Walled Garden

by Catherine Dunne

  He’d disappeared into the garden shed again once she’d burst into tears. She could still see how he’d moved the shiny trike to one side, quietly, out of his way. She remembered her mother taking her by the hand, back into the house, but it wasn’t Alice’s anger that she remembered: it was her own. With a five-year-old’s complete self-centredness, she had been unaware of her mother’s emotions: she did not remember being pulled, what she did recall was dragging, kicking and screaming, at her mother’s resisting hands. Even now, she could feel the shards of disappointment that had sliced through her when she’d realized that this trike was not new, that it was yet another hand-me-down from James. Once more, as her child-self had seen it, he had come first; once again, she hadn’t been given what she wanted. James always got everything new – his clothes and toys didn’t come from cousins. Auntie Peggy had only had girls: Clare, Anna and Margaret. All of Beth’s clothes that weren’t home-made had been handed down to her from these three. But James’s couldn’t be hand-me-downs, naturally: his outfits came home from town in big brown bags decorated with gold writing. As the only boy, he was top of the list. Beth was surprised that she could still recall, with the clarity of old resentments, how sidelined she’d felt in this family, even as a very small child.

  From her banishment in the back of the house, her five-year-old self had heard the sounds of hammering and sawing coming from the garden shed. She’d opened her window, cautiously, waiting for her opportunity. He’d have to come out soon for something, even if it was only to light his pipe.

  Her father’s paint-spattered overalls were a vivid palette, a shock of colours against the brown wood of the garden shed as he emerged, finally, into the garden. He patted his top pocket and pulled out his pipe and a tin of tobacco. From her open window, Beth waited until the ritual of filling, tamping and lighting was finished. The sweet, blue smoke had curled almost at once, drifting up towards her.

  ‘Daddy?’ she called.

  He looked up.

  ‘Can I come down?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Will you ask Mam if it’s okay?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s okay. Come on.’

  She clattered down the stairs and pushed open the kitchen door cautiously, just in case. But there was no sign of her mother, apart from her red-and-white check apron, lying carelessly on the tiled floor.

  Beth’s image of her father now, sitting waiting for her on the white, cast-iron garden seat, was especially clear. It was as though she were seeing a compilation of memories, like paint layered on canvas, the original image being intensified over and over again; only the colour and the tone changed, the substance remained the same. She had seen him sit like that so many times that no one memory could be anchored to the day when she was five. That iron seat was one of the few things to which his attachment had always been obvious. It nestled in the old part of the garden, beyond the shed, close to the high stone wall at the end. It was in the part that was always meadow-like in its tumble of wildflowers. He had never replanted it; it always remained detached, set apart from the sculpted beauty around the house. Beth wondered now whether her father had known even then that this would form part of the L-shape that he would eventually have to sell, in yet another attempt to keep the family finances afloat. He sat there a lot at the end of the garden, almost hidden from the house; he’d usually smoke his pipe, occasionally he’d read the paper. That day, his head and shoulders were wreathed in tobacco smoke as his daughter approached him. There was no wind; the bright Easter-time mid-morning was warm and still. He seemed almost to be screened from her by the puffs of blue-white pipe smoke. She had always loved that smell, burying her face in his jacket and jumpers after he died, sitting in his wardrobe with the door shut tight when her mother wasn’t home. She had used all her childish energy to will him back to life again by breathing for him, taking in all the sweet cloudiness of pipe tobacco. She came closer to him, tentatively now.

  ‘Can I sit on your knee?’

  ‘You can,’ and he held out his arms to her.

  She snuggled into him, feeling safe and sorry at the same time.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.’

  He stroked her cheek.

  ‘I know. You were hoping for something better, weren’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I wanted a new bike,’ and she began to cry again.

  ‘I know that. But you’ll have to learn to be happy with what you’ve got. Life can be very hard for a little girl who is only made happy by the very best. We’ve all got to learn to live with what we have. Do you understand me, Lizzie?’

