Distant Voices. Barbara Erskine
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down at it from her bedroom window across the bare square of earth and rubble which would one day be their garden, Amanda sighed. Turning from the window she sat down on the end of the bed and stared round the room. Small, functional and new, like the garden. So new it still smelled of paint and varnish and the sour tang of sawn deal.
Next door the baby was crying again as it had been on and off all night. The muffled protests and the distant sound of a radio somewhere across the road only served to emphasise the silence in her own house.
‘We must live somewhere new; so new no one else has ever lived there before! I don’t want a second-hand house! I don’t want a house full of other people’s dreams and nightmares.’ Andrew’s sweep of argument carried all before it as it always had and her own dream of an old cottage with a thatched roof and roses round the door crumbled before his enthusiasm, swept away as impractical and romantic and hopeless.
So here they were, newly married, newly moved, practical and down-to-earth and Andrew had left for work, early as usual, leaving her with the long day stretching out before her, empty, soulless and alone.
‘You’ll soon find a job; make some friends. Go and knock on some doors.’ So easy for him. He had done it already and talked cars and sport and TV programmes and the relative qualities of the local pubs. Her knocks had been greeted with vague smiles, barely concealed impatience, screaming children, hurried uncomfortable exchanges in the frantic business of her neighbours’ days.
Standing up at last she went to the window again. The sun was up now, the light outdoors harsh and unforgiving. Beyond the chain-link lay all that remained of the old suburban garden in which their small development of ‘executive starter homes’ had been built. The grey stone mansion had long gone, destroyed, so she had heard, by fire, but something remained to titillate her curiosity for there, beyond the long swaying grasses and the lichen-covered apple trees, she could see the reflection of the sun on glass. Several times she had walked round the neighbouring streets, trying to find the entrance to the garden, but with no success. It seemed to be a lost enclave, an unsold, unremembered plot amongst the neat geometric streets, the small red roofs and the manicured lawns. The lost garden beckoned. It was old; it was romantic; it was the focus of her dreams. One day she knew she would find the entrance and walk there on the old land beneath the new.
She had no premonition that today would be the day, no warning that suddenly the urge would become undeniable. One minute she was standing in her lonely bedroom listening to the baby’s wails, the next she was running downstairs, knowing that she had to find what lay beyond the wire.
No one saw her. Glancing behind her at the rows of neat windows, most swathed modestly in ruched nets and fancy frills, she put her foot, without giving herself time to think, on the concrete stanchion which held the high fence in place, grabbed at the top of the wire and vaulted it. In the neat houses behind her, women got their children ready for school; they fed their babies and made their beds and looked for the car keys so they could go to a supermarket too far away to visit on foot. None looked out of the windows. There were no gardens yet to admire. Some had laid neat squares of grass bought by the metre; two had planted small whips of birch and miniature weeping willow. None looked beyond the chain-link fence. Those who did saw nothing but a wilderness of weeds and wondered, if they thought at all, why the plot had not been sold.
Amanda stood for a moment feeling the unexpected iciness of early morning dew soaking into the legs of her jeans. It made her gasp with surprise. Glancing back she saw how high the wire she had vaulted was from this side, with beyond it the blind windows, and she shivered. Ducking through the wet grasses she ran for the apple trees, suddenly afraid of being seen, feeling the catch of bramble and spear thistle, the slippery wetness in her shoes, the cling of burrs in her hair, then she was out of sight of the houses and wrapped in the silence of the garden.
She stopped, trying to steady her breath, willing the beating of her heart to quieten and steady, and at last, as the pounding in her ears subsided, she let the peace and beauty of the garden enfold her and soak into her soul. Walking slowly now, exploring, confident she could not be seen, she found that she was listening to the liquid song of a wren as it scuttled and hid in the ivy which swathed an old grey garden wall. On the top of one of the apple trees a blackbird eyed her suspiciously and then relaxed, ignoring her. Its throat swelled and it began to sing, the sound echoing gloriously round her in a cascade of liquid notes.
Enchanted, she listened without moving, conscious that in the distance she could hear the steady popping sound of ball on racquet from the municipal tennis courts in Celadon Road – surely once part of this same garden. She did not move until the blackbird stopped, flirted its tail and flew away. Then she plunged further into the undergrowth.
She saw the old man before he saw her. A trug laden with flowers on his arm, he moved slowly and silently away from her along the path and out of sight. Frightened and embarrassed she drew back into the shelter of the brambles and watched.
The half ruined, shabby greenhouse stood against a high brick wall. Most of the glass was broken; that which remained was smeared and furry with lichen. On the wooden battens the paint rose in blistered flakes to leave weathered broken frames for the surviving jagged triangles of glass which they clasped. This then had been the glass she had seen from her bedroom window; this the glass which had caught the rising sun. She crept closer, staring in. Where had he got the flowers? She could see the wild remains of an old vine, clinging to the glass; giant nettles, fat hen, avens. A few poppies splashed the only colour through the green; the staging was littered with broken clay pots and rotten splintered seed trays.
At the back door of the house he proffered the basket of blooms. ‘The last of the chrysanths, tell her ladyship.’
‘Her ladyship wants to see you.’ In a flurry of white aprons and uncomfortable self-importance the cook beckoned him in.
He nodded, stamping mud from his boots, pulling his cap from his head. For special occasions she often asked him in, planned the flowers with him, consulted his expertise. She loved flowers, did her ladyship. With a smile he stepped onto the shining oak boards and made his way towards the morning room.
Amanda glanced through the door and then stepped inside the greenhouse. With a frightened squawk a bird flew up from the floor and beat for a moment against the glass before finding a gap and soaring out into the sunlight. She ran a finger over a work bench. The soil was dust under her hand. A rusty tobacco tin rattled as though it were full of nails. Another was full of empty, desiccated seeds. Keeping a wary eye out for the old man she wandered further in, savouring the warmth, the smell of dry earth, the buzz of a bee trapped beneath the glass. Outside the sun moved higher in the sky. The shadows shortened. The dew evaporated. The day grew hotter.
A strange sweet smell assailed her nostrils. Unpleasant. She sniffed with sudden distaste. It was the smell of decay. Near her hand, as she picked idly over the rubbish on the bench she found a packet of cigarettes, half empty, the cigarettes inside as dry as the dust. She frowned. They must have lain there abandoned for years. Her fingers hovered over them, hesitated and moved away. Inexplicably she felt a shiver tiptoe across her shoulders.
‘I’m afraid there can be no hothouse flowers this year, Bates.’ She was sitting with her back to the desk, her pen poised, the ink already dry on the nib, turning to him for only a second in her busy day. ‘We shall not be firing the boilers.’
‘Your ladyship?’ He could think of nothing to say.
‘That will be all, Bates.’
‘But the orchids, your ladyship. The frost –’
‘I’m sorry, Bates. There will be no more orchids.’ None of his business why; hide her fear and sorrow and rage from the servants at all cost. She could see it all in his face: first the bewilderment; then the realisation; then the sick disbelief. ‘That will be all Bates.’ She could say nothing else. Beneath the high frill of her silk blouse and the long strings of creamy pearls she too felt sick. In the drawer of the desk only a few inches from her hand the pile of gambling debts burned like a fire. Reginald was in