Eight
O n Sunday evening, after a light supper, and before the viewing of an old episode of Mattie’s beloved Inspecteur Barnaby —known to the English-speaking world as Midsomer Murders —Emma had brought out the family photograph album again. This time she was looking for any pictures that showed the garden. She found a handful of them, most with the garden as a backdrop to people, but a couple with it as the focus. Mattie had also shown her some lovely watercolours she’d done of it over the years.
Now, on this cool but bright Monday morning, Emma—dressed in her shabbiest T-shirt, gumboots and an old pair of Alain’s overalls (fortunately he’d been short and wiry so they didn’t totally float on her)—was in the garden, surveying the array of tools she’d collected from the shed and cleaned. There was a rusty but sturdy wheelbarrow; a fork and a spade; a pair of secateurs, which had been a bit stiff to open at first but a drop of oil had worked wonders on them; a battered watering can; and a pair of ancient gardening gloves. They’d all belonged to her grandfather, and it felt right to use them.
After a close reading of parts of the Petit guide pratique du jardinage , the consultation of some online sites as well as gardening snippets she vaguely remembered from Paddy, Emma had drawn up a plan of attack, deciding that the best way to handle this project was to divide the garden into sections. She’d get each one cleared completely before she started on the next.
Time to get to work. She squared her shoulders, picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow, and trundled it to a spot near the big old wisteria vine that spread against one wall, and which she’d decided would be her starting point. Though weeds had grown around the vine, its age and toughness meant it had survived. It had even put out a few of the fragrant violet-coloured flowers that hung in grape-like clusters here and there among its spreading branches.
As she cleared the weeds, she’d dump them in the wheelbarrow and trundle it to the spot she’d earmarked for green waste. She would take it all in logical stages, starting with what looked like the easiest section, near the wisteria, and proceed in order of difficulty as she got more experienced. In between she’d also write down what she had found growing, and what might be missing. She had a small notebook and pencil for that very purpose, jammed into the top pocket of her overalls. And then, at the end, she’d have a good idea of what had to be done next. If she worked to the plan, then she should get it done quickly. The last thing she wanted was to give Marc-Antoine an excuse to pop in and start throwing his weight around.
Alas, nature had other ideas. Emma had imagined that most of the weeds would be relatively easy to get rid of with the aid of secateurs, fork and spade, as well as her gloved hands; however, the thick undergrowth put up a stronger battle than she had expected. There were no overgrown rosebushes with vicious thorns in this first section at least, like there were in other bits. But she knew that there should be a couple of hydrangea bushes. She remembered her grandfather telling her hydrangeas were magical plants because their flowers could change colour. She would take great pleasure in freeing them from the invading weeds.
She worked steadily through the first section and found one hydrangea—sadly the other appeared to have died. Clearing around it, giving the straggly bush room to breathe, felt like a triumph. Another victory was uncovering three or four smaller plants that had also survived. They didn’t look like weeds to her untrained eye, although she didn’t know what they were, exactly. She’d try to find out later.
But after those first small successes it soon became apparent that it wasn’t simply a matter of pulling up something here, chopping something there, digging out something else so the plants that had survived could breathe again. Sure, some weeds did come up easily, but others were more challenging, like the annoying sticky blades that she vaguely remembered Paddy calling goosegrass but which she didn’t know the French name of yet (she’d have to learn a whole new vocabulary, she thought grimly), or the sharp sting of nettles, which caught her more than once.
But worst of all was the damn ivy, which had crept all over the garden from its original picturesque placing against the back wall of the house. It was hard to get rid of because no sooner had she discovered a strand of it creeping along like a green sneak thief and pulled it out than she saw that it had a tributary strand, and another, and yet another. Whenever she attempted to get to the source of it, she was led off in different directions. The bloody thing was even trying to strangle the wisteria! But she kept working, pulling and chopping and sweating, cursing the ivy, cursing herself for not having paid more attention to Paddy’s gardening talk back home, telling herself she was delusional thinking she could do this, wishing she hadn’t started, then cursing herself again for being so negative. And she had thought she was ready for it! Ha, she hadn’t known a bloody thing!
Mattie came out a couple of hours after Emma had started, with a glass of water and a small jug of grenadine with ice. ‘You need to stop and have something sweet, for the energy,’ she said firmly, when Emma said she just needed the water. So she did as she was told, drinking the water first, then a glass of grenadine, both without stopping. And she did feel better. ‘You’ve done very well, it already looks clearer,’ Mattie said, loyally, glancing at the patch Emma had been working on. More like it’s been butchered , Emma thought, but she said, ‘At least I managed to rescue a few things. But it’s going to take longer than I thought.’
‘That’s gardening, Alain used to say.’ Mattie smiled. ‘It makes you move to its own time. Emma, I’m thinking of bringing out a chair and my sketchbook and pencils—do you mind?’
‘Of course not,’ said Emma, ‘but I must look like a dirty old scarecrow right now. You don’t really want to draw me, do you?’
Mattie gave a mischievous grin. ‘Dirty old scarecrows make great subjects,’ she said, and went back inside, returning moments later with a kitchen chair and her sketchbook.
