The Rose Gardener Page 3

  You always survive, Mrs. Shaye!

  She knew she had a reputation for being resilient and for letting nothing and no one keep her down, and there were times when she wondered at how stubbornly those around her clung to this conviction. She herself did not feel half as strong as the people around her obviously thought her to be. Rather she felt that she had been fortunate in being able to build a good, solid armor around herself that held back everything that pressed in against it from the outside, and that above all protected her inner life from curious onlookers. From time to time she thought she could still sense a great number of wounds there that even today had not stopped bleeding. The good news was that apparently no one could see them.

  She snipped away at her roses, swiftly and skillfully. She didn’t say a single word to them though. Her father had always spoken to the roses, and claimed that this was of the utmost importance.

  “They’re living things. They need attention. They need to feel that they are well-liked and that your concern for them is genuine. They absolutely sense it if you mean well towards them, towards their character, if you respect the particulars of their nature and their idiosyncrasies. And they can tell just as precisely when you are indifferent or condescending towards them.”

  As a little girl Beatrice had hung on these words worshipfully and had not doubted the truth in them for a second. But Andrew Stewart, her father, had been something like God himself in her eyes, and there was quite simply nothing in the world that she wouldn’t have believed of him. In some way she was of the mind that he had been right, even today, but she had never been able to do as he had told her. At some point in the hard years of the war and in the difficult times that followed, she had lost the ability to take up his way of living for herself: good-natured, gentle, and overflowing with true love for all of creation. Andrew had been too vulnerable, and she could not and would not allow herself to be that way. And after a time she was unable to rid herself of the idea that a man who spoke to roses was leaving himself wide open to life’s attack. It might well have been a stubborn notion, a prejudice, nothing she could substantiate, but its effect was that she was incapable of saying even one word to her roses. Not since she was fifteen years old had she managed to do it. She suspected that if she was to do so there would be an immediate outpouring, as if a dam within her had burst.

  When Helene called from the house for Beatrice to come to the phone, she was thankful for the opportunity to escape the ever more oppressive heat for a few minutes.

  “Who is it?” she asked as she stepped into the corridor. Helene, now wearing a pink silk dressing gown, stood in front of the mirror and held the phone in her hand.

  “It’s Kevin,” she said. “He’d like to ask you something.”

  Kevin also grew roses, but unlike Beatrice, he was right in the middle of his career. He was thirty-eight years old and gay. A touching affection bound him to the two old women from Le Variouf. His gardens were on the southwest tip of the island, a twenty-minute drive away.

  Kevin called often; he often felt lonely and had still not managed to hold onto a stable, lasting relationship. His years-long involvement with a young man named Steve had just fallen apart, and the romance he was leading during that same time with a somewhat dubious Frenchman was also no more. At the moment there seemed to be no one for him. Guernsey offered few opportunities for homosexuals. Kevin dreamed of moving to London one day and finding “the man of his life” there — but all who knew him also knew that Kevin would never leave his island. And he was not at all cut out for the rough life of the big city.

  Beatrice took the receiver from Helene’s hand. “Kevin? How’s it going? Don’t you agree that it’s too hot to work today?”

  “Unfortunately I can’t afford to lose even one day, as you well know,” said Kevin. He had an uncommonly deep voice. He could make women half crazy over the telephone. “Listen, Beatrice, I need your help. This is really embarrassing, but … could you lend me some money?”

  “Me?” Beatrice asked in surprise. Kevin often borrowed money, particularly in the past six months, but he almost always turned to Helene with his problems. She was mad about him and he could be sure of never having to leave empty-handed.

  “I’m uncomfortable approaching Helene again,” Kevin said. He sounded uneasy. “She just helped me out with a rather large sum. I mean, if you …”

  “How much do you need, then?”

  He hesitated. “A thousand pounds,” he said finally.

  Beatrice was startled. “That’s quite a lot.”

  “I know. I’ll pay it back, for sure. You don’t have to worry.”

  Of course you had to worry where he was concerned. Beatrice knew that Kevin had barely paid a penny back to Helene. He simply did not have the money. He never had money.

  “You can have the money, Kevin,” she said. “And just take your time paying it back. But I don’t quite understand why you always need such large amounts. Is business really that bad?”

  “Is business good for anyone right now?” Kevin said vaguely. “The competition is heavy, and the general economic situation isn’t all too rosy, either. And on top of all that, I’ve bought two more greenhouses and it’ll be awhile till I can pay off the expense. And even then I’ll …”

  “Okay, okay. Come by tomorrow and I’ll have a check for you to pick up.”

  Beatrice didn’t like listening to his endless promises, nor did she like to reproach him. The way she saw it, Kevin lived too high on the hog, simple as that. The fancy silk ties, cashmere sweaters, champagne … all of this had its price.

  He’ll never get a grip on things, she thought.

  “You’re a treasure,” Kevin said, his voice now filled with relief. “I’ll return the favor the next chance I get.”

