The Retired Exorcist Plants a Garden

Chapter 1 - The Girl at the Gate

The wheelbarrow entered the gate as far as its handles and stopped. Abel lowered it, examined the gap on either side and tried again at an angle, which improved matters for one handle while making them considerably worse for the other. He had borrowed it from the coal merchant with the intention of doing something useful before supper. So far he had prevented two people from passing along the pavement and acquired a splinter beneath his thumbnail.

‘The gate opens farther than that,’ Lottie said from the bakery step. She was shaking flour from a folded cloth, keeping it low so that the wind took the dust away from the window. ‘There’s a stone behind it. Mrs Stemp used to put it there when the catch wouldn’t hold.’

The stone was half buried beside the post, where a small fern had established itself against the ironwork. Abel worked it loose with the heel of his boot, and the gate went back on complaining hinges. He brought the barrow through onto the bare strip beside the front path.

Lottie came as far as her gate to inspect the result. ‘What are you putting in it?’ Abel looked at the empty tray. He had imagined that part of the undertaking would become obvious once he possessed the means of carrying things away.

‘Whatever I can reasonably remove from the garden,’ he said. ‘There are several candidates.’ He pulled off his glove and examined his thumb. Lottie told him there were tweezers in his kitchen drawer, because she had put them back after removing a thorn from her own hand the week before. He thanked her and said he meant to begin with the dead stems beside the cold frame.

‘Look underneath before you pull. There may be something coming up.’ She tucked the cloth beneath her arm as a woman approached the shop carrying an empty basket. ‘I’ll ask you tomorrow how much of the garden you’ve kept.’

He heard her greet the customer by name. They had become comfortable with conversations which ended because one of them had something else to do. Abel had needed rather more practice at this than Lottie. On the afternoon he fetched her for tea after Christmas, he had spent the short walk wondering whether he ought to have planned where they would go; by the time they returned to the house, they had stopped twice to look at things she wanted to show him. Since then, he had learnt to leave some of an afternoon unarranged.

The barrow would have to stay at the front, well away from the parlour carpet. For now he could carry the first cuttings out in a sack, and he went inside to deal with his thumb.

March was well advanced, but the kitchen still needed its fire. Beyond the window, a little sunlight had reached the garden wall without warming the wet ground beneath it. The grass lay in different directions where the winter weather had pressed it down. Near the cold frame, something green showed through a clump of last year’s stalks, though Abel could not tell whether he ought to encourage it.

Joyce stood beside the table, looking at two clean pillowcases he had brought down to mend. The guest in Room Two had left that morning after three nights, having paid the bill and remembered both umbrellas. Abel had stripped the bed and aired the room before deciding that the rest of the day might be his.

‘One of those only needs the hem catching,’ Joyce said as he opened the drawer. ‘You could do it while you sit down this evening. The other wants a patch, unless you mean to give people somewhere to put an ear.’

He found the tweezers beneath a length of string and drew out the splinter by the window. Joyce asked whether the barrow was his; the coal merchant wanted it back the following afternoon, he said. She looked past him at the garden, where the overturned chair still lay beside the frame.

‘You might get that upright first. Then you’ll have somewhere to sit while you decide what to do next.’ When he said he had borrowed the barrow in order to make a start, she smiled. ‘I’m not stopping you. I should like to see what’s happened to the path.’

He took a sack from the cupboard and set the kettle on the cool side of the range; there was soup in the pantry which needed only warming for supper. The house had grown easier to manage as he learnt which small preparations saved him coming back with his hands full.

Joyce came to the window while he lifted the chair, which had left a pale rectangle in the grass. One rear leg shifted unpleasantly beneath his hand. He put it on the paving beside the kitchen step, where nobody would mistake it for a safe place to sit, and bent to the stems Lottie had warned him about.

The new leaves beneath them were thick and pointed. A snail clung to the underside of one stalk, and Abel set that piece aside with its occupant still attached. Soon he had enough dead growth to fill the bottom of the sack, and a patch of emerging green which looked unexpectedly deliberate.

Through the open kitchen door, Joyce asked whether he had found anything worth keeping. He described the leaves and she suggested that he leave them until they showed him what they were. He had been about to do precisely that, but accepted the advice without explaining the coincidence. After another few minutes his knees began to object, and he carried the sack through the house to the front.

A girl was standing outside the gate.

