Walled Garden

by Catherine Dunne

  Beth felt a stab of relief. It was all nearly over, then.

  ‘Would you like to come with me while I examine her?’

  Beth shook her head. Right now, she wanted to keep the old, energetic Alice alive for a little longer in her mind’s eye. She didn’t want to see the skeletal frame that she knew must now exist under the comfortable burden of blankets and bed-jackets.

  ‘I think I’ll just stay here.’

  Ellen turned to James.

  ‘Perhaps you could come with me, James? I may need some help.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They both left the kitchen quietly, and Beth heard the doctor’s words, over and over again. Now it felt as though they were testing her, measuring her strength, seeing how much she could take. She waited, almost breathlessly, for collapse, for tears, for the old familiar sensation of wanting to run away. But it didn’t come. Instead, she felt a gathering stillness inside her, a sureness that this was right, this was where she should be, this was what she should be doing. The words might not be new: what was new was this almost tangible sense of peace. She no longer wanted to escape, to flee mindlessly from something that made her unhappy. And it was as though a reward waited for her upstairs, the third, unopened letter, waiting to speak to her. She would read it tonight, now that she knew how swiftly they were running out of time.

  Beth rested her forehead on her folded arms. She didn’t move until James came back into the kitchen.

  ‘You okay?’

  She nodded, smiling at him. He seemed to have returned to his old self; his aloofness had vanished and his eyes met hers without difficulty.

  ‘Yeah, fine. Is Ellen gone?’

  ‘Just now. She said to say goodbye; she didn’t want to disturb you. She’ll drop in again after her rounds on Monday. There’s been no real change since Thursday.’

  Beth nodded. A reprieve, perhaps.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked him.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ and he grinned his old grin at her. He started ticking off a list on his fingers, one by one. ‘My mother’s dying, my wife’s just fucked me out, I’ve no chance of promotion and I’ve a pile of bills waiting to be paid. Why wouldn’t I be okay?’

  ‘Well, that’s just fine, then. God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Come on, you. I could eat a lorry-load of pasta.’

  Beth looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Are we still going out?’

  ‘Yeah, why not? Whatever’s going to happen isn’t likely to happen tonight. Anyway, I think we’ve both got cabin fever.’

  Beth was relieved, almost joyful.

  ‘Great – I could really murder a bottle of wine. I’ll just go and get my mobile, in case Keith wants us.’

  She stood up from the table and went to open the kitchen door.

  ‘Beth?’

  She turned.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m really glad you’re here.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She ran all the way up to her bedroom. She felt ridiculously light and free, as though someone had just taken the steel bar from across her shoulders. She and James were okay again. He needed her. Her mother needed her.

  She must be doing something right.

  *

  James poured the last of the remaining wine into Beth’s glass.

  ‘Dessert?’ he asked her.

  ‘God, no; I couldn’t. That was absolutely delicious. Amazing how much better it tastes when you don’t have to cook it yourself.’

  He grinned over at her.

  ‘Still not a fan of the kitchen, eh?’

  Beth shook her head exaggeratedly.

  ‘Now less than ever. Laura’s good, though. She makes sure we don’t suffer from malnutrition.’

  ‘Gemma’s the cook in our house. She’s good, too, but there’s always a row about the washing-up.’

  James fell silent. He began to fidget, pushing at his wineglass restlessly.

  ‘How is she?’ Beth asked, suddenly.

  He paused for a moment while the waiter placed their coffees in front of them. He studied his cup, not meeting her eyes.

  ‘Unhappy. She senses what’s going on between me and Olive, much more than Keith does. She goes very quiet from time to time. Spends a lot of time alone in her room, too.’

  He sipped at his coffee thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t quite know what to do with her. I don’t know how much is due to Alice, and how much to Olive and me. I’m afraid to think about it, to be honest.’

  ‘Would it help if I talked to her?’

  His face brightened a little.

