The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  The young boy had first fallen in love with aeroplanes at the age of two, when playing out on the lawn one summer afternoon. He and his father had watched spellbound as a bright red biplane had performed aerobatics high above them in the sky. That day George had started to tell his son about aeroplanes while his mother dozed beside them, lying out on a rug on the newly cut lawn, but to his astonishment Peter remembered everything that George had told him, right down to the famous German who flew a red aeroplane in the war.

  ‘The Red Baron. He crashed and died.’

  ‘You remembered!’

  In fact Peter appeared to remember everything and anything he was told, so much so that George nicknamed him ‘Little Master Memory’. After that his father started to delight in seeing how much he could teach his son, soon finding himself not only teaching his little boy chess, but playing against him, only a matter of days after his first lesson.

  ‘It happens quite a lot with children,’ he assured Amelia. ‘Particularly with chess, I mean. Their minds are quite uncluttered by prejudices so they easily pick up things that as adults we make difficult for ourselves because we put up objections.’

  ‘I would hate Peter to be some sort of music hall prodigy, George.’

  To Amelia’s relief, Peter subsequently proved to be no genius, although there was no doubt that he was exceptionally clever and in advance of his years. In every other respect he was just like all other small boys, mischievous and inquisitive, or so they thought until one day when George was helping Clara put him to bed, when he piped up suddenly to Clara, ‘I saw the man again.’

  ‘Oh, now, Master Peter, none of your nonsense, please. This man you keep saying you see! My word, your mouth must be red from eating all the raspberries and telling Clara that they was greengages!’

  ‘No, I did, Clarey, I did! I saw the man again.’

  ‘He’s always on about this man.’ Clara shrugged her shoulders and looked sheepishly at George. ‘He only ever has warm milk at night with honey in it, Captain Dashwood, nothing more, I promise you.’

  ‘I did see him, Clarey, I did.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’ George replied with a wink to Clara. ‘And where did you see him?’

  ‘He took me to see the lake,’ Peter told his father, before diving down his bed to retrieve his buried bear.

  ‘He was never out of my sight for a moment, Mrs Dashwood.’ Clara turned indignantly to Amelia who had come in on the tail end of the conversation. ‘Him and his imagination. Don’t you listen to him.’

  ‘Oh, but I shall.’ Amelia laughed. ‘You try and stop me, Clara. I love his stories. They’re so inventive.’

  ‘So he took you to the lake did he, young man?’ George enquired when Peter re-emerged from under his bedclothes. ‘What lake was this?’

  ‘The one in the trees.’ Peter sighed with the obviousness of grown-ups, while propping his bear up beside him. ‘You know. The great big lake. In the trees.’

  George looked at Amelia but said nothing. The one area in the grounds with which they had done nothing was where the lake used to be. The reason they had done nothing was quite simply because they had run out of funds. There had never been any mention made of the lake to Peter or to anyone, not even Nanny Clara, who had simply been told where it was safe to go and where it was not.

  ‘Fine.’ George sat down on the end of his son’s bed. ‘So why don’t you tell us about it? About your trip to the lake?’

  ‘Well.’ Peter frowned deeply, as if trying to assemble all the facts. ‘We were having tea. In the garden. And the man came and said would I like to see the lake?’

  ‘Did anyone else see him?’ Amelia now sat herself down in the nursing chair beside Gwendolyn’s cot, so that she could face him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Peter frowned, uncertain, as if it really was none of his concern. ‘The man asked me to see the lake. Then I went.’

  ‘You went with him to the lake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did Nanny Clara say?’

  ‘Nanny Clara wasn’t there.’

  ‘I see.’

  Amelia smiled at Peter while gathering Gwendolyn up from her eiderdown where she was crawling and lifting her onto her knee, as if by doing so she could prevent her from trotting off on her own down to the lake.

  ‘So what was the lake like, Peter?’

  ‘Big. Big and very dark. And flat. Very flat. With no ripples. So there can’t be any fishes.’

