The Insistent Garden by Rosie Chard Page A

second.”
    Images projected onto the insides of my eyelids: a drop down onto a stone pavement, brittle steps loose with age.
    â€œNow smell,” said Dotty, wafting something beneath my nose.
    I leaned into mid-air and sniffed my friend’s hand like an obedient horse. “Lemons!” I cried, opening my eyes.
    â€œLemon Verbena,” she said, “strengthens the nerves.”
    â€œDotty, I can’t wait a second longer.”
    I moved into the doorway; then stopped.
    Someone had made an Elysium. Someone had gathered up the loveliest plants in the land, sifted through them, and laid them out as a garden of unimaginable beauty. I suspected I saw an invisible hand arranging the simmering brew of colour that seemed to drift across the ground. From our new vantage point we looked down upon a cluster of little garden rooms, exposed to the weather and connected like the remains of a ruined house. Grass carpeted the floor, rain-bleached benches sat empty at the base of buttresses wallpapered with ivy and columns of yew held up the sky. A mock orange flower nudged my arm, begging to be sniffed. Breathing in a large lungful of garden air, I set off down the slope. Dotty followed; neither of us spoke.
    Intimacy arrived fast. Leaves rubbed the undersides of my hands as I hurried down the path, the steps seemed to fit my feet and chickweed seeds clung to my sleeves like sticky crumbs. Walking more slowly, I squeezed down a narrow corridor of delphiniums and admired a distant church that had jumped into view. Finally I stroked my hand across the back of a clipped yew ball, feeling an earthy happiness.
    â€œLike it, darling?” Dotty’s voice was close.
    â€œIt’s perfect.”
    â€œThis is my favourite place in the whole world,” she said.
    â€œMine too.” I smiled. “Dotty, I want to stay longer but I should be getting home soon. My father will be back from work at five.”
    â€œBut you must see the house first, I think it will surprise you.”
    I glanced up at my watch. “I can’t be too long.”
    â€œWe can be quick; the entrance is just over there.”
    Dotty strode off towards the house, but I paused, unable to resist the elderly foxgloves nudging my sleeve. I eased off a seed head and slipped it into my pocket.
    A pair of stone eagles sneered down at me over disdainful beaks when I reached the steps to the house.
    â€œWipe your feet before you come in,” said a voice from inside the entrance.
    I rubbed my shoes across the doormat. Other people in my garden?
    A woman’s head poked out the dark interior, fierce and pale, and perched on a long neck. “Sign here,” she said without preamble.
    The visitors’ book lay on a table, its cramped pages only just visible in the dirty light. I wrote my name beneath a flamboyant ‘ Dotty Hands ,’ then flicked through the book, smiling at the distinctive ‘ Hands ’ signature cropping up on the previous pages, not once but several times — summer, autumn, winter and spring.
    â€œThat’s fine,” said the fierce woman, pulling the book out of my hands and snapping it shut.
    I waited, fretting that the ink was not quite dry, then made my way down the hallway towards the first room.
    Oh, the first room. Goose pimples sprang up on my arms as I entered it, looking for a sign of Dotty. The first room was full. Packed from wall to wall with strange, unlikely things, it caused me to stand for a second in the doorway, gauging the intimidating fullness of it. Everything was everywhere: plaster dolls stared at me from empty sockets, a suit of armour watched me through a slit in its helmet, and a life-size mannequin, slumped in a chair, gazed sadly at the floor. I struggled to recognize some of the objects in the room: ancient clocks with forty hours on their faces, timber locks ripped from long discarded doors, bottles sewn from leather. I bent down to read some labels, all