The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  It was the place on the island that Beatrice loved most. Here, on Pleinmont Point, on Guernsey’s southwestern tip, she could sit for hours and look out at the water or walk and let the wind blow through her hair. She loved the wildness of the coast and the strength of the sea. She loved the solitude that emanated from the place. Somehow Pleinmont Point seemed, to her, a mirror image of her own self: austere, cool, tough. Pleinmont was never at rest, rather it was constantly asserting itself. Neither flowers nor palm trees grew here, and if the sun didn’t happen to be setting, there was no color apart from the gray-brown of the cliffs and the gray-green of the grass. Ugly and cold, the stone towers, part of the former German fortifications, rose into the sky. Here, spite and determination mixed with melancholy and a beauty that only a few could grasp.

  No matter what, thought Beatrice, in this place I feel I belong, whether I fit in now or not.

  She sat in her car, which she had parked in the dusty, unpaved parking lot, a ten minute walk from Pleinmont Tower. She smoked a cigarette, stared out at the ocean. Music played on the radio, very softly.

  She had been sitting here for almost an hour, and in all that time only two hikers came by. In spite of the magnificent sunset the many tourists on the island hardly seemed drawn to this place. Beatrice imagined that most of them were sitting down to dinner — it was a little after eight-thirty — or preferred to seek out the sandy bays to the south and east of the island; they were making campfires, or ambling dreamily along the cliff paths. All the better. She was happy to remain undisturbed.

  She had dropped Helene off at Kevin’s and excused herself. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I know it’s impolite to cancel at such short notice but I can’t eat anything. It’s just not possible. I …” She had looked at him imploringly, hoping for his understanding. “Don’t be angry with me. I have to be alone.”

  “She spoke to Alan on the phone,” Helene had tossed in, raising her eyebrows in suggestion. “And yet again it was … unpleasant.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kevin. He looked shockingly pale. It didn’t escape Beatrice’s notice that his hands were shaking slightly. “Was he, again …?”

  She nodded. For the moment she couldn’t make a sound.

  “Oh, God,” said Kevin. “I’m sorry.” He ran both hands through his hair. Already it was sticking up in every direction, an unusual sight if you knew how put together he usually looked.

  “Where is Franca?” he asked. “Is she following on her own?”

  “Kevin, I’m sorry, but Franca isn’t coming either,” said Beatrice. She bit her lip. Franca had asked her in the early afternoon to tell Kevin on her behalf that she couldn’t come, but after the phone call with Alan she had completely forgotten.

  It’s unacceptable how we’re treating one another, she thought. Kevin has cooked for three guests, and now only one has come.

  “Franca’s husband showed up unexpectedly,” Helene explained, “and the two of them apparently have a few extremely problematic matters to clear up with each other. She has to spend the evening with him.”

  Kevin was frighteningly ashen in the face. “So we two are alone,” he said to Helene. “Heavens, I thought … I’ve cooked a ton of food and …”

  “I’m really sorry,” Beatrice repeated. “It’s not a good day today, not in any respect. Not for any of us.”

  “For me it is,” Helene smiled. She was draped in sky blue silk, her dress had a puffy twill skirt that recalled the petticoats of the ’50s. To Beatrice she looked a bit grotesque, but she herself seemed extremely pleased.

  “I’m looking forward to an evening with you, Kevin,” she went on. “We’ll have wonderful conversation, won’t we? It’s always so cozy and harmonious at your place. And dinner smells marvelous, yet again.”

  Kevin had accompanied Beatrice back to her car and asked again if she didn’t still want to stay, but she had abruptly declined — which she was sorry for right away. After all, it was she who had behaved impolitely, not he. It baffled her that he was putting so much stock in her being there. Usually he insisted on meeting with Helene alone, so he could ask her for cash without being disturbed.

  Not my problem, she had thought finally, I can’t think about Kevin right now. I’ve got worries enough.