  ‘I think it might. She’s very fond of you. Always says she wishes Laura was her sister.’

  Beth smiled.

  ‘How much does she know?’

  James shrugged.

  ‘We’ve told her nothing formally: she doesn’t know that I’ve moved out, as such. As far as she’s concerned, this is just a convenient arrangement while . . . for looking after Alice.’

  Beth looked at him in dismay.

  ‘Then what can I tell her? I can’t be the one to break that sort of news to her.’

  He hesitated, looking at her over the tops of his glasses.

  ‘Actually, she’s been asking lately why you and Tony split up. Apparently she and Laura were talking about it last time Laura was over. And now, for obvious reasons, the subject has come up again.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Beth. She was surprised at the sudden stab of betrayal she felt at Laura’s confidence to Gemma. But why shouldn’t they discuss it? Laura had a perfect right to wonder about her parents. So why, thought Beth, didn’t she ask me? She, Beth, had never refused to talk about the separation; she’d always given the same carefully agreed, politically correct version of the truth. A truth tailored, perhaps, more to the needs of a five-year-old than a teenager, but it had always seemed enough to say, that no matter what, Mum and Dad will always love you. At fifteen, obviously, such comic-strip formulas wouldn’t do any more. Laura hadn’t asked her the question because she’d known she’d never get a real answer. Beth felt herself shiver. Was this the beginning of another Gulf of Misunderstanding? One to match the muddy waters that she and Alice had been longing to bridge for at least twenty-five years? Is this how it would happen between her and her own daughter – an evasion here, a half-truth there, a refusal to unravel with hard honesty the knotty complexities of the ties between men and women?

  ‘Beth? Are you okay? You look very tired all of a sudden.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Someone just walked over my grave, that’s all.’

  She hugged her arms close to her, warding off the chill winds of a guilty conscience. She didn’t want to meet James’s eyes.

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘Yeah. I think I’m ready now. Are you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’ll fix up the bill. You stay here.’

  Waiting for him to come back, Beth felt the return of the same old sadness that had recently, suddenly, begun to plague her again. How could she possibly explain to Laura, to Gemma, to anyone, why she had sent Tony away? How could you possibly say that the reason for the end of your marriage was that your husband watched television every night and washed the car on Sundays? Like balm for a bruised soul, Tony had drawn her to him in the first place with the eloquent promise of ease and stability. After twelve years of the hectic pace of life in London, she’d been tired, her emotions ragged and discordant. She’d felt the need for peace and ordinariness.

  Friends had introduced her to Tony just as she’d begun looking for somewhere to settle, for someone to still the creeping, insistent ticking of her biological clock. He had seemed like the perfect answer: solid, dependable, predictable. It had been a mistake; she’d married him under false pretences. And then, she’d sent him away for precisely the same reasons that she’d married him. It was her fault, all of it. And yet, they had made each other ha
ppy enough for more than five years, until her old, fractious restlessness began to surface again. All the unfulfilled expectations of her whole life seemed to come home to roost in her marriage, nagging at her, driving her away. She didn’t know where this irresistible urge to move on kept coming from, all her life. Running away, again: as soon as things get tough. Alice’s voice, hard-edged, tight-lipped, was clear and direct inside her head. And perhaps there was more truth to that than she was prepared to admit.

  Things had changed after Laura’s arrival – not that she’d ever have been without her baby daughter, not even for a moment. But life had become tougher in so many, indefinable ways: family ties had become more fixed, more complex, somehow. Beth could still remember the feelings of panic that had assaulted her in the early years of her daughter’s life. She’d felt almost suffocated, trapped by the needs of this little human being, her life changed for ever, the same for ever. She could see her entire future mapped out inexorably in front of her, while Tony settled into the blissful domesticity which she had never craved. Panic had tightened its grip. The only time she’d felt really alive was when she fought with him. She’d sought conflict, upping the ante over and over again. But she rarely, if ever, moved him to anger. He never even raised his voice, just regarded her steadily, mildly, waiting for her to ‘come to her senses’. Finally, she’d needed out.

