Two Lives

7

Aimée was calm when she awoke, but during the days that followed there were further setbacks, though thankfully none was as alarming as the first one. Her uncle’s departure from America was again delayed to allow her further time to make a recovery. But even so Dr Innocenti was optimistic.

We ourselves – the General, Otmar and I – were naturally apprehensive and each day that ended without incident seemed like a victory of a kind. And for me there was another small source of pleasure, a bolt from the blue as agreeable as any I have experienced. As I recall it now I am reminded, by way of introduction, that overheard conversations do not always throw up welcome truths. ‘Pass on, my dear, for you’ll hear no good,’ Lady Daysmith advises in Precious September, but of course it is not always so. Pausing by the door of the salotto one evening, I overheard Otmar and the General tentatively conversing.

‘Yes, she has mentioned that,’ the old man was saying, and this was when I paused, for I sensed it was I who was referred to, and who can resist a moment’s listening in such circumstances?

‘I would take the chance,’ Otmar said, ‘to pay my debt to her.’

His wife had been quite expert, the old man said next, especially where the cultivation of fritillaries was concerned. Otmar didn’t understand the term; an explanation followed, the plant described. The name came from the Latin: fritillus meant a dice-box. ‘She was always interested in a horticultural derivation. She read Dr Linnaeus.’

Otmar professing ignorance again, there came an explanation. I heard that this Linnaeus, a Swedish person apparently – Linné as he’d been born – had sorted out a whole array of flowers and plants, giving them names or finding Latin roots for existing names, orderliness and Latin being his forte.

‘She wants a garden,’ Otmar said, not interrupting but by the sound of it repeating what he had said already, in an effort to bring the conversation down to earth.

‘Then we must make her one.’

How could they make me a garden? One was too old, the other had but a single arm left! Yet how sweet it was to hear them! As I stood there I felt a throb of warmth within my body, as though a man had said when I was still a girl: ‘I love you…’

‘He’s not the sort of person,’ the old man was observing when next I paid attention. ‘He’s not the sort to be a help or even be much interested.’

I guessed they spoke of Quinty, and certainly what was deduced was true.

‘A machine is there?’ Otmar asked then. ‘An implement to break the earth?’

‘There’s a thing in England called a Merry Tiller. A motorized plough.’

I imagine Otmar nodded. The General said:

‘Heaven knows what grows best in such dry conditions. Precious little, probably. We’d have to read all that up.’

‘I do not know seeds.’

Fuchsias grew in the garden of his parents, Otmar went on. He was not good about the names of plants, but he remembered fuchsias in pots – double headed, scarlet and cream. The geranium family should do well, the General said, and brooms. To my delight he mentioned azaleas. Shade would be important, and would somehow have to be supplied. The azaleas would have to be grown in urns, and moved inside in winter.

‘With one arm,’ Otmar reminded him, ‘I could not dig.’ ‘It is remarkable what can be done, you know. Once you settle to it.’

I moved away because I heard them get to their feet. A few minutes later I saw them at the back of my house, gesturing to one another beside the ruined out-buildings. Their voices drifted to where I watched from; the old man pointed. Here there’d be a flight of steps, leading to a lower level, here four flowerbeds formally in a semi-circle, here a marble figure perhaps. A few days later, when they revealed their secret to me, they showed me the plans they had drawn on several sheets of paper in the meantime. The General promised a herb bed, with thyme and basil and tarragon and rosemary. There would be solitary yew trees or local pines, whichever were advised. They’d try for box hedges and cotoneaster and oleander. There’d be a smoke tree and a handkerchief tree, and roses and peach trees, whatever they could induce to thrive.

‘When I’m grown up I’d like to tell stories too.’

Aimée had Flight to Enchantment in her hand. She had asked me and I had related its contents, while effortlessly she listened.

‘I like being here in the hills,’ she said.