Aisling’s Garden
“Touch lightly Nature’s sweet guitar
Unless thou know’st the tune...”
Emily Dickinson
In the beginning it had been nothing special, the garden. A wilderness was too fine a term to use. At the rear of the house there was just this seemingly boundless space of tangled vegetation, none of it nameable.
It feels as though I have lived here forever, he thought.
That he had not done so he was sure of at times; that is, those times when he could recall a time before he had purchased the house.
That’s too long ago to worry about now, he thought. This is home, whatever else it may have been, and I shall die here. There is nowhere else.
Does it matter who I am? he thought. Does it matter what kind of person I have been? What matters is now, not my antecedents, though they might be worth someone writing about.
He sits in his study by the bay window. His knees are covered with an old red, white and blue coloured blanket, patterned with alternating stripes of diamonds, triangles and wavy bands. On it is a closed book. It is Borges’ ‘Ficciones’ and he has just finished reading ‘El Jardin de senderos que se bifurcan’.
The sunlight of the morning warms him. From the bay window he can overlook the garden. He seldom goes out the front nowadays or gazes from those windows except from his bedroom on the second floor. The view there is of a road, hills and a distant stretch of water which might be the sea or a lake. He used to go for a drive that way, into the village or the hills. He used to cycle that way before he could drive and before he was driven.
I have forgotten the chauffeur’s name, he thinks.
Each morning, once he has taken breakfast, he is brought from the dining room to the study. He eats little now, less than a mouse he thinks. It is just enough to keep the doctor at bay. When the doctor visits he asks about his diet and the manservant Ness shows him the notes he has made of the meals he has eaten.
He wishes that they would just leave him alone; but when he says he can manage they both smile at each other and pay no attention to him. Once that might have mattered; now it does not, not in the way it once used to matter. He smiles too.
Once I am here, in the study, I am left in peace, he thinks. It is enough that he knows Ness is there, that someone is there. Someone has always been there, he thinks.
Whatever Ness needs to be doing he will do out of his sight and without fuss. Sometimes he wonders what Ness finds to do all day long, that is when he is not tending to him. But there is the house and its grounds to maintain. That must keep him busy.
If he needs anything he will ring. That is the arrangement. Ness will leave him alone until eleven, when he will bring in some coffee, not in a cup but in a silver pot on a tray, leaving him to pour it as he wishes. The coffee pot is from the reign of George I and is of straight sided design. It was made by William Darker and is decorated with flowers, leaves and scrolls.
Ness will see that the blanket is tucked in securely and that the coffee on the stand is within his reach, and then he will leave him. He will sip some coffee, if he feels like it, and gaze out of the window as far as his sight can see. Some days he seems to see to the very horizon and some days his eyes can only see as far as the window and not beyond it.
He thinks of the places he has lived, or thinks he has lived. This will be the last. He cannot recall the first, though there will have been a first, the one where he was born. They are scattered everywhere, he thinks, the places I have lived. Some I was hardly there; others I seemed to start to settle. But I have never rooted, even here, where I am caught in this wheelchair and have to be waited on, put to bed, taken to the toilet.
This is no way to live, he thinks; and it certainly is no way to die.
Not that he can do anything about it. He is dependent upon others, where once he was dependent only upon himself- or so it must have seemed.
What did I make of my inheritance? Or was that one of my stories?
I become confused. I am confusing myself.
He blinked at the brightness of the day.
The coffee is still hot. Ness must have just poured it. I did not see him come in or go.
He drinks some coffee. He is careful not to let it dribble down his chin.
How many such windows have I looked out of? Have I ever seen what I have hoped to see, what I have wished to see? Have I always looked outward rather than inward?
There are no answers to these questions; he doesn’t know why he asks himself them. Usually questions are asked with the hope- even expectation- that there will be an answer.
But I do not expect an answer, he thinks. I am asking these questions to hear myself think. I dare not ask them aloud. If I ask: Ness, what is the time? Ness will think I am even more forgetful. I am forgetful; but I have always been forgetful. That is how I have managed to last this long. Forgetting is an art; remembering is a burden- did I say that? I have said many things: perhaps I have said too much; perhaps I have said too little.
What name do I have today? he thinks. Should it be the same as the one I had yesterday? I have had many names. People have called me this and that and I have nodded or bowed as this or that. They were fine names, famous names, names printed on the covers of my books- but not my real name. Ness- does he know my real name? I cannot remember hearing him call me by it. It is always ‘Sir’ with him.