She wore a pale pinafore over a brown dress, with narrow sleeves which ended above her wrists. Her hair had been plaited and tied near the bottom, though several strands had escaped around her face. Abel first took her for someone sent with a message. Then she turned towards him and he saw the pattern of the railings through her shoulder.

He put the sack down beside the barrow. The girl watched his hands before looking up at his face. She seemed about twelve or thirteen, with a small, firm chin and the strained attention of someone trying to follow a conversation from too far away, although neither of them had spoken.

‘Are you Mr Crane?’ she asked. When he said that he was, she came a little nearer the opening. ‘The one who can hear people? I was told you lived at the end, but I wasn’t sure which end they meant.’

‘I can hear you,’ he said. ‘This is the right house. Would you like to come in?’ He moved away from the gate. Her outline was faint against the sunlit stone behind her, and for a moment she seemed to lose track of where he stood. Abel stayed beside the barrow.

‘I’d like to stop walking,’ she said at last. ‘I thought I was nearly here when I reached the baker’s, but then I couldn’t make myself come quite as far as the board.’ She glanced towards the house sign. ‘I can read it now.’

Abel took off his gloves and put them on the sack. He told her there was a quiet chair in the front room and that she need not explain anything before she had rested. He walked beside her at her pace, and at the steps went ahead to hold the door.

The kettle began to sing in the kitchen. Joyce appeared in the passage, saw the girl and stopped without beginning the questions Abel could almost hear her preparing. He introduced her as Mrs Stemp, who lived at the house, and asked whether the chair by the parlour window would suit their visitor.

The girl looked through the doorway. ‘The other one, if you don’t mind. I can see the street from here, and it keeps moving.’ Abel brought the chair by the inner wall a little closer to the hearth. She settled with her hands in her lap. The cushion did not sink beneath her, and a narrow line of patterned fabric remained visible through the hem of her dress.

‘I’ll attend to the kettle,’ he said. ‘Mrs Stemp can stay, if you would like company.’ The girl looked towards Joyce before agreeing. In the kitchen he warmed the teapot and brought a small tray back to the parlour.

Joyce was telling the girl that the top of Harrow Street caught more wind than people expected. Their visitor had drawn her feet closer to the chair and was listening with less effort. Abel set the tray on the table and sat in his green armchair, far enough away that she need not turn her head sharply to look at him.

‘I’m Hettie,’ she said while he poured. ‘Hettie Lyle. I ought to have said before.’ She glanced at the cup, then towards the empty space on the tray. ‘I don’t need any, thank you. But you can have yours. I don’t mind the smell.’

He said that he was pleased to meet her and took a little milk. Joyce asked whether she would prefer the door open or closed. Hettie considered the strip of hall beyond it before saying open, if nobody was going to keep coming through. There were no other living guests expected, Abel told her, and she could sit where she was for as long as she wished.

For a while they listened to the clock. A cart passed downhill with something loose rattling against its side, and Hettie followed the sound until it faded. As she turned back, the edge of her sleeve held more clearly against the chair. Abel let his tea cool and waited until she was ready to tell him how far she had come.

‘There were two women talking by the shops,’ she said eventually. ‘I was behind the wall, where the garden used to be. One of them said you spoke to people who had died, and that they could stay here. She said it was next to Pargeter’s, going up towards the cliff.’ Hettie looked at Joyce. ‘I hadn’t heard of this house before. Not by its name.’

Joyce said people had always been better at remembering the bakery. Abel asked whether Hettie had come from near the market. She nodded and described a narrow opening between a shop and a store, with a wall at the far end where the top bricks sloped. It sounded close enough to the market turning for him to find it if she wanted him to.

‘I know that part,’ she said. ‘The street’s different when you come out. I stopped beside a window until I could see which way the hill went, and then farther up where there’s a broad step. Nobody minded. They went round me without knowing.’ Her fingers rested against one another in her lap. ‘I thought perhaps you could ask someone something for me.’

Abel set his cup down. ‘Tell me what you would like to know.’

‘Where my brother went. His name’s Albert Lyle.’ She gave the surname carefully, as though it mattered that he should have the whole of it. ‘He’s younger than me. He was always saying he’d be taller, but he hadn’t got there when I died.’

Joyce remained quiet beside the hearth. Abel had spent the winter hearing people speak of children who had become parents while somebody else continued to remember their small hands. He looked at Hettie’s narrow wrists and asked whether she knew how long it had been since she last saw Albert.

