by Tor Udall
‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘Bits.’ She wipes her nose on her arm, her snot leaving a silvery trail. ‘But how can I help her? You told me that everything will fade away, that I can’t make a difference.’ She stands up, frustrated. ‘I don’t want to be useless. I love these plants, but I want real friends, I want—’
‘But, Milly, don’t you realise? If you’re remembering, you might be able to leave.’
He can only see her silhouette under the branches. Her voice is so quiet he can hardly hear.
‘And then what?’
Harry won’t survive it. ‘I’m sure there’ll be kids to play with . . .’
Look at him, pretending he knows what will become of her, but he’s just flailing around in the darkness like everyone else.
Milly reluctantly returns to the bench. She searches his face for what frightens her, but all she finds there is a friend. She’s remembering the million things she has lost and can never fetch back; she’s beginning to realise the world is unfair.
Harry squeezes her hand. ‘You remember all of it? You have to piece it together bit by bit. What colour was the sky that day, what were you doing . . .’
‘Mum had to change a nappy. Then we agreed to meet at half-past.’
‘Where?’
‘A glasshouse.’
‘Which one? Come on, Milly, you need to remember. Relive it. And this time I won’t interfere.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘Don’t be soft.’ He knows if he glances up, her hope will break him. His callused hands become fascinating. ‘We don’t even know if this will work. I could ruin your chances . . .’
She looks at him squarely. ‘But you’ll help?’
‘Of course.’ His ancient eyes are full of tears. ‘How did it start?’
She shrugs. ‘With a blank sheet of paper.’
Milly says goodbye to the bookshop, the plastic dog outside the butcher’s, and the fish with their glassy eyes, lying in beds of ice in the fishmonger’s window. She even waves goodbye to a couple of flies circling above the mackerel. But how can she say goodbye to every house and tree, each cat skulking along the pavement, every passing car full of people? So Milly stops trying and dawdles on the street, peering into a doorway where a man is cutting a key. A few minutes later she strolls to the main road, where the skateboarder performs his usual tricks.
‘See ya, James.’ As she reaches the pedestrian crossing, she yells, ‘I always liked your trainers, by the way.’
After entering the Gardens, she is ambushed by a memory: her dad wrapping a towel around her dripping shoulders and giving her a squeeze. She remembers the smell of his ironed shirts, how his cheek scratched against hers; the way he sang along to Simon and Garfunkel and said, ‘Mini Milly, I love you a million.’ She can recall the daily noises of the kitchen, toast popping up, her mother calling from upstairs, ‘Have you got your cardy?’ Now she’s walking towards Temperate House hoping that her mum doesn’t only come on the thirteenth of each month, but on the ninth of April.
The mother is sitting on the bench dedicated to Milly. Her knees are pressed together, a bouquet by her feet. She is holding the empty cellophane in her soap-dried fist. Today is her daughter’s eleventh birthday. But there’s no point in Milly shouting, or waving her arms. She sits down, her fingers touching the back of her mum’s hand. Too late, she recognises the Russian wedding ring, the white moons on her nails that was something to do with calcium, but she stops herself remembering further. She cannot hold it. Her mum is focused on a passing peacock.
‘Pretty, ain’t it?’
The woman doesn’t answer. Her fingers twitch in response to an imaginary ant wandering along her hand, then she smooths down her skirt as if brushing away crumbs. Once she has tidied the yellow flowers, she walks away, leaving Milly alone with the grass and the sky.
Her nails dig into her palms but still she squeezes tighter. She walks to the Japanese Gateway, then all the way to Queen Charlotte’s Cottage; she walks so far her hip sockets ache. As she passes through the Redwood Grove she studies the colossal trees that have been her four-poster bed, the dead leaves her mattress. Harry always props himself up against a trunk, waiting for her to sleep. Each night, she still fakes slumber so she can feel his goodnight kiss. This is what has rooted her here – the shy tenderness of a man who will never be a dad. But she doesn’t want to be like him, forever haunting these Gardens. She has given up hope of changing anything that matters. As she makes her way to the Wounded Angel, her eyes well up at the magnolias in full flower.
