The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  It was just before midnight when the exasperated server approached their table once again.

  “We’ll be closing at twelve o’clock,” he mumbled. “If I might bring you the check …”

  “I will decide myself when I’m going to go,” Michael shouted. He had gotten rather drunk by then and what was more he needed an outlet for his aggression. Franca suspected that he would start a serious argument with the server if he was to make even the slightest mistake. She quickly took out her wallet.

  “Bring me the check,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

  “You’re going to let that guy intimidate you?” Michael asked with a heavy tongue. “My wife is going to let herself be thrown out of a restaurant like some lousy deadbeat? You …”

  “We’ve been sitting here long enough,” Franca interrupted. “These people also have to get off work at some point. We should have left a long …”

  “A long nothing! That’s typical Franca, yet again. Somebody comes and says something and Franca tucks her tail between her legs. All somebody else has to do is just open their mouth and you give in. You’re the worst kind of submissive, the world hasn’t ever seen the likes of you. You …”

  “Michael!” Franca implored softly. He had gotten rather loud, the other waiters were already looking over in confusion.

  “I won’t let myself be quieted down by you!” Michael lost it.

  “I’m tired,” said Franca. “I’d like to go home.”

  “You’d like to go home? You’d like to put an end to the conversation? And you think you can get away simple as that? You drop a divorce on me and then say that now you’re tired and you have to go to bed?”

  “There’s nothing more to discuss,” said Franca. “And so it makes no sense to sit here any longer.”

  The waiter brought the check. Franca put a few bills on the table.

  “We’re not done yet,” said Michael.

  She stood up. Her knees felt wobbly. That day had weighed on her nerves, but she felt that, all in all, she had fought well for herself.

  “No, Michael,” she said. “We’re done.”

  How he got back to the hotel was his own affair. There were taxis. It wasn’t her problem. She left the restaurant, knew that he stared after her, uncomprehending, and went to her car. She could feel that in this moment he understood: it was no use trying to hold her back. The matter was decided.

  She unlocked her car door and let herself down before the steering wheel. There in front of her stood the brightly lit Castle Cornet. The ocean’s waves roared onto the dark beach.

  I’m free, she thought. It was an almost overpowering feeling, which caused her to shut her eyes tight for a few seconds. I’m free. And I took my freedom for myself. No one allocated it to me or forced it on me or granted it to me out of mercy. I took it.

  She opened her eyes. She knew that fears and self-doubt would reawaken, would again gnaw at her. But for the moment she felt a strength that was so boundless and invincible that it almost took her breath away.

  I must always remember these seconds, she thought, as long as I live. I must remember that this strength exists. I wouldn’t be able to feel it if it wasn’t there. It’s within me. It will always be within me. I only have to know it.

  She waited a few moments, until her heartbeat had settled down, then she started the car and left the parking lot.

  It was exactly midnight.

  11

  She drove through sleeping Le Variouf and crept up the steep, winding street on the edge of the village. The night was clear and dark. The sky is probably full of stars, she thought.

  She turned into the driveway, braked on seeing a car already parked there. The car was Beatrice’s. Only when she got out did she notice that Beatrice was still sitting at the steering wheel.

  She knocked on the window. Beatrice jumped, frightened, then opened the door.

  “Oh, Franca, it’s you,” she said. “I completely lost track of time. How late is it?”

  “It must be just about twelve-thirty. What are you doing in the car?”

  “I was thinking.” Beatrice got out, shook her head, as if she was trying to shake out a string of unpleasant thoughts. “There are problems with Alan, you know. Somehow I’ve not been able to get away from them all night.”

  “Was Kevin able to take your mind off it for awhile?”

  “I didn’t even go. I dropped Helene off and drove to Pleinmont Point. I sat on the cliffs there for a long time. Probably,” she laughed, and it seemed artificial, “I’ll get a cold, and that’s all I’ll have to show for tonight.”

  They walked side by side to the house, stepped inside.

  “Helene is asleep by now for sure,” said Beatrice. “How was your evening, Franca? How did it go with your husband?”

  Franca shrugged her shoulders. “It was unpleasant. But I think we’re done.”

  Beatrice looked at her searchingly. “You don’t really look sad!”

  “I’m not sad, either,” said Franca. She hung up her jacket, which she had been carrying over her arm, in the wardrobe. “I’m relieved.”

  “I’m going to quickly check in on Helene,” said Beatrice. “I want to know that she’s gotten back here alright. And then we’ll drink some red wine, and you’ll tell me about it, hmm?”

  Franca briefly touched her arm. “What’s going on with Alan?” she asked softly.

  “We can talk about that, too,” said Beatrice.

  She went up the stairs. Franca stayed downstairs in front of the mirror by the wardrobe. What does a free woman look like? she asked herself. She smiled at her reflection. The woman in the bright red dress smiled back. She looks good, she decided. Freedom seems to make a person attractive.

  Upstairs, Beatrice leaned over the railing.

  “Helene isn’t there!” she called. Her voice sounded unsettled. “She’s not in her bed.”

  “Maybe somewhere else in the house?” Franca said.

  Beatrice furrowed her brow. “Everything’s dark. And quiet. No, she’s obviously not home.”