  Now she was stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette in the car’s ashtray. She opened the door and got out. She needed fresh air, she had to take a few steps, walk around a bit. The wind was chilly at this time of night; she sunk deeper into her jacket. She went along the path a ways, then turned left and went over the field, which led towards the large cliffs off the shore. There was no path here, the ground was rocky and uneven, but ahead of her there was only the ocean and around her only the cliffs, the fields, and solitude. The overwhelming feeling of freedom that she always found at this place lit upon her in this moment as well, but her worries weighed on her too heavily for her to really be able to abandon herself to it, to really be able to permit it entry.

  For half the day she had fought with herself about whether she should call Alan, and the whole time it had seemed to her as if an inner voice was warning her against it. Then she had spoken to Franca, and Franca hadn’t found anything at all wrong with the thought that she could call Alan. And in the end she’d thought, What’s the problem, really? I want to talk to my son, I want to ask him how he’s doing. It’s the most normal thing in the world.

  At four o’clock she had called his office and learned that he had cancelled all his appointments that day and stayed home. Deeply unsettled, she had dialed his home number, and for an eternity no one had come to the phone. At the last second, as she was about to hang up, Alan had answered. In that first moment she hadn’t realized that it was he, then she had realized and was stunned.

  Even now, on the rough fields, which lay bathed in the red-gold light of the wonderful early summer evening, she felt the icy cold, the pain of that moment. She remembered every word, every silence, every breath of the conversation.

  “Whoizzit?” had come slurring out of the receiver, and she had asked in return, “Hello?”

  “Whoizzit?” repeated the voice on the other end, and at that moment everything inside her screwed up tight.

  “Alan?”

  “Yeah. Whoizzit?”

  “It’s me. Beatrice. Mum. Alan, are you sick? You sound so strange.”

  She knew that he wasn’t sick, but she clung to a small shred of irrational hope.

  It took a while for him to answer. It seemed difficult for him to collect his thoughts and focus. “Mum?”

  “Yes. Alan, how are you? Is everything alright?”

  “Oh … ‘Course … Everything’s alright.” He spoke haltingly, swallowed single syllables. “How … are … you?”

  “Alan …” Her voice sounded like clinking glass. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Oh God … Mum … is … is that why you called?” He sounded so garbled that she could hardly understand him.

  “Alan!” It seemed to her like she had to steady him with her voice. “Why have you been drinking? It’s the middle of the day! Why aren’t you in the office?”

  “One … one whiskey,” he said, concentrating hard. “Honest … one … tiny little … whiskey.”

  “It wasn’t any tiny little whiskey. It was more than a few doubles. At least. You’re completely drunk.”

  “Non … nonsense. Mum, you … you’re pretty hys … hysterical.” It took him a lot of effort to get the word out. “Don’t wo … worry. I’m do … doing well … Honest.”

  “You are absolutely not doing well, otherwise you wouldn’t be so drunk in the middle of the day. Where’s Maya?”

  “Maya?”

  “Yes. Maya! She’s been living with you since a few weeks ago. You know. Where is she?”

  “She …’snot here.”

  “Where is
she then?”

  “I … dunno.”

  “You don’t know? You must know if you live together. Alan, concentrate now!” Despairingly, she tried to tear single strands of memory from his alcohol-clouded brain. “Where is Maya? Have you been fighting?”

  He didn’t understand what she was asking him, tried to satisfy her with meaningless news, stammered something or other about a case he’d been busy with the previous year. He paused for so long in between that Beatrice thought he wasn’t even on the line anymore. But then he would suddenly start slurring again, babbling disjointedly, and once he laughed out loud, laughed so shrilly and hopelessly that it cut her heart in two. Eventually, in the hour that followed, she found out with painstaking effort and by repeating her questions over and over again that Maya had gone for good — or more precisely, that he’d thrown her out.

  “She …’s with Frank now,” he explained, after taking some time trying to remember the name of the other man that Maya had taken up with. “I told her she … she should stay with him.”

