by Wayward
It was a little awkward, sometimes, having to come up with an excuse before rushing out; she was sure her co-workers thought she was having an affair, or had developed an addiction to gambling, drink or drugs. And the need she felt to go walking, the craving she had for fresh air, was similar to an addiction – although it seemed to have no negative effects.
Often on her walks she noticed the skeletal remains of what had once been a blooming patch of Fallopia japonica. Earlier, she had found the bare, lifeless canes a depressing sight, but now, although not pretty, they marked the spot where new life was growing, little reddish snouts pushing through the debris.
In a matter of days they had become stalks several inches high, resembling fresh asparagus. They pushed aside anything in their way, cracking the old dead stalks as they rose. Nothing could stop the blind urgency of growth. Hannah saw several shooting up out of a crack in pavement, forcing it wide, breaking the concrete a little more every day. While she was very glad it wasn’t her driveway, she couldn’t help finding a positive lesson in the sight. It said something about life, about the power of the natural world, and she thought it was good to be reminded of this at a time when people were so worried about how human beings were destroying the planet. Nature still had a few tricks up her sleeve, other ways of ensuring the survival of plant-life in the face of almost any obstacle.
~
Her arm began to tingle and she rubbed it hard, resisting the urge to scratch for the third or fourth time that day. It was rarely a good idea to attack your own skin, however briefly gratifying it might be. She told herself it did not itch. And it didn’t really – not quite. The sensation that had been plaguing her for several days seemed subcutaneous, as if it were the underside of her skin, and not the surface, that felt a tickle. She’d applied various lotions and potions, but nothing worked, and it was probably pointless when she had no rash, no redness, swelling or any other sign save a faint, greenish shadow like the memory of a bruise.
She unfastened her watch – although it couldn’t possibly be the problem – and was startled by how late it was. She had left the office what felt like ten minutes ago, yet two hours had passed. There was clearly no point in going back now.
She wanted to go home, felt it as an increasingly urgent desire, but when she reached the station, she went past, unable to bear the thought of going down the steps, of being underground, even for a short while. Eventually she managed to catch a bus that took her back to her part of the city, and alighted when she was within a short walk of home. As she stepped down she noticed, with a thrill of recognition, new growth sprouting at the base of the bus-shelter.
The house was empty; possibly the children had already come and gone – she could no longer remember every detail of their schedules. Stripping off her coat, she dropped it on the floor, then took off her shoes and peeled off her hated tights. Unburdened, barefoot, she went through to the back, unlocked the door, unfastened the bolts, opened it and went outside, across the deck and down to the tiny scrap of lawn. It was pathetically small, the grass was patchy and faded, but it was earth. Home. She sighed with relief and wriggled her toes.
Now, without other distractions, she was able to attend to her own feelings, listen to what her body was telling her. The tickling sensation intensified, then became something sharp and chilly. She looked at her arm.
She saw, first, a thin line of blood, which in a matter of seconds became a gaping wound as flesh and bone gave way before the life-force within. The reddish-purple bud had pushed through the skin, and now grew before her eyes into an asparagus-like stalk. When it was fifteen centimetres high the tender green leaves began to unfurl.
Nothing could possibly grow so fast, and yet it was happening. Almost overwhelmed by a mixture of awe and pain, she felt stalks erupting from other parts of her body. The resourceful plant had adapted to its new situation during its winter-long hibernation within her body, and had speeded its growth rate because, if it was not well-established in minutes, rather than days, it would be unlikely to survive.
If Neil came home while she was still recognizably his wife, he would try to stop it, he would do his best to kill the plant in the hope of saving her. And even through the fear and pain of the change, she knew that must not be allowed to happen. It was already too late for Hannah.
She wriggled and clenched and flexed her toes, digging them into the grass and then deeper into the soil, until they took root.
ERIC BROWN
The Ice Garden
The letter was unusual for two reasons; the first was that I receive few letters these days, and the second that my great uncle had been dead these past forty years.
My Dear Gordon,
This will come as something of a shock, but rest assured that I would not be contacting you if it were not absolutely necessary. I have followed your career with great interest over the years, and it is regarding this that I would like to meet you.
If you would be so kind as to drop me a line as to when you might be available, I would be most grateful.
PS – Please don’t mention this communiqué to your mother.
Edward Benedict
I laid the letter on my desk and stared out at the ice-bound countryside.
My great uncle Edward had gone missing, presumed dead, forty years ago while trekking across the snowfields of northern Norway. His skis had been found by a search party, along with a backpack still stocked with provisions, but of his corpse there had been no sign. This was in 1960, and he had been thirty at the time.
If the writer of the letter was indeed my great uncle, he would now be seventy.
He had been keeping an eye on my career, he wrote, and it was about this that he wished to speak to me. And that line asking me not to mention the letter to my mother, his only living sister...?
I picked up my mobile and rang my mother.
“Gordon, how lovely to hear from you!” she sang, as if we hadn’t spoken for months.
