The Insistent Garden (32 page)
Vivian went through the mangle that night. It started innocently. She stood in the corner of the scullery watching me work. But she had to interfere. She just couldn't resist pushing a shirtsleeve into the rollers as it turned. Her fingers were caught, first one then two. She began to scream but the rollers kept rolling. She screamed again but the rollers still kept on rolling as bones cracked and blood ran down onto the freshly washed floor. It wasn't until I woke up that I realized. I was the one turning the handle.
“She had green eyes.”
“Who had green eyes?”
“My mother.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw a photograph in my father's drawer.”
“What drawer?”
“The one at the factory, in his office. I was tidying his desk.”
“Do you have it on you?”
“No, it's still there.”
“You didn't pick it up?”
“No.”
Jean zapped a price onto the back of a banana. The sound of the price gun was rhythmic, a soothing contrast to the bell above the door, which jangled my nerves every time it shook.
“Did your father say anything?”
“No.”
The shop bell rang and a man, wider than he was tall, squeezed into the shop.
Jean sighed. “Got to stop that man tickling my chin.”
“Who. . . him?”
“Yes, him, Walter Wrigley â black dog, custard creams every Tuesday.”
I smiled. Jean smiled back. “I'm not the only one with an admirer, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Young lad in the other day spent ten minutes reading the ingredients on a tin of soup.”
“I don't think that means anything.”
Jean looked full of wisdom, her eyebrows raised into a well-plucked arc, but before she could speak, the shop bell shook again.
“Who's that old boy?” she hissed.
A belt of anxiety squeezed my waist. “It's my father.”
I lifted my hands out of the box I'd been unpacking and watched him make his way towards me. He didn't seem to fit the shop. He caught his heel in the closing door and he knocked a packet of biscuits ninety degrees to the shelf as he made his way up the aisle. The belt was up a notch by the time he reached the till.
“I didn't know you worked this late,” he said.
“I don't normally, Jean needed help with a large delivery.” I held my hand towards Jean. “This is Mrs. Wordsworth, my employer.”
My father nodded, the movement barely there. Jean held up a clean, straightforward smile.
“I'm going to need you back soon, there's a crack beside the oak tree,” he said.
“She'll be finished within the hour, Mr. Stoker.”
He nodded again, then without further comment left the shop, knocking the biscuits back into line as he turned the corner.
Jean turned towards me. “A crack beside the oak tree?”
I sighed. “Our garden wall needs a bit of work. I. . . offered to help.”
“Is he always like that?”
I felt a needle somewhere inside my chest. “Like what?”
“Not many words in his dictionary.”
I picked up the price gun, held it against a tin and squeezed the trigger. “He's a quiet man.”
“Your house must be like a morgue on a slow day,” said Jean. She nudged my elbow; it hurt. I laughed.
“Still, it was nice of him to come and see you.”
I sighed. “He didn't come to see me,” I said, “he came to fetch â”
Jean picked up another tin, took the gun out of my hand and held it against the metal. “Edith,” she said, “Tell me it's none of my business, but maybe it's not green eyes that you should be worrying about.”
Walter Wrigley laid two packets of shortbread on the counter. “For Billingford's loveliest proprietor,” he said with great ceremony, pushing one of them in Jean's direction. I waited for him to pay, a drawn-out saga of trouser-searching and coin-counting, and then I bought a bar of chocolate and slipped it onto my pocket. My father might like it. Or he might not.
34 Ethrington Street
Billingsford,
Northamptonshire
June 24th 1969
Dear Gillian,
I met him at last. Yes, Edith's old dad. Although it turns out he's not as old as I'd thought, but he was a bit run down. I'd been itching to catch sight of him ever since I'd met his sister. Wondered if he'd be decked out in red too but he blundered into the shop looking like one of those tramps from up on Market Street. Honestly he did, his buttons were in the wrong holes and he had wax in his ear. But Gill, the really odd thing was Edith. She changed. It's hard to explain but she spoke in a tone Iâd never heard before. And he didn't talk how I'd imagined either. Now I'm wondering if I'm getting the picture straight. Maybe I'll ask Archie, see if he's got one of his theories on the go. Wish you lived closer Gill and we could go and get our hair done together like we used to and chew it all over under the dryers.
The kids are coming back into town for the summer holidays. Any day now the shop's going to be packed with giggling girls and lads loading up with fags and razors. Waste of money judging by the size of their moustaches but as the supplier of goods to the foolhardy who am I to complain? Reminds me, better get a special order of spot cream in before the rush starts.
Jean
“She doesn't seem to have homework anymore.” Una's father seemed glum when he opened the front door.
“She's back though, isn't she?” I said.
“Yes, she's back.”
He watched me as I went up the stairs to Una's room. She was in her usual spot on the bed but when she turned to smile I didn't recognize her. Her hair had been straightened and her eyelashes, heavy with eyeliner, flipped up and down like little black wings. She hugged me but the weight of her hug was different. We settled down to talk.
“Edith, you need to meet a bloke,” she said.
“Oh, Una, no.”
“We all do, don't we?” she continued.
“This is the sixties,” I said. “Women don't need men anymore, do they?”
“Edith! Who've you been talking to? Not your father surely?”
I smiled. “No, not my father.”
“Vivian?” She cocked her head.
I laughed. “Did you know she's moved in?”
“You mean she's there every day?”
“Yes.”
“God. So how come you're looking so. . . well, so perky?”
“Am I? I don't know.”
