Page 2
Story: The Garden
2
Evelyn was up at sunrise to collect eggs. She left Lily under her heap of blankets and went barefoot around the great western wing of the house and the ruins of the sunroom. The chickens were already awake and waiting to be let out. Just three hens now, and an elderly rooster, in the same coops that had stood there for decades. Their father had built the wooden hutches to last, and it seemed they were destined to outlive the chickens’ entire lineage. They’d had no chicks for a long time.
She let the hens out and they came down the little wooden ramp and clucked and pecked at the ground uncertainly, every morning exercising the same caution, as if encountering the world for the first time. She left them prowling through the grass and opened the back of the hutch. There were two eggs hidden in the straw, one each for her and her sister. They felt like a pair of large, sun-warmed pebbles in the palms of her hands. She put them into the front pocket of her nightdress and looked up into the cold blue haze and there found most of a full moon hanging where she had not expected to see one. She’d forgotten where the month had got to. She stood and thought, counting the days and nights on her fingers, then went inside.
Back in the kitchen Lily was still asleep. She always rose later than Evelyn. Evelyn didn’t particularly mind. It seemed as much Lily’s duty to sleep in as it was Evelyn’s to collect the eggs.
She stepped quietly over her younger sister and crossed the kitchen floor, the soles of her feet numb from the dew. She placed the eggs carefully in the cast-iron egg tree and then came back to the dresser and opened the topmost drawer. She took out the almanac and laid it open on the table.
“You’re back early.”
Evelyn turned. Lily was sitting up like one of the hens in her nest of blankets.
“I’m just checking something.”
“Checking? Now there’s something I never thought I’d hear. First the beehive, now this. You losing your marbles, Evie?”
Evelyn smiled but said nothing and turned back to the pages spread on the tabletop.
The almanac was their mother’s work, a large ring-bound diary whose damp and wadded pages contained all that she knew and all that she had instructed her daughters to know. There was not half an inch of blank paper between its covers. The first dozen pages showed a bird’s-eye view of the house and the gardens, front and back, with plans of the plots and the beds. At the back was an appendix of recipes and remedies that could be made from the things they grew, a kind of apothecary’s miscellany. In between, the lion’s share of the almanac was given over to timetables for planting and growing and harvesting. Sections headed Spring , Summer , Autumn , Winter , though these meant little nowadays. The garden kept its own seasons. Each new year seemed overlaid rather than joined consecutively, a jumble of cycles within cycles. It was not unusual for Evelyn to be digging potatoes out of earth that was scattered with apple blossom.
She turned a few of the pages and traced a finger over the minuscule writing. The words had been etched deeply into the paper and were covered with a thin patina of dust, giving each page the appearance of some ancient stone tablet. She found the section headed Autumn, first moon, gibbous, waxing , flattened the almanac, compared her mother’s list to the list she held in her head. There was more to do than she had thought.
“I thought that thing was useless, anyway,” said Lily.
Evelyn felt the slightest shiver of indignation on their mother’s behalf. “Not useless. It’s just a little out of step.”
“What is it today then?”
“Brassicas. Onions and garlic. More beans.”
“More beans? I feel like I should have some say in this since I’m the one doing the cooking.”
“They’re good for the soil.”
Lily didn’t reply, but Evelyn knew she was rolling her eyes.
“I think the roses need deadheading.”
“Oh! I’ll deadhead the roses.”
“Mama doesn’t mention it, though.”
“So?”
“So maybe we shouldn’t.”
Lily got up from her blankets with a groan and came and put her arms around Evelyn’s waist. She pressed her chest against the back of Evelyn’s ribs, and Evelyn felt her sister’s heart beating through her thin bird-bones.
Lily peered over her shoulder and said, “I don’t know why you don’t just give up on that and write a new one.”
It was not the first time she had said it, not even the hundredth time, but the suggestion still seemed a wild one. Of course the almanac couldn’t be replaced. Evelyn wouldn’t know where to start. Besides, they had no more paper, and their one pencil belonged to Lily, and Lily didn’t like to part with it. It was little more than a nub now, and writing anything so extensive would wear it down to nothing.
“I’ll ask Mama about it,” said Evelyn. “Later.”
Lily went to the back of the kitchen to make their porridge. Evelyn closed the almanac and looked at the cover for a moment. It was curled and liver-spotted and showed another timetable, a daily schedule that did not shift beneath their feet as the seasons did. Lunchtime, teatime, bathtime, bedtime. Beside each entry were numbers that seemed to refer only to themselves rather than any objective measurement of minutes and hours. The handwriting was larger but still recognizably their mother’s, the words more forcefully imposed, somehow, than the almanac’s contents.
“Oh dear,” said Lily, from back in the darkness.
Evelyn returned the almanac to the drawer and looked over at her. “What’s oh dear?”
“Just two eggs today?”
“Better than yesterday.”
“Not much. How are the old girls?”
“Fine. Bad-tempered.”
“Wouldn’t you be? Having to live with that cockerel.”
The remark was more a ritual than a joke, but they both laughed anyway.
Lily brought over their bowls of porridge and they ate it wordless and smiling. The kitchen door was ajar, and a wedge of yellow sunlight fell across precisely half of the table. Birdsong and bristling leaves outside. Lily’s jaw clicked when she ate, and Evelyn liked the sound. She liked all the sounds of her sister’s body. They were more in keeping with the other sounds they heard in the garden, she thought; much more so than speaking, which seemed to belong there less and less these days.
Lily pushed her bowl away and got up first, as if steeling herself for something.
“What will you do today?” said Evelyn.
“I shall fetch the water,” said Lily. “Then I shall wash the dishes. Then I shall go to the gazebo to practice my steps.” She paused. “What about a game after lunch? We haven’t played a game for months. Not a proper game.”
Evelyn thought of her list of tasks. “Yes,” she said. “If I have time.”
Lily shrugged. “Well, I’ll play by myself if I must,” she said. “Although I don’t know why you keep yourself quite so busy all the time.”
Lily always seemed surprised that there was work to do; had not twigged, after all these years, that work was all that there was.
Evelyn got up herself and squeezed her sister’s hand. She put on the same outfit she always wore—plaid shirt, jeans, holes at the elbows and knees, and cinched in the middle with their mother’s cracked leather belt. She took the waxed jacket from the hook behind the door and put on her Wellington boots and went out into a day that was, she thought tiredly, already well ahead of her.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2 (Reading here)
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49