Consider the Lily (52 page)

A log broke in the grate.

‘Your father kept faith,’ said Danny. ‘“Let’s get through this bloody awful battle, Danny,” ‘e said. And we did.’ Danny paused. “E knows I won’t let ‘im go out alone. ‘E knows I’m ‘ere.’

As Danny talked, Rupert opened his eyelids and, ignoring his son and his daughter, gazed at Danny with eyes as clear and lucid as a Highland burn. Right at Danny, through him and beyond. Then he died.

After Kit had come, told her the news and gone again, Matty read through the night, a cone of electric light from her lamp illuminating the page.
Papaver
– the poppy – she read, the flower of sleep and oblivion. In mythology, it is said to have been created by Somnus, the god of sleep, its juice the pathway along which flee wild and fanciful dreams so seductive that the dreamer never tires. Therein lay its fascination and its danger.

Matty pushed back her hair and studied the illustrations: the violet poppy... the carnation poppy... the curled poppy... the fringed poppy. The French call the wild poppy
coquelicot
because it is a persistent scarlet tease that returns time after time to thread its brilliant pinpoints through the corn – the corn that Rupert and Danny, and those hundreds of thousands of men, those Tommy Atkinses, now dead and gone, trampled through in their rotting boots.

‘The Poppie procureth sleepe,’ wrote Gerard in 1567, ‘it mitigateth all kindes of paines.’

So it did, so it does, thought Matty. Laudanum. Loddy. Opium. Pathways to the waters of the river Lethe where Rupert now swam.

He was at peace, she was quite sure, free from the wrapping of a body that no longer functioned, free from the past.

She closed the book and thought about her garden. That also contained the past, and she had been fearful of going back into it. For Hesther was there, Rose was there, and she was afraid that Kit and Daisy had left their imprint over her flowers.

But finally, the memories had not mattered. What bothered Matty was the neglect of the past weeks, and that she could – and did – do something about.

Matty rolled back the bedclothes, stood up on the freezing floor and, light-headed from lack of sleep, shivered. The house was quiet and Robin’s car was no longer parked in the drive.

She opened the wardrobe door. Hanging undisturbed at the back were the clothes that had become second nature, a little dusty from disuse. With a sigh of pleasure, Matty took them down from their hangers – her daring breeches, blouse, green corduroy jacket – and dressed, bundling on two vests under her blouse because of the cold. Then she pulled on her boots.

Wearing breeches made her feel free and uninhibited — as if she had put on another Matty. The Matty who had come to accept things about herself and her life: who could see ghosts; whose husband would continue to love another woman; who was childless.

She wound a scarf round her neck and looked at the clock in the shagreen case. Seven thirty. Barely light, but light enough.

Rupert was dead and she was glad for him – and she, who was alive and now well, was going out into the dawn to indulge a passion that would not fail her.

Saddened but exhilarated, Matty smiled at herself in the mirror.

As she filled the kettle in the kitchen, Matty remembered that she had to cancel the Christmas guests and arrange Rupert’s funeral. She put the kettle on the stove, got out the tea caddy and raked up the coals. The kettle would be boiling by the time she came back.

‘Get up, you lazy lump,’ she said to Minerva in her basket.

She let herself out of the house into the freezing air. Breathing in gusts of it, she walked across the frosted lawn towards her garden.

During the early days of the year, the weather sometimes flings us a bonus of warm, sun-filled days smelling of frost and iced berries. I suppress my fussy urge to cut and tidy, for frost must not get into open wounds.

Once winter depressed me. The gloom and fog of November and December, the rawness of January, February’s bleakness. There is nothing there, one is tempted to conclude, peering out into the dead brown and buff, the rattling skeleton of the garden.

But there is, you know. Tiny stirrings of life. Unexpected bursts of blossom and glorious scent. Winter stars are, of necessity, isolated, but when they come one can concentrate on them. Ah, when they come... I wait for the pink blossoms of the
Prunus autumnalis
with the impatience of a child, or for the scented honeysuckle, the starbursts of daphne, the first snowdrops, the first crocus... These, in many ways, give me more pleasure than the profusion later.

This is the time when you know if you have chosen your evergreens well, when ivy comes into its own, when the pleasures of a box-edged bed deepens, when the spurge,
Euphorbia chara-cias wulfenii,
will repay many times over the trouble you have taken with it.

