The Garden

Mrs Wakeham was lifted out of the back bedroom of the Pimlico flat for the last time, by Maeve, on the morning of the twenty-third of December.

She was lifted into the green-leather armchair in the front room.

The day was bright. The plane trees of the quiet square outside were in the small bare winter shape Mrs Wakeham had been buying, every Wednesday afternoon since the previous March, the flat for. The small electric kettle on the small walnut side table had been switched on. The small enamel biscuit tin with the print of the Norfolk coast on the lid had been opened. The cups had been laid out — three of them, today, because Mr Stephen Halligan would arrive at eleven with the small bunch of white camellias he had been bringing every Tuesday and Friday for six weeks.

Maeve sat in the dove-grey wool armchair.

Maeve held Mrs Wakeham's left hand.

Mrs Wakeham, in the soft dove-grey dressing-gown, in the green-leather armchair, with the small framed photograph of three girls in St Brigid's blazers on the mantelpiece behind her, said in the smallest voice Maeve had ever heard her use —

'Maeve, my darling. Three things. May I.'

Maeve said, 'Eleanor. You may.'

Mrs Wakeham said, 'One. The pouch in the cabinet of the Knibb clock has been moved, by the solicitor on Tuesday, to the small reading room of the National Library in Edinburgh that has agreed to keep it. They will keep it on a shelf with the name TESSA HALLIGAN on the spine of its small green silk box. They have written to me. The shelf is in the reading room on the second floor of the George IV Bridge building. The reading room is open on Wednesdays and Fridays. You may, my dear, on any Wednesday or Friday of the rest of your life, go and read it. You shall not need an appointment. The librarian on duty has been told.'

She paused.

She said, 'Two. The Davenport in the south study of the Belgravia townhouse has been removed, on Tuesday, from the house, before the house was handed to the charity. It is in the small bedroom of this flat. The second drawer contains all the pouches I have not yet sent. The first pouch — the one with the small enamel hairbrush with TH on it — is yours, my dear, to keep. The brush belonged to your grandmother. She was thirteen when her mother gave it to her. She had it in her overnight bag in 1975. It is small enough to go in any handbag you will, in the rest of your life, ever carry. I should like you to carry it, my dear. I should like you not to be without it.'

She paused.

She said, 'Three. There is a small garden, at the back of this flat, at the bottom of the iron stairs. I had it dug, last March, by the small wiry man from the maintenance company. He did not ask questions. He put down four box-hedge plants in the corners and one small bird-bath in the middle. He laid a flagstone path. There is no plaque. There is no marker. There is, however, in the very small bed beside the flagstone path, on the day Tessa would have been sixty-seven — the second of April — a small white camellia tree, which I had brought to me last spring from a nursery in Cornwall and which will, my dear, in the springs to come, flower in the first week of April, every year, for as long as it lives.'

She paused.

She said, 'Stephen knows about the camellia. The cabinet of the Knibb in Edinburgh will have, each second of April for the rest of his life, a small white camellia delivered to its shelf. He has agreed to do this himself. He shall, on the second of April after my last morning, also bring a small white camellia to this flat, and shall leave it on the small walnut side table, on the morning of the day you take the new pouch from the Davenport to Edinburgh. You shall not need to write to him. He will come.'

She paused.

She said, very softly, 'My darling. That is the three things.'

She closed her eyes.

Maeve, in the dove-grey wool armchair, with her hand still on Mrs Wakeham's hand, did not, for a long second, do anything.

Then Maeve said, very calmly, in the small precise voice that had risen up in her in the morning room of the Belgravia townhouse seven weeks ago and which was, this morning, the voice she would have for the rest of her life —

'Eleanor. I have understood the three things. I shall do all of them.'

She paused.

She said, very softly, 'Are you tired, Eleanor.'

Mrs Wakeham, in the green-leather armchair, with her eyes closed, with her left hand in Maeve's right, with the dove-grey wool dressing-gown over her thin shoulders and the small jet earrings — the small jet earrings Mrs Wakeham had been putting in for forty-two years of Fridays — still in her ears, said, in the smallest voice —

'I am, my darling. I have been, for a very long time.'

Maeve said, 'Sleep then, my dear.'

Mrs Wakeham slept.

She did not wake.

The small mechanical sound of the small enamel bedside clock on the writing table by the window — the small enamel bedside clock that had been on the writing table by the window of every house Mrs Wakeham had lived in since 1981, which had been wound by Mrs Wakeham herself, every Friday morning, with the small brass key on the small ribbon she kept in the small ring-dish on her bedside table — made, at twenty past three on the afternoon of the twenty-third of December, the small mechanical sound it had been making, in the small flat in Pimlico that Mrs Wakeham had been furnishing on Wednesdays for the year, since the previous March.

Maeve, in the dove-grey wool armchair, did not let go of her hand.

She did not, this time, weep.

She would, on the morning of the next day, the twenty-fourth of December, the morning her own great-uncle Stephen Halligan would come at eight and would help her cover the small framed photograph on the mantelpiece with a small linen cloth, weep.

She would weep, then, the way her own mother and her own grandmother and her own great-aunt and the woman who had been her own grandmother's best friend at school in 1975 had all, in the various rooms of their various lives, taught her — into something soft, so the small front room of the small flat in Pimlico in the quiet square of plane trees would not, on this December morning, have to know it had happened.

The small flat in Pimlico knew.

The small flat in Pimlico had been built, by a woman who had been thinking about this exact morning for forty-two years, to know.

* * *