Radical. Of the root. There is some correspondence, surely, between the radical movement and the work of the gardener. Is it that he sees how all things grow in their proper time? How all things have equal value but different properties. A garden, to be truly a garden worth cultivating, needs due measure of different plants: flowers, vegetables, soft fruits, trees and shrubs, large and small. I was reading, not only about gardening and plants and their properties, but there were other books in Thomas’s library, books about the rights of man; works that changed not just my knowledge but my thinking as well. He had a handsomely illustrated volume of the poems and letters of Robert Burns and it was obvious where the poet’s sympathies lay, although he had been but a cautious exponent of radicalism. Like most of us, he had a wife and family to support, the fear of poverty ate into him, and he also knew a bit about patronage. So many of us are caught between the knowledge that lies deep in head and heart and the pressing demands of our everyday lives.
All of this stood me in good stead later on, when I left gardening forever and entered into the world of books and bookselling. Where did I get the wherewithal for such an undertaking you may wonder? Well, I got it from my father-in-law. Always of radical tendencies, he wholeheartedly embraced the movement with renewed vigour. I run ahead of myself, perhaps because of a very reasonable desire to leap over the events of the following few months, a desire not to come to the point. But I have to return to the tale, and it must be told just as it happened.
From Jenny there was complete silence for some weeks. I worked away in the gardens, a little sadly to be sure, because I was aware that the future care of all my beloved trees and plants would fall to somebody else. But I was making plans with Thomas, plans that involved moving myself and at least some of my family to Ayrshire. And there was a certain excitement in that, or would have been, if I had been able to take my mind off Jenny for more than a few hours at a time. I would visit her father and he would give me word of her, a carefully balanced tissue of caution and hope. He was sure that she would soon be coming home but he couldn’t say when.
At last, I demanded that he give me the direction to her cousin’s house in Dumfries. And because he could see that I was on the verge of losing all patience with him, he agreed.
I can see him yet, sitting at his table, with his head bent, writing it down for me.
‘Write to her,’ he said. ‘She is but a poor correspondent where I am concerned, but she may write to you. Tell her that we miss her. We’d be glad to have her home again. Tell her that she should come home again as soon as she can.’
After that, I sent her letters whenever I could, writing them in Thomas’s library, using Thomas’s paper and his pens. At long last she replied, but her letters were few and far between and disappointingly short, a few lines in her neat, childish hand, telling me that pen and paper were at a premium in the house, as were candles to see by, so she would not be writing very often. She was well, although her cousin was still very ill. Dumfries was a pretty town, but she wished that she were at home. She would never fail to ask after my family, her father and Anna. When I can bear to reread them – for I have them yet, buried deep inside my desk, thrust to the back of the secret drawer concealed by a lion’s head carving – I can see that they told me almost nothing except that she herself was well. But not happy. She never mentioned that she was happy and I sensed that below her reassuring words, something was very much amiss.
* * *
In October I decided that enough was enough. We were in the mild spell that often comes to the west before the onset of winter, much like now, as I write these words, before the rains begin in good earnest. There was yellow stubble in the fields, the leaves were turning to liquid gold and there was a breathless quality over the land as though it were pausing before winter, sighing for summer, but with a wee spice of anticipation for the coming spring about it all the same. So do all green and growing things fall in with the seasons. Sometimes it seems to me that it is only we human beings who battle against what should be our deepest instincts.
But there, I have become ridiculously philosophical in my old age and I am quite sure that I thought of none of this back then, when I was a daft young man, and wanted only to see Jenny home again so that we could make plans for our wedding. All I thought was that we were in for a spell of fine weather, perhaps the last before winter, and I must seize the initiative and find out what was detaining my girl in Dumfries, before travelling became thoroughly impractical. Faculty would not be pleased at my absence, but then there was little they could do to me since they had already dismissed me. James knew fine what he had to do in the gardens and urged me to go and leave everything in his hands, which were capable enough.
And so I took myself off to Dumfries. From Thomas, I borrowed a horse called Meg, like Tam O’ Shanter’s mare, the one that lost her ain grey tail to Cutty Sark. I sent James to make the request lest Thomas should question me too closely about my journey. Having made the decision to visit Jenny, at last, I think I was afraid my friend might try to dissuade me from travelling. He lent me Meg very gladly, although I was but a poor horseman, and bounced up and down upon the placid animal, giving myself the most amazing pains in my back and thighs. Every so often, Meg would turn her head and look round at me with an expression of dismayed disbelief on her features, if a horse can possibly do such a thing. It was comical in the extreme and greatly endeared the animal to me. The journey, even along the postroad, was arduous, and I marvelled that Jenny had undertaken it, although she had been in a coach, which would have been easier. But then I had to take stabling for Meg at coaching inns each night – the horse was better accommodated than I was – and I found myself sleeping in the least expensive and therefore most bug- and flea-infested bedrooms, on filthy straw. There was little I could do to prevent the loathsome creatures feasting off me, but I closed my eyes to the discomfort and thought of Jenny. When I was outside the town of Dumfries, I stopped, stripped off my soiled linen, washed in a fast-flowing and icy burn and changed into a more respectable shirt which I had kept clean for the purpose, so that her relatives would not wonder what manner of vagabond was coming to their door.
I stabled my Meg at another inn. I think we had been something of a trial to each other, but she seemed to have grown fond of me, surveying me with weary patience when I came to saddle her up each morning. Still, I’m sure she was glad enough to be rid of me for a spell, finding herself warm and well fed in a good stable. Then I wandered about aimlessly, clutching the paper upon which Sandy had written his direction. I could not make out the maze of unfamiliar streets at all but, at last, I found a ragged boy with a grubby face, crouching on a street corner, tossing pebbles in the air and trying to catch them again. By dint of promising to give him a penny for his pains, I had a guide to the very doorstep.
It was a tumbledown stone cottage with a mouldy thatch, like a worn-out wig, in a back close of the town, and I would never have come upon it without the child’s assistance. A thin line of smoke, a pencil stroke across the sky, went up from the chimney. The little lad grinned at me and tested the coin between his teeth – God knows what he was testing it for but I suppose he thought that it made him look like a grown man – and then swaggered off.
‘Mind the auld yin!’ was all he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘She’ll gie you a sair dunt on the heid as soon as look at ye!’
With this awful warning ringing in my ears, I knocked on the door. What ‘auld yin’ I asked myself? But then, I knew Jenny had been helping to look after a sick old lady. I had timed my visit for a very respectable hour of the early afternoon. I thought I would be able to talk to Jenny, perhaps even walk out with her for a while, spend a night at the inn where I had stabled the mare, or even at their house, if her relatives allowed, and then return to Glasgow, with the benefit of having reassured myself that all was well with her and that all was well between the two of us.