What would Grandi make of it all? The absence of her huge spirit seemed particularly noticeable tonight, even if only to Juliet.
When she’d visited Grandi in hospital, after her stroke, an art therapist had come round the ward one day, with laminated reproductions of paintings, and shown them to the patients who greeted them with a mixture of total indifference or annoyance.
For three days in a row Juliet went to Walbrook hospital and sat with her, sweating because she was still breastfeeding and the heat of the ward and her winter clothes were too much. The nurses didn’t like Grandi, she could tell – she was large, heavy to move around, and she moaned too much, and, besides, her drooping face and mouth were alarming, as though she’d been left out in the sun too long and melted. Her eyes swivelled, she kept the other patients awake – and she didn’t seem to know Juliet, not at all. She ignored her, or stared past her.
On the third day the art therapist, a meek, small woman, younger than Juliet, had approached the bed. ‘Here’s some paintings for you to look at, Stella!’ she’d said in a perky voice. ‘Let’s see, shall we? Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Look at the bright yellow, isn’t it cheery? That’s a David Hockney, of his parents. Look at the detail of his mother’s hands. Very old and gnarled. Here’s a lovely one. This is Edward Horner. The Caged Nightingale. Can you see the mechanical bird in her hand? And the girl is also – Oh. Oh dear.’
For Grandi had started writhing around, emitting wild, lowing groans, grinding against the sheets, her eyes bulging, her collapsed face immobile.
‘She likes this painting,’ said the art therapist, uncertainly. Juliet looked at her grandmother in alarm.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. She grabbed Grandi’s arm, stared into her eyes, the dark-brown eyes that were like hers. ‘Grandi, it’s all right, I’m here.’
But Grandi was still tossing, almost screaming something. Juliet turned back to the art therapist, who was shuffling the laminated pages, awkwardly.
‘It’s called The Nightingale,’ Juliet said.
‘Yes, The Caged Nightingale.’
Grandi moaned, even louder. Other patients were staring at her; a nurse, in the corner, looked over. ‘Awwwhohhh,’ she was screaming. ‘Awwwhooohhhhhhh.’
‘No,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s just The Nightingale. No caging.’
‘Well, it says “The Caged Nightingale” here,’ said the young woman, slightly sharply. She scanned the label on the back. ‘It’s in the . . .’ She peered. ‘. . . Tate Britain. “Purchased from Mrs Constance Whitty, nee Galveston, daughter of the famous art dealer Galveston whose purchase of this painting at the Royal Academy lifted the young artist out of poverty. The figure is his wife, Lydia Horner.” Oh, I remember this painting. My grandmother used to take me to see it.’ She stared at it as though for the first time. ‘She loved the girl’s face. And her hair. Isn’t that funny.’
‘Yes, that bit’s right, but the title’s still wrong,’ said Juliet, and she turned back to her grandmother. One brown eye was fixed on her, filmy with tears. ‘She wasn’t caged. She wasn’t ever caged. You see?’
But she didn’t say any more – what was the point? The woman wasn’t interested, good though her intentions were. Juliet closed her eyes in the heat, smelling hospital scent: antiseptic, urine, cloying sweetness, rancid cleaning products. When she opened them her grandmother was asleep, though the art therapist carried on. ‘This is by Gainsborough, can you see the girls, their lovely dresses and their hair?’
‘Yes,’ said Juliet, staring at the picture, one of her favourites, of his two anxious little daughters, chasing a butterfly. ‘I see them.’
‘Lovely, isn’t it? The patients always like this one. Pretty dresses.’
‘She went mad.’ Juliet pulled at her heavy clothes, sweat dripping down her spine.
‘Sorry?’ The art therapist was shuffling her pictures, and looked up.
‘The one on the right. Mary. She went mad and had to go and live with her sister after her marriage broke down.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’ She didn’t know what to do, and carried on putting the pictures away. ‘Well, you obviously know more than I do.’ She cast a dubious look down at Juliet’s sleeping grandmother, her vast body not part of her any more. The bony, useless hands that staked plants and caught mice and brushed hair now heavy and lifeless at her side. ‘Good luck, then. I’ll be off to see some more patients.’
