I step around behind the wall, to get away from the sight of the apple trees. There’s a path behind the wall. Directly opposite the wall, mirroring it, are a row of huge yew trees, jammed close together from years of never being trimmed so that they form a large hedge, a slumbering green whale.
There’s a flash of white under the hedge and I bend down to examine the flower there. An anemone of some sort. I bend closer over the small white flower with the yellow centre. It’s strange that I don’t recognize it. I am usually quite good with flowers.
The flower is not alone. It is not growing under the yew, but has moved in that direction from where it starts in a small clearing. When I get down on my hands and knees and peer under the hedge I can see a whole river of anemones. I use the gardener’s ledger as a shield and push through the hedge. Yew branches feather against my scalp. I breathe in the spicy smell and then I’m past it, standing on top of the river of white anemones and looking at the most unruly garden I have ever seen.
The anemones lead to a huge, overgrown flower bed. Near one end there is some kind of structure, completely choked with greenery. The bed itself is covered with hundreds of nettles. The flowers bloom amid the dead wood and the vegetation of those still dormant or long since dead. I follow the flow of anemones up to the edge of the flower bed. There is not much light here. One side of this garden is flanked by the massive yews. The other three sides are bordered by woods. Some of the trees have woven their branches together over this patch of ground, effectively blocking the sun.
I crouch beside the edge of the garden. I feel something that at first I’m sure is fear. But no, that’s not it. What I feel is a kind of unreality. I am a ghost. I have wandered back in time, or forward, and I have disturbed this sleeping place with my presence. The one thing I can clearly feel, the one thing I know above all else, is that I am the first person to have been here in a very long time.
I scrape around in the bed beside the anemones and promptly get stung by the cloud of nettles that has settled over the garden. I poke around in the dirt instead, rubbing it between my fingers to assess its measure. My fingers brush against something solid resting in the earth. Flat stone. A cut rectangle of stone. I rub my fingers along it and feel the indentations open under them like windows. There’s something carved into the stone.
It is a word. Not a name as I had presumed. I brush the earth carefully away from the stone with my jersey sleeve. There’s a word cut into the slate by a steady hand. A word buried and recovered, as this word always must be, because that is how it works in us, that is how it is read.
Longing.
12
The anemone is an Anemone narcissiflora. I look it up in the reference books I have lugged down from London. I barely have time before supper, scrabbling through the pages with grubby hands. I have brought a sample back with me from the garden, although it’s a little soiled from having been jammed into my trouser pocket.
The Anemone narcissiflora is an alpine flower that grows in meadows in the Pyrenees, the Alps, parts of Spain and Turkey, even in mountains across Siberia to the northern part of Japan. It is a strange thing to find in an English garden.
There are noises in the hall outside my bedroom. The girls are back and on their way to dinner. I snap my book shut, jump up to wash my filthy hands. I have missed lunch today, with all the turmoil and my explorations, and I am famished.
A rigid order in dinner seating arrangements seems to have been established and is being avidly maintained by the group. I take my regular, and now obviously permanent, seat next to Jane. Again, I am the last one to the table. The others glare at me.
“Have you been out climbing trees, Gwen?” Jane whispers to me. She reaches up and pulls bits of yew from my hair, laying them carefully beside my plate as a sort of table decoration.
The doors open and Mabel and Irene enter with bowls of a lumpy pulp that looks very much like the animal swill of last night’s dinner. “Rabbit stew,” says Irene helpfully, as she puts my dish down in front of me.
I think of the rabbit found in London at the end of January, after a particularly heavy period of bombing. It was running around and around Piccadilly Circus. This wild creature in the midst of ruined London was a miracle for a day, until the rabbit was discovered to be an escaped regimental mascot.
As soon as the village women leave, Jane pushes her bowl away from her.
“Not hungry?” I ask.
“Just doing my bit for food rationing. There’s a war on, you know,” says Jane.
