The Midsummer Garden

by Kirsty Manning

  ‘I’m really sorry, Jack,’ Will said. ‘It’s a real blow.’ He shuffled along his bench seat until he was in the middle, stabilising the boat. ‘I mean, how’re you guys going to compete with a bloody consortium?’

  ‘Exactly! Not a chance. Nicko hopes they’ll get the deposit for a weekender in the Hamptons, I guess.’ Jack laughed with a twinge of bitterness. ‘I don’t care if we stay in the cottage forever and lease out the big place, I’d start a family tomorrow—Chloé’s awesome!’ Jack smiled then took a deep breath, savouring the salty air. ‘Pip wants to get her thesis sorted first. She’s freaked out that she won’t get a marine research job at the end of all this. As if!’

  ‘Ha! Sounds a bit like her sister. So alike sometimes.’

  Jack laughed as he nodded in agreement. ‘I won’t tell Pip you said that. She’d hate it.’

  ‘She would.’ Will grinned. ‘Let’s get this boat moving before the weather turns, try to catch some flathead. If the wind drops by sunset, I’ve got the big torch and jig so when we see some squid we can have a crack at those too. Got a couple of good ones last week. Grilled them on the barbecue with some chilli, parsley and white wine. Delicious.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Jack, staring across at Pip as she sank both arms elbow-deep in the sand. She looked serene in the fading afternoon sun. So why couldn’t he shake this uneasy feeling that there was far more than storm clouds on the horizon?

  Chapter 4

  Tasmania, April 2014

  Pip could sense Jack watching her as he launched the boat with Will, but she avoided eye contact. They’d be gone as long as it took to down a couple of beers and she wanted to keep dusk to herself.

  She traced the corrugated ripples of sand with her fingertips as she watched for telltale holes and bubbles before plunging her arm deep into the slurry to grab a handful of sand. She spread the clump of sand out with her foot and picked out a few of the caramel butterfly-shaped Electroma papilionacea and threw them into her bucket along with the clams and pipis. The sun was dropping, the clouds darkening and gathering pace in their movement across the sky as the crisp evening breeze lifted and stung her cheeks.

  Will’s dinghy motor roared and echoed between the low sandstone cliffs for a few seconds as the men sped off into open water. She paused to listen for the wind whipping and rustling the eucalyptus leaves on the foreshore. The sharp smell of the gums softened with the heavy air promising rain.

  Pip flicked another couple of pipis into her bucket. Last week, after his parents had called in, Jack had gathered her into one of his big hugs and slowly massaged her shoulders as he’d suggested postponing her PhD deadline until after they had Italy and the buyout sorted: ‘Surely down the track you can get more funding? I mean, Imogen said she didn’t know, right?’

  Conflicting waves of electricity and anxiety had pounded her stomach and Pip bit her lip, hiding her head in his grey T-shirt so he didn’t see her hurt. Was she going mad? Was a bit of space to finish her studies too much to ask?

  Pip understood that Jack’s roots spread wide and deep across these slopes overlooking the curves of the channel. He had no intention of being transplanted. But why did he expect Pip to compromise her research—her dreams—to fit his timeline? It just wasn’t fair. But what would it take for him to realise that his ambition couldn’t always take priority in their relationship?

  Nine-year-old Pip stood on the thick green grass carpeting the middle of the old quadrangle at Melbourne University, playing with her yellow yo-yo. Around her, the sandstone archways were smothered with ivy, the air thick with the scent of purple wisteria. It was a perfect pocket of lush garden in the middle of a magical castle. Her father, David, was wearing a cherry red academic gown with olive facing, a large hood and a gigantic smile. He waved a scroll with his microbiology PhD above his head in the sunshine as adults swarmed around and patted his back, muttering about breakthroughs and tremendous achievements. In the midst of the fuss, David removed his soft black velvet hat with a pretty cherry tassel and pulled it onto Pip’s curly mop. The hat flopped down over her eyes so she could barely see, and as she pulled it up her father crouched down so he was at her eye level. They had the same green eyes.

