It was cool and quiet in the entrance hall. A bee, caught behind the long panes of glass, buzzed frantically and I heard the intermittent tap, tap as its body hit the glass. Somewhere a clock struck three. The moment reminded me of childhood, when I had lain in bed with some ailment and listened to the silence of the afternoon, straining for the slightest human sound. Where had everybody gone? Now I only waited a second or two before Father Godfrey appeared, carrying a walking stick in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.
‘I can push the brambles out of the way with this,’ he said, waving the stick at me. ‘We have far too many now. Anyway, come along and you can see for yourself.’
He opened the French windows, allowing me to go first.
‘Now, let’s see, where shall we start?’ He looked around. ‘I think the walled garden. Yes, the walled garden’
He led the way to the left, across the lawn and to the side of the house. We went through an old stone archway and into a square garden surrounded by high flint walls. The flower beds were planted with rose trees already in bloom and the warm air filled with their sweet perfume. Across each corner stood wooden seats, weathered greyish green.
‘Well, this is the rose garden,’ he announced, and I waited as he searched around for something else to say. Then, drawing breath, he continued, ‘And as you can see it is not as well weeded as it should be.’
‘It’s still lovely, though.’ Knowing I was nothing but a nuisance, taking up his time, but wanting to show appreciation, ‘There’s something magical about a walled garden. What is it, I wonder?’
‘It’s a good spot for the sun,’ he murmured, ‘and the brothers sometimes come here to sit and read or just to meditate.’ He paused and cleared his throat slightly. There was something strong and regal about him. I thought he must have been very handsome once, but now his eyes were far away and weary and something in me wanted to put a hand on his arm to reassure him, comfort him.
‘The trouble is,’ – and he laughed – ‘that whenever I come here to read, someone comes and wants to talk.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We don’t get that much opportunity to talk here, and so…’
‘That’s very lovely,’ I said, pointing to a pale-yellow rose on the wall beside us. ‘Do you know what it’s called?’ I wanted to show interest and pleasure, for that would please him, I thought. I remember thinking that if I liked the garden then, surely, he would like me. Then I would exist. He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I’m no good at names. I appreciate flowers and gardens, but I’ve never studied it fully.’ And he turned abruptly wanting to move on.
Once outside the garden, he stopped and, turning to me, said, ‘Perhaps you would like to sit in the rose garden; it’s very peaceful. You can come at more or less any time.’
‘Oh lovely! I’ll come tomorrow, perhaps.’ My heart sank as I thought of tomorrow and the expanse of empty time.
But he was speaking again. ‘We have some nice rhododendrons.’ And he pointed to the path that led to the visitors’ block. ‘You know that part, of course. The blooms are particularly fine this year.’ He touched a deep red bloom with the end of his stick. ‘I don’t quite know why. Well, we’ve had a very mild winter – perhaps that has something to do with it.’
I don’t like rhododendrons. The leaves are too solid, too thick and shiny, too unbending and regular; for me the blooms are pompous and stiff, but I pretended they were lovely.
‘We have some very colourful azaleas too.’ He turned away from the path. ‘But come this way.’
We were entering a long grassy avenue with huge overhanging beeches, which ran parallel to the house. It was cooler there as we walked in and out of the dark slabs of shadow. Every now and then, between the beeches, on either side and at irregular intervals, were the orange and pink azaleas that he had mentioned, and now he pointed them out by waving his stick to and fro.
‘Very lovely, very lovely,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘This is the Monks’ Walk,’ he explained. ‘I like to take a constitutional along here. I used to do it regularly when I first came, but I don’t seem to have much time these days.’ And then, ‘Too much time indoors. It’s not good.’
I imagined him striding along lonely paths on country walks, for he strode at such a pace that now I was almost running to keep up with him.
‘Have you lived here a long time?’
‘Fifty-three years. I came when I was twenty-nine. Now you know how old I am.’ And he laughed like a schoolboy and strode out like someone impatient to cover a great distance quickly. ‘Things have changed a lot.’
‘In what way?’
He stopped. ‘Well, we’ve got you, for a start! We didn’t used to have women visitors, you know.’ He gave me a cheerful glance. ‘Oh! We’ve been dragged into the twentieth century all right. Never mind! Never mind! I’m sure it is all for the best.’
We continued walking. ‘A funny thing happened once,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘I had a visitor and when he arrived I immediately brought him out here, thinking we could talk and have a good walk at the same time. It was only after we had been up and down here several times that he told me that he had walked from the station. And that is two miles away!’ He laughed again. ‘I think he must have been exhausted.’ He moved ahead and muttered to himself, ‘I never did that again.’
