Return to the Secret Garden

by Holly Webb

  Emmie had never seen him so angry – for a few minutes, he was the same distant, growling figure she had first met, so many months before. Remembering, she edged back further under the lilac bush, and shivered a little in the chill of the shadow.

  The green door in the wall banged open, and Emmie flinched, scraping her knees on the dry twigs. The quiet, bee-humming afternoon was broken as a figure blundered into the garden.

  “Jack! Are you there? Jack! Oh, please…”

  Emmie heard him turn, his sandals hissing on the dry grass. He was still playing hide and seek; he waited for a moment, caught in the game. Then something made him run. He hurled himself at his mother.

  It was the colour of the paper. Emmie saw it a few seconds after Jack did. Even from the shadows under the lilac bush, she knew what it was. A telegram. Everyone knew what that colour of paper meant. Mrs Martin the cook had received a telegram to tell her that her son had been injured while he was fighting in the army in Norway, and she had refused to open the yellow envelope. She was quite certain that the message was to tell her that Will was dead. She had sat holding it, and staring at it, and turning it over in her hands. Eventually Mrs Evans had sent Joey, telling him to fetch Mrs Craven so she could open the envelope for the cook. Mrs Evans had been so relieved that Will was only wounded that she had hugged everyone in the kitchen, and used all the sugar ration to make cocoa.

  “Is it David?” Jack was clinging on to his mother’s arm. Emmie wriggled further back under the lilac bush. She shouldn’t be here. This was secret – too much of a secret even to fit into the garden. She tried to stuff her fingers into her ears, but she couldn’t make herself not hear.

  “No.” Mrs Craven sat down suddenly on the grass, pulling Jack with her, half on to her lap. “No, darling. It’s Dad.”

  Miss Sowerby told them the news properly at supper time. She slipped into the servants’ hall looking thinner, and round-shouldered, as though suddenly she wasn’t young any more. There were tears seeping through the smiling creases around her eyes.

  She had known Lieutenant Craven since they were both children, since she was a clumsy little servant girl, too countrified really, to work in such a smart house. She had watched over him when he was a bad-tempered, sickly child who wore out his nurse. He had screamed and shouted at her in the middle of the night. And then he had grown up, when everyone had been so sure he never would.

  “I never thought,” she murmured, dropping into a chair next to Mrs Martin. “After everythin’ that happened – there was always a spark of summat in him. They called it Magic, the children, when they were small. Even with the war like it is, I never thought…”

  “What happened?” Arthur whispered, his eyes round. They had known he was dead – not from Emmie, they had seen Mrs Craven’s face as she ran calling through the gardens. She and Jack had stumbled together back into the house, and shut themselves away in Lieutenant Craven’s study.

  “Is it certain?” Emmie asked, at the same time. “It couldn’t be a mistake?”

  Miss Sowerby reached out to stroke her cheek. “I can’t see it bein’ wrong, Emmie. The telegram had his name, his number an’ all. It happened a week ago. There’s a letter to follow, they said. It was th’ Admiralty sent the telegram, they must know.”

  “A week? He was at Dunkirk, then?” Joey leaned forward eagerly. “We thought that! When it came on the radio, we wondered if Lieutenant Craven might be there.” He was smiling excitedly – it had been exciting, hearing it. Emmie and Ruby had hugged each other, and Ruby had done a little dance around the kitchen. All those little ships, sailing off to France to rescue the brave soldiers, and bring them home. Some of them had been fishing boats, the man on the radio had said. Some of them were the sort of boats that took people on outings at the seaside. Britain had called, and the men in those boats had answered, everyone said. The story had been so dramatic that the rescue felt almost like a victory, not the crushing defeat it really was.

  Joey ducked his head, his cheeks pink, suddenly remembering. “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Miss Sowerby only smiled at him, the tears slowly spreading down her cheeks.

  “He was good at rescuing things,” Emmie whispered. “If he’d go to all that trouble for Lucy, he’d make them pick up those poor soldiers from the water. That will be what happened. They were rescuing the soldiers.”