  “That would be great,” said Beatrice. Kevin always had the same way of returning the favor. He could cook like a god and had a knack for imbuing his dinners with a marvelous atmosphere — flowers, candles, crystal, and a fire in the hearth. He loved to make a fuss over his guests, to spoil them. He often invited Helene over, but there was a calculated quality to the invitation. With Beatrice it was different. He sometimes said that she was the only woman he’d ever fallen in love with.

  After the conversation had ended, Beatrice stayed in the hallway for a moment, thinking. It seemed to her that Kevin had sounded hunted. There seemed to be a great deal hanging on this money.

  Hopefully he’s not in an even bigger mess than he’ll admit, thought Beatrice.

  “So, what did Kevin want?” asked Helene. She had withdrawn discreetly into the kitchen during the conversation, but now she reappeared and was trying to act casual — which wasn’t at all the reality of the situation. Helene was never casual. She found herself in a constant state of attention, was always on guard, always tensed to find out everything that went on in the house — above all where Beatrice was concerned: whom she spoke with and about what, whom she met with, what she was planning and why.

  “You are neurotic, you’re a control freak!” Beatrice had once screamed at her, fed up. Helene had burst into tears, but nothing had changed.

  “Kevin needs money,” Beatrice explained. It was clear to her that Helene had been listening anyway, and that therefore she could play openhandedly. “And I’m to give it to him.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand pounds.”

  “A thousand pounds!” Helene seemed truly taken aback. “Again? Already?”

  “Why? Did he ask for that much recently?”

  “Last week. I gave him a thousand pounds last week. Why doesn’t he come to me?”

  “Probably for just that reason.” Beatrice tried not to sound too irritated, but even the short conversation with Helene was wearing on her nerves. “He didn’t want to scrape and beg in front of you again so soon.”

  �
��Why does he always need so much money?”

  “I don’t know. It makes me uneasy. I’m guessing he’s got a new lover who’s rather expensive. That’d be typical for Kevin.”

  “But why …”

  “Good heavens, Helene, please stop needling me with these questions! I don’t know what’s going on with Kevin. If you really want to find out, go over there and ask him.”

  “You always speak so irritably to me!”

  “Because you always have to know everything. Should I start writing down descriptions of my dreams for you? What about the times when I’m on the toilet?”

  Helene’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re always so ugly to me! Every word you say to me you have to let me know how much I get on your nerves. All day I sit there, and nobody is there to look after me, and I’m not the least bit important to anybody. And when I want to take part in your life in the smallest way, then …”

  It could last forever if Helene started in lamenting the way her life was, and it would always end in a sea of tears. Beatrice didn’t think she could stomach it just then.

  “Helene, perhaps we should discuss your regrettable situation some other time. Right now I would like to go pick up where I left off with the roses and then leave to go meet Mae. Do you think that would be possible?”

  She had spoken with a dangerous politeness in her voice, and in a tone that she knew Helene feared. Sure enough, the old woman bit her lip and turned away. She’d go back to her room now, and once there she’d let her tears flow freely.

  Beatrice watched her as she slowly climbed the stairs, and she asked herself why she wasn’t capable of feeling compassion for this old, neurotic person. Helene was a deeply unhappy woman, had always been so. There was simply no peace for her, not even in old age.

  And I can’t manage to feel sorry for her, Beatrice thought. And she was almost shocked when, unbidden, the next thought came to her: I can’t manage it because I hate her more and more each day.

  2

  Franca had known from the outset that everything would go wrong on this trip. It started on the plane. First she had sat in the wrong seat, and the man whose seat it was had shouted at her as if she had made an unforgivable grab for another’s private property. Afterwards she had wandered aimlessly around the aircraft until a flight attendant had taken pity on her, looked at her boarding pass and led her to her seat. Close to a panic attack, Franca had sunk into the upholstery and with trembling fingers had searched through her handbag for pills. Finally she had found the flat box, and then had discovered, to her horror, that it was almost empty. This wasn’t possible. Such a thing had never happened to her before. Whenever she actually left the house, which happened seldom enough, she checked a dozen times to make sure that she had brought enough anti-anxiety pills with her. This time, at the start of a longer trip, she had of course done so as well — but she had thought the two blister packs in the box were full.

  How could that even happen? She asked herself hopelessly. Except for a single pill, both blister packs were empty.

  Her first impulse was to jump up and hurry off the plane. The aircraft would have to leave without her, she couldn’t go with it. On Guernsey — that was to say, in a foreign country — she would not be able to get the medicine she needed, never mind the fact that she didn’t have the prescription with her. But then the plane was pushed slowly from its parked position and Franca knew that she no longer had a chance. She would fly to Guernsey, and she would have to get by with just one pill.

