The Garden of Lost Secrets

by A. M. Howell

  The other picture was a small tapestry, not much bigger than an open book. It hung on the wall above the wooden headboard. To reach it she would have to climb on the bed. She glanced at the door. All was quiet. Slipping off her boots, she clambered onto the bed and over the patchwork quilt.

  Holding on to the headboard, she pulled herself upright. Her feet wobbled on the mattress as she looked at the tapestry. It was a pineapple – a twist of burnt-orange, brown and yellow threads. An embroidered pink ribbon bound the fruit to a clutch of purple figs and some emerald green leaves. The work was detailed and pretty, but some of the threads were loose, messy, like it had been finished in a rush. Had Mrs Gilbert made this? Clara searched for her embroidered initials at the base of the tapestry, but there were none.

  Carefully lifting the frame away from the wall, Clara felt around the edges, then examined the thick board back. There was nothing there, aside from the name of the picture-framing shop and the date it had been framed: Summers & Sons Framemakers of Abbeygate Street, 1914.

  The bang of the front door shutting made the window rattle. Clara’s right foot slipped on the quilt. The tapestry frame fell from her hand, but instead of falling back into place against the wall, it trembled and nosedived behind the headboard to the floor below. The sound of splintering glass made her breath catch in her throat.

  The clump of footsteps approached up the stairs.

  Her surroundings imploded around her with a whoosh. How stupid she had been. She was not an explorer, a seeker of secrets. She was a small girl rooting around in a place she should not be rooting around in.

  The door squeaked open and Clara bit the inside of her cheek until the rich ironlike taste of blood tingled on her tongue.

  Silence, aside from laboured breathing. Did the breaths belong to her, or the person standing in the doorway?

  “What in heaven’s name?” cried Mr Gilbert. His eyes were as wide as saucers. “What has happened here, Clara?”

  “I’m…sorry,” said Clara, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. “I was…looking at the tapestry. It fell. It broke. I will pay for the damage.”

  Mr Gilbert took a hesitant step towards her, then another. “You had best get down from the bed,” he said quietly.

  Clara’s cheeks were burning. She half-fell from the bed to the floor. She smoothed the wrinkles from the quilt and straightened the pillows. Bending down to pull on her boots, she saw a shard of glass lying next to them.

  Mr Gilbert followed her gaze. “Oh dear,” he said, rubbing his chin. He glanced at the empty spot on the wall where the tapestry had been hanging. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

  “I will take it to the framemakers to get it mended. My mother gave me some money…for emergencies,” said Clara in a rush.

  Mr Gilbert sighed and shook his head. The shake was full of disappointment and it made Clara squirm. He bent down, reached under the bed and pulled out the tapestry. It was still attached to the board. Relief bubbled through her that the threads themselves did not appear to be damaged. Mr Gilbert passed the tapestry to Clara to hold while he fetched a brush.

  If mild-mannered Mr Gilbert had thought the damaged tapestry frame warranted four oh dears, what would Mrs Gilbert’s reaction be? Clara turned to place the tapestry on the bed. As she did, something floated to the floor. It was a scrap of folded paper which had been lodged between the tapestry and the board.

  Mr Gilbert’s feet thumped up the stairs.

  Picking the paper up, Clara unfolded it. There was a single handwritten word: Maestro. What on earth did that mean?

  Mr Gilbert coughed in the hallway.

  Clara quickly refolded the paper and slipped it back under the tapestry.

  Mr Gilbert came in and started to pull the bed away from the wall. The feet of the bed scraped on the wooden floor and the headboard rattled. But there was another sound too, so tiny, so minute, that Clara wondered if her ears were broken. It was the chink of something small and metallic against wood. Clara glanced at Mr Gilbert, but he seemed not to have heard.

  As Mr Gilbert swept up the glass, Clara leaned forward. Hooked to the back of the headboard on a thick piece of string dangled a small bronze key. Clara’s pulse thudded in her ears. She mentally kicked herself for not checking down the back of the bed earlier. It would have saved a whole lot of bother.

