Eleanor blinked in the bright sunlight. She felt groggy, everything around her was muted, as if she were swimming up through the water towards the light shimmering on the surface above. Finally the world came into focus, and she saw she was in her bedroom, the curtains drawn back to let in the light of a summer’s afternoon. Katherine was sitting in the chair by her bed, a book forgotten in her lap as she propped her head with her hand and dozed.
Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, and nothing but a croak came out. Katherine startled to wakefulness, leaning forward to inspect Eleanor.
“Thank heaven, you’re awake.”
Eleanor licked her dry lips and Katherine quickly poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. Eleanor could see several paper twists and brown glass bottles of medicine, and she wondered just how ill she’d been.
Katherine held the glass to Eleanor’s lips and she managed several sips before falling back against the pillows, her eyes closed.
“You’ve been in bed for nearly a week,” Katherine told her. “With the influenza. Mother’s been half out of her mind with worry.”
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor whispered and Katherine brushed her words aside the way you would a fly.
“There’s no need to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
Memories filtered through Eleanor’s mind, shadowy shapes that slowly gained clarity. “Your wedding…” she said, and Katherine pressed her lips together and said nothing. Eleanor turned her head; it seemed to take an awful lot of effort. Her head felt terribly heavy and it seemed as if her body was being pressed into the bed. She could not imagine walking or running or so much as moving a finger ever again.
“What happened?” she finally asked.
“I don’t rightly know. Right in the middle of our wedding breakfast Jack Taylor came bolting out of the walled garden, holding you in his arms. He said you’d collapsed, and Father took you into the house. You’ve been in bed since, out of your mind with fever. The doctor said if it didn’t break soon there was no hope, and Father went to the church and kept vigil all night long.”
“Poor Father,” Eleanor whispered. She lay there for a moment, trying to summon the strength to speak again. Finally she asked, “And you… and James? Did you go to Edinburgh?”
“How could we?” Katherine asked without rancour. “With you at death’s door.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Stop saying that. It’s not your fault. We can go to Edinburgh another time.”
Eleanor turned to look at Katherine. She was bustling about her bedside table, clearing away the discarded paper twists of medicine. “And how is married life?” she asked with what she hoped was a smile. Her face felt funny too, the muscles tight and stiff.
“I wouldn’t know,” Katherine answered briskly. She moved Eleanor’s glass and the pitcher of water, rearranging them needlessly. “I’ve been here since you became ill. It seemed right. You were that close to death, Eleanor.”
“Did James mind?”
“Why should he?” Katherine returned, and Eleanor wasn’t sure if she meant because he’d understand, or that he simply didn’t care. She chose not to ask for clarification.
“Jack Taylor’s come to the door every day to ask after you,” Katherine said after a moment. “The kitchen door, mind. He asked Tilly, who told him you were very ill and sent him away with a flea in his ear.”
“She shouldn’t have—”
“Even Tilly can see he’s too familiar with you,” Katherine cut across her. “You should have seen the look on everyone’s faces when he came from the garden with you in his arms! I thought Grandmama would faint.”
“Grandmama never faints,” Eleanor answered. She’d closed her eyes again; she was so very tired, and Katherine’s admonitions were making her feel even wearier.
“Even so. It was shocking, Eleanor.” Her sister’s tone was serious rather than accusatory, which made Eleanor feel worse. “I wasn’t the only one who thought so.”
“I’d collapsed,” Eleanor reminded her. “Was he meant to leave me lying in the dirt?” She drew a shuddering breath; speaking so much had taken a huge amount of effort and everything in her ached.
“Do you even remember what happened?” The dubious note in Katherine’s voice made Eleanor open her eyes.
“You’re not…” She drew another laborious breath. “You’re not accusing Jack of lying, are you?”
“It’s not lying I’m accusing him of, but improper feelings towards you.”
“We’re friends, Katherine, that’s all.”
“You know Father wouldn’t countenance anything else for a moment,” Katherine warned her. “He wasn’t best pleased to see Taylor carrying you.”
“I would have thought he would be grateful Jack came to my rescue.”
“He was, but there was something familiar about the way he held you. Something… tender.”
Once Eleanor would have thrilled to hear such words. Now she felt only weary. She turned her face away; she could feel sleep coming for her, the edges of her mind starting to fog.