  Beth remembered smiling up at him through her tears, cuddling close to the sound of his words, rather than the sense. She hadn’t really understood everything he’d said, but she was relieved by his forgiveness, and the kindness in his voice.

  Of the many memories her mother could have chosen, Beth smiled at the irony of this one. It was one of the few occasions she could remember when she’d known intuitively, almost at once, that she’d been in the wrong. Five was not too young to see the depth of hurt and humiliation on a father’s face. Of course, her child-self couldn’t have known that he had recently lost his job; nevertheless, she had learned something that day of her own power to wound, of her heedless, childlike ability to twist the knife, a skill that had remained with her right throughout adulthood. Of all the times her mother had been angry at her, this time her fury had been justified. She needed to make no apology.

  Beth thought suddenly of her own daughter, of how docile and gentle she was, of how little she had ever needed to be punished. Laura would have suited Alice so much better than she, Beth, had done: she should have been Alice’s child, and Beth should have had feisty Granny Mac as a mother. They should all have swopped generations, intermingling with each other in the interests of family harmony. Each one would have known how best to handle the other. Beth sometimes worried that Laura was too placid; she was still waiting for the battles of adolescence to begin. She had tried hard not to make the same mistakes that her own mother had: clothes, make-up, boys – all were cool in Beth’s household. The problem was that Laura didn’t seem interested in any of them. At fifteen, she had already drawn her own lines of demarcation, and Beth felt every bit as excluded from Laura’s life as Alice had been from hers.

  Beth kept both of her hands pressed warmly around her mother’s. She had a vision of her teenage self again, truculent, moody, aggressive, and felt a wave of empathy engulf her as she recalled her mother’s almost constant facial expression: a mixture of anger, bewilderment and, above all, disappointment. Even as she remembered this, Beth realized that she and Laura were already having their differences, that Laura was pulling away from her in her own time, her own way. And the irony of their battle was not lost on Beth: her own daughter was resisting her mother’s unspoken demand that she be more assertive, more driven. Beth could see her now, her small pale face framed by long, flyaway hair; her gaze steady, rather than defiant. But she had inherited Granny Mac’s chin – a little sharp, a little prominent, endlessly determined.

  Beth looked down at the face on the pillow, now resting peacefully.

  ‘Alice, we’ve a long way to go. But I know we’ll end up at the same place together, when all of this is over.’

  She replaced the letter in its creamy envelope, and pushed it into the front pocket of her jeans. In case she fell asleep, she did not want to leave these pages lying around for James to find. She decided to put the rest of the bundle back into the bedside locker, just in case, although the temptation to devour them all, now, was enormous. But she would do as she was told. The clarity and intimacy of her mother’s written words were to be savoured, not rushed. Not for the first time, Beth was acutely aware of how hardship had dictated the circumstances of Alice’s life. She had always been a great reader, an avid letter-writer, particularly when her children were young. It was sad that lack of opportunity had foiled the growth of a lively, enquiring i
ntelligence, a quick and eager mind.

  Beth went looking for the locker key again, and then placed the letters back in the silk bag. She settled into the little chair once more, feeling a stiffness begin to develop around her hip joints. She closed her eyes, just for a while. She hoped that James would not go searching just yet; this time, it would be nice to be first.

  *

  A strange sound made Beth look at her watch. It was almost seven o’clock and James would be in soon. There was still no sign of daylight through the closed curtains, but it was as though the spell of night had suddenly been broken. It only took her a moment to identify the whine of the milk-float as it lurched its way down the narrow street from the main avenue. Conditioned by years of childish habit, she waited for the chinking of milk bottles on the red tiles of the porch downstairs. But there was no sound. Instead, as though at a secret signal, the whole street began to wake up. The milkman had worked his magic and loosened the morning noises that now hung, like smoke in the air, all over her mother’s bedroom. Somewhere, a car door slammed, an engine revved. She felt like the princess in Sleeping Beauty, whose whole unmoving kingdom suddenly springs to life again as her eyelids flicker open after hundreds and hundreds of years of enchanted sleep. Her mother’s letter had had an extraordinary effect on her, had awakened more than old memories. The intensity of emotion had finally settled into something approaching a new state of consciousnesss: alert and peaceful at the same time. Beth wanted to read her words again, now, privately, in the silence of her old bedroom. She wanted to find that five-year-old again, to put together the fragments of the little girl who had been so suddenly magicked back to life by her mother’s words.

