A Fatal Turn
in the Garden

Celia March brought the gate into the Borrowing Room because nobody believed her measurements.

It was a small gate, painted white, with a curl of rust beneath each hinge. She stood it against the counter and took a folded sheet from her pocket.

‘Thirty-one inches,’ she said. ‘As I said on the telephone.’

Bev looked over the top of it.

‘You could have brought a photograph.’

‘Miles would say I'd photographed the wrong gate.’

‘Has he got another thirty-one-inch gate?’

‘He has a remarkable capacity to find one when required.’

Jo Mercer came through from the workshop carrying the narrow trolley they had been discussing. She set it beside the gate, took out her tape and measured across its wheels. Twenty-six inches. The handles spread a little farther, but there was room.

‘This one. With somebody holding the gate back while you go through.’

‘There won't be a gate,’ Celia said. ‘I've taken it off.’

Bev glanced at Jo.

‘That may help.’

Outside, June rain had brought a shine to the street and driven two people beneath the Borrowing Room's little canopy. One came in with a drill. The other remained outside, apparently willing to get wet before becoming responsible for an object.

Celia put the folded sheet beside the trolley. It was a plan of her garden, with a rectangular pond, a long rectangle marked GLASSHOUSE and several pencil lines which had acquired competing arrows.

‘The wide trolley is for the front lawn,’ she said. ‘This one will go through the kitchen garden. Miles wants everything on the big one because he doesn't want two trips.’

Jo had visited March House once, to help Nell carry flowers for a birthday lunch. She remembered a long lawn sloping towards the valley and a greenhouse which could have accommodated her flat with room left for tomatoes. She did not remember the small gate.

‘Show me where it belongs.’

Celia put a finger between the glasshouse and the kitchen garden.

‘Here. There's a wall on either side. You can't improve the width by being determined.’

Jo drew a circle around the opening. At the opposite end of the glasshouse, a short flight of steps connected the raised terrace to a lower gravel walk. Celia had crossed the steps out in red.

‘Closed?’

‘Sue says the rail needs replacing. The carpenter can't do it until Monday. Nobody uses those tomorrow.’

‘Then the signs need to make that obvious before people reach them.’

‘That's why I've come to you.’

Jo checked the work they had agreed: two hours setting out the borrowed equipment that afternoon, a final route check before the garden opened, then her own Saturday counter shift. March House was one of five private gardens taking part. She had offered to help with the practical arrangements; she had not offered to stand all day explaining to visitors why a rope meant they should stop.

‘Who deals with the route during opening?’

‘Sue on the paths. Miles at the house. Me wherever they aren't.’

‘One person needs to decide if anything changes.’

Celia wrote SUE beside the crossed-out steps.

‘She'll be delighted to have that in writing.’

The bell rang. A man carrying a large waterproof envelope came in, stepped round the gate and stopped.

‘Oh, Celia.’

‘Good morning, Miles.’

‘You didn't need to take it down.’

‘It had to come down for the day anyway. The bottom catches the paving.’

Miles March had his sister's narrow nose and none of her briskness. He took off his cap, ran a hand over the flattened hair and looked at the gate as though it were something she had said about him.

‘I could have planed that.’

‘Yes. You offered in April.’

Jo fetched the wide trolley. Its platform was useful for a folding table and several chairs; across the wheels it measured thirty-four inches. She showed Miles both measurements before putting the tape away.

‘The big one stays on the drive and lawn. The small one goes through the wall. The load still has to fit the opening.’

‘I know how to use a trolley.’

‘Then you won't need much of the demonstration.’

He looked at her and, after a moment, smiled.

‘Sorry. We're having a day.’

‘We've only just begun it,’ Celia said.

Miles took two sheets from his envelope. One was a glossy map of the garden, with little drawings of roses along its lower edge. The other was a list of attractions for tomorrow: plants, refreshments, a short talk about the house, access to the valley walk.

‘The print shop can do another fifty if we decide by noon.’

Celia read the list.

‘You haven't taken the walk off.’

‘Anita said—’

‘Anita hasn't agreed. I spoke to her yesterday.’

He lowered his voice.

‘We can discuss that at home.’

‘We can decide it before you print fifty copies.’

The drill borrower passed his case to Bev and began explaining a noise it had made. Bev listened with an attention which left Jo in charge of the other conversation.

Miles set his envelope down.

‘People are coming because they want to see the whole place.’

‘Then we tell them which parts they'll see. We don't send them through somebody else's garden because an arrow looks better there.’

He crossed out the valley walk. His pen left a dent in the glossy sheet.

Celia took off her glasses and folded them into their case.

‘I've booked the meeting for Monday,’ she said.

Miles stopped writing.

‘Which meeting?’

‘The one we've been postponing.’

‘We said after the open day.’

