the small brick building to be nothing more than a tool shed. In fact, there are no tools in it at all. What is there is far more useful than tools.
The door has settled down on the frame, so the Lumper has to use her rather impressive brute strength to shift it open enough for us to squeeze into the interior. The floor is carpeted in mouse droppings. Along one wall, beneath the only window, is a desk, its pigeonholes having become nests and depositories for the rodents who have lived here most recently. There are still bits of paper resting in some of the slots above the writing surface. A chair is pushed up neatly to the desk, as though someone had just popped out to get a cup of tea and was expected to come right back. The walls are sprouting nails. On one nail hangs what’s left of an old pair of gardening gloves. On another nail there’s a chewed bit of paper, one word still visible in faded ink— Sweet . Sweet peas, I think. Sweet William.
“Do you know what this is?” I say to the Lumper, who’s cuffing cobwebs out of her curly hair. “This is the head gardener’s office.”
“Is it?” she says with complete indifference.
I pull out the chair and sit carefully down at the desk. The wooden surface is patchy with mould. What must once have been a blotter is now a dissolved map of green and brown, stuck quite firmly to the oak desktop. The building must have a leaky roof. “You can go if you want,” I say to the Lumper, who’s breathing noisily behind me. I hear her inhale loudly as she squeezes through the margin of door and door frame on her way out.
Sitting at the desk I can see the brick wall at the end of the garden opposite, through the filthy, cracked window. The tips of the trees beyond the wall. If I crane my neck, I can make out the roof of the chicken coop.
I don’t want to touch the top of the desk, keep my hands curled together in my lap. I look down at them, and at the desk drawer that lies snugly closed just above them. The single, brass handle that fits my right hand perfectly.
What I find in that desk drawer, unharmed by creatures or weather, is the head gardener’s ledger.
I take the book outside and sit on a bench in the sun, against the warmth of the brick wall, the gardener’s journal open on my knees.
The ledger is a week-by-week job allocation for the estate garden. Everything is marked down in meticulous handwriting on double-page spreads. The book covers the years from 1914 to 1916. At the beginning of the volume, on the opening page, is a list of the twenty-five men who were employed to work in the gardens. Twenty-five men. I look around at the kitchen garden. If I had willing workers, it could be put to rights in a little over a week. What an incredibly busy, productive place this must once have been. I read some of the jobs the men were required to do. Clip the yews. Train the apples to the wall. There were North and South gardens. An orchard. There was a lavish mixed border around the quadrangle. There were plans for a water garden on a lower lawn that is now disappeared. I turn to the end of the book. Blank pages. I flip back from there until I find the last entry, written in September of 1916. The last entry, like the first entry, is a list of names. The same names, only the later list has many of the names crossed out. A name with a neat line drawn by a ruler through the middle of it, like a river cleaving its banks. In small lettering beside the names, the word Killed . There are only six of the original twenty-five names that have not been crossed out. At the bottom is one sloppily handwritten line. We will now keep only to the kitchen garden.
The sun is warm on the page, warm on my skin. I put my hand on top of that list of men and trace their names with a finger. All those gardeners gone off to war. When I was in gardening college I heard someone remark that the only reason such a fuss was being made about training women to be gardeners was that half of
The door has settled down on the frame, so the Lumper has to use her rather impressive brute strength to shift it open enough for us to squeeze into the interior. The floor is carpeted in mouse droppings. Along one wall, beneath the only window, is a desk, its pigeonholes having become nests and depositories for the rodents who have lived here most recently. There are still bits of paper resting in some of the slots above the writing surface. A chair is pushed up neatly to the desk, as though someone had just popped out to get a cup of tea and was expected to come right back. The walls are sprouting nails. On one nail hangs what’s left of an old pair of gardening gloves. On another nail there’s a chewed bit of paper, one word still visible in faded ink— Sweet . Sweet peas, I think. Sweet William.
“Do you know what this is?” I say to the Lumper, who’s cuffing cobwebs out of her curly hair. “This is the head gardener’s office.”
“Is it?” she says with complete indifference.
I pull out the chair and sit carefully down at the desk. The wooden surface is patchy with mould. What must once have been a blotter is now a dissolved map of green and brown, stuck quite firmly to the oak desktop. The building must have a leaky roof. “You can go if you want,” I say to the Lumper, who’s breathing noisily behind me. I hear her inhale loudly as she squeezes through the margin of door and door frame on her way out.
Sitting at the desk I can see the brick wall at the end of the garden opposite, through the filthy, cracked window. The tips of the trees beyond the wall. If I crane my neck, I can make out the roof of the chicken coop.
I don’t want to touch the top of the desk, keep my hands curled together in my lap. I look down at them, and at the desk drawer that lies snugly closed just above them. The single, brass handle that fits my right hand perfectly.
What I find in that desk drawer, unharmed by creatures or weather, is the head gardener’s ledger.
I take the book outside and sit on a bench in the sun, against the warmth of the brick wall, the gardener’s journal open on my knees.
The ledger is a week-by-week job allocation for the estate garden. Everything is marked down in meticulous handwriting on double-page spreads. The book covers the years from 1914 to 1916. At the beginning of the volume, on the opening page, is a list of the twenty-five men who were employed to work in the gardens. Twenty-five men. I look around at the kitchen garden. If I had willing workers, it could be put to rights in a little over a week. What an incredibly busy, productive place this must once have been. I read some of the jobs the men were required to do. Clip the yews. Train the apples to the wall. There were North and South gardens. An orchard. There was a lavish mixed border around the quadrangle. There were plans for a water garden on a lower lawn that is now disappeared. I turn to the end of the book. Blank pages. I flip back from there until I find the last entry, written in September of 1916. The last entry, like the first entry, is a list of names. The same names, only the later list has many of the names crossed out. A name with a neat line drawn by a ruler through the middle of it, like a river cleaving its banks. In small lettering beside the names, the word Killed . There are only six of the original twenty-five names that have not been crossed out. At the bottom is one sloppily handwritten line. We will now keep only to the kitchen garden.
The sun is warm on the page, warm on my skin. I put my hand on top of that list of men and trace their names with a finger. All those gardeners gone off to war. When I was in gardening college I heard someone remark that the only reason such a fuss was being made about training women to be gardeners was that half of
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