  She decided to ask James if he minded that she took the late-shift: she had liked the night-time quietness, the mantle of closeness that darkness and candlelight had cast over the bedroom. Then, if he wanted, he could go home to Olive and the children and return early each morning. That was how she would propose to spend her time from now on: awake at night, asleep for some of each day. Turning her life upside-down at this point had a special appeal for Beth. Being awake all of yesterday had, in some way, made her conscious of new possibilities, of a new way of living. It was as though Alice’s fragility had shaken her roughly by the shoulders, shocking her into wakefulness, into the realization that she, Beth, would not live for ever either. It was time now to live inside her own life, to make every moment into an act of choice, to stop looking on from the sidelines. There was the new awareness, too, that each breath her mother took could be her last. The tension of waiting was not easy, this sharp-eyed watching for the rise and fall of every breath taken, but for the first time that Beth could remember, she felt that she had truly risen to the challenge. Facing its very difficulty had made her test her own strength and she was surprised at the depth of her resources. She wondered at how she could have left them all untapped over the past twenty years.

  It had been strangely comforting to sit in the darkness and absorb her mother’s presence without any of the distractions of daylight. The memories evoked by their silent, breathy communication had been bright and clear, the emotions clean and uncluttered, in spite, or perhaps because, of the pain they brought with them. Beth had had the sense for the first time ever of starting to untangle all the undergrowth that had stunted her relationship with Alice. She wanted to sit with her again tonight, to wander with her through the timeless space of Singer sewing-machines, walled gardens and green trikes. It was the least she could do: her mother had supplied the maps.

  She felt her eyelids begin to grow heavy, finally. She patted her jeans pocket, making sure the letter was safely hidden, pulling her sweater down carefully. She felt a bit guilty about hiding things from James, but this was not the time for sharing. This time, she would, unquestioningly, do as her mother had bid her. Her last conscious thought, before her eyes drifted closed at last, was how strange a thing the passing of time was. It no longer seemed to be a measurable presence – the hours had slipped away in what could have been an instant or a lifetime, and ordinary living seemed to be something that had happened to her a long time ago. Even the flight from London yesterday evening felt as though it had been undertaken by someone else, someone playing at her life. Here and now was the only reality; the rest of time and space existed in another dimension where other people lived and which she could no longer enter.

  When James came in at twenty past seven, Beth was sitting exactly as he had left her more than six hours before. He noticed that her eyes were closed. Gently, he reached out and touched her on the shoulder. She jumped, but there was none of the spiky restlessness of the evening before. He was glad; it must have been an easy night.

  ‘Sis?’

  She looked up at once, her eyes becoming wakeful.

  ‘Morning, James.’

  ‘Was everything okay?’

  ‘Fine. Very quiet.’ Beth rubbed her hands over her thighs, which had suddenly grown cold. ‘She had a good night. Are you sure you’ve had enough sleep? I’m okay here for another while, if you’d like.’

  She stifled a yawn. Now that the time had come, she felt reluctant to leave her mother, to pass over responsibility to someone else.

  ‘I’ve had plenty of sleep. I usually wake much earlier than this. You should turn in for a while, now; I’ll take over.’