I can’t blame her. The stew is completely tasteless, but I bolt mine down because I am so hungry. Some of the other girls eat only a few spoonfuls before pushing their bowls away as well. No one speaks. I look round at the table of girls, at the bowls of liquefied rabbit, at the huge flag of black unfurled against the windows. It feels as if night itself has entered this room.
No one seems inclined to explain their absence from work today. “I need you to do what you’re here to do,” I say, but this elicits no response from the girls. I think of what Raley said to me at the house. “Was it a good picnic?” I ask.
Golden Wonder snaps her head up, looks at me warily. Still no one speaks.
“Captain Raley and I will organize dances for you and the soldiers,” I say, “but I need you to work in the garden. It’s why you’re here.”
Jane looks over the assembled girls. “That’s a fair deal,” she says quietly, and the others nod and mumble their agreement. I can’t believe how easily she has controlled them. I know I should be thankful, but I immediately feel jealous of Jane’s easy authority.
“I’m going to buy chickens,” I blurt out. “We can have our own eggs.”
Silence. Finally one of them speaks. Vittelette Noir leans on her arms over the table and looks down towards me. At first I think she is talking to me, but as soon as she starts to speak I realize she is talking to Jane. “You know,” she says, “I can do better than this.”
“What can you do?” says Jane.
“My father owns a hotel in London. I used to work for him in the kitchen.” Vittelette Noir looks at the row of Land Girls. “Cooking,” she says. There is a murmur of excitement from the others. My mention of chickens garnered no response at all.
“Well,” I say. “That will be of no use here.”
“Why not?” Jane turns to me, her unflinching gaze doing its usual work to disarm me. I think I prefer it when people glance away from me, disregard me. “Gwen,” says Jane, “why couldn’t we do our own cooking? Or rather, Elspeth could do our cooking. That’s what you’re suggesting, isn’t it?” she says to Vittelette Noir.
“Yes.” Vittelette Noir now addresses her words to me. “Once we all start working in the garden,” she says, “I could be spared to work in the kitchen.”
“But I’ve found more ground for the potatoes,” I say in protest.
“We could get our ration books back from the village women and you could do the necessary shopping,” says British Queen to Vittelette Noir.
“Gwen,” says Jane quietly. “How is this different from your chickens? This is just another instance of us taking control of our well-being.”
Fine, I think. Mention the chickens now. No one cared about them when I mentioned them. “Do what you have to do,” I say to Jane. I don’t look at her, keep my head down over my empty bowl. I get tangled up, trying to get on with these girls. If I order them about, try to keep them organized, then I’m being too bossy. If I try to be nice to them, they ignore me or regard me with complete suspicion. They have enjoyed days here without me, and have probably formed a united front against me. I stand up, abruptly knocking the table with my knee. The dishes jiggle.
“Where are you going?” asks Jane.
“I don’t know.” I feel very close to tears. “I was happy about the chickens,” I say too loudly, causing several of the others to look in my direction. British Queen shakes her head sadly at May Queen.
“Gwen, sit down. Please.” J
ane tugs at my arm. “Think how happy you’ll be when Elspeth makes you a lovely omelette out of those eggs from your chickens. Please.” She tugs at my arm again and I fall back into my chair like a chastened child.
I still feel like crying. Nothing is going well. No one ever likes me. I’m not good with people. I’ve been too isolated most of my life. I don’t know how to get on with others. Why did I ever think that volunteering for this job was a good idea?
“Look,” says Jane. “You’ve still got tree in your hair.” She reaches up and gently removes the pieces of yew. This makes me feel even more like a child. No, worse than that, like some silly, helpless pet. But I let her do it. I feel alternately that I am vastly superior to her and that I am not worthy of her attention at all.
After supper the girls leave for one of the downstairs rooms in the west wing. A wireless has been discovered there by Golden Wonder and they’re off to listen to the nightly war broadcast. I have a dim recollection of a time when the evening broadcast was news of the world. Now it is solely news of the war. What places have been hit by the German bombs. What lies in ruins or burns to ashes.
