In The Garden Of Stones

by Lucy Pepperdine

  “Or?

  “Or, B, you give yourself a couple of days to think about it, to let things settle, to get things straight in your mind, and then go back, find Colin, tell him how you feel. It’s your place, he’s your creation, and you are in control. If he doesn’t like it, that’s his problem.”

  “It’s all so confusing, Mal. The sensations I’m getting. They are all so real.” She rests her cheek against the now distorted cushion and closes her eyes.

  “Talk to me, Grace,” says Mal. “Tell me what’s going through your mind.”

  “Do you think imagination can be so powerful as to create a place where I can feel every blade of grass under my feet, where I can smell the flowers and the smoke from the bonfire, where I can hear every bee and taste the juice from the blackberries I pulled from the bramble,” she says, after a pause.

  Mal nods. “Yes I do. If it weren’t, how would a blind person imagine what colours are, or a deaf person appreciate music?”

  “What about an imaginary man grabbing my arm and causing actual bruises?”

  “Ah, now, that’s still open to debate–”

  “Or being stabbed by a splinter of wood, or this–?” She pushes the sleeve of her sweatshirt up her arm to reveal a patch of raised watery bumps surrounded by reddened skin. “You can see this can’t you, or am I still imagining it?”

  Mal leans closer to look at the rash. “Yes, I can see it. What is it?”

  “Nettle rash. Pinching make believe blackberries in a make believe garden is not without its hazards. Make believe nettles sting just as hard as real ones.” She scratches at the angry area. “Itches like hell. Must put some calamine lotion on it. So what do you think?”

  Mal’s face once more takes on that unreadable mask that tells her she’s presented him with something he wasn’t expecting, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t know how to react.

  At least he isn’t laughing at her, far from it, and she can’t decide whether that’s a good sign or not.

  Chapter 15

  There is no sign of Colin in the garden or in the cemetery. Noiselessly Grace approaches the hut, and through the window sees movement inside.

  He is in there, straightening out the rough khaki coloured blanket on his cot, pulling it as tight as a drum, tucking in the corners in pin sharp folds in the military style she only believed happened in movies.

  All his own work, or an unconscious representation of my own compulsive need to tidy?

  When he is done he stands back to admire his handiwork. The door of the hut is ajar and she knocks gently on it, pushing it open a touch. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  Colin turns to see her, his expression registering at first surprise, then recognition, then relief.

  “Grace?”

  “Were you expecting someone else?

  “No.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “If ye like.”

  She steps inside the gloomy hut. It smells of grass and soil and engine oil. “You okay?” she says.

  “Aye.”

  He maintains a distance between them, keeping her at more than arm’s reach, shifting from foot to foot. He sniffs and clears his throat. “I was hoping ye’d come back. I wanted ta apologise fer bein’ sa rude … again.”

  She shrugs. “S’okay.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s very much not okay.”

  He pushes past her to go outside. Grace follows.

  “Ye were right,” he says. “None of this is real. Not a damned thing. It’s all an illusion. I’m no in therapy. I did this by mysel’. I made this place for me, inside ma ain heid because I needed somewhere to go, to get away from everything and everybody, and it was working fine, I was happy here in ma ain company–”

  “Until I turned up and spoiled it.”

  “Aye … no … ach, I don’t know.”

  He lashes out at the dead leaves with his foot. Unbalanced, he staggers, flinging his arms out.

  Grace grabs him before he can fall. “Whoa, careful! You okay?”

  He closes his eyes, drawing in a few deep breaths. “Aye. Fine. Knocked masel’ off kilter there a wee bit.” He gazes off into the shrubbery. “D’ye like strawberries?” he says, presently.

  Grace smiles. “I love strawberries.”

  “Good. Grab that trug over there and come wi me.”

  She takes a long shallow basket from a nail at the hut’s door, and follows Colin into the undergrowth to a patch of wild strawberries. Soon the trug is loaded with fresh red fruit.

  They take it back to the hut and sit at the table, the pile of berries between them.