  “Then it must have gone late over at Kevin’s. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”

  Beatrice hurried down the stairs. She seemed deeply out-of-sorts.

  “Helene can’t manage to stay up so long. At ten-thirty at the latest she’s dead tired. She’s never stayed out so late.” She seemed seriously distressed.

  “I find this very unusual,” she said.

  At quarter past one they called Kevin. Before that, they had searched through the entire house. After all, Helene could have gone down to the basement and had an unlucky fall there, Beatrice said.

  Nowhere was there any trace of her to be found.

  “Her coat isn’t in the wardrobe,” Franca confirmed. “So she hasn’t come home.”

  Beatrice grabbed the big flashlight that stood on a shelf in the kitchen. “Maybe she forgot her key and is somewhere in the garden. In the greenhouse or in the shed. But if I don’t find her there I’m calling Kevin, I don’t care if he’s sound asleep.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Franca offered.

  Both women stepped carefully through the dark garden. The flashlight painted a bright ball of light in the darkness ahead of them. The moon was just a narrow sliver in the sky; the wind, full of secrets, rustled the leaves of the trees. Franca stepped in the soft, churned up dirt of a few molehills.

  “It’s spooky out here at night,” she said, shuddering.

  Beatrice called Helene’s name, but there was no answer. They shined the flashlight into every corner of both greenhouses, rummaged through the old shed, where they found primarily bikes, discarded furniture, and a few boxes of books. Franca even climbed the ladder to the small former guest quarters. She heard a few mice go off with a pattering and got entangled
in sticky spider webs.

  “There’s no one up here!” she called down.

  “I’m calling Kevin now,” Beatrice said firmly.

  It took forever for Kevin to come to the phone. Beatrice had dialed three times, each time letting it ring endlessly.

  When he finally answered, he didn’t at all sound like he’d been asleep.

  “Hello, who’s there?” he asked. He was wide awake.

  “Kevin! My God, I was afraid you’d cut the phone off and couldn’t here it ringing. This is Beatrice. Is Helene still there?”

  “No. Not for a while now.”

  “When did she leave?”

  He was silent for a moment. “At about half past ten.”

  “Half past ten? It’s almost one-thirty. She’s not home!”

  “That’s strange,” said Kevin.

  “Strange? I find it extraordinarily unsettling. Did you see her go into the house?”

  “I didn’t even drive her home.”

  “How did she get home then?”

  “She took a cab. She called it sometime between ten and half past.”

  “But how come you didn’t drive her? That’s what you’ve always done!”

  “Yes, but not this time. I’d had too much to drink.”

  “But that never happens with you!”

  “This time it did happen, however. Is it a crime to drink a little too much on one occasion?”

  Beatrice noticed herself slowly getting angry. For God’s sake, Kevin shouldn’t be acting like everything was normal. He hadn’t played by the rules, and now Helene was nowhere to be found, and apparently he wasn’t even particularly disturbed by it.

  “Damn it, Kevin, the old woman was with you last, so you’re responsible! Who was driving the taxi?”

  “I don’t know. She called the taxi.”

  “But still you probably gave her the number.”

  “No. But there’s a number for a taxi company hanging over my telephone, she probably tried that one.”

  “Why did she herself have to …”

  “Lord, Beatrice, I was drunk! I was off the rails … she wanted to leave … now don’t give me such a hard time about it!”

  “I’d like to have the number. Something’s not right. Helene can’t have just vanished into thin air!”

  “Maybe she went out somewhere,” Kevin said.

  Beatrice snorted. “Kevin, please! We both know Helene! She’s not the kind of woman who suddenly goes off on a bar crawl in St. Peter Port! Now would you please give me the number of the taxi company? Maybe they know something about an accident.”

  She wrote down the number and said, quickly, “I’ll call you back, Kevin!” hung up and called the taxi company. She had to keep trying over and over again, until finally a woman answered. She sounded as if she had been asleep and was obviously furious about the disturbance.

  “Please excuse me,” said Beatrice, “but there’s a missing woman who rode in one of your taxis tonight. She apparently never got home.”

  A long and demonstrative yawn came from the other line.

  “Can’t this wait?” the woman asked angrily.

  “Of course it can’t wait,” said Beatrice. “Something might have happened to the old woman. I can’t put off looking till next morning.”

  “My husband was driving tonight. I’ll go wake him. He’s not going to be happy, I can tell you that.”

  Beatrice heard her shuffling off. It seemed that, very slowly, an ever-thicker growing web of fear and threat was spreading over her. The owner of the taxi company was himself the driver. He was apparently lying peacefully in bed, asleep. And so there hadn’t been any accident, which must mean that no one had been injured, which, however, only made the situation even more mysterious.

  I’ll know more in just a second, she thought, and just then felt a vague foreboding that something horrible was headed her way.

  The taxi driver, who after an almost endless amount of time finally came to the phone, grumbling and in a bad mood, reported that his sole employee was on vacation in France at the moment and therefore he was handling all trips himself. He remembered the dispatch to Torteval well, he remembered Helene, whom he had picked up there and had driven to Le Variouf.

