Walled Garden Read online

  ‘Coffee?’

  She nodded, still not trusting herself to speak. It was James who broke their silence, pushing a mug towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened, Sis. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

  Beth’s eyes filled, moved beyond words by his simple generosity. He had done it again: he had always been the first to say sorry – to Alice, to friends, to her, even when the responsibility for wrong-doing was still in question. She envied him the ability he had, to soothe and defuse conflict. It took her a moment to regain control, to measure her words. She could feel the gap between the two of them closing again, but she was cautious, still. She felt suddenly resolute: this time, she was not going to let him soothe her out of her need for her mother.

  ‘I’m sorry, too, James, but I really need to do this.’

  James’s head was bent. He seemed to be peering into his mug. When he answered her, his voice had grown very quiet.

  ‘I know. I was thinking about it upstairs. I’ve had lots of chances to say my goodbyes, and I still don’t find it easy to let her go.’

  Beth swallowed hard, trying to ease the words around the hard lump in her throat.

  ‘I just want to feel close to her for a little while, and to tell her that. I didn’t know how else to ask for it.’

  James combed his fingers through his beard, looking at her steadily. He seemed to be making up his mind about something.

  ‘To be honest, it was your assumptions about my life that really got me going.’

  Beth returned his gaze, not understanding. He took a sip of coffee, and she could see him deciding whether to continue.

  ‘Olive and I have been going through a very rough patch, lately and, well, maybe that’s why I barked at you like I did. It really pisses me off when people assume my life is all sewn up.’

  Beth felt embarrassed by James’s admission. It was like being a child again, made speechless by hot confusion. What could she say? He was probably the only man in the whole world who wouldn’t see life with Olive as a permanent rough patch; if he was suffering now, then things must be really bad.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, thanks, Sis. I’ll have to sort it out for myself.’

  ‘I know, but if you want to talk – God knows I’m no expert, I seem to spend half my life fucking up. But I can be a good listener.’

  Stop babbling, she said to herself. The words came tumbling out, tripping over one another. It was an astonishing sensation to be offering James comfort and sympathy – it had always been the other way around. She was sure that he would regard her offer with amusement: what could she possibly do for him, after all? To her surprise, he took her seriously.

  ‘Thanks, Sis. I may well take you up on that.’

  He poured more coffee and held up the pot, looking quizzically at her. She shook her head. She knew that for now, the subject was closed. Peace had been restored. Beth felt almost happy, as though something had shifted between them and finally settled into a place long prepared for it. All of her anxiety drained away, and a sense of calm filled her. Now that she felt able, she was going to see this through.

  ‘What about the sedation, James? What should we do?’

  Her question was just right, it had the tone she’d intended. They were in this together, now more than ever.

  ‘I’m happy for you to ring Dr Crowley and talk to her about it. If there’s any question of Alice suffering . . .’

  ‘There’ll be no question of that, James. Give me some credit.’

  Her smile softened the words she had spoken, and he patted her hand.

  ‘Of course; I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘It’s okay, I know you didn’t. But I’m not totally heartless, you know.’

  Beth pulled her hand away abruptly. She felt a sudden burn of bright red anger where he’d patted her.

  ‘I’ll ring Dr Crowley this evening.’

  She stood up from the table. She’d been unable to soften her tone, this time. A new, unfamiliar irritation with her brother was beginning to take root. His air of patient wisdom was suddenly jarring, a harsh note grating on her nerves. Had she never sensed this before, or was she only now beginning to recognize it for what it was? He seemed full of benign arrogance, brimming over with the gentle tyranny of the one who always knows best. But her flash of anger was short-lived: as she looked at him sitting there, hunched over the coffeepot, she felt an unaccustomed stab of pity. What she had seen as simply fatigue now appeared to her as more than that – his expression was sad, almost defeated. She felt suddenly frightened for him. He had always seemed so strong, and now, all at once, the serene, ordered pace of his life was changing and there were no more certainties. She had always seen James as rather plodding: a devoted family man, a good son and a thorough and methodical, rather than a brilliant, lecturer. Curiosity almost overcame her: she was dying to ask – is there someone else? Is Olive about to leave you, or are you, wonder of wonders, about to leave Olive? Wisely, she said nothing. Was she really behaving like an adult at last, complete with tact and understanding? She allowed the silence between them to deepen. He didn’t seem to have noticed her momentary irritation. For the moment, she’d prefer to keep it like that.

  ‘Why don’t you light the fire inside and sit down? I’ll go up and say a quick hello to Keith, and then I’m going to do some shopping. You could do with a break.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  Beth handed him the newspaper and went upstairs, more and more surprised at the amount of emotion that could be fitted into less than twenty-four hours.

  *

  Beth moved around the bedroom, lighting the night-lights one by one. It already seemed like a long-established ritual, and she had to remind herself that only one full day had passed since she had left her other life behind. She felt as though she had inhabited this reality for years and years and the routine came easily to her now.

  She had asked James earlier on in the evening to stay until June left. She hadn’t wanted to see her, to meet again with the nurse’s unspoken disapproval.