I look out the window and hope- what do I hope? That I will see my father or my mother or a ship come sailing into harbour? But that is not this window. This window looks out onto the land, the countryside, a wilderness I might once have described and explored with my imagination; a scene I can only gaze at now with as much understanding as one of those trees on the hills.
Everything I see in this landscape, he thinks, is older than I can imagine. In the distance are Neolithic mounds and standing stones where once perhaps ancient rituals were enacted. Somewhere nearer the building, beyond the lawn and the downward slope leading to the tangle of vegetation, are bee hives which once were tended but now cannot be seen for the shrubs and plants that have run wild.
Even the glass through which I am gazing is old, perhaps still original. Do you see things differently through old glass? he wonders. If someone were to look in, someone other than the birds which occasionally sit on the outside sill and peck at the insects in the corners and crevices, would that person see a different me to the one I think I am?
On the inside windowsill he sees a pack of playing cards and wonders in what order the cards lie. Perhaps, he thinks, they are not playing cards but Tarot cards. There is also an ashtray, though no half-smoked cigarette with the smoke curling up from its glowing tip lies in it.
Do I smoke? he wonders. Have I ever smoked? Has someone just left the room, gone out of my sight and left the thought of a cigarette in the ashtray? What am I to make of the toy soldiers lying and standing there? Do I have children, grandchildren? Are they mine, those toy soldiers, relics of my childhood? I cannot recognise the uniforms they wear, perhaps Kitchener’s 21st Lancers. Are they made by Britains, Charbens or Mignot?
Once all such speculation would have intrigued him. Once he would have sat with pen and paper and have written what he thought and what he saw. Now it all flits past him like the bird outside flying in search of nesting material.
Somewhere a radio station is giving out the weather forecast. The music that had been playing softly ceases and a masculine voice is saying that it will be fine and warm. A weather front will move in later in the week, bringing much needed rain. Somewhere there are small fires on the heath land of the peninsula. Local fire-fighters are containing the smouldering gorse. The temperature will be such and such and the wind is from this or that direction, the pollen count high or low- he cannot absorb it all.
A vase holding some dried flowers stands on a table near the window through which he has been looking. The flowers are carefully composed, or so he imagines- perhaps some Ikebana style? The vase is a pale green and has a curved shape below the narrower neck.
Why do I notice things? he thinks. Once perhaps I did so that I might tell the detail to another but now I only tell myself. Once you have seen is it not pointless to then say: there are dried flowers in that pale green vase.
In the light, this light, the vase seems to change colour, so that now he might call it a darker green. Gazing past it and through the window it seems to become one with what lies out there, though he knows it is in the room, this side of the window.
He sips the coffee.
I thought I had finished it, he thinks. Perhaps I have poured myself another cup, or Ness has come in and discreetly poured one for me as I’ve been distracted by what I see through the window.
I only drink coffee at this time of day, he tells himself. It is a habit I have had since I can’t remember when. Some habits I can remember when I first started them, others are just habits- like tying my shoelaces. I no longer have to do that- or do I? I am wearing slippers so perhaps I never wear shoes these days.
These days: I do not know what day it is. It does not matter. I cannot remember when it ceased to matter. It used to matter, though I cannot recall why it used to matter. Now there is just today. Yesterday: that must lie somewhere behind me, like a shadow. I will have been doing what I am doing now, looking out of the window, wondering what I was doing the day before and noting what I see without changing anything.
Those clouds, he thinks; I once knew the name and shape of all the cloud formations. I can remember being taught that in school. I was sitting behind a desk and in the text book on the desk were black and white photographs of clouds with captions under each picture identifying this one as Cumulonimbus, that one as Altostratus and the other as Cirrus fibratus. The sky is like a constantly revised painting, or the palette from which paint is taken: how restful it can be just gazing up at its constant pageantry and silent unrolling!
Did I fall asleep? The coffee tray is gone. The clouds are still there, other clouds or the same I cannot say.
Now Ness is pouring me coffee. I do not know if it is made from Coffea arabica or Coffea canephora beans. I do not know if this matters. I taste it and it is as I like it. I say thank you; I hear myself saying thank you; I feel my tongue moving and my mouth opening. I watch his shadow on the carpet as he silently moves out of the room.
I did not ring for him but it must have been the time for him to come. There will be a clock in the kitchen. There will be clocks elsewhere. There is none in this room. One would serve no purpose in here. What could it tell me that I want to know or do not already know? Perhaps on the lawn there is a sundial. It would not surprise me if there was. Perhaps I once watched as the shadow slowly crept across its face. I was much given to that kind of thing, watching, as I am doing now.