I go into the kitchen to do the washing-up from supper. It is an excuse not to have to join the group. It is also something of a plea for sympathy. I don’t know how to make them like me. This is all I can think of at the moment. If they’ve failed to be impressed by the dance and the chickens, I don’t have much else at my disposal.
Jane has gone off to tell Mabel and Irene that we will no longer be needing them to cook for us. She comes back while I’m washing up, hops onto the kitchen worktop beside the sink, and lights a cigarette. “Done,” she says cheerfully. She unfolds a fan of ration books and waves them in front of my face. “Our destiny is in our hands.”
“It’s not just the cooking,” I say, not prepared to let go of my reservations without a bit of a fight. “She’ll have to keep the range and boiler going. There’s hot water and—”
“There’s a whole cellar full of coal,” Jane says, cutting me off. “She’s done this before. That’s the important thing. This is what she knows how to do. What she wants to do.” Jane flicks her cigarette ash into my sink full of soapy water. “Omelette,” she says. “Soufflé. Victoria sponge with cream and jam.”
I have to smile. “Why do you bother with me?” I say. “I’m not like the others.”
“Precisely. You’re infinitely more interesting than the others. You’re complicated. They are young and barely formed. They only want to please or be pleased. But you—” Jane stabs her cigarette towards my face for emphasis. “You aren’t as easily defined as that.”
I stop washing the dishes, my hands up to the wrists in soapy water. But I am easily defined, I think. Longing. The word I found today comes back with such force I sway against the sink. I almost tell Jane about that garden. I actually open my mouth to tell her, and then I shut it again. What would I tell her? What would I say? I don’t really know what to make of it myself. Then I realize what I felt when I found that garden this afternoon. That I was the first person to see it aside from the person or people who made it. And that it was meant for me and me alone to find. I do not want to share it with anyone, even Jane.
“What?” says Jane. She has been watching me, can tell I was on the verge of speaking.
“Were you close to your cousin?” I lift a heavy plate from the warm water and heft it into the dish rack. It is all I can think of to say. When all else fails, ask a question.
“When Colin and I were small,” says Jane, “we were very close. Constant companions. Inseparable. All that rot you’ve ever read about a close family, that was us.” She swings down off the worktop, grabs a towel from the handle of the range, and starts to dry the dishes from the rack.
“What happened?” I ask.
“We grew up.” Jane opens the cupboard above her head and clatters the dry bowls into it. “This is what I know. I was close to Colin. Then I wasn’t. Then, when he was lying in the hospital dying, I was close to him again. The funny thing was that I recognized him in his pain, recognized that little boy from when we were young and the equivalent of in love with each other. It was his screaming that did it. His screaming brought him back to me.” Jane leans against the worktop. “And then he left me for good,” she says. “In the moment he returned, he left.”
I’m afraid she is going to start to cry again, but she doesn’t, just stands against the worktop, the damp tea towel slung over her shoulder. “This is what I know,” she says again. “Because I was close to Colin when we were young, because I had the example of that, I knew how to love. I knew what intimacy was and I wanted it. Because of Colin, I knew about love.”
“And then there was Andrew,” I say.
“Yes, Andrew.” Jane takes a glass from the rack and wipes it dry. “Andrew is missing. But missing isn’t dead.”
I think of Mrs. Woolf, and the hasty way her death has been anticipated. “I know,” I say. “Missing isn’t even lost. It just means someone isn’t where they’re expected to be.”
“Exactly.”
“And where is Andrew expected to be?”
“Malta. He was on his way there.” Jane abandons the wet tea towel and reaches for a cigarette. “He’s RAF,” she explains. “He was flying a mission to an aerodrome in Malta and his plane disappeared somewhere over the Mediterranean. But the thing is this—” Jane lights her cigarette. I’m not looking at her, but out of the corner of my eye I can see the jumpy match. Her hands are shaking again. I hear her inhale deeply. “The thing is this, Gwen. No wreckage was found. There were six men in that Wellington. No wreckage. No bodies. And he’s ditched before and survived. And the Mediterranean’s warm. And he’s a good swimmer.”