  ‘You never know, old chap. There could be lots of fishes deep, deep down.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The man said there were no fishes.’

  ‘Did he? I wonder how he knew.’

  ‘He said the lake was his. And that it was dead.’

  ‘A dead lake?’

  At this George exchanged a look with Amelia who was gently rocking little Gwendolyn on her knee, trying to pretend that she was not in the least interested in anything Peter was telling them.

  ‘A dead lake with no fishes. Tell you what, Peter. Tomorrow you and I will go for a walk and you can show me where the man took you. All right?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Peter looked at both his parents in turn excitedly. ‘I’d like that. I know just where to get in.’

  After they had tucked the children up for the night and left Clara to settle them in, George took Amelia by the hand and led her outside to the circle of trees which surrounded the place where the lake was supposed to be hidden.

  ‘You’re not going to wait until tomorrow, are you? Peter will be very disappointed if you don’t.’

  ‘He won’t know. Unless you tell him. Now – look – this is extraordinary because according to Ambrose’s old maps there was meant to be a pathway through to the lake here. In line with the house.’

  George searched the line of trees busily for any sign of an entrance, but without success. Since it had been raining heavily earlier in the day, Amelia looked on the ground for footprints. Just when George was about to give up, she found a set.

  ‘There’s only one lot,’ George stated, when she had summoned him to look. ‘At least that’s all I can see. And they look like – they look like Peter’s.’

  George looked up at her. Amelia looked back at him.

  ‘They are Peter’s. Those are his sandals.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Not without actually going to fetch his shoes, no, George. Pretty sure, though. I mean there are no other children about here, are there?’

  ‘No. And even if there were, what would someone as small as this – what would they be doing down here alone?’

  Amelia just shook her head and then tried to trace where the set of little footprints went. Straightening up she followed them slowly, carefully pulling aside the young saplings on the edge of the woods as it became apparent that the trail led into the very depths of the woodland. When she realized this, Amelia stopped and turned round anxiously to George, waiting for him to catch her up.

  ‘This isn’t possible,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If Peter had been down here, how could Clara say he had been with her all the time?’

  ‘You imagine for one moment Clara would let Peter out of her sight? She adores him. Anyway, it’s more than her life is worth, she knows that.’

  ‘So how could he have got down here without her knowing? And gone all this way into the woods? Look--’

  Amelia pushed the branches which were just ahead of her to one side and nodded to the path which had now become visible. Not up the middle, but to one side, the trail of footsteps continued, almost as if the child had been walking along beside someone else. Yet there were no other prints anywhere – not one.

  In silence the two of them made their way along the path, having to stoop, because of the overhanging branches. There was utter quiet around them, no sound of birdsong nor rustle of animal life, just deep, dark silence. Finally they came upon the lake, still and dark, circled by huge and ancient trees, the tops of which they had made out previously from the house altho
ugh, because they were so tall, even from the very top of The Priory it was not possible to see over them.

  Now, at last they could see the secret the trees protected, a stretch of dark mirrored water edged by enormous bulrushes which stood as still as sentries. No wind ruffled the glassy surface of the water, which was black from the shadows of the trees all around, black, unmoving, deep and dead. There was no way from the path to reach the water’s edge either, not without cutting a way through the thick belt of rushes which circled the lake without a visible break anywhere.

  ‘What a simply amazing place,’ George whispered. ‘It’s as if no-one has been here for centuries.’

  ‘I’ve never seen water so still,’ Amelia replied, taking George’s hand. ‘It’s like varnish. It’s as if it’s been painted.’

  George picked up a stone from the path, cocked his arm, then threw it in a high arc so that it landed in the middle of the lake.

  ‘Curplopp:

  It sounded the same to both of them as it breached the water which swallowed it without leaving a ripple.

  ‘Not possible,’ George said, staring at where the stone had disappeared as if swallowed by a large, dark mouth. ‘That simply isn’t possible.’

