At the north side of the church she was there. He had been picking flowers, as was his wont, and now he scattered them at her graveside. It was overgrown with summer’s long grasses and John pushed them back, and the ivy too, creeping towards the grave from the hedgerows behind.
Eliza Helena Horner
Born 1893 – Died 1901
She flew away too soon
And her brother
John Dysart Horner
1895 – 1917
Missing in action whilst fighting for his country
God bless our house · We loved them so
John stood very still, blinking, inhaling the scent of freshly mown grass. It is something to see your own gravestone with the supposed dates of your life carved upon it. He kneeled down, and kissed the soft, mossy earth, beneath which lay Eliza’s remains. He could see her, dancing away from him in the garden, the image stronger than ever. She was not really there, he told himself. She is in here, with me.
Then he crossed through the churchyard down the lane behind the house, weaving slightly now, dizzy with fatigue and hunger, through the dark dead leaves left over from winter which crackled underfoot. At the bottom of the path John stopped and, looking up at the rose-red roof in the afternoon sun, rubbed his eyes. He was home.
John walked carefully past the front door and the stone chair for weary travellers, and paused. He realised he could not pull the bell and implicate anyone who didn’t need to know he’d been there. Zipporah, or Darling the gardener, Nora the new housemaid – not so new, it had been four years since she’d come. She had had red-raw elbows, and fingers, and hair always escaping from its cap, and she was terrified of everything. She would be terrified . . . John rubbed his eyes, unsure what to do. Then he heard the old familiar sound, a palette knife on painted canvas.
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
John straightened up, and proceeded slowly towards the Dovecote. The old familiar smell of the fig almost knocked him sideways – sweet, musty, dark. He peered in. The fig had covered the glass roof – did his father not notice how much darker it was now, inside? There was his father, bent over the old easel, priming a canvas himself. He was shorter than before; John caught the side of his face. He’s old.
On another easel, to the side of the studio, stood another painting, facing away from him. John coughed, and said, slowly:
‘Father?’
His voice was rusty from misuse and the word croaked out, rasping. Ned swung round, on one foot, paintbrush in one hand, palette in the other and saw his son.
The paintbrush fell from his hand but he said nothing at all.
John noticed, with some alarm, how pale he was, how thin. ‘Father . . .’ he said, again. ‘I – I thought I’d come back and pay you a visit.’
Ned really was like a little gnome. Rumpelstiltskin. He stamped one foot, and cleared his throat.
‘You,’ he said, slowly, and he ran to the door, past his son, peering out, then he shut the door, pulling it hard, and turned to face him. ‘So I was right. I knew you’d deserted. I knew you weren’t dead.’ A terrible smile twisted across his father’s face.
‘You did?’
‘I know you, my boy. I never said a word of it to your mother, but I know what you’re like. Who you are. You can’t stay here,’ he said suddenly. ‘You understand, don’t you?’
John nodded. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘So why’d you come?’ He passed a hand over his forehead: he was blinking, as though he wasn’t sure where he was, what to do. ‘Oh John, my boy. Why’d you come?’
John’s legs shook – he was a child again, caught in the glare of his father’s attention, his disappointment in his only son almost palpable, for it was also displaced rage at the loss of Eliza, who had been so very, very like him.
‘Father, I wanted to see you and Mama again, one last time.’ He took a step forward and put his hand on the paint table, to steady himself. ‘I’m – I’m very thirsty, Father. I’ve been walking for a while, do you have any water?’
‘Here.’ Ned thrust a glass bottle at him and John drank his fill, all the while aware of his father’s eyes on him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, wiping his mouth and setting the bottle down again.
‘You can’t stay,’ said Ned. Again, that impassive, unsettling stare. ‘We’ve Lord and Lady Coote coming for supper this evening.’
‘Alfred’s people—’
‘Yes. They have no one now. The girls cannot inherit. But they mourn him with pride. They know he died holding his line. We’ll win the war because of men like him. He was a hero.’
‘He – he was.’