  “That’s smart, Alan. The only thing you could have done. Alan, listen,” she had tried to put on a matter-of-fact tone despite her despair, “Alan, you are never to see this girl again. Do you understand? Maya is no good for you. Every time it’s the same. It doesn’t work between you two, and you’re worse and worse off because of it. Are you listening? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Eventually, she had gotten him far enough along that he dutifully assured her he would not start things up with Maya again. But Beatrice suspected he didn’t really know what was going on. She tried to convince him to put all his bottles away, put himself to bed, and under no circumstances touch another drop of alcohol for the rest of that day. He made that promise also, but it seemed unlikely to her that he would keep it. He would tap into all the reserves he could find in his apartment, and these were not insignificant.

  She had ended the call and sunk into a deep depression, hadn’t known what she should do, had wandered around the house without a plan, had finally gone into the garden and had begun to clear weeds from the rose bushes. But her hands had been shaking as she worked, and her legs had been like jelly. At some point Franca had shown up, her face deathly pale.

  “Where’s your husband gone?” Beatrice had asked, somewhat mechanically, since at that moment she was barely interested.

  “We went to lunch at the Chalet hotel,” said Franca, “on Fermain Bay. They had a room available there, and he went ahead and took it.” She seemed nervous, unsettled.

  “I can’t go with you to Kevin’s tonight,” said Franca. “I have to meet Michael again. It’s … there are a lot of things that have to be settled. And so I’ve got to see him again. If you could give me Kevin’s phone number …”

  “I’m going inside anyway, I’ll call him,” Beatrice said and rose teeteringly to her feet. There was no sense in keeping it up with the roses, she felt sick, and eventually she’d collapse. She went inside, but then suddenly she didn’t have the energy to talk to Kevin; she put off the task of calling him and retreated to her room, where she stayed till evening. Finally, she heard Helene getting ready in the bathroom. As usual, the old woman was humming to herself and gave off an impression of self-satisfaction that brought out the aggression in Beatrice.

  With Franca things aren’t good, and with me things aren’t good, she thought with scorn, but she doesn’t notice any of it and acts like everything’s alright.

  At some point Franca left to meet Michael; she wore the new, short dress that Helene had bought her in St. Peter Port. With her lightly tanned skin, freshly washed hair and a bit of lipstick on, she looked better than ever, though she seemed serious and sad.

  Her husband’s going to throw a fit trying to win back her heart, thought Beatrice, but I don’t think he’ll succeed.

  And now she was walking among the cliffs, because she’d felt incapable of dealing with an evening with Helene. If she could have been alone with Kevin, she would have told him about the phone call, she would have spoken with him about the things that were bothering her. But she couldn’t have listened to Helene’s commentary. She didn’t want to tell her anything. Alan’s horrible condition was none of Helene’s business. It was bad enough that she suspected anything; she had overheard the phone call, and naturally she could figure some of it out herself. She knew about his problem. Everyone on Guernsey knew about it. And a lot of people in London probably did as well.

  God, I knew it, she thought, I knew it, I knew it. When I heard Maya had gone to him, I knew right then what would happen.

  She had been walking fast, her breathing was heavy. She climbed up the cliff that had appeared right in front of her. Her hands touched the bare stone, which was still warm from that day’s sun. As always, it seemed to her as if some of the stone’s strength flowed into her. The magic never failed, and even on this terrible day it proved a consolation. She grew a little calmer, a little more relaxed. She sat down on a rock at the highest point of the cliff and held her head in her hands.

  Damn it all, she thought, he’ll never be rid of it. He can’t do it. Something always happens to pull him back.

  She had been so horrified to hear him slurring on the telephone because she knew his voice when he was in this condition, when we was too drunk to even stand up straight, when speech failed him, when he sounded like a little child, could hardly form a thought and certainly not think it through to the end. She had seen him like this more times than she could count.

