The Forgotten Garden (3 page)

The nurse swapped the drip’s empty bag for a fat bladder, turned a dial on the machine behind the bed, then set about straightening the bedclothes.

‘She hasn’t had anything to drink,’ Cassandra said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. ‘Not all day.’

The nurse looked up, surprised at being spoken to. She peered over her glasses at the chair where Cassandra sat, a crumpled blue-green hospital blanket on her lap. ‘Gave me a fright,’ she said. ‘You been here all day, have you? Probably for the best, won’t be long now.’

Cassandra ignored the implication of this statement. ‘Should we give her something to drink? She must be thirsty.’

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The nurse folded the sheets over and tucked them matter of factly beneath Nell’s thin arms. ‘She’ll be right. The drip here takes care of all that.’ She checked something on Nell’s chart, spoke without looking up.

‘There’s tea-making facilities down the hall if you need them.’

The nurse left and Cassandra saw that Nell’s eyes were open, staring.

‘Who are you?’ came the frail voice.

‘It’s me, Cassandra.’

Confusion. ‘Do I know you?’

The doctor had predicted this but it still stung. ‘Yes, Nell.’

Nell looked at her, eyes watery grey. She blinked uncertainly. ‘I can’t remember . . .’

‘Shhh . . . It’s all right.’

‘Who am I?’

‘Your name is Nell Andrews,’ Cassandra said, taking her hand.

‘You’re ninety-five years old. You live in an old house in Paddington.’

Nell’s lips were trembling—she was concentrating, trying to make sense of the words.

Cassandra plucked a tissue from the bedside table and reached to gently wipe the line of saliva on Nell’s chin. ‘You have a stall at the antique centre on Latrobe Terrace,’ she continued softly. ‘You and I share it, we sell old things.’

‘I do know you,’ said Nell faintly. ‘You’re Lesley’s girl.’

Cassandra blinked, surprised. They rarely spoke of her mother, not in all the time Cassandra was growing up and not in the ten years she’d been back, living in the flat beneath Nell’s house. It was an unspoken agreement between them not to revisit a past they each, for different reasons, preferred to forget.

Nell started. Her panicked eyes scanned Cassandra’s face. ‘Where’s the boy? Not here, I hope. Is he here? I don’t want him touching my things. Ruining them.’

Cassandra’s head grew faint.

‘My things are precious. Don’t let him near them.’

Some words appeared, Cassandra tripped over them. ‘No . . . no, I won’t. Don’t worry, Nell. He’s not here.’

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Later, when her grandmother had slipped into unconsciousness again, Cassandra wondered at the mind’s cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life’s end, her grandmother’s head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way?

Did those with passage booked on death’s silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

Cassandra must have slept then, because the next thing she knew the hospital’s mood had changed again. They’d been drawn further into the tunnel of night. The hall lights were dimmed and the sounds of sleep were everywhere around her. She was slumped in the chair, her neck stiff and her ankle cold where it had escaped the flimsy blanket.

It was late, she knew, and she was tired. What had woken her?

Nell. Her breathing was loud. She was awake. Cassandra moved quickly to the bed, perched again on its side. In the half-light Nell’s eyes were glassy, pale and smudged like paint-stained water. Her voice, a fine thread, was almost frayed through. At first Cassandra couldn’t hear her, thought only that her lips were moving around lost words uttered long ago. Then she realised Nell was speaking.

‘The lady,’ she was saying. ‘The lady said to wait . . .’

Cassandra stroked Nell’s warm forehead, brushed back soft strands of hair that had once gleamed like spun silver. The lady again. ‘She won’t mind,’ she said. ‘The lady won’t mind if you go.’

Nell’s lips tightened, then quivered. ‘I’m not supposed to move. She said to wait, here on the boat.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘The lady . . . the Authoress . . . Don’t tell anyone.’

‘Shhh,’ said Cassandra. ‘I won’t tell anyone, Nell, I won’t tell the lady. You can go.’

‘She said she’d come for me, but I moved. I didn’t stay where I was told.’

Her grandmother’s breathing was laboured now, she was succumbing to panic.