  He took another stone from the ground by his feet, cocked his arm and threw. Again the stone landed with the same deep sound, and again the water yielded no ripples.

  ‘I have to see if it’s water,’ George said, as Amelia gripped his hand even more tightly.

  ‘What do you suppose it is? It has to be water.’

  ‘It’s like – it sounds like – black treacle.’

  He sat down, pulled his shoes and socks off, and rolled up his trousers.

  ‘Be careful, George.’ Amelia begged, holding on to him till the last moment as he made a path for himself through the thick rushes which now whipped angrily back at him. ‘Do be careful!’

  ‘My God, it’s cold!’ George gasped. ‘It’s like ice! This is the coldest water I have ever known.’

  ‘But how can it be?’ Amelia called. ‘It’s been so warm!’

  ‘Lakes are another matter altogether, Amelia! They’re always about ten degrees colder than you expect!’

  ‘But not at the edges, surely? When you’re swimming out deep, perhaps – but not at the very edge?’

  ‘This one,’ George called back over his shoulder as he neared the edge of the rushes, ‘this one is freezing right from the word go!’

  Then he himself was gone, straight down and out of Amelia’s sight.

  ‘George!’ She started kicking off her own shoes. ‘George! George!’

  As she stumbled towards the water’s edge she heard him splashing and calling back.

  ‘It’s all right! Don’t worry! I can swim, remember? It’s all right!’

  Amelia stood right by the edge of the rush belt, skirt in one hand, her other to her mouth as she watched the sodden George emerging from the water.

  ‘There are no shallows,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘It just suddenly goes deep. Without any warning. And I mean deep. And I mean cold.’

  Back at The Priory George sat in a steaming hot bath with a large tumbler of whisky while Amelia set him out some warm, dry clothes.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been as cold as that in the water since I swam in Scotland,’ he announced after giving the matter much thought. ‘In fact I think that water was colder than Scotland, much colder.’

  ‘That is a very strange lake, George,’ Amelia said, putting a clean vest and pair of shorts on the bathroom chair. ‘That is a weird and an ancient lake.’

  ‘We know it’s ancient, darling, because we have seen it on the old maps. That lake was here when they built the priory. And weird – I agree. But Peter’s prints are the weirdest thing of all.’

  ‘I shall take his shoes down with me tomorrow.’

  ‘There won’t be any need. Peter will be in them.’

  ‘What do you think about Peter’s story?’ Amelia asked as she sat on the window sill of the bathroom, looking out over the gardens now lit by the evening sun. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘What do I make of it? You mean what do I make of the man? Well – remember those stories we heard about some old hermit who lived here? Maybe if Peter’s been seeing anyone at all—’

  ‘Rather than imagining it.’

  ‘Rather than imagining it, precisely. Maybe he’s seen the old hermit lurking around somewhere and made a story out of it. This is – what? The third time he’s said he’s seen him?’

  ‘Something like that. Third or fourth. The first time he said he saw him in his bedroom. Standing by the window.’

  ‘I discount that one, Amelia. No-one could have got all the way up to the nursery without someone hearing or seeing them. They’d have had to go through Nanny’s room first. No, that time I think he was dreaming. This time I don’t know. Maybe he saw him when they were out in the garden and then spun a story round it.’

  ‘He’s only four, George.’

  ‘Four or not, you know what Peter’s like, darling. Looks to me as if we’ve got another writer in the family.’

  ‘The footsteps on the path, George?’

  ‘That I can’t explain.’

  ‘And all the other things we can’t explain. Such as the way the weather’s always different here, the way things grow so well and so quickly, the snow on the night Peter was born – or rather the lack of it. In fact how we always seem to escape the worst of the frosts. Remember two years ago? That frost in May which killed the flowers on Archie and Mae’s wisteria? And all their early rosebuds? We didn’t lose one bloom, and our wisteria was better than ever.’

