The China Garden

by Kristina Olsson

  Faces – all unknown, unfamiliar – turned as she approached the new grave. A woman, middle-aged, pleasant, introduced herself as the celebrant. Others approached and squeezed Laura’s hand. She could only look at the fresh, red soil and the coffin, which seemed child-sized, wrong. There was an air of waiting, and when she glanced up towards the path there was Fergus, looking just like a lawyer in a dark suit, striding towards the group.

  He walked straight to her and stood by her side. He’d shaved; his hair wasn’t combed but it was tidy, pulled back from his face. He looked at her. Sorry, he said. I was delayed. She hadn’t realised he planned to come. He nodded at the others and greeted a couple by name; the celebrant composed her features to begin. Low murmurs faded. Fergus put his arm around Laura’s shoulders briefly and squeezed, and she felt her nervousness evaporate into the awful multi-coloured checks of the tie knotted clumsily at his throat.

  From behind the lemon gum tree on the rise, Kieran watched the assembly of people below him. The whole scene was very still, or seemed to be. He knew though that this stillness held a thousand movements: breaths rising and falling, lips moving, leaves lifting. And there was this one other thing about it: the absence of noise. The word tableau came to his head. He felt that he was looking at a picture in one of Angela’s books, and at that lovely word. Tab-lo. There was a sense of Angela looking down at it all too, from somewhere over his shoulder; he felt an urge to turn to her and say, Look. You should paint this. The group of individuals, the heads bowed. The shapes they made together and alone. The way their eyes converged on the grave and occasionally drifted off skywards, or somewhere distant.

  His own eyes came back to the tall thin figure that was his grandmother. She was standing next to a woman who might, he thought, be Iris from the shop. They were both old women, but he would, he knew suddenly, easily pick Cress in a crowd even if he couldn’t see her face. It was her shoulders. They were sharp as small rocks; no clothing could disguise the bones and angles they made. Even now that her body was slightly hunched forward, those shoulders still seemed set, ready for work. That was how she looked today, he thought. Ready for work.

  A woman in the group was holding a book open in front of her. He craned his head around to see her face. She was talking. Looking down at the book and then up, down and then up. From here he could hear nothing. Only a shushing noise as a light wind played around the leafy trees, and then stopped. He glanced about. It was all deep green and brown with wells of shade from the boundary trees, huge figs and clumps of eucalypt, and in the corner a jacaranda in full flower, an oversized crinoline in deep purple.

  Angela loved that colour. He tried to think if she’d ever painted jacarandas. She thought they were pests, he knew that, spilling their juicy flowers everywhere, clogging gutters, smothering other growth. But once he’d found a list of colours she was experimenting with, and under a heading that read truth in colour were things like flesh green, tongue, jacaranda blue (?). He’d never got around to asking her what the question mark had meant. It was another unanswerable thing, something else he was left with. But he’d known immediately what colour she meant by tongue.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a low whirring noise and he was startled by the sudden movement of the coffin. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, had kept his eyes on the figures in their loose little circle, the frame of grass and headstones and sky. Now it shuddered slightly and began a slow descent into the hole which, he realised, had been there beneath it all the time.

  Kieran was transfixed by this. It might have been magic. If you wanted it to be. He shuffled his feet a little behind the tree, trying to get a better view; perhaps he was missing something. Perhaps invisible human hands were at work beneath it, in the ground. But he knew as soon as he thought this that it wasn’t true. Knew that something mechanical and clever was involved, and that the absence of hands was the whole idea.

  He looked to see if everyone else was watching too. In those moments – there and then gone – one face stopped him, or at least, its profile. The small movements of others, a head bent, a hand raised, had revealed this face and he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. A drop of blue-black hair nearly concealed it but that was what made him sure it was her. The woman at the house. With blue-black hair, just like Angela’s.

  He found he wasn’t surprised, not really; he might have known she would be here. He swayed slightly, as much as the leaves around him, not more, and he could see the rest of her: it was just as he thought. The black clothes and the serious air around her didn’t change what he’d decided the first time. That she might be someone, like Angela, who would not be afraid.

