More Than Meets the Eye (2 page)

He moved cautiously towards the noise of the shears, coming eventually upon the sight he had expected. A slight man stood with his back to Dennis as he entered the white garden. The man's head was on one side, considering carefully the effects he was securing with his shears upon the topiary bird in front of him. Dennis watched the work for a moment before he said softly, ‘It's true what they say then. A garden's never quite perfect to the people who work in it.'

The slim shoulders jumped with the shock. Jim Hartley turned with a smile towards the familiar voice. ‘I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I'd no idea there was anyone else around.'

He looked even younger than his thirty-four years. Indeed, when he was enthusiastic, Jim always looked quite boyish. And at Westbourne, he was enthusiastic for most of the time. Although it was over a year now since he had been appointed head gardener, he often said that he still couldn't believe he was in charge of what was in his opinion the greatest garden of all.

There had been many raised eyebrows and some dissent at the time. The National Trust is a conservative organization, even though it strives, sometimes a little desperately, to move with the times. No one had queried James Hartley's qualifications and competence, but some had thought his experience could not possibly be wide enough for this plum horticultural appointment. Dennis Cooper had been one of the men who had pleaded his cause. Hartley had worked at Kew and at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley. He was hard-working, enthusiastic and had strong references from all who had employed him.

Dennis was glad that he had spoken up so strongly for the youngest candidate when they were interviewing, because Jim Hartley was emphatically a success. He had moved into the long, low cottage reserved for the head gardener with his wife and two small children and quickly become one of the keys to Westbourne's ever-increasing popularity with the public. The existing glories were being consolidated, whilst some of the hitherto slightly neglected and peripheral areas of the gardens were being developed. Jim was a ‘hands-on' gardener, not just a supervisor. You saw the work of his hands as well as the plans of his mind wherever you moved in the grounds.

There were twenty years between them, but Dennis Cooper felt very close to Jim Hartley. He sympathized with the younger man's attitude, where everything was a challenge, but a challenge he was confident of meeting. Dennis had been like that himself in his younger days, he fancied. Now he watched over Hartley's development almost like a father, quick to defend, anxious to praise.

He said with a smile, ‘You do quite enough during working hours, Jim, without coming out here in the evenings.'

‘Oh, I don't mind this. It's a pleasure, not a chore. And it needs to be done carefully – I'm not much good with the public looking on and making comments!' As if to reinforce his words, he stepped forward to the bush and made a sharp cut with the end of his small, specialist shears, sharpening the bird's beak and giving it an interrogative look, as if it was conscious of other events in this small, intimate section of the garden. It was almost like a painter stepping forward to his easel and making some tiny but telling stroke on a canvas, emphasizing his mastery of the medium.

‘I didn't know that you listed topiary among your many skills,' said Dennis appreciatively.

‘I don't. That's why I have to do it very slowly and without being observed. Jack Fisher usually takes care of the clipping here, but he's got shingles and will be off for a fortnight. And the public deserve to see the place at its best – they pay enough for the privilege!' Jim Hartley still thought it amazing that the public should turn up in such numbers and pay so handsomely to view his work.

‘But you should be at home with the children, reading bedtime stories and so on.' Dennis, who couldn't remember much reading to the son who had long grown up and departed, was rather vague about the duties expected of a modern father.

‘The meeting seemed to go all right this morning,' said Hartley, as if anxious to change the subject.

Dennis, who had chaired the meeting of the resident staff and the two representatives of the voluntary guides and helpers, had almost forgotten that Hartley had been present. Avowedly not a committee man, the head gardener chose to stay silent and observe, unless he was called upon directly for his views. ‘Yes. I'm sorry if you felt you could have been better employed in the gardens. But meetings are necessary to keep everyone informed of what's going on and make sure we're all pulling in the same direction.'

‘Yes.' There was a pause, whilst Jim Hartley wondered whether he should really say anything more. ‘I thought Lorna Green went on a bit.'

