Celandine (47 page)

And there was something grim and imposing about the clinic itself, a square white building with black-painted window frames and big double doors, also black. The doors and the windows were all closed – to keep people out, or to keep people in?

‘Ugly place, isn’t it?’ said Uncle Josef. His voice was quite cheerful. ‘The gardens are pretty, though. Come along – this way. I am a little late, I’m afraid.’

He led her past the clinic and down a smaller pathway that wound between tall neatly clipped hedges of golden yew. They stopped at a place where two paths crossed.

‘And now, if you follow this way down, you’ll come to a little garden. We call it the Hart Garden. It’s named after a benefactor, Amelia Hart. You’ll find a bench there, and a summerhouse and a fountain – it’s really rather lovely. You can sit there and read, or play, and at midday I will come and take you home again. But, Celandine, if you want to walk around and explore, then of course you must do so. There is no danger, and there is nobody here who would harm you or frighten you. And if you should want to see me, then just come and ring at the bell. It’s in the main entrance to the clinic, and it has my name on it. I shall come down personally. You won’t have to speak to anyone, I promise. Is that all right? Off you go then.’

Celandine had become quite adept at using her walking sticks, but the journey from the house had
tired
her and now her wrists were beginning to ache. Her splinted leg was also throbbing quite painfully and the narrow pathway was turning out to be longer than she had expected. The high walls of yew on either side made her feel that she was becoming trapped, confined, as though in a maze.

The entrance to the garden appeared quite suddenly, a hedged archway after a tight bend in the gravelled path. The top of the arch had been clipped into the shape of a heart.

Celandine stood beneath the arch and looked in. A tingle of shock ran through her scalp and she immediately lurched backwards. In the centre of the enclosed garden was a white stone fountain, and on top of the fountain was a dark figure, a bronze statue. The figure was winged, armed with a bow and arrow – and the arrow was pointing straight at her. One of her sticks fell from her fingers, and bounced onto the gravel.

It was a cupid, of course – or perhaps it was Eros – but the sudden image of it had been so like . . . so like . . .

The breath whistled out of her and she had to hold onto the metal gate in order to steady herself. Her head reeled. After a few moments, she stooped to pick up her fallen stick. The effort made her dizzier than ever, so that she felt as though she would collapse. She really needed to sit down.

There was a long white bench, just to the right of the gateway.

‘
Donated by Amelia Hart. 1879
.’ Celandine read the
little
brass plaque on the bench as she gratefully sat herself at the furthest end, and stretched out her injured leg.

The garden was a circular enclosure of tall clipped yew with a cheerful border of flowers and shrubs and a gravel path running around the central fountain. Set back amongst the shrubs was a green wooden summerhouse with wooden steps leading up to it and a weathervane on the roof. Old Father Time. It looked cool and peaceful in the summerhouse, but Celandine stayed where she was, too exhausted for the moment to move.

Gradually the fluttery feeling in her chest subsided and she became aware of the sounds and scents around her – the blackbird singing in the holly bush, the warm smell of the roses, the hypnotic trickle of the fountain. A lone bee buzzed lazily among the hyacinths. Uncle Josef was right. It was very beautiful here.

Calmer now, she allowed the peace of the summer morning to settle upon her. Yes, she would be very glad to just sit here, protected from the world, and feel the warmth seeping into her skin. Perhaps she might go and explore in a little while. But not yet.

She squinted up at the bronze cupid, shading her eyes against the sun, and decided that it was silly to have mistaken it for . . . anything else. It was just a chubby little cupid – a childlike figure with feathery wings. But it had reminded her of everything that she was trying so hard to forget. It started her thinking, and she didn’t want that.

No. She would not look at it. Instead she made herself be interested in the weathervane on top of the wooden summerhouse – the silhouetted figure of Father Time, burdened down by old age and the heavy scythe upon his shoulder, leaning wearily upon his stick.

Tap-tap . . . tap-tap
 . . .

