Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [118]
Flo's cautiously polite noises had turned to honest appreciation as soon as she had seen the interior, and now, as she worked her way towards the back, her voice took on a note of enthusiasm and even—once she saw the view—wonder.
“Oh, Mary, this is perfectly swell! It's like something from a fairy-tale book, the flowers and the lawn and the lake—and look, there's even a boat, just sitting and waiting.”
I moved, reluctantly, to join her at the expanse of windows that formed the back wall of the original cabin, and saw that, indeed, the little sail-boat lay ready. One glance at its trim paint told me that it had also been recently placed there—no doubt by the stout Mr Gordimer, grumbling and snapping at one or another of his youthful assistants as they wheeled the vessel out of the boat-house and down to the dock. He'd always knelt, laboriously, to pass a clean cloth over the boat's prow before nodding to himself, then climbed to his knees, turned his back on the gleaming object, and marched up the dock and the lawn with the weight of the world on his shoulders, muttering glum but inaudible invective to himself all the way—most of his conversations were conducted with himself.
I'd once caught my mother smiling at his retreating back; when she'd noticed me watching her, she had winked, as if we shared a secret.
I pulled my eyes from the waiting boat and made myself look at the wide stretch of green that spilled down to the water's edge: my mother's realm. Father had built the house, but Mother had formed the garden, and my dread for this spot was greater than any other. She had spent hours here every day we were in residence, pruning and weeding, planting the flowers and shrubs she had brought from the city, putting into effect the changes she had worked out with the help of Micah—who, as far as I knew, had never set foot here. It was all her, from the tiny pink rose she had placed in the shelter of the apple tree to the dancing fuchsias she had placed in shady corners and the wild-flower seeds she had scattered in the lawn, every inch of it her vision and her labour. I was afraid that seeing the garden without her in it would act like a knife in my heart.
But I had reckoned without the effects of time: What I saw was not her garden. Oh, the bones were there, the trees and shrubs she had planted, the shape of delineation between cultivated and wild, but the flesh had changed beyond anything she had known. The lilac, once a trim and obedient resident of the far corner, now appeared to be making serious inroads on the native growth. Another shrub—a peony, I thought—was halfway to being classified as a tree; the tiny pink rose had all but overcome the apple in a riot of colour; and the English flowers she had nurtured around the perimeter had long ago broken for freedom in the lawn. The grass, which Mother had always preferred shaggy as compared to the tight trim of English lawn-grass, was nearly a meadow; although it had been mown in the past couple of weeks, pink daisies and yellow dandelions gave it the appearance of a tapestry.
It was startling at first, then reassuringly foreign. And as I began to relax out of my apprehension, two thoughts came to me: that it was indeed magical, as Flo had said; and that it was precisely what my mother had been working towards. I was grateful that Mrs Gordimer had not inflicted her tightly pruned system here.
My ruminations were interrupted by a voice previously unheard here—Donny's, coming from the next room.
“I don't know about you girls, but I could sure use a drink after