The Unfinished Garden

by Barbara Claypole White

  “Wonderful, thank you.” Mrs. Haddington held up her glass. “I must say, in less than twenty-four hours you have certainly perfected the art of making Pimm’s. Are you sure you don’t have English genes?”

  “Pure Irish-American mongrel,” James replied.

  Sebastian leaned into Tilly. No aftershave today. Thank God. “How long is he staying?”

  “Two weeks.” Tilly dunked a bobbing piece of strawberry in her glass and tried to ignore Sebastian. His tone had suggested petulance. The same tone, in fact, that he had used on the night she had refused to relinquish her virginity in a musty old sleeping bag. Sod it. Why did every conversation with Sebastian trigger a mental reel of adolescent sex highlighted by fumbles to rebutton blouses and tissue-up spills before someone—human or pet—crashed open the door? No wonder they’d run to the Dower House for privacy. The ghosts of a ruin had disturbed them less than life at Woodend.

  A fighter jet roared over the patio, and Tilly hunched her shoulders. Military aircraft had zoomed over the village since she was a child, but every sighting, every crack that split the sky, still unnerved her.

  “Why’re you so interested in James’s plans?” she said. “You jealous?”

  Sebastian spluttered into his drink. “Christ, Tilly. Keep your voice down.”

  “It’s just if you’re not jealous, you should stop staring at James. You’ll give him the wrong idea. And don’t snap…no one heard me over the jet.”

  “I did not snap.” Sebastian’s voice was crisp, a voice that closed deals and signaled his intention they should stay closed.

  See? This was why she didn’t want a man in her life. Who had the energy to deal with hand-me-down emotions, to second-guess a partner, especially one whose life was guided by propriety? Thou shalt not reveal thy emotions. Had she ever seen Sebastian break down, either from rage or ecstasy? He was a sweet drunk and a silent lover. He could probably step on a copperhead and not whimper.

  His competence at life had appealed to Tilly-the-teenager as she’d struggled to curb a constant bubbling urge to scream at the world. Even when faced with her temper, his devotion had been quiet and solid, expressed not verbally but through the way he handled the minutiae of her life. But would she settle for that now?

  Tilly blew an imaginary bubble from her lips. Thank God she worked with plants, not humans. Take those leggy pinks in her mother’s herbaceous border. One swift round of deadheading and they would bounce back with fatter, healthier blooms. Sebastian on the other hand…had grown rigid. He was glaring at a wasp perched on the rim of his glass.

  Best say nothing. After all, Sebastian would prefer it that way.

  If she grabbed Sebastian by the shoulders and gave him a good rattle, would any emotions fall out? Was it so awful to admit that you loved a person who had abandoned you or that wasps terrified you? As Sari had commented, everyone was frightened of something. Except for Rowena, who was more likely to skip toward danger, arms open, shouting, “Yippee!”

  Sebastian cleared his throat, signaling that the wasp had gone. “Are you free next Saturday night?” he said. “For dinner at The Flying Duck?”

  Symmetrical cubes of fruit—that takes talent, James—floated on the surface of her drink, refusing to sink. She looked up. “A date?” Might as well establish the ground rules.

  “No, Tilly. Not a date.” Sebastian picked at the back of his signet ring. “I’d like to talk to you in private.”

  Good thing she got that sorted, then. Tilly flicked imaginary lint from her sundress. Still, his timing was spot-on. She could ask for advice about buying Woodend. Her mother might be shut down to the idea, but if Tilly could get Sebastian on her side….

  James appeared in front of them, silhouetted by brilliant sunshine.

  He looked different today and strangely exotic in the setting of Woodend, like a black swan that had flown off course and found sanctuary in an alien habitat. Maybe it was his black silk shirt or the chunky swirls of earrings that reminded Tilly of the @ sign on a computer keyboard. Maybe it was the mere fact of his height, which meant he had to duck under every interior doorway of the house. Tilly was still trying to place him in her world, and then he smiled. His smile suggested he was drawing her into a conspiracy, which, technically he was. But even if you hadn’t deciphered his code, it would be impossible to resist such an intimate gesture. He had that rare gift, the ability to give you his attention without distraction or restraint.

