The Secrets of Flowers, page 2
‘As a coot,’ Betty says faintly, gazing from one to the other.
‘And you’ve got no neck,’ Emma adds for good measure. She thinks she is beginning to get the hang of Tamas.
His laughter rings out, and he slaps his ample belly. ‘This is also true.’
Then Emma catches the look on Betty’s face: startled, blinking. She has gone too far – she has got it wrong. Again. She doesn’t want Betty to think badly of her, but she has no idea what to say next.
She is saved by Tamas, who starts telling Betty what flowers he wasn’t able to get at the market that morning and which varieties he has put in their stead.
With a feeling of relief and slightly trembling hands, Emma returns to adding cherry tomatoes to her funeral wreath.
When Tamas leaves, Emma busies herself unpacking the new delivery of flowers, keeping her head bent, trying not to catch Betty’s eye. She can feel her watching her.
What Betty says next surprises her.
‘Les and I were wondering if you would like to join us tonight, here in the café? Just a small group of people. It’s the local History Society that Les is treasurer of. He’s doing a short talk – between you and me, I think he’s a bit nervous, so he could do with the support. The theme for this evening’s meeting is “Secrets of the Titanic”. You never know, love – you might find it interesting.’
What surprises Emma more than this invitation is that she looks up at Betty and replies, ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’
She meant to say, ‘Sorry, Betty, I’m busy.’
Chapter 2
Violet
Wildflowers
If she were to tell the story of her life, she would start among the flowers. That is where her memory began – picking wildflowers as she walked through the pale grasslands of the Argentine Pampas.
She suspects this is not the tale most people want to hear. Most would clamour to know about that one night, as they strain to imagine the low, grinding sound of ice against metal. She has come to realise that people want to sail close to the horror, skim the surface, feel the splash of icy water on their faces and then race on, unharmed.
Those who were there understand it cannot be like this. They know that the horror will reach up and pull you under. Her mother would tell those trying to sail closer and closer, to stay well away from the deep water.
She learnt early on in her life to heed her mother’s advice, and so she does not look into the cold, black depths if she can help it. She prefers to remember lives lived and oceans sailed.
The story she would wish to tell is about the small thread that was her life, and though her thread may have been thin – hold it to the light and you can barely make out its colour – when it was woven with other threads it made a cloth that stretched through time.
Somewhere within the weave would be her story of the Titanic, but she likes to think the cloth she was part of could be flung out full over a table or laid wide and taught across a room. It would not be a piece of fabric snagged on one single night.
She knows the pattern would be intricate, woven with flowers. Honeysuckle would be there – her mother would insist on that – and roses, lily of the valley and, of course, violets. She would like to stand back and admire how the sun catches the colours and textures within the cloth and say:
‘I was part of that.’
Chapter 3
Emma
Foxgloves
Why did she say, ‘Yes’?
Emma has never taken much interest in the Titanic. She did a school project on it when she was about eight or nine, and of course she saw the film. But the story of the Titanic was much more Will’s kind of thing: documentaries, history, National Geographic. She recalls him once showing her some 3D imagery of the wreck of the Titanic – which, looking back, had been fascinating.
Was that it? Had she thought for a split second that Will would be keen to go, that in another world, another life, this was something they might do together?
Whatever the reason, here she is, make-up on, smartish navy jacket over her jeans (what do you wear to a History Society talk?), making her way from the car park to the garden centre. From where she is standing by the entrance, she can see the broad window of the café facing her. She instinctively steps to her left, keeping a pillar hung with hanging baskets between her and the people gathering inside.
Les is there, wearing a smarter than normal fleece (it’s a cool evening for July) and Betty has on a denim shirt that appears to be embroidered with some kind of flying thing. Emma squints. Is that a flying fish? Surely not. Maybe an exotic bird?
This meander into Betty’s wildlife-wear calms her, but not enough to make her want to step out from her hiding place.
It seems most of the group is now assembled; her reluctance to come has made her late. She can see Betty chatting and ushering people to rows of chairs. They are mainly middle-aged and elderly. Women in summer dresses with jackets or cardigans. Men in chinos and one or two in shorts. They look like they could all be members of the National Trust.
Emma forces herself to move out from underneath the baskets of busy lizzies and petunias. She steps through the main door, heading towards the café. There is no one around; everyone else appears to be already seated. She can spy the rows of heads through the glass panel of the café door. None of the people are looking at her; they are all turned towards Les, who is standing in front of a large white screen, nervously and vigorously rubbing his palms together. Emma has a hand on the café door when the next thought descends.
They will all soon be looking at me.
She fast-forwards to her opening the door. She pictures the group turning to stare at her. She knows her muted outfit of anonymous navy will not shield her. Her height. That hair. Then later, there will be small talk, people gathered in tight, impenetrable groups. She swallows hard as her breathing quickens. It feels like something is stuck between her throat and her ribs. She knows her hand is clammy on the door handle and with this comes a dizzying nausea. Heat floods through her body and she cannot move. She wants to sink to her knees but they are locked and she is left staring at the rows of heads in front of her.