I let the water out of the sink. There’s a great sucking sound as it disappears down the drain. “Those are good facts,” I say. “Hang on to them.”
The last of the water leaves the sink and I see the one small plate lying stranded on the bottom of the porcelain. It was easily missed. I pick it up carefully and put it gently in the rack.
13
I move my bed directly underneath the timbered arch in my room. I lie there, with the weight of The Genus Rosa pinning me to the mattress, and I imagine Raley’s fiery bower overhead. Longing, I think. Longing. Sometimes I think I might die of it.
Jane has had someone to long for, someone to love. She can probably still remember the weight of him on top of her. But maybe that’s not true either; maybe the physical presence of someone doesn’t stay around after they’ve gone, doesn’t hang in a room like smoke. Maybe longing itself is the ghost, and all evidence of the actual lover vanishes instantly.
The Genus Rosa feels unbearably heavy tonight. I lie on my back and think of Raley’s fiery roses above my head. I must ask him what colour they were. I like to know the names of things. Maybe I can figure out what kind of roses appeared to him in that dream he had.
I think of the anemone I found in that neglected garden today. An Anemone narcissiflora. Why is that longing? Is it to do with the myth of Narcissus—the boy who fell in love with his own reflection? And then I think of the common name for anemones. Windflower. Anemones are opened by the wind. Yes, I think, that’s it. Longing is opened by the wind.
I don’t have the blackout curtains pulled yet in my room, but I have no lamp lit, no light to be glimpsed from outside. And besides, here in the depths of Devon there don’t seem to be any wardens going around checking for chinks of light between the curtains, as there were in London. Not much danger of the five-pound fine for having a streak of light showing. It is so nice not to have the curtains pulled. I can see the pale cast of moonlight in the sky. If I arch my neck back, I can see a fine spray of stars above the quadrangle.
Anemones are opened by the wind. They are hard to raise from seed, and are not easily divided.
Sometimes The Genus Rosa is the exact weight of my loneliness. I push it off me, struggle off the bed, and go over to the window. I shove open the gla
ss and thrust my head out into the cool night air. It’s after midnight. There’s the smell of damp rising from the stones of the building. Off in the distance there’s the soft call of a nightingale. I look down at the strict rectangle of the quadrangle. There’s a dark blur, moving from the shadows of this building, running across the grass towards the stables. From this angle and height I can’t tell who it is. The moon disappears behind a cloud and I momentarily lose the figure in the shadows of the opposite buildings. When the moon returns, the figure has vanished.
14
In the next week we finally settle into a routine at Mosel. The chickens are purchased and moved into the coop in the walled garden. They are fed kitchen scraps and almost immediately start producing eggs. Even though no one was enthusiastic about the chickens when I first mentioned them, the actual fact of the eggs has cheered everyone up no end.
Vittelette Noir has vastly improved the evening fare. She cooks dishes with names I can’t pronounce. She occasionally bakes fresh bread. Sometimes she even manages to cook a pudding to follow the main course. She makes a very good flan. In honour of her new duties in the kitchen, I have secretly renamed her Victualette Noir.
After our initial faulty start there is now a rhythm to our days, a certainty of routine that, I hope, provides some comfort to us all. Jane rises first in the mornings, well before any of the rest of us are even awake, and goes out to milk the cows. Breakfast is porridge and tea, both laced with the fresh milk Jane has procured. Then, after breakfast and washing-up, Jane takes the cows and the two horses out to graze, and the rest of the girls go to work in the walled kitchen garden. They have started planting the potatoes there now, having cleared off all the debris and prepared the ground for the setting of the seed. I have also had them plant cabbage, peas, broad beans, runner beans, and onions, since there is currently an onion shortage in Britain.
The Lost Garden: A Novel Page 6