  She knew all too well by now that her panic attacks came mostly without warning. They washed over her like a giant wave, and for endless agonizing minutes left her stranded in a state of terror and despair. She had seen it coming, the panic attack that befell her in the plane. It had started when the man whose seat she’d taken had snapped at her, and the final push had come with the discovery that the pill box was almost empty. But although Franca had certainly known that it would set in, violently, pitilessly, any minute, she struggled wildly for air under the force of the assault. In seconds her light cotton sweater was soaked in sweat, her legs turned to pudding, her heart started pounding, as if she’d just run a marathon. An intense chill came over her, but she knew that the chill came from within, that nothing in the world could warm her. Her teeth knocked against one another, scarcely to be heard. In these moments she was aware of the ashen color of her face. She must have looked like a ghost.

  In addition to the bodily symptoms — the trembling, sweating and simultaneous chills — fear coursed through her with the speed of a wildfire moving through a dried up forest. She almost thought she could hear Michael, his angry, aggravated voice.

  “What fear, for God’s sake?” He asked her this again and again, and clearly she was never able to give an answer that would satisfy him.

  “It’s not just fear, the word is too weak. It’s panic! But it’s an unidentifiable panic. A feeling of terror. Of agony. Of no escape. A nameless fear that you can’t counter with anything because you don’t know where it comes from.”

  “There is no such thing as a nameless fear. Or an unidentifiable panic! You have to know what it is you’re afraid of and what it is you’re panicking about.”

  “Everything. Life. People. The Future. Everything seems dark, threatening. It’s …”

  Every time, her explanations had died out helplessly. “Michael, I just don’t know. It’s horrible. And I’m completely defenseless.”

  “Nonsense. A person is never completely defenseless. It’s just a question of will. You, however, retreated long ago to the cozy position of claiming that you have no will at all. That way you can feel comforted just to stand there, arms at your sides, and stumble from one panic attack to the next.”

  She heard his voice hammer into her without mercy as the plane rolled towards the runway. In vain she tried to somehow bring her trembling and inner agony under a semblance of control.

  The pill … she knew that if she took it she’d calm down in less than a minute. But then it would be gone. Its effects lasted five to six hours, tops. And the earliest she could leave Guernsey was the day after tomorrow.

  “Are you not feeling well?”

  She heard the voice of her neighbor as if through a fog. Hazily she saw the friendly face of an old woman. White hair, kind eyes.

  “You’re lips are gray and you’re shaking like a leaf. Should I call the flight attendant?”

  “No, thanks very much.” Just don’t call any attention to yourself, now. She knew from experience that it would only make the situation worse. “I have a pill here … if I take it I’ll feel better in no time.”

  “Do you have a fear of flying?”

  “No … I’m … I have a pesky cold I haven’t been able to get rid of.” Doubtless that sounded completely unbelievable, but nothing else occurred to her just then. She needed three tries to pop the pill out of the cellophane. Her fingers were shaking as she put it in her mouth. She got it down easily without water. She’d learned how to do this all too well in the past years, when she had had to take the pills in the most inopportune moments.

  “I used to have the most horrible fear of flying,” said the old woman, ignoring the explanation about the lingering cold. “For a time I stopped traveling by plane entirely. But then I said to myself I had to fight it somehow. My daughter got married on Guernsey, and after all I want to be able to see her and the grandkids every now and then. It’s a very long way by car, and by train … oh dear Lord!” she waved dismissively. “And so, with flying, I really trained myself. And now I don’t have any problems with it at all.” She smiled. “You’ll get the hang of it, too.”

  Franca closed her eyes. The pill was already starting to work. The trembling subsided. The chills stopped. The sweat dried on her skin. Slowly the panic drained away. She breathed in deeply.

  “You’re getting some col
or back in your cheeks,” her neighbor declared. “It looks like those pills work fabulously. What are they, actually?”

  “A valerian mixture.” Franca quickly hid the box away in her purse. Her body relaxed. She laid her head back on the headrest.

  Six hours. Six hours, if she was optimistic — and in the period just after taking a dose, optimism came easily to her. For six hours she would have peace.

  And then?

  How will I be able to function at the bank tomorrow, she thought, how will I even manage to leave the hotel room?

  She could skip dinner and breakfast and just stay in her room. If she was lucky, she might be able to buy a sandwich in the airport in St. Martin, so she wouldn’t have to go hungry all that long. But tomorrow she had to go to the bank, and it was a mystery to her how she was supposed to handle this task.

  I’ll have to think about it tomorrow, she decided, maybe I won’t have any attacks at all, and then there won’t be any problems.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that an attack would come. They always came. But this thought, subdued by the medication, couldn’t take hold. A soft veil had been drawn over her senses. She would simply let things come as they would.

  Reza Karim waved his hands around excitedly. He let loose a string of words in the language of his native Pakistan before he got hold of himself again and fell back into his rough, somewhat choppy English.

  “I do not know! I really do not know how that can happen. I do not have a booking here! Mrs. Palmer, I am inconsolable. Could it be that you forgot to notify me?”

  Franca clutched the reception desk with both hands for support and stared at Reza Karim as if in a trance. “Mr. Karim, my husband booked the room. Or rather, his secretary did. But that has always worked before.”

  “Yes, but this time I have no booking!” Karim flipped hectically back and forth through the pages of his register. “There is nothing here! Everything gets put in here. There is nothing here!”