‘A long time.’ She watched him for a moment before continuing. ‘I know it isn’t just a few years. There used to be a house in front of the garden. Then they changed it, and later they changed it again. The shops haven’t always had those windows.’ She turned one hand over against her skirt. ‘I don’t know how to count it properly. I thought if I stayed where he could find me, one day he’d come back.’

Abel considered what he could honestly offer. There were people in Saltgrave who knew families, others who remembered a street before its present buildings. He could ask an ordinary question without deciding in advance what answer would be kindest. ‘I can make enquiries,’ he said. ‘I don’t yet know what we’ll learn. Would you like me to begin with his name?’

She nodded, then looked towards the open door. ‘Would I have to go back while you did it?’

‘No. There’s a room upstairs you may use. You can rest there, or sit with us downstairs. You needn’t decide how long you want to stay today.’ He waited while she considered that, then added, ‘There would be no charge.’

Hettie looked down at her pinafore, where one pocket lay flat against the skirt. ‘I haven’t anything to pay with.’ Her voice had become quieter. Joyce told her that there was clean linen in the room and a little view of the harbour, although a chimney had rather more of it than anyone would have chosen. Hettie looked up at this, and after a moment asked whether the room was at the top of the house.

‘Only the first landing,’ Abel said. ‘Mrs Stemp’s room is higher. We can go slowly, or leave it until later.’ Joyce assured her that there was no hurry. When Abel had finished his tea, Hettie said she would like to look before it grew dark.

At the stairs, a thin, uncertain note sounded beneath Joyce’s familiar higher one. Hettie stopped on the first step to listen. Abel explained that the stairs often had something to contribute, and waited until she was ready to go on. By the landing the second note had steadied.

Room Three stood with its door open. The green-striped cover was on the bed, and the curtain had been drawn far enough back to show the gap between the roofs. Abel moved the chair a little away from the window, then stood aside. Hettie looked at the chest, the washstand and the narrow hearth before going to see the water.

‘Is that all the harbour?’ she asked. He told her it was only a small part, and pointed out where the roofs concealed the rest. She studied it with her head tilted. ‘I thought there would be more boats. Perhaps they’re behind that chimney.’

‘A good many things are,’ Joyce said. ‘You can have the curtain a little farther across if the light troubles you.’ Hettie asked for it to be left as it was. She could see the water clearly from here, she said, and would like to watch it for a while.

Abel waited by the door. Across the landing, Room Two had finished airing; he would close its window before the evening cooled. Irene’s former room needed no luggage unpacked, just as it had needed none carried away at Christmas, when the last of that winter’s guests had gone home.

Hettie turned from the window. ‘Was that your garden I could see through the kitchen?’ she asked. ‘There was a glass lid, with things growing round it.’

He told her about the cold frame and the little he had managed to clear. She asked what he intended to put there. Abel admitted that he had borrowed a barrow before settling that question, which made her smile for the first time. She came towards the chair, looking at its position before choosing to sit.

‘Albert wanted peas,’ she said. ‘The tall sort. He liked making the sticks stand up, but he put them too close together. You couldn’t get your hand between them without knocking another one down.’ She demonstrated the narrow gap with her own hands, then let them rest on her lap. ‘He said he’d do them again when I could come out. He wanted me to see how high they went.’

Abel leaned against the open doorframe. He had been about to tell her that there might be room for peas near his wall, but she was looking at the space between her hands, and he let the suggestion go. ‘Did he mind being told the sticks were wrong?’ he asked.

‘Very much. Then he moved them when he thought I wasn’t looking.’ Her smile returned briefly before she looked towards the window. ‘He used to bring me one in his pocket, when they were ready. Just one pod. He said the others needed another day, but I think he ate them on the way upstairs.’

Abel asked whether she would like them to leave her for a little while. She would, provided she could come down later. At the doorway she called his name, and he turned back. ‘If anyone remembers him, would you ask what he liked doing?’ she said. ‘He might have found something he liked better.’

Abel said he would ask. He left the door ajar as she wanted, closed the window in Room Two and went downstairs with Joyce. At the front of the house his gloves lay on the sack, beside the empty barrow. He brought them in, leaving the garden work where it was, and found a clean sheet of paper on the parlour desk. Beneath Albert Lyle’s name, he wrote Hettie’s question in full.