“That’s what shocked people, I suppose,” Katherine continued. “If he’s developed an affection for you, Father will send him away. It would be better for Taylor if you didn’t encourage it.”
Eleanor swallowed; her throat felt sore and swollen. “Go away, Katherine,” she mumbled.
Katherine sighed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this now,” she said as she rose from the chair. “But someone has to.”
Thankfully Eleanor was already drifting back to sleep.
It was another week before Eleanor felt well enough to get out of bed – seven summer days where she watched the bright-green leaves of the chestnut trees dance in the breeze and wished she possessed the strength or even the desire to go outside and see the garden.
She’d felt listless and flat since waking up that afternoon with Katherine by her bedside; even the thought of seeing Jack again failed to rouse her. Their friendship, she knew, would die on the vine even as the garden he’d created blossomed and grew. Katherine had said nothing more about it, but she hadn’t needed to. In the long, lonely hours of her recovery Eleanor came to the conclusion that everyone else had surely already drawn: a friendship, much less a romance, with Jack Taylor was inappropriate and impossible. She’d known that, of course, but she’d chosen to ignore the truth that was staring her in the face. She’d enjoyed her friendship with Jack, such as it was; she liked him, liked the way he listened, how he understood.
But reality, she knew, was not a life or even a friendship with the gardener, and the last thing she wanted was for her recklessness to cause trouble for Jack.
Her own future would most likely be a marriage to whatever half-decent man she could find. It would be like Katherine’s marriage to James, an alliance that would no doubt be uninspired. Gazing out at the green leaves by her bedroom window, she wondered if she loved Jack, or even if she could love him, in time; perhaps, like Katherine, she didn’t know what love was.
Finally, in the middle of June, Eleanor was well enough to go downstairs; she sat in the sitting room rather than her usual alcove in the dining room, and looked out at the lane that led to the church. Her father had been busy discussing a war memorial to be constructed by the church, and listening to him talk about all the boys who had lost their lives brought Walter’s death back to her afresh. It was all she could do to sit in the armchair by the window with a rug over her knees and gaze out at nothing.
“This isn’t like you, Eleanor,” Anne said one afternoon a fortnight after she’d woken up from her fever. “You’re usually so full of joy and gaiety.” Her mother came to sit down next to her, smiling, although her forehead was furrowed in a frown. “I think we’ve come to depend on your good spirits to bolster our own.”
Eleanor turned to gaze out the window. It was another brilliant day, balmy and blue-skied. Everyone was remarking how no one had seen such a summer in Cumberland before, but the news hardly stirred Eleanor now. “I’m too tired to bolster anything,” she said after a moment. “Nothing seems to matter any more.”
“Oh, my dear.” Anne touched her arm lightly. “The world will continue to turn, and us with it. If you rouse yourself a little, perhaps you will find something to interest you again.”
“I doubt it, Mother,” Eleanor replied. What was there to interest her? Days spent visiting the poor and unfortunate, or volunteering in church or with the newly formed Women’s Institute? Evenings at insipid parties or dances to look for a suitable husband she didn’t think she could love? And if she didn’t find a husband, which was quite likely considering the dearth of men, she would wait out her days in this vicarage, steeped in loneliness, the Sanderson spinster. When her father retired, perhaps they would all crowd into the Bower House, and she would help to care for her parents as they aged. Perhaps she would help care for Katherine’s children when they came. Without the solace of her own household and children, she would have precious little to look forward to.
If she’d been more academic, Eleanor supposed she could have tried for a job, teaching in a girls’ school, perhaps. Her father was old-fashioned enough not to encourage such possibilities. Eleanor remembered the women in London with their shorter dresses and shingled hair, their swinging arms and sense of purpose, their cigarettes, even. But even though the world was changing, Eleanor was not sure she possessed the strength or desire to emulate them.
A week later her father had his turn at rousing her from her glum mood. “Come out into the garden, Eleanor, and see what Taylor has done.”
“I couldn’t manage it, Father,” Eleanor replied. She did not want to see Jack, not after Katherine’s dire warning.
“But you must. He’s worked ever so hard at your walled garden.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Even so.”
“Then let me carry you out in a chair,” Andrew insisted, and ignoring her protests, he arranged for Eleanor to be brought out in an old bath chair he’d found in the cellar.
Eleanor felt rather ridiculous being carried out on a chair like some Indian raj in his palanquin. Her father took one side and Raymond Carr, who had just delivered the day’s ice, took the other. Jack, Eleanor couldn’t help but notice, had not been asked to help.