A black and white photograph flickers onto the screen behind Les: the Titanic. The image releases something within her. It is not too late. No one has seen her.
Round-shouldered, head ducked, heart hammering, Emma twists on her heel and stumbles in her rush for the car park. She may be trembling and drenched in shame – it feels pathetic to let Betty and Les down like this – but if she is on her own, no one will see; no one else will know. The bleak dead thing within her will stay submerged and hidden.
She finds herself running towards her car. As she starts the engine, her mind is filled with the image of the Titanic slowly tipping, then ripping apart and sinking.
Emma stands in her kitchen, jacket abandoned on the back of a chair, half-drunk glass of wine on the table. It is nearly dark but she notices the temperature has risen. The July night air that flows in at the open window feels like tepid water over her skin. The sickness and panic have passed; only the shame remains.
She moves closer to the window and watches a badger scuttle across the lawn, leaving a dark rut in the grass. She follows its waddling form, a ripple of white and silver, until it disappears into the flowerbed where the foxgloves once grew.
The foxgloves have never returned to the garden. She often looks for them, unsure whether they are the kind of flowers that reappear each year. Gardening had been something she believed she would come to later on in life. She had imagined working with Will in this garden. Now she is left staring into the inky depths of the flowerbeds where the foxgloves once bloomed.
They had been in the cottage for just over a year when Will died. They moved there from a tiny house in the centre of Oxford. Time, they had joked, for a grown-up home. Far enough away from the city to be in the country but still close enough to the university and the station – an easy commute to Will’s law firm in London. Neither acknowledged the painful irony of being able to afford a family-sized house now they had accepted they would never have a family.
One of the things Emma and Will liked most about the property when they first saw it was the garden. It circles the house, stretching up behind the cottage to a small, raggedy field. Now, each morning, Emma takes her coffee up to the edge of this field and stands looking down over the broad, sweeping Oxfordshire countryside. She likes it best when mist settles in the hollows and the world is revealed, not as one broad expanse, but layer upon layer of field and woodland, like scenes from a theatre.
Some mornings, when the light is golden and the mist rises, masking the lower landscape, she can believe she is staring out across a sea of islands and the dark trees marking the horizon are ships. On days when her mind is fuzzy from lack of sleep, when thoughts of Will submerge all other feeling, she imagines boarding one of these ships and sailing away.
At the front of the cottage, the garden dips down to a small orchard bordered by a wall on one side and a shallow stream on the other. The lawn around the house now lies patchy, like a bad home-haircut, overlong in bits and razored in others where Emma has hacked a path through with the lawnmower. Behind long fringes of grass, the flowerbeds emerge chaotic and overgrown. Near the gate to the lane is a shed that Will claimed as his own and an ancient greenhouse where Emma once planned to bring on her favourite flowers: blush-coloured hollyhocks, magenta poppies and lupins the colour of ice-cream.
Some of the flowers planted by the previous owners still hold strong in the overgrown beds. In the last month, the pastel rambling roses of June have given way to the scarlet penstemon and feathery white euphorbia of full summer. Lavender bushes fizz with bees and black-eyed Susans warm their faces in the sun. As flowers bloom and fade, Emma often thinks about how transient life is – there one moment, gone the next.
She wonders how she knows the names of all these flowers. Sometimes in the Flower Cabin, she is caught, unsure what something is called, but if she waits, the name usually comes to her. She must have absorbed these from her father, who spent hours working in his garden. Perhaps she subconsciously learnt this language in the same way she picked up the Spanish that he spoke to his parents. Sometimes she thinks of the name of a flower in English and also in Spanish. Foxglove – Dedalera. Lavender – Lavanda.
Emma turns away from the window, sits down at the kitchen table and reaches for a notepad. Occasionally, when she cannot order her chaotic thoughts, she writes. A stream of words unleashed to lance the overwhelming pressure of her pain.
She writes her letter in Spanish.
Dear Papa,
I have just watched a badger disappear into the flowerbed where the foxgloves used to grow. I want to ask you if foxgloves are meant to come back each year? There are so many things I want to ask you. Maybe I’ll write this letter and bury it in the garden, in the hope that it will somehow reach you.
I don’t know who else to talk to. Granny Maria was a good listener. I often think of her. And I think of you and the time we used to spend in the garden together. I know we didn’t always talk much, and as I’m finding out now, I didn’t really listen when you told me what to do in the garden. But I do remember the names of flowers.
I wish I could see you, Papa. I want to sit on the tree stump by your shed and tell you how I struggle these days to do the simplest things. I tried to go to a talk this evening, but I just couldn’t do it. Such a simple thing, really.
I’ve left my job – did you know that? I’m beginning to wonder why. I think I was a good scientist, Papa. In our research work, it was all about looking for new connections. I keep coming back to that – I thought this job would be a way for me to find new connections. But I don’t know anymore.
I thought things were supposed to get easier. Time is supposed to heal. Isn’t that what everyone says?
No, I can’t talk about Will, Papa. Don’t ask me to.
What do I really want to do?
Now there’s a question.
I want to sit in the garden with you and drink coffee. I want to be ankle deep in purple and yellow crocuses as you plan what to add to the borders this year.