  The coffin was gone now. Each person’s eyes followed it. They had all, he thought, arranged their bodies in a certain way, sort of folded inwards, as if they all had sunken chests. Their chins were lowered, hands clasped in front. Except Cress. She was looking up. She was staring straight ahead, and even though her gaze was not in his direction Kieran shifted slightly again, as if her vision was circular and he might be seen. Cress’s shoulders, he noted, were still set, she was at attention, a soldier on guard.

  Then the others were looking up and around, their bodies their own again, free to move. The woman with the book shook a few hands and left. The others gradually began to follow, leaving flowers at the head of the grave. He watched Cress. She began to walk away too, still clutching her flowers, then stopped and turned back. The others kept drifting away. Kieran took the opportunity, swiftly, quietly, to swap trees. He had to crouch behind the low shrub – it was a Rose of Sharon, he recognised it, the flowers floppy and big – but from this position he had a much better view. He could see Cress’s face clearly. He watched as she walked up to the edge of the grave. She crouched beside it, and pulled one flower from the bunch. He couldn’t see what it was, what kind of flower, only that it had loose petals, because now Cress was plucking them from the stem, scattering them in the air over the grave, over the coffin. He looked at her face. Was she crying? No, he didn’t think she was. But her lips were moving. She was talking.

  He was too far away to hear or even to lip-read; the words fell into the grave with the petals. Gone. She pressed her lips together. Then she stood. Kieran realised with a start that this was an effort for her. She steadied herself with one hand on the ground. Upright again, she brushed her hand against her dress. Then, turning, she placed the rest of the flowers, all pinks and yellows, with those of the others. Adjusted her handbag, pushing it up on her arm. Lifted her head, looked around. Kieran took a breath, sucking in his chest and stomach, minimising himself. He stared at the veins on the leaves now right up against his face, the fleshy green. When he dared to look again she was almost at the cemetery gate.

  Fergus bought cognac. They sat in the lounge bar of the Commercial Hotel. Laura thought: There is everything to talk about but nothing to say. It would all have been swallowed, at any rate, by the carpet and its thick blue swirls, or by the puffs of humidity that entered with every patron from the street, or her own obstinate mind. All morning her head had seemed full of clouds that wouldn’t break. She was reminded of the stupor of high sub-tropical summers, of storms that hovered but didn’t come. Despite the air-conditioning she felt sweat in all the creases of her skin.

  Then she was struck by a question – it felt like a blow, almost physical – that snapped her out of her reverie. She almost didn’t raise it, feeling negligent about not knowing the answer. Fergus, she said, keeping her voice steady, Do you know where my father is buried?

  He lowered his glass and frowned up at the ceiling. She felt a rush of gratitude – no surprise in his eyes, no stupid joke on his lips. I’d have to check, he said finally. I’d assume up there – he tipped his head to the side – where Angela is.

  His answer, straight, unloaded, left her free to say: I didn’t even bother to find out before I left. She looked at him. I was angry, all right.

  They dr
ank two toasts to Angela and talked about repairs to the house. She struggled to raise any interest; it was the last thing on her mind. My parents are in their graves, she thought, and I didn’t know them at all. The idea went round and round, repeating itself, so she forced herself to break it, to concentrate. To Fergus she recited the litany of work they’d discussed the day before: kitchen cupboards, windows, bathroom, back verandah. Floor. Paintwork. She sighed deeply, feeling more listless with every word.

  Finally, Fergus gathered up his coat and tie, found his keys and said, Gotta go. Then he stood and swung the coat over his shoulder. Don’t worry too much about the house, he said, I’ll be there tomorrow. We’ll make a start. She barely acknowledged the offer or what it meant. Instead she watched him pick up his glass and finish the last of his cognac. As he turned to go she said, Fergus. He looked at her. Have you still got the letters your old auntie wrote to her son?