‘Please don’t worry, Nell, please. Everything’s okay. I promise.’

Nell’s head dropped to the side. ‘I can’t go . . . I wasn’t supposed to . . . The lady . . .’

Cassandra pressed the button to call for help but no light came on above the bed. She hesitated, listened for hurried footsteps in the hall.

Nell’s eyelids were fluttering, she was slipping away.

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‘I’ll get a nurse—’

‘No!’ Nell reached out blindly, tried to grasp hold of Cassandra.

‘Don’t leave me!’ She was crying. Silent tears, damp and glistening on her paling skin.

Cassandra’s own eyes glazed. ‘It’s all right, Grandma. I’m getting help. I’ll be back soon, I promise.’

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4

Brisbane, 2005

Brisbane, Australia, 2005

The house seemed to know its mistress was gone and if it didn’t exactly grieve for her, it settled into an obstinate silence. Nell had never been one for people or for parties (and the kitchen mice were louder than the granddaughter), so the house had grown accustomed to a quiet existence with neither fuss nor noise. It was a rude shock, then, when the people arrived without word or warning, began milling about the house and garden, slopping tea and dropping crumbs.

Hunched into the hillside behind the huge antique centre on the ridge, the house suffered stoically this latest indignity.

The aunts had organised it all, of course. Cassandra would’ve been just as happy to have gone without, to have honoured her grandmother privately, but the aunts would hear none of it. Certainly Nell should have a wake, they said. The family would want to pay their respects, as would Nell’s friends. And besides, it was only proper.

Cassandra was no match for such ingenuous certitude. Once upon a time she would have put up an argument, but not now. Besides, the aunts were an unstoppable force, each had an energy that belied her great age (even the youngest, Aunt Hettie, wasn’t a day under eighty).

So Cassandra had let her misgivings fall away, resisted the urge to point out Nell’s resolute lack of friends, and set about performing the tasks she’d been allotted: arranging teacups and saucers, finding cake forks, clearing some of Nell’s bric-a-brac so that the cousins might have somewhere to sit. Letting the aunts bustle around her with all due pomp and self-importance.

They weren’t really Cassandra’s aunts, of course. They were Nell’s younger sisters, Cassandra’s mother’s aunts. But Lesley had never had 16

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much use for them, and the aunts had promptly taken Cassandra under their wing in her stead.

Cassandra had half thought her mother might attend the funeral, might arrive at the crematorium just as proceedings got underway, looking thirty years younger than she really was, inviting admiring glances as she always had. Beautiful and young and impossibly insouciant.

But she hadn’t. There would be a card, Cassandra supposed, with a picture on the front only vaguely suited to its purpose. Large swirling handwriting that drew attention to itself and, at the bottom, copious kisses. The sort that were easily dispensed, one pen line scarred by another.

Cassandra dunked her hands into the sink and moved the contents about some more.

‘Well I think that went splendidly,’ said Phyllis, the eldest after Nell and the bossiest by far. ‘Nell would’ve liked it.’

Cassandra glanced sideways.

‘That is,’ Phyllis continued, pausing a jot as she dried, ‘she would’ve once she’d finished insisting she hadn’t wanted one in the first place.’

Her mood turned suddenly maternal. ‘And how about you? How’ve you been keeping?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘You look thin. Are you eating?’

‘Three times a day.’

‘You could do with some fattening up. You’ll come for tea tomorrow night, I’ll invite the family, make my cottage pie.’

Cassandra didn’t argue.

Phyllis glanced warily about the old kitchen, took in the sagging range hood. ‘You’re not frightened here by yourself?’

‘No, not frightened—’

‘Lonely, though,’ said Phyllis, nose wrinkling with extravagant sympathy. ‘Course you are. Only natural, you and Nell were good company for each other, weren’t you?’ She didn’t wait for confirmation, rather laid a sun-spotted hand on Cassandra’s forearm and pressed on with the pep talk. ‘You’re going to be all right though, and I’ll tell you why. It’s always sad to lose someone you care for, but it’s never so bad when it’s an oldie. It’s as it should be. Much worse when it’s a 17

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young—’ She stopped mid-sentence, her shoulders tensed and her cheeks reddened.