On the wall to his left there is a large mirror with an ornate frame. In it he can see himself sitting in his chair with the cup raised to his lips. He wonders what his reflection would think of him sitting in this room, by this window, day after day. Does his reflection see what he sees?
Nonsense, of course, he thinks; but then I have been much given to that kind of speculation as well. I made my living from it. I am still making my living from it. And what then, he wonders; what then?
The music being played now on the radio is Manuel de Falla’s ‘Noches en los Jardines de España’. It is the 1928 original recording by Aline Isabelle van Barentzen. He recognises this, one of Hemingway’s favourite pieces found amongst the other over nine hundred records in the living room of ‘Finca Vigia’ in Cuba.
Why do I remember this, he thinks, and not the name of my chauffeur? He would drive me once a week to that headland where she was buried. He would wait while I walked to and from the grave. There was just a rough path through the grass leading to it. I would place the flowers- sometimes marigolds and sometimes zinnias- on her grave. Some days I would sit there with her and gaze out across the sea as we had done when she was alive. As I gazed out on my own I would sometimes imagine that I could see with her eyes and hear her murmuring as she sat beside me. We would speak seldom as we sat watching the waves and the birds, the clouds and the sun. Somehow words did not fit with the view. At the most one of us might say ‘Look there’ and point at something that had caught our eye. I looked without her and nothing would catch my eye; but sometimes I would hear her whispering ‘Look there’ and I would look and it was as though I had just glimpsed the coat-tails of an angel disappearing.
I do not believe in angels, he thinks. Or is that my reflection in the mirror thinking that? He stares at himself staring at himself, wondering. Somewhere between us is that thought, trapped by the glass, absorbed by the glass.
It is the second section, about the unidentified garden in which there is the exotic dance, that is being played now.
He reaches out to ring the bell for Ness to come to take away the coffee service. He sees that the table is bare.
If I ring the bell now, he thinks, will Ness appear with the coffee or will he wonder why I am calling him after he has taken it away?
He closes his eyes, feeling tired. Somewhere a piano is playing and he can hear flutes, oboes, a harp and trumpets.
This is not music to sleep by, he thinks, but to dance to. But he knows his dancing days are over. In his mind he imagines that he is dancing again with her. How she loved to dance, he thinks. He was a clumsy dancer, yet she had made him seem as nimble and agile as Astaire. ‘I shall be the man,’ she had said smiling that first time they had danced; and he had followed as she led. That was how it would always be: she would lead and he would follow.
*
The building- a mansion of some antiquity- stands on its own several miles from the nearest township on the coast. There is no sign that points to the building. If you wish to find it you have to stop in the town and ask. If you do not know its name then it may still be found for there is only one such building in the surrounding countryside. The day he came to view it he had the cutting from the paper and a letter from the solicitor, who had advised him to enquire at the local inn where he would be lodging overnight. Yes, he was told, the place is well known but it’s off the beaten track. He was given directions, seemingly simple directions, but even then he had almost missed the turning.
The main road in and out of the town was itself a narrow road, for there was not much traffic came that way near the coast. The railway ran some distance to the north. The narrow road threaded its way through pleasant countryside- hills and valleys that seemed the same as each other as much as they differed in names and foliage. Even with the windows down and a fresh breeze blowing on his face he could feel the hypnotic rhythm of the scenery and motion of the car carrying him into a kind of trance. He decided to stop to break what seemed like a spell being cast over him; and it was then that he thought: I have come too far. He got out of the car and walked back along the road, more to shake himself awake and to loosen his cramped legs; and it was then that he noticed the turning to the right. There was no sign but from the description he had been given at the inn he knew that this had to be the road to the building. He returned to his car, reversed and began to drive carefully up the single track road. It was sunk somewhat deeply between wild hedgerows which hid from his view the fields to either side. The surface of the road was metalled and thankfully free of potholes.
After a moderate climb up the side of the hill the road levelled out swiftly and then ahead he could see the building. It had been designed by a Dutch architect in the second half of the 18th century. The walls were of rough stone covered with lime render. Dutch bricks surrounded the heavy sash windows and main door. It was set back from the road but the road more or less ended where the building was.