The marble angel has a noble face, his hair stretched back into a stony plume of feathers. Harry’s muddy boots peek out from behind the plinth then he takes a step forward and hands Milly a white square of paper. Now all she has to remember is the art of origami.
Under Harry’s watchful gaze, she kneels down on the grass. She creases the paper like Chloe showed her, folding this way and that, until she’s tucking the paper backwards into the base of the hull. She tries really hard to fit the pieces together: what happened that day, and in what order. Then she folds one of the triangles into the main sail and it finally looks like a boat. She checks she’s done everything correctly, then glances up – Harry has gone. Her throat feels like she’s just swallowed a gobstopper. She is alone and the scene is set. This is how it was.
Milly picks up the boat and squeezes the flower press into her trouser pocket. Once she reaches the lake she sits down and swings her legs back and forth over the edge. A couple of grebes are mirroring each other in a graceful duet. Milly looks beyond the sunlit surface to the huge clumps of blanketweed; then Jonah arrives on the other side of the water. It takes all her willpower not to run over to the safe haven of his chest. She dithers, unsure if she should go ahead. But Jonah hasn’t seen her. He’s drumming his fingers against Audrey’s bench, tapping along to a tune that no one else can hear – and look, the sky is a seamless blue, just like last time.
Milly grazes her elbow as she leans over the brink of the lake. Carefully launching the boat, she watches it float for a few seconds, then sink. After saying goodbye to Chloe, she’d returned to the water. Now she’s balancing her weight over the edge, further and further, just like before, until the flower press drops from her pocket. A slow-motion fall. All those things saved from dying, all those months of collecting, lost. She remembers reaching, the flower press bobbing precariously on the surface. She lowers her body down into the lake, her muscles bracing.
Jonah hears splashing. He pulls his gaze from Audrey’s bench and sees Milly wading into the lake. It looks like she is trying to reach something, perhaps a large piece of bread.
‘What are you doing? Get out of there!’
She doesn’t listen. She goes deeper then loses her footing. Her head plunges under, and all that is left are ripples that vanish. Jonah tears off his shoes then throws off his jacket. When the spluttering child surfaces, something dark drips from her forehead.
‘Milly!’
Her strokes are uneven. She sinks, comes up for breath, then is pulled down again. Jonah looks around for help, but there are only a few coots by Audrey’s bench. He wrenches off his jumper and wades in.
The lake is shallow, reaching his calves, his knees, but then there is a drop, the cold flooding his groin until Jonah is swimming in water greasy with weeds. The ducks leave noisily, appalled by the intrusion of hectic, human limbs.
‘Milly! Sweetheart!’
He ventures underwater, but the blanketweed is blinding. His jeans are so heavy he struggles to surface.
‘Someone’s drowning. A little girl. Please!’
Jonah refuses to lose this child. Not this one. As he dives down again he thinks about his children, how he would have done anything to save them. But then he glimpses Milly through the cloudy water. She is walking serenely across the bottom of the lake. This must be a dream. Jonah feels an intense pressure in his chest. He reaches up for air, his mouth full of algae
and bewilderment; then he glimpses a man in a suit standing on the island in the middle of the lake. The stranger from Audrey’s funeral. How did he get there? Why won’t he help? Perhaps these visions are the thoughts of a man losing oxygen to his brain. Jonah submerges again, his eyes groping through the stirred water. The weeds entangle his limbs, a rising panic. Searching for Milly, his arms flail.
Be calm. Think.
Jonah becomes still. Suspended in the rippling light, everything is muffled. But he hears a voice ask: Why not let go? Its audacity shines brightly in the water. Could he follow his wife anywhere? He closes his eyes and the questions cease pounding. This is the silence when your head is underwater, the soundlessness of sleep. The world stops moving.
In the absence of time there is only pause, a faith uncomplicated. Jonah looks up at the sky above the water, the sunlight dancing, and his thoughts feel crystalline, fluid. This is a strange kind of drowning. He thought he would remember his past, but what he sees are the endless possibilities of the future. He is clutching a newborn child, holding the exact weight of hope in his arms.