His father was staring at him. ‘John. They’ll shoot you if they find you. You understand, don’t you? You must go now.’
John could hear the desperation in his own voice. ‘I know. I only want to see Mama, one more time. I simply want to kiss her and tell her how very sorry I am but that I am well and won’t disturb her again. I won’t ever come back.’ John had rehearsed the speech, but now, shoehorning it in like this, it sounded all wrong. This was all wrong. ‘Father – I’m back, though. Are you not glad to see me?’
His father pressed his hands to his face, blocking him out. A small, muffled sound came from him; he didn’t move. He looked up, his mouth set, his kind blue eyes hard.
‘You must understand. Your mother believes you are dead, John. She thought you died in December. She has buried your letters to her from the Front. We added your name to the gravestone, last month.’ Ned coughed. ‘What was I to do? I was there as we said prayers over the grave. “What vengeance shall the Lord wreak on me for my lies when the Day of Judgement calls, John?” His voice rose. ‘I-I knew you were a coward, a prancing, gambolling, mincing defective coward—’ His voice broke and he looked down. ‘I don’t feel well,’ he muttered. ‘Not well, not well.’
John looked at him, with an appraising stare. ‘You are pale, Father. Have you taken a chill?’
‘This flu,’ Ned muttered. ‘I think I’m sickening for something, and the devil of it is there’s this influenza, they say there’s three dead of it in Walbrook hospital. The Germans, you see. They’ve organised it to finish us off. And I must work, I must keep on working.’
‘Father . . .’ John leaned against the shelf, wiping his forehead, drinking more water. This man was not his father. ‘I think you should rest, not work. Can’t I—’
‘No!’ He tapped the corner of the golden frame beside him. ‘She’s still worried about money. Worry, worry, worry. Why, what’s it all for, now, anyway?’ Like a sly child with a secret he tapped a frame, then turned it around on its stand. John gaped at what he saw. ‘Look. I’ve bought it back, y’see. Bought you children back to keep you close by.’
Then John understood, the frantic air about him, the almost palpable desperation. ‘You bought back The Garden of Lost and Found?’
‘I wanted you close by! I said so! Damn you, don’t you hear me?’
John swallowed, to prevent his throat closing up. He must keep him talking. ‘That must have near about wiped you out, Father.’
‘No. No!’ He stamped his foot. ‘It had to be here again. So we remember.’ His stare was glassy again. ‘I must work. I must paint. More paintings.’ He gestured to the gleaming white, blank canvas. ‘Now go, get out of here, John, leave me be. If you’re a ghost, you’re a damned good one.’
‘Father—’ John could feel the fear building inside him again. ‘Please, let me see her. Just once more. You must.’
He stared at him blankly. ‘See who?’
‘Mama.’ John’s mouth was dry. ‘For five minutes or so, that’s all I ask.’
‘I’ll not. You cannot. Don’t you understand? She has believed you dead for eight months. It has nearly killed her. She has lived in hell, John. She has just started now, only now, to remake her world. She was so proud of you! When we had so many worries about you she was able to tell the world you died a hero. You can’t creep back on your belly for o
ne afternoon and tell her you’re a damned deserter, so you can hang about her neck and snivel for an hour then creep off again. Can’t you see that?’ His finger was jabbing John. ‘It’d kill her.’ He glanced around. ‘Here. Here! Take this.’
He plucked a folded piece of paper from his pocket book and gave it to John, who took it. Their shaking fingers touched. Ned sprang away. ‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?’
‘No, Father, of course not.’
‘Here’s this too—’ he was wrenching his pocket watch from his waistcoat. ‘Take it, it’s gold, it’ll sell well. Five pounds and a pocket watch, that’s your father’s lot. I loved you, my son, but it’s all over, you might as well understand now. You do, don’t you?’
His white face, his terrible, hooded expression: John wheeled round, glancing outside, just in case she was coming towards him, or peering out of a window. But outside it was glorious sunshine, the garden undisturbed.
‘Where is she?’ he said, trying not to weep.