Even now I can see it, he thinks as he gazes out the window. That first sighting was enough to tell me that I had found what I was looking for here. I sit within the shelter of that mansion I once saw from a lofty rise after the drive. That morning I walked around the building, gazing at it not to find flaws- if there were any I did not see them- but just to familiarise myself with its lineaments. Perhaps that is how farmers look at livestock on a market day. All the while I was studying the building I thought that it was studying me: a strange thought but it felt true! I had already, on the very first sight as I crested the hill, decided that this was what I wanted; but was I what it wanted? I did not venture into the garden, designed by the Dutchman Johan van der Niemand, and grounds behind it. I merely took in the sweep of them at the back and the view to the coast from the front. Once I had circled the building I returned to my car and drove back to the town. I phoned the agent at once and told him I wished to buy the place. He sounded relieved- it had been on the market for some considerable time and there had been, so he told me later, no enquiries prior to mine.
Or has the house always been in the family and I have inherited it?
When it is time for lunch Ness will come to wheel me into the dining room. Two places are always set. A fresh rose in a small clear glass vase is always set beside her placement.
On a wall there is a portrait of a young woman. It is a three-quarter length portrait in the manner of Gainsborough. The young woman is half-turned in her high-backed seat and over her left shoulder is a view out of a window to a garden. The detail is very fine, not only of her dress and hair but of that section of the garden visible through the window. The colours of the painting are bright as though it has been cleaned recently. The young woman’s head seems crowned with a neatly bunned riot of auburn hair, a long twisted tress of which hangs over her left shoulder and falls past her breast to her waist. Her features are sharp and clear, her skin light with just a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and on her half-bare forearms. Her hands are lightly clasped in her lap, the fingers interlaced and an emerald ring glitters on her wedding finger, matching the colour of her eyes. She is smiling slightly as though she is about to rise and embrace someone who is entering the room.
I remember how she would rise to embrace me, he thinks, whenever I came into the room. It would be as though I had been away for a long time, rather than for a few hours or the odd day or two. She would hold me as though she was reuniting herself with a part of her being she had mislaid.
Over the right shoulder of the young woman, along a wall is a bookcase full of books. It is possible to read the names along the spines of some of the books- ‘Novum Organum’ and ‘Essayes, or Counsels, Civill and Morall’ by Sir Francis Bacon; ‘Pinax Theatri Botanici’ by Gaspard Bauhin; ‘Yuan Yeh’ by Chi Ch’eng; and ‘Systema Horticulturae’ by John Woolridge. There are dozens of others but their titles are not so readily discerned.
*
He is frowning as he looks through the window.
My eyesight is getting worse, he thinks. His spectacles are on the table beside him. He cannot remember having taken them off and having put them back in their case. Perhaps he never put them on. Perhaps he took them off when he drank the coffee, to avoid them becoming steamed up. That would make sense, he thinks; but then why should things make sense?
He puts his glasses on and returns to his survey of the scene beyond the window. There are times, he thinks, when it could just as well be a screen, such as are to be found in cinemas, or a television screen. But what was it that had distracted him and caught his eye just then?
In those first weeks after her death he had wandered uselessly in the garden, already seeing those signs of neglect which he couldn’t repair.
It is all a tangle of greens and browns, he thinks, like a tumble of sweaters in a chest. Some of this is because of my poor eyesight and some of this is because of the untamed growth in the garden.
It has been like that, he thinks, since she died. It was their garden but she was the one who tended it, as she tended him. He would do some of the more burdensome chores- shifting or wheeling things here and there at her behest, or mowing the lawn. He enjoyed the physicality of that, whilst she revelled in the creativity, the envisioning of the garden, the transformation of the wilderness into something more accessible.
What was it I would recite to myself from the “Dark Rose” as I worked beside her, he thinks? ‘Shiubhalfainn féin an drúcht leat is fásaigh ghuirt, Mar shúil go bhfaighinn rún uait nó páirt dem thoil.’ Once the words would bind him to her like the invisible thread of freshly spun spider’s webs in the avenue of trees. Now they weighed heavy as empty oil drums: they were unable to sink, jarring and echoing emptily as they floated on the surface in his memory.
If I turn my head, he thinks, on the wall behind me I would see her portrait. I can feel her gazing out with me on to the wilderness that has overtaken the work of her hands.
*
When he first turned the key and entered the inside of the house looked as though it was ready to be lived in.
The previous occupant had died suddenly; there were no relatives and so the contents of the house had been included in the sale. He had not wished to view inside before the purchase. He could not explain then or now why that was. Take it as it is, he told himself. Others might well have had all the contents carted away and disposed of; but he wanted to get a sense of the spirit of the place as it was, rather than impose on it his nature and tastes. Perhaps that was because then he was not quite sure of them, who he was and what he liked and disliked. Somehow he was incomplete and he felt that the puzzle he might find inside would propose answers to him- or at least insist on answers.