  ‘Only for tonight, please. I just don’t want to have to deal with her attitude towards me.’

  James had appeared surprised at her request.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with her attitude towards you?’

  Beth shrugged. ‘She just makes me feel uncomfortable, that’s all. I know that she thinks badly of me.’

  ‘Why on earth would she think badly of you?’

  There wasn’t even a hint of challenge in James’s tone – just amazement.

  Beth was relieved that, no matter what June’s motives were for disapproval, James certainly didn’t share them.

  ‘Trust me – she does. Probably because I didn’t come home sooner. Anyway, I’ll get over it; just not tonight.’

  James had nodded, but Beth could see that he’d felt completely at a loss. They had both let the subject drop.

  Now she settled herself back into the little chair, and waited until the room became used to her again. James had just left to go home with Keith, and she was glad to be back in the cocoon once more, surrounded by the flickering candlelight and the warm, still sense of being really present here, sharing her mother’s company. And tomorrow, Dr Crowley would come. Beth had the absurd sense of having reclaimed some time for her mother. It was as though by making the phone call to the doctor, she had somehow helped to prolong Alice’s life. She felt almost confident now that her mother could hang on through the low ebb hours of night. She was glad that she was alone in the house this evening; she felt full of eager anticipation, thinking about the next letter, lying waiting in the silky depths of soft, silent purple.

  THREE

  Arthur

  ALICE OPENED THE door to Elizabeth’s room and stood for a moment, looking around her in the sunlight. She loved the way the whole back of the hous
e became flooded with light in these late summer afternoons. The room looked different now, more open and welcoming than it had seemed last night. Or rather, early this morning. Alice had woken up, again, to find herself sitting there, on the floor, the wardrobe at her back. For the first time since the night-time wanderings had begun, she had felt really frightened. The landmarks had not been familiar to her when she’d opened her eyes; the room had been filled with shadows and her right hip was throbbing painfully. It had taken several moments of blind terror to locate where she was this time, to distinguish the pallid light of the distant street-lamp beyond the heavy curtains. She hadn’t even known whether she was still all in one piece.

  Shakily, she had stood up and switched on the light, her heart beating loudly in the silence. The room suddenly shifted back into the shapes that she could recognize again: the high, old single bed, still complete with pink candlewick bedspread and eiderdown. The lumbering old-fashioned wardrobe, taking up almost all of one wall: old-fashioned even when Jack had bought it, and not yet old enough to have become fashionable again. And finally, the culprit – the mahogany desk that Jack had made, and which lay against the wall just inside the door. The bruise on Alice’s hip this morning was at the exact level of its outer right-hand corner; she must have stumbled against it as she came through the door last night.

  She pulled up the sash window now and let the warm breeze blow through the room; the patterned muslin curtain billowed and swam around her. The room was filled with the sudden, heady smell of cut grass. She remembered that Keith was coming tonight, probably under protest, to help her tidy her own garden and trim the hedge. She must remember to put a little something in an envelope for him. She fought back at the filmy material, beating it down, closing the window just a little to calm the stream of air. There was still a very faint smell of damp in this room, more from lack of use than anything else. Elizabeth hadn’t been to stay in such a long time. The last person to use the bed had been Laura, almost eight months ago. She must make a note to herself to air it, soon. Alice smoothed the bed covers, patting them here and there, although there were no creases anywhere. Then she took the can of Pledge out of her apron pocket, and her yellow duster. She sprayed and polished the little desk, restoring the surface to its original soft lustre. She liked the clean, lemony smell: it dispelled all traces of neglect, and made her feel again like the meticulous housekeeper she had once been. She wiped the seat of the wooden chair, and dusted its fiddle-back. Finally, she turned round to face the wardrobe.

  Three times that Alice could remember, she had found herself in this room, sitting on the floor beside the wardrobe. It puzzled her that her illness seemed to take her over so completely in the darkness, thieving in the night. During the day she was mostly clear-headed, aware of herself, becoming frustrated only occasionally as another word or two stole away from her and went into hiding. She had learned to live with all that long before her recent visit to the hospital. On the whole, her days had not changed; it was the nights that were stealing bits of her from herself. On one occasion, a month or so back, she had, while still asleep, opened the right-hand door of the wardrobe in Elizabeth’s room and taken down one of Jack’s photograph albums. Perhaps ‘asleep’ was not really the word for it – it had been more like a non-waking state, halfway between sleep and dreaming.

  Sometimes when she went wandering, she knew, vaguely, what she was doing, where she was going: she felt semi-conscious, but no longer in control of herself. It was like seeing something out of the corner of her mind’s eye, a fleeting image that she couldn’t quite catch. She always felt compelled to obey the instinct that pushed her on, making her search towards something she believed long forgotten. Sometimes, when she sat, or stood silently, having reached her destination, it was like looking at a blurred photograph. She knew she was there, was aware of her own presence, but she couldn’t quite get herself into focus. Other times, when she woke, she couldn’t distinguish whether she’d been dreaming, or whether the dream was really a hazy memory. Either way, she had never hurt herself before; but last night she had been jolted into wakefulness, fully conscious to the danger of injury. It was as though she, and the bedroom, had suddenly sharpened into a shocked brightness, with all the fuzzy lines and images finally converging into one, clear picture. She was sure now that it was the stinging pain in her hip that had brought her to.