Dennis smiled. ‘She did, I suppose. That's Lorna's way. But we have to bear in mind that she gives us a lot of her time and is entitled to her opinion. It's better that she says what she thinks rather than keeping it bottled up.'

‘I suppose so.' Jim, having sized up the needs of another topiary bird, leapt forward and made another small but telling incision. ‘All the same, I expect there are moments when you could cheerfully kill Mrs Green!'

Dennis Cooper smiled benignly, then uttered another meaningless cliché about it taking all sorts of people to make up an interesting world. It was a remarkable coincidence, he thought as he continued on his evening stroll. Two people as different as his wife and Jim Hartley had suggested within an hour of each other the death of Lorna Green.

It was a good thing that the lady herself couldn't hear such shocking suggestions.

T
he lady in question was in fact very busy with quite different concerns.

Lorna Green was contending with that fiercest of contemporary ogres, senile dementia in a loved one. Her mother was eighty-four now. Until a year ago, Barbara Green had been a lively and vigorous octogenarian. She had done her own shopping, argued her corner with any political canvasser who had the temerity to knock at her door, played swift and imaginative bridge with three ladies who had once been her golfing companions.

It was just a year since the doctors had mentioned that sinister word Alzheimer's. The symptoms were there, in a mild form at present, but the tests had confirmed it. No, it wasn't possible to forecast the speed of development. Many people passed away peacefully without suffering really serious mental decline. In others, deterioration was rapid. There was much more they could do to keep the worst at bay, with the drugs now available.

Nevertheless, Lorna should now keep a close eye on her mother.

It wasn't meant to be a message of impending doom, but it rang like one in Lorna's ears. The answers to her questions confirmed it. Yes, someone should be in the house with Mrs Green. Not all the time; not at present, anyway. Lorna gave up the flat she had been renting and moved back in with her mother. It was what the people from Mrs Green's church thought a spinster daughter should do, even in the twenty-first century. Her mother still attended the high stone church where her daughters had been christened.

Lorna wasn't a churchgoer herself. She was pretty sure that she was now an atheist rather than an agnostic, and her mother's decline seemed to be confirming that for her. It was so relentless, so cruel, so illogical. Nor was Lorna a typical spinster, if there was any longer such a creature. She had never married, though she had come close to it on two occasions. She had never been promiscuous, but she had undertaken by her count four serious relationships, where she had lived with a man for two years or more. That none of them had ended in the formal ties of marriage had been her choice, on three of the four occasions. Perhaps she expected a little too much of her men, or perhaps she had simply not been the best of choosers.

She had never wanted children and she didn't miss them now. She declared that forcefully to anyone bold enough to raise the subject. Some listeners felt that the lady did protest too much, but had more sense than to voice the thought.

Lorna had a degree in history from the University of Birmingham – one of the older and more respectable universities, she assured anyone who cared to listen. She didn't approve of these modern, tin-pot institutions, which should never have been allowed to call themselves universities. All they did was add to the lengthening lists of unemployed graduates, with their degrees in media studies and sports science and even less suitable subjects for higher education. These opinions received a good deal of support from her contemporaries, except for the occasional moments of embarrassment when she propounded her views to parents unfortunate enough to have their children in attendance at these dubious institutions.

Lorna had greater concerns than embarrassment at this moment. Her mother's long grey hair was flying round her head, though Lorna had combed and brushed it for her before leaving for her meeting at Westbourne Park. A shorter style would be better when the hairdresser called next week, if she could persuade Barbara to accept it. The television was blaring loudly through a children's programme, though her mother did not seem to be following it. Lorna turned the volume down to a level which would allow her to think. The old woman looked at her resentfully, but said nothing.

Lorna forced a smile and tried hard to relax. ‘Did you have a chat with the Meals on Wheels lady today?'

‘No. She didn't have anything for me today. She was in such a hurry that she didn't even apologize.'