  “I will talk to Mrs Gilbert,” Mr Gilbert said, once the glass was swept up. He threw a wistful glance at the tapestry. It was the same kind of nurturing look Clara had seen him give the apple and plum trees in the garden. He opened the bottom drawer of their dresser and laid it carefully inside. “I’ll try and smooth things over.”

  “Thank you,” said Clara, clasping her hands together.

  “No need to thank me yet,” Mr Gilbert replied gruffly. He gave Clara a sorrowful look which burned into her bones and made her feel very small indeed.

  Clara sat cross-legged on her bed, watching her spidery friends resting in the corners of their webs. One particularly large spider had spun its home between two of the attic beams. The web wafted in the breeze from the open window, like wafer-thin washing on a clothes-line.

  Mrs Gilbert had returned to the cottage ten minutes before. As Clara watched the web, she could hear the rise and fall of Mr Gilbert’s voice as he talked to his wife in their bedroom below. But she couldn’t hear Mrs Gilbert saying anything at all. Clara had braced herself for Mrs Gilbert’s sensible brown shoes to thunder up the stairs as soon as Mr Gilbert told her about Clara trespassing in their bedroom (on their bed, no less!) and the broken tapestry frame. But it hadn’t happened. Perhaps the tapestry did not mean as much to Mrs Gilbert as Mr Gilbert had implied?

  Meanwhile, Clara couldn’t stop wondering what the hidden slip of paper meant. Maestro. Was that not the name for a conductor of music? There was no piano or other instrument in the cottage. And Mrs Gilbert did not even like the gramophone – she said the noise gave her a funny head. It was all very odd.

  But at least Clara now knew how to get into the locked room. She stood up and walked to the open window to suck in a breath of cool air. The light was fading, faint stars studding the sky. The front door banged shut so hard it made Clara’s open window shudder in surprise. Mrs Gilbert was striding purposefully towards the hothouses. Where was she going at this time in the evening? Her head was lowered, and she was carrying a small wicker basket, a cloth covering whatever was inside. Her hair had come loose from her hat, tendrils snaking down her back. Clara felt a pull of recognition in her chest. Aside from the glisten of grey, Mrs Gilbert’s hair had a similar wave to her own (and her father’s). Even though Clara was not allowed to address Mrs Gilbert as Aunt, it was a sign of their relationship which could not be ignored.

  Mrs Gilbert paused in front of the pineapple hothouse and pressed a hand to the glass. Her lips were moving, but the wind was not obliging that evening and did not carry her voice up to Clara’s bedroom. She turned and glanced back at the cottage, as if checking to see whether she was being watched.

  Clara ducked out of sight. A few seconds later she looked again. Mrs Gilbert was nowhere to be seen. Clara blinked, then strained her neck, searching the gardens, but there was no sign of her. Had she gone inside the hothouse?

  Clara leaned her elbows on the window sill and waited and watched. The sky was blacker; it was getting more difficult to see.

  “Clara?” Mr Gilbert was calling her.

  She ignored him, peering out into the darkness.

  “Clara.” The sound of feet trudging up the stairs.

  Clara reached for the window catch, swung it nearly closed and sat on the edge of the bed. She picked at a loose thread on the sheets and waited.

  Her door creaked open. “Did you not hear me calling?” Mr Gilbert asked. His hair was sticking up in tufty peaks, even more bird’s-nest-like than usual.

  “No…sorry,” Clara lied.

  “Can you come and help me with tea? Mrs Gilbert has…an errand to run.” His arms hung limp at his
sides. His eyes seemed worn out, ready to close at any second.

  Clara followed Mr Gilbert downstairs. She saw him glance at the locked door next to his bedroom as they passed it, then flick his eyes away. His hands balled into fists at his sides.

  Determination grew behind Clara’s ribs. As soon as she could, she was going to take the hidden key from behind the Gilberts’ bed and find out if the answers to any of the puzzles that troubled her could be found inside the locked room.

  As Clara helped prepare tea – buttering bread, cutting thick slices of ham and washing juicy red tomatoes – she wished she could run outside and check the hothouses. For she was sure that was where Mrs Gilbert had been going. With a basket. But why? For a second Clara thought… The ham knife slipped, narrowly missing her thumb. Could her aunt be…was she the…? No. Mrs Gilbert would not steal from the Earl. Clara’s father had always said how dedicated Mr and Mrs Gilbert were to their jobs on the estate. That was one of the reasons they hardly ever came to visit. For them to steal and risk losing their beloved jobs was too foolhardy to even imagine.