  There had been a suggestion that people meet for tea at a café, but Cress had declined. She was in no mood for company. Instead she climbed behind the wheel of her VW and drove without intention. It was hot; she thought of parking on the seafront for the breeze, but when she came to the turn-off to the local hospital she was prompted to take it, to drive around to the rear where the old buildings still stood and stop the car beneath the spreading boughs of a poinciana. Even here the air was like a hot pool, so she got out and leaned against the bonnet, looking up at the old wing with its wide verandahs and whitewashed iron lace work.

  She stared straight ahead to the building and the lawns until she could see them: nursing sisters in their stiff white veils; patients in their dressing gowns, chenille usually, the belts tied high over swollen bellies if they hadn’t yet delivered. Little wire cots lined up in the nursery. The frightened faces of young women. The smell of phenyl and floor polish and fear.

  Her younger self was there too. Perhaps twenty-two years old, stiff with pride in her uniform, walking down the white-washed corridor of the maternity ward. Her brown leathers made a wet sound on the lino. Every surface was shiny: the floor, brass railings, windows, and as she walked she saw herself reflected at every level, the confident stride, the starched veil, her face composed. Occasionally she consulted the silver nurse’s watch on her chest.

  Cress shifted slightly on the warm metal of the bonnet. She squinted up at the building. Tried to read her own young face as it bent to a patient in a high bed, her fingers on the woman’s thin wrist. But all she could remember was the feel of the veil, the way it gripped her head, the reassurance of the fabric brushing her shoulders, her back. It had taken her months to get used to the idea of wearing it, to the idea of herself as Sister. She would find excuses to look in the mirror, to tuck in her hair or straighten the band on her forehead, amazed at her own transformation.

  At the time it seemed just a physical change – the veil altered her face, she knew, into an older, more authoritative one. But now she could see it was more than that. She moved from the car to stand in the deeper shade of the tree, her hand on the trunk for balance. Tried to merge her seventy-eight-year-old head with her younger one, there in the scrubbed corridor, at the bedsides of young women. How had she felt? That the veil had anointed her, that was how she felt; it might have been a crown. And a symbol of her separateness: wearing it, she was removed from the ordinariness and fallibility of all the female flesh around her.

  The realisation made her feel light-headed. She touched a hand to her forehead, expecting, perhaps, the reassurance of linen. You’re a good scholar, her father had said when she graduated, and she had been – assiduous with her schoolwork and then her nursing studies. She could still feel the glow of her father’s approval as she moved easily through her training years, scoring high marks despite her budding romance with Ed and the hours involved with Sunday school and church. Somehow she had found time for everything. Work hard had been the mantra at home; everything was achieved through it – jobs, houses, marriages, success. And she had been happy to believe, she could see that: all around her, at the end of the war and just after, people were doing just that, were doing what they were asked to do – rolling their sleeves up, using some elbow grease, putting their shoulders to the grindstone.

  But even then she knew there were some who weren’t, those with no initiative, no work ethic, those who suited themselves. I had nothing as a child, her father was overly fond of saying, it doesn’t mean you can’t achieve things, make something of yourself. Everyone can. It was a prelude, usually, to the hard work homily. Cress turned now from the tree and rubbed the small of her back and eased her legs, aching a little from standing and the heat, onto the driver’s seat. She rested her fingers on the steering wheel. Saw all those young women, pregnant and single, their runaway boyfriends. The families who’d relied on St Barnabas for food, who lived eight to a room in the boarding house on the estuary, the women thin and their children barefoot and bad-mouthed. It doesn’t mean you can’t achieve things.

  She had fitted the crisp white veil to her head each morning, pressing it into place, and sailed into the day to do her job. Now, leaning back in the driver’s seat, she arched her back, relaxed again, then straightened the strands of hair that fell forward as she moved, the soft, thin hair behind her ears. The veil had made her feel good, yes, but as she’d gone about her day in the wards, that seemed fair. She had earned it, after all. And all those others, all the frightened girls who called for her as their fatherless babies struggled into the light, they were different. They hadn’t made much of an effort, obviously. They hadn’t worked hard enough.