This is the time to dig deep into yourself and to swear to do the things that you omitted to do the previous year. For winter exposes the soul of the gardener and the garden. In its retreat, it is possible to see the traps which are laid for every gardener, however prudent.

That is why it is such a great leveller.

When she went back into hospital, Ellen stopped dreaming – except for one strange instance. Afterwards she was never sure if it
was
a dream or a twist of mind brought on by the drugs. In it, she struggled with a monster, a black, formless shape that pressed down on her whichever way she turned, smothering and implacable. Ellen recognized the monster. It was fear. Fear was no stranger and over the past few months she and it had become well acquainted. Restless, she tossed and turned in her starched hospital sheets.

Then Bill stood before her, as clear as the day she had swung over the stile and smiled into his eyes. ‘Don’t run, love,’ he said. ‘You must face it.’

‘I can’t,’ she told him. ‘It’s too much for me.’

‘No, it isn’t, love. Go on.’

‘I just want some peace, Bill.’

‘Go
on,
love.’

Still in her dream, Ellen slowly turned a half-circle, spread wide her arms and looked into the heart of the monster.

After that, the dreams ceased. Ellen responded to the sulphonamides, her fever dropped and she began to get better.

Matty and Ned discovered her in the women’s surgical ward of Fleet hospital dispensing mid-morning tea from the trolley. Sister led the way down the polished no man’s land dividing the beds. Matty was wearing a sable-trimmed jacket with a row of pearls and there was a rustle as the regimented occupants in hospital gowns sat up to get a better look. Ellen’s standing shot skywards.

‘Hallo, girl,’ said Ned awkwardly.

Sister intervened at this point. ‘Mrs Sheppey’s our helper. She’s done so well,’ she explained, as if Ellen was not there.

‘Mrs Lofts is very sorry she can’t come today,’ said Matty, and allowed Sister to usher her into a chair. ‘How is the knee?’

Sister nipped in. ‘Dr Staine has seen to that, Lady Dysart. And it’s all tickety-boo. And, in a trice, here Mrs Sheppey is dispensing tea and sympathy.’

‘Ned,’ said Ellen with her old fierceness when Sister had moved on, ‘if you don’t get me out of here soon, I’ll kill that woman.’

‘No need for that kind of talk, girl.’ Ned shot a distressed look at Matty, who came to the rescue. She told Ellen about Rupert’s funeral service at the village church and the tea at the house afterwards, about the short obituary in
The Times,
and how the family, Flora in particular, had been forced to keep a close eye on Danny, who had set about drinking himself to death. Luckily, the hunting season was in full swing and he had been forced to pull himself together.

‘How was your daughter, Mrs Sheppey?’ she asked, at last. ‘Ned tells me she came to see you as planned.’

Ellen smiled a smile from which all worry had vanished. ‘She was fine, wasn’t she, Ned?’ Ellen looked at him. ‘And I wanted to thank you for having Tyson drive her up. It was a kind thing to do. Seeing Betty means everything to me, and Ned here.’

‘That was Mrs Lofts’s idea,’ said Matty, fiddling with her handkerchief.

Plainly, Ned was ill at ease: polished floors and disinfectant did not agree with him. His eyes shifted around the ward — he was unable to stop himself searching out sights he would rather not see – and lingered on patients who were clearly very ill. ‘When are you coming out, girl? Have they told you?’

‘Monday next,’ said Ellen, ‘providing I behave. I am grateful for what they have done, sure, but I tell you, Lady Dysart, the women that run this ward are enough to send a saint round the twist. Our helper, indeed. I’ll give her help.’

‘She looked so indignant,’ Matty reported to Kit later, ‘I almost took her home there and then.’

She had been in bed writing up her garden notebook when Kit had knocked on the bedroom door.

‘Can I come in? I know it’s late.’

‘When planning a garden,’ she had written, ‘you must make a path along the line which people will always take. That is, the shortest route, unless you mislead them by planting shrubs.’ Under that she had put, ‘All young plants (and trees?) require feeding and watering for their first two years. N.B. Must build that into the plans...’

‘Do you mind?’ asked Kit, sitting down on the bed. He was wearing his striped dressing gown and down-at-heel slippers and seemed restless and preoccupied. He squinted over her knees to the notebook. ‘Are you writing a diary?’