  Clara sat at the kitchen table and began to eat a slice of bread and ham (with a large helping of pickled cucumbers on the side). She glanced at Mrs Gilbert’s waiting plate. She had not yet returned from her errand. She had been gone for over an hour. Mr Gilbert was chewing his sandwich slowly, occasionally glancing at the door. Perhaps now would be a good time to see if he had any answers to the unsolved puzzles rolling around in her head?

  “What is the bedroom for, the one next to yours?” Clara asked Mr Gilbert, wiping cucumber juice from the corner of her mouth.

  Mr Gilbert’s jaw paused mid-chew. He coughed, as if a crumb was caught in his throat. He placed his sandwich down and slowly brushed flour dust from his hands, his gaze steady and fixed on Clara.

  The door to the gardens opened and shut again.

  Clara anchored her feet to the floor. She waited for Mrs Gilbert to come in, preparing for her steely gaze, sharp words and a suitable punishment. But instead, she heard her aunt’s feet treading slowly up the stairs. Clara glanced at Mr Gilbert, who had started to chew again. He massaged his throat as if he was having trouble swallowing. He had still not answered her question about the room and it seemed as if he wasn’t about to.

  “I spoke with Elizabeth about the tapestry. She knows it was an accident,” he said. His voice was low and crackly.

  Guilt and sorrow burned in Clara’s chest. It had been an accident. Even though she did not like Mrs Gilbert one small bit, it was somehow important that her aunt knew that. She pushed back her chair and strode to the door.

  “Clara,” Mr Gilbert said, but Clara ignored him, bounding up the stairs two at time before Mr Gilbert had even reached the kitchen door.

  She stood outside Mrs Gilbert’s bedroom. Funny noises were coming from inside, like a small animal was trapped and needed rescuing. Clara pressed her palms to the wood. The door creaked.

  The animal noise stopped.

  Clara gave a tentative knock. “Aunt…I mean, Mrs Gilbert. May I speak with you?”

  Silence.

  “I just wanted you to know…that I am truly sorry for breaking the tapestry frame.”

  More silence.

  Then feet padded across the floorboards inside the room. The door creaked open.

  Mrs Gilbert looked as Clara had never seen her before. High spots of colour bloomed on her cheeks. Her eyes were bright. Behind her, on the floor near the bed, Clara could see the basket Mrs Gilbert had taken into the gardens. It was empty, a red checked cloth neatly folded in the bottom.

  Mrs Gilbert blinked, as if she had just woken and was seeing Clara for the first time.

  Clara stared at her in surprise. Where was the punishment? The shouting and the sternness? It was like a giant paper straw had sucked away all of Mrs Gilbert’s malice and anger, leaving her a hollowed-out eggshell.

  “Go to bed, Clara. It’s been a long day,” she said wearily. She pressed the door shut.

  Clara stood there for a second, placing a hand on the door again. She felt something curious inside – a pang of regret for Mrs Gilbert’s weary, heavy eyes, and the weight which stooped her shoulders.

  Clara watched the gardens from her window, just as Will had asked her to when she had left him the night before. The only problem was that her eyes were leaden with tiredness, closing every few seconds and then jerking open again when a fresh burst of rifle fire ricocheted through the night. She glanced at the spiders, who seemed oblivious to the noise. She wished for a second that she could join them on their webs, and have nothing more to worry about than keeping a neatly spun home and catching a fly or two for tea. Will had been wrong. She was not getting used to the Regiment’s nightly practices. If anything, as the nights went on she was finding them harder to bear, a constant reminder of the waiting envelope from the War Office, and how the words inside might throw her family’s life off-kilter. She and Mother and Father – they were like wooden skittles waiting to be knocked over by a large ball, with no one to pick them up, brush them down and stand them straight again.