‘Yes,’ said Cassandra quickly, ‘of course it is.’ She stopped washing cups and leaned to look through the kitchen window into the backyard.

Suds slipped down her fingers, over the gold band she still wore. ‘I should get out and do some weeding. The nasturtium’ll be across the path if I’m not careful.’

Phyllis clutched gratefully the new string of purpose. ‘I’ll send Trevor round to help.’ Her gnarled fingers tightened their grip on Cassandra’s arm. ‘Next Saturday all right?’

Aunt Dot appeared then, shuffling in from the lounge room with another tray of dirty teacups. She rattled them onto the bench and pressed the back of a plump hand to her forehead.

‘Finally,’ she said, blinking at Cassandra and Phyllis through impossibly thick glasses. ‘That’s the last of them.’ She waddled into the kitchen proper and peered inside a circular cake container. ‘I’ve worked up quite a hunger.’

‘Oh Dot,’ said Phyllis, relishing the opportunity to channel discomfort into admonition, ‘you’ve just eaten.’

‘An hour ago.’

‘With your gall bladder? I thought you’d be watching your weight.’

‘I am,’ said Dot, straightening and cinching her sizable waist with both hands. ‘I’ve lost half a stone since Christmas.’ She refastened the plastic lid and met Phyllis’s dubious gaze. ‘I have.’

Cassandra suppressed a smile as she continued to wash the cups.

Phyllis and Dot were each as round as the other, all the aunts were.

They got it from their mum, and she from her mum before. Nell was the only one who’d escaped the family curse, who took after her lanky Irish dad. They’d always been a sight together, tall, thin Nell with her round, dumpling sisters.

Phyllis and Dot were still bickering and Cassandra knew from experience that if she didn’t provide a distraction the argument would escalate until one (or both) tossed down a tea towel and stormed off home in high dudgeon. She’d seen it happen before yet had never quite grown accustomed to the way certain phrases, eye contact that lasted a mite too long, could relaunch a disagreement started many years 18

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before. As an only child, Cassandra found the well-worn paths of sibling interaction fascinating and horrifying in equal parts. It was fortunate the other aunts had already been shepherded away by respective family members and weren’t able to add their two cents’ worth.

Cassandra cleared her throat. ‘You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.’ She lifted her volume a little; she’d almost got their attention. ‘About Nell. Something she said in the hospital.’

Phyllis and Dot both turned, cheeks similarly flushed. The mention of their sister seemed to settle them. Remind them why they were gathered here, drying teacups. ‘Something about Nell?’ said Phyllis.

Cassandra nodded. ‘In the hospital, towards the end, she spoke about a woman. The lady, she called her, the authoress. She seemed to think they were on some kind of boat?’

Phyllis’s lips tightened. ‘Her mind was wandering, she didn’t know what she was saying. Probably a character from some television show she’d been watching. Wasn’t there some series she used to like, set on a boat?’

‘Oh Phyll,’ said Dot, shaking her head.

‘I’m sure I remember her talking about it . . .’

‘Come on, Phyll,’ said Dot. ‘Nellie’s gone. There’s no need for all of this.’

Phyllis folded her arms across her chest and huffed uncertainly.

‘We should tell her,’ said Dot gently. ‘It won’t do any harm.

Not now.’

‘Tell me what?’ Cassandra looked between them. Her question had been asked to pre-empt another family row; she hadn’t expected to uncover this strange hint of secrecy. The aunts were so focused on one another, they seemed to have forgotten she was there. ‘Tell me what?’

she pressed.

Dot raised her eyebrows at Phyllis. ‘Better to have it come from us than for her to find out some other way.’

Phyllis nodded almost imperceptibly, met Dot’s gaze and smiled grimly. Their shared knowledge made them allies again.

‘All right, Cass. You’d better come and sit down,’ she said finally.

‘Put the kettle on, will you Dotty love? Make us all a nice cuppa?’

Cassandra followed Phyllis into the sitting room and took a seat on Nell’s sofa. Phyllis eased her wide rear onto the other side and 19

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worried a thread loose. ‘Hard to know where to start. Been so long since I thought about it all.’