Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  The day after one of these dreams is always terrible. I am always cold, whatever the weather, and shattered from the lack of sleep. I wrap up warm, walk onto Parliament Hill, stride to where the kite flyers gather, watch the kites dip and soar, and then walk and walk. I go up to Kenwood House, or over to South End Green, and over the months and years I have got to know the Heath inside out. I’m often able to set other walkers on the right path, even while I wander unguided myself. Sometimes I go home through the streets instead of the park, prolonging my journey so that I am out all day.

  The bombing here was not nearly as bad as elsewhere, nothing like in the East End or in Docklands, but still decay is evident everywhere, in the gap-toothed terraces of houses and the piles of rubble that have not yet been cleared away. Paintwork blisters and peels on doors and window frames, splintered panes of glass go unrepaired. Weeds push through the gaps between paving slabs and run rampant in the rubbish-filled gardens.

  If I feel up to it, I buy a newspaper from the street vendor but more often than not, I’m not in the mood for reality, and I go home and read instead. I read obsessively; everything I can lay my hands on. My tastes are wide and eclectic; Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead are current favourites.

  I am aware that sometimes, in my solitude, I talk to myself in Portuguese. Every now and again, I am so lost to the world that I don’t notice that there are other people nearby. They stop, listen, concentrate on what they are hearing and only when they are sure that the language isn’t German, they nudge each other, nod and move on. I take no notice.

  Everything, or so it seems, is still rationed, and we no longer have a maid, cook or housekeeper, so I have to plan, shop for and cook all the meals myself. It’s selfish and pathetic of me, I know, but I find it extraordinarily hard. I have never been very domestic – and there is so little available and what there is, so different to what I have always been used to. But I do my best, try new dishes, smile when John gets home from work, and somehow I get through the days.

  “It will improve with time,” I tell myself, often. But my hair remains short, thin and sparse.

  London, 1949

  I found myself walking in a different direction from normal today, not north to the Heath but south towards Bloomsbury, ending up outside the small park and playground called Coram’s Fields. A plaque set into the boundary wall informs visitors that it is the site of a Foundling Hospital, the first in England, established in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram. In the 1920s, the old Hospital was demolished, and later the site re-opened as London’s first public playground.

  The birds were singing gaily in the trees and the sun, after a long winter, held some warmth again. I rested my forehead against the railings and looked into the park. I listened to the laughter of the children playing there, and thought of all the babies abandoned in this place over the years, orphans or those given up by mothers who simply did not have the means to keep them. Many of the infants were left with letters and scraps of ribbon or fabric; identifiers by which their desperate mothers hoped, if their fortunes were to change and their circumstances improve, they might one day be able to find them again. Of course, hardly any were ever reunited – but those mothers had tried and done what they could.

  I felt suddenly so tired, and cold to my very bones, despite the watery glow of the sun. I pictured Portugal, of how at this time of year the cork trees on the montado would be growing and strengthening their bark in preparation for the nine-yearly cycle of harvesting, ready and able to give of their essence time and again. I longed for the heat, the blistering summers when the birds in the trees would cease to sing and the grass would wither and die under the relentless onslaught of sunshine, when railings like these would burn to the touch and the few tarmac roads would melt and turn sticky underfoot.

  I longed, too, for an end to my sorrow, with its bitter taste and nauseating smell.

  It’s enough, Inês, I told myself. You have grieved for a long time and however much you cry, whatever pain you feel, Isabel will never come back. It’s time to accept that.

  I went home and told John that I was going to get a job. In fact, I’d already seen one to apply for. It was advertised in the local newspaper and is for a tiny organisation, the only one of its kind in the country, that works with young and unmarried mothers, helping them to keep and bring up their babies rather than have them adopted. No mother should have to give away her baby just because she made the error of conceiving it out of wedlock. Losing a baby scars a life forever and I think it might be even worse if the loss is not caused by death, but by being forced apart. Then you must go through your whole life knowing that your baby lives but not with you, is being raised not by your nurture and love and cuddles, but by somebody else’s. I don’t know for a fact that this is worse, it’s just what I believe.

  I filled in the form and put it in an envelope to take to the post in the morning.

  My application for the charity job was successful and I work from 9 to 12 noon every day, quite often longer, even though I don’t get paid for extra time. But I do the job for the love of it, not for the money; John is earning plenty and I’m happy to give my time to those who need it. By some strange coincidence, my hair has started to grow back, glossy and raven-black as before.

  London, 1950

  Such a long time has passed since I opened this book that I had almost forgotten about it. But today I read the news and was compelled to retrieve it from its shelf and add to it. It sounds like nothing, doesn’t it, reading the news? Just a normal thing to do, to sit at the table and peruse the paper over a cup of coffee. But as I scanned the newsprint my eye was caught by a name, a name so familiar from another place and time, so dearly loved, so long lost but not forgotten. Bond. E-D-M-U-N-D B-O-N-D. The letters jumped and danced and flew off the page towards me before settling back down into a well-ordered row where they kept up their pretence of being unobtrusive, unassuming.