As the impulse to survive surges through his waterlogged body, the distress hits; the crushing of his lungs, his ribs crying out like a dam breaking. He looks up to see the man standing on the island’s edge, shimmering above him. Next to Harry Barclay is Milly, soaked and shivering. Both are shaking their heads.
Jonah surrenders: not a giving in, but a giving upwards, to something greater than him. It powers his muscles to wrench free from the weeds, it pulls his body to the surface; he splutters green spit. Milly is gulping down tears.
As the man leads her away, Jonah scrambles through the water.
‘Wait!’
Pulling himself on to the island, Jonah staggers to standing. Half-running, half-falling through the copse, there is no one to be seen. He lurches around an empty island with just a swan for company, then comes the crushing realisation of his mistake. Perhaps she is still underwater, drowning. He squints at the surface of the lake; then notices a couple by the edge.
‘Did you see a child with me? In the water?’
The couple cock their heads. He can see what they’re thinking: who is this crazy idiot marooned on an island?
‘You just dived in, screaming,’ the guy shouts. ‘Are you OK?’
Bile rises in Jonah’s throat until he vomits weeds and water.
It doesn’t take long for a crowd to gather. They stare at the big, soaked man, doubled over. A woman makes a phone call, while another turns her children away, pulling their heads to her soft belly. We are the lucky ones. Safe.
The Bird Keeper waves. ‘Don’t worry, sir. I’m coming to get you.’
Jonah’s legs convulse then give way. It is only now, when he drops to the muddy ground, that he feels the glacial temperature of his clothes, his skin developing a rash from the water.
When the rowing boat arrives, the Bird Keeper wraps him in a tartan blanket and helps him into the hull. As he is rowed back to the mainland, Jonah notices the heron standing in the reeds, and feels just as detached; a mere witness. He becomes aware of his skin lying loosely over his bones, his used muscles. He listens to the creak of the oar, the paddle tearing free from the blanketweed. He feels the bobbing of the boat, as soothing as a cradle; then he sees the pity scratched into the Bird Keeper’s brow.
The flower press still sits on the bottom of the lake. When Milly reached for it, her hand became wedged between two rocks. She fought to free herself, but eventually she was suspended in a calm grave.
The drought that summer had clogged the water with weeds. Growing three feet each day, they hid her body. But, a few days later, her decomposing corpse ballooned with gases, the pressure dislodging her broken wrist. When she floated to the surface, the Bird Keeper discovered the girl riddled with insects. Her polyester T-shirt was still wrapped around her ribs, and her plimsolls, covered in algae, were straining at the seams. She had bloated feet.
When Harry had seen her mother panic, he had instinctively run to the lake. It was natural to help; he was full of bravado from his first encounter with Audrey. Carried away with the belief that he could save people, he waded in. Underneath was a murky haze. As he yanked the girl’s trapped hand, he could feel the bones in her wrist snapping. Her kicking legs stilled, then, with one last wrench, he set her free. Holding her, he felt triumphant; then he saw her body beneath him. The girl in his arms opened her eyes and gave a bemused, wet grin.
Christ. He felt sick. He carried her to land then stumbled towards the Ruined Arch. If he did it quickly enough she might not notice. As he placed her feet down on the path, she was disorientated. He guided her into the central tunnel, shooing her along as if he were encouraging a baby bird, but she walked out the other side.
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ he gasped.
He tried to persuade her to walk through again. Holding her wriggling arm as tenderly as possible, he knew she was scared of him. Who wouldn’t be? She kicked him in the shin.
Running away, she found a barefoot woman.
‘Emily!’
Her mother looked through the soaked, bedraggled girl then continued her frantic run across the diagonal of the Gardens. Milly didn’t know who she was or what she was supposed to be doing; she turned back to see Harry standing in a puddle, his suit dripping. She didn’t have much choice but to trust him. She was delighted when, a few weeks later, he gave her a new flower press. That was the first time she hugged him.
As the seasons passed, the sight of her mother would stir her, like a prod on the back, or suddenly remembering she’d left her glove on a bus. But for her mum, it was different. All that remained was a book of stickers, a much-loved bear, and the awful shock of seeing Milly’s fingerprints left behind on the kitchen window.