“
Have
you met someone?”
“No, I haven't. I still see Harold, now and then, at the bookshop, but. . .”
“But Harold's like an uncle â from what you've told me.”
“Yes, an uncle.”
Her eyelashes flickered as she looked at me. I felt a chill, a fresh worry.
“Edith, do you want to come to the pub with me tonight? I want to celebrate the start of the summer holidays.”
“Una, you know I can't.”
“Why not? Really, why not? You're nineteen years old. You're your own woman. They can't stop you.”
“I don't have any money.”
“Ah, but I do.”
There was always a certain sort of noise coming from the pub whenever I walked past on my way to the shops. A restful hum broken by the occasional shout, which always made me jump. It smelled too, a rich aroma of beer and cigarettes that caused my heart to pump a little faster and my feet to move more quickly across the pavement. Now I was
inside
its warm walls, my back pressed into a fake leather bench and my hands lying neatly on the table. It had been remarkably easy leaving the house. I knew where I was going but
they
didn't. My voice had even held steady when I'd explained I was visiting Una â not for long â and I would be home before it got dark. Yet I still fretted that those words I'd said, so clear to my own ear, were actually saying something else, something more akin to the truth.
“Edith, relax, they're not going to know you're here.” Una draped her jacket across the back of her chair. “What would you like? A lager or something?”
“I think I'll just have a soda water.”
For a second she looked annoyed.
“Or maybe a whisky, that'd be nice.” I unfolded my hands and laid them on the table, daringly far apart.
“Did you say whisky?”
“Yes.”
“Whisky it is.” Una kept her gaze on me as she picked up her purse and headed in the direction of the bar. I felt relaxed, wrapped in the arms of the pub. I gazed round the room and noticed the worn parts of the place, the threadbare carpet at the doorway, the groove in the table where I imagined fingers had stroked. My house seemed far away; I didn't want to go home.
“I got you a double.” Una's eyes smiled.
The glass in front of me was bigger than I expected and the taste was rough, quite unlike the silky liquid I had sampled at Dotty's house.
Una seemed at ease with her drink, wiping condensation off the glass and swigging it down in noisy swallows. I sipped. She told me about her life in London, the parties, the men, and as I listened I began to feel the weight of her gaze.
“Edith, do you want to try some eyeliner on?” she said.
I looked at the little wings; they beat quietly and persuasively. “Alright, but will I be able to get it off later?”
“What for?”
“My aunt would be angry.”
Una sighed. “I see what you mean. I forgot. What about a dab of lipstick?”
“Perhaps not.”
She pulled a compact out of her bag and flipped open the mirror. Two pairs of lips puckered, two sets of teeth caught a speck of lipstick. “Edith, to be blunt I think you're going to have to try a bit harder.” She put the compact down on the table. “When you come up to London you'll have to wear make-up; otherwise you'll stick out in a crowd.”
“I know.”
“And your clothes, you'll need to get some others.”
I smiled with eyes that felt like they were shining. “I'd like to live in this pub.” I said, leaning back against the bench.
“Edith, you're not tipsy are you?”
“No, I'm not tipsy. But I'd like to live in this pub.”
“You know, Edith,” said Una, draining her glass, and smiling, “I'd like to live in the pub too. Let's get a chaser.”
It took all my concentration to slip back into the house as myself. The hall floor seemed to have developed a slope and the walls were unsteady but fortunately my father and aunt were engrossed in a crossword and I held my breath as I called my return into the kitchen then sneaked up to my room. I could hear them talking through the floor below me but I didn't care what they said.
As the days grew longer, armies of hot colour set up camp in my garden, trampling the reticent blues of spring in their path. Orange crocosmia strode into the borders, brandishing their swords like warriors, while red-hot pokers surged skyward, overshadowing the clumps of poppies that bled red onto tissue thin petals. The climbing hop bore out Archie's prophesy. It forced its tendrils into rock-hard joints, climbing higher daily until flowers clung to the end of the high wall like balls of yellow candyfloss.
The air had a transparency to it that morning as I strolled round the garden, every shape pronounced, every colour soaked. I began slowly, starting at what I thought of as the beginning, the semi-circle of trees, now boldly leafy, then continued through the middle, the circle of boulders and flower bed on the site of the old hawthorn, and finally came to the end, the blue border that lined the back fence. I pulled a pair of scissors out of my pocket, leaned forward and cut a single rose. It shed a droplet of water as I brought it up to my face and breathed in the scent. A state of perfect happiness entered my garden.
My family hardly noticed me as I entered the kitchen, picked up an empty milk bottle from the draining board and filled it with water. My father flicked a glance in my direction and then continued to read his newspaper. The headline was enormous, great pounding black letters â
ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN
. I slipped the rose into the bottle and placed it squarely on the table. Vivian, seated beside my father, was busy removing nail varnish; the air reeked of acetone and the water in the bottle flared red, reflecting her sleeve resting nearby. She turned towards me, her expression obscured by drying fingertips. Scrubbed-looking, they could have belonged to a nurse. “Where's my handbag?” she said.
“I haven't seen it,” I replied.
“It must be in my room. Edith, go and. . . oh, I'll get it.”
The air felt lighter as Vivian carried her nails out of the room. I pulled the milk bottle towards me and examined the rose. Bubbles of air lined the stem and anonymous bits of black speckled the table. I brushed them off, smearing a family of shocked aphids sideways with the same movement.
“Pass me that bottle,” said my father.