  In the short, matter of fact news-in-brief column were the details of an inquest held by the Brisbane coroner’s court, Queensland. A British man had been involved in a shooting accident whilst clearing a creek of saltwater crocodiles and pronounced dead at the scene. The verdict was accidental death; his family in England had been informed.

  The man’s name was Edmund Bond.

  Nausea rose in my throat and I only just got to the bathroom in time before I began to vomit uncontrollably. Shivering and shaking, it was a long while before I was able to go back to the table on which lay the newspaper. I read it again and again. There was no denying it, the words said the same thing every time.

  I became bizarrely preoccupied with the idea of Edmund shooting; it was one of the many things that had set him so apart from his compatriot, my husband John. He had no love of killing for sport, would never have gone hunting or shooting as John loves to do. But presumably things were different there, in Australia, where vicious wildlife is ubiquitous and often deadly. Guns must be a necessary evil.

  And then I had to confront what I was doing. Refusing to engage with the only important fact: that all those thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world, Edmund was dead and any dreams I may have harboured, any thoughts of contacting him now that war was over and the world, more or less, back to normal were, of necessity, dead too.

  I thought about crying but there have been so many tears over so many years that I did not have any left. Instead, I put on my coat and boots and walked. There is something about the light on Hampstead Heath, the view from Kite Hill that stretches across all London and in which the glistening dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is prominent, that always calms the soul. Edmund’s spirit is out there somewhere, and Isabel’s – and one day mine will be, too.

  London, 2010

  As Sarah struggled to take in the fact of Edmund’s tragic and untimely death, Inês’s eyes that had fallen closed as Sarah read wavered slowly open. She looked around as if establishing where she was and then, o
nce she had recalled, began to speak again.

  “And now I must confess what no one in the world has ever known.” Inês’s voice was dry, rasping in her throat. Sarah handed her water and helped her to drink.

  “The baby. My daughter, Isabel, was not John’s. She was Edmund’s.”

  The glass fell from Sarah’s hand and smashed to the floor where it broke in two, the water pooling outwards like spreading tears.

  “Edmund never knew.” Inês did not flinch at the noise or seem to notice the breakage.

  “Before Isabel, I couldn’t contemplate divorcing John – the hurt it would have caused my family, the disapproval they would have faced on my behalf. When I knew I was pregnant – I thought about Edmund, and whether I should tell him, often. But what good would knowing do him? He was already on the other side of the world, we couldn’t be together. And it wasn’t until Isabel was born and I saw how fair haired she was, how pale her skin, that I knew for certain she was his. By then, John and I had fallen back in love again, brought together by our shared joy about the impending birth. I believed that everything would be all right, that she and John and I would be happy together…”

  A wind blew up outside and the ash tree’s branches rattled the window, as if something outside were desperate to get in.

  Inês didn’t seem to hear it. “Then she died and there would have been no point in him knowing, anyway.” She looked straight into Sarah’s eyes before speaking again. “But later, after the war, after…” Inês tailed away and sat, breathing heavily, her hands cold as ice on Sarah’s. “There was a time I considered seeking for him,” she continued. “Then I read that he had died.”

  Sarah recalled the conversation they had had on Kite Hill, when Inês had spoken of a gun but no fighting. Sarah had worried that dementia was setting in – but now she realised that Inês had been talking of Edmund, not John. Tears were streaming down Sarah’s face, pouring in torrents that she did not even bother to wipe away. But Inês’s eyes were still dry, and bore into her as she said her next words.

  “All of this is the past, Sarah, and cannot be changed. But there is one thing that I would like to resolve before I die. The worst thing about Isabel’s passing was that it was never talked about. The subject was closed and John wouldn’t have it mentioned. I think everyone thought it was for the best, that speaking of it would make me ill again. That is how people thought, in those days.”

  Inês took one of her hands from Sarah’s grasp and raised it to the gold crucifix around her neck, which she clutched tightly before continuing.

  “So I don’t know, I never found out, where she is. I don’t know where she was buried, Sarah. And what I would like to ask you…what I need you to do – is to find her. If you can. Find my baby girl, for Edmund and for me. And for John, who so mourned the infant he believed to be his daughter.”

  A profound quiet descended on the room. The leaves of the ash tree fluttered against the window panes again, but softly this time, encouragingly. Sarah bowed her head to Inês’s hand and kissed it, gently.

  “Of course I’ll find her, Inês. Of course I will.”

  When next Sarah raised her eyes to Inês’s, she saw the tracks of silent tears glistening on the papery skin of her cheeks.

  25

  Walking home with the girls skipping along beside her, Sarah found herself still dazed by her great-aunt’s story. They say time heals, she thought, but some wounds last forever and become a part of you. How could Inês have kept it from everyone for so long? How could she have survived a lifetime without speaking of it? Tragedies of such seismic force would have been enough to destroy many people, but not Inês. How strong she must have been, must still be.