  “A rather fearful person,” he said. “I’d spoken to her on the telephone myself and could hardly understand her. She was whispering. I almost twisted my ear off trying to figure out where she was and what she wanted. I said she should speak louder, but apparently she couldn’t.”

  “She was whispering?”

  “That’s what I said. Seemed to be totally off to me. And then when I got to Torteval, she was already standing at the corner of the main road and almost jumped in the car. Once she was in the car she seemed to feel much better. She said she wanted to go to Le Variouf. And that I should hurry.”

  That sounded more than strange, and left Beatrice deeply unsettled.

  “And did you drop her off at the foot of the driveway?” she asked. “Or did you drive her up to the front door?”

  The driver seemed to squirm a bit, but apparently he considered that the situation called for him to come out with the truth.

  “I didn’t drive up to the house,” he mumbled. “I mean, not even really onto the property. I … oh, hell, could I have known that the old lady was just going to disappear all of a sudden? I dropped her off a ways below the house, maybe a hundred yards away.”

  “Why was that?” Beatrice asked in amazement.

  “The road forks there.” It was obvious that the driver was cursing his comfort, which might now make a lot of trouble for him. “I thought that farther up I’d probably not be able to turn around so easily. There was another car pretty close behind me, and … well, the street is extremely narrow there …”

  “The streets are just as narrow practically everywhere else on the island,” Beatrice interrupted, “and you would’ve had no problem turning around in our driveway!”

  “Yes, but the old lady said the gate might be closed up there, and before she could’ve opened it … yeah, and the guy behind me was almost breathing down my neck … anyway, I asked her if it would bother her if she were to go ahead and get out where the road turns off, and she said she’d be happy to walk a few steps, it would do her good in any case. So …”

  “So you let an eighty-year-old woman walk through the night on her own! I must say, I …”

  “Barely a hundred yards!” The taxi driver was wide-awake now, and highly nervous. “Certainly not more. Surely you know the place!”

  “Somewhere on this barely-a-hundred-yard stretch,” said Beatrice, “something or other must have happened to cause Helene to not be home now. This could be a problem for you, I hope you’re clear about that!” She slammed the phone back onto the hook, looked at Franca, who stood next to her. “That goddamn idiot! Just to save himself a somewhat complicated turnaround and to get home to bed faster, he lets Helene out down below at the fork in the road! The thing to do would have been to drive up the driveway and make sure that she made it in the house alright. My God, she’s an old woman!”

  “What I’m really asking myself, though, is what can have happened along the small stretch,” said Franca. “It’s not like we’re in New York, where you can get assaulted on every street corner. Guernsey! I always thought nothing ever happened here at all.”

  “I can’t understand it.” Beatrice shook her head. “But I have an extremely bad feeling.”

  “Maybe she went over to one of the neighbors …”

  “Not this late. And anyway, everything is dark all around here. Nobody’s still awake.”

  “But then …”

  “Maybe she fell into some kind of confused state? Instead of going home, she made her way towards the cliffs …”

 
“That would be very dangerous,” said Franca. “In the dark … and she’s not exactly sure on her feet, either.”

  “Let’s go,” said Beatrice, determined. “We’ll go out again. This time we’ll take the dogs with us. And we’ll search the area outside the property.”

  Franca held her back. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “If we still haven’t found her in an hour,” Beatrice said, “then that’s what we’ll do.”

  The dogs, chief among them the irrepressible Misty, were jumping around and barking with excitement at the nighttime expedition. They sniffed wildly at the path’s edge, as if in the past eight hours at least a hundred exciting new smells had emerged. Once again the flashlight threw its bright beam, sketched mysterious images on the stone wall along the path, on the overgrown hedges, the ivy, the trees. Clouds had formed in the sky that covered the moon from time to time.

  “It’s going to rain,” said Beatrice, and Franca also noticed the heavy humidity that hung in the air.

  “Did she walk all the way to Petit Bôt?” she asked, and Beatrice replied, “I don’t understand why she would do that. She never had an affinity for the place.”

  All of a sudden, Misty, who was now a large ways ahead of them, stopped in her tracks and raised her nose, sniffing the air. She pricked up her ears, her whole body became tense. The two other dogs followed her lead. All three stood still as statues on the path.

  “Something must be up there,” said Beatrice. “Hopefully …”

  Misty howled softly. A kind of frightened uneasiness came from the dogs.

  “That doesn’t look good,” said Beatrice, and for a few seconds, both women were just as incapable of moving as the dogs.

  But then all of them started forward, the dogs in front, the two women following after. When the dogs stood still, barking loudly, Beatrice said, “Oh God, I think this is the end.”

  “What do you mean, that …” Franca began, and at this moment she saw the dark shape lying on the path ahead of her, next to which the dogs had gathered. Misty was whimpering, the other two stood with bristling fur and growled. Slowly, hesitating, Beatrice turned the beam of the flashlight onto the figure. They recognized Helene’s thin face. Her gray, shoulder-length hair had come loose from the band that she always wore and hung in disarray around her head and on the path. And then they saw the dark pool that spread over the gravel right next to her head, and Franca said in terror, “I think that’s blood!”