‘I – well, I don’t know where she is. She’s not here.’
John did not believe him. She was in the house, he was certain, yards away from him now. It was unbearable, and yet what could he do? Would he disobey his father, run inside? Risk it all, risk them all? She was able to tell the world you died a hero. You can’t tell her you were a deserter. You were her world, my boy. It will kill her.
He took the money, and the watch, placing them carefully in the pocket inside his jacket.
‘Where’d you get the papers to come back home?’ his father said, quickly.
‘I stole them from a dead man,’ said John, not caring any more. ‘I found him as I was running away – his head had been blown off – I couldn’t see whether it was from a gun or a shell. I swapped his papers with mine.’ He picked up a crust of bread from the table nearby, and bit into it. It was fresh, springy, delicious. ‘I’m Frank Thorboys. Don’t worry, Father. There’s nothing that could possibly link you to me.’
He had to go, he knew that. He couldn’t stay any longer. If he was to be somewhere by nightfall he ought to push on. He took the rest of the hunk of bread and the slices of ham and cheese and tipped them into his pocket too.
‘I won’t ever come back. Don’t worry. She’ll never know.’
He turned in the doorway.
‘It was all for nothing, wasn’t it? All your striving.’
And he walked up the driveway, skirting along the edge of the yew trees, in the shadows. He felt that was what he was now, a shadow. At the lane he stopped, leaning to one side, his near-empty stomach churning with acid as it attacked the bread. And should he now go left, back towards the town, the church? Or right, out up on the wold. He could walk to Bristol, and thence find passage to France. Left? Or right?
The morning after the final assault at Cambrai John had found his friend David Cooper, drowned in mud, his horse too. He had wiped the mud from David’s face, and had crouched down, unable to cry, but with his eyes closed, and opened them again fifteen seconds or so later to find a rat gnawing on David’s eye socket. Tanks were rumbling away from the conflict in the distance . . . the earth seemed to shake, to its very core.
John had walked away, tripping on boots sucked into the bubbling grey mud, stumbling on dead trees and dead men. He had hidden in the barn he had staked out in on manoeuvres the previous week. He had stayed there without moving, wetting and soiling himself, until nightfall. He did not move; in fact, he found he could not move.
When he walked away, when he escaped, he had no plan, no strategy. He simply walked away from it all, back towards home.
The following day, he found Frank Thorboys’s body, and took his papers and helmet, and gave him a burial in the sea of mud that seemed now to cover most of Northern France. He was operating with a plan now. He did not realise that every step he took away also meant forfeiting the right to go home. It was not a desperate flight, either, it was the slow creep of a broken thing. I am not made for fighting, he’d told the drill officer at training camp in Worcester, very early on. Too late, sonny. We’ll make a fighter out of you yet.
The shells. The sound of it, cracking open your head. The smell and sight of mustard gas, what it did to your skin, your stomach, your eyes: blocking up your nose and throat with blisters, so some men suffocated with it. He’d seen them dying, just as Eliza had died. Over and over again. He’d watched men fighting for breath like he’d watched his sister through the crack in the door, watched the green cloud moving slowly towards them on the ground, only they were below the ground, trapped in maze-like trenches from which there was no escape, mud like liquid glue sticking them to the spot.
The screams, day and night. The cries of dying horses, they took so long to go and there was no ammunition to waste on finishing them off. The stench of decaying corpses, of death, that hung around you all the time. But to John the worst was the rats, grown vast with feasting on dead men and horses. They were the size of rabbits. They would wait, wait, wait till you were in the deepest stage of sleep and nibble on your ears. John’s sergeant had had his ear lobe bitten clean off. When it was quiet at night, the nibbling, scratching, scurrying sounds they made that bore into your head so all you could hear was rustling, driving deeper into your skull so sometimes you found you were praying for a loud noise, a gun, a yell, just to mask the sound of them feeding, growing, breeding . . . When he dreamed, it was not of war, it was of rats, rats taking over the world, eating everyone up, nibbling at a child’s fat fingers, a woman’s soft arm, his face while he slept . . .
