One day I found a shovel and took it to a spot far away from the confines of the house and its walled garden. I chose a long-abandoned border as the site for my first planting, and began to prepare the ground for the imminent arrival of some Lupins. I began to dig. The shovel came to my armpits and was difficult to manoeuvre; the earth was as hard as bedrock but still I persevered, holding the handle against my chest and pushing down at an angle. I dug until the skin on my palms became thin and raw; a splinter pierced my thumb, embedding itself just beneath the fingernail. I knelt down, exhausted. It began to snow. It was nearly April — Passiontide, I recall; my young ears were rich with the strains of “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott.” I looked at where I had dug and saw that I had only succeeded in scraping away a thin layer of soil. Snowflakes alighted on the sorry, shallow patch I had created, their frail crystals resting gently for a moment before dissolving into the black earth.
I remained like this, crouching and defeated, until Robinson found me and led me back to the dark solace of the potting shed. Poor Robinson. He alone brought colour to the gardens and kept Hemscott alive for me, until one summer I returned from school to find that my mother had dispensed with his services. Well, she said, he was getting too old for the job. The truth was that there was no money to pay him. There had been none for a very long time. In spite of my best efforts, the plants soon went to seed and the garden finally — fittingly, one might say — became a dilapidated mess.
And yet, curiously, whenever images of Hemscott invade my sleep now, it is not this sorry tangle that I see. What appears before me is the late-winter view from my bedroom as I stand at the dormer looking at the neat rows of box hedge against a snow-softened landscape, the topiary animals poised under a chalky sky. Although the hard, bare beds sparkle with frost, I know that soon it will be spring, and life will return to the garden once more.
AFTER MY FIRST MEETING with Johnny, I returned to the coffee shop every night, hoping to see him again. I sat on my own, testing my bladder with cup after cup of milky tea. Carefree matelots and pouting cocottes called to me as they went past, but I would not be seduced from my solitude. I asked the wizened old woman who ran the coffee shop about the Valley, but she seemed incapable of comprehending my need to go there.
“Are you a tin miner?” she kept asking, as if that were the only reason anyone would wish to visit the Valley.
One evening I took my place as usual, surveying every passing face, carefully looking out for Johnny’s. After some time a very young woman, little more than a girl, approached my table and sat down in the manner of a familiar old friend. She lit a clove cigarette and looked out at the street with me.
“Waiting for your girlfriend?” she said. I knew immediately she was a prostitute.
“No,” I replied, somewhat curtly. I did not appreciate this disruption of my vigil. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
“OK,” she said, exhaling a plume of pungent smoke. Her crude maquillage of thickly rouged cheeks and bright lipstick emphasised rather than disguised her youth.
“Actually,” I added, “I’m waiting to join my friend. He is going to take me somewhere rather wonderful.” I do not know why I felt the need to elaborate.
She lifted an eyebrow as if to say, Where?
“The Kinta Valley,” I said.
She opened her mouth and threw back her head in an ugly laugh. Her cackle revealed a set of perfectly brown teeth, which stood out starkly against her powdered skin. The chrysanthemum she wore in her hair suddenly seemed ludicrous and inappropriate. “That place,” she said, “what a shit pile that is.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It’s full of nothing,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
She turned to the shopkeeper. “This idiot wants to go to the Valley, can you believe it?” Their rough laughter tore into my head.
“Please, go away.”
“Hey, I’m telling you the truth.” She leaned across the table. Her voice was hard, stabbing.
“How would you know?”
“It’s my home, mister. My home.”
I got up and left the table, managing to raise a weak smile as I did so. Their laughter rang loudly as I stepped out into the street. I blinked back the first prick of hot tears in my eyes. I ran back to my lodgings and began to pack. I left for the Valley at dawn the next day, after a breakfast of sweet coffee and glutinous rice.