At first, Emma felt a little self-conscious working under her grandmother’s eye, but she soon relaxed as Mattie shared her memories of the garden, including a story about how five-year-old Corinne had decided that an elf lived under the wisteria vine. She had put out bits of food for him, including a couple of her favourite biscuits. ‘A real sacrifice on her part,’ Mattie observed, ‘but she was so delighted to find out that they had gone! Of course, we never told her that the real culprit was a young rat which had made its home under the wisteria.’ Usually that anecdote might have made Emma feel close to tears, but today, working in the sunshine in the very same garden where it happened, it felt different. She could see her mother here, as a child, coming out with biscuits for the elf and the image warmed her heart and made her feel even more certain that restoring the garden was the right thing to do.
Presently, Mattie went back inside to prepare lunch while Emma finished clearing a patch and threw the green matter into the wheelbarrow. She was about to wheel it over to the pile she’d made when her eye caught a flash of movement in a litter of dead leaves a short distance away.
‘Monsieur Leroux!’ she whispered in delight, standing as still as she could while the squirrel darted about, seemingly unconcerned by her presence. It was such a beautiful creature, red fur shining, feathery tail waving, quicksilver movements almost dizzying.
Suddenly, the squirrel stilled. Its dark eyes looked directly at her. Then, with a trilling sound, it turned and dashed into the undergrowth almost quicker than her eyes could follow.
Emma sighed deeply from sheer pleasure. Normally, she might have wished she had her phone to take a photo or video, but she was glad she’d left it in the kitchen. How could you capture that joyful liveliness, anyway? It would just have looked like a blur of movement.
She stayed there a moment longer, hoping the squirrel might reappear, but when it didn’t, she finished dumping the weeds onto the pile, then slowly went around the section she’d cleared, making notes in her little book. In one bare patch of earth in a resurrected bed, she saw a bulb had come to the surface. She pushed it back into the soil, then saw several more. She had no idea what sort of bulbs they were—daffodils, irises, tulips?—but they definitely needed to stay there. She made a note of it.
And then she saw another brown bulb. When she touched it, however, intending to push it into the soil like the others, she realised that it wasn’t a bulb but something harder. Scratching gently on one side of the object, she saw another colour appear—a dull silver. So it was made of metal. It was too chunky for a coin. She’d have to clean it up to see what it was.
Putting it in her pocket, she trundled the wheelbarrow and tools back to the shed, ready for tomorrow. She’d have a break this afternoon.
Going back inside, she found Mattie setting out plates and cutlery in readiness for lunch, which smelled delicious. She knew it was grilled Toulouse sausages with mustard, a big salad and fresh bread—a perfect combination. ‘Ready in five minutes,’ Mattie said, smiling.
Emma washed her hands and face, then took out the object she’d found and scrubbed it as clean as she could. It was revealed to be a small silver pendant, carved into the shape of a rose, and the bail that would have once attached it to a chain was broken.
‘Look what I found, Mattie,’ she said, holding it out. ‘A silver rose.’
Mattie made a soft sound in her throat as she saw the object in her palm. ‘It’s Corinne’s. From when she was sixteen or seventeen.’ She looked up at Emma, her eyes bright. ‘I remember she bought it when she was on holiday with her best friend, who also got one. When she lost it, she hunted for it everywhere. It caused quite a commotion. She was so angry! With herself, with us when we tried to suggest where it might be. And it’s been in the garden all this time! It’s actually a peony. Corinne’s favourite flower back then.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Corinne had never mentioned those frilled fragrant beauties to her daughter. As far as Emma knew, her mother had preferred native Australian flowers to European ones. She felt a surge of excitement. ‘Do you think Maman might have bought the pendant on the same holiday when that photo was taken?’
‘It’s possible,’ Mattie said. ‘But I’m not sure. She’s not wearing it in the photo, is she? And she wore it every day when she got back, until she lost it.’
‘Perhaps the photo was taken before she bought the pendant,’ Emma said. ‘You said her friend had the same one. Do you remember who that was?’
‘Let me think.’ Mattie frowned, then her face cleared. ‘Yes. I’ve got it. It was Charlotte. Charlotte Marigny. I remember her because she came to our house when the Chernobyl disaster happened, and she was worried about her aunt who was in Sweden at the time, because of the radioactive cloud, you see. Corinne was very good friends with her for a while. They bought the matching peony pendants when they were on holiday with Charlotte’s family.’
‘Do you know if they stayed in touch, at least until Maman left France?’ Emma asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mattie said, as she handed back the pendant to Emma. ‘But I’m not sure.’
They sat down for lunch then but all the time, Emma kept turning it all over in her mind. Her mother had never mentioned Charlotte Marigny, but then she had hardly talked about any aspect of those last years in France. Perhaps she and Charlotte had fallen out or drifted apart long before Corinne had left, and there was no connection to whatever it was her mother had been wanting to tell her. But if something had happened between them that had triggered her mother’s departure, then that might be the first proper clue to the mystery.
She had to try and track down her mother’s old friend.