  Joey nodded. “Maybe a U-boat…” But then he snapped his mouth shut again, as Emmie and Miss Dearlove and Miss Rose all turned on him with a fierce glare. Miss Sowerby leaned forward, pressing her hands over her face, and Joey hunched down, trying to make himself look small.

  “It’s not a story,” Emmie hissed, and Joey nodded, just a little apologetic twitch of his head. It was hard not to talk about it. He wanted to know. The news had caught everyone’s imagination.

  So many of the rooms were closed up and covered in dust sheets now that Mrs Craven had taken to sitting downstairs in the kitchen or the servants’ hall sometimes, especially to listen to the evening news. She said it was too lonely, hearing it upstairs on her own. But she didn’t come down that evening, and neither did Jack.

  Jack didn’t appear at lessons the next day either. Emmie watched the door, hoping for him to slip in. She didn’t know what she could say to him, but she hated the thought that he was hidden away again, desperate. Even more desperate now than he had been the night she went to find him in the dark.

  “I expect Jack needs to be with his mother now,” Miss Rose murmured. “We must leave them alone.” She was looking at Emmie as she said it, and Emmie nodded, though inside she wanted to argue. What if Jack wanted someone else to talk to? Or needed someone, even if he didn’t want them very much. She wouldn’t mind if he yelled at her again… Emmie leaned on her hand, and stabbed her pencil at the page. Well. She would mind. But she wouldn’t yell back, she promised herself.

  He still has a mother… something whispered inside her. You don’t have anyone.

  “But I never did have,” she murmured to herself. “It isn’t the same.” Then she looked across at Arthur expecting him to be smirking at her for talking to herself. But he was drawing tiny ships in the margins of his sums, and Joey was gazing into the distance across the room. For once, it could have been Emmie that teased them for daydreaming, but all she did was kick Joey gently under the table, and nod sideways. Miss Dearlove was watching.

  Emmie bolted her lunch down, eager to get out into the gardens, away from the brooding sadness of the house. The roses were coming out. She hadn’t believed that there could be more flowers in the secret garden than when she had first seen it in September, but the buds were everywhere, unfurling, lines of pink and white and blazing red bursting through the green. There were more every day. She sped up as she ran down the paved walk by the gardens – there was a rose that climbed around the statue where Lucy liked to sleep, an early-flowering one that she had never seen open. Jack had told her that it was striped, dark red with white, and Emmie could see it in her head, like the stiff silk dress of the little girl in the painting that hung in their schoolroom. Even Jack didn’t know who she was, but she made Emmie laugh. She looked so cross. Her parents couldn’t have been pleased with the portrait, Emmie thought. The poor painter must have tried to make her smile, or at least look grand and proud. But the girl’s mouth was dragged into a determined line, and her eyes were snapping. She had wanted to be outside, Emmie was sure. Perhaps she had wanted to run about in the garden and stroke the petals of the striped roses, instead of being laced into that tight dress and made to stand still. Even the little dog in her arms was gazing wistfully out of the side of the frame – it wanted to dash about over the grass too.

  Emmie twisted the brass handle under the ivy, and eased the door open, slipping through and looking eagerly over at the statue. She darted across the lawn to see if the striped flowers had opened yet, but then a fluttering of pink caught her eye, and she
spun round.

  Mrs Craven was lying on the grass under the great tree, her pink cotton dress the same colour as the rose petals scattered around her. Fistfuls of them. Emmie stared at them, not understanding. Mr Sowerby always made sure that the bush just next to the tree was watered, and carefully trimmed. The flowers had hardly opened, and now the bush was almost bare, a few buds limply trailing from the branches.

  Mrs Craven put one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, and squinted at Emmie as if she wasn’t sure who this was in her garden. Her hand was scratched – there was a thin trickle of dark blood running down on to her wrist.

  “You tore all the flowers off,” Emmie whispered, shocked. “What did you do that for?”

  Mrs Craven didn’t say anything – she just went on staring at Emmie as though she were a stranger.

  Emmie stepped back, suddenly frightened. Mrs Craven’s face was so pale, her eyes looked almost black.