Matty surveyed her husband. Once upon a time her heart would have beaten a tattoo at his entrance, but it had got tired of doing so – or perhaps Matty had given up hoping that Kit would love her. ‘Do you need an aspirin powder or something?’ she asked politely.

‘No. I came in to see you and to say goodnight.’

Then she told him about Ellen, and after that a silence fell between them. Matty asked if Kit had been in touch with Max over the final arrangements for the trip to Iraq the following week. Kit replied that all was under control.

Another silence.

‘You do understand why I’m going?’ he asked out of the blue.

‘Max asked you.’

He leant forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘Just one more time, Matty. That’s all. To drive it out of my blood. The smell of leather, sun on your back, the smell of it. Cleanness.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

Still Matty was not sure why he had come.

Suddenly, he reached over and touched the collar of her nightdress. ‘I am glad you don’t wear frilly, slippery things,’ he said. ‘You’re so comfortable and soft.’

It flashed on Matty that Kit was telling her that she looked motherly, and perhaps this was what he had been wanting all along – after all, she knew now that Hesther was the key to Kit. She said nothing, but nor did she push him away as he undid the first button. A childish horn button, sewn on tightly. Kit undid the second button.

‘Stop me if you wish,’ he said, and slid his hand inside to cup her breast. At his touch, her feelings awoke, green and surprisingly strong, and she caught her breath as Kit eased the nightdress down her shoulders. ‘I don’t expect anything after all that has happened.’ She remained motionless under his hands. Then he removed the combs that were still in her hair, shaking them free so that her newly grown hair framed her face in a cloud.

‘You’re very pretty,’ he said, and he meant it. He stood up with his hand on his dressing-gown belt and looked down at Matty. ‘Shall I go on?’

As he kissed and stroked the small body, Kit seemed to be searching for something and Matty was wary of being hurt. But, in the end, the habit of loving Kit was too strong, and she strove to give him what he searched for. But an edge was missing, or perhaps, Kit thought as he moved above her, it was trust. And who could blame Matty? Afterwards, they lay in the dark, with their separate thoughts.

He drew Matty into the circle of his arm and for a moment she allowed herself to relax against his shoulder. ‘What were you writing when I came in?’

‘Notes for the garden.’ Kit’s flesh was smooth and muscled under her cheek. Her lips tasted his saltiness. She turned suddenly and propped herself on one elbow. ‘Kit,’ she said, ‘I was going to wait, but perhaps we should discuss something now. We both know that our marriage was a business arrangement...’

She felt him tense. ‘Go on.’

She slipped away from him and sat up on the pillows. ‘What I am trying to say is, that I want you to think very hard on this trip whether or not we should continue. Or whether it would be better to finish the marriage.’

‘Why now, Matty?’ Kit switched on the light and both of them blinked. From habit, Matty looked for her nightdress in the bedclothes and Kit for a cigarette in his dressing gown.

‘Because of what we have just done. That.’ She beat the space that they had occupied with the flat of her hand. ‘Both of us want something other than the original bargain provides for. Don’t you see?’

‘Matty what are you driving at?’ Matty was trapped in the neckline of the nightdress and he reached over to ease it over her head. ‘You love Daisy, and you should have married her,’ her voice was muffled by the material, ‘and everything you have done since has convinced me of that. Your going off with Max is one example. I thought I wouldn’t mind but I was wrong.’ Matty’s face and tousled hair emerged. ‘I do, Kit.’ She stuffed a pillow behind her and sat up straight. ‘You know I love you, and there is no use pretending.’ She picked at the lace edging of the sheet and then raised her eyes. ‘I don’t want half measures any more.’

‘I see.’ Kit was very quiet. He looked into familiar features – and concluded, with a surprising jolt, that he would mind very much not seeing them again.

Unaware that she had unwittingly chosen the best tactic – that of threatening to take something away – Matty pressed on. ‘If we part amicably, the fuss will die down after a bit and then you can marry Daisy. You mustn’t worry because I have lots of things I want to do.’

‘What things?’

She reflected for a moment as if, he thought wryly, deciding whether to allow him access to her thoughts. ‘I would like to breed roses and develop a garden. I’d buy a house somewhere, near Winchester, perhaps. I like the country and I like the country life.’