  ‘The frost can be explained, surely. I mean there are places which are the opposite of frost pockets. Our garden in Sussex, for instance—’

  ‘George. You’re not really aware of this because you’re usually hard at work in your study. At first I thought it was just Jethro and Robbie’s hard work, the fact that I hardly ever have to do any weeding. In fact, to put it quite bluntly, since we cleared the place we’ve hardly seen any more weeds! I haven’t mentioned it to Jethro, don’t worry – I don’t want him to think I’m dotty either. But I’ve been keeping a journal of garden jobs and duties, and making Jethro and Robbie fill one in, too. And neither of them ever seems to weed either. In fact only the other day Jethro complimented me on the way I keep the flower beds because it leaves them free for the fruit and veg and so on.’

  ‘Hm,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘Hm.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that there’s something – something different about this place.’

  ‘I know it’s very special, certainly. But different—?’

  ‘Different, George. I was going to call it something else . . .’

  ‘What, for instance?’ George looked at her suspiciously over the edge of the bath. ‘Not magic, Amelia? Magical perhaps, but not magic.’

  ‘Let’s just say I think it’s charmed, George. Maybe old places like this, particularly places which have once been sacred – or semi-sacred, or whatever – maybe they pass different things on, different things from other places, ordinary places. I’m not explaining myself very well, am I?’

  ‘You’re not saying it’s haunted, are you?’

  ‘Yes, but not in the way we normally take it to mean. I think it could be haunted by its past, or affected rather. Maybe what happened here before, all that time ago, maybe it affects the way things are today. Who knows? There is so much that we really don’t know about the past, and maybe we spend all our time treading on and around it, or it drifts past us, or encircles us, but we are just too insensitive to notice.’

  ‘Hm,’ George mused again, not really listening. ‘Hm. So this man Peter claims he saw—’

  ‘That most probably was our famous hermit,’ Amelia said crisply, getting up and handing George his towel. ‘For goodness’ sake though, don’t go making any mention of ghosts or the boy will probably never sleep another wink here. Now I’m go
ing down to get myself a drink and make us some supper. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’

  ‘Hm,’ she heard from behind her as she left the bathroom. ‘Hm hm hm !’

  They ate their supper outside at a table in the courtyard where they loved to sit on summer evenings, listening to the birdsong and watching the colours of the skies as they darkened. That night they sat there until it was dark, until the air was full of hunting bats and the mournful sound of owls, they sat there with a bottle of wine talking until they could barely talk any more, yet they both knew that the subject was far from being exhausted; they were a long way off from coming to any conclusions. For most of these apparently phenomenal things there might, somewhere, be some sort of explanation.

  The frost for instance, the odd rainfall, the peculiar waters of the lake, perhaps even the apparently inexplicable lack of weeds – when put before various experts, all those things might well have some perfectly natural explication, some exposition based on the lie of the land or a freak incidence of weather patterns. Just as the amount of mud and silt on the lake bed might be due to the same phenomena. Also, as George suggested, the strange lack of weeds could be because the place had been tilled so diligently by monks making their herbals and growing their vegetables; or it might be that their soil had a totally different chemical make-up. And too, the man seen by Peter could well be the hermit once rumoured to have lived in The Priory. The footprints on the path to the lake could have been made by some vagrant child. Equally Peter’s supposed discovery of the lake could have been in his imaginings, since he could easily have overheard his parents at some point discussing what precisely lay within their boundaries.

  Yet one thing could not be explained away, namely the secret of the hidden garden, and perhaps because it could not, it coloured George and Amelia’s judgement about all the other incidents.

  Had they been able to think of one reason for what had apparently happened in and to the hedged garden, or even the merest and vaguest theory, then they could have put aside the belief both of them felt that there might be some extra force at work in the place, other than the natural ones. Yet they could not think of one, or even the beginning of one, which was why, when they went to bed that night, before they fell asleep, they both lay silently in the dark wondering what precise magic it was that seemed to be intent on enchanting their home.