We carried on in silence and I wondered if he was trying to find some words for me about the children, about the accident. I thought perhaps that looking at the gardens was just an excuse to be alone so he could say something. But he said nothing and I found the silence awkward. I looked at the long grass and wished I could lie down in it.
‘Who cuts all this grass?’ I wasn’t interested really.
‘Oh, various of the brothers take it in turns. Nobody used to want to do it, but now we have one of those motor machines and they quite enjoy it. Of course, we used to employ several gardeners a long time ago, before the war. But the war stopped all that and now we can’t afford to. We did employ a Polish gardener who wanted to learn English, but I’m afraid that with working alone in the gardens all day and taking silent meals, his English didn’t improve at all!’
We both laughed.
‘You have a garden I suppose?’ he asked.
‘Only a very small one. Now. We used to have a big one. It sloped down to the River Lee.’ My mind went back to the elm trees and the cuckoo and the children laughing and playing and Dan messing about in the dinghy. But that was a different world, a secret world inside of me. A world no one could share. A lonely place.
‘I expect you like gardening. Most women seem to.’
‘I do, although I actually prefer growing vegetables.’
‘Oh, well, let me show you our vegetable garden, then. We’ll have to make a small detour.’
Peter had once planted onions between the flowers but he had planted them upside down and the shoots had turned yellow beneath the soil and the tiny white roots had shrivelled in the sun. It always made a good story. He was no gardener!
‘Oh! The doves. The doves have come.’ He pointed to broken-down walls, which surrounded what had been the kitchen gardens, explaining that the walls were in need of repair and the doves pecked at the stonework, adding to the problem. ‘So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just clap my hands and send them away.’
He clapped his hands hard and the smacks echoed round, bouncing off the walls, but the doves didn’t stir. ‘They won’t go. No, they won’t.’ He stood and looked at them for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and turning away. ‘Well, you can see it’s not much of a place now, but we do still get a little fruit. I don’t think there will be anything where we’re going.’
‘Where are, you going?’
‘Wiltshire.’ He waited and then added, ‘I’m sure it will be very nice.’
‘When exactly? You did mention something when I phoned.’
‘Oh, we’ve only got three weeks left. You must forgive us if we’re a bit upside down. We have such a lot of clearing out to do. It’s been used by the order for seventy years. And the stuff we’ve collected…’
We were back in the avenue now and I was tired. But I’d decided that I would come back on my own and probably enjoy it.
Suddenly, there were the bells again, hollow and regular. He stopped where he was and gazed ahead.
‘The Angelus,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten the time. I’m afraid I’ll have to show you the rest of the gardens tomorrow. I’ll be late for evensong – and I’m giving the sermon too! Would you like to come to the chapel?’ he asked, and then, suddenly remembering something, said, ‘Oh, by the way, I found a copy of our … well, I suppose you would call it a brochure or … in-house rules.’
He grunted with some awkwardness and handed me the creased pamphlet, the paper he had been holding all this time. I took it and was grateful for the distraction from having to say no to the chapel. I was too nervous for that.
He turned. ‘I must hurry. Can you find your own way back?’ And then as an afterthought, ‘Supper is at five-thirty, by the way.’
The sun had moved behind trees and the room was dark. I felt empty after the company of Father Godfrey. It’s strange, but already home seemed somewhere that I had been separated from for a long time. Even the journey was a vague unreality. Had I really only been here for a few hours?
I lay back on the bed and lit a cigarette. A wasp kept diving between the edge of the curtain and the window. Its whirring body clipped spasmodically against the pane, the force sometimes knocking it onto the windowsill. It didn’t understand that there was no way out. Hitting its head against a brick wall! How often had I been accused of doing just that? But now I couldn’t imagine what could have been important enough. Getting the job, I wanted? Fighting to be loved by the wrong person? Getting Dan into the grammar school? How excited Fleur had been, fetching him on the first day. How smart he had looked in his new school uniform, and Fleur, too excited to wait for him to get out through the school gates, had run in to him through all the big boys, calling out to him in her high-pitched voice, and he had grabbed her hand with that shy smile of his. Fleur had started talking even before she reached him and I heard her above all the other voices.
The wasp was dancing on its back and I couldn’t let that go on, so I slipped the pamphlet under its struggling body, opened the window and threw it out into the air. Through the open window, I could see behind the trees the wall of the rose garden.