The Forgotten Garden (65 page)

A wall was built around the cottage so that when Eliza’s belly began to swell, no one would see. Word spread that she had gone away and the world closed over the cottage. The simplest falsehoods are the strongest and this one performed perfectly. Eliza’s desire to travel was well known.

It wasn’t a stretch for people to believe that she had left without a word, would be back when time suited. Mary was sent nightly with provisions and Dr Matthews, Aunt Adeline’s physician, attended every two weeks, under night’s black veil, to ensure the pregnancy’s health.

During the months of confinement, Eliza saw few other people and yet she never felt alone. She sang to her swelling stomach, whispered stories, had strange and vibrant dreams. The cottage seemed to shrink around her like a warm old coat.

And the garden, a place where her heart had always sung, was more beautiful than ever. The flowers smelled sweeter, looked brighter, grew faster. One day, when she was sitting beneath the apple tree, and the warm, sunny air moved heavily around her, she fell into a deep sleep.

While she softly slumbered, a story came to her, as vividly as if some passing stranger had knelt by her ear and whispered their tale. A tale about a young woman who overcame her fears and travelled a great distance in order to uncover the truth for an ageing loved one.

Eliza woke suddenly, gripped with certainty that the dream was important, that it must be turned to fairytale. Unlike most dream inspirations, the tale required little manipulation. The child, the baby inside her, was central to the story, too. Eliza couldn’t explain how she knew, but she had the oddest certainty that the baby was connected in 464

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some way to the tale, had helped her to receive the story so vividly, so completely.

Eliza wrote the fairytale that afternoon, named it ‘The Crone’s Eyes’, and throughout the following weeks found herself wondering often about the sad old woman whose truth had been stolen from her. Though she had not seen Nathaniel since the night of their final meeting, Eliza knew he was still working on the illustrations for her book, and she longed to see those that her new tale inspired. One dark night, when Mary brought her supplies, Eliza asked after him, kept her tone even as she asked whether perhaps Mary might let him know that he may visit her sometime soon. Mary only shook her head.

‘Mrs Walker won’t have it,’ she said, lowering her voice, though they were alone in the cottage. ‘I heard her crying to the mistress about it, and the mistress was saying it wasn’t right for him to be going through the maze, going to see you. Not any more, not after what has happened.’

She glanced at Eliza’s swelling stomach. ‘Things might become confused, she said.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Eliza. ‘What was done was done for Rose.

Both Nathaniel and I love her, we did as she requested to provide her that for which she longs more than anything else.’

Mary, who had made quite clear her own opinions about what Eliza had done, what she intended to do after the child was born, remained silent.

Eliza sighed, frustrated. ‘I wish only to speak with him about the illustrations for the fairytales.’

‘That’s another thing Mrs Walker isn’t too happy about,’ said Mary.

‘She doesn’t like him drawing for your stories.’

‘Whyever would she mind?’

‘Jealous, she is, green as old Davies’s thumb. Can’t bear to think of him spending his time and energy thinking about your stories.’

Eliza stopped waiting for Nathaniel after that; she sent her handwritten version of ‘The Crone’s Eyes’ back to Blackhurst with Mary, who agreed—against her better judgement, she said—to deliver it. A gift arrived by courier some days later, a statue for her garden, a little boy with an angel’s face. Eliza knew, even without reading the accompanying letter, that Nathaniel had sent it with Sammy in mind. In the letter he had also apologised for not visiting, made enquiries after her health, then moved 465

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quickly on to how much he loved the new story, how its magic had overtaken his thoughts, that ideas for the illustrations overwhelmed him so that he could bear to think of nothing else.

Rose herself came once a month, but Eliza grew to receive such visits cautiously. Things always started well, Rose would smile broadly when she saw Eliza, enquire after her health, and leap at the opportunity to feel the baby moving beneath her skin. But at some point in the visit, with neither warning nor provocation, Rose would recoil inexplicably, knot her hands, and refuse to touch Eliza’s stomach any more, refuse even to meet her eye. Her fingers would pluck instead at her own dress, padded to suggest a pregnancy.