He stood to the side of the door as she was wheeled into the walled garden and then hefted aloft when the wheels caught in the grass. Eleanor forced herself not to look at him. And, in truth, the garden claimed all of her attention, for Jack had truly wrought wonders with it. The ground was now laid to grass, and the borders were bursting with herbs and flowers. From Jack’s tutelage she recognized the tight pink buds of thyme in flower, and the spiky clumps of anise hyssop with their purplish-blue flowers thrusting up towards the sky. And rosemary, of course, spiky and spicy-scented, for remembrance.
“Isn’t it lovely!” Andrew said with satisfaction, almost as if it were his doing rather than Jack’s. “But that’s not even the best bit.” He nodded towards the little building in the centre of the garden as he and Raymond Carr set down her chair.
Eleanor could see that the building’s windows had been fitted with new glass, and they sparkled in the sunshine. The door had been fixed too, and painted; the whole building looked new again.
“Why has he repaired it?” Eleanor asked. “Is there something inside?”
“Indeed there is,” Andrew answered. “Many things inside, as it happens. It was quite an endeavour, mind you, but I’ve been planning it for some time, with Taylor’s help.”
Eleanor turned to him. “This was your idea?”
“Well…” Andrew had the grace to look a little abashed. “It was Taylor’s idea, to be sure, but I gave the go-ahead. He came to me with the suggestion weeks ago, after I’d given you permission to get started in here.”
Eleanor’s malaise fell away as her curiosity became well and truly roused. “What on earth is it?” she asked.
“Can you walk that far?” Andrew asked. “Or shall I carry you inside?”
“I can walk,” Eleanor said, and unsteadily she rose from her chair. It was only a matter of a dozen steps to the door of the building, but they still made her feel dizzy. Her father held her elbow, and Raymond Carr hovered on her other side. Eleanor wished Jack were there; he’d remained by the door to the garden, his hands clasped in front of him, his head slightly bowed, the very picture of subservience.
She reached the door and lifted the latch; it creaked open and she stepped inside the little room, noticing first how warm and humid it was, and then registering a strange sound, something between a hum and a flutter.
It took her a moment to adjust to the dimness of the room, although the windows let in a fair amount of light. Then with a sharply indrawn breath she saw what the building contained.
“Butterflies…”
Dozens of butterflies fluttered in the little room, contained behind netting. There were flowers, too, to provide the nectar they fed on. Jack had planted them in tubs: purple phlox, orange and red gaillardia, and the tall, purple, spiky flowers known as blazing star.
“I had the gas man come to fix the heating,” Andrew said proudly. “It will be warm in here right through winter, to keep them alive.”
“Oh, but that’s a terrible expense,” Eleanor cried.
“It’s worth it to me, my dear, if it makes you happy.”
“It does.” Eleanor gazed in rapture at the butterflies chasing each other in their cosy quarters; she could see the bright-blue wings of the same kind of butterfly she’d seen on the day she’d been here with Jack, and had thought he might kiss her.
She wanted to see Jack now, and share this with him; almost roughly, she pushed past her father and Mr Carr and went back out into the garden, the sunshine so bright she nearly reeled back. She must have staggered a little, for instinctively Mr Carr caught her arm, murmuring an apology, but Eleanor didn’t listen, didn’t care.
She was gazing at Jack, who had lifted his head and was staring back at her, his eyes seeming to her to blaze as brightly as the sun. Neither of them spoke, but Eleanor didn’t think they needed to. The look in his eyes told her everything.
“Shall we take you back into the house?” Andrew asked, and Eleanor shook her head.
“Oh no, please, Father. I want to stay out here and enjoy the sunshine and the butterflies.” She touched his sleeve as she smiled up at him. “You’ve made me very happy. Thank you.”
“All right, then. But tell Taylor to call me when you want to be brought inside.”
Within moments Andrew and Mr Carr had left, and Eleanor was alone with Jack. She’d sat back down in the chair, for she was in fact feeling rather weak, and Jack started for the door of the walled garden.
“Don’t go,” Eleanor called softly, and he stopped before half turning towards her.
“I think it’s best if I get on with my work…”
“When did you think of the butterflies?” Eleanor asked. “Was it the day I cut my foot?”
He took his cap off, twisting it in his hands. “Yes.”
