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Authors: Helen Humphreys
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limbs fastened to the stone, made to grow in straight lines so that the fruit will grow evenly. I remember the notation from the book I carry under my arm. Train the apples to the wall . Espalier. That’s what this method of producing fruit is called. Some consider it artistically pleasing, but I’ve always found the splayed posture of the crucified tree very unsettling. All its movement is controlled and directed. The tree ceases to be itself and becomes merely the product of an entirely human desire.
The trees espaliered to this wall have been untended for years. Whereas the branches start firmly attached to the wall close to the trunk of the individual tree, they soon are free to move upwards, move out from the wall. It is as though the bodies of the trees are pinned to the wall and the limbs are reaching out for freedom.
I step around behind the wall, to get away from the sight of the apple trees. There’s a path behind the wall. Directly opposite the wall, mirroring it, are a row of huge yew trees, jammed close together from years of never being trimmed so that they form a large hedge, a slumbering green whale.
There’s a flash of white under the hedge and I bend down to examine the flower there. An anemone of some sort. I bend closer over the small white flower with the yellow centre. It’s strange that I don’t recognize it. I am usually quite good with flowers.
The flower is not alone. It is not growing under the yew, but has moved in that direction from where it starts in a small clearing. When I get down on my hands and knees and peer under the hedge I can see a whole river of anemones. I use the gardener’s ledger as a shield and push through the hedge. Yew branches feather against my scalp. I breathe in the spicy smell and then I’m past it, standing on top of the river of white anemones and looking at the most unruly garden I have ever seen.
The anemones lead to a huge, overgrown flower bed. Near one end there is some kind of structure, completely choked with greenery. The bed itself is covered with hundreds of nettles. The flowers bloom amid the dead wood and the vegetation of those still dormant or long since dead. I follow the flow of anemones up to the edge of the flower bed. There is not much light here. One side of this garden is flanked by the massive yews. The other three sides are bordered by woods. Some of the trees have woven their branches together over this patch of ground, effectively blocking the sun.
I crouch beside the edge of the garden. I feel something that at first I’m sure is fear. But no, that’s not it. What I feel is a kind of unreality. I am a ghost. I have wandered back in time, or forward, and I have disturbed this sleeping place with my presence. The one thing I can clearly feel, the one thing I know above all else, is that I am the first person to have been here in a very long time.
I scrape around in the bed beside the anemones and promptly get stung by the cloud of nettles that has settled over the garden. I poke around in the dirt instead, rubbing it between my fingers to assess its measure. My fingers brush against something solid resting in the earth. Flat stone. A cut rectangle of stone. I rub my fingers along it and feel the indentations open under them like windows. There’s something carved into the stone.
It is a word. Not a name as I had presumed. I brush the earth carefully away from the stone with my jersey sleeve. There’s a word cut into the slate by a steady hand. A word buried and recovered, as this word always must be, because that is how it works in us, that is how it is read.
Longing .
12
The anemone is an Anemone narcissiflora . I look it up in the reference books I have lugged down from London. I barely have time before supper, scrabbling through the pages with grubby hands. I have brought a sample back with me from the garden, although it’s a little soiled from having been jammed into my trouser pocket.
The Anemone narcissiflora is
The trees espaliered to this wall have been untended for years. Whereas the branches start firmly attached to the wall close to the trunk of the individual tree, they soon are free to move upwards, move out from the wall. It is as though the bodies of the trees are pinned to the wall and the limbs are reaching out for freedom.
I step around behind the wall, to get away from the sight of the apple trees. There’s a path behind the wall. Directly opposite the wall, mirroring it, are a row of huge yew trees, jammed close together from years of never being trimmed so that they form a large hedge, a slumbering green whale.
There’s a flash of white under the hedge and I bend down to examine the flower there. An anemone of some sort. I bend closer over the small white flower with the yellow centre. It’s strange that I don’t recognize it. I am usually quite good with flowers.
The flower is not alone. It is not growing under the yew, but has moved in that direction from where it starts in a small clearing. When I get down on my hands and knees and peer under the hedge I can see a whole river of anemones. I use the gardener’s ledger as a shield and push through the hedge. Yew branches feather against my scalp. I breathe in the spicy smell and then I’m past it, standing on top of the river of white anemones and looking at the most unruly garden I have ever seen.
The anemones lead to a huge, overgrown flower bed. Near one end there is some kind of structure, completely choked with greenery. The bed itself is covered with hundreds of nettles. The flowers bloom amid the dead wood and the vegetation of those still dormant or long since dead. I follow the flow of anemones up to the edge of the flower bed. There is not much light here. One side of this garden is flanked by the massive yews. The other three sides are bordered by woods. Some of the trees have woven their branches together over this patch of ground, effectively blocking the sun.
I crouch beside the edge of the garden. I feel something that at first I’m sure is fear. But no, that’s not it. What I feel is a kind of unreality. I am a ghost. I have wandered back in time, or forward, and I have disturbed this sleeping place with my presence. The one thing I can clearly feel, the one thing I know above all else, is that I am the first person to have been here in a very long time.
I scrape around in the bed beside the anemones and promptly get stung by the cloud of nettles that has settled over the garden. I poke around in the dirt instead, rubbing it between my fingers to assess its measure. My fingers brush against something solid resting in the earth. Flat stone. A cut rectangle of stone. I rub my fingers along it and feel the indentations open under them like windows. There’s something carved into the stone.
It is a word. Not a name as I had presumed. I brush the earth carefully away from the stone with my jersey sleeve. There’s a word cut into the slate by a steady hand. A word buried and recovered, as this word always must be, because that is how it works in us, that is how it is read.
Longing .
12
The anemone is an Anemone narcissiflora . I look it up in the reference books I have lugged down from London. I barely have time before supper, scrabbling through the pages with grubby hands. I have brought a sample back with me from the garden, although it’s a little soiled from having been jammed into my trouser pocket.
The Anemone narcissiflora is
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