After the sixth month, Rose stopped coming altogether. Eliza waited in vain on the allotted day, confused, wondering whether she had mistaken the date somehow. But there it was in her diary.

Her first fear was that Rose had taken ill, for surely nothing less would keep her from visiting. When Mary next arrived with her basket of supplies, Eliza pounced.

Mary laid down the basket and set the kettle on the hot plate. Didn’t answer for a time.

‘Mary?’ said Eliza, arching her back to shift the baby who was pressing against her side. ‘You mustn’t try to protect me. If Rose is unwell—’

‘It’s nothing like that, Miss Eliza.’ Mary turned from the range. ‘Only Mrs Walker finds it too distressing to visit.’

‘Distressing?’

Mary didn’t meet Eliza’s eyes. ‘It makes her feel a failure, even more than before. She unable to fall and you looking ripe as a peach. After her visits she returns home and is unwell for days. Won’t see Mr Walker, snaps at the mistress, picks at her food.’

‘Then I look forward to the child’s arrival. When I deliver the baby, when Rose is a mother, then she will forget such feelings.’

And like that, they were back in familiar waters: Mary shaking her head and Eliza defending her decision. ‘It isn’t right, Miss Eliza. A mother can’t just give up her child.’

‘It’s not my child, Mary. It belongs to Rose.’

‘You might feel differently when the time comes.’

‘I won’t.’

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‘You don’t know—’

‘I won’t feel differently, because I can’t. I’ve given my word. If I were to change my mind, Rose would never bear it.’

Mary raised her eyebrows.

Eliza forced further determination into her voice. ‘I will hand over the child, and Rose will be happy again. We will be happy together, just as we used to be long ago. Can’t you see, Mary? This child I carry will return my Rose to me.’

Mary smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Miss Eliza,’ she said, though she didn’t sound as if she believed it.

c

Then, after months in which time seemed to pause, the end arrived. Two weeks earlier than expected. Pain, blinding pain, the body like a piece of machinery creaking to life to do that for which it had been created. Mary, who had recognised the signs of impending birth, made sure she was there to help. Her ma had delivered babies all her life and Mary knew how it was done.

The birth went smoothly and the child was the most beautiful Eliza had ever seen, a little girl with tiny ears pressed neatly against her head and fine pale fingers that startled periodically at the sensation of air passing between them.

Though Mary had been ordered to report to Blackhurst immediately on any sign of the baby’s imminent arrival, she remained silent in the days after. Spoke only to Eliza, urging her to reconsider her part in the dreadful pact. For it wasn’t right, Mary whispered over and again, that a woman be asked to forsake her own child.

For three days and nights, Eliza and the baby were alone together.

How strange it was to meet the little person who had lived and grown inside her body. To stroke the tiny hands and feet that she’d grabbed at as they pushed against her stomach from inside. To watch the little lips, pursed as if about to speak. An expression of infinite wisdom, as if, in those first days of life, the small person retained the knowledge of a lifetime just passed.

Then, in the middle of the third night, Mary arrived at the cottage, stood in the doorway and made the dreaded announcement. A visit 467

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from Dr Matthews had been arranged for the following night. Mary lowered her voice and clasped Eliza’s hands: if there was any part of her that thought to keep the baby, she must go now. She must take the child and run.

But although the suggestion of escape knotted itself to Eliza’s heart, tugged sharply and willed her to action, she hurriedly untied it. She ignored the sharp ache in her chest, and reassured Mary, as she had before, that she knew her own mind. She looked down at her child one last time, stared and stared at the perfect little face, tried to comprehend that she had made it, that she had done this wonderful thing, until finally the throbbing in her head, her heart, her soul, was unbearable.

And then somehow, as if watching herself from afar, she did as she had promised: handed the tiny girl over and allowed her to be taken. Closed the door after Mary, and returned, alone, to the silent, lifeless cottage.

