Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  “Broken,” he replied. “Trowel broken!” He sat down on the sofa next to Sarah, frowning at the trowel and shaking his head, as if disappointed at how it had let him down.

  Sarah took it from him and began to examine it whilst she thought about what to say next. She hadn’t meant anything by her remark about the time, but on the other hand she couldn’t deny that she sometimes felt Billy was a little over-familiar. He had learning difficulties that were largely undefined but that Sarah understood to be the result of lack of oxygen during a traumatic birth. John had employed him to tend the 130-foot garden behind the house as a Saturday boy, and then full-time once he had left school, and Inês had kept him on ever since even though the garden was not really big enough to justify it, saying that she couldn’t think who else would ever give him work, that anyway she liked having someone else about the place and that she felt a moral duty towards him. Sarah assumed these were the same reasons why Inês gave him so much leeway.

  And she had to admit that he was unfailingly kind to Honor and Ruby, who didn’t seem to notice what he lacked intellectually. Neither did the plants in the garden for he had a green-fingered ability to grow anything and everything. He was always busy, if not actually tending the plants, then working in the garage at the bottom of the garden, a big pot of strong tea by his side. He spent hours potting up trays of seedlings and cuttings and making brightly painted wooden spinning tops, all of which he donated to local fundraising events and charity shops. He could coax almost any plant to bloom, from roses to orchids, and construct almost anything out of wood, from picture frames to simple pieces of furniture.

  “Show me what the problem is, Billy,” Sarah asked him now, gesturing towards the trowel, although she could already see that the handle had started to detach from the front part and was about to sever completely. Billy pointed to the fractured joint and shook his head again. “Broken. Need new one.”

  “I see what you mean. You definitely do need a new one. I’ll order one for you on express delivery and you should have it in a day. How does that sound?”

  “Thank you,” he replied, the anxious wrinkles around his eyes and furrows in his brow smoothing out and disappearing. And then, abruptly, “Bye.”

  “Bye, Billy,” replied Inês. “Take care, my dear.”

  Sarah tried to give the muddy trowel back to him, but he waved his hand at it disparagingly, saying “No, broken” twice over. Then his familiar shuffling gait signified his departure from the room and Sarah and Inês were alone with the quietly playing girls once more.

  “Poor Billy,” said Inês, in a flat tone of voice that was as unfamiliar to Sarah as her cross one of earlier. “Sometimes he gets very flustered about things for what seems to be no reason – but still – it’s nice for me to have him around. You and he are all I have now. And my dear – you dealt with him very nicely. Thank you for your patience.” It was as though Inês was trying to make up for snapping at Sarah earlier.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, I think it was luck rather than judgement. You’re very good to him, Inês, employing him for all these years; most people aren’t nearly so tolerant and understanding.”

  As she spoke, Ruby appeared beside her and started to pull at her leg, complaining that she was bored. Attempting to distract her, Sarah crouched down and pushed a bright red toy car with one wheel missing towards the middle of the room. It skidded lopsidedly along until it collided with a discarded doll. As Ruby ran after it, Sarah turned back to Inês.

  “But I am a bit worried that he’s going to give you a heart attack one day, barging in out of the blue like that. Would you like me to speak to him about it?”

  “No!” Inês’s voice was brittle, and she had pulled herself upright in her chair. “That is not necessary at all.”

  Inês’s immaculate English once more, precise and deliberate, the language of the Queen, Brief Encounter and the BBC. When she had had enough of a subject, it was clear in every perfectly enunciated syllable.

  “There are things about Billy that you don’t understand yet.”

  Sarah was engulfed by guilt and embarrassment; she’d been talking about Billy as if he were a child, or even worse, sounding as if she herself were, and was childishly jealous of the attention that Inês gave to him. She noticed that Inês’s face seemed to have sunk during the discussion, her creased eyelids drooping lower over irises that had imperceptibly dulled; her bent and twisted hands so tiny against the elaborate fringes of the shawl that lay across her shoulders. Sarah bustled around, overly-busily, making tea and tidying photo frames on side tables that were already perfectly in place, trying to dissipate the tension through unnecessary activity.