  “Come away, lass.” Mr Sowerby caught her arm, and Emmie gasped – she hadn’t even heard him limping up behind her. “She needs us gone.”

  “But the roses…” Emmie whispered.

  “Do as tha’rt told!” He pulled at her arm sharply, and Emmie cried out – he’d hurt her, even though she could see that he hadn’t meant to. He hustled her back out of the green door and on to the path. “I’m sorry, Emmie. Mrs Craven needs th’ garden now, doesn’t tha’ see it? Tha’ just let her be. Did I hurt thee?”

  “Yes.” Emmie sniffed, rubbing her wrist. “A lot. When can I go and look at the roses?”

  He shook his head, and then rubbed a hand wearily across his reddened eyes. His scars looked darker. “No. Tha’ can’t. Didn’t tha’ listen? It’s her place, hers and his, their secret. Leave her alone. Stay out.”

  Emmie gazed at him, dumbfounded, and then shook her head. “No! I can’t – you don’t mean it.”

  But he hardly seemed to be hearing her. He turned away and began to hobble up the path, back to the kitchen gardens.

  “But who’s going to look after the garden?” Emmie wailed. She ran after him, pulling at his jacket. “I help, don’t I? Please? You can’t make me stay away.”

  “I’ll do it,” he growled. “Get away with thee, child. Buzzing about like a wasp, th’art.”

  Emmie dropped back, staring after him with her eyes stinging. Even when she’d first arrived, he’d never spoken to her like that. It almost sounded as if he hated her. Emmie watched him until he limped into one of the kitchen gardens, and then she walked back to the door under the ivy. She wanted to sneak back in and she didn’t think Mrs Craven was in a state to notice. But then the brass doorknob under her hand was cold – it seemed to have lost some of its worn silken feel, that inviting golden softness that always tempted her in. Even in the hot June sunshine, the cold metal bit into her fingers, and Emmie stepped back.

  She wasn’t wanted.

  Emmie lay on the warm stone slabs around the pool, with Lucy sitting next to her. Both of them were staring at the fish, and occasionally Lucy would put out a hopeful paw, and then draw it back again. She wanted the little golden things so much, and she spent hours watching them, but she was afraid of the water.

  “What if I can never go back?” Emmie whispered to her. “What if he meant for always?” She sat up, drawing her knees up under her chin, and closed her eyes, trying to see the garden in her head. But there was too much of it, too much to see and smell and touch. Even when she told it to herself as a story, only a hint of the magic came through. She needed to step through the door.

  “I should have taken you with me,” she muttered, running her hand over Lucy’s sun-warmed fur. “No one ever tells you where to go.” She looked over her shoulder at the long flower bed, blazing with pink lilies, and hissed through her teeth. The heat was bringing them all on, and they were opening out like great cups – but it wasn’t the same. “I know that rose would be out. I could go back – Mrs Craven must have gone by now. And I don’t think she’d mind if I was there, anyway. She knows I love the garden. Emmie told Lieutenant Craven how helpful I was.” Emmie rocked back and forth gently, hugging her knees. “I could go back,” she whispered again. But she didn’t get up. She could – but she wouldn’t.

  17th June 1910

  Even the walls are covered now – tiny creeping plants have seeded themselves in the cracks between the bricks, and smothered them in flowers. White daisies, with each petal dipped in pink, and tiny little yellow flowers that look like specks of gold. One of the statues has a great clump of violet-blue campanula trailing out of the wall behind her; it’s grown down all over her shoulders like a cape of little bells.

  There are so many columbines I could gather armfuls and fill a vase in each room of the house, if it wasn’t such a pity to pick them. They must be named after the dancing girl in the stories, I’m sure; they dance and shake their frilly petals as the wind blows through them. Today I lay down next to the tallest purple delphiniums, the ones that are almost as tall as me, and stared up at the sky. I made patterns out of the clouds. Colin said I looked quite mad, and even Dickon was trying not to smile, but I don’t care.