Celandine’s fingers instantly gripped the hard edge of the wooden bench seat – and her head swivelled round so fast that she felt her neck click.
What was that?
Every muscle and bone in her body was locked solid as she strained to listen. She could hear nothing but the blackbird whistling in the holly bush, and the bee that still bumbled among the hyacinths.

Where had the sound come from? Was it . . .

Tap . . . tap-tap . . . tap
 . . .

There! To the left of her – somewhere beyond the gateway! Coming along the path? But it
couldn’t
be . . . not here. It just
couldn’t
be. And yet it was that same sound – that of a stick, tapping at branches, swishing at the undergrowth . . .

But also tapping on gravel.

Tapping on the gravel? In broad daylight? Celandine kept her head turned, eyes fixed, unblinking, on the gateway. The shadowy opening was no more than a few feet from the other end of the bench, and there was no other way out of the enclosed garden.
Tap-tap . . . tap-tap
 . . . Closer it came, and now she could also hear the slow and deliberate crunch of footsteps upon the loose surface of the gravel path.

A flicker of movement – the end of a waving stick
– and
then a figure emerged from the shadow of the arch, just a few yards from where she sat. A man. A young man in pale summer trousers, his army battledress jacket slung loosely about his shoulders, collarless shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

He stood just inside the garden, lifted his head up to the sunlight, and breathed in the scented air. A flash of green reflected from his dark glasses as he turned in her direction and began to move towards the bench. The stick probed low, sweeping from side to side, feeling its way ahead. It was a white stick. The man was blind.

Tap . . . tap-tap
 . . . The stick gently struck the end of the bench. The man leaned forward, fingers outstretched, reaching out for something to hold on to. He found the curved arm of the bench and gripped it tight, resting his weight for a moment, head lowered. Then he manoeuvred himself round and cautiously sat down. He finally leaned back with a long sigh of relief.

Celandine was pressed hard against the bench, wedged into the furthest corner from him, motionless, unable to breathe. She stared at his boyish face, saw the scrap of peeling skin on his nose, the tiny shaving cuts on his neck, and was amazed. This must be how he spent his days now, sitting in this garden, listening to the blackbird sing – so far away from the war and the awful things that he was once able to see. And did he see those things still, surrounding him in the darkness? Were they the things he would see for ever?

She wanted to know. And she wanted to help.

The man’s body suddenly stiffened, a little jolt of the shoulders, and his face slowly turned towards her. The centre of his brow was creased into a frown above the blank stare of the sunglasses. He had realized that he was not alone on the bench – knew that someone was there. And yet he said nothing.

She could get up, she thought, and she could walk away from him in her own secret silence. He would never be any the wiser. But that would be very rude. It would be rude, and cruel and unnecessary. Celandine made a decision. There was no point in trying to hide any more – not from him, and not from herself. There was no point in trying to hide from anything in this world. It was time to step out into the open again.

‘Hallo, Tommy,’ she said.

She saw the lines on his forehead deepen. Was he puzzled or annoyed? She couldn’t tell. For a long moment he faced her, but remained silent. Then he suddenly threw his head back and gave a quiet laugh. He had remembered.

‘Good God,’ he said. ‘It’s . . . Celandine, isn’t it? What on earth are
you
doing here?’

Josef appeared at around midday, strolling through the archway with his hands in his pockets, and Celandine felt guilty, as she watched him approach. He must surely have overheard the two of them talking. The game was up.

Yet her uncle seemed as cheerful as ever.

‘How pleasing it is here,’ he said. He looked around the garden with approval. Then he
added,
‘And how glad I am to hear your voice again.’

‘Yes,’ said Tommy – and he sounded shy and hesitant, as though he too had been caught out. ‘We’ve been telling each other of . . . our adventures. Some of them.’

Celandine looked up at her uncle.
How glad I am to hear your voice again
. He had been addressing Tommy, not her. She began to understand something. This meeting had not happened entirely by chance, nor had it been for her benefit alone.

‘Did you
know
that was going to happen?’ she said as she and Josef walked back to the house.