He told none of this to the agent, of course. The company were relieved to have the place off their books.
Once he had moved into the mansion he hired someone to look after the grounds. The fellow was named Josef Johann and though he lived locally, in the village, he was originally from Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Then Johann had mysteriously moved on. Some of the locals suggested he had been a Nazi spy and they swore that they had seen a U-boat surfacing in the bay one evening. But it was pub talk. He had been a good gardener- dependable and knowledgeable, someone who knew more than just that a tree was a tree.
That was before she came into his life.
It was the study where I now sit, he thinks, which welcomed me the most. Wherever I went that first day, into whichever room I strayed or was led, I felt settled; but it was here that I felt most at home. It was to this window that I was drawn.
The room had been bright, despite the mahogany bookshelves crammed with volumes all of which gleamed as though freshly dusted.
As I hurried to the window that morning, he thinks, I took in a few of the titles: ‘Les Jardins de Samboursky’, ‘Joyfull Newes out of the New Found Worlde’, ‘Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris’ and ‘Le Jardin de Mme Jeanne’. Two leather chairs were drawn up either side of the bay window which looked northward into the heart of the countryside. I half expected two people to be standing to greet me, he thinks. The chairs are thrust back into the interior of the room now, so that there is space for the wheelchair in which I sit.
Have I taken any book down from the shelf? he wonders.
On his knees he turns over and over the copy of Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ he may have been reading. A sterile phrase lurks on the edge of his consciousness like a caterpillar in its chrysalis waiting to take the form of a butterfly. In the mirror he sees behind himself- himself in the mirror- a small vacant space on one of the shelves. It seems too high for him to have reached and perhaps Ness took the volume down for me, he thinks.
All of these books were here, he thinks, and I have added nothing to them. That first morning I had hurried to the bay window to gaze out of it, even though I had seen the view that day I had come to first see the mansion. It was exactly as I remembered it, the view. I had dreamt about it in the days and weeks following my visit. Now there it was, here it is, the view over the terrace with its skirting of lawn and then the wilderness which is the garden, and then the wilderness which is the wilderness.
I saw something then, he thinks, as I have seen something just now- or was it before I fell asleep? I may be asleep now.
He smiles at the thought.
*
He tells Ness there is someone in the garden.
That is what has been troubling me, he thinks. That is what I saw, or thought I saw, a moment ago as I was gazing out of the window.
Yes, he tells Ness, there was someone out there.
I shall investigate, sir, Ness says. But he can tell that Ness does not believe him. There is never anyone in the garden- birds, yes, wild animals, yes, but never anyone. The village is too far away, several miles of rugged hillside and heath-land, and why would anyone wander all the way out here?
Through the window he watches as Ness walks along the terrace, shading his eyes as he quarries the distant wilderness for a trace of this interloper.
Ness will know that I am watching, he thinks. He is a good servant; he will do his duty and look to see if someone is there. But I can tell that he does not believe he will find anything. Later he will tell the doctor and they will put it down to my declining state.
When Ness returns he tells him to ask the chauffeur to prepare the car as he wants to go to the headland to visit her grave. Ness says he will do so straight away and leaves the room. It has been some time since he has visited her grave. He cannot remember the last time he went. It was not last week- not that he can clearly recall last week. Maybe it was last month? He cannot say.
Why have I forgotten? he thinks. This at least I do not want to forget and now it seems that I have forgotten.
He looks at the painting on the study wall. It is the same woman as in the painting that hangs in the dining room. In this painting the young woman, perhaps a year or two older but perhaps not, is standing in a garden, most likely the garden that lies beyond the window.
It could be a mirror, he thinks, and if I were to turn suddenly I might see her at the window.
In her hands, held raised to her waist, is a bunch of flowers, a mixture of Daisies, Dahlias and Forget-me-Nots. He can see them in his minds eye in a bowl on the table in the sitting room at the front of the building, as fresh as when they had first been picked. If he were to look into that room now he would find those flowers still there, he was sure of it. Unlike the portrait in the dining room her hair is loose and cascades around her head and over her shoulders like some of the bushes and shrubs behind her. All around her flowers seem to be blooming, a riot of colours which make her figure stand out all the more. She is wearing a blue dress which is stirred slightly by an unseen breeze and perhaps some motion on her part as she moves slightly forward. On her lips there is that same smile, a hint of the sunrise which was her full smile, a smile which was sure to end in either a kiss or her rich laughter. Her laughter seemed to summon the creatures from the garden and if he looked closely he knows that he would see them peeking through leaves and branches, revelling in her joy.