John blinked, becoming aware of his surroundings once more. He was back in a quiet, verdant English lane, staring into a hedgerow, tangled with pink dog roses. Behind him was home.
Left? Or right? He had to take the first step on the road away from Nightingale House – then another, then another – he went right, striding down the lane, ignoring the gnawing feeling of nausea in his stomach, the knot in his throat that would not let him cry.
‘John!’ came a faint, high voice.
He turned back, hope blossoming, that it was she whom he most wanted to see. But it was his father, barrelling down the road towards him, waving something. He limped; he was worn out, John realised.
Ned drew to a halt and dug his hands, bloodied red with carmine and streaked with vivid emerald green, into his smock pockets. He withdrew them, then pressed a wooden cylinder into his son’s hand. Sweat drenched his face, his clothes.
‘Have it,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘It’s worthless now. Have it. Goodbye, sweet John. Goodbye to you.’
John slid the rolled-up painting out of its wooden cylinder. He blinked, stared. ‘What’s this?’
His father said hoarsely: ‘I’ve cut it out. There you are. And your sister. All gone. Have it, take it with you. Take with you the memory of the love we had for you. Remember us, remember what we were. I did love you, my son. I do love you. Take it with you.’ Tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘It’s all gone.’
John looked down at the painting, neatly sliced from its frame. The newly raw edges had had no time to fray. He shook his head in horror. ‘No, Father. I don’t want it.’
‘Take it. Damn you. I can’t have you back in the house, I can’t – you know that. You mustn’t come back. But we loved you. Look at this sometimes and remember that.’ Tears ran down his face, streaking the paint marks. ‘I’m on the way out, my boy. These new boys painting something blue made of squares . . . My God, these chains.’ He tugged at his shirt. ‘It’ll be worthless in a few years, except as a keepsake of the love we all bore each other. So take it.’ Ned stared at the painting. ‘“The past is burnt and gone.” I shall burn the frame, and my new canvas so there’s nothing left, you see. You used to love bonfires, when you were a lad. You’d help me – do you remember?’
‘N-no. Father—’
‘Yes. You’d come with me down there, down past the vegetables, collecting up your sticks, and you’d help me strike the flint. You were ever so good at it.
I loved autumn because of it, collecting the leaves together, piling them on the fire. You were my boy, Johnny – I’m sorry. Farewell, my boy. Farewell—’
He rubbed his eyes like a small child, blinking furiously. Then he turned back, hurrying home: John could just make out the bird finials atop the house, golden in the falling sun. Once, his father stopped, looked down at the dirt track beneath him, and then he turned into the driveway and was gone.
John rolled the painting up again, fastening it tightly, and he went on his way. He did not look at it, not for many days. That night he lay down in a hedgerow, and feasted on the ham and bread from his father’s studio. In the morning, he carried on walking, and but for a few hours’ snatched sleep each night he didn’t stop until, several days later, he reached Bristol.
After many years in Brittany, in his small stone house behind a cobbled courtyard on the edge of the green hill that sloped down to the black rocks and the churning sea, John Horner felt safe enough to allow himself a little luxury, only when he was alone, or perhaps after a digestif or two. He would sometimes go to the bookshelf in his bedroom, hidden behind a curtain. Pulling back the fine embroidered French linen, he would remove a particular pile of books, stacked sideways, sticking out a couple of inches more than the other books on the same shelf. Behind them was a cylinder, and inside was the painting.
He would unfurl it slowly, his eyes darting over the English country scene – the briar roses, the wild informality of the garden, the golden stone that was particular to that part of the world only. He would stare at himself, in his teal-blue knickerbockers and white ruffled shirt. Bare feet, head crooked on one side. He could still remember the feel of the parched July grass under his toes, scratchy, dry. He could still hear Eliza’s voice. ‘I’m so tired, Papa! Can’t we play now?’ The wings, which Mama had made by stretching material over wire. He could hear her, telling him all about it, now.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 43