“I thought you might kiss me then,” Eleanor said, half amazed that she was being so brazen, and yet the words had come unbidden, from a deep part of her. She could not have stopped them if she’d tried.
Jack shook his head. “This isn’t… it isn’t proper, Eleanor.”
“Don’t you think the idea of what is proper is changing?” Eleanor protested. “The war has changed so much.” She thought of the women in London, of Katherine teaching veterans to type. Even in Goswell, surely things could change, if only a little. “If one good thing could come from so much devastation and grief,” she said, “then let it be that. Let it be that two people who care for each other can do so without a regard for outdated propriety.”
“That’s a nice wish, and no more.”
“But you do care for me?” Eleanor pressed, reckless now, and determined. “Don’t you?”
She could see the conflict and even the torment on his face; by pressing the point she was making him unhappy, but she would not stop. “Because I care for you,” she stated defiantly, and he shook his head again.
“You don’t know me.”
“I do,” she protested. “I know how kind and gentle and understanding you are.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “No.”
“Yes—”
“Oh, Eleanor.” He opened his eyes then, and now he simply looked bleak. “You see the world in such a simple way, as if caring for someone is all that matters.”
“Isn’t it?” she demanded, stung. “It could be, at least.”
“But you really don’t know me,” Jack said quietly. “You’ve only spent a handful of hours with me. You don’t know who I am, what I’m capable of—”
“I know you’re capable of great kindness,” Eleanor returned staunchly. “You showed me great kindness, Jack, when you spoke with me about Walter. Why are you arguing with me about how I feel?”
“Because nothing can happen between us,” Jack answered. “Ever.”
Eleanor blinked, chastened by the finality of his tone. Struggling a bit, she rose from her chair. “Please don’t say that.”
“I must.”
“Jack—” Her voice broke on his name as she stretched one hand out to him, all her resolutions about keeping her distance vanishing in the light of the truth she now knew. He cared for her. She would prove it to him. She took a step towards him, her knees buckling beneath her as she came over faint. With a little cry she sank back onto her chair, and Jack hurried to her.
“Are you all right? Your father will have my head if something happens to you out here.” But the concern she saw on his face was not for his head, but hers. She held her arms out to him, and after a second’s pause, when the entire world seemed suspended, he came to her, kneeling at her feet, his head pressed into her lap.
“Oh, Jack,” Eleanor said softly. “Dear, dear Jack.” She threaded her fingers through his hair; it felt soft and springy, and it seemed entirely natural for her to touch him in this way.
Jack lifted his head to stare at her. “I have nothing to offer you, Eleanor. Nothing.”
“I don’t want anything but you.” It was simple, she thought with a fierce triumph. Of course it was, no matter what Jack had said.
“You say that now, when you have everything at your fingertips. A life with me…” He shook his head. “Your family might disown you. And I’d have nothing for you but the meanest cottage. You’d look twice your age in a matter of years, worn out from all the scrubbing…”
Eleanor laughed. “Do you really think I care about that?”
“You would.”
“No.” She spoke firmly, with utter certainty. Jack sat back on his heels.
“And there’s something else. Something I haven’t told you.”
“Then tell me now.”
“I… I can’t.”
She frowned, and Jack looked away. “Why can’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I meant what I said. I’ve compromised you enough already.” He stood up and she gaped at him, shocked that even now he could think of leaving her.
“So you’re to decide for me?” she demanded. “About my own life? I think I know what I’m capable of, Jack. I’m stronger than you seem to think. I can manage a little housework.”
“A little?” He raised his eyebrows, his mouth twisting in a funny sort of smile. “It would be more than a little, Eleanor. You’d be a – a drudge! The commonest char. And what work do you do now? A bit of embroidery? Some darning, perhaps?”
There was no scorn in his voice, only sadness, but Eleanor still felt stung. “I can learn.”
“You would come to hate me, and I couldn’t bear that.”
“I wouldn’t!” Anger surged through her and she nearly stamped her foot in rage. With effort she forced the fury back, and kept her voice calm. “That’s not fair, Jack.”
“You’d lose that vital, vibrant part of yourself that I love. And it would be my fault.”
“But if you love me…” she whispered, still unable to believe it could end like this, before it had even begun.
“It’s better this way,” he answered, and Eleanor knew there would be no changing his mind, at least not now. “I’ll go tell your father you want to come inside,” he said, and turned to go.