Page 3 of The Sky Beneath Us
Immediately, it’s like stepping into a parallel universe. The Garden of Dreams is an oasis of calm, the clamour and bustle of the city streets muffled beyond its high stone walls. I sink gratefullyon to a bench, giving myself a few moments to allow the pounding of my heart to subside, regathering my tattered nerves.
The first thing I then notice is the birdsong. I suppose it’s everywhere in the city, but it’s only when the din of the traffic fades that it can be heard. The bass cooing of pigeons is overlain with the treble notes of other birds, high and pure as a flute or soft as an oboe’s liquid tones. It reminds me of walking along the hallway at Ardtuath House, hearing the sounds of instruments being practised behind closed doors. I sit for a while, closing my eyes to absorb the sounds.
When I open my eyes again, I become aware of the play of sunlight over my face and a sweet scent drifting on the air, enticing me deeper into the gardens. I gather up my bag containing Violet’s papers and begin to walk. The space is filled with colour and perfume from the plants that grow here – cascades of jasmine, a tapestry of roses, the teardrop flowers of angel’s trumpets, and a clump of headily fragranced white orchids hiding in the shade of a fig tree. As I wander along the paths, I imagine I feel the presence of Violet beside me. The exotic birds and trees remind me of the descriptions I’ve read in her journals and the flowers seem familiar to me from the botanic watercolours she painted, crowding the walls of the library in the big house. I pull out my phone and snap some photos to send home to Mum, my spirits lifting a little as I do so.
The focal point of the garden is a pavilion, its domed cupola supported by elegant cream columns. According to the leaflet I was given with my ticket, this is where the café ought to be. But I find the doors locked and a hand-scrawled notice saying it’s closed until further notice due to the virus. I spot a white marble plaque set into the wall and step closer to read the writing on it. It bears four stanzas translated from theRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, butthey’re made difficult to read by a cobweb of cracks radiating from the third of the verses. I peer at it more closely.
Ah, love! Could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire.
Would not we shatter it to bits – and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire!
And then I read the engraving on a smaller metal plate set beneath it:
The crack in the marble plaque, now disguised as a creeping vine, is said to have been the only damage to the garden caused by the Great Earthquake of 1934.
Instead of replacing the broken slab of marble, someone has instead turned the damage into a part of the design by etching leaves and flowers along the cracks. I sit on a bench beneath it, turning every now and then to reread the words and absorb their broken beauty. It’s as if Violet has reached out to me and taken my hand to guide me here. If I needed a sign of encouragement to continue on this journey, then surely here it is. The message is loud and clear ... life falls apart; and maybe some things can’t be mended, but perhaps they can be reshaped into something even more beautiful. In the sighing of the breeze and the calling of the birds, I imagine I hear her voice too.Keep going, she says.Keep putting one foot in front of the other, just as I did. You’ve taken the first steps – now see where the path takes you.
I pull her journal from my bag and settle down in the jasmine-scented shade to read.
Violet’s Journal
SUNDAY, 4THSEPTEMBER, 1927
My first week as a student of the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women has passed in a blur and it’s a relief to be able to sit down for a few minutes at last and write up my impressions. So much for my resolution to keep this journal on a daily basis! It’s been all I can do at the end of every day to drag myself upstairs to my room and collapse into bed. Marjorie is the same. We scarcely exchange a word before falling into the deepest of sleeps, and then my dreams are filled with Miss Morison’s lectures on the care of glasshouses and the best ways to propagate herbaceous perennials.
Even though today is Sunday, I’ve come to the Royal Botanic Garden to explore the glasshouses, which are on a far grander scale and filled with infinitely more exotic specimens than those at the gardening school. I’m writing this sitting on a bench in a corner of the Tropical Palm House, beneath the fronds of a tall Bermuda palmetto. Outside, beyond the white ironwork and towering panes of glass, a biting autumn wind is tousling the heads of the trees, turning the maples scarlet and making the sweet-chestnut leaves tumble. But in here the air is more pleasantly balmy than thewarmest of summer days back home on the shores of Loch Ewe (and with the added bonus of being without the swarms of midges).
A young man was sitting on this bench. I nodded to him as I sat down and he took off his cap and wrung it in his hands, betraying his discomfort at my presence. His hair was the reddish brown of a conker and there was grime beneath his fingernails, although the skin surrounding them was clean. His hands had the chapped appearance of having been well scrubbed with soap and water – a condition with which I am rapidly becoming all too familiar myself.