  Tilly shifted her focus to her glass. “Cooking for the whole crew is above and beyond, James. Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” James said. “Since you’ve found me a room with a shower.”

  “Really?” Sebastian sounded bored. “Where?”

  “With me!” Rowena released the baggie clip and swung her hair free. “Think I should warn him that my bathrooms are circa World War I, and the shower is a rubber contraption one has to shove up the taps?” She made a lewd gesture and laughed. “Makes sense, though,” she explained to Sebastian, “since he and Tilly are going to be noses-deep in my soil every day.”

  James blinked several times, paused and blinked again. It seemed oddly ritualistic. Was this a compulsion, an outward sign of OCD? If he were standing closer, Tilly would put her arm around him, or stroke his back. Instead, she jiggled her head to catch his gaze, hoping he could read her intention. But before she could clock his reaction, she jumped.

  Sebastian’s arm had curled around her waist. His other arm claimed Rowena. And then he tightened his grip.

  Chapter 15

  James threw his right leg on top of his left, and let his ankle rest on his knee. Good casual posture, just your average crazy waiting for his first gardening lesson. Despite being perched on the edge of the bench to avoid a small stain. He jiggled both legs like a psycho on an amphetamine high and fretted with the lace of his red Converse high-tops. Red. The universal color of danger, of warning, of stop. Of stay away, Tilly, for your own sake.

  But she entered the walled garden with a wave. He wanted to wave back, honest to God he did. Instead, he jumped up and began wringing his hands as if washing them with air. What a stellar impersonation of Lady fucking Macbeth. Now what would Tilly think?

  He couldn’t do this. On no level could he do this.

  The gate clanked shut behind her, and Tilly dumped the basket she called a trug on top of a mutant dandelion. Biggest fucking dandelion he’d ever seen. Dandelions. There had been dandelions at Maple View Farm that day everything had changed. The day Tilly had let him in. That was a sign, a good sign. Right?

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point explaining that gardening is therapy for the soul?” Tilly said. “You look as if you’re waiting to be hung, drawn and quartered. And I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened in Northamptonshire since the Tudors were knocking around.”

  His fingers flew to his hair and he scraped it back from his scalp in two fistfuls. Then he emitted a noise that was halfway between a choke and a laugh. Feral. He sounded feral.

  “An apt analogy, but it could be worse, far worse.” His speech raced. Pull back, James, pull back. “My fear thermometer hasn’t hit a ten.” His hands juggled imaginary weights. “It helps to grade fears. Ten being the worst. I’m at an eight.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and clutched at his legs. “Eight and rising.”

  “Peachy. Should I hide all the sharp implements?” Tilly nudged the trug with her foot.

  James explode
d into laughter laced with mania.

  What must she think? Why was he putting her through this?

  She was explaining something. He should listen. It could be the distraction he needed. As if. He was too far gone for distraction, the anxiety too high. He needed to crash and burn. Hit a ten and let it all out, but that wasn’t an option. Never done a ten in public before. Ten was private hell. Private all the way.

  You’re panting. Stop panting. Slow it all down.

  Breathe, concentrate on your breath.

  Words. Tilly talking. Something about amending soil. Was she serious? Him? Pick up a fistful of soil and shake it all about? He gave two laughs, two hyena barks, as he pictured a conga line of people singing the Hokey Pokey.

  Tilly gave him a quizzical look. “Is this a ten?”

  “Nine and a half, nine and a half.” He grappled with his T-shirt. He wanted to gouge through his clothes, through his skin.

  Inside he screamed: It’s too strong. I can’t control it.