  ‘Ready?’

  Beth started. She didn’t know how long James had been standing there.

  ‘Sorry – yes, I’m ready – let’s go.’

  She was suddenly anxious, wanting to get home to Alice. She needed to be there, to see it through. She wasn’t going to run away anywhere, this time. Her mother needed her. Everything else could wait. She pulled her hat down low over her forehead and wound her scarf around her neck. Shivering again, she followed her brother out into the freezing October rain.

  FIVE

  Jack

  ALICE PULLED HER bedroom window closed, and locked it. It was only the middle of August, but already the change in the evenings was perceptible. Or maybe she was just feeling the cold more than she used to. She had suddenly, unexpectedly, begun to shiver. The heavy afternoon rain had released the scent of stock and jasmine in the front garden, just below her window, and she had been standing there for some time, inhaling the freshness all around her, enjoying the bite in the air produced by the early autumn showers. And the gardens, front and back, were looking lovely. Some of their colours were dying back, to be sure, but enough of the greenness and lushness were left to be a tonic for the eye. She thought gratefully of Keith, and how he had taken the hardship out of Jack’s gardens for her. His swift eye and endless energy had restored them to her again as a place where she could just be. She had reclaimed Jack’s seat at the end of the back garden, too, and the sense of peace that went within the high walls, a stillness she could not remember having had since the children were very small.

  But now it was time to lock up for the night. Over the past few days, she had started to write messages to herself, little yellow reminders of the ordinary daily tasks that had lately started to slip from her fingers. She was forgetting to close windows and lock doors, and recently, she had gone to bed without switching on the house alarm. So now she spoke aloud to herself more and more often, reminding herself of all the things that had to be done, rehearsing their order in her nightly scheme of things. It was becoming like a game to her – she tried to remember which small ritual came next, before consulting the yellow flags that adorned the mirror in her bedroom, the kitchen tiles behind the kettle and the bit of bathroom wall just above her toothbrush. The same messages, repeated in three different locations, just in case.

  She was tired tonight. Her sister Peggy had called for tea, with Clare, and Katie, Clare’s youngest teenager. Alice had felt slightly weary at the thought of their visit, and had had the good grace to be immediately ashamed of herself. But no matter how hard she tried not to, she always saw Clare, her oldest niece, as a rebuke for the mess she, Alice, seemed to have made in bringing up her own daughter. Beth and Clare had always been chalk and cheese. Even as children, they had maintained an indifferent distance from each other. They hadn’t even cared enough to fight. And now, every time she saw Clare, gentle, soft-spoken, conscientious in visiting her elderly aunt, she was overtaken by a perverse instinct to boast about Beth, her high-flying London life, the success of her business. The truth was, Clare reminded Alice all too sorely of the daughter she thought she’d have liked better: one who’d stayed close to home, who’d minded her children herself, and who’d had the good sense to stay married. After they’d gone, Alice had cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen, missing Beth and Laura so keenly she thought she would cry. She’d felt guilty, too, hoping that none of her visitors had sensed any lack of welcome on her part; Peggy had been very good to her and the children after Jack died.

  And that was just the point, wasn’t it? A part of her had always resented having to be grateful to those who were kind to the poor widow; Jack was the one who should have looked after them. Alice sighed, pulling her curtains impatiently. It was wrong of her still to feel angry at Jack, wrong of her to keep on feeding this bitterness which surged unexpectedly to the surface more and more often these days. He’d always been a good man; he’d always done his best. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t foreseen his own early, catastrophic death. She hadn’t seen it coming, either.

  Alice squeezed some cream into her palm and began to massage it methodically into her hands. It was another of her nightly rituals, made necessary now by the increasing dryness of her skin. She sat on the padded stool in front of her dressing table and pulled the hairpins out of her bun, letting the fine white hair fall loosely to her shoulders. She should probably have it cut. Was it just an old woman’s ridiculous vanity that made her wear it long, a pale wispy reminder of its former glory?