I took out my sketchbook and began to draw the palmetto with its clusters of ripening berries. When I paused to remove my coat – the heat of the glasshouse beginning to make my skin prickle – from the corner of my eye I caught the young man looking at my efforts. I turned to face him and held out the sketch. He blushed as pink as a beetroot. I couldn’t help noticing the warmth in his hazel eyes when he finally plucked up the courage to meet my amused gaze.
‘You have an interest in plants?’ he asked. He couldn’t disguise the surprise in his voice.
I suspect I couldn’t keep the pride out of my own voice as I replied, ‘I’m a student at the School of Gardening for Women.’
Instantly, his demeanour changed and the air around us seemed to cool a few degrees along with his expression, despite the muggy warmth of the glasshouse. I supposed he must be one of those people who disapprove of young ladies dirtying their hands, or perhaps he agreed with those who say we take jobs from young men who need them and would be better off staying in the kitchen where we belong.
‘You draw well enough,’ he said. I couldn’t place his accent precisely, although his words had the brusque edges of the Scottish east coast about them.
‘It’s most kind of you to say so,’ I said. I nodded towards the palmetto. ‘That particular specimen is the oldest one here. It was moved to this location from the old botanic garden on Leith Walk nearly a hundred years ago.’
I’d gleaned this fact from one of Miss Morison’s lectures in the preceding week, but rather than receiving it with polite interest, the young man abruptly got to his feet. He settled his cap back on his head and bid me a gruff ‘Goodbye’, before disappearing into the undergrowth of the tropical forest surrounding us. I heard the door bang shut behind him as he left and caught a glimpse of him hurrying along the path, pulling the edges of his jacket together and stooping slightly against the buffeting of the wind.
I shook my head at his incivility and finished my sketch, then settled down to writing up this journal. The first week of the course has passed in a blur of new names and faces, and my mind is full to bursting with Latin botanical nomenclature as well as the challenges posed by lectures in bookkeeping and chemistry. We have to attend evening classes in those subjects at the College of Agriculture, requiring a lengthy tram ride into George Square at the end of an already long day’s toil.
Miss Morison insists upon her students learning all aspects of horticulture and takes a most pragmatic approach. She has told us of her own career, which began when she became one of the first practitioner gardeners at these very same botanic gardens at the turn of the century. It was the prejudice she encountered here that prompted her and her colleague, Miss Barker (sadly no longer with us), to start the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women. ‘It is up to you to prove our male counterparts wrong in their assertions that you lassies are welcome to come and play in the garden, but the “tall and braw laddies” – as they like to call themselves – will pity your struggles with the spade,’ she told us on our first day. ‘We are no fair-weather gardeners at this school, and we have no use fordilettantes and dabblers here. You will dig and plough and plant and hoe, just as the men do, even though you do so in skirts. We have already proven ourselves their equals, joining our suffragist sisters on the march to winning the vote so very recently. It is up to you to do justice to the women who have gone before you, to prove yourselves worthy of their efforts and to keep opening new doors for those who come after you.’
Next week we begin the practical classes too at Corstorphine. I look forward to the introduction to ploughing – having already made the acquaintance of the School of Gardening’s resident plough horse, a stocky grey named Bessie – as well as getting to grips with the market garden, where the season’s fruit and vegetables are ready for harvesting.
Manuring is on the syllabus as well, though I reserve judgement on just how exciting that particular topic will be.
Daisy – March 2020
Kathmandu has always conjured up images of a mysteriously remote and exotic city, but nothing I’ve read has prepared me for the noisy, crazy, colourful chaos that engulfs me each time I step out of the doors of my hotel. The air is filled with dust and traffic fumes, and the stench of raw sewage makes me gag as I cross a bridge over a murky stream. Madly haphazard loops of electric wiring run above every pavement, and I wonder how often people are accidentally electrocuted. I snap a photo and send it off to Jack, adding the taglineJust one of the hazards on the streets of Kathmandu. Probably a faster and less painful way to go than being run over by a hundred scooters though. There’s no reply, but then it’s still the middle of the night in Bermuda, which was the last place he texted me from. He’d said he was fed up with sailing yachts for other people and was looking for a more modest boat of his own to buy.