  “Where are you Colin?” she says, taking one.

  Colin does the same. “Sitting here with you eating strawberries.”

  “Not what I mean. As your ‘inner self’ for want of a better description is here, what is your actual physical body doing right now?”

  “Not this again.” He pushes a strawberry into his mouth, swelling his cheek like a hamster’s.

  “Shall I tell you where I am?” she says. “I’m at home in my nice new flat, stretched out on the sofa with a cushion under my head and Mr Pickles … he’s my cat, is lying on my legs. I did intend to have a glass of wine and watch a movie on TV, but instead I found myself here talking to you and eating strawberries.”

  “I thought about getting a cat once, to keep the mice down.”

  “You should. It would be good company for you, but don’t change the subject.”

  He wipes juice from his lips with the back of his hand, and sucks at his teeth to catch a pip. “The flesh and bone is doing the same as it always does,” he says. “…nothing. It can’t do anything. Hasn’t for a long time. Its heart is beating; air is going in and out of it, that’s about all.”

  It? Is this how distanced he has become from his own physical form that he has reduced it to a mere object?

  “Are you…conscious?”

  He shrugs, drops his eyes and commences to pick at a splinter in the rough tabletop.

  “Are you in any pain?” she says. “When you stumbled outside, it looked like–”

  Another shrug.

  Grace puts her hand over his, stilling his worrying of the wood. He doesn’t withdraw, lets it lie there, small and warm on his. She squeezes his fingers.

  “Once upon a time, a lifetime ago and in another country, I was afeart of nothing,” he says. “Game for anything, try anything once and sod the consequences. Que sera sera and all that bollocks. Took no mair’n a couple of seconds for all that to change.” He frowns, letting out an uneven sigh. “Now everything scares me. I live in a perpetual state of panic. Pain, sickness, violence, death, it’s all out there around the next corner, waiting for me.” He swallows hard, licking his lips. “In here, I’m away from it all, a world of my ain making where I don’t have ta think about anything. It’s safe. I’m safe. There’s nothing and naeb’dy here ta–”

  He slaps the tabletop with the flat of his hand, making Grace jump, pushing himself up from his seat, and in his ungainly way striding from the hut.

  Alone at the table, Grace takes another strawberry. It yields to her bite, giving up a mouthful of juice; deliciously sweet, as a ripe fruit should be. Divine. Too divine. She’s eaten more than she can normally stomach, yet still feels she can manage just one more, craving the flavour, the sweetness despite the fact that, if she thought about it logically, she shouldn’t be able to taste anything at all, or get any of the little seeds stuck in her teeth.

  Come to think of it, she shouldn’t be able to feel every tiny imperfection in this naive hand made tabletop either, shouldn’t be able to smell…wood smoke?

  She peers through the hut’s only window to see Colin outside poking at a crackling bonfire with a long stick. A thick pall of grey smoke belches from the fire, then settles into a curling white wisp, and Colin, satisfied the fire is going well, uses the stick as a prop to lower himself onto an upturned log, sitting at a right angle to the fire with his legs stiffly out in front o
f him.

  He rests his head against the stick, eyes closed, shoulders hunched, face crumpled.

  “He lied when he said he wasn’t in pain.”

  Grace needs to wash the strawberry stickiness from her hands but there is no sink and hot water here, only a water jug and bowl on a hand made table. No soft and fluffy towel either. She has to make do with a coarse piece of fabric hanging from a nail. Both do the job quite adequately. Clean and dry, she hangs up the towel and goes outside.

  “Can I join you, or do you want to be left alone?”

  Colin sits up at her approach and indicates another log. If she cares to move it herself, he says, she can use it as a seat. It’s heavy and cumbersome, but she manages by half rolling, half lifting it, to plonk it down beside him. Minutes pass as they sit together watching the flames consume the cuttings and clippings and trimmings accumulated from his day’s work in the garden, serenaded by a thrush perched somewhere high up in a tree, singing out his joyful melody.

  “I’m in a hospital,” Colin says presently.