‘Monday is after the open day.’

He gathered his papers so carefully that Jo found herself looking at his hands. She could see Celia deciding whether to add something. In the end she picked up her gate.

‘Shall we get this in the car?’

Miles reached for it. Celia let him take one end. They negotiated the doorway without further disagreement, each watching the hinges to make sure they did not catch.

When they had gone, Bev brought over the drill.

‘It squeals under load. He says it's never done that before.’

‘How long has he had it?’

‘Since yesterday.’

Jo attached an inspection tag. Bev put it in the waiting space and looked at the garden plan.

‘I was going to see the roses.’

‘You still can.’

‘I may admire them from somewhere Miles isn't explaining their family.’

At two, Owen collected the trolleys in his van. Celia had booked and paid for the delivery with him; Jo had paid for her own sandwich and meant to eat it before they arrived. They sat with the doors open in the dairy yard while the last of the rain moved east.

‘Are we still walking on Sunday?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Unless your modest hill has grown.’

‘It's been there quite a while. I think it's finished.’

She took the map from his dashboard. Their first attempt at the route had been abandoned for weather. They had gone to lunch anyway, and the map had remained in the van, accumulating folds.

‘Ten o'clock,’ she said. ‘Before somebody offers me a gate.’

March House stood above the town behind a low stone wall. By the time they arrived the road had dried, although the drive held shallow puddles beneath the trees. Miles met them beside the front lawn, wearing gardening gloves and carrying nothing which required them.

‘We can unload here. Sue wants the small trolley round the back.’

He helped Owen take the folding tables down while Jo carried the signboards to the porch. Four belonged to the Borrowing Room, each marked on its back with a number. Their heavy feet stayed with them. The black faces could be written on in chalk; there were no fixed arrows to make an old direction look authoritative.

Sue Rennie came round the house carrying a coil of rope.

‘You're Jo. Thank goodness. Tell me those don't say THIS WAY.’

‘They don't say anything yet.’

‘Excellent. We might remain in charge.’

She was broad-shouldered, with cropped fair hair and the tan of somebody who worked outdoors in weather which other people described as unsuitable. A pair of gloves hung from her belt. She had put red tape on the rope at intervals, conspicuous even when it sagged.

They walked the route together. Visitors would enter beside the front lawn, pass the rose beds, go along the upper terrace beside the glasshouse, then through the narrow opening into the kitchen garden. From there a broad gravel path returned along the outside of the wall to the tea tables. The steps down from the terrace were a shortcut which nobody needed to use.

Jo measured between the posts where Celia had removed the gate. The clear opening was thirty-two inches, a little wider than the gate itself. She wrote that on the plan. The narrow trolley would pass; the wide one still would not.

At the top of the steps, Sue tied the rope between a stout fence post and a metal eye in the glasshouse wall. Jo checked that it could be seen from either direction. Celia came out of the glasshouse with two pots of seedlings and stopped beside them.

‘Will that do?’

‘With a notice,’ Jo said.

Sue held up a laminated sheet: STEPS CLOSED. PLEASE FOLLOW THE GARDEN ROUTE.

‘I've been waiting for the pleasure of hanging this.’

Below them, the six stone steps descended to a gravel walk beside a shallow rectangular pond. There was room at the bottom to turn left towards a potting shed or right towards the far end of the lawn. Partway down, the wooden rail leaned where its lower fixing had failed. Jo did not test it.

‘Nobody uses the steps,’ Celia said. ‘Including us. Sue's right.’

She carried the seedlings towards the kitchen garden. Beyond the wall, Miles was moving an empty table on the large trolley. He stopped at the narrow opening, looked at it and turned back towards the drive.

Sue followed Jo's glance.

‘He'll remember now.’

Jo wrote the next arrow on board three. She added KITCHEN GARDEN beneath it and stood back to judge it from a visitor's height.

‘Could you take a picture of the route when we're finished?’ Sue asked. ‘For whoever comes to help tomorrow. I won't have time to show everyone individually.’

Jo took four photographs on Sue's phone, one at each decision point, then walked the complete circuit herself. At the far end of the kitchen garden the path brought her back to the lawn exactly as promised. She could see Owen fastening the tailgate of his van.

Celia was standing beside him. She had an envelope in her hand and was describing a small flat near the square.

‘There's a balcony. I can garden sitting down.’

‘Does Miles know?’ Owen asked.

‘He knows I'm selling. He doesn't yet believe houses get sold after people say that.’

She looked up at the garden. The wet leaves shone in the late sunshine; beyond the terrace, a climbing rose had reached the upstairs windows.

‘Thirty-six years,’ she said. ‘It's been lovely. I'm tired.’

Miles stood in the porch. Jo had not seen him arrive there. He took off his gloves, one finger at a time, and went inside.