  Later, making tea in the kitchen, she had decided that today, in the daylight, she would start sorting through all the personal belongings that she had stored at the top of the old wardrobe: it was now time. Perhaps if she did all she could do, to still the nagging little voice which drove her again and again into her daughter’s room, she would be left alone. Maybe the nighttime searchings would be over then, having served their purpose. She had no idea why anything stored in this room should be important to her now – it was mostly old stuff, snaps and documents from her commercial college days, her first paypacket, things like that. Nothing to do with either Elizabeth or James. Most of their photographs and souvenirs of childhood were all safely housed in leather-bound albums, on the bookshelves downstairs. Jack had always been very proud of his photographs, and Alice had made sure they’d all been properly looked after, pasted into his lovely old albums, stored safely out of the reach of childish sticky fingers.

  She had decided to stay and use Elizabeth’s desk. It would be nice to spend time in this room, and she could leave things just as they were once she got tired: there would be no need to put everything away again. James never came upstairs, unless Alice asked him specifically to get something for her. She could be private here; she would not need to explain herself to anyone. James, she knew, would be suspicious if he caught her at anything like this: he would know at once why she was tidying up: getting ready to put her life away, to shelve herself and her memories.

  Carefully, she lifted the boxes and albums one by one from the top three shelves. She was amazed that there were so many: the shelves were high and deep and she had forgotten how much they could hold. The desk was now littered with half-full cloth-bound photo albums and Cadbury’s chocolate boxes overflowing with black and white memories. Alice sat down and began to turn each of the photos over, checking to see if anything was written there. She knew that she used to be very methodical, once upon a time: that she used to write the names and dates on the backs as soon as she got the photographs. But this whole box was a jumble – these had simply been looked at once, and then put away safely for some day in the future when she might have more time. Well, she had time now, however little of it was left to her. And now was the right time, too.

  This was not the first occasion that Alice had been astonished at the sharpness of her memory when dealing with events that had happened forty or fifty years ago, while the whereabouts of her glasses, or her keys, or yesterday’s shopping list were still a complete mystery. She chose five or six photographs at random from the pile beside her, glancing at them quickly, delighting in her instant ability to name the people and the places she saw. She had been afraid that she would feel frustrated; she had fully expected to be. And so, her first glances were hesitant, prepared to move on at once if recognition did not come quickly. Instead, she was deluged by details of names and dates – it was as if her mind couldn’t give her enough memory, as if it were trying to make up for the occasional cruel lack of connection which was now becoming part and parcel of her daily existence. It had only been two weeks since her hospital visit, two weeks since that first, all-important letter to Beth, and she had been amazed at how much of her past life she had relived in her memory since then. It was like watching a video speeding up, fast-forwarding with jerky, vivid images until it reached the point in the story where Alice suddenly wanted to linger, to look over her life once again, this time in slow motion.

  She selected one of the albums that was almost empty, and laid it on the table beside her. Then she began writing on the backs of the pictures she’d selected, pinning down her knowledge, making
it concrete before she bent each one of the photos very gently, easing them into the four little slits in the stiff, grey cardboard. There they were, anchored safely, for good. It didn’t matter if no one ever looked at these again, if no one ever cared who Margaret Cooper was, or Bridgie Phelan, or Mary Byrne. She cared, and paying due regard to these memories was important, a way of finding her place in the past, and grounding herself there. It would be safe, a solid vantage-point from which to look back at the years which had since become her future. She turned again to the landslide of papers on her left and slid out one of the larger photos from the bottom of the pile. She knew what she was looking for now, she had her chronology established.

  There was a circular stamp on the back of this one, barely distinguishable among the brown splotches on the off-white background. Just like liver spots, Alice thought. She held Jack’s magnifying glass close to the printed words. ‘Miss Rutherford’s Secretarial College for Young Ladies. Class of 1944–1945’. Alice exclaimed out loud with delight. She turned the photograph over; its surface was a little cracked with spidery white lines, but she was able to distinguish the twelve sepia-toned young faces that smiled out at her. She felt her breath catch. How many of these girls’ names would she be able to remember? She was struck by how much the same they all looked – neat, hatted, gloved. It was strange to see her other self, sitting tall and proper, in the second row. She could remember in detail the costume she’d worn for the occasion, too – navy-blue linen with a fur collar, and a matching hat, its brim just tilted over one eyebrow. She had made her own outfit, cutting it down from a suit once worn by her mother; the collar had been on loan for the occasion of her graduation. Alice smoothed the photograph in front of her, and applied the magnifying glass more closely. She could match names to just five of the faces in front of her, and these she wrote on the back, at once, in case they slipped away from her again.