  Grace swivels on her log seat to face him. “What sort of hospital?”

  “A military rehabilitation centre.”

  “Military? You’re what…a soldier?”

  “Until I’m officially discharged.”

  “What rank?”

  “Captain.”

  “That’s pretty high up isn’t it?”

  “Far enough ta get me a table in the Mess, to be looked up to from below, and be shat on from above.”

  “And you were wounded in the line of duty?”

  “Aye.”

  “Badly?”

  He runs his hand up and down his thigh a few times. “If losing both your legs above the knee, being set on fire and peppered with burning shrapnel fits your definition of badly, then aye,” he says, his voice thin and loaded with bitterness.

  “You lost your legs? But–” She points at his stiff limbs in their well worn trousers.

  “As you are so fond of saying … nothing here is real,” he says. “Out there, they are gone. Here I can have them back. Even make masel’ a bit taller if I want ta.”

  “Oh Colin. I’m so sorry.”

  “Aye, everyone is al’ays sorry. Like it’s gain ta make any difference.”

  “I don’t know what else to say. I don’t much about these things apart from what I hear on the news, so it’s the best I can do.”

  He scrapes the ground with the stick. “I keep telling maself, “At least you’re still alive”, and, “Half a man is better than no man”, but it disna help. Neither do inane platitudes and banal sympathies and everyone telling me to give it time and everything will be okay. What the hell do they know about it, eh? They’re not the ones who’ve had their mates’ brains splattered all o’er their face, had their blood in their mouth, been shot at, set on fire, showered with burning metal, had their limbs ripped off. They’re not the ones on the inside of the…of the ever present burning, bloody agony of it. It’s–”

  A boom sounds in the distance and Colin freezes, eyes sparkling and darting in a face turned the colour of clay. The frightened rabbit look is back. Grace asks if he’s okay. He doesn’t answer; his concentration is elsewhere, on the late afternoon thunderstorm building in the distance. The rumble fades and he seems to relax a little, although his eyes remain wary.

  “What … what were we talking about?”

  “You were telling me about what happened to you, about being in hospital,” says Grace. “But if you’d rather not, if it upsets you too much, you don’t have to.”

  Colin pokes the stick savagely at the heart of the fire, sending a shower of sparks spiralling into the air. “There was a bomb,” he says. “What they call an IED. It was left at the side of the road, strapped to a donkey–”

  “A donkey? You mean a dead one, right?”

  “No, it was still alive. Tied up in the street. Its panniers had been loaded with wood … and explosives.”

  Grace covers her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God. The poor thing.”

  “The bombers got a wee kid to tie the beast up in the street. I doubt he knew it was primed, he was just a boy, although you never know, they like to start them out young. The bombers were hiding somewhere out of sight, waiting and watching until we, there were three of us, were within a few feet of it, and then set it off by radio control.”

  He pauses, frowning, “Dan was in front and caught the full force of the blast. It tore him in half. He died instantly, lucky bastard. Jimmy … he was standing next to me.” He swallows and licks his lips. “He lost an arm and half his face … got a great gaping hole in his skull, but that’s not what killed him. He got what they call a blast lung injury. The pressure of the explosion … it caved in his chest, crushing and tearing his lungs, forcing air into his body, into his bloodstream. It made wee bubbles that blocked up his arteries and his heart. Nothin’ they could do for him. Who woulda thought, eh?” He pinches his fingers together. “Tiny little bubbles?”

  “And what about you?” Grace asks gently.

  “Me?” A hollow laugh. “I got away easy. Left leg clean off at the knee, right oan mashed ta pulp, set on fire from neck to backside, showered with white hot pieces of metal–”

  There is a sudden blinding light, accompanied by an instantaneous cannon fire crack of thunder, and it makes Grace look to the leaden sky. “Crikey, that was–”

  “GET DOWN!”

  Her head snaps rounds to see Colin launching himself at her, his face contorted as he yells out his warning. He grabs her and wrestles her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.