‘Thank you,’ Juliet called after her. She turned to her grandmother, and found her watching her, one eye half-open again, and jumped with shock.
They stared at each other, but Juliet knew she wasn’t really seeing her. But, just in case, she squeezed one hand tightly, kissed the warm, smooth forehead.
‘Thank you.’
Then Grandi gave a slight small sigh. She closed her eyes, and did not open them again, and after ten minutes or so, Juliet kissed her gently again and left her. She died a week later, and Juliet was not sorry. She knew Grandi would not be, either.
Now, standing looking out over the garden, she lifted out her grandmother’s little exercise book, written just before the stroke. The close, beautifully looped italic hand, the careful underlining of each section, the letters . . . Poor Grandi, she thought. She’d pushed away the people who could have told her. She pushed away poor Dad, who left me to have the relationship with her. And then I was the only one left apart from dear, steady Frederic, and after a while she made sure she pushed me away too. And what difference would it have made, if she’d found the painting? If John had simply given it to her? Money wouldn’t have made her happy. Looking at the original wouldn’t have made her happy . . . those two children, the ones everyone remembered . . . the one she had sent away again . . .
Then Juliet could only remember the good times. How Grandi had made corn dollies each August, and given them names, a whole world they’d created. How they’d slept in the Birdsnest one night every May half-term, to hear the nightingales singing. How her dark eyes gleamed as she read to her from the old children’s books she’d pull at random down from the dusty shelves: The Arabian Nights, and The Railway Children and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel outside – she looked up, still lost in thought.
‘Hello?’ she said to the silhouette in the doorway. ‘Oh, you must be the . . .’ She paused, feeling ‘gardener’ was a bit Downton Abbey. ‘Are you the man who’s coming to look at the garden?’
‘The gardener, you mean?’ a voice said, amused. ‘Juliet?’ The man in the doorway moved forward, out of shadow. A bulky figure, close-shaven, wellingtons caked in mud.
‘Yes?’ she said blankly.
‘Don’t you recognise me?’
She stared at him, shock flooding her veins. ‘Ev?’ She leaned forward. ‘No. Ev?’
He had her hand, and was pressing it in his, and shaking it. ‘Yes! I knew you didn’t recognise me!’
His wild, curly Afro, which as a child he had refused to let his mother cut, was now trimmed down to the skull, so you could see the scar he’d got from jumping off the wall by the stream. His eyes were the same: liquid, alternately black and brown in the light. His skin, darker than hers when they used to hold their forearms next to each other. So many years . . . his hands – she held his hands in hers, laughing as she saw them because the nails were bitten to the quick, still packed with dirt in every line and crevice. And he was huge. He was strapping. He was almost unrecognisable from the small lithe boy who’d slipped out of streams and into trees and up on to roofs with her, all those summers ago.
‘Look at you,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Everett Adair! What happened to you!’
‘Too many cakes and beers,’ he said, patting his stomach.
‘Rubbish! The height! The last time I saw you . . .’
Their last summer together had been a summer of firsts, losing their virginity to each other in the Dovecote, in the garden, up in the Birdsnest . . . He was eighteen, she was seventeen and he had go
ne to Birmingham in September and never come back, and at home in London she had been heartbroken for the whole autumn term, as rain dripped on to wet leaves and summer receded into memory. At Christmas she’d returned to Nightingale House yearning for him, but he wasn’t there and then . . . She rubbed her forehead with one finger. She supposed she’d stopped missing him at some point. It was long ago . . . How long? Twenty, twenty-two –
‘Twenty-two years ago! Is that right? Christ, we’re old.’ She looked down, still holding his hands. ‘Were you this tall then?’
‘I grew another three inches when I was eighteen. Or nineteen. And I found beer,’ he said, and Juliet raised her eyebrows, and they both laughed.
‘You never came back,’ she said, after a while. ‘You went away to university and you said you’d be back.’
‘I didn’t want to stay, Ju. I was the only black person for miles and miles.’
‘Not miles and miles – there was –’
‘My dad, Ju. There was me and my dad. And he loves living here still but . . . I wanted to try being unremarkable for once. You know, when you’re in the city, no one thinks you’re special. They don’t stare, or speak in really nice bright voices to hide their white guilt. I liked that at first. I’d never had it before.’