  “Sit down, Sarah,” said Inês, softly.

  Sarah sat, an antimaccassar that she had taken off to put right still in her hand.

  “You have something on your mind, don’t you?”

  Sarah felt her stomach muscles tighten and her throat constrict.

  “I know that you’re keeping something from me.” Inês had a knack of getting straight to the point and could make searching questions sound as if she were merely asking the time. “Would you like to tell?”

  She sat silently, hands folded in her lap, head slightly to one side, watching Sarah with an expectant air.

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders as if admitting defeat and laughed over-brightly. She had wished for Inês’s counsel so recently, but now the opportunity to talk had come, she felt tongue-tied and embarrassed.

  “It’s nothing really. But you asked me if I would see anyone I knew in Lisbon and I said no. But I did. I saw Scott.” She took a deep breath. “It was quite by chance. He was staying in the same hotel, attending a conference, you know, a work jolly – there were lots of his colleagues there. He just appeared by the side of the swimming pool on my first evening.”

  She shook her head as if it were all of no consequence whatsoever, and took a gulp of her tea, no longer scalding but lukewarm. “Amazing, huh?”

  It was a long while before Inês spoke, and when she did, her voice was quiet and low, but steady. “And what is the conclusion of this story, Sarah?”

  Sarah scrunched the antimaccasar in her hands. “I realised that I love him from the bottom of my heart and always will.”

  “And what will you do with that knowledge?”

  “Nothing.”

  Sarah told the lie, and Inês heard it as she always listened to anything, with empathy, without judgement.

  “Do you really think that’s true, Sarah?”

  Can you stop loving someone just because you must?

  “It has to be true, doesn’t it?”

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was the murmur of Honor and Ruby’s chatter in the far corner of the room.

  “Being there – meeting Scott so unexpectedly – it was so strange, you know. I had avoided it for so long, that’s why we never went to Portugal on holiday, even though I adore it so, not just because of the cost but because I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him.” Sarah spread the piece of lacy cloth over her knees, staring at it without really seeing it.

  “But now I have seen him again – I suppose it has brought home to me that I’m getting older, we all are. Those days of being young with your whole life ahead of you are well and truly over. Sometimes it’s hard to face up to that, even though you know it’s true. You think you can change your future. Then suddenly you realise that your future is now the past, and what you thought was a rehearsal is the real thing, the only performance – and before you’ve really noticed it, you’re halfway through already.”

  Inês nodded but said nothing.

  “Those years are gone and I can never have them back.”

  Inês’s gaze seemed very far away, and when she spoke, her voice was faint as a whisper. “Some lives are very short. Far too short. And some, like mine, are very long.” She smoothed the blanket over her knees, although it wasn’t wrinkled. “But whether short or long, it’s true that you do n
ot get a second chance.”

  Her heavy-lidded eyes rose to meet Sarah’s. “We all only have the one life, Sarah. What’s done is done but the future is yours to shape.”

  Sarah cooked Inês an omelette and made some pasta with tomato sauce for the girls, Inês’s words running endlessly through her mind.

  “I’ll just go and switch on the bedside light in your bedroom and turn down the bed for you before we go,” she said, when the meal was over.

  Walking into Inês’s room, she felt cold and strangely apprehensive. It was immaculate, as usual. As Sarah pulled down the bed covers she created a breeze that sent some papers on the bedside table fluttering to the floor. She bent to pick them up. There was a card from a Portuguese friend, written in that European style of handwriting that Sarah found so hard to read, and a used envelope with a list on the back. A piece of thick, rich, vellum writing paper was folded into a tight square. Without thinking about what she was doing, that it was something private, Sarah undid the tucks in the paper. Inside was a tiny photo, faded and worn, lined with cracks and creases. Sarah had to hold it close to her eyes to see it properly. It seemed to show a mother holding a newborn baby, and despite the photo’s age and size, Sarah could see the light of pride and happiness in her eyes. But she couldn’t make out who the woman was, and guessed that it must be Maria, Inês’s younger sister. Maria had moved to New Zealand in the 1960s and died quite recently; she had one daughter, Gabriella, who as far as Sarah knew had Alzheimer’s and lived in a home. Sarah had never met either of them.