  ‘Pip, my popsicle,’ he whispered, ‘you are never too little to dream big. Work hard—use that creative brain of yours.’ He tapped her head and she giggled. Then his voice turned serious and he squeezed her shoulders. ‘Promise me now, my darling, that you’ll make your time on this precious earth count. This PhD is for you.’

  Pip nodded solemnly before Megs swooped, grabbed the hat and yanked it onto her flawless black bob.

  ‘Daddy, look at me!’ cried Megs in her bossy voice. ‘I’m the one who’s going to be a doctor. Pip’s the seashell collector. But there’s no more room on her windowsill for stinky shells!’

  Her dad was now the dean of science at the university. How could Pip face the disappointment in those piercing green eyes when she couldn’t quite get her PhD across the line? She traced her fingers through the sandy slurry, popping icy air bubbles with the tips of her finger as they appeared on the surface.

  The splutter of the engine ripped across the bay, masking the sound of waves lapping against the rocks and the shrieks and twitter of the birds in the black peppermint gums beyond the waterfront.

  Pip was grateful for the offshore breeze carrying a whiff of eucalyptus and the thick sweet scent of autumn wattles and blossoms. Sometimes, in the heat of the day, Stinkpot Bay could really live up to its name—if the hydrogen sulphide trapped under the sediment was ever disturbed.

  She understood the science, but the mudflats were still magic. So many secrets. Vast, ugly and pockmarked when the tide pulled out, mudflats were protected from oceanic swells, giving life to a complex network of fish, molluscs, crustaceans and birds. Some, like the showy spotted handfish and the yellow pentagon of the live-bearing seastar, never ventured beyond the tiny coves and inlets along these sandstone shores.

  Her first encounter with this shoreline had been with her zoology professor, as an undergrad. Jim Grant was a jolly man with a pink face smothered in white zinc cream and shaded by a wide-brimmed Mexican straw hat whenever he stepped outside. He had the dumpy shape and texture of his beloved Irish Rooster potato and wore baggy shorts year-round. Despite his genetic unsuitability for working through the searing sun of Tasmania’s summer, Professor Grant would show Pip how to find native oysters—Ostrea angasi—along the mudflats. With brown shells curved and terraced like a contour map, the natives were easily prised open with another shell. He pointed out areas where the feral Pacifics—Crassostrea gigas—were taking over the foreshore and picked over deep piles of middens—mussel, oyster and clam shells—taking care not to disturb the ancient hand-sized tools used by the Mouheneener tribe as they foraged for protein. The local Aborigines recognised patterns of the oceans and mudflats. Symbiosis. She was an introduced species—yet she felt most at home here on the mudflats, in this stretch straddling water and land. Elation coursed through her body. This was where she belonged.

  Professor Grant rejoiced at the sighting of a rare local Gunns screwshell and scowled at its invasive competitor the New Zealand screwshell and the equally invasive European clam. His Irish accent would roll over the string of Latin vowels like a fierce swell: Gazameda gunnii, Maoricolpus roseus, Varicorbula gibba.

  ‘Philippa,’ he would say, ‘your generation needs to look at these patterns again. Look closely, my girl.

  ‘Just as the middens tell their story you need to look at all the benthic invertebrates—the crabs, the clams and mussels, the seastars. They live in the sediment and they don’t much like to move. Study the nutrients in the sediments, count their numbers, pay attention to the dirty imports like me and it will tell you about how this world is changing. Do you know what will happen if the ocean rises by four centimetres?’ He would shake his head and dig his toes into the sand and silt. ‘Have you thought about that?’

  Pip nodded. It was p
retty much all she thought about.

  ‘I’m staying put.’ Jim smiled. ‘A few degrees of global warming and Tasmania will be the perfect climate. It’ll take more than global warming to get me back to Ireland.’ He shuddered theatrically.

  Seeking a way to spend more time on the mudflats, Pip had become hooked on Coastcare, and even more hooked on one of her fellow volunteers. She’d been paired with Jack Rodgers for the last two weeks of that summer to count the number of swift parrots that nested around Stinkpot Bay. Swift parrots were easy enough to find. Volunteers simply listened for the high-pitched musical trill that floated down from their perches in a handful of mottled blue gums. They watched for a flash of lime and emerald green with a patch of red under the little beak. These stunning parrots grew fat feasting on Tasmanian blossoms before departing with the cooler winds on the long flight back to Victoria and New South Wales, to snuggle down for the autumn in the more austere ironbark forests on the mainland.