‘I never thought about it like that. I did afterwards but not . . . not then. I’m sorry.’
‘We were kids. Why would you? Kids don’t notice stuff like that.’
‘But still, I wish I had. I thought everything was the same for us and it wasn’t.’ She nodded. ‘Of course it wasn’t. Come with me.’ She drew him out on to the terrace, towards the evening sun, pouring him a glass of wine.
But Ev declined it, with a smile. ‘I don’t drink wine.’
‘What?’
‘My mother’s most disappointed as you can imagine.’ He was still jangling his car keys. ‘Anyway, I’m back for a week or two and she suggested I come and look at the garden . . . is that OK?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, smiling into his face. ‘It’s just – glorious to see you. Where are you living now, then?’
‘Nottingham at the moment. But I’m in Jamaica a lot, too. I like it there. Different roots, you know what I mean. Till I got this house and garden job I hadn’t been back in the UK for eight years. Before then I was in Hatfield. Just outside London.’
‘I didn’t know that. You should have come into London. Said hi.’
‘I can’t face London any more. It does my head in.’
‘Oh.’ She knew him, the bones of him, inside and out, but she didn’t know anything about what he liked or didn’t like now. But then he scratched his scalp and said:
‘Plus I was afraid . . . you know?’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘We’d meet and have . . . be different . . . nothing to say to each other. You know how it is.’ He leaned against the table, looking at her.
‘I do know. I’ve often wondered . . .’ She smiled up at him, into his dark eyes, his boyish smile. ‘You haven’t really changed.’
‘Oh, I have. You have.’
‘Have I?’
‘Oh yes. You wouldn’t say boo to a goose, you were entirely in your own head. Or mine.’
‘We were, weren’t we?’
Ev folded his arms, his head on one side. ‘I used to wonder about you, Ju. How you’d find real life.’
‘Yep. Well, I’ve had some real life the last few years or so.’ He looked a little blank. ‘You know, three children, a divorce, hospitals, redundancy, moving house, family.’ She shifted her weight, so she was staring at him properly, out of the sun. ‘I’m happy now. Happy-ish. Sandy, that’s the main thing, and the other two.’
‘Who’s Sandy?’
‘Oh. My son. The one who had an accident, a couple of months ago. Fell from a ledge in the Dovecote.’
‘Oh of course. That must have been . . . wow. Quite bad.’
‘It was,’ she said. ‘He’s back home today, that’s why we’re having a party.’
‘Back from where?’
She stared at him, smiling to cover her surprise that he didn’t get it. ‘Hospital. He’s been in hospital for two months.’
‘Oh. Oh OK. Wow, Juliet, I guess Mum told me but I’d forgotten. I’m sorry.’
Something shifted, the mood changing. Juliet felt a lightness, a sense of release. ‘How were you supposed to remember?’
‘I suppose I let it slip my mind. So . . . I can’t wait to see the garden, help you with it. I love being back here, this part of the world. Catching up, doing the sports stuff, seeing Mum and Dad.’
She blinked. Of course he didn’t get it. He didn’t have a kid who’d spent a couple of months in hospital. He didn’t have kids! Why should he get it? And then a voice inside her head said: Yes, but Frederic doesn’t have kids, for God’s sake, and he or George have been round every other day to see what they can do. I’d never met Fin before and the first time she came she brought round a card and she’s a teenager! It’s not that he doesn’t have kids. It’s just who he is.
There was a short silence.
‘You said sports stuff,’ she said. ‘What kind of thing do you do when you’re back?’
‘Off-roading. There’s a place over the hill near my auntie. I’ve got an ATV. I go with a bunch of guys . . . Great guys. Fellow petrol-heads. It’s my main thing there, back in Jamaica. We get together, roar round the countryside, feel the wind in our hair – or not . . .’ He rubbed his shorn head. ‘Causing mayhem . . . getting into trouble – nothing serious, more with our missuses, you know.’
‘Oh. Yep. I know.’
‘We’re called “The Chaos Crew”. We’ve got stickers for our bumpers. “Get out of our way, or get under our way.”’