  Ensconcing the girls in front of the television, Sarah went up to her office. Inês had revealed so much that she couldn’t take it all in, needed the distraction of the mundane and ordinary to allow it time to filter through. She opened her laptop. A few documents, articles in half-finished form and editor’s commission sheets, were open on the desktop. She saved and closed them, annoyed with herself for being so lax; she was usually scrupulously careful to make sure that everything was backed up and in the correct folder in case she lost something vital. She pulled up the internet browser window. It was open on the gmail account that she and Scott used. Her forehead creased in puzzlement and annoyance; she was always paranoid about making sure she’d signed out and closed it. Her head must have been in a different place that morning to be so careless.

  She checked her other emails and found a reply to a story idea she’d sent to the commissioning editor Rosalind as a follow-up to the cork article. This one was about the harvest of the grapes for the port wine and she wanted it. Sarah almost cried with relief; the fee would pay for the trip to Portugal to look for Inês’s baby. The recession was dragging on, clients slow to pay and her and Hugo’s financial situation was dire. She would have undertaken the search if she had to go out busking to raise the money but here was a solution and she seized it, replying to Rosalind immediately in case she changed her mind.

  She sorted out a few other work-related matters and replied to a couple of other emails and then fell to idleness, Inês’s revelations rising up again to fill her mind, precluding concentration on anything. Inês had finally shared her story with Sarah but had left it too late – aeons too late – to share with Edmund. Sarah found herself desperately wanting Scott, wanting to share with him the thing that she had never told him, the experience that, although nothing like as horrendous as Inês’s, had wrenched her apart in a way she had taken years to truly realise.

  It had not been until well after halfway through her first term at university that she had realised. Her periods had always been irregular and erratic and she didn’t pay much attention to them, especially at that time of starting a new student life. So the miscarriage, when it began, came out of the blue and it was a while before she understood what was happening. It soon became apparent, though, that cramps and bleeding on this scale were more than just a painful time of the month.

  Once the worst had passed, Sarah didn’t know whether to celebrate the end of a problem that she hadn’t known existed yet, or to mourn the loss of a pregnancy, a baby who would have been part of her and part of Scott. So she did both, going out and getting blind drunk with a group of new friends, laughing and crying at alternate moments, ending up collapsed on the floor of Sukey’s student house, too weak and ill to make it home. She was still bleeding, although much less than before, and the loss of all that blood, or maybe just the sight of it, made her feel lightheaded and dizzy. The next day it was late afternoon before she felt able to drag herself back to her halls, have a hot bath and go to bed.

  She had thought about telling Scott, tossed the idea back and forth in her mind. He should know; it was his baby too. It was his responsibility she’d got into this state in the first place; he should know so that he could suffer the loss with her. Pain and anger and confusion made her feel momentarily vicious. Then the fog of vindictiveness had cleared and she had longed for his comforting arms and reassuring presence.

  Next day she had thought better of telling him. He would think her foolish for caring about something that wasn’t even a proper baby yet, would wonder why she had been so careless as to forget to take her pill. Such feelings vacillated back and forth inside her over the next week, added to the fact that if she contacted him she’d have to explain why she had left and elucidate actions she had taken that she didn’t fully understand herself. And then the letter from Carrie had come, in which she wrote of Celina’s pregnancy, and told her that Celina and Scott were soon to be married. Maybe already were married, for the letter had been sent from Manaus in Brazil, where Carrie was still away travelling, and Sarah had no idea how long it had taken to get to England.

  She remembered exactly where she had been sitting as she read the letter – at the melamine-topped gate-leg table in her student house, a cup of lumpy instant coffee, black because the milk had gone off
, in front of her. The mug she was drinking out of she’d had since childhood; it was cobalt blue and etched into the coloured coating was her name, Sarah, in serif font. All ideas she’d had about contacting Scott had evaporated like the steam on the frozen window panes.

  She had put the letter down on her bedside table, lain on her lumpy student mattress and sobbed, wrapping her arms around herself as if to protect her grazed heart from further hurt. An Arctic wind blew across the Severn, freezing her tears on her pillow, turning her hands and feet as numb as her mind. Choosing university, with its boring lectures and tedious tutorials and no guarantee of a good job or future off the back of it, over Vancouver with Scott had been a huge mistake, a catastrophic error. Her mother hadn’t even acknowledged her sacrifice, let alone thanked her for it.

  But there was nothing to be done. It was too late. Scott had moved on, or back, hooked up with Celina again. He’d made his choice.

  After all these years, though, they had quite by chance met again, had found how deep the feelings they still had for each other were. Scott’s latest email sat unread in her inbox. She opened it now. Along with his news, something funny he’d read in the paper that day, was a plea.

  When can I see you again, Sarah? I’m in Portugal for a month. Can you come? Could you get here? I wish you could.

  And she yearned to see him again with a urgency like an iron band that tightened around her heart and squeezed the breath out of her. Inês and Edmund had lost their chance; she and Scott had not.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, eating supper, she broached the subject of Inês’s revelations.

  “Hugo, Inês told me something today. Something quite momentous.”

  “Really? Don’t tell me she’s getting married again or something. I read a story in the newspaper the other day about two centenarians tying the knot in their nursing home.”