‘I did not know. But perhaps I hoped. Yes, I hoped. Tommy has been . . . quiet . . . for a very long time. I did wonder, if the two of you were put together, whether possibly one of you . . .’

‘We’ve met before – did you know that? On a train.’

‘No. I did not know that either.’

They walked on in silence until they reached the wicket gate of the doctor’s house.

‘I heard you talking to Aunt Sarah,’ said Celandine. ‘And I heard you promise her that nobody would see me in the Little Garden. But you knew that Tommy would be there.’

‘Hm. And
did
he see you?’

The penny dropped. How careful she had to be with this man.

‘Uncle Josef?’

‘Yes?’

‘I still don’t want to talk about it. What . . . happened.’

‘That is perfectly all right.’

‘Thank you for . . . not asking.’

‘You’re welcome.’

There were things that she couldn’t speak to Tommy about – things that she didn’t even want to think about – but she told him what she could, as they passed their mornings together in the Hart Garden. She told him about Tobyjug, and Miss Bell, and about Mount Pleasant and how she had run away. She even told him about the strange ghost-girl that she had seen, the way that she could sometimes feel the hurt in people, the way that words had appeared to her as coloured shapes after her accident.

And he in turn told her about the war in France, and all the things he had seen there, some of them funny, some of them terrible. But when he learned about Freddie, he wondered why she had not been to see his grave. She should go and visit Freddie, he said. She must.

Tommy was right, of course. She had run away from this, hidden herself from this as she had from everything else. Freddie’s memorial was almost within walking distance of here, and yet she had pretended to forget that it was so. She had pretended that one day he would just roll past the parlour window once more, face screwed up against the rain, on the back of a rattling motorcycle. But he never would . . .

He never ever would . . . and she cried and cried at last as she stood in front of the newly carved stone angel in Staplegrove churchyard with her mother and
her
Aunt Sarah. There were too many new angels here, too many bright stone crosses, too many polished headstones and fresh wreaths. There were too many Freddies.

Her bitter tears raged against the stupid war and her own helplessness in the face of it. Knitting balaclavas – was that all she could do? Dig potatoes? Throw away her German dictionary? Would that bring Freddie back, or be of help to one more like him? What could she do that was of any
use
?

Celandine was glad of her mother’s arm to rest her aching head against, and of her Aunt Sarah’s handkerchief to bury her face into. And when at last she could cry no more, she was glad to walk between them as they began to make their way back along the church path towards the cemetery gate. They were not alone, she realized. Beside another grave, in a further corner of the cemetery she saw a similar group – three bowed figures in dark clothing – a mother and two daughters perhaps. Others like themselves. Other Women of Britain, who had lost their fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, and who now felt as she did.

Celandine put her arms between her mother’s and her Aunt Sarah’s, and held on tight. No, she was not alone in this.

Her mother took her walking sticks from her, and carried them in her free hand. ‘Freddie wanted to go, Celandine. We could not have stopped him, I think.’

‘I know,’ said Celandine. She looked down at the three sets of feet that marched slowly along the mossy
path,
and adjusted her stride so that they were all in step.

Her mother said that she could stay with the Wessers for a few more days, and then she must come home – for the weekend at least – in order to decide upon what was best for her future. There was still the possibility of a new governess, although Celandine was perhaps too grown-up for governesses, now. Certainly she would not be going back to Mount Pleasant – it being doubtful that they would even have her. She was of a legal age to leave school, of course, but that would mean working. And what work could she do? They would talk about it at the weekend.

‘I have brought for you the clothes that you asked for. And the leather bag, and the shoes. Oh, and Celandine – do you remember the photograph? When Mr Tilzey came, yes? So
long
ago, it was, and yours was become lost. Yes? He found it again and posted to us. Here – I have it.’ Her mother rummaged in the little overnight suitcase she had brought with her and found an envelope. ‘See? How
pretty
you are. But oh! Most serious!’

Celandine took the envelope from her mother and drew the photograph out. Her hands shook a little as she quickly glanced at the picture. The child that stared out at her might have been a complete stranger.