  And could that face in the mirror really belong to her? She looked at it closely, so closely that the reflection began to distort, and she thought she could recognize something of the young woman who had so happily, so easily fallen in love with Jack Keating. She wanted to remember those early days again, to share them with James and Beth – her children deserved a memory of their father that was not wedded to poverty and hardship. And she, she deserved to relive the warmth and joy of their early relationship, to feel its substance fully, unshadowed by death and all the later disappointments.

  She began to brush her hair gently, with her mother’s tortoiseshell hairbrush. She was much too tired to write to either Beth or James tonight, but she was in just the right frame of mind for remembering. Once she got into bed, her mind would begin to drift, as it usually did, between sleep and waking. The trouble was, this drifting state was now a lot more real to Alice than her present life: she could feel that marching away from her inexorably, every footfall of her own mortality measured out in yellow Post-It notes.

  ‘Just let me finish my business with my children, that’s all I ask.’

  Startled, Alice realized that she had spoken out loud. She sighed. This was all getting to be very difficult. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so stubborn. Perhaps she should take James up on his often-repeated offer to move her in with his family, to be taken care of. Tomorrow. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she’d think about it all tomorrow. For tonight, all she had to do was remember to switch on the landing light, so that at least if she went wandering and woke up suddenly, she wouldn’t have to feel quite so terrified in the clutching, vulnerable darkness.

  Alice left her bedroom door wide open and slipped in between cool sheets. When had she changed them last?

  ‘Stop vexing yourself,’ she said crossly. ‘Just lie down and be good.’

  She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. Sometimes, the rhythm of her own heartbeat frightened her. Would she know, with some sixth sense, when it was about to stop? Should she really be alone when it did? But now, the breathing was easy, effortless. She felt as though she could go on for ever. This was going to be
one of the good nights.

  Sure enough, Jack was waiting for her.

  She knew, just by the look on his face, that tonight he had brought the ring with him. She never wanted to forget that chill Sunday evening in late April, when she’d watched him from the top of the stairs at Abbotsford. She had reached the top landing just as her mother was closing the front door. It was too late to turn back, useless to pretend that she hadn’t been waiting for him. Some instinct had made him look up, immediately he entered the hall, and their eyes had met instantly.

  ‘Alice?’ her mother called. ‘Jack’s here.’ She followed his gaze up to the landing. ‘Oh, there you are.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs McKinney.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Jack.’ Then, over her shoulder, as the older woman made her way back to the kitchen: ‘The fire’s lit in the front sitting room.’

  ‘Thanks, Mam,’ Alice called, suddenly nervous.

  She was acutely conscious of Jack’s gaze as she made her way down the long, elegant staircase. She kept her own eyes down, focused carefully on her new strappy shoes. The last thing she wanted to do was trip, and she wasn’t completely used to the height of these heels yet. He was waiting for her at the bottom step, smiling up at her.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ he said quietly. ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she smiled. It was a good job he’d never know the rush she and her mother had just had to finish that dress: good quality, peach-coloured cotton, the first welcome sign that the shortages of the War years were finally coming to an end. Her mother had chosen the material for her, and together they had spent hours the previous morning rustling through the fat envelopes of Vogue patterns in Clery’s until they’d found just the one to flatter Alice’s slim waist and full hips.

  Home again, they’d bent together at once over the long kitchen table, pinning the whispers of tissue paper pattern onto the folded material. Mouths full of pins, neither woman had felt the need to speak. The only sounds were the rustle of paper, the hiss of tailor’s chalk on soft cotton and, finally, the clean, deep echo of scissors slicing through fabric, resounding against the wooden surface underneath. At five o’clock the following evening, several impatient fittings later, Alice had begun to panic. It would never be finished in time.