It is not the chauffeur he remembers. This man is younger, he thinks, and his hair is cut differently. Perhaps he is the son of the chauffeur.
This is not the route that he remembers either. He feels as though he is being driven to an unknown assignation. He sits in the back of the car and watches the scenery as it scrolls past the windows. It might be a dreamscape. At any moment exotic creatures might appear. He hears some music from the car radio. It is Ravel’s ‘L’Enfant et les Sortilèges’ with its libretto by Colette.
When they stop he has to wait for the chauffeur to open the door and help him out. For a moment he looks around himself in bewilderment. Which way should he go? The chauffeur is busying himself with the car, rubbing some smear or mark from the long black bonnet.
I shall go this way, he decides.
The chauffeur makes no attempt to stop him. Why should he? It is none of his business. His job is to drive, to drive wherever he is told to drive. The route he may chose may vary- though hereabouts it cannot for there are few roads - but his orders are to go here or there, to wait or not to wait, to be prepared to leave at such and such a time. This is his job. His job is not to suggest that his employer is going the wrong way once he has left the car.
None of this is familiar to me, he thinks. Perhaps I was last here in a different season. It is summer now and there is new growth all around.
He looks at the grave, startled to find it so close, just over the ridge which shields it from the road.
The flowers in the small vase still look fresh. He replaces them with those he has brought today- Sunflowers set in a necklace of Queen Anne’s Lace.
There is a mist over the headland as he gazes out to sea. It is barely possible to see the ocean and the boundary between it and the sky is obscured so that it is all one. He feels unsteady on his feet, untethered. He wonders why he has come today. It may be an anniversary of a kind but he does not think so. Perhaps, he thinks, I have come because I felt the need to come. Perhaps I have come out of habit.
When he returns to the house Ness carries him straight up to his bedroom as he has fallen asleep. The chauffeur will return the car- a 1931 Bentley 8 litre Saloon- to its garage after he has once more polished away the dust of the road and any other debris.
He lies in the large double bed with its canopy and gazes across the darkened room. The curtains are wide open so that the starry night can be seen. He has snuffed the candle which Ness always leaves burning on the table beside his bed.
It is odd, he thinks, that I insist on staying in this bedroom, with its view to the south. At night, when it is dark, when I can see only vague shapes in the darkness or the punctuation of the stars if there are no clouds, I lie here and gaze out of a higher window.
He cannot see the walls. In the darkness it is possible to believe that there are no walls and that he is laid out beneath the stars with this view towards the site of her grave.
She is still, he thinks, my compass.
When he dreams, if he dreams, he dreams of her, their life together. His life before her is closed off as though behind a wall.
Otherwise his dreams are empty, like a scooped out eggshell.
In the morning the candle will be alight beside him, as though his dreams have relit the wick.
When he dreams of her he wakes with a good appetite. When his dreams are absent he has no hunger in him and will only sip his tea of coffee, waving away the food he might be offered.
*
The mansion was built for a successful 18th century merchant named Diarmuid Fise. It was his marriage present to his wife-to-be. She saw it for the first time on the day of her marriage when he and his bride drew up outside the mansion in a landau. He could tell from her face that it was just the house she had seen in a dream she had once described to him.
In the library is an old leather bound volume of his diaries which he kept from the time of the clearing of the land to the death of his wife whilst in labour. He wrote no more after her burial in a grave which overlooks the bay where his ships would drop anchor before unloading their cargo. Her portraits- the only two pictures to be found in the mansion- were painted by Cornelia van der Mijn, sister of the better known Dutch painter George van der Mijn. Most of her works are lost, including a known self-portrait from the year 1780. Her only other surviving picture- of flowers- is to be found in the Rijksmuseum.
During the building of the mansion several local tradesmen were employed and some of their descendants still live in the village. In Fise’s diary of the time- the work took two years all told- he notes the death of a couple of labourers who were buried under a collapsed wall. These deaths were thought to have brought bad luck to the site and for a while the workmen refused to continue building. Fise doubled their wages and this overcame their superstitious scruples. From the diaries it is clear that Fise was a daily visitor to the site when not elsewhere dealing with the calls of his business. Much material had to be imported, such as the bricks, and the mahogany used for the panelling in the hall, study and sitting rooms.
*
He tells Ness there is someone in the garden and Ness goes to investigate. When he returns he tells him that there was no one there and takes him to the red pine panelled dining room for lunch. He notices the solitary Provence rose in the small vase beside the second place at the table. Today the rose is red; was it a white Botzaris yesterday?