Lorna looked at her for a moment, but her mother's attention had returned to the television set. She went back along the hall and into the kitchen. A plate of cold casserole lay on the table, with a knife and fork untouched beside it and the gravy congealed at the edges. Barbara had forgotten to eat again. You had to get her through the first mouthfuls and then she'd carry on. But the Meals on Wheels lady wouldn't know that and she had other dinners to deliver.

She went back to the sitting room. This place was far too big for the two of them, but she couldn't face persuading Mum to move and then enduring the agonies of selling and packing. She had always rather despised material comforts, but now she missed the convenience and modern fittings of the neat flat she had forsaken to come here

Barbara Green was sitting staring at the television, her forehead frowning her resentment that she could not follow the excitements of the child actors.

Her daughter said gently, ‘Jean did leave your meal, Mum. You forgot it.'

Barbara turned her head and looked at her intently. ‘It'll do for your Dad when he gets in. He likes stew, does Wally.'

It was this strange mixture of comprehension and nonsense which she found most hard to deal with. Lorna looked hard into the lined, familiar face and said quietly, ‘Dad's dead, Mum. Wally died eight years ago.'

Her mother looked at her for a moment sorrowfully. Then she spoke as if the fifty-three-year-old woman beside her was a child in plaits. ‘He'll be in presently, just you see. He's probably been kept late at work again.' She transferred her gaze to the television, rocking gently backwards and forwards on her seat.

It was only when Lorna had been sorting through his papers after her father's death that she had found the letters which showed that he had conducted affairs with other women. Barbara had always been very tolerant and very trusting about Wally's need to work far into the evenings a couple of times each week. Lorna wondered whether her mother had known nothing of his amours or whether she had chosen to ignore them. Now she would never be certain about that – unless of course Barbara let it out unwittingly in one of her musings about her husband. Lorna hoped she wouldn't. It seemed to her an invasion of privacy to discover through her illness things which her mother would normally have concealed.

Lorna felt suddenly weary. She went into the kitchen and sat down for two minutes. Then she rose and made a simple meal with sausages and new potatoes and carrots. She had learned to cook only what her mother would eat; it was very irritating to see Barbara turn away from dishes which had taken her hours to prepare. Barbara liked spaghetti bolognaise, but the eating of it had proved a disaster last time Lorna had prepared it. Today the old lady demolished the simple meal with apparent relish; presumably she'd eaten nothing since breakfast. Then she laid her knife and fork down neatly and said, ‘Our Debbie's a good cook. Better than you.'

Lorna tried not to feel resentful. She had been her father's favourite, but Barbara had always favoured her younger sister. ‘Debbie's four hundred miles away, Mum.'

Barbara nodded with a small, secret smile. ‘Debbie's in Aberdeen. Looking after my grandchildren.'

Lorna was about to say that they were grown-up now and had left home. But what was the use? She bit back the explanation and said merely, ‘That's right, Mum. Debbie's a long way away.' But she was a naturally precise person – positively anal at times, her best friend had told her – and it came hard to her not to correct the old woman's facts.

Probably that's what she should have done in the meeting this morning, bitten her tongue and held back the words. Dennis Cooper had obviously been put out when she had corrected him on the history of Westbourne Park. It had meant a loss of face for him, in front of his staff. And she had gone on a bit; she could see now that she had enjoyed correcting Dennis and embarrassing him in front of others. Initially, she had merely been anxious to have the correct facts established, so that the eight people in the meeting wouldn't go away with false information.

All the same, she could see now that she had been insensitive. Dennis Cooper had been careless, not harmful. There had been no need to make him look a pompous twit in front of his staff.

Lorna Green watched her mother toying with her strawberries, pushing them around her dish instead of eating them. Eventually, Barbara dropped her spoon and a long splodge of cream shot out across the clean tablecloth. Lorna would put it in the washing machine, as soon as she'd stowed her mother safely back in the sitting room. Perhaps the time was coming when she'd have to give up tablecloths. She'd already abandoned them for breakfast and lunch, but she'd kept them for the evening meal; they were a symbol of the civilized life which was ebbing away from her mother.