‘Wow. How creepy.’ said Juliet.
He put his head on one side. ‘How? Oh – sorry. Are you easily offended?’
Juliet paused. ‘Apparently so,’ she said, laughing. ‘Look –’
He moved before she did. ‘So I’ll have a nose around, if that’s OK. You get back to them all. I’ll stay out here. I’m not that person.’
‘Not that person,’ she echoed.
There was a slight pause, and she could hear wheels turning into the drive. ‘And – yeah, we’ll catch up after that. Whoa,’ he said, as a car screeched down the drive. ‘Someone’s in a hury.’
The sound of braking came behind them. Juliet turned, looking curiously. Sam was slamming the car door and almost running towards her.
‘Juliet – look. Look what we found this morning—’ He stopped. ‘Sorry.’
‘Nice Audi,’ Ev was saying. ‘Great, great wheels.’
‘Thanks.’ Sam turned back and looked at the car as if he’d never seen it before. ‘I rented the wrong car by mistake, but I quite like it now. It’s silver.’
‘I’m Ev. Hi.’ Ev held out his hand.
Still in something of a daze, Sam looked at him, and at Juliet, then at him again, but then his innate manners asserted themselves. ‘Wow. Juliet talks about you all the time.’ He was tall, but almost dwarfed by Ev. He shook Ev’s hand. ‘It’s great to meet you. Well. I guess you and Juliet have a lot to catch up on but—’ Juliet turned to look at him properly, and saw his eyes, the expression in them. ‘But I need you just for a moment, Juliet.’ His hand rested very lightly on her wrist. She nodded.
‘Take your time,’ she said to Ev.
‘Hey – I can’t stay long. Gotta thing with a thing. I’ll check it out and then call you. I’ll enjoy it. The old place hardly seems to have changed. Look – there’s a starling nest, up in the elm.’ His face creased into a smile. ‘And the Japanese maple’s still there. Acer palmatum. Let’s see now . . .’ He wandered off, between the borders of the Wilderness, down the path again.
‘He always was slightly obsessive,’ said Juliet, turning to Sam but, his eyes were fixed on hers.
‘I’m sorry to drag you away from him,’ he said. ‘But it – this couldn’t wait.’
‘I had to see you, you see,’ he said. ‘I—’ He stopped. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Juliet.’
Juliet’s heart started to thump, rather erratically, in her chest. ‘Oh. Not – not today, maybe.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, it’s Sandy’s welcome home from hospital party.’
‘Of course. Damn. Dammit.’ He smote his forehead, brushing his dark messy hair out of the way so it stuck up in different directions. ‘I’d forgotten. I got the little guy a present, too. It’s this disgusting animal, you hatch it out from an egg. It’s awful, but the lady in the shop promised me he’d love it. Oh, I’m sorry, Juliet. I meant to bring it with me. You see—’ The pressure on her wrist tightened. He looked at her, eyes urgently searching her face. ‘You’re looking at me like you know what I’m going to say already. Kate told you? You know?’
‘Maybe – know what?’
‘About the letter?’
‘What letter?’
‘The letter Kate the archivist found in Dalbeattie’s travelling case—’ He broke off. ‘What did you think I was going to say?’
Juliet’s face was aflame with instant mortification. ‘Nothing.’ She passed a hand over her forehead. ‘Nothing at all!’
She’d never seen him other than calm and composed – it was rather funny, and perhaps it was the general tiredness of the last few weeks – or years – or the scent of honeysuckle, and the garden, so alive, or the fact he was there, in front of her, framed by red and purple salvias next to the steps dropping down to the Wilderness, but she saw him anew then. And she had always known this new person, somewhere in the back of her mind. Yes. I know you. How did I not realise it?
He took her hands in his then, both of them, and stared at her. ‘Kate Nadin came in to see me today. She’s been going through the last of Dalbeattie’s papers, just before he died. He was travelling back to London, after the Ottawa commission, late in 1919. There was a letter in his small portable desk, the one he used to use to look at his plans on site. He didn’t take it with him to London; the desk remained locked all these years; no one had thought to look inside it until Kate found the key in the box files of all his other papers. She opened it last week – there’s a letter in there . . .’
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 46