She asked how my work was going, and I replied with the usual platitudes, asking in return after her garden. In common with my great uncle, she had a passion for gardening on a large scale. She had managed a thriving market garden for over forty years. Now in her eighties and retired, she still maintained an abundant cottage garden.
“Uncle Edward would be proud of you,” I said, by way of introducing him, somewhat clumsily, into the conversation.
“Indeed he would, Gordon. I wish he could have seen everything I’ve achieved.”
I ventured, “You’ve told me very little about how he disappeared.”
A hesitation, before, “That’s because there is very little to tell. He went hiking, against my advice, I might add, in Arctic Norway, lost his bearings and perished in the ice. It must have been a... a terrible death.”
“I would have thought, what with his disability, the last thing he should’ve been doing was hiking through the Arctic.”
My mother laughed. “Edward never let being disabled hold him back in whatever he did. If anything it made him more determined, more reckless.”
How Edward had been injured, at the age of twenty, was almost as mysterious as the facts surrounding his disappearance. In 1950, apparently, Edward had been engaged in certain ‘experiments’ in the grounds of his father’s extensive estate in Hampshire. There had been an explosion, and Edward had crawled back to the house dragging – or so the much-embroidered family legend has it – his shattered left leg after him through the snow.
I said, “Did you ever find out exactly what Edward was doing back then?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “It was kept quiet by the family. Daddy hushed it all up. Wouldn’t say a dickey bird on the subject. And I never asked Edward. Or, rather, I did once and was given rather short shrift. Never again.”
“You don’t suppose...” I began hesitantly, “that Edward might have survived his Arctic trek?”
“What a strange question, Gordon! Of course not. He would have been in contact, wouldn’t he?
”
I agreed, admonished, that indeed he would.
~
I sat for a long time, after the phone call, great uncle Edward not uppermost in my thoughts.
Equable-Pharm – how I’d hated the name when Danbridge came up with it, and I hated it still – had expanded little in twenty-odd years. We still occupied a crumbling Victorian school building on the edge of town, with a few prefabs where production took place. We could have sold the business ten years ago and made, between us, over two million. But I’d been reluctant to sell to a rapacious multinational drugs company which would undo all our good work in the name of increased profit.
I was an optimist. I believed that if you acted with the best intentions, with goodness in your heart, then rewards would accrue. I believed that if you sought what is best in humanity, and fostered that, then humanity would respond with positivity. Danbridge and I started Equable-Pharm in order to counter what other pharmaceutical companies were doing in Africa and Asia. We supplied affordable drugs to third world countries and ploughed the profits back into research and production.
~
My attention returned to the letter on my desk and I pulled it towards me. I read the letter-heading: Halford Hall, Halford, Hampshire. It was where my great uncle had lived as a boy, and where as a child I had been taken on family visits once or twice.
I re-read the letter, trying to make sense of it. Might Edward, against all probability, have survived the Norwegian expedition and resurfaced forty years later to take up residence in his family seat? But, to the best of my knowledge, the Hall had been sold years ago.
I rang directory enquiries and requested the phone number, but drew a blank. I glanced at the wall clock. It was a little before noon. On impulse, I made a decision.
I would take a day off and motor down to Hampshire. Halford Hall was a three hour drive south, which would give me plenty of time to consider my great uncle and his – if it were indeed his – letter.
I was about to inform my secretary of my decision, and ask her to tell Danbridge that I’d be away for the rest of the day, when the phone rang and Danbridge himself said, “Gordon. Hope you don’t mind my springing this on you.”
“Springing what?” I asked, suspicious.
There was an uneasy silence at the other end of the line. “I’m in the boardroom. If you could come along...”
“I was just about to go out.”
“This is rather important, Gordon.”
Alarm bells should have started ringing then, but I was still thinking about the letter.
“I’m on my way.”
I passed through the outer office. I smiled at Alice, my secretary, but she feigned concentration on her PC’s monitor. I should have realised at the time, of course, but it was only later that it came to me: she knew.
I came to the boardroom and pushed open the veneered oak door. Danbridge was not alone. He sat at the head of the table, flanked by Wilson, our part-time accountant, and a smart, rather smug-looking stranger.
Danbridge stood and moved around the table, extending his hand and smiling like a poacher caught in the act. “Gordon... This is Nigel Maltravers, CEO of Denning and Maltravers.”
I shook hands weakly and slumped into the nearest seat. I felt suddenly deflated. A hot and cold flush chased itself across my face. Explained: Danbridge’s shiftiness when broached on the subject of next year’s business plan. Explained: his phone calls suddenly terminated when I entered his office. I felt shafted, stabbed in the back.
Danbridge rubbed his hands together and said, “You know how things’ve been of late, Gordon. Falling orders, increased overheads – ”
“What’s happening?” I said.
Maltravers cut straight to the quick, “I’ve been appointed by the board of Denning and Maltravers, Mr Benedict, to make a formal offer for the business, stock and good will of your company. The offer on the table is two hundred and fifty thousand.”