And as dawn came to the wintry garden, and the walls of the cottage receded again, Eliza realised that she had never known the black ache of loneliness before.

c

Though she despised Linus’s man Mansell, had cursed his name when he’d brought Eliza into their lives, Adeline couldn’t dispute that the man knew how to find people. Four days had passed since his dispatch to London, and this afternoon, as she’d pretended to embroider in the morning room, Adeline had been summoned to the telephone.

Mansell, at the other end of the line, was mercifully discreet. One never knew who might be listening on another extension. ‘I telephone, Lady Mountrachet, to let you know that some of the goods you require have now been collected.’

Adeline’s breath caught in her throat. So soon? Anticipation, hope, nerves set her fingertips to tingling. ‘And may I enquire, is it the larger item or the smaller that you have in your possession?’

‘The larger.’

Adeline’s eyelids fell closed. She flattened the relief, the joy, from her voice. ‘And when will you make delivery?’

‘We leave London immediately. I will arrive at Blackhurst tomorrow evening.’

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Thus had Adeline waited. Thus was she waiting still. Pacing the Turkish rug, smoothing her skirts, snapping at the servants, as all the while she plotted Eliza’s dispense.

c

Eliza had agreed never to go near the house and she didn’t. But she watched. And she found that even when she had saved sufficient funds to book passage on a ship, travel to distant lands, something stopped her.

It was as if, with the birth of the baby, the anchor Eliza had been seeking all her life had lodged into the earth of Blackhurst.

The child’s pull was magnetic, and so she stayed. But she kept her promise to Rose and avoided the house. Found other places to hide from which to observe. Just as she had as a girl, lying on the shelf in Mrs Swindell’s tiny upstairs room. Watching as the world moved around her and she remained motionless, outside the action.

For with the loss of the child, Eliza found that she had fallen through the centre of her old life, her old self. She had forsaken her birthright and, in the process, forfeited the purpose in her life. She wrote rarely, only one fairytale that she deemed worthy of inclusion in the collection.

A story about a young woman who lived alone in a dark wood, who made the wrong decision for the right reason and destroyed herself in the process.

Pale months formed long years, then one summer’s morning in 1913

the book of fairytales arrived from the publisher. Eliza took it inside immediately, tore the packaging to reveal the leather-bound treasure within.

She sat in the rocking chair, opened the book and lifted it close to her face.

It smelled of fresh ink and binding glue, just like a real book. And there, inside, were her stories, her dear creations. She turned the thick, fresh pages, tale by tale, until she came to ‘The Crone’s Eyes’. She read it through and as she progressed she remembered the strange, vivid dream in the garden, the all-pervasive sense that the child inside her was important to the story.

And Eliza knew suddenly that the child, her child, must possess a copy of the tale, that the two were connected somehow. So she wrapped the book in brown paper, awaited her opportunity, then did what she 469

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had promised not to: breached the gate at the end of the maze and approached the house.

c

Dust motes, hundreds of them, danced in a sliver of sunlight that had appeared between two barrels. The little girl smiled and the Authoress, the cliff, the maze, Mamma, left her thoughts. She held out a finger, tried to catch a speck upon it. Laughed at the way the motes came so close before skirting away.

The noises beyond her hiding spot were changing. The little girl could hear the hubbub of movement, voices laced with excitement. She leaned into the veil of light and pressed her face against the cool wood of the barrels. With one eye she looked upon the decks.

Legs and shoes and petticoat hems. The tails of coloured paper streamers flicking this way and that. Wily gulls hunting the decks for crumbs.

A lurch and the huge boat groaned, long and low from deep within its belly. Vibrations passed through the deck boards and into the little girl’s fingertips. A moment of suspension and she found herself holding her breath, palms flat beside her, then the boat heaved, pushed itself away from the dock. The horn bellowed and there was a wave of cheering, cries of ‘Bon voyage!’ They were on their way.