  He’s heavy, solid bone and muscle pinning her face down into the leaf mould and soil. She can’t breathe, only managing a stifled, “Gerroffme!”

  The gut churning noise rumbles on its way, and in its wake the sky opens and the rain pours down as if from an upturned bucket, forming instant puddles. The choice facing her now is be crushed or be drowned.

  She wriggles furiously beneath him, lashing out with a free foot. “Get off me, Colin!”

  The flailing foot strikes home and Colin cries out, the hold lessens and she crawls out from under him, rolls away and scrabbles to her feet in the slippery earth, swearing and gasping for air.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re–?” She stops. Stares. “Oh no! Oh shit! Colin? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

  In dirt rapidly turning to mud, Colin is curled like a Quaver, legs pistoning like he’s riding an invisible bicycle, arms pulled tight over his head, face the colour of ash, teeth clenched, keening and whimpering like a beaten dog.

  A kick to the balls would have hurt, sure, but her lifting and separating his testicles with her foot couldn’t have done this. This is something much worse.

  She squats down and takes hold of his sodden shirt sleeve. “Colin, you’ve got to get up. You’re getting drenched.”

  He flinches, bats her away and draws himself into an ever smaller ball, shivering and whining. He’s not going anywhere, and when the thunder and lightning come again, she realises why. She kneels down in the wet dirt with him, leaning over him, sheltering him from the deluge of rain hammering against her back, water streaming down her face in a river.

  “Shhhh, it’s alright,” she whispers, moving her hand over him in soothing comforting strokes. “There’s nothing to be frightened of. You’re safe.”

  “That was quite a downpour,” Grace says, dabbing her hair with the piece of rough fabric towel. “You’re soaked to the skin. You need to get out of those wet things or you’ll catch cold.”

  A furnace flush of embarrassment burns Colin’s neck and cheeks, and he keeps his eyes on the floor as he wipes his red shiny face on his sleeve. “So do you.”

  “What?”

  Still not looking, he wafts his hand at her. “Ye’re…showing.”

  She looks down at her blouse, at her lacy underwear clearly visible through sodden mud streaked fabric turned transparent and clingy. She squeaks and clutches
the piece of cloth close. “Ah! Oh dear…yes, I’d better go and … erm…” She hands him the rag. “You going to be okay?”

  He takes the rough cloth and wrings it in his hands. “Aye.”

  “You sure? That was quite a turn you had there. I can stay if you like, keep you company … if you’ll lend me a shirt or something.”

  He dabs at a rivulet of water leaking from his own hairline. “It was nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Didn’t look like nothing–”

  “I said I’m–”

  “Fine? Yes. I heard. Okay. If you’re sure.” Pause. “Can I stop by and see you again?”

  He looks at her from under the makeshift towel. “Why?”

  “To make sure?”

  He shrugs. “There’s nae need…unless ye…unless ye want ta.”

  “I do want to, but it’s up to you.”

  He dabs his hair some more, frowns, nods. “’Kay.”

  “Tomorrow perhaps?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Splendid.”

  Grace pulls open the door “Right, I’ll leave you in peace and you can get changed.” She looks to the sky. “If I get a move on, I might get to the gate before another soaking is unleashed on me.”

  She steps outside.

  “Grace!”

  She turns back. Colin is hovering in the doorway, that awkward smile tugging at his mouth. “Thank you,” he says.

  “What for?”

  “For no running away when you could have. For staying with me … even though ye got soaked through. It meant a lot.”

  A difficult admission, she can see. “Not a problem.”

  “Please…come tomorrow?” he says.

  She sneezes. “If I haven’t got the flu, you can depend on it.”

  Grace does not have the flu, or even a cold, she never got wet because the rain wasn’t real. Yet although her blouse is dry, the skin beneath is sticky and unpleasant with the clammy dampness of a cold sweat.

  A bone deep chill makes her shiver. She takes a long warm shower, dresses in a fleece lined sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, adding her fluffy bed socks and rabbit eared slippers for extra warmth.