I know I could work on this garden instead. I keep looking at it, but I don’t ever do anything. I just don’t seem to know where to start.
Follow the flowers?
What does that even mean?
Emma looks down at her close-spaced handwriting. What is she doing? Writing an imaginary conversation with a man who died a decade ago?
She tears off the page, screws it up and drops it on the chair beside her. The journey to the bin, like most things in her life, seems just too much of an effort.
Chapter 4
Violet
Blanket Flowers
Argentina, 1893
She is six years old.
Her father is on the hill waving, his old brown hat making circles in the sky. She starts to run towards him, scattering the small group of sheep in front of her. One animal stumbles and as it falls forward onto its knees she is worried she may have hurt it. Each year there are fewer and fewer in the flock, and she knows her father cannot afford to lose even one animal. She pauses, hovering on the ball of her foot, fear pinning her balance. The sheep scrambles to its feet and is off running with the others – and so is she, her heart pounding with relief. As she gets closer to her father, she anxiously searches his face in case he has seen the animal stumble and is ready to scold her.
But he smiles at her and sweeps his hat in an enormous arc, gesturing for her to look down over the brow of the hill.
‘The blanket flowers are back. Have you ever seen the like?’
The land opens up in front of her, a collage of green grass and grey dust with a splash of blue far off in the distance, like a sweep of bright paint. To her right, down the slope, it looks as if someone has spilt a jar of yellow buttons: tiny dots mark the scattering of flower heads. Even though the nuns have taught her her numbers and have told her parents she is a quick learner, she cannot begin to imagine counting all those flowers.
She reaches up for her father’s hand. It is large and calloused and engulfs hers easily. He squeezes her small fingers momentarily and then he is off, striding down the slope, sweeping a path through the yellow buttons, his mind back on his flock. She knows he has forgotten her and he is searching the horizon for stragglers.
Sometimes, she wishes she too was a sheep.
Chapter 5
Emma
Clove Carnations
From her phone screen she can see it is 2.49 a.m. For a while she lies listening: no dawn chorus, no passing cars – instead, a ringing silence so high-pitched she suspects only she and dogs can hear it. She wonders if it is her guilt that has woken her. She should have gone in to the talk to support Les. It wasn’t much to ask. The last thing she had done before going to bed was to bake a cake to take in for Betty and Les by way of an apology. But as she forgot to add the sugar, this gesture ended up in the bin.
She stretches out her hand to the empty side of the bed and feels the coolness of cotton under her fingertips. How many quilts hide a sheet that is crumpled on one side and yet is pristine and smooth on the other? Months on. For some people, years on. Still, your side of the bed. Still, their side of the bed.
Emma shuffles up until she is sitting, pillows stuffed behind her back. She knows she is not going to get back to sleep tonight. She reaches for her laptop which is down by the side of the bed and starts searching for something to watch on catch-up TV. As she browses the BBC’s Science and Nature section, one title leaps out at her: Disappearing Titanic: Revealing how the ocean is eroding the shipwreck of the Titanic.
Well, at least she might have something to talk to Les about.
Forty minutes later, Emma watches as a floral wreath is flung out into the Atlantic to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic. The story of the erosion of the shipwreck had been poignant; the ocean slowly reclaiming the huge bulk that was once a ship. The metal hull, the captain’s bath, the glossy blue-green tiles of the steam room – all slowly fading way. Possessions that had laid scattered on the ocean floor – shoes, hairbrushes, opera glasses, violins – had either been recovered or left to sink into their sandy grave.
As she watches the wreath of lilies tip lopsidedly beneath the grey waves, a new thought comes to her: what about the flowers on the Titanic? Who arranged those? Surely there must have been flowers: smart table centres for the restaurants; carnation buttonholes for evening jackets; and corsages for crepe and silk gowns.
As the credits roll over footage of a disintegrating marble fireplace, Emma imagines the mantelpiece with a crystal vase of ruby roses on it, cut-glass sparkling in light reflected from banks of mirrors. In the labyrinth below deck she pictures plump stewards in white uniforms rushing to deliver bouquets to first-class cabins.
Somewhere on the Titanic, someone must have arranged these flowers.
She leans back on her pillows and closes her laptop. She shuts her eyes, hovering between waking and drowsing.
The documentary said that it was April when the Titanic set sail from Southampton; the dawn must have been cold and dank as the final preparations were made. Did the florist arrive at the docks at first light as the flowers were being delivered onto the wharf? Did she dodge between wagons as she searched for the nurserymen’s cart? Perhaps she had lingered in the shadow of a heavily laden dray as she watched cases of Cognac and Champagne being winched into the hold? Did she count the wooden boxes of flowers being unloaded for the ship? Perhaps she picked out a rose, checking it for bruising, and was unable to resist lifting it to her face to smell.
Emma stirs and reopens her laptop. She starts searching online for information about the crew of the Titanic. A myriad of sites immediately pop up, many listing those who had worked on board. She can’t give Les and Betty a cake, but maybe she can find out this bit of information, something of interest to show she is not a rude and thoughtless woman – an offering from their trainee florist to lay alongside her apology.