  She took the photo into the drawing room.

  “I’ve never seen this picture before,” she said, showing it to Inês. “Who is it? Is it Maria?”

  Inês’s body seemed to stiffen in her chair. “Where did you find that?”

  Sarah was shocked at how upset she seemed, hating to think she had caused it. “I’m so sorry, it was by your bed, it fell onto the floor and I picked it up…” She tailed off, feeling dreadful but wondering what she had done to so perturb Inês. “It’s a beautiful photo, anyway,” she continued, trying to make amends. “A nice memory.”

  “Memories can twist and turn and are not always what they seem.”

  Inês’s tone was riven as if with some half-remembered pain and her eyes were focused far in the distance, in some space and time long ago.

  “We will not talk about it any more now. The time for that will come.”

  Sarah stared at her uncomprehendingly, the photo feeling huge and accusatory in her hand. Hurriedly, she took it to the bedroom to put it back. She should not have been looking at Inês’s private things; she had been given permission only to read the journal. As she began to rewrap it, she noticed that the paper had writing on it.

  I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you and I always will.

  Sarah sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, hit by the power and force of such simple words. There was too much, much too much, hidden beneath the surface, closeted in some distant past. Right now, she didn’t understand any of it, but it was clear that Inês was not ready to talk.

  Leaving Inês dozing in her chair, Sarah and the girls left by the back door. There was a gate at the end of the garden that led onto the mews behind and they often let themselves out that way. A crooked path of stepping stones led the way across the lawn. The girls laughed out loud as they jumped from one to the other, pretending the gaps between were a deep ocean inhabited by sharks and terrifying imaginary sea monsters. Billy was standing motionless in the flowerbed amongst the shrubs and roses; as soon as he saw the three of them, he raised his finger to his lips.

  “Shhhhh,” he hissed, pointing upwards to the branches of the ornamental cherry tree that stood next to them. Sarah crept over to him and looked up. After a few moments of searching, her eyes fell upon a wooden nesting box tucked between the branches, and almost immediately, she saw a tiny wren appear in the circular entrance. As she watched, Billy bent down to a bag by his feet and quietly pulled out a microphone. He held it up and waited for the bird to sing.

  For this was Billy’s real passion, even more than gardening or woodwork. He was addicted to sound; to the song of the blackbird and the robin, to the whistle of the March wind through the bare branches of the ash tree, or the scuffle of leaves blowing along the pavements in autumn. As with garden know-how, when it came to technology, his intellectual deficiencies seemed to recede into the distance and he would put his homemade soundtracks onto his iPod and computer and listen to them whilst he was weeding or whiling away the time on one of his many hobbies.

  But as they stood by the cherry tree watching the wren, waiting for it to start its lilting song, the girls were suddenly upon them, shrieking and giggling, shattering the peace and frightening the bird into startled flight.

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” said Sarah, making frantic shushing gestures to the children. “We’re going now…maybe she’ll come back when it’s a bit quieter!” Her eyes flicked towards the nesting box and she smiled apologetically. Inês loved all the songbirds Billy encouraged to her garden; Sarah didn’t want her or the children to drive them away.

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m going, try again tomorrow.”

  “All right then. Bye.” replied Sarah, leading the girls towards the door in the wall. “See you soon.”

  “Bye, girls.”