How she loved flowers, all kinds of flowers, the simple and the complex, those with scents and those without. Many of the original plants and seeds were brought from Andrieux’s of Quai de la Mégisserie in Paris. It has now become Vilmorin’s at Verrières-le-Buisson and was visited by Chekhov when building his garden in Yalta.
He would watch from the terrace as she cut those flowers she wanted to set around the house. He would feel an odd sense of excitement as she stood running her eye over the display. Would he have chosen the same flower, the same example of each flower? When she noticed the intensity of his gaze she would smile and then plunge her hand into the display to select one almost at random, although he knew that she must have already chosen.
Was that how it had been at the dance? he wondered. He had felt awkward as he watched the others moving on to the dance floor as the band began to play Paul Whiteman’s ‘Happy Feet’. There had been no way to decline the invitation. He had told himself that he would go along for an hour, perhaps two, and then he would slide away discreetly. Then this young woman was asking him to dance. All his composure seemed to desert him. He mumbled something about not being much able to dance. She had smiled and said ‘I shall be the man’ and had held up her hands for him to hold and then he had been gently swept on to the dance floor.
He eats some cold meat with pickle. In the afternoon he requests that he be wheeled out on to the terrace so that he might enjoy the freshness of the air and the warm sun that the afternoon promises. Ness settles him beneath a large umbrella so that he has some shade. On a table beside him there is a book which he may read. The windows of the study are open so that he may hear Mozart’s opera ‘La finta giardiniera’ which is on the radio. Ness has left some lemonade in a pitcher on the table, in case he becomes thirsty.
He watches as the woman works amongst the beds overgrown with weeds.
Diarmuid Fise made his fortune transporting labourers from Ireland to Newfoundland and Labrador where there was a migratory fishing industry. He also supplied them with salt beef, pork and butter. He was a self-made man, hard-working and, like many of that time, devout without being a fanatic. Though he subscribed to the Protestant faith which was the dominate power at the time he was a Catholic but hid that fact so that he might trade and prosper and look after the family he hoped to raise. When his wife died he deserted the house, left his business in the hands of managers he trusted, and disappeared. Some thought he had gone into a monastery near Vienna; others thought he had become an adventurer, travelling to the Far East or the Americas both north and south. The truth is that nobody knows what happened to him. The house was eventually sold and over the years has had several owners. After their initial pleasure at owning such an estate the isolation becomes too much and the place is sold again.
Some of its owners over the years have revived the gardens and have installed lighting, gazebos and a Ha-ha. Over the years these improvements have decayed. The lighting no longer works and the gazebo and Ha-ha are as overgrown as the bee hives. There is no problem about things growing there. Whatever is planted thrives.
The only thing that does not thrive, he thinks as he sips some lemonade, are the occupants of the mansion.
Though he sees the woman he isn’t sure if she sees him. Or if she does she must not care about his presence.
He looks at the words in the book he is holding. The letters seem to jiggle together in the sunlight, as though dancing. He cannot make sense of what he reads. Perhaps it does not make sense. Perhaps it is a foreign language, one that he cannot understand though he understands several. He turns the page and watches the letters dancing some more, leaving the pages and being carried away. Then a light breeze turns the page for him.
He looks up and sees that the woman has disappeared. He hears Ness approaching. Ness tells him that the doctor is here.
Has a week passed already? he thinks.
The doctor says it is good to see him out on the terrace. Doctors have this great belief in sunlight and fresh air. Doubtlessly they are right, he thinks, though he prefers the darker comforts of his study and the bedroom. He allows himself to be examined and blood to be drawn. Ness will have already told the doctor about what he has or hasn’t eaten. They sit and chat for a while. The doctor enjoys some lemonade. He watches as the doctor runs his eye over the tangle that is the garden. Perhaps he is himself an amateur gardener like Chekhov and is imagining what he could do with such a place.
He does not tell the doctor about the woman he has seen. Some things I must keep for myself, he thinks. There is little enough that I have left.
When the doctor has said his goodbyes and gone he asks Ness to take him back inside. The opera has finished and he wants to read somewhere that the letters don’t dance.
*
Cornelia van der Mijn did the painting in a studio in London. The background details in each of the portraits- the library and the garden- she improvised from the sitter’s description. The garden had not been completed then, existing only in the recently wed young woman’s mind. He is struck with how accurately the real garden, what can be made out beneath the tangle, matches the painting. Perhaps she had seen the library for those books are still there on the same shelves. Even curiosity has not made him remove them to glance through them. He wonders if he’s fearful of what he may find in those pages.
