17 Alma Road
The eighth section...
VIII
This time he heads anti-clockwise around the garden: right-hand border first, then past the apple trees, about turn at the vegetable patch and back up the other side. It seems strange how doing so — and looking at the garden and house from this marginally altered perspective — can make things seem both the same and different simultaneously. He stops near where a swathe of germaniums cascades from the border onto the lawn, and remembers how George kept them under control, constrained in their patch. Yet he did so all the while allowing you the impression that they were somehow free to spread as much as they wished. It was a tightrope he walked with his garden, control versus chaos.
“But he was good at it, wasn’t he?” Maddie asks.
“Masterful.” Owen resumes walking. “But I don’t think you and I realised that until much later; until we’d moved out in fact. I remember coming back and marvelling at the place, each year identical but somehow changed.” He wonders how the boundaries of such divergent seasonal states are defined by gardeners, and when they know they are close to settling on something that will just work. “I suspect there were lots of things over which George had that kind of controlling influence.”
“Invisible,” Maddie suggests.
“To us, undoubtedly.” He stops and looks toward the kitchen window. “But not to Florence. Never to Florence.”
They had been in the kitchen, the three of them, he and Maddie engaged in the washing up, Florence putting things away in one of her vast cupboards.
George had been dead just two months.
“Remember that time we told you how we met,” Florence began, “in Canterbury?”
Owen and Maddie paused and turned to watch her move to the small kitchen table, sit on one of its chairs.
“Once we had coffee I simply knew I couldn’t let him go. He seemed - such a ‘catch’… There was still a lot of pressure in those days for young women to marry early. The Swinging Sixties weren’t that far away, but they hadn’t arrived yet.” She paused. “Put the kettle on would you dear?”
Maddie busied herself as requested.
“Which I suppose meant the poor man didn’t really stand a chance.” Florence smiled to herself. “Do you remember when we were talking about how we met and how he made a show about being naïve when it came to girls? That was rubbish too. Your uncle George knew what was what alright!” Her smile broadened for a moment. “But maybe he was ready to settle down. Perhaps that was where I got lucky. Maybe we were both a little afraid that if we let the opportunity go — the opportunity of each other, you understand — then we might not get another one. Or at least not one as good. It was a mutual sweeping off the feet, as it were.”
Owen hung the tea-towel on its hook and joined his aunt at the table. Maddie watched on as she prepared the tea.
“We married the following summer. Augustus was there of course. That was where he met Alice. Did we ever tell you that?”
“No.” Maddie’s voice was a mix of surprise and incredulity. They both turned to look at her.
“Yes. Really.” Florence looked at her hands, weaving her fingers across each other, then releasing them, then repeating. “She was somebody’s daughter. I forget who. Your uncle and I were all too wrapped up in ourselves to spot anything else going on — though something clearly was. They proved it by getting married themselves three years later.”
From across the kitchen came the sound of water being poured into a pot, then Maddie carried it to the table where she sat it down alongside the cups that were already there.
“Thank you,” Florence said.
There was a brief pause as the three of them watched the steam rising from the pot’s spout, waiting for the tea to brew. They all liked their tea strong.
“You mustn’t let your uncle fool you though,” Florence spoke as if he was still there, perhaps ensconced in his study awaiting to be served, his tea poured into the large florid mug he favoured and which they had bought in Siena when they had once holidayed there.
“Fool us about what?” Owen asked.
“He makes out he’s not very good at things — all that rubbish about girls for example — but that’s just nonsense. His way.” She seemed to struggle with linguistic tense for a moment. “George was always sure of things, decisive. He never really showed it because — well, I don’t suppose he ever needed to. As long as I knew; that’s what counted for him. And I did. He was my rock really. I was only able to be me because of him.” There was a catch in her voice which prompted Maddie to place her hand on Florence’s. The older woman smiled. “Oh, don’t you mind me. Come to think of it, I don’t see why I should be singing his praises given the selfish bastard has gone off and left me.”
It was intended as a joke. Florence’s choice of language — given she rarely swore — was offered as the signpost of it being so. And yet there remained something lingering within the incontrovertible truth which, however relayed, cut through the language she had used when making the assertion.
“If I might be permitted,” Florence began again, looking at each of them in turn, “it is one of my few regrets that neither of you were able to find your own version of my George.” Owen makes to reply, but Florence stops him. “Oh, I know you’ve tried hard, and in your different ways, but having someone on whom you can depend… Well, it makes life bearable.”
Maddie glanced away from her aunt and out through the kitchen door, heart and head focussed elsewhere entirely. It was a gesture Owen could not fail to notice. In doing so, he found it was his turn to place a hand on his sister’s.
“Look at us,” Florence said, suddenly lively, “sitting here with our hands linked as if we’re engaged in some cheap séance.”
~