The Insistent Garden Read Free Page B

we all?) but he hasn’t let himself go to seed. Says he knows a girl who might be interested in a part-time job at the shop. I could do with a hand.
    I’ll write again soon. I know you’ve always said you wouldn’t touch a telephone with a barge pole but it would make life easier if you could bring yourself to get one. By the look of this place, I think I’m going to be writing a lot of letters.
    Jean

5
    Vivian’s departure was almost as eventful as her arrival. Her belongings never seemed to fit back into the case, and there was always a scene: pressing in that final girdle, forcing the zip. Yet I always volunteered to sit on top of the suitcase — and occasionally she let me — from where I could watch my aunt from a new angle while she shuffled round me, every last bit of air forced out and the objects beneath my legs quietly crushed.
    A heavy silence hung about the house after the case had been heaved into the taxi and the back of Vivian’s head had receded from view. Only youths passing the gate animated what was left of my morning. I’d hear them coming — squeaking, screeching, screaming and squealing. They’d pour down the street in groups, pennies of colour flickering behind the front hedge, before disappearing down the hill. They chased paper; they yanked the backs of sweaters; they left crumbs. Occasionally the hedge got damaged, a body shoved through, nothing to grab. Then they’d be gone, leaving only the smell of cigarette smoke drifting through my keyhole. That was the hardest part. They’d never see me, never think to wave. Was I invisible? — my skin the colour of the house.
    I didn’t leave my home very often. I didn’t want to. I’d get our food at the Co-op, buy the occasional stamp and visit the dentist if my teeth hurt. The rooms of the house were quiet while my father was at work and those hours were bare. There was only one place to which I could go.

    â€œHow was your day, sweetheart?”
    â€œTiring.”
    â€œFancy a cuppa?”
    â€œWith sugar?” I touched the hand that had come to rest on my shoulder.
    â€œTwo spoonfuls coming up.”
    I sat at a kitchen table in the house on the other side of mine. Archie lived here. After seventy-five years, he’d forgotten that ‘Archibald Bishop’ was inked onto his birth certificate and offered up Archie to anyone who asked. And ask they did, for Archie was a local hero, producer of the town’s largest vegetables and holder of the Billingsford Horticultural Cup.
    I loved Archie’s kitchen. I loved the consistency of it. Although his attempts at tidying freshened it occasionally, most parts never changed. Books teetered permanently on the corner of the table, the slivers of dry soap that dotted the draining board never grew any smaller and the bread bin, loaded with dry crusts and crumbs would never, ever close. Fruit flies constantly hovered above the bowls of over-ripe peaches on his sideboard in stationary clouds, yet the hands on the clock always seemed to move faster beneath Archie’s roof. This was the place I came when I could, sometimes twice a week, and sometimes, when the clock ticked coldly in my own kitchen and clouds hung like grey sacks in the sky, three times a day. I’d climb over the low wall between our two gardens after my father left for work, weave my way between Archie’s flowerbeds and tap on his kitchen window. This was the place I came when I needed to shake off my own home and I would sit at his table and drink tea and talk about his garden and think about nothing.
    â€œDon’t mind a chipped cup, do you?” Archie said.
    â€œNot in the slightest.”
    He filled the kettle and lit the gas. His lips accidentally whistled as he blew out the match.
    â€œNice tune.” I flipped open a seed catalogue.
    â€œEdie, have you seen the new amaryllis?” he said, leaning over my shoulder and planting a