Jane Borodale - The Knot

But on the whole, Tobias Mote seems to know what is going on around him without looking, without ceasing his thin, see-sawing whistle, without raising his eyes from the ground as he digs or rakes. His ears are small and pricked, perhaps their bristle of hairs makes his hearing more acute than other men’s. Mary calls him the troll, because she is afraid of him. If she is naughty, he only has to mention his name to make her squeal and comply with parental requests.

‘Does he do magic?’ she’d whispered once in awe, when they were discussing the crop of skirrets laid like dead man’s fingers buttered on the plate at supper, but her stepmother dislikes that kind of talk and made her get down from the table. Frances applies herself with scant duty to prayer and worship at the appropriate moments of the day but has a horror of talk of spirits and the afterlife, that makes Henry suspect that her beliefs run wilder than some. Of course he can’t be sure of this as they have never discussed it, not being something a civilized family should concern itself with. His first wife Anys, he can’t help remembering, was devoted to prayer.

‘And on the shady slope behind the bank, for who ever thinks about what is behind them, we can set primroses, or violets as a surprise, and other little shy flowers that do not mind a lack of sunshine – all in due course,’ Henry adds hastily. He is determined to remain enthusiastic about remembering details, even in the face of cynicism. He paces up and down the length of land, which Mote is now raking finely, slighting the soil in preparation for the sowing as soon as the weather seems suitable.

Henry has hired a weeding woman who lives at Tuck’s, called Susan Gander. She has been pulling out neat, tender bits of dandelion, jack-by-the-hedge and long, easy roots of withywind, so that the beds are smooth and clear, and everything is ready for committing the seeds to the earth. Some areas are sown, and some left bare for pricklings to be set out later. Susan Gander is an odd woman, Henry decides. He has caught her staring at him when his back is turned, and when he speaks to her to give instruction, she doesn’t say much in return, just nods, staring all the time even as she tosses weeds into the basket, so that she sometimes misses. He knows she’s not a half-wit, she is the wife of John Gander who is the most reliable carter round here. He thinks perhaps she may be put out because at first he found it hard to remember her name, but now he has it, and still she goes on, which is making him feel almost paranoid. It happened when he saw her at church on Sunday, he swears he saw her surreptitiously turning round and watching him out of the corner of her eye, nudging her neighbour. Her behaviour proves to him something unpleasant he has been suspecting for a few weeks now.

There can be no longer any doubt that something has begun to quietly, insidiously, circulate the district about the nature of his first wife’s death. No-one has mentioned it to him, not a single mortal soul, but he hears the whispering and sees the glances, and slowly the whole ghastly mess is rearing its head again in an unformed, pliable version of itself like a bad dream.

He goes inside, and watches the sowing of seeds from the study for a while, with more than a touch of jealousy. Mote somehow knows he’s watching, brazenly raises his hand once to him. See? Henry mutters to himself, even his own gardener prefers him not to dig in the garden. He seems to regard it mostly as his own domain. But he does trust Mote sufficiently to carry out what they have agreed. The progress is invisible from here.

Henry prays, then goes to his manuscript, though it is hard to put his mind to it. Every day as the season draws on he finds it more of an effort to apply himself to its difficulty, tinkers with what little there is of it so far. He feels mired and tense.

The next day is grey, and the lesser celandines have kept their petals half-shut. A small brown hawk with pointed wings, not from round here, has been flying between the pear trees and making the blackbirds jittery. By midday the pale sky has lowered and dissolved into a mizzling fine drift of rain that is perfect for moistening, nurturing those seeds laid already in the earth. Tobias Mote says that a successful life for any seed is determined in the first day – the first hours, even – of being planted.

Watching the hawk whirr up to the edge of the copse, Henry is reminded of a reddish-brown moth and thinks it softly beautiful, until he sees its decisive landing in the ash tree, cruel feet outstretched and latching onto the bough so swiftly that he flinches. It is a meat-eater, through and through.

Chapter IX.

Of PLANTAINE, or Waybrede. The third kind of plantaine is smaller than the second, the leaves bee long and narrow, with ribs of a darke greene with smal poynts or purples. The roote is short and verie full of threddie strings.

FRANCES QUICKENED TODAY. Henry can’t feel it of course, though he puts his hand dutifully on her belly, but he praised God for it; another healthy child kicking in the womb. He can never picture a miniature human in there, like those shown in the diagrams in medical books. His mind’s eye suggests rather that it is a pinkish kind of grub or caterpillar, that will later transform into something more recognizable, when it is pressing tiny feet and hands against the inner side of her belly skin. He is after all an experienced father. There were the births of Edith, Mary, Jane and Florence, and there was the other birth too, but this is too painful for him to remember. This last memory is the one that is slippery, evasive, so deeply interred that he can’t even acknowledge it. He is adept at forgetting; extremely adept.

‘Come and see the garden today, Frances!’ he says, on impulse.

‘Then you must wait while I find my old shoes,’ she says.

‘No, now! Come at once! It is the end of April and you have not seen what has been happening out there,’ Henry makes himself laugh, tugs at her hand. And as they go out together to see the progress of the Knot and its surrounding borders, Henry begins a descriptive verbal tour for his wife, so that she can imagine how it is to grow. What will be here and here. What will be high, what will be climbing. He ignores Mote, who is grinning to himself as he listens to Henry’s enthusiastic, expansive rendition of how it is to be.

‘Picture its frankness,’ he entreats, ‘fat and green. Here will be the gillyflowers, and these little slips of lavender will have grown into plants by then, and see all these frondy bits of dill coming up, and these are the apothecary’s rose, and these the damask. What do you think?’

‘I do love roses.’ Her tone suggests that there is doubt involved in all of this.

‘The beehives are at the far end by the garden. If you sit up here by the house they will never bother you, and here is a good corner where the sun warms the wall. Even the little rock lizards bask in this spot.’

‘It really is quite hard to picture, Henry.’ He knows she is only allowing herself to see the mud, the parts that are not finished.

‘Think of a lily. Think of breathing in the plant’s waxy freshness like a draught of vital spirit.’

Frances does smile politely.

‘Think of a rose, then, think of bringing a fresh pink rose up to your face and drinking in its scent. It will have opened that morning and you will have your basket with you in order to gather many more, perhaps to make an aromatic water in your stillroom that very day while the blossoms are wholly fresh. If you like there could be a seat here for you to sit on, by the roses.’ He fetches a cask for her. ‘Try it!’

‘And my face won’t catch the sun?’

‘Your fair white skin would be shaded by the briars overhead.’