  At first Pip couldn’t work out why this surfer with dark raffish hair wasn’t riding the chilly waves down near Point Arthur. Why on earth was he counting parrots? It turned out he had a minor in biology. How had she not noticed such a magnificent specimen in her lectures? He’d explained he’d done the first two years at Melbourne University on a rowing scholarship. Later, he told her how he’d felt hemmed in doing laps on the muddy upside-down Yarra and yearned for the space and ruggedness of his channel. ‘Didn’t miss the bloody wind, though,’ he’d said, laughing, as he jumped up and down to keep warm, hugging his torso.

  Pip eyed the warm swirls of gold and orange in the tall cliff faces as dusk closed in. Her eyes ached. Once the revised tests were completed she could get on with writing up her thesis—the introduction and outline of the methods should be finished. She could meet Imogen’s requirements, but Italy would have to wait. Work had to come first this year. As she listened to the waves lapping against a nearby outcrop, Pip catalogued the chapters in her head like a mantra: ‘Spatial variation’, ‘Seasonal variation’—over and over again.

  Was that enough research? Could she get it all finished before the wedding?

  She turned and glanced out at the darkening waters of the broad channel, scanning the horizon for a speck of silver. The hum of the cicadas told Pip darkness was not far away and with it would come the tide. Her red bucket was half full of the larger local clams, Katelysia scalarina, and she estimated she had a couple of kilos. Enough for dinner.

  She lifted one of the small, smooth shells and ran her fingers over the waves of yellow ridges and watched the clam clamp tight. Perhaps it was time for her to do the same.

  Chapter 5

  Château de Boschaud, Midsummer 1487

  Artemisia sighed and dropped her head as she tried to find a comfortable position for her back against the contorted branches of the quince winding around the arbour. Her back and feet were sore and she needed to sit a while. Why did they always make these so-called resting spots so uncomfortable? Was God such a miser that he wanted to stick thorns in your side while you viewed His creation? Abbot Roald seemed to think suffering was holy and just. It was different for the ladies of the château, with all their padded dresses and thick flesh around the back and bosom. Perhaps they didn’t feel the gnarled woven branches digging through the clothes into them as they sat and finished their tapestries, or prayed. Artemisia was an old maid—even if she didn’t know her exact age. She first bled seven long summers ago, so she was every bit the ‘hag’ Abbot Roald had snarled at her yesterday when she struggled to lift copper pots wider than a hog onto the broad granite bench.

  Today Artemisia had a giant ache in her body that was as long as her service.

  An orphan, Artemisia had been given refuge at Château de Boschaud by the kind château chaplain Abbot Bellamy when he found her wasted and filthy in the chestnut forest while foraging for early spring fungi. She slept in a bed of straw out in the barn and for her keep she had learned the cook’s trade—along with an arsenal of curses—by clinging to the tunic of the ancient, hunched Hildegard. Together they clanged about in the kitchen and roamed the grounds of the walled garden, including the orchards and Abbot Bellamy’s precious physic garden. Abbot Bellamy explained to his young ward that tending the garden was the work of monks because God Himself had written in the first Book: The Lord God took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. The abbot gently counselled the monks to follow his planting regime. From November—the season of All Saints—in went the broad beans and the dead sage branches should be cut. Sage, lavender, clary, dittany and mint weren’t planted until the moons of February—depending on the frosts. House-leek and salad seeds went into the soil from March to St John’s Day, and gillyflowers were planted by St Remy’s Day in October—or March for a second season. Sometimes the abbot would join them after his prayers, showing Artemisia how to read the sundial, or suggesting she take a moment on a grassy mound in a sunny corner for her own meditation. He would point out the round reflection pool at the centre of the grid of raised garden beds and tell her how this symmetry—this beauty—was inspired by God’s work. Occasionally, he’d pluck a white rose shimmering with dewdrops and pass it to Artemisia with a smile as broad as his precious garden beds. ‘A rose, Artemisia, is perfection in the morning. Look how we make the windows in the cathedral. A symbol of life. Love. Perfection. His work. We must give thanks for such divine beauty.’

