Edmund had dug a hole in the garden, not for the Anderson shelter as Miriam had wanted but for the pond that he’d been thinking about. He knew it should be in full sun, well away from the shade and drifting leaves from overhanging trees. It should contain still, shallow water not more than eighteen inches deep. He had no intention of sticking a fountain in the middle as some had done. There was something artificial to him in having a jet of water spurting out of what he hoped would be a natural looking pool.
The soil was clay-like, dense and clumpy, so he’d had to break it up with the garden fork, stabbing the ground until it would relent to the spade. The sun was at his back, but the breeze was cool and spoke of rain, a good day for digging, though Edmund was not getting the pleasure he’d hoped from it. The morning newspaper had brought news of conscription for men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two, and this brought on a general unease, a steady drip in the constant flow that was the developing war. The conscription did not affect him, that’s true, but it was the unknowing of what was really happening behind these headlines that worried him. Preparations for war did not necessarily mean war. That had been his mantra, until the issue of the Anderson shelter had come up. This still seemed a step too far, one he found he couldn’t make.
But Miriam was quick on the case, unable to see how this was the right time to be digging for a pond.
“There’s no sense in it, not now,” she’d told him.
“We have to carry on, not live our lives to news headlines,” he’d argued. But he, too, was more unsettled than he wanted to admit, though he could not back down from his plans for the pond.
The hole was nearly two feet deep now, and six feet around, large enough to accommodate the water plants he had in mind. He stood back to assess it, calculate whether he’d gone deeper than he should have. He would put rocks at the base—that, too, needed calculating. He glanced over to the house, saw Miriam in the window, saw her look up briefly from what she was doing then return to it without a smile or a wave. He felt her presence as a judgment, watching him betray her wishes like this so that for a brief moment he wondered if it was worth it, the tension between them till now so rare a thing, he had no way to read it. She had recovered from her procedure but she seemed more tense these days, which he took to be unsteady nerves in preparation to the race.
He wondered whether the pond he’d dug might be turned into a shelter after all, whether that might settle things between them.
Just then Miriam came through the door with a tray, the tea pot rattling, and she pulled the door closed behind her.
“Elevenses,” she announced, putting the tray on the table.
“Oh, yes. Good.” He stabbed the spade into the ground and went to her. She fixed the teacups in place, put the plate of biscuits on the table, and poured from the pot. Edmund brushed his hands on his trousers and stood across the table from her, glancing back to see the pond from the house end of the garden, wanting her to admire it, be impressed with the progress, imagine the beauty of it once it had the flowering lilies in place. He sat down opposite her and picked up the teacup. She reached for a biscuit then sat back and looked at the sky.
“It looks like rain,” she said.