  She nodded. Maybe it would be good to take a break, to climb between clean sheets, to turn off the thoughts for a few hours. In the split second between sleep and waking at James’s gentle touch, Beth had felt suddenly overwhelmed. Her dreaming-self had voiced the fearful, troubled questions that her waking-self could not: What if it all led to nothing? What if she never learned to know this woman, her mother? What if it were all too little, too late? Right now, in the slowly dawning greyness of morning, it all felt like too much to take on. She felt suddenly depressed, her limbs heavy. Now she wanted oblivion.

  ‘Yes. I could do with lying down. I’m feeling a bit stiff.’

  She kissed the top of James’s head as she left the bedroom. Without even thinking about it, she made her way straight to the back of the house, towards her old room. She took the letter out of her jeans pocket and slipped it under her pillow. She wanted to hold it again, to read the words over and over, but tiredness suddenly blinded her. She kicked off her shoes and jeans. Pulling back the old eiderdown and blankets, she slipped in between cold linen sheets.

  Curling up in a ball, burying her head into the comforting softness of her old, childhood-smelling pillow, she slept.

  *

  It was about midday when Beth finally woke. She felt surprisingly alert and refreshed, all her recent sluggishness gone. The room was warm and dim. She knew from the quality of the light that seeped through a chink in the curtains, that it was drizzling again outside. She lay still for a few moments, allowing her eyes to trace the cracks on walls and ceiling, their shapes still familiar despite the intervening years. The old, childish pictures seemed to spring into life again, as though they had all been waiting a long time for her to open her eyes. Here again was the giant’s face, with the huge nose and both eyes set to one side, so that he resembled an unfinished Picasso. There was the delicate outline of a seagull, its beak wide open, wings curving into flight. And above the bedroom door, the silhouette of a tree doomed to permanent winter. Cracks in the old plaster and yellowing paintwork had been a constant feature of Beth’s childhood years, and the memory of them now made her smile. James had told her, long after they had both left home, that such shabbiness had been the subject of an on-going tug-of-will between their parents. It had frustrated Alice enormously that the one place her husband took no pride in painting was his own home. Meticulous in his preparation and painstaking in his neatness in other people’s houses, he seemed never to see the need for decoration in his own. The tailor’s children, Alice would say to James, fuming, are always the ones to have no arse in their trousers . . .

  With a sudden shock, Beth remembered her mother, remembered
why she was here, at home, lying in her old room. It seemed incredible that she could have forgotten, even for an instant. She pushed back the heavy blankets, still smelling faintly of mothballs. She tugged at the curtains, pulling them back to loop them over the ornate brass hooks on either side of the window. The sky was pewter-coloured, the whole street silent, sheltering from the rain. The house felt quiet too; it had lost that depth of stillness brought on by night, but there were no sounds, no signs of anyone being up and about. As she rummaged in her case for her dressing gown and slippers, Beth felt panic begin to grow somewhere underneath her ribcage. Somehow, although she would never doubt James’s kind competence for a moment, Beth was overwhelmed by the feeling that her mother had been left suddenly alone, abandoned, and that even now, she was wakeful, restless, searching for her children . . . Beth wanted to get back to her, now, at once. All the responsibility for Alice’s ease and comfort felt as though it were suddenly, fiercely, hers, and hers alone. She felt that she could keep her mother alive now by the sheer, simple force of wanting it enough.

  She opened her bedroom door and crossed the landing, quickly, to her mother’s room. James was there, of course he was, and the sleeping figure in the bed was still unmoving, her head turned to the right, just as when Beth had left her. The change that she had been expecting had not happened, and now Beth didn’t know which she feared more: that her mother would die during her vigil, or that she would wake up during James’s.

  He looked up as Beth entered the room. The candles that she had so carefully lit had all gone out, and James was sitting in the old, deep armchair, his eyes heavy with fatigue. Beth noticed how grey his face was, and she felt the return of all the guilt of the previous evening. She was determined that he would see her doing her part, more than her part. She owed him that, and so much more, the old debt stretching way back, as far as she could remember.