  Emmie padded silently through the night-dark passages and up the steps to Jack’s room. She had been dreaming about the garden, Mary’s garden. She had found the pages in the diary for the summer, all those years ago. She could see the garden as she read – the words made it even harder not to be there. But she couldn’t stop.

  Then in her dream she had got in there again at last – but the garden had kept changing, stretching out into tunnels of dark shadow. Emmie ran and ran to reach the bright sunlight and the roses, but could never escape the clinging greyness of the tunnel. She had woken up gasping, choking, to find Lucy stretched across her chest weighing her down – and grumpy when she tried to move.

  Too scared to go back to sleep, in case she slipped back into the shadows again, Emmie got out of bed. She would go and find Jack, she decided. Maybe he wouldn’t want to talk to her, but at least she could try. Lucy stood up and stared at her, and then clambered quickly into the warm spot that Emmie had left in the bed, and curled up again.

  The house was silent, and when she peered through the heavy curtains in the passageway outside Jack’s room the night was black. It must be late – the middle of the night. Emmie paused at the top of the steps, chewing her lip and peering into the darkness of the room. He was probably fast asleep. It was stupid to have come.

  “What are you doing?”

  Emmie nearly shrieked. Jack wasn’t in bed – he was curled up on the wide stone windowsill, glaring at her. The moonlight glimmered on the side of his face. He looked cold, and miserable.

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” she snapped, surprised into sharpness. She’d forgotten that his father had died, and that she’d come all prepared to be nice to him.

  “Why aren’t you?”

  Emmie shrugged. “I dreamt – something bad. I thought I’d come and see you. To see if you were all right…” She ducked her head, embarrassed. It sounded so stupid. How could he be?

  “I am. Now go away.”

  Emmie swallowed down another sharp answer. “Do I have to?” she asked, her voice almost pleading. “I don’t want to dream it again. Can’t I stay here for a little bit?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to be so mean.”

  “Yes, I do.” Jack spat out each word, and Emmie suddenly recognized the way he was talking. He was all buttoned up. Even his mouth was tidy, the lips pressed together. His hands were folded in his lap, the knuckles white. If he let himself go, he was going to scream.

  “It might be better if…”

  “What?”

  Emmie shook her head. “Nothing. I’ll go then. Shall I?”

  “Yes. Go away.”

  Emmie began to shuffle away towards the steps, still looking at him, hoping that he’d change his mi
nd. He watched her go – she could see the sharp glitter of his eyes in the light from the window. As she reach the top of the steps, Emmie was almost sure she saw him lean forward – did he reach out one hand, to snatch her back? But he said nothing. What would he do if she ran back, and hugged him, and curled up next to him on the windowsill? Probably push her off. Or cry. She wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  “Night,” she murmured.

  “Go away.”

  Working in the kitchen garden, Emmie could smell the roses. The scent wafted over the high wall, sweet and tempting. Emmie sighed. She could go in – the door wasn’t locked, and she was almost sure that Mrs Craven was in the house. After the first few days of quiet strangeness, she had gone back to her old self, or seemed to have done. She smiled at the children when she passed them. She went back to her volunteer work at the convalescent home in Thwaite, and she talked to everyone the way she always had.

  But she didn’t let anyone else back into the garden. Emmie saw her going in there almost every afternoon. She had gloves on, and tools with her, sometimes she was even wheeling a barrow. Mr Sowerby worked there too, but in the afternoons, he left her to be in the garden alone. Emmie wondered why Mrs Craven never cried – she didn’t listen, exactly, but it was like the roses, she was only just across the wall, she couldn’t help hearing. Mrs Craven didn’t cry. Occasionally she sang, very quietly, and Emmie wasn’t quite sure of the song. A nursery rhyme, she thought.

  Now she put out a hand, and stroked the crumbling brick of the wall. It was comforting to be so close. She knew that the garden was still there, quiet and mysterious. But it made it so hard to stay away, knowing that she could just run along the path, and sneak behind the ivy. She had the strangest feeling that the garden was lonely without her – that it needed her and Jack, playing hide and seek, or tag, or stretched out in the grass watching the two robins fussing around their nest.