She watches as the artist steps back to survey her. If the artist is conscious of her watching her paint she gives no sign of it, so absorbed is she in her task. She has chosen the blue dress especially for this sitting and the flowers that she holds at her waist. She has never sat for a portrait before and is excited by the occasion. Before he left Diarmuid had asked her if she might not become bored and perhaps a shorter sitting would be better; but she and the artist had waved him from the studio both excited at the prospect of the sitting. What he did not know then was that she was in the early stages of pregnancy; but the artist, being a woman, knew this at once. Though he was shooed from the room he is present in both their minds. The painter was thinking of the fine commission fee she has been promised; but once she began to put brush to canvas such thoughts had disappeared from her mind. The sitter was thinking of the pleasure the portrait would give to her husband; and the thought of him kept that expression on her face and that eagerness in her pose which excited the painter.
When he returned to the studio she was sitting downstairs in the lounge sipping tea with the artist who had changed from her smock and canvas trousers into a comfortable dress. He was surprised that it had taken less time than he thought it would. When he asked to see the painting she laughed and said he must wait until it was hung in their home and in the meantime he must make do with just her. The second painting, the one that hangs in the dining room, was done some months later by the artist from memory.
When she dies, the day that she dies, in his grief he wants to take a knife to the paintings; but he can not bring himself to deface what would be the only external image of her he is left with.
*
He wonders how the flowers come into the house. Only when he is going to visit the grave does he ask Ness to gather a few flowers for him to take. Ness will do that; but otherwise he has not seen Ness in the garden picking blossoms.
He does not select at random, though it may appear that way. She had made a list for him of flowers to collect while she was away visiting her sister in the north. She did not like to think of the house without their colours and scents. He had been diligent in collecting the flowers, though he could have asked the gardener or one of his boys to do it. He wanted to be close to her by doing what she would have done when she selected the flowers and cut them and arranged them. He knew that his eye was not as good as hers; but the results were not as bad as he feared they might be. Everyone would smile at ‘the master’s flowers’ when they saw them on the tables and in the vases in all the rooms- and he would smile too, knowing that she would be smiling at the thought of what he was doing.
*
One day, with the aid of his walking stick, he manages to descend the steps from the terrace and stand in the garden. He sees the woman working some distance away. She pulls weeds from the beds and gives space and light to choked plants which are now flowering again. Wherever she moves in the garden she re-establishes order where there was wilderness. He watches her moving slowly through the beds of weeds. Her head is uncovered and her hair is plaited down her back. She is well tanned by the sun and wind. He cannot guess at her age. There is a determined air about her as she works, her arms and hands never still or empty. He wonders how long she has been working in the garden. Was it yesterday he first noticed her? But Ness said he saw nothing then and today. But there she is, crouched down on her knees and intent on her work.
He would call out to her but he does not want to startle her. She does not look up.
Motionless, leaning on his stick, he stands at the edge of the garden almost afraid to venture into it. He glances around at the vastness of the garden and when he tries to locate her again he cannot see her.
He manages to climb back up to the terrace and return to his wheelchair under the umbrella.
In the book he has been trying to read the words seem to have settled down. It is ‘El Jardin de los Sueños Perdidos’ a story by an obscure Spanish Basque poet and novelist Javier Galera. They have never met. He has read the story many times before. It is one he translated for an anthology many years ago, before Galera achieved fame and notoriety. Like many who fought on the Republican side during the Civil War in Spain he was murdered by Franco’s Nationalists during the Represión Franquista. His body, along with others shot beside him, was buried in an overgrown garden in the town of Badajoz. The site is now marked with a bed of carnations.
Is this really the story of Galera, he thinks, or one I have written but forgotten? He closes the book and the words disappear, leaving only an echo of some indescribable feeling.
He wonders what it would be like to fight against fascism and to be put against a wall and shot. There are all kinds of walls against which all kinds of people have been shot, he thinks.
*
Ness will find me, he writes, where I have collapsed in the garden.
He will pick me up and carry me up to my bedroom and will lay me on the bed. He will summon the doctor but will know already that I am dead.
As I lie on the bed I will see the painting on the ceiling, the painting of a garden; and in it I will see a woman working. The palm of one hand is bloodied where she has pricked it on a thorn.
Each time I see the painting the garden becomes more and more vivid. I recognise it and am smiling when the doctor comes to pronounce me dead.
On his cheek is a smear of blood.
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