  Clara’s candle burned low as she waited. She picked at a blob of wax which had dripped onto the window sill. She clenched her toes in her boots. She needed to think about horrible things, she decided. They would keep her awake in between the bursts of gunfire. Then, just before she could dig down into her darkest thoughts, she saw a single pinprick of light by the boiler-house steps – her signal. Throwing off the nightgown she had pulled on over her clothes (although there’d really been no need, as it never seemed to occur to Mr or Mrs Gilbert to check on her after she had gone to bed), Clara tiptoed down the stairs. She paused on the first floor, listening to the rise and fall of Mr and Mrs Gilbert’s rhythmic snores. Then she ran lightly down the final set of stairs and opened the door to the gardens. Pulling it closed behind her, she rushed through the dark, her feet remembering the path like notes on a piano.

  “You came,” whispered Will, who was sitting on the low brick wall in front of the steps, a folded blanket on his lap.

  “Of course,” whispered Clara. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Will smiled. “I’m just…glad, is all.” He held something out in his hand.

  Clara blinked in surprise. Another mandarin.

  “It was at the entrance to the hothouse,” Will said.

  “How odd,” said Clara, taking it from him and giving it a sniff. The citrus smell tickled her nose.

  “Very,” said Will.

  “Could it be…the thief?” asked Clara, handing it back.

  “There’s only one way to know for sure, and that’s to catch whoever is doing this.” There was something in the tone of Will’s voice that Clara couldn’t read.

  “So, do you have a plan?” whispered Clara. “Are we going to hide in a bush or in the orchard? We would have a good view of the hothouses from up the slope.”

  Will shook his head, pushing the mandarin into his pocket. “I think we should watch from inside the pineapple house.”

  “What?” said Clara, her voice rising above a whisper.

  Will pressed a finger to his lips.

  “But that’s madness. Surely Robert will be watching the gardens, like Mr Gilbert told him to. We’ll get caught – and he’ll be angry that you were out.”

  Will rubbed at his neck as if it was sore. “I told you, Robert sleeps like the dead. There is no chance he will be in the gardens tonight. Come on. Let’s go catch the fruit thief.”

  Clara folded her arms around her middle, trying to quell the tiny shivers rolling through her body. Her mother had told her to look on her stay with her aunt and uncle as a little adventure. But she very much doubted her mother had imagined that adventure would involve Clara roaming the gardens at night with a new friend, trying to catch a pineapple thief.

  The pineapple hothouse was different at night. The dark mellow warmth expanded in Clara’s lungs, while the occasional quiet gurgle of a hot-water pipe tickled her ears, as the s
piky pineapple crowns quietly watched over them.

  Will’s feet came to a sudden stop and Clara bumped into his back.

  “Sorry,” she said hastily.

  Will seemed not to have heard. The blanket he was carrying dropped to the ground. His head was bent over a plant pot. “Look at this,” he whispered dully, placing a hand on the rim of the pot.

  Clara frowned. The spiky leaves were there, but the pineapple had been cut from the stalk. The other pineapples nearby appeared to be staring, their crowns of leaves bristling in shock.

  “This Scarlet Brazilian had only just ripened,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion. Clara watched as Will stroked the lengths of the leaves and examined the stalk the pineapple had been cut from. He dropped his hands to his sides, balled them into fists. “Taking things that don’t belong to you…it makes my blood boil.”

  An onion-sized lump formed in Clara’s throat. She reached down and picked up the blanket. “We need to catch whoever did this.” She laid the blanket on the gravel under the planting bench halfway down the hothouse. They sat close, knees pulled to their chins, their backs to the panes of glass. It reminded Clara of playing house when she was small – how Mother would give her sheets that smelled of lavender water to drape over the living-room furniture, so she could make dens and have tea parties with her dolls.

  They sat in silence, the earthy air warm and still. A drip of condensation plopped onto the bench above them. The windows shook and blustered in the wind.

  “Do you find the days long here?” Clara asked after a while.

  Will glanced at her. “Long?”

  “I suppose I mean…it feels different here, there isn’t much to do. I miss home. And school.”

  “You miss school?” Will said, raising his eyebrows. “Can’t say I do. I prefer to be outdoors drawing. I suppose I do miss some of my friends, like Jonny. Once he stole Mrs Brown’s glasses and put them on in the lesson. Everyone laughed, and it took for ever for her to notice. Probably because she couldn’t see.”