‘I almost killed him,’ she says.
Harry’s jacket is draped around Milly’s shoulders.
‘Jonah’s fine,’ he comforts. ‘It was a scare, but . . .’
‘You were right. We can only cause trouble.’
Her skin is goose-pimpled, her corduroys muddy and drenched.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I think I trapped you here. I was so carried away by saving Audrey . . .’
Her hair drips on to the page. Harry tries to dry her arms with his jumper, but it is scratchy, useless.
The image is clear on Jonah’s computer screen: a school photo of Emily Richards accompanying a newspaper report of her drowning. Her hair is combed, her red cardigan neatly buttoned. Her smile is cheeky.
Jonah must be imagining things, but the truth stares at him, mocking. He turns to the photo above the piano, but Milly’s blurred elbow could easily be his thumbprint. He even remembers Audrey talking about the tragedy. There were posters of a missing child outside the station. His subconscious must have been playing tricks on him: the delusions of a man who never allowed himself to say how much he had let himself love his children.
Jonah doesn’t believe in ghosts. He refuses to accept his experience, but at night he dreams of a child’s corpse on an autopsy table, her tiny frame pale. Her fingernails are lined with mud. Under a hallowed light, her mouth is prised open. From her throat grow leaves and buds, and on her tongue is a pressed flower: a primrose.
Jonah believes it is he who has drowned. Like Audrey, he lingers in a liminal space: a threshold. He calls in sick at work, and, over the next few days, reads everything he can about Milly. The photograph of her father looks nothing like Harry. Thirty years old, the papers said – a cabbie. But Jonah’s convinced he saw the two of them playing chess; only now does he place the orange scarf, the tweed cap. He trawls the Gardens, hoping to glimpse Milly. Instead he finds her bench near Temperate House, sitting between an ash and a maple.
On the thirteenth of April, Jonah watches a family ritual. Her father is skinny, his elbows so threadbare that they seem to have been dipped in talcum powder. Underneath his cheap suit is the suffocation of a man who looks after everyone else’s sorro
w. While he tends to a little boy, his wife arranges the flowers then warily raises her chin at the watching stranger. Jonah tries to stop swaying. He leans towards the tilt of the sky, worried that gravity won’t hold him.
As they walk towards the crumbling folly, Milly is chatty.
‘Miss Tanner told us about Jesus and Allah – and an elephant god I can’t remember the name of – but I’m sure they know I was naughty. Mum told me not to touch the flowers. Or talk to strangers.’ She is pulling on Harry’s sleeve. ‘Do you know what happens next? Where I go, do you?’
He shakes his head. ‘I’ve never been there.’
He expects Milly to falter, but the only sign of anxiety is her holding his hand too tightly. It is Harry who is nervous.
‘Will you be OK?’ asks Milly.
‘Of course. Once you’re there, you’ll wonder why you stayed. There’ll be comfy beds and hammocks. Loads of gardens . . .’
‘Please come with me.’
They stop walking. As he turns to face her, her eyes are smarting with tears. He knows he should chaperone her – to where, to what? Nothing? He can’t exchange that for the redwoods, the Lucombe.
‘This is where I belong. Everything I love is here . . .’
‘Everything?’
‘Of course not.’ He squats down to her level. ‘You will be OK, I promise.’
Once they arrive at the Arch, the only thing alive is the ivy. Milly becomes jittery and Harry prays that she’s going somewhere even more beautiful than this garden. He clasps her tightly, taking in the scent of her hair, the pressure of her limpet grip around his neck. Every part of him wants to say, don’t go, don’t leave me. But when she frees herself she barely looks at him. She is pouring her strength elsewhere.
As she stands before the three arches, her tiny back is determined. She has a child’s simple acceptance of what has happened: all it took was a pocket too small.
The folly waits, its bricks pretending to crumble. As Milly steps into the central arch, her leg becomes fainter, like a sketch fading on paper. Her hips grow paler, then her torso; a rubbing out. What must it be like to become undone, just particles of dust?