I stared at him. I wanted to laugh in his face, to show him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his offer.
Instead I sat stock still, staring at him. At last I turned to Danbridge. He had the good grace to look sick.
I said, “Jim...” I stood up and gestured him into the corridor. I moved from the room without waiting to see if he followed.
I paced the carpet, beyond anger. I heard Danbridge smooth-talking Maltravers behind the boardroom door, and a minute later he emerged. He couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eye.
He strode to the window and stared out over the snow-covered fields. “It’s the best we could hope for, Gordon,” he murmured.
I said, “Do you know what hurts the most, Jim? It’s not the paltry offer, the idea of everything we’ll lose... It’s not even that you’ve done all this behind my back.”
He protested. “I had to test the water. I knew you’d kick off if I even suggested...”
I ploughed on, “It’s that it’s Denning and sodding Maltravers. The biggest set of corrupt, cheating bastards in the business. So we sell to Denying and Malpractice, and what do they do? I’ll tell you, they stop production of the anti-malaria line straight away.”
“They said they’d keep it on, for the time being. They want to utilise our market influence in South Africa...”
“I bet they do!”
He murmured, “Gordon, talk to Wilson. He has the figures. If we don’t sell...” He sighed. “Wilson predicts closure in three to five years. Bankruptcy.”
And the hell of it was, I knew he was right, which made the idea of selling to Denning and Maltravers all the worse.
I faced my partner, my friend of more than thirty years, and said, “I need time to think this over, okay? If you’d give me a day or two... I’ll get back to you.”
He smiled, a look of relief sweeping across his weathered features. He’d probably expected a row, not my abject capitulation.
“Thanks, Gordon. That’s appreciated.”
He turned to the boardroom door and I hurried to my office. I bundled myself up against the biting cold – midday and still five below zero – drove from the car park and headed south along gritted roads flanked by trees silvered with frost.
All the way to Hampshire I thought back twenty years to the time Danbridge and I had founded Equable-Pharm; I relived the heady optimism, the idealism, the success of those early days. We had done something different, broken the mould, proved that altruism and big-business could survive hand in hand. I had been an optimist. Had I also been a fool?
~
The main road through Aylesbury was closed due to an accident caused by the treacherous ice, so I had to make a long detour. It was almost three when I passed through the village of Halford and braked before the tumbledown gatehouse of Halford Hall.
I peered up the driveway, overgrown with rhododendron, and made out the tall chimneys above a distant stand of elm. Wondering what I might find at the end of my journey, I let out the handbrake and steered up the driveway.
The hall came into view, and I was saddened to find it a shadow of its former glory. Every window in the east wing was boarded over; several chimney stacks had toppled and ivy upholstered much of the west wing.
I had a lingering memory of Edward as a tweed-clad, pipe smoking, jovial giant; in family photographs he presented a rugged, devil-may-care exterior, his face that of a frost-ravaged Arctic explorer.
I climbed a plinth of chipped steps to a vast timber door that had not seen paint for a couple of decades. I rang a bell, and when there was no response, hammered on the door. I stepped away from the entrance and walked along the down-at-heel façade. I might try the tradesmen’s entrance, I thought, or some other door less grand.
I rounded the corner of the house, walked along its ivy-covered side wall, and came at last to the kitchen garden.
Someone was at work on a turned patch of earth, his back to me, bending to pull a turnip. It could not be my great uncle, for I judged the gardener to be in his forties.
&
nbsp; He must have sensed my presence for he straightened up and turned suddenly, raising a hand and smiling a greeting.
He advanced and shook my hand. His grip was like iron.
“Gordon,” he said in a baritone with a slight burr of Hampshire, “I hoped you’d drop everything and come.”
I stared at him, this man who could not be my uncle.
Disbelieving, I said, “Edward...?”
His deep blue eyes regarded me. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this, Gordon.”
“It really is you,” I said fatuously. Then, “You’ve aged well.”
“You mean I look good for someone well past retirement age?”
Regarding him, his barrel torso, his upright posture and weather-beaten face, I found it impossible to believe he was seventy.
“This keeps me busy,” he said, extending a hand to take in the garden, “and that.”
‘That’ was a range of low glass cloches beyond the kitchen garden, covering the area of a football pitch.
“You look frozen,” he said, taking in my overcoated figure, hat and gloves. He wore a tweed jacket, totally unsuitable in the sub-zero temperatures.
“How about tea and a bite to eat?”
I nodded. “That would be good.”
He led me through a pair of French windows into in a conformable book-lined room with a fire blazing in the hearth. I had expected to find the interior of the building as dilapidated as its exterior, but the library, at least, was in good repair.
“I’ve closed down most of the hall,” Edward said. “Now I live in this room, which I use as my study, a room next door where I sleep, and the kitchen. Speaking of which, please excuse me while I prepare the tea.”