawling oak, its trunk bulging with knots. “And have
picnics in that glade.” She indicated a mass of dead bluebell heads skirting a
grassy clearing.

“How old is The Chase?” James asked.

“Ancient. Used to be a royal hunting forest in the Middle Ages,
but I’m sure it goes back way, way further. Can’t you imagine druids racing
through—”

“The beat of a horse’s feet, and the swish of a skirt in the
dew.”

“Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Way Through The Woods.’” She turned to
examine the long, angular face with the large, almond-shaped eyes. “My favorite
poem.”

“Mine, too. I slept badly as a kid, so I read poetry in the
middle of the night. Mainly about ghosts and ghouls. I think my subconscious was
searching for answers, even then.” He interlaced his fingers as if in prayer and
held them under his chin.

They watched each other in silence.

“You’re smiling,” he said at last. “You had me cast as a
techno-geek, didn’t you?”

“Anyone less geeky I can’t imagine. Although the ghost stories
make sense. You’re a little scary to a short woman, you know—I’m guessing over
six foot?”

“Six feet two and a half inches.”

“And that beard—”

“You don’t like the beard?” He sounded like Isaac, hurt but
eager to please.

“Nothing personal. I’m not a beard-moustache-goatee type of
gal. Had it long?”

A buzzard circled high above them.

“No,” he said. “It was an experiment. A failed one.”

“Let’s sit.” She gestured to a downed bough lying beneath the
multifingered limbs of a sweet chestnut tree. On the other side of the trunk
there was a small heart engraved with the initials S.W. and T.H. followed by the
word forever. Had Tilly honestly believed, at fifteen, that forever was
real?

“Do you have chiggers here?” James cast his glance in every
direction.

“No.”

“Fire ants?”

“No.”

“Poison ivy?”

“Nope. Just nettles. But keep your hands away from the
undergrowth. Hogweed and bracken can bring you out in a nasty rash.”

He swiveled around. “Bad?”

“James.” The buzzard gave its plaintive mewing call. “Just
sit.”

He did, but writhed and squirmed as he positioned his legs.
Finally, he dragged them up and rested his elbows on his knees. He kept his
hands open, then began grinding his palms together, filling the air with the
sound of flesh rubbing against flesh.

She preferred sitting when they talked; it diminished the space
between them. Although, once again, he sat too close, his knee resting against
hers so she could feel his warmth. Tilly leaned forward, using the movement to
wiggle space between them, and stole a glance at James.

He was pinching his skin randomly, covering his arm in angry
pockmarks. She considered stopping him, as she had done when he’d attempted to
fling himself from the car, but decided against it. Wherever he was, there
wasn’t room for two.

“So what’s the story on the beard?” Tilly said.

“I wanted to be someone else.”

“And why, exactly, would you want to be someone else?” She
understood the New Year’s pledge for self-improvement, the desire to become
someone who didn’t chew her nails or lose library books. But you couldn’t erase
the essence of you, and why would you want to try? Tilly picked up a small
branch and traced patterns with it on the forest floor.

“If I were someone else,” James said, “I could sit on a log
without thinking of the consequences. Or pick up a stick as you just did. And
some days?” He kicked aside a twig. Leaves rustled as it disappeared into a
clump of stinging nettles. “I just need a break from being me. The guilt that
you mentioned on the phone, is it survivors’ guilt?”

She moved her head from side to side, trying to decipher the
pattern she’d created in the dirt, but all she saw was a squiggle of circular
lines that led back on itself. Should she talk about this? Probably not, since
it was best to lock these things away and never examine them. To drag this out,
to confront the memory, would only sharpen the pain. But since finding the lump,
hadn’t the memory begun to fester and ooze? She tossed the branch away and
scooted farther back onto the log, wincing as bark scraped her skin.

A fox appeared ten feet ahead of them, froze and then padded
away—one more living thing passing through her life. And Tilly remembered a
nurse. Amazing, that she could recall new shards of fact from such a blank time,
as if the memory were returning thread by thread. Yes, there had been a nurse
with her in the doctors’ lounge, the place where they had taken Tilly—isolated
her—to give her the news. A nurse with warm hands who had brought comfort and a
disgusting cup of tepid tea. And Tilly had lacked the heart to tell her she was
a Brit who didn’t drink tea. This nurse, this stranger, had been someone Tilly
had held on to for a while. As she wanted to do now, with James.

“My guilt,” she said, “is the guilt of failing my family.”

A nuthatch hopped up a tree, with the simple goal of finding
food. How easy life would be if you could live only in the moment, if you could
erase the past and the future.

“I was doing pretty well in the big scheme of guilt.” She tried
to smile but it could have escaped as a grimace. “Then I found this lump, and
here I am, stuck like a player in Monopoly with the
do not
pass go, do not collect $200
card, wondering, yet again, if my
husband died because of me.”

Tilly rubbed her hands back and forth along her upper legs. The
rocking motion felt good. Was that why James moved so much? Did an active body
ease pain in the mind? “My husband had a living will. I don’t. It was the one
area of our marriage in which we agreed to disagree. He argued it would allow
the three of us to move on quickly if something catastrophic happened. Whereas I
pointed my moral compass north and refused to budge.” She tugged on the back of
her neck, her fingertips worrying at a tension knot. “I always thought there was
time. To talk him round. Who knew time was the one thing we didn’t have.”

She refused to imagine what could have happened if David had
woken up. “My husband was a brilliant man who had a horror of being trapped in
an unresponsive body.” She paused. “Like the sun in the walled garden, he was
relentless in his need to shine. He had to maintain control, even in death,
which is why I told the doctor about the living will. I thought that was what he
wanted. And therein lies my mistake. Because—” she stared at the ground until it
blurred “—I think he changed his mind.”

A creature scratched on the forest floor. A woodcock? No,
woodcocks were far too rare. There was a time she could identify every sound in
The Chase. Not anymore.

Tilly sucked in her breath then forced it out. “He held on, for
five days. They unhooked him, pulled the plug, and he held on. I remember being
grateful—isn’t that appalling?—that I could touch his skin and feel life. Some
days I even convinced myself he was asleep. So he held on, and I watched him
die. And did nothing. Afterward, I started thinking, questioning. Had he hung on
for a reason? Had he, in the end, chosen life, expecting me to do the same?”
Tilly wrapped her hand around her mouth and pinched her lips between her thumb
and forefinger, squeezing as hard as she could. “Did you ever see
Groundhog Day
?”