  The idea of the empty, brooding house waiting on the hill drilled a kind of panic into Laura’s stomach. She sat for a while after Fergus left and contemplated another drink, perhaps two or three. She hadn’t been drunk for years. Before Italy, before the orchard and the families she came to know and eat with, to share their jugs of home-made wine, she’d barely touched alcohol at all, turned off by memories of Angela’s years of drinking, the acrid smell around her. With Alvaro and Francesca and the Italian families, she saw quickly there was no danger. At lunch a bowl of soup, a chunk of bread and a glass of grappa, then back to work. The ritual repeated in the evening, perhaps with cheese, or pear tart.

  The memory made her long to be there, even amid the hard, repetitive work of pruning. She imagined them, Alvaro, Francesca, the boys from the farm next door, sitting down to their meal at the table under the fig tree, hands and words flying over the bowls as they ate and joked and argued. Laura realised she even missed the sharp tongue and veiled disapproval of Francesca’s mother, Anna, who often cooked the midday meal.

  These images seemed to shake off the need for gin or more cognac. Laura tucked her purse into her backpack and walked out of the hotel, retracing her earlier path.

  At the cemetery she walked slowly through the rows, stopping to read headstones blurred by a century of rain and salt. Occasionally a name would draw her closer. Olive Rose Brown. She mouthed the sounds. She thought it was a lovely name, three colours, each short, self-contained. In the next row: Dorothy May Alcorn. 7.7.1911 – 29.12.59. My dear Wife. Then a space beneath the words. Laura stood and stared. A blank space where Dorothy’s grieving husband had expected his name to go, when the time came. There must have been no one to inscribe his name for him, no children or surviving relatives. Dorothy’s husband had no one to remember him.

  Why did this – more than the funeral service, the fact that both her parents were gone, more than all the events of the week – why did this tighten her chest and fill her eyes? She had no idea who Dorothy May Alcorn was. Knew no Alcorns in the town, had no reason to mourn them. But this pathetic tombstone quietly, unobtrusively, spoke of loneliness and grief, so starkly she could recognise the emotions at last as her own. She stood beside Dorothy May and covered her face with her hands and wept.

  Finally she turned up the hill, pausing briefly at Angela’s grave, now filled and cover
ed with the sheaths of flowers brought that morning. She wandered on, looking for August’s name, remembering a conversation with Alvaro who, like Francesca and her mother and their endless extended brood, was intrigued, a little shocked, by Laura’s absent family.

  I didn’t choose it, she’d said that afternoon as they drove back from a market where only three kinds of apples had been on sale, two of them imported. They’d been talking about Italian girls who, before the great migrations of the fifties, had always taken a cutting from their own family’s fruit trees to the homes of their new husbands. So they could cook like their mothers had, Alvaro had said, and then asked her about her own family’s cooking. She’d laughed as she negotiated a narrow country road and said, A contradiction in terms. He’d frowned at her, clearly shocked. Then she’d surprised herself by saying, I wanted what you’ve got, then smiled, because Alvaro’s and Francesca’s third daughter had just been born.

  All through school and later, she’d listened to the stories of girls and women and the men who’d fathered them. It didn’t matter what the stories were – the men might have been ogres, tyrants, who ignored, slapped or just tolerated their daughters; the thing was, they were there. It didn’t matter what kind of fathers they were. She knew she could have moulded any man into the shape of the father she wanted. In the end, she’d invented the shape herself.

  This was a father who had captained a submarine during the war, sunk Japanese ships. He turned up in playground conversations, in English compositions. Every day his chest grew heavier with medals and his love for her. He took her for walks, admired her schoolwork, played catch for hours. He finally died one afternoon – after months of rich and vivid storytelling – when her Grade Five teacher, Mr Lee, called her outside during free reading. On the school verandah Angela was waiting. I was just asking your mother, Mr Lee said, his unfatherly face mock serious, even she could see that, how Admiral Lindquist is. Whether he might come along when you bring in his medals for show and tell.