  Honor and Ruby dawdled and dragged their heels on the walk home. Sarah cajoled them along, keen that they wouldn’t be too late to bed. A young couple passed them on the pavement, arms around each other, the girl all sleek hair and perfect skin, the boy sporting low-slung jeans and two-day stubble. They were enthralled with each other, oblivious to anyone else, so that Sarah had to side-step to avoid crashing into them.

  She stared after them as they stopped for a passionate kiss and then resumed their conjoined, ambling walk. They have no idea, thought Sarah, no idea at all that the future could be anything but rosy.

  She took the children by the hand and hurried home.

  True to her promise to herself, Sarah threw herself into family life with more energy and dedication than she could ever remember having before. She cooked delicious meals and organised kitchen suppers with friends. She was relentlessly positive and encouraging about every mishap at Hugo’s work, every difficult client who made impossible demands, every frustration with his business partners. She refused to let the children’s bickering and arguing get her down, or to be downbeat about the everyday mundanity of so much that she had to do. She did not allow herself to use the exhaustion of motherhood to put off having sex.

  Scott sent an email. How are things? I think of you often. Hope all well.

  She read it – the few short words – over and over again. Hesitantly, she slid the mouse across the cork mat depicting a solitary cork tree standing on a hilltop that she had bought at the airport in Porto on the way home. It reminded her of Inês’s family montado in the shimmering Alentejo.

  She closed the email and clicked open the Google Earth icon. She looked at the rectangular ‘Fly To’ box flickering on the screen before her. She wanted to see Scott’s house, his neighbourhood, maybe spot his car in the drive, know what plants in pots stood on his front step. She wanted to imagine walking out of the door with him, arm in arm or perhaps hand in hand, the way he always used to walk with her and had again so recently, down to the shops, the restaurants, the cinema.

  Did he walk that way with his wife? Did he hold Celina’s hand, stroke Celina’s hair, the way he did her own? After so many years together, did they still kiss the way she and Scott had done? I wonder if he still fancies her, if they are still intimate, she thought, as she gazed at the screen with unseeing eyes. Whether they still have sex.

  I could ask all of these questions and more. But what good would knowing do me?

  The location box was there before her, cursor flashing, waiting for the postcode. But she didn’t know his address, didn’t know even that most basic thing about him. The box’s emptiness mocked t
he fact that she had nothing to type into it.

  Sarah closed the email without replying and dragged it into the trash.

  Perhaps absence had made the heart grow fonder because Hugo seemed to be trying, too. He bought her chocolates and even cooked a meal one night, albeit the infamous spaghetti Bolognese. But still, they seemed only to be able to operate in parallel, doing what needed to be done with children, work and finances, locomotives steaming along the rails of their own track, never deviating, never coming together. Nothing seemed to change that.

  “I’ve got some tickets for a show,” Hugo announced one Saturday lunchtime.

  Sarah nodded distractedly whilst ladling leek and potato soup into bowls and trying to persuade Honor to put her Barbies away during the meal.

  “Tommo had some spare tickets for Ronnie Scott’s tonight that he needed to get rid of, so I took him up on the offer. Free jazz, I think he said, which I rather like. A bit pricey, but I guess that’s Soho these days. I know you like a night out.”

  The next ladle of soup splashed over the side of the bowl and onto the table where it lay in a viscous green pool.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “That’s great, Hugo.” Sarah wiped up the spillage before continuing. “And you’re right, I do like a night out – when finances allow. The only thing is – as you know – I’m really not keen on free jazz. And who’s going to babysit?”

  Hugo sank down heavily into the chair next to Ruby. She reached out for her cup of milk and promptly sent her bowl flying. It landed upside down on the floor, splatters of green shooting off in all directions.

  “Christ, Ruby, you need to be more careful!” he shouted at her. Ruby burst into tears.

  “That’s not fair, daddy. You’re mean,” Honor pitched in, with good intent but bad effect.

  “Don’t you get involved, too,” Hugo snapped at her.

  Sarah put her head in her hands.