  When was the first time? She wondered. She searched her memory. He must have been twenty-one or twenty-two. The semester was over and he had been on Guernsey for summer holidays. He had been slow to open up about his problems; they had had to do, as far as she could remember, with a few failed exams. After he had spoken of them once, he couldn’t stop anymore, it had consumed him, worried him day and night. Neither Helene nor Beatrice had considered the event as the catastrophe it presented for him, but now Beatrice thought that she should have been more on the alert.

  A person doesn’t talk about something constantly if it doesn’t deeply concern them. One night she had heard him come home and fall heavily on the stairs; she had come out and had recoiled at the alcohol fumes that wafted towards her.

  Alan lay spread out on the two bottom steps, groaning. His shirt was untucked, he had lost his jacket in the hallway. His hair stood every which way, his face was red.

  “H … hello Mum,” he slurred. He tried to stand up but immediately fell back down.

  “Good Lord, Alan, what have you done?” She bent over him, lifted his head, ran her fingers over his burning cheek.

  “I … don’t feel good,” Alan murmured.

  Naturally, Helene had also woken up by then and had hurried down. She reacted with shock, was almost hysterical.

  “Oh no, what’s wrong? Is Alan hurt? Good God, he isn’t drunk is he? He stinks terribly of alcohol! Do you think he …?”

  “He has,” Beatrice said curtly, “and every young man does now and again. Now help me get him to his room.”

  Together they took Alan up the stairs. On the way he vomited, which brought renewed shrieks from Helene. She made a huge drama of the story, blew it out of proportion — Beatrice had thought back then. Now she thought: it was as if she’d seen the tragedy’s beginning!

  Lying in bed, Alan had talked non-stop, and it was always about the exams that he had failed. Beatrice had undressed him and cleaned him up and told him he should forget the stupid exams; he’d take them again, and in no time it would all be water under the bridge. She had told herself that something had gone wrong for him, and he, deeply frustrated, had gone out and gotten tanked. What person had never had something like that happen to them?

  It happened to Alan every night for the rest of the summer. He went out with friends and came back home completely drunk. A few times he never eve
n came back, and Beatrice went looking for him, found him by the harbor in St. Peter Port, lying on park benches or on the rocks. Often he would be lying in his own vomit. She knew that it wasn’t normal any longer. It was happening too often, and his consumption was too excessive. He didn’t simply get drunk. It seemed like he wanted to drink himself to death. It seemed like he found life so unbearable that he was always trying to run away from it, once and for all. Beatrice clung to the hope that it would happen only during the summer holidays, during these summer holidays. When he was back at college, had to work regularly, he could hardly afford this kinds of carousing. Then he would have to find his way back into a different way of life.

  He didn’t find his way back into a different way of life, at least not for long. There were periods when he was more sober, but that only meant that his alcohol consumption held itself within certain limits that allowed him to act without calling attention to himself. He needed a certain amount every day for him to be “good” — successful, communicative, self-confident. If he stayed under that amount, he became shaky and nervous. If he went past it, then he was lying in a corner somewhere, and there was nothing more to be done with him. In this way, he made it seem for a long while to those around him — even Beatrice — like everything was alright with him. If you didn’t know the typical markers of a habitual drinker — the enlarged pores, the red nose, the yellow color in the cheeks, the heavy bags under the eyes — you would have taken him for a healthy, stable man, who sometimes looked a bit rough, which, however, could be put down to stress and overwork. It had taken Beatrice years to realize that her son drank constantly. That he countered every problem of day-to-day life with alcohol. Every challenge at work, every bit of strife with colleagues or clients, every frustration with his relationships. Later, she wouldn’t have been able to say exactly what finally made her aware of it. It had been a creeping awareness, a slow process over the course of which she had learned to take note of the signs, to become sharp-eared and sharp-eyed. Eventually, she could no longer manage to keep deceiving herself. Her son was an alcoholic. And there seemed to be no way to help him. She could only keep trying to make him understand that she was there. That he — whatever happened — never had to be shy about coming to her.