‘We stayed out in the garden for about ten minutes but he hardly spoke in that time. He was wandering around in a kind of trance, walking over to different corners of the garden and then turning around to view everything from different angles. He stood beside the fountain and touched the frozen water. I can still see him doing this, such a sombre figure in his long black overcoat, his fingers stroking the cascade of icicles gently, then flicking them with his fingernails so that they sounded little notes like some far-off, tinkling musical instrument. His eyes were misted over. The owners of the house were trying to talk to us about water drainage and the cost of hiring a local gardener but Roger wasn’t listening to a word. He didn’t reply to a single thing they told him, until right at the very end of the tour, when he suddenly turned to them and said: “Of course, we’ll buy it.”
‘I was amazed. He hadn’t even asked my opinion. And he hadn’t said “We’ll be making an offer”; he’d said, “We’ll buy it.” Just like that. In the car on the way back to Oxford, I was too angry to talk to him properly. Anyway, he was behaving especially strangely; he was on some weird cloud nine of his own. He never once mentioned the garden. He kept talking about the house, rhapsodizing about it as though we could never have imagined anything so perfect. Finally I cut him off in mid-flow and told him that he should never, ever do anything like that again. He didn’t even know what I was talking about. When I pointed out to him that, without consulting me, he’d assured these people we were going to buy their house off them, he didn’t even seem to be aware that he’d done it. And the strange thing is, I believed him. It was as if he’d experienced some sort of fugue state.
‘As soon as we got back to our flat, he disappeared into the study and went online. I didn’t see much of him after that, until later that evening, when he came and found me on the sofa, eating dinner. I’d ordered pizza but he hadn’t heard me when I told him it had arrived. He was carrying his laptop with him and he sat down next to me and started talking.
‘“OK,” he said. “So I have to tell you what happened to me today in that garden.” I told him that was probably a good idea, and he started to explain: “Something came back to me,” he said. “Something I thought I might have imagined. From a long time ago.” He was struggling, rather, to find the words. “When I was just a kid, probably aged about five or six, I saw this film. At least, until today I wasn’t really sure whether I’d seen it or not. I didn’t know whether it was something I’d invented, or dreamed, or misremembered, or whatever. All I know is that the memory of it — even if it was a false memory — was so precious that I’d barely even allowed myself to think about it in all that time.” He looked at me so earnestly that I almost wanted to laugh. Which wouldn’t have been a pretty sight, since I had a mouth full of pizza at the time. “I didn’t know anything about it, except that it was a short film, as far as I could recall. It must have been shown mid-afternoon, in the school holidays, as some sort of filler between programmes, and it was called The Crystal Garden. At least, I was pretty sure that must have been the title. It’s so hard to distinguish what belongs to memory and what belongs to real life. I can’t remember anything about the story. I can only remember … an atmosphere, a feeling. A very faded print, the soundtrack filled with pops and scratches. A young boy as the hero: in one scene — the only scene I can call to mind, in any detail — he wanders into this garden, and I can remember the music on the soundtrack — there was a sort of tinkling background, some sort of tuned percussion, and over the top of that, a tune — a beautiful tune, lyrical and yearning — with a soprano singing the melody — there were no words — but again, the whole thing was incredibly scratchy, almost distorted — the recording must have deteriorated so badly … And this garden … The whole thing was made of crystal, was made of glass … It was a walled garden, he had to pass through a sort of passageway, a sort of tunnel in the wall to get to it, and when he came out into the garden … Yes, everything glittered, everything was made of crystal, all the flowers, the roses, the little topiary hedges, there were paths criss-crossing each other between the flower beds and they led towards this … lake, was it? this frozen pond? … a sheet of crystal, anyway, and this fountain at the centre of it, shimmering, glittering, just like the fountain in the garden today. The resemblance was incredible.” He paused for breath. I think this was the longest speech he’d ever made in the whole time I’d known him. His voice was quiet, but it was shaking as well. I’d never known him speak about anything with such passion. “I’m sure this is real,” he resumed after a while. “I’m sure I’m not imagining this. I did see that film. I know I did. I just wish I could remember more about it. It’s crazy, I can’t remember anything about the story. Nothing at all. Like I said, the whole thing is just … just an atmosphere, and the strange thing is, that the atmosphere of the film sort of … bleeds in to the atmosphere in the room when I was watching it. It was the school holidays — it must have been the school holidays — or perhaps I was off sick, something like that — and Mum wasn’t sitting next to me on the sofa or anything but she was inside the house with me, in the next room, I think, in the kitchen, getting dinner ready for when Dad came home. And it was winter, definitely winter, because there were ice crystals on the window of the living room and icicles hanging down above the window, and snow on the ground outside, or at least a frost — these details blend in, you see, they blend in with the crystal of the crystal garden; and our gas fire was on, our little old-fashioned gas fire, and it was hissing, as it always did, and giving out little pops and scratches, and again, that blends in, somehow, with the poor quality of the film soundtrack, so that it becomes even more hard to distinguish between what I’ve remembered and what I’ve imagined.”
‘He tailed off, and fell silent, until I asked: “How come you’ve never mentioned this before, if it’s such an important memory for you?”
‘And he said: “Because I couldn’t be sure if it was true or not. Not until today.”
‘“Just because the garden reinforced that memory,” I said, “doesn’t mean that it makes it true. It sounds to me that what you’re doing is conflating two different —” But he cut me off, and went back to the computer. “No,” he said, “that’s not the point. The point is that seeing the garden today made me go online and start looking for some evidence. And here’s what I found.”
‘He passed the laptop over. I wiped my fingers on a piece of kitchen towel and took it off him. He was on the IMDb, looking at a page devoted to the filmography of some American cameraman. There was a long list of pretty undistinguished credits from the early 1940s onwards — some of them films, but mostly TV shows — and then just one credit as director, which said “Der Garten aus Kristall, 1937”. When you clicked on the link, it brought up a page which was completely blank except for the title of the film and the director’s name: Friedrich Güdemann.
‘I looked across at him and said: “That’s it?”
‘“That’s it,” he answered.
‘I double checked. “You’ve spent the last few hours searching the internet for this film, and this is all you found?”
‘“Yes. There’s no other reference to it. Nothing.”
‘I looked at the computer screen again. “So it’s a German film?”