  Tears stabbed behind his eyeballs and an image flashed, an awful image, one he couldn’t ignore: Tilly—gray, wasted, ravaged by cancer, dying. No, not Tilly, not Tilly.

  Fear ambushed him from all sides, telling him to knot his hands around themselves. If he did this six times Tilly wouldn’t die; the soil she’d just shaken off that Day of the Triffids weed wouldn’t contaminate her. She would not die.

  “James.” Tilly sat back on her haunches and peeled off her gardening gloves. “You haven’t told me everything, have you?”

  She had no idea, no fucking idea. What kind of a bastard was he to inflict this on her? He twisted his hands for the sixth and final time and then backed away. He hit something solid—the wall?—and sank to his heels.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “I can’t do this, Tilly. I thought I was ready. But I’m not. Get me out of here, please.”

  She walked over to him and held out her hand. All he wanted was to take it. To take her hand, to hold her goddamn hand. But he couldn’t. She had a smear of dirt on her knuckle.

  Tilly shrugged and smiled the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. “How about a stroll through The Chase?” she said. “I can guarantee it’s unlike any place you’ve ever been.”

  He blinked his agreement, too exhausted for words.

  * * *

  The gnarled trees of The Chase created a wall of green so dark that your eyes saw black. Most newcomers dithered when they reached the kissing gate at the entrance to the wood, but James entered without hesitation. His head grazed the tangle of dog rose and elder that arched over the gate, and a dusting of white blossoms fell to his black T-shirt like snowflakes.

  Tilly took a deep breath and followed him in.

  Immediately, the light changed from harsh morning sunshine to a soft, luminous yellow. Tilly loved the light in The Chase—like a dusky sky glowing with the charge of a million fireflies. The gardener in her called this bright shade, but the romantic in her preferred fairy light. She glanced down at the grass tickling her ankles. It was fluorescent, an unnatural tone that suggested magic lurked under every blade.

  The cool shade thrown down from twisted, sagging boughs was refreshing after the dry heat. There was no shade in the walled garden, no relief from the day’s brutal sunlight.

  James stopped and Tilly took the lead. Arms above her head, she wove through the bracken where it reached over the path. Leaves wobbled a few feet from her, betraying the antics of wildlife. Squirrels or rabbits, she hoped, not adders. One poisonous snake this summer was one too many.

  They joined the public bridle path, a trail worn bare by generations of ramblers and riders, and James pulled alongside her. She tripped several times over the hard, lumpy ruts of compacted earth. James, however, didn’t even stumble. He seemed to have a sixth sense for the hazards ahead.

  They moved deeper into The Chase, sidestepping tree stumps filled with new plant life and hoofprints sculpted out of caked earth. Echoes of traffic on the far side of The Chase disappeared, and the melodies of bullfinches, chaffinches and goldfinches—the bird songs Tilly had been listening for since arriving in Bramwell Chase—played all around them.

  A brace of pheasants shot across the path, and Tilly felt a familiar jab of trepidation. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to catch history replaying itself. Walking here, usually alone, was the only time she believed in ghosts. She inhaled the intoxicating scent fermented over centuries: the musk of trampled earth, the odor of fox, the old-fashioned floral perfume that she could never quite identify. Once, not long after her father died, she could have sworn she’d smelled his cigars in this very spot.

  “You love this place,” James said. “Don’t you?”

  Tilly peered into a mass of red campion flowers. “Time stands still in The Chase, which I find reassuring. Rowena and I used to climb that tree.” She pointed at a sprawling oak, its trunk bulging with knots. “And have picnics in that glade.” She indicated a mass of dead bluebell heads skirting a grassy clearing.

  “How old is The Chase?” James asked.

  “Ancient. Used to be a royal hunting forest in the Middle Ages, but I’m sure it goes back way, way further. Can’t you imagine druids racing through—”

  “The beat of a horse’s feet, and the swish of a skirt in the dew.”