  Abbot Bellamy thrived on routine and encouraged all the monks in his charge to do the same: matins, reading and transcription, gardening and then vespers in the evening. He tended his herbs with love and studied them with precision, often asking Artemisia to pluck them with the dawn when they were fresh so he could draw them on his monastery herbals.

  The abbot taught Artemisia to read and write alongside the young heir, Master Boschaud. Together the children would sit in the shady cloisters, reciting their prayers, practising geometry and learning to do the necessary additions and subtractions to the treasury columns the young master would one day inherit. The fair boy with the cheeky grin would lean back with his feet on the desk, swatting flies with his makeshift sword fashioned from twigs and twine, and sneak away to the pond to catch tiny brown tadpoles and fill his velvet pockets.

  ‘I won’t always be here, young master. You have to learn your duty. There are many people working within these walls who will rely on you one day when you are lord,’ said Abbot Bellamy, tapping the latest treasury numbers on stiff parchment.

  The young boy giggled and shot a narrow look at Artemisia. ‘I’ll have Artemisia. She can do the numbers better than me. You’ll help me, won’t you?’

  Artemisia blushed and looked at the abbot. How could a girl who lay in straw be any help to a child wrapped in velvet? They were roughly the same height and the master’s shoulders were wider, but Artemisia felt a strange pull to protect this carefree, freckled boy who spent his days face turned up to the sun, climbing trees and chasing rabbits with his bow and arrow.

  The abbot sighed and rolled his eyes at the heavens as the boy reached down and hoisted his little wooden sword. The young master ran off to practise his footwork stabbing imaginary dragons and filthy English knights in the orchard. ‘Don’t worry …’ The words trailed over his shoulder in the summer air like a ribbon. ‘Artemisia can do it—she’ll live here forever.’

  Artemisia’s skin prickled hot and cold and she closed her eyes and sent her prayer to the Holy Father. She hoped the boy’s words were true enough—she was grateful for her bed in the barn and work in the kitchen. It was more than a dirty stray like her could ever have hoped for.

  Within a couple of years, young Artemisia was assisting Abbot Bellamy and his failing eyesight, helping to check and balance the weary chaplain’s chronicles for the château—including adding up all the orders for Hildegard’s kitchen. She could transcribe remedies like the abbot’s prized tizanne doulce—barley and hulls, figs and liquorice, boiled until the barley burst and strained t
hrough linen—for Hildegard to dispense to the monks and tenants.

  Of course, her favourite herb was the wild grey shrub in the corner with feathery branches that shimmered on frosty morns yet stood firm and tall in high summer. Artemisia. It was the abbot who insisted on her christening. ‘A foundling like you will thrive in many terroirs. Artemisia is the Mother of Herbs, named for the mighty Greek goddess Artemis. Diana. She will protect you, my child. Have faith.’

  It had been two winters now since the monks had hacked at the frozen dirt with their shovels and Abbot Bellamy’s body was laid to rest alongside Boschaud kin in the cemetery within the walls. No sooner was he lowered in a linen sheath into the ground and dirt settled than the young Abbot Roald was dispensed from the Benedictine abbey in Limoges. In addition to his general priory duties, Abbot Roald certified all official purchase papers from the château and kept the accounts. Abbot Bellamy had been the château’s treasurer, chaplain, chronicler, almoner and apothecary—no task was too grand or too demeaning for the gentle old man. Lord and peasant were treated equally: ‘A soul is a soul, Artemisia. God cares nought for your position, child. Only how you use it.’ He’d waggle his finger at her and smile. It was hard not to believe him.

  Under Abbot Roald, much of the physic garden was ripped out and replaced with grapes, roses chopped at the root and pulled for an extended melon patch. Matins were moved to before dawn, and vespers extended by double. A severe whipping was meted out to any monk or servant who did not attend.

  Lord Boschaud, however, had stepped in and given Artemisia and Hildegard special dispensation. Artemisia carried the tradition with Hildegard of preparing the finest feasts of these southern valleys.