  “Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Way Through The Woods.’” She turned to examine the long, angular face with the large, almond-shaped eyes. “My favorite poem.”

  “Mine, too. I slept badly as a kid, so I read poetry in the middle of the night. Mainly about ghosts and ghouls. I think my subconscious was searching for answers, even then.” He interlaced his fingers as if in prayer and held them under his chin.

  They watched each other in silence.

  “You’re smiling,” he said at last. “You had me cast as a techno-geek, didn’t you?”

  “Anyone less geeky I can’t imagine. Although the ghost stories make sense. You’re a little scary to a short woman, you know—I’m guessing over six foot?”

  “Six feet two and a half inches.”

  “And that beard—”

  “You don’t like the beard?” He sounded like Isaac, hurt but eager to please.

  “Nothing personal. I’m not a beard-moustache-goatee type of gal. Had it long?”

  A buzzard circled high above them.

  “No,” he said. “It was an experiment. A failed one.”

  “Let’s sit.” She gestured to a downed bough lying beneath the multifingered limbs of a sweet chestnut tree. On the other side of the trunk there was a small heart engraved with the initials S.W. and T.H. followed by the word forever. Had Tilly honestly believed, at fifteen, that forever was real?

  “Do you have chiggers here?” James cast his glance in every direction.

  “No.”

  “Fire ants?”

  “No.”

  “Poison ivy?”

  “Nope. Just nettles. But keep your hands away from the undergrowth. Hogweed and bracken can bring you out in a nasty rash.”

  He swiveled around. “Bad?”

  “James.” The buzzard gave its plaintive mewing call. “Just sit.”

  He did, but writhed and squirmed as he positioned his legs. Finally, he dragged them up and rested his elbows on his knees. He kept his hands open, then began grinding his palms together, filling the air with the sound of flesh rubbing against flesh.

  She preferred sitting when
they talked; it diminished the space between them. Although, once again, he sat too close, his knee resting against hers so she could feel his warmth. Tilly leaned forward, using the movement to wiggle space between them, and stole a glance at James.

  He was pinching his skin randomly, covering his arm in angry pockmarks. She considered stopping him, as she had done when he’d attempted to fling himself from the car, but decided against it. Wherever he was, there wasn’t room for two.

  “So what’s the story on the beard?” Tilly said.

  “I wanted to be someone else.”

  “And why, exactly, would you want to be someone else?” She understood the New Year’s pledge for self-improvement, the desire to become someone who didn’t chew her nails or lose library books. But you couldn’t erase the essence of you, and why would you want to try? Tilly picked up a small branch and traced patterns with it on the forest floor.

  “If I were someone else,” James said, “I could sit on a log without thinking of the consequences. Or pick up a stick as you just did. And some days?” He kicked aside a twig. Leaves rustled as it disappeared into a clump of stinging nettles. “I just need a break from being me. The guilt that you mentioned on the phone, is it survivors’ guilt?”

  She moved her head from side to side, trying to decipher the pattern she’d created in the dirt, but all she saw was a squiggle of circular lines that led back on itself. Should she talk about this? Probably not, since it was best to lock these things away and never examine them. To drag this out, to confront the memory, would only sharpen the pain. But since finding the lump, hadn’t the memory begun to fester and ooze? She tossed the branch away and scooted farther back onto the log, wincing as bark scraped her skin.

  A fox appeared ten feet ahead of them, froze and then padded away—one more living thing passing through her life. And Tilly remembered a nurse. Amazing, that she could recall new shards of fact from such a blank time, as if the memory were returning thread by thread. Yes, there had been a nurse with her in the doctors’ lounge, the place where they had taken Tilly—isolated her—to give her the news. A nurse with warm hands who had brought comfort and a disgusting cup of tepid tea. And Tilly had lacked the heart to tell her she was a Brit who didn’t drink tea. This nurse, this